English Literature Part 32

The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

In this fragment, from the "Ode to the West Wind," we have a suggestion of Sh.e.l.ley's own spirit, as reflected in all his poetry. The very spirit of nature, which appeals to us in the wind and the cloud, the sunset and the moonrise, seems to have possessed him, at times, and made him a chosen instrument of melody. At such times he is a true poet, and his work is unrivaled. At other times, unfortunately, Sh.e.l.ley joins with Byron in voicing a vain rebellion against society. His poetry, like his life, divides itself into two distinct moods. In one he is the violent reformer, seeking to overthrow our present inst.i.tutions and to hurry the millennium out of its slow walk into a gallop. Out of this mood come most of his longer poems, like _Queen Mab, Revolt of Islam, h.e.l.las_, and _The Witch of Atlas_, which are somewhat violent diatribes against government, priests, marriage, religion, even G.o.d as men supposed him to be. In a different mood, which finds expression _Alastor, Adonais_, and his wonderful lyrics, Sh.e.l.ley is like a wanderer following a vague, beautiful vision, forever sad and forever unsatisfied. In the latter mood he appeals profoundly to all men who have known what it is to follow after an unattainable ideal.

Sh.e.l.lEY'S LIFE. There are three cla.s.ses of men who see visions, and all three are represented in our literature. The first is the mere dreamer, like Blake, who stumbles through a world of reality without noticing it, and is happy in his visions. The second is the seer, the prophet, like Langland, or Wyclif, who sees a vision and quietly goes to work, in ways that men understand, to make the present world a little more like the ideal one which he sees in his vision. The third, who appears in many forms,--as visionary, enthusiast, radical, anarchist, revolutionary, call him what you will,--sees a vision and straightway begins to tear down all human inst.i.tutions, which have been built up by the slow toil of centuries, simply because they seem to stand in the way of his dream. To the latter cla.s.s belongs Sh.e.l.ley, a man perpetually at war with the present world, a martyr and exile, simply because of his inability to sympathize with men and society as they are, and because of his own mistaken judgment as to the value and purpose of a vision.

Sh.e.l.ley was born in Field Place, near Horsham, Suss.e.x, in 1792. On both his father's and his mother's side he was descended from n.o.ble old families, famous in the political and literary history of England. From childhood he lived, like Blake, in a world of fancy, so real that certain imaginary dragons and headless creatures of the neighboring wood kept him and his sisters in a state of fearful expectancy. He learned rapidly, absorbed the cla.s.sics as if by intuition, and, dissatisfied with ordinary processes of learning, seems to have sought, like Faustus, the acquaintance of spirits, as shown in his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty":

While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

Sh.e.l.ley's first public school, kept by a hard-headed Scotch master, with its floggings and its general brutality, seemed to him like a combination of h.e.l.l and prison; and his active rebellion against existing inst.i.tutions was well under way when, at twelve years of age, he entered the famous preparatory school at Eton. He was a delicate, nervous, marvelously sensitive boy, of great physical beauty; and, like Cowper, he suffered torments at the hands of his rough schoolfellows. Unlike Cowper, he was positive, resentful, and brave to the point of rashness; soul and body rose up against tyranny; and he promptly organized a rebellion against the brutal f.a.gging system. "Mad Sh.e.l.ley" the boys called him, and they chivied him like dogs around a little c.o.o.n that fights and cries defiance to the end. One finds what he seeks in this world, and it is not strange that Sh.e.l.ley, after his Eton experiences, found causes for rebellion in all existing forms of human society, and that he left school "to war among mankind," as he says of himself in the _Revolt of Islam_. His university days are but a repet.i.tion of his earlier experiences. While a student at Oxford he read some sc.r.a.ps of Hume's philosophy, and immediately published a pamphlet called "The Necessity of Atheism." It was a crude, foolish piece of work, and Sh.e.l.ley distributed it by post to every one to whom it might give offense. Naturally this brought on a conflict with the authorities, but Sh.e.l.ley would not listen to reason or make any explanation, and was expelled from the university in 1811.

