English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 43

AN ESTIMATE.--The great amount of verse Wordsworth has written is due to his estimate of the proper uses of poetry. Where other men would have written letters, journals, or prose sketches, his ready metrical pen wrote in verse: an excursion to England or Scotland, _Yarrow Visited and Revisited_, journeys in Germany and Italy, are all in verse. He exhibits in them all great humanity and benevolence, and is emphatically and without cant the poet of religion and morality. Coleridge--a poet and an attached friend, perhaps a partisan--claims for him, in his _Biographia Literaria_, "purity of language, freshness, strength, _curiosa felicitas_ of diction, truth to nature in his imagery, imagination in the highest degree, but faulty fancy." We have already ventured to deny him the possession of imagination: the rest of his friend's eulogium is not undeserved. He had and has many ardent admirers, but none more ardent than himself. He constantly praised his own verses, and declared that they would ultimately conquer all prejudices and become universally popular--an opinion that the literary world does not seem disposed to adopt.

ROBERT SOUTHEY.--Next to Wordsworth, and, with certain characteristic differences, of the same school, but far beneath him in poetical power, is Robert Southey, who was born at Bristol, August 12, 1774. He was the son of a linen-draper in that town. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1792, but left without taking his degree. In 1794 he published a radical poem on the subject of _Wat Tyler_, the sentiments of which he was afterwards very willing to repudiate. With the enthusiastic instinct of a poet, he joined with Wordsworth and Coleridge in a scheme called _Pantisocrasy_; that is, they were to go together to the banks of the Susquehanna, in a new country of which they knew nothing except by description; and there they were to realize a dream of nature in the golden age--a Platonic republic, where everything was to be in common, and from which vice and selfishness were to be forever excluded. But these young neo-platonists had no money, and so the scheme was given up.

In 1795 he married Miss Fricker, a milliner of Bristol, and made a voyage to Lisbon, where his uncle was chaplain to the British Factory. He led an unsettled life until 1804, when he established himself at Keswick in the Lake country, where he spent his life. He was a literary man and nothing else, and perhaps one of the most industrious writers that ever held a literary pen. Much of the time, indeed, he wrote for magazines and reviews, upon whatever subject was suggested to him, to win his daily bread.

HIS WRITINGS.--After the publication of _Wat Tyler_ he wrote an epic poem called _Joan of Arc_, in 1796, which was crude and severely criticized.

After some other unimportant essays, he inaugurated his purpose of ill.u.s.trating the various oriental mythologies, by the publication of _Thalaba the Destroyer_, which was received with great disfavor at the time, and which first coupled his name with that of Wordsworth as of the school of Lake poets. It is in irregular metre, which at first has the charm of variety, but which afterwards loses its effect, on account of its broken, disjointed versification. In 1805 appeared _Madoc_--a poem based upon the subject of early Welsh discoveries in America. It is a long poem in two parts: the one descriptive of _Madoc in Wales_ and the other of _Madoc in Aztlan_. Besides many miscellaneous works in prose, we notice the issue, in 1810, of _The Curse of Kehama_--the second of the great mythological poems referred to.

Among his prose works must be mentioned _The Chronicle of the Cid_, _The History of Brazil_, _The Life of Nelson_, and _The History of the Peninsular War_. A little work called _The Doctor_ has been greatly liked in America.

Southey wrote innumerable reviews and magazine articles; and, indeed, tried his pen at every sort of literary work. His diction--in prose, at least--is almost perfect, and his poetical style not unpleasing. His industry, his learning, and his care in production must be acknowledged; but his poems are very little read, and, in spite of his own prophecies, are doomed to the shelf rather than retained upon the table. Like Wordsworth, he was one of the most egotistical of men; he had no greater admirer than Robert Southey; and had his exertions not been equal to his self-laudation, he would have been intolerable.

The most singular instance of perverted taste and unmerited eulogy is to be found in his _Vision of Judgment_, which, as poet-laureate, he produced to the memory of George the Third. The severest criticism upon it is Lord Byron's _Vision of Judgment_--reckless, but clever and trenchant. The consistency and industry of Southey's life caused him to be appointed poet-laureate upon the death of Pye; and in 1835, having declined a baronetcy, he received an annual pension of 300. Having lost his first wife in 1837, he married Miss Bowles, the poetess, in 1839; but soon after his mind began to fail, and he had reached a state of imbecility which ended in death on the 21st of March, 1843. In 1837, at the age of sixty-three, he collected and edited his complete poetical works, with copious and valuable historical notes.

