Halleck's New English Literature Part 45

Wordsworth strikes almost the same chord:--

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie."[4]

The tenderness and sympathy induced by this new interest in human beings resulted in the annexation to English literature of an almost unexplored continent,--the continent of childhood. William Blake and William Wordsworth set the child in the midst of the poetry of this romantic age.

More sympathy for animals naturally followed the increased interest in humanity. The poems of Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge show this quickened feeling for a starved bird, a wounded hare, a hart cruelly slain, or an albatross wantonly shot. The social disorder of the Revolution might make Wordsworth pause, but he continued with unabated vigor to teach us--

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."[5]

New humanitarian interests affected all the great poets of this age.

Although Keats was cut off while he was making an Aeolian response to the beauty of the world, yet even he, in his brief life, heard something of the new message.

Growth of Appreciation of Nature.--More appreciation of nature followed the development of broader sympathy, Burns wrote a lyric full of feeling for a mountain daisy which his plow had turned beneath the furrow. Wordsworth exclaimed:--

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."[6]

For more than a century after Milton, the majority of references to nature were made in general terms and were borrowed from the stock ill.u.s.trations of older poets, like Vergil. We find the conventional lark, nightingale, and turtledove. Nothing new or definite is said of them.

Increasing comforts and safety in travel now took more people where they could see for themselves the beauty of nature. In the new poetry we consequently find more definiteness. We can hear the whir of the partridge, the chatter of magpies, the whistle of the quail. Poets speak of a tree not only in general terms, but they note also the differences in the shade of the green of the leaves and the peculiarities of the bark. Previous to this time, poets borrowed from Theocritus and Vergil piping shepherds reclining in the shade, whom no Englishman had ever seen. In _Michael_ Wordsworth pictures a genuine English shepherd.

The love for mountains and wild nature is of recent growth. One writer in the seventeenth century considered the Alps as so much rubbish swept together by the broom of nature to clear the plains of Italy. A seventeenth century traveler thought the Welsh mountains better than the Alps because the former would pasture goats. Dr. Johnson asked, "Who can like the Highlands?" The influence of the romantic movement developed the love for wild scenery, which is so conspicuous in Wordsworth and Byron.

This age surpa.s.ses even the Elizabethan in endowing Nature with a conscious soul, capable of bringing a message of solace and companionship. The greatest romantic poet of nature thus expresses his creed:--

"...Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy."[7]

The Victory of Romanticism.--We have traced in the preceding age the beginnings of the romantic movement. Its ascendancy over cla.s.sical rules was complete in the period between 1780 and the Victorian age.

The romantic victory brought to literature more imagination, greater individuality, deeper feeling, a less artificial form of expression, and an added sense for the appreciation of the beauties of nature and their spiritual significance.

Swinburne says that the new poetic school, "usually registered as Wordsworthian," was "actually founded at midnight by William Blake (1757-1827) and fortified at sunrise by William Wordsworth." These lines from Blake's _To the Evening Star_ (1783) may be given to support this statement:--

"Thou fair-haired Angel of the Evening, * * * * *

Smile on our loves; and while thou drawest the Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes In timely sleep. Let thy West Wind sleep on The lake."

We may note in these lines the absence of the cla.s.sical couplet, the fact that the end of the lines necessitates no halt in thought, and a unique sympathetic touch in the lines referring to the flower and the wind.

Blake's _Songs of Innocence_ (1789) and _Songs of Experience_ (1793) show not only the new feeling toward nature, but also a broader sympathy with children and with all suffering creatures. The chimney sweeper, the lost child, and even the sick rose are remembered in his verse. In his poem, _The Schoolboy_, he enters as sympathetically as Shakespeare into the heart of the boy on his way to school, when he hears the call of the uncaged birds and the fields.

These two lines express an oft-recurring idea in Blake's mystical romantic verse:--

"The land of dreams is better far, Above the light of the morning star."

The volume of _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798), the joