English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 47

CHARLES LAMB.--This distinguished writer, although not a novelist like d.i.c.kens and Thackeray, in the sense of having produced extensive works of fiction, was, like them, a humorist and a satirist, and has left miscellaneous works of rare merit. He was born in London, and was the son of a servant to one of the Benches of the Inner Temple; he was educated at Christ's Hospital, where he became the warm friend of Coleridge. In 1792 he received an appointment as clerk in the South Sea House, which he retained until 1825, when, owing to the distinction he had obtained in the world of letters, he was permitted to retire with a pension of 450. He describes his feelings on this happy release from business, in his essay on _The Superannuated Man_. He was an eccentric man, a serio-comic character, whose sad life is singularly contrasted with his irrepressible humor. His sister, whom he has so tenderly described as Bridget Elia, in a fit of insanity killed their mother with a carving-knife, and Lamb devoted himself to her care.

He was a poet, and left quaint and beautiful alb.u.m verses and minor pieces. As a dramatist, he is known by his tragedy _John Woodvil_, and the farce _Mr. H----_, neither of which was a success. But he has given us in his _Specimens of Old English Dramatists_ the result of great reading and rare criticism.

But it is chiefly as a writer of essays and short stories that he is distinguished. The _Essays of Elia_, in their vein, mark an era in the literature; they are light, racy, seemingly dashed off, but really full of his reading of the older English authors. Indeed, he is so quaint in thought and style, that he seems an anachronism--a writer of the Elizabethan period returned to life in this century. He bubbles over with puns, jests, and repartees; and although not popular in the sense of reaching the mult.i.tude, he is the friend and companion of congenial readers. Among his essays, we may mention the stories of _Rosamund Gray_ and _Old Blind Margaret_. _Dream Children_ and _The Child Angel_ are those of greatest power; but every one he has written is charming. His sly hits at existing abuses are designed to laugh them away. He was the favorite of his literary circle, and as a talker had no superior. After a life of care, not unmingled with pleasures, he died in 1834. Lamb's letters are racy, witty, idiomatic, and unlabored; and, as most of them are to colleagues in literature and on subjects of social and literary interest, they are important aids in studying the history of his period.

THOMAS HOOD.--The greatest humorist, the best punster, and the ablest satirist of his age, Hood attacked the social evils around him with such skill and power that he stands forth as a philanthropist. He was born in London in 1798, and, after a limited education, he began to learn the art of engraving; but his pen was more powerful than his burin. He soon began to contribute to the _London Magazine_ his _Whims and Oddities_; and, in irregular verse, satirized the would-be great men of the time, and the eccentric legislation they proposed in Parliament. These short poems are full of puns and happy _jeux de mots_, and had a decided effect in frustrating the foolish plans. After this he published _National Tales_, in the same comic vein; but also produced his exquisite serious pieces, _The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_, _Hero and Leander_, and others, all of which are striking and tasteful. In 1838 he commenced _The Comic Annual_, which appeared for several years, brimful of mirth and fun. He was editor of various magazines,--_The New Monthly_, and _Hood's Magazine_. For _Punch_ he wrote _The Song of the Shirt_, and _The Bridge of Sighs_. No one can compute the good done by both; the hearts touched; the pockets opened. The sewing women were better paid, more cared for, elevated in the social scale; and many of them saved from that fate which is so touchingly chronicled in _The Bridge of Sighs_. Hood was a true poet and a great poet. _Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg_ is satire, story, epic, comedy, in one.

If he owed to Smollett's _Humphrey Clinker_ the form of his _Up the Rhine_, he has equalled Smollett in the narrative, in the variety of character, and in the admirable cacography of Martha Penny. His caricatures fasten facts in the memory, and every tourist up the Rhine recognizes Hood's personages wherever he lands.

After a life of ill-health and pecuniary struggle, Hood died, greatly lamented, on the 3d of May, 1845, and left no successor to wield his subtle pen.

THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859).--This singular author, and very learned and original thinker, owes much of his reputation to the evil habit of opium-eating, which affected his personal life and authorship. His most popular work is _The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_, which interests the reader by its curious pictures of the abnormal conditions in which he lived and wrote. He abandoned this noxious practice in the year 1820. He produced much which he did not publish; and his writings all contain a suggestion of strength and scholarship, a surplus beyond what he has given to the world. There are numerous essays and narratives, among which his paper ent.i.tled _Murder considered as One of the Fine Arts_ is especially notable. His prose is considered a model of good English.

The death of d.i.c.kens and Thackeray left England without a novelist of equal fame and power, but with a host of scholarly and respectable pens, whose productions delight the popular taste, and who are still in the tide of busy authorship.

Our purpose is already accomplished, and we might rest without the proceeding beyond the middle of the century; but it will be proper to make brief mention of those, some of whom have already departed, but many of whom still remain, and are producing new works, who best ill.u.s.trate the historical value and teachings of English literature, and whose writings will be read in the future for their delineations of the habits and conditions of the present period.

OTHER NOVELISTS.

_Captain Frederick Marryat_, of the Royal Navy, 1792-1848: in his sea novels depicts naval life with rare fidelity, and with, a roystering joviality which makes them extremely entertaining. The princ.i.p.al of these are _Frank Mildmay_, _Newton Forster_, _Peter Simple_, and _Midshipman Easy_. His works const.i.tute a truthful portrait of the British Navy in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and have influenced many high-spirited youths to choose a maritime profession.

_George P. R. James_, 1806-1860: is the author of nearly two hundred novels, chiefly historical, which have been, in their day, popular. It was soon found, however, that he repeated himself, and the sameness of handling began to tire his readers. His "two travellers," with whom he opens his stories, have become proverbially ridiculous. But he has depicted scenes in modern history with skill, and especially in French history. His _Richelieu_ is a favorite; and in his _Life of Charlemagne_ he has brought together the princ.i.p.al events in the career of that distinguished monarch with logical force and historical accuracy.

_Benjamin d'Israeli_, born 1805: is far more famous as a persevering, acute, and able statesman than as a novelist. In proof of this, having surmounted unusual difficulties, he has been twice Chancellor of the Exchequer and once Prime Minister of England. Among his earlier novels, which are pictures of existing society, are: _Vivian Gray_, _Contarini Fleming_, _Coningsby_, and _Henrietta Temple_. In _The Wondrous Tale of Alroy_ he has described the career of that singular claimant to the Jewish Messiahship. _Lothair_, which was published in 1869, is the story of a young n.o.bleman who was almost enticed to enter the Roman Catholic Church. The descriptions of society are either very much overwrought or ironical; but his knowledge of State craft and Church craft renders the book of great value to the history of religious polemics. His father, _Isaac d'Israeli_, is favorably known as the author of _The Curiosities of Literature_, _The Amenities of Literature_, and _The Quarrels of Authors_.

_Charles Lever_, 1806-1872: he was born in Dublin, and, after a partial University career, studied medicine. He has embodied his experience of military life in several striking but exaggerated works,--among these are: _The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer_, _Charles O'Malley_, and _Jack Hinton_. He excels in humor and in picturesque battle-scenes, and he has painted the age in caricature. Of its kind, _Charles O'Malley_ stands pre-eminent: the variety of character is great; all cla.s.ses of military men figure in the scenes, from the Duke of Wellington to the inimitable Mickey Free. He was for some time editor of the _Dublin University Magazine_, and has written numerous other novels, among which are: _Roland Cashel_, _The Knight of Gwynne_, and _The Dodd Family Abroad_; and, last of all, _Lord Kilgobbin_.

_Charles Kingsley_, born 1809: this accomplished clergyman, who is a canon of Chester, is among the most popular English writers,--a poet, a novelist, and a philosopher. He was first favorably known by a poetical drama on the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, ent.i.tled _The Saint's Tragedy_. Among his other works are: _Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet_; _Hypatia, the Story of a Virgin Martyr_; _Andromeda; Westward Ho! or the Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh_; _Two Years Ago_; and _Hereward, the Last of the English_. This last is a very vivid historical picture of the way in which the man of the fens, under the lead of this powerful outlaw, held out against William the Conqueror. The busy pen of Kingsley has produced numerous lectures, poems, reviews, essays, and some plain and useful sermons. He is now Professor of Modern History at Cambridge.

_Charlotte Bronte_, 1816-1855: if of an earlier period, this gifted woman would demand a far fuller mention and a more critical notice than can be with justice given of a contemporary. She certainly wrote from the depths of her own consciousness. _Jane Eyre_, her first great work, was received with intense interest, and was variously criticized. The daughter of a poor clergyman at Haworth, and afterwards a teacher in a school at Brussels, with little knowledge of the world, she produced a powerful book containing much curious philosophy, and took rank at once among the first novelists of the age. Her other works, if not equal to _Jane Eyre_, are still of great merit, and deal profoundly with the springs of human action. They are: _The Professor_, _Villette_, and _Shirley_. Her characters are portraits of the men and women around her, painted from life; and she speaks boldly of motives and customs which other novelists have touched very delicately. She had two gifted sisters, who were also successful novelists; but who died young. Miss Bronte died a short time after her marriage to Mr. Nichol, her father's curate. _Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell_, her near friend, and the author of a successful novel called _Mary Barton_, has written an interesting biography of Mrs. Nichol.

_George Eliot_, born 1820: under this pseudonym, Miss Evans has written several works of great interest. Among these are: _Adam Bede_; _The Mill on the Floss_; _Romola_, an Italian story; _Felix Holt_; and _Silas Marner_. Simple, and yet eminently dramatic in scene, character, and interlocution, George Eliot has painted pictures from middle and common life, and is thus the exponent of a large humanity. She is now the wife of the popular author, G. H. Lewes.

_Dinah Maria Muloch_ (Mrs. Craik), born 1826: a versatile writer. She is best known by her novels ent.i.tled _John Halifax_ and _The Ogilvies_.

_Wilkie Collins_, born 1824: he is the son of a landscape-painter, and is renowned for his curious and well-concealed plots, phantom-like characters, and striking effects. Among his novels the best known are: _Antonina_, _The Dead Secret_, _The Woman in White_, _No Name_, _Armadale_, _The Moonstone_, and _Man and Wife_. There is a sameness in these works; and yet it is evident that the author has put his invention on the rack to create new intrigues, and to mystify his reader from the beginning to the end of each story.

_Charles Reade_, born 1814: he is one of the most prolific writers of the day, as well as one of the most readable in all that he has written. He draws many impa.s.sioned scenes, and is as sensuous in literature as Rubens in art. Among his princ.i.p.al works are: _White Lies_, _Love Me Little, Love Me Long_; _The Cloister and The Hearth_; _Hard Cash_, and _Griffith Gaunt_, which convey little, if any, practical instruction. His _Never Too Late to Mend_ is of great value in displaying the abuses of the prison system in England; and his _Put Yourself in His Place_ is a very powerful attack upon the Trades' Unions. A singular epigrammatic style keeps up the interest apart from the story.

_Mary Russell Mitford_, 1786-1855: she was a poet and a dramatist, but is chiefly known by her stories. In the collection called _Our Village_, she has presented beautiful and simple pictures of English country life which are at once touching and instructive.

_Charlotte Mary Yonge_, born 1823: among the many interesting works of this author, _The Heir of Redclyff_ is the first and best. This was followed by _Daisy Chain_, _Heartsease_, _The Clever Woman of the Family_, and numerous other works of romance and of history,--all of which are valuable for their high tone of moral instruction and social manners.

_Anthony Trollope_, born 1815: he and his brother, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, are sons of that Mrs. Frances Trollope who abused our country in her work ent.i.tled _The Domestic Manners of the Americans_, in terms that were distasteful even to English critics. Anthony Trollope is a successful writer of society-novels, which, without being of the highest order, are faithful in their portraitures. Among those which have been very popular are: _Barchester Towers_, _Framley Parsonage_, _Doctor Thorne_, and _Orley Farm_, He travelled in the United States, and has published a work of discernment ent.i.tled _North America_. His brother Thomas is best known by his _History of Florence to the Fall of the Republic_.

_Thomas Hughes_, born 1823: the popular author of _Tom Brown's School-Days at Rugby_, and _Tom Brown at Oxford_,--books which display the workings of these inst.i.tutions, and set up a standard for English youth. The first is the best, and has made him famous.

WRITERS ON SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

Although these do not come strictly within the scope of English literature, they are so connected with it in the composition of general culture, and give such a complexion to the age, that it is well to mention the princ.i.p.al names.

_Sir William Hamilton_, 1788-1856: for twenty years Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. His voluminous lectures on both these subjects were edited, after his death, by Mansel and Veitch, and have been since of the highest authority.

_William Whewell_, 1795-1866: for some time Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has written learnedly on many subjects: his most valuable works are: _A History of the Inductive Sciences_, _The Elements of Morality_, and _The Plurality of Worlds_. Of Whewell it has been pithily said, that "science was his forte, and omniscience his foible."

_Richard Whately, D.D._, 1787-1863: he was appointed in 1831 Archbishop of Dublin and Kildare, in Ireland. His chief works are: _Elements of Logic_, _Elements of Rhetoric_, and _Lectures on Political Economy_. He gave a new impetus to the study of Logic and Rhetoric, and presented the formal logic of Aristotle anew to the world; thus marking a distinct epoch in the history of that much controverted science.

_John Ruskin_, born 1819: he ranks among the most original critics in art; but is eccentric in his opinions. His powers were first displayed in his _Modern Painters_. In his _Seven Lamps of Architecture_ he has laid down the great fundamental principles of that art, among the forms of which the Gothic claims the pre-eminence. These are further carried out in _The Stones of Venice_. He is a transcendentalist and a pre-Raphaelite, and exceedingly dogmatic in stating his views. His descriptive powers are very great.

_Hugh Miller_, 1802-1856: an uneducated mechanic, he was a brilliant genius and an observant philosopher. His best works are: _The Old Red Sandstone_, _Footprints of the Creator_, and _The Testimonies of the Rocks_. He shot himself in a fit of insanity.

_John Stuart Mill_, born 1806: the son of James Mill, the historian of India. He was carefully educated, and has written on many subjects. He is best known by his _System of Logic_; his work on _Political Economy_; and his _Treatise on Liberty_. Each of these topics being questions of controversy, Mr. Mill states his views strongly in respect to opposing systems, and is very clear in the expression of his own dogmas.

_Thomas Chalmers, D.D._, 1780-1847: this distinguished divine won his greatest reputation as an eloquent preacher. He was for some time Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrew's, and wrote on _Natural Theology_, _The Evidences of Christianity_, and some lectures on _Astronomy_. But all his works are glowing sermons rather than philosophical treatises.

_Richard Chevenix Trench, D.D._, born 1807: the present Archbishop of Dublin. He has written numerous theological works of popular value, among which are _Notes on the Parables, and on Miracles_. He has also published two series of charming lectures on English philology, ent.i.tled _The Study of Words_ and _English Past and Present_. They are suggestive and discursive rather than philosophical, but have incited many persons to pursue this delightful study.

_Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D._, born 1815: Dean of Westminster. He was first known by his excellent biography of Dr. Arnold of Rugby; but has since enriched biblical literature by his lectures on _The Eastern Church_ and on _The Jewish Church_. He accompanied the Prince of Wales on his visit to Palestine, and was not only eager in collecting statistics, but has reproduced them with poetic power.

_Nicholas Wiseman, D.D._, 1802-1865: the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England. Cardinal Wiseman has written much on theological and ecclesiastical questions; but he is best known to the literary world by his able lectures on _The Connection between Science and Revealed Religion_, which are additionally valuable because they have no sectarian character.

_Charles Darwin_, born 1809: although he began his career at an early age, his princ.i.p.al works are so immediately of the present time, and his speculations are so involved in serious controversies, that they are not within the scope of this work. His princ.i.p.al works are: _The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection_, and _The Descent of Man_. His facts are curious and very carefully selected; but his conclusions have been severely criticized.

_Frederick Max Muller_, born 1823: a German by birth. He is a professional Oxford, and has done more to popularize the Science of Language than any other writer. He has written largely on Oriental linguistics, and has given two courses of lectures on _The Science of Language_, which have been published, and are used as text-books. His _Chips from a German Workshop_ is a charming book, containing his miscellaneous articles in reviews and magazines.

CHAPTER XLII.

ENGLISH JOURNALISM.

Roman News Letters. The Gazette. The Civil War. Later Divisions. The Reviews. The Monthlies. The Dailies. The London Times. Other Newspapers.

ROMAN NEWS LETTERS.--English serials and periodicals, from the very time of their origin, display, in a remarkable manner, the progress both of English literature and of English history, and form the most striking ill.u.s.tration that the literature interprets the history. In using the caption, "journalism," we include all forms of periodical literature--reviews, magazines, weekly and daily papers. The word journalism is, in respect to many of them, a misnomer, etymologically considered: it is a French corruption of _diurnal_, which, from the Latin _dies_, should mean a daily paper; but it is now generally used to include all periodicals. The origin of newspapers is quite curious, and antedates the invention of printing. The _acta diurna_, or journals of public events, were the daily ma.n.u.script reports of the Roman Government during the later commonwealth. In these, among other matters of public interest, every birth, marriage, and divorce was entered. As an ill.u.s.tration of the character of these brief entries, we have the satire of Petronius, which he puts in the mouth of the freed man Trimalchio: "The seventh of the Kalends of s.e.xtilis, on the estate at c.u.mae, were born thirty boys, twenty girls; were carried from the floor to the barn, 500,000 bushels of wheat; were broke 500 oxen. The same day the slave Mithridates was crucified for blasphemy against the Emperor's genius; the same day was placed in the chest the sum of ten millions sesterces, which could not be put out to use." Similar in character were the _Acta Urbana_, or city register, the _Acta Publica_, and the _Acta Senatus_, whose names indicate their contents. They were brief, almost tabular, and not infrequently sensational.