HISTORICAL VALUE.--It is easy to see in what manner Southey, as a literary man, has reflected the spirit of the age. Politically, he exhibits partisanship from Radical to Tory, which may be clearly discerned by comparing his _Wat Tyler_ with his _Vision of Judgment_ and his _Odes_. As to literary and poetic canons, his varied metre, and his stories in the style of Wordsworth, show that he had abandoned all former schools. In his histories and biographies he is professedly historical; and in his epics he shows that greater range of learned investigation which is so characteristic of that age. The _Curse of Kehama_ and _Thalaba_ would have been impossible in a former age. He himself objected to be ranked with the Lakers; but Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge have too much in common, notwithstanding much individual difference, not to be cla.s.sed together as innovators and a.s.serters, whether we call them Lakers or something else.

It was on the occasion of his publishing _Thalaba_, that his name was first coupled with that of Wordsworth. His own words are, "I happened to be residing at Keswick when Mr. Wordsworth and I began to be acquainted.

Mr. Coleridge also had resided there; and this was reason enough for cla.s.sing us together as a school of poets." There is not much external resemblance, it is true, between _Thalaba_ and the _Excursion_; but the same poetical motives will cause both to remain unread by the mult.i.tude--unnatural comparisons, recondite theology, and a great lack of common humanity. That there was a mutual admiration is found in Southey's declaration that Wordsworth's sonnets contain the profoundest poetical wisdom, and that the _Preface_ is the quintessence of the philosophy of poetry.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.--More individual, more eccentric, less commonplace, in short, a far greater genius than either of his fellows, Coleridge accomplished less, had less system, was more visionary and fragmentary than they: he had an amorphous mind of vast proportions. The man, in his life and conversation, was great; the author has left little of value which will last when the memory of his person has disappeared. He was born on the 21st of October, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary. His father was a clergyman and vicar of the parish. He received his education at Christ's Hospital in London, where, among others, he had Charles Lamb as a comrade, and formed with him a friendship which lasted as long as they both lived.

EARLY LIFE.--There he was an erratic student, but always a great reader; and while he was yet a lad, at the age of fourteen, he might have been called a learned man.

He had little self-respect, and from stress of poverty he intended to apprentice himself to a shoemaker; but friends who admired his learning interfered to prevent this, and he was sent with a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1791. Like Wordsworth and Southey, he was an intense Radical at first; and on this account left college without his degree in 1793. He then enlisted as a private in the 15th Light Dragoons; but, although he was a favorite with his comrades, whose letters he wrote, he made a very poor soldier. Having written a Latin sentence under his saddle on the stable wall, his superior education was recognized; and he was discharged from the service after only four months' duty. Eager for adventure, he joined Southey and Lloyd in their scheme of pantisocracy, to which we have already referred; and when that failed for want of money, he married the sister-in-law of Southey--Miss Fricker, of Bristol. He was at this time a Unitarian as well as a Radical, and officiated frequently as a Unitarian minister. His sermons were extremely eloquent. He had already published some juvenile poems, and a drama on the fall of Robespierre, and had endeavored to establish a periodical called _The Watchman_. He was always erratic, and dependent upon the patronage of his friends; in short, he always presented the sad spectacle of a man who could not take care of himself.

HIS WRITINGS.--After a residence at Stowey, in Somersetshire, where he wrote some of his finest poems, among which were the first part of _Christabel_, _The Ancient Mariner_, and _Remorse_, a tragedy, he was enabled, through the kindness of friends, to go, in 1798, to Germany, where he spent fourteen months in the study of literature and metaphysics.

In the year 1800 he returned to the Lake country, where he for some time resided with Southey at Keswick; Wordsworth being then at Grasmere. Then was established as a fixed fact in English literature the Lake school of poetry. These three poets acted and reacted upon each other. From having been great Radicals they became Royalists, and Coleridge's Unitarian belief was changed into orthodox churchmanship. His translation of Schiller's _Wallenstein_ should rather be called an expansion of that drama, and is full of his own poetic fancies. After writing for some time for the _Morning Post_, he went to Malta as the Secretary to the Governor in 1804, at a salary of 800 per annum. But his restless spirit soon drove him back to Grasmere, and to desultory efforts to make a livelihood.

In 1816 he published the two parts of _Christabel_, an unfinished poem, which, for the wildness of the conceit, exquisite imagery, and charming poetic diction, stands quite alone in English literature. In a periodical called _The Friend_, which he issued, are found many of his original ideas; but it was discontinued after twenty-seven numbers. His _Biographia Literaria_, published in 1817, contains valuable sketches of literary men, living and dead, written with rare critical power.

In his _Aids to Reflection_, published in 1825, are found his metaphysical tenets; his _Table-Talk_ is also of great literary value; but his lectures on Shakspeare show him to have been the most remarkable critic of the great dramatist whom the world has produced.

It has already been mentioned that when the first volume of Wordsworth's _Lyrical Ballads_ was published, _The Ancient Mariner_ was included in it, as a poem by an anonymous friend. It had been the intention of Coleridge to publish another poem in the second volume; but it was considered incongruous, and excluded. That poem was the exquisite ballad ent.i.tled _Love_, or _Genevieve_.

HIS HELPLESSNESS.--With no home of his own, he lived by visiting his friends; left his wife and children to the support of others, and seemed incapable of any other than this shifting and shiftless existence. This natural imbecility was greatly increased during a long period by his constant use of opium, which kept him, a greater portion of his life, in a world of dreams. He was fortunate in having a sincere and appreciative friend in Mr. Gilman, surgeon, near London, to whose house he went in 1816; and where, with the exception of occasional visits elsewhere, he resided until his death in 1834. If the Gilmans needed compensation for their kindness, they found it in the celebrity of their visitor; even strangers made pilgrimages to the house at Highgate to hear the rhapsodies of "the old man eloquent." Coleridge once asked Charles Lamb if he had ever heard him preach, referring to the early days when he was a Unitarian preacher. "I never heard you do anything else," was the answer he received. He was the prince of talkers, and talked more coherently and connectedly than he wrote: drawing with ease from the vast stores of his learning, he delighted men of every degree. While of the Lake school of poetry, and while in some sort the creature of his age and his surroundings, his eccentricities gave him a rare independence and individuality. A giant in conception, he was a dwarf in execution; and something of the interest which attaches to a _lusus naturae_ is the chief claim to future reputation which belongs to S. T. C.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, his son, (1796-1849,) inherited much of his father's talents; but was an eccentric, deformed, and, for a time, an intemperate being. His princ.i.p.al writings were monographs on various subjects, and articles for Blackwood. HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, (1800-1843,) a nephew and son-in-law of the poet, was also a gifted man, and a profound cla.s.sical scholar. His introduction to the study of the great cla.s.sic poets, containing his a.n.a.lysis of Homer's epics, is a work of great merit.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

THE REACTION IN POETRY.

Alfred Tennyson. Early Works. The Princess. Idyls of the King.

Elizabeth B. Browning. Aurora Leigh. Her Faults. Robert Browning. Other Poets.

TENNYSON AND THE BROWNINGS.

ALFRED TENNYSON.--It is the certain fate of all extravagant movements, social or literary, to invite criticism and opposition, and to be followed by reaction. The school of Wordsworth was the violent protest against what remained of the artificial in poetry; but it had gone, as we have seen, to the other extreme. The affected simplicity, and the bald diction which it inculcated, while they raised up an army of feeble imitators, also produced in the ranks of poetry a vindication of what was good in the old; new theories, and a very different estimate of poetical subjects and expression. The first poet who may be looked upon as leading the reactionary party is Alfred Tennyson. He endeavored out of all the schools to synthesize a new one. In many of his descriptive pieces he followed Wordsworth: in his idyls, he adheres to the romantic school; in his treatment and diction, he stands alone.