Sh.e.l.ley's marriage was even more unfortunate. While living in London, on a generous sister's pocket money, a certain young schoolgirl, Harriet Westbrook, was attracted by Sh.e.l.ley's crude revolutionary doctrines. She promptly left school, as her own personal part in the general rebellion, and refused to return or even to listen to her parents upon the subject.

Having been taught by Sh.e.l.ley, she threw herself upon his protection; and this unbalanced couple were presently married, as they said, "in deference to anarch custom." The two infants had already proclaimed a rebellion against the inst.i.tution of marriage, for which they proposed to subst.i.tute the doctrine of elective affinity. For two years they wandered about England, Ireland, and Wales, living on a small allowance from Sh.e.l.ley's father, who had disinherited his son because of his ill-considered marriage. The pair soon separated, and two years later Sh.e.l.ley, having formed a strong friendship with one G.o.dwin,--a leader of young enthusiasts and a preacher of anarchy,--presently showed his belief in G.o.dwin's theories by eloping with his daughter Mary. It is a sad story, and the details were perhaps better forgotten. We should remember that in Sh.e.l.ley we are dealing with a tragic blend of high-mindedness and light-headedness.

Byron wrote of him, "The most gentle, the most amiable, and the least worldly-minded person I ever met!"

Led partly by the general hostility against him, and partly by his own delicate health, Sh.e.l.ley went to Italy in 1818, and never returned to England. After wandering over Italy he finally settled in Pisa, beloved of so many English poets,--beautiful, sleepy Pisa, where one looks out of his window on the main street at the busiest hour of the day, and the only living thing in sight is a donkey, dozing lazily, with his head in the shade and his body in the sunshine. Here his best poetry was written, and here he found comfort in the friendship of Byron, Hunt, and Trelawney, who are forever a.s.sociated with Sh.e.l.ley's Italian life. He still remained hostile to English social inst.i.tutions; but life is a good teacher, and that Sh.e.l.ley dimly recognized the error of his rebellion is shown in the increasing sadness of his later poems:

O world, O life, O time!

On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime?

No more--oh, never more!

Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh spring, and summer, and winter h.o.a.r, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more--oh, never more!

In 1822, when only thirty years of age, Sh.e.l.ley was drowned while sailing in a small boat off the Italian coast. His body was washed ash.o.r.e several days later, and was cremated, near Viareggio, by his friends, Byron, Hunt, and Trelawney. His ashes might, with all reverence, have been given to the winds that he loved and that were a symbol of his restless spirit; instead, they found a resting place near the grave of Keats, in the English cemetery at Rome. One rarely visits the spot now without finding English and American visitors standing in silence before the significant inscription, _Cor Cordium_.

WORKS OF Sh.e.l.lEY. As a lyric poet, Sh.e.l.ley is one of the supreme geniuses of our literature; and the reader will do well to begin with the poems which show him at his very best. "The Cloud," "To a Skylark," "Ode to the West Wind," "To Night,"--poems like these must surely set the reader to searching among Sh.e.l.ley's miscellaneous works, to find for himself the things "worthy to be remembered."

In reading Sh.e.l.ley's longer poems one must remember that there are in this poet two distinct men: one, the wanderer, seeking ideal beauty and forever unsatisfied; the other, the unbalanced reformer, seeking the overthrow of present inst.i.tutions and the establishment of universal happiness.

_Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude_ (1816) is by far the best expression of Sh.e.l.ley's greater mood. Here we see him wandering restlessly through the vast silences of nature, in search of a loved dream-maiden who shall satisfy his love of beauty. Here Sh.e.l.ley is the poet of the moonrise, and of the tender exquisite fancies that can never be expressed. The charm of the poem lies in its succession of dreamlike pictures; but it gives absolutely no impressions of reality. It was written when Sh.e.l.ley, after his long struggle, had begun to realize that the world was too strong for him. _Alastor_ is therefore the poet's confession, not simply of failure, but of undying hope in some better thing that is to come.

_Prometheus Unbound_ (1818-1820), a lyrical drama, is the best work of Sh.e.l.ley's revolutionary enthusiasm, and the most characteristic of all his poems. Sh.e.l.ley's philosophy (if one may dignify a hopeless dream by such a name) was a curious aftergrowth of the French Revolution, namely, that it is only the existing tyranny of State, Church, and society which keeps man from growth into perfect happiness. Naturally Sh.e.l.ley forgot, like many other enthusiasts, that Church and State and social laws were not imposed upon man from without, but were created by himself to minister to his necessities. In Sh.e.l.ley's poem the hero, Prometheus, represents mankind itself,--a just and n.o.ble humanity, chained and tortured by Jove, who is here the personification of human inst.i.tutions.[228] In due time Demogorgon (which is Sh.e.l.ley's name for Necessity) overthrows the tyrant Jove and releases Prometheus (Mankind), who is presently united to Asia, the spirit of love and goodness in nature, while the earth and the moon join in a wedding song, and everything gives promise that they shall live together happy ever afterwards.

Sh.e.l.ley here looks forward, not back, to the Golden Age, and is the prophet of science and evolution. If we compare his t.i.tan with similar characters in _Faust_ and _Cain_, we shall find this interesting difference,--that while Goethe's t.i.tan is cultured and self-reliant, and Byron's stoic and hopeless, Sh.e.l.ley's hero is patient under torture, seeing help and hope beyond his suffering. And he marries Love that the earth may be peopled with superior beings who shall subst.i.tute brotherly love for the present laws and conventions of society. Such is his philosophy; but the beginner will read this poem, not chiefly for its thought, but for its youthful enthusiasm, for its marvelous imagery, and especially for its ethereal music. Perhaps we should add here that _Prometheus_ is, and probably always will be, a poem for the chosen few who can appreciate its peculiar spiritlike beauty. In its purely pagan conception of the world, it suggests, by contrast, Milton's Christian philosophy in _Paradise Regained_.

Sh.e.l.ley's revolutionary works, _Queen Mab_ (1813), _The Revolt of Islam_ (1818), _h.e.l.las_ (1821), and _The Witch of Atlas_ (1820), are to be judged in much the same way as is _Prometheus Unbound_. They are largely invectives against religion, marriage, kingcraft, and priestcraft, most impractical when considered as schemes for reform, but abounding in pa.s.sages of exquisite beauty, for which alone they are worth reading. In the drama called _The Cenci_ (1819), which is founded upon a morbid Italian story, Sh.e.l.ley for the first and only time descends to reality. The heroine, Beatrice, driven to desperation by the monstrous wickedness of her father, kills him and suffers the death penalty in consequence. She is the only one of Sh.e.l.ley's characters who seems to us entirely human.

Far different in character is _Epipsychidion_ (1821), a rhapsody celebrating Platonic love, the most impalpable, and so one of the most characteristic, of all Sh.e.l.ley's works. It was inspired by a beautiful Italian girl, Emilia Viviani, who was put into a cloister against her will, and in whom Sh.e.l.ley imagined he found his long-sought ideal of womanhood.

With this should be read _Adonais_ (1821), the best known of all Sh.e.l.ley's longer poems. _Adonais_ is a wonderful threnody, or a song of grief, over the death of the poet Keats. Even in his grief Sh.e.l.ley still preserves a sense of unreality, and calls in many shadowy allegorical figures,--Sad Spring, Weeping Hours, Glooms, Splendors, Destinies,--all uniting in bewailing the loss of a loved one. The whole poem is a succession of dream pictures, exquisitely beautiful, such as only Sh.e.l.ley could imagine; and it holds its place with Milton's _Lycidas_ and Tennyson's _In Memoriam_ as one of the three greatest elegies in our language.

In his interpretation of nature Sh.e.l.ley suggests Wordsworth, both by resemblance and by contrast. To both poets all natural objects are symbols of truth; both regard nature as permeated by the great spiritual life which animates all things; but while Wordsworth finds a spirit of thought, and so of communion between nature and the soul of man, Sh.e.l.ley finds a spirit of love, which exists chiefly for its own delight; and so "The Cloud," "The Skylark," and "The West Wind," three of the most beautiful poems in our language, have no definite message for humanity. In his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" Sh.e.l.ley is most like Wordsworth; but in his "Sensitive Plant," with its fine symbolism and imagery, he is like n.o.body in the world but himself. Comparison is sometimes an excellent thing; and if we compare Sh.e.l.ley's exquisite "Lament," beginning "O world, O life, O time," with Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," we shall perhaps understand both poets better. Both poems recall many happy memories of youth; both express a very real mood of a moment; but while the beauty of one merely saddens and disheartens us, the beauty of the other inspires us with something of the poet's own faith and hopefulness. In a word, Wordsworth found and Sh.e.l.ley lost himself in nature.

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of the Romanticists.

While Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law, and Sh.e.l.ley advocating impossible reforms, and Byron voicing his own egoism and the political discontent of the times, Keats lived apart from men and from all political measures, worshiping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart, or to reflect some splendor of the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be. He had, moreover, the novel idea that poetry exists for its own sake, and suffers loss by being devoted to philosophy or politics or, indeed, to any cause, however great or small. As he says in "Lamia":

... Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy?

There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things.

Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine-- Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.

Partly because of this high ideal of poetry, partly because he studied and unconsciously imitated the Greek cla.s.sics and the best works of the Elizabethans, Keats's last little volume of poetry is unequaled by the work of any of his contemporaries. When we remember that all his work was published in three short years, from 1817 to 1820, and that he died when only twenty-five years old, we must judge him to be the most promising figure of the early nineteenth century, and one of the most remarkable in the history of literature.

LIFE. Keats's life of devotion to beauty and to poetry is all the more remarkable in view of his lowly origin. He was the son of a hostler and stable keeper, and was born in the stable of the Swan and Hoop Inn, London, in 1795. One has only to read the rough stable scenes from our first novelists, or even from d.i.c.kens, to understand how little there was in such an atmosphere to develop poetic gifts. Before Keats was fifteen years old both parents died, and he was placed with his brothers and sisters in charge of guardians. Their first act seems to have been to take Keats from school at Enfield, and to bind him as an apprentice to a surgeon at Edmonton. For five years he served his apprenticeship, and for two years more he was surgeon's helper in the hospitals; but though skillful enough to win approval, he disliked his work, and his thoughts were on other things. "The other day, during a lecture," he said to a friend, "there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to Oberon and fairyland." A copy of Spenser's _Faery Queen_, which had been given him by Charles Cowden Clark, was the prime cause of his abstraction. He abandoned his profession in 1817, and early in the same year published his first volume of _Poems_. It was modest enough in spirit, as was also his second volume, _Endymion_ (1818); but that did not prevent brutal attacks upon the author and his work by the self-const.i.tuted critics of _Blackwood's Magazine_ and the _Quarterly_. It is often alleged that the poet's spirit and ambition were broken by these attacks;[229] but Keats was a man of strong character, and instead of quarreling with his reviewers, or being crushed by their criticism, he went quietly to work with the idea of producing poetry that should live forever. As Matthew Arnold says, Keats "had flint and iron in him"; and in his next volume he accomplished his own purpose and silenced unfriendly criticism.

For the three years during which Keats wrote his poetry he lived chiefly in London and in Hampstead, but wandered at times over England and Scotland, living for brief s.p.a.ces in the Isle of Wight, in Devonshire, and in the Lake district, seeking to recover his own health, and especially to restore that of his brother. His illness began with a severe cold, but soon developed into consumption; and added to this sorrow was another,--his love for Fannie Brawne, to whom he was engaged, but whom he could not marry on account of his poverty and growing illness. When we remember all this personal grief and the harsh criticism of literary men, the last small volume, _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems_ (1820), is most significant, as showing not only Keats's wonderful poetic gifts, but also his beautiful and indomitable spirit. Sh.e.l.ley, struck by the beauty and promise of "Hyperion," sent a generous invitation to the author to come to Pisa and live with him; but Keats refused, having little sympathy with Sh.e.l.ley's revolt against society. The invitation had this effect, however, that it turned Keats's thoughts to Italy, whither he soon went in the effort to save his life. He settled in Rome with his friend Severn, the artist, but died soon after his arrival, in February, 1821. His grave, in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, is still an object of pilgrimage to thousands of tourists; for among all our poets there is hardly another whose heroic life and tragic death have so appealed to the hearts of poets and young enthusiasts.

THE WORK OF KEATS. "None but the master shall praise us; and none but the master shall blame" might well be written on the fly leaf of every volume of Keats's poetry; for never was there a poet more devoted to his ideal, entirely independent of success or failure. In strong contrast with his contemporary, Byron, who professed to despise the art that made him famous, Keats lived for poetry alone, and, as Lowell pointed out, a virtue went out of him into everything he wrote. In all his work we have the impression of this intense loyalty to his art; we have the impression also of a profound dissatisfaction that the deed falls so far short of the splendid dream.

Thus after reading Chapman's translation of Homer he writes:

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific--and all his men Looked at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

In this striking sonnet we have a suggestion of Keats's high ideal, and of his sadness because of his own ignorance, when he published his first little volume of poems in 1817. He knew no Greek; yet Greek literature absorbed and fascinated him, as he saw its broken and imperfect reflection in an English translation. Like Shakespeare, who also was but poorly educated in the schools, he had a marvelous faculty of discerning the real spirit of the cla.s.sics,--a faculty denied to many great scholars, and to most of the "cla.s.sic" writers of the preceding century,--and so he set himself to the task of reflecting in modern English the spirit of the old Greeks.

The imperfect results of this attempt are seen in his next volume, _Endymion_, which is the story of a young shepherd beloved by a moon G.o.ddess. The poem begins with the striking lines:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pa.s.s into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us; and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing,

which well ill.u.s.trate the spirit of Keats's later work, with its perfect finish and melody. It has many quotable lines and pa.s.sages, and its "Hymn to Pan" should be read in connection with Wordsworth's famous sonnet beginning, "The world is too much with us." The poem gives splendid promise, but as a whole it is rather chaotic, with too much ornament and too little design, like a modern house. That Keats felt this defect strongly is evident from his modest preface, wherein he speaks of _Endymion_, not as a deed accomplished, but only as an unsuccessful attempt to suggest the underlying beauty of Greek mythology.

Keats's third and last volume, _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems_ (1820), is the one with which the reader should begin his acquaintance with this master of English verse. It has only two subjects, Greek mythology and mediaeval romance. "Hyperion" is a magnificent fragment, suggesting the first arch of a cathedral that was never finished. Its theme is the overthrow of the t.i.tans by the young sun-G.o.d Apollo. Realizing his own immaturity and lack of knowledge, Keats laid aside this work, and only the pleadings of his publisher induced him to print the fragment with his completed poems.

Throughout this last volume, and especially in "Hyperion," the influence of Milton is apparent, while Spenser is more frequently suggested in reading _Endymion_.

Of the longer poems in the volume, "Lamia" is the most suggestive. It is the story of a beautiful enchantress, who turns from a serpent into a glorious woman and fills every human sense with delight, until, as a result of the foolish philosophy of old Apollonius, she vanishes forever from her lover's sight. "The Eve of St. Agnes," the most perfect of Keats's mediaeval poems, is not a story after the manner of the metrical romances, but rather a vivid painting of a romantic mood, such as comes to all men, at times, to glorify a workaday world. Like all the work of Keats and Sh.e.l.ley, it has an element of unreality; and when we read at the end,

And they are gone; aye, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm,

it is as if we were waking from a dream,--which is the only possible ending to all of Keats's Greek and mediaeval fancies. We are to remember, however, that no beautiful thing, though it be intangible as a dream, can enter a man's life and leave him quite the same afterwards. Keats's own word is here suggestive. "The imagination," he said, "may be likened to Adam's dream; he awoke and found it true."

It is by his short poems that Keats is known to the majority of present-day readers. Among these exquisite shorter poems we mention only the four odes, "On a Grecian Urn," "To a Nightingale," "To Autumn," and "To Psyche." These are like an invitation to a feast; one who reads them will hardly be satisfied until he knows more of such delightful poetry. Those who study only the "Ode to a Nightingale" may find four things,--a love of sensuous beauty, a touch of pessimism, a purely pagan conception of nature, and a strong individualism,--which are characteristic of this last of the romantic poets.

As Wordsworth's work is too often marred by the moralizer, and Byron's by the demagogue, and Sh.e.l.ley's by the reformer, so Keats's work suffers by the opposite extreme of aloofness from every human interest; so much so, that he is often accused of being indifferent to humanity. His work is also criticised as being too effeminate for ordinary readers. Three things should be remembered in this connection. First, that Keats sought to express beauty for its own sake; that beauty is as essential to normal humanity as is government or law; and that the higher man climbs in civilization the more imperative becomes his need of beauty as a reward for his labors. Second, that Keats's letters are as much an indication of the man as is his poetry; and in his letters, with their human sympathy, their eager interest in social problems, their humor, and their keen insight into life, there is no trace of effeminacy, but rather every indication of a strong and n.o.ble manhood. The third thing to remember is that all Keats's work was done in three or four years, with small preparation, and that, dying at twenty-five, he left us a body of poetry which will always be one of our most cherished possessions. He is often compared with "the marvelous boy" Chatterton, whom he greatly admired, and to whose memory he dedicated his _Endymion_; but though both died young, Chatterton was but a child, while Keats was in all respects a man. It is idle to prophesy what he might have done, had he been granted a Tennyson's long life and scholarly training. At twenty five his work was as mature as was Tennyson's at fifty, though the maturity suggests the too rapid growth of a tropical plant which under the warm rains and the flood of sunlight leaps into life, grows, blooms in a day, and dies.

As we have stated, Keats's work was bitterly and unjustly condemned by the critics of his day. He belonged to what was derisively called the c.o.c.kney school of poetry, of which Leigh Hunt was chief, and Proctor and Beddoes were fellow-workmen. Not even from Wordsworth and Byron, who were ready enough to recommend far less gifted writers, did Keats receive the slightest encouragement. Like young Lochinvar, "he rode all unarmed and he rode all alone." Sh.e.l.ley, with his sincerity and generosity, was the first to recognize the young genius, and in his n.o.ble _Adonais_--written, alas, like most of our tributes, when the subject of our praise is dead--he spoke the first true word of appreciation, and placed Keats, where he unquestionably belongs, among our greatest poets. The fame denied him in his sad life was granted freely after his death. Most fitly does he close the list of poets of the romantic revival, because in many respects he was the best workman of them all. He seems to have studied words more carefully than did his contemporaries, and so his poetic expression, or the harmony of word and thought, is generally more perfect than theirs. More than any other he lived for poetry, as the n.o.blest of the arts. More than any other he emphasized beauty, because to him, as shown by his "Grecian Urn," beauty and truth were one and inseparable. And he enriched the whole romantic movement by adding to its interest in common life the spirit, rather than the letter, of the cla.s.sics and of Elizabethan poetry. For these reasons Keats is, like Spenser, a poet's poet; his work profoundly influenced Tennyson and, indeed, most of the poets of the present era.