EARLY EFFORTS.--He was the son of a clergyman of Lincolnshire, and was born at Somersby, in 1810. After a few early and almost unknown efforts in verse, the first volume bearing his name was issued in 1830, while he was yet an under-graduate at Cambridge: it had the simple t.i.tle--_Poems, chiefly Lyrical_. In their judgment of this new poet, the critics were almost as much at fault as they had been when the first efforts of Wordsworth appeared; but for very different reasons. Wordsworth was simple and intensely realistic. Tennyson was mystic and ideal: his diction was unusual; his little sketches conveyed an almost hidden moral; he seemed to inform the reader that, in order to understand his poetry, it must be studied; the meaning does not sparkle upon the surface; the language ripples, the sense flows in an undercurrent. His first essays exhibit a mania for finding strange words, or coining new ones, which should give melody, to his verse. Whether this was a process of development or not, he has in his later works gotten rid of much of this apparent mannerism, while he has retained, and even improved, his harmony. He exhibits a rare power of concentration, as opposed to the diffusiveness of his contemporaries. Each of his smaller poems is a thought, briefly, but forcibly and harmoniously, expressed. If it requires some exertion to comprehend it, when completely understood it becomes a valued possession.

It is difficult to believe that such poems as _Mariana_ and _Recollections of the Arabian Nights_ were the production of a young man of twenty.

In 1833 he published his second volume, containing additional poems, among which were _Enone_, _The May Queen_, _The Lotos-Eaters_, and _A Dream of Fair Women_. _The May Queen_ became at once a favorite, because every one could understand it: it touched a chord in every heart; but his rarest power of dreamy fancy is displayed in such pieces as _The Arabian Nights_ and the _Lotos-Eaters_. No greater triumph has been achieved in the realm of fancy than that in the court of good Haroun al Raschid, and amid the Lotos dreams of the Nepenthe coast. These productions were not received with the favor which they merited, and so he let the critics alone for nine years. In 1842 he again appeared in print, with, among other poems, the exquisite fragment of the _Morte d'Arthur_, _G.o.diva_, _St. Agnes_, _Sir Galahad_, _Lady Clara Vere de Vere_, _The Talking Oak_, and chief, perhaps, of all, _Locksley Hall_. In these poems he is not only a poet, but a philosopher. Each of these is an extended apothegm, presenting not only rules of life, but mottoes and maxims for daily use. They are soliloquies of the nineteenth century, and representations of its men and conditions.

THE PRINCESS.--In 1847 he published _The Princess, a Medley_--a pleasant and suggestive poem on woman's rights, in which exquisite songs are introduced, which break the monotony of the blank verse, and display his rare lyric power. The _Bugle Song_ is among the finest examples of the adaptation of sound to sense in the language; and there is nothing more truthful and touching than the short verses beginning,

Home they brought her warrior dead.

Arthur Hallam, a gifted son of the distinguished historian, who was betrothed to Tennyson's sister, died young; and the poet has mourned and eulogized him in a long poem ent.i.tled _In Memoriam_. It contains one hundred and twenty-nine four-lined stanzas, and is certainly very musical and finished; but it is rather the language of calm philosophy elaborately studied, than that of a poignant grief. It is not, in our judgment, to be compared with his shorter poems, and is generally read and overpraised only by his more ardent admirers, who discover a crystal tear of genuine emotion in every stanza.

IDYLS OF THE KING.--The fragment on the death of Arthur, already mentioned, foreshadowed a purpose of the poet's mind to make the legends of that almost fabulous monarch a vehicle for modern philosophy in English verse. In 1859 appeared a volume containing the _Idyls of the King_. They are rather minor epics than idyls. The simple materials are taken from the Welsh and French chronicles, and are chiefly of importance in that they cater to that English taste which finds national greatness typified in Arthur. It had been a successful stratagem with Spenser in _The Fairy Queen_, and has served Tennyson equally well in the _Idyls_. It unites the ages of fable and of chivalry; it gives a n.o.ble lineage to heroic deeds.

The best is the last--_Guinevere_--almost the perfection of pathos in poetry. The picturesqueness of his descriptions is evinced by the fact that Gustave Dore has chosen these _Idyls_ as a subject for ill.u.s.tration, and has been eminently successful in his labor.

_Maud_, which appeared in 1855, notwithstanding some charming lyrical pa.s.sages, may be considered Tennyson's failure. In 1869 he completed _The Idyls_ by publishing _The Coming of Arthur_, _The Holy Grail_, and _Pelleas and Etteare_. He also finished the _Morte d'Arthur_, and put it in its proper place as _The Pa.s.sing of Arthur_.

Tennyson was appointed poet-laureate upon the death of Wordsworth, in 1850, and receives besides a pension of 200. He lived for a long time in great retirement at Farringford, on the Isle of Wight; but has lately removed to Petersfield, in Hampshire. It may be reasonably doubted whether this hermit-life has not injured his poetical powers; whether, great as he really is, a little inhalation of the air of busy every-day life would not have infused more of nature and freshness into his verse. Among his few _Odes_ are that on the death of the Duke of Wellington, the dedication of his poems to the Queen, and his welcome to Alexandra, Princess of Wales, all of which are of great excellence. His _Charge of the Light Brigade_, at Balaclava, while it gave undue currency to that stupid military blunder, must rank as one of the finest battle-lyrics in the language.

The poetry of Tennyson is eminently representative of the Victorian age.

He has written little; but that little marks a distinct era in versification--great harmony untrammelled by artificial _correctness_; and in language, a search for novelty to supply the wants and correct the faults of the poetic vocabulary. He is national in the _Idyls_; philosophic in _The Two Voices_, and similar poems. The _Princess_ is a gentle satire on the age; and though, in striving for the reputation of originality, he sometimes mistakes the original for the beautiful, he is really the laurelled poet of England in merit as well as in t.i.tle.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.--The literary usher is now called upon to cry with the herald of the days of chivalry--_Place aux dames_. A few ladies, as we have seen, have already a.s.serted for themselves respectable positions in the literary ranks. Without a question as to the relative gifts of mind in man and woman, we have now reached a name which must rank among those of the first poets of the present century--one which represents the Victorian age as fully and forcibly as Tennyson, and with more of novelty than he. Nervous in style, elevated in diction, bold in expression, learned and original, Mrs. Browning divides the poetic renown of the period with Tennyson. If he is the laureate, she was the acknowledged queen of poetry until her untimely death.

Miss Elizabeth Barrett was born in London, in 1809. She was educated with great care, and began to write at a very early age. A volume, ent.i.tled _Essays on Mind, with Other Poems_, was published when she was only seventeen. In 1833 she produced _Prometheus Bound_, a translation of the drama of aeschylus from the original Greek, which exhibited rare cla.s.sical attainments; but which she considered so faulty that she afterwards retranslated it. In 1838 appeared _The Seraphim, and other Poems_; and in 1839, _The Romaunt of the Page_. Not long after, the rupture of a blood-vessel brought her to the verge of the grave; and while she was still in a precarious state of health, her favorite brother was drowned.

For several years she lived secluded, studying and composing when her health permitted; and especially drawing her inspiration from original sources in Greek and Hebrew. In 1844 she published her collected poems in two volumes. Among these was _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_: an exquisite story, the perusal of which is said to have induced Robert Browning to seek her acquaintance. Her health was now partially restored; and they were married in 1846. For some time they resided at Florence, in a congenial and happy union. The power of pa.s.sionate love is displayed in her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, which are among the finest in the language. Differing in many respects from those of Shakspeare, they are like his in being connected by one impa.s.sioned thought, and being, without doubt, the record of a heart experience.

Thoroughly interested in the social and political conditions of struggling Italy, she gave vent to her views and sympathies in a volume of poems, ent.i.tled _Casa Guidi Windows_. Casa Guidi was the name of their residence in Florence, and the poems vividly describe what she saw from its windows--divers forms of suffering, injustice, and oppression, which touched the heart of a tender woman and a gifted poet, and compelled it to burst forth in song.

AURORA LEIGH.--But by far the most important work of Mrs. Browning is _Aurora Leigh_: a long poem in nine books, which appeared in 1856, in which the great questions of the age, social and moral, are handled with great boldness. It is neither an epic, nor an idyl, nor a tale in verse: it combines features of them all. It presents her clear convictions of life and art, and is full of philosophy, largely expressed in the language of irony and sarcasm. She is an inspired advocate of the intellectual claims of woman; and the poem is, in some degree, an autobiography: the ident.i.ty of the poet and the heroine gives a great charm to the narrative.