II. PROSE WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

Aside from the splendid work of the novel writers--Walter Scott, whom we have considered, and Jane Austen, to whom we shall presently return--the early nineteenth century is remarkable for the development of a new and valuable type of critical prose writing. If we except the isolated work of Dryden and of Addison, it is safe to say that literary criticism, in its modern sense, was hardly known in England until about the year 1825. Such criticism as existed seems to us now to have been largely the result of personal opinion or prejudice. Indeed we could hardly expect anything else before some systematic study of our literature as a whole had been attempted. In one age a poem was called good or bad according as it followed or ran counter to so-called cla.s.sic rules; in another we have the dogmatism of Dr. Johnson; in a third the personal judgment of Lockhart and the editors of the _Edinburgh Review_ and the _Quarterly_, who so violently abused Keats and the Lake poets in the name of criticism. Early in the nineteenth century there arose a new school of criticism which was guided by knowledge of literature, on the one hand, and by what one might call the fear of G.o.d on the other. The latter element showed itself in a profound human sympathy,--the essence of the romantic movement,--and its importance was summed up by De Quincey when he said, "Not to sympathize is not to understand." These new critics, with abundant reverence for past masters, could still lay aside the dogmatism and prejudice which marked Johnson and the magazine editors, and read sympathetically the work of a new author, with the sole idea of finding what he had contributed, or tried to contribute, to the magnificent total of our literature. Coleridge, Hunt, Hazlitt, Lamb, and De Quincey were the leaders in this new and immensely important development; and we must not forget the importance of the new periodicals, like the _Londen Magazine,_ founded in 1820, in which Lamb, De Quincey, and Carlyle found their first real encouragement.

Of Coleridge's _Biographica Literaria_ and his _Lectures on Shakespeare_ we have already spoken. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) wrote continuously for more than thirty years, as editor and essayist; and his chief object seems to have been to make good literature known and appreciated. William Hazlitt (1778-1830), in a long series of lectures and essays, treated all reading as a kind of romantic journey into new and pleasant countries. To his work largely, with that of Lamb, was due the new interest in Elizabethan literature, which so strongly influenced Keats's last and best volume of poetry. For those interested in the art of criticism, and in the appreciation of literature, both Hunt and Hazlitt will well repay study; but we must pa.s.s over their work to consider the larger literary interest of Lamb and De Quincey, who were not simply critics of other men's labor, but who also produced some delightful work of their own, which the world has carefully put away among the "things worthy to be remembered."

CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834)

In Lamb and Wordsworth we have two widely different views of the romantic movement; one shows the influence of nature and solitude, the other of society. Lamb was a lifelong friend of Coleridge, and an admirer and defender of the poetic creed of Wordsworth; but while the latter lived apart from men, content with nature and with reading an occasional moral lesson to society, Lamb was born and lived in the midst of the London streets. The city crowd, with its pleasures and occupations, its endless little comedies and tragedies, alone interested him. According to his own account, when he paused in the crowded street tears would spring to his eyes,--tears of pure pleasure at the abundance of so much good life; and when he wrote, he simply interpreted that crowded human life of joy and sorrow, as Wordsworth interpreted the woods and waters, without any desire to change or to reform them. He has given us the best pictures we possess of Coleridge, Hazlitt, Landor, Hood, Cowden Clarke, and many more of the interesting men and women of his age; and it is due to his insight and sympathy that the life of those far-off days seems almost as real to us as if we ourselves remembered it. Of all our English essayists he is the most lovable; partly because of his delicate, old-fashioned style and humor, but more because of that cheery and heroic struggle against misfortune which shines like a subdued light in all his writings.

LIFE. In the very heart of London there is a curious, old-fashioned place known as the Temple,--an enormous, rambling, apparently forgotten structure, dusty and still, in the midst of the endless roar of the city streets. Originally it was a chapter house of the Knights Templars, and so suggests to us the spirit of the Crusades and of the Middle Ages; but now the building is given over almost entirely to the offices and lodgings of London lawyers. It is this queer old place which, more than all others, is a.s.sociated with the name of Charles Lamb. "I was born," he says, "and pa.s.sed the first seven years of my life in the Temple. Its gardens, its halls, its fountain, its river... these are my oldest recollections." He was the son of a poor clerk, or rather servant, of one of the barristers, and was the youngest of seven children, only three of whom survived infancy. Of these three, John, the elder, was apparently a selfish creature, who took no part in the heroic struggle of his brother and sister. At seven years, Charles was sent to the famous "Bluecoat" charity school of Christ's Hospital. Here he remained seven years; and here he formed his lifelong friendship for another poor, neglected boy, whom the world remembers as Coleridge.[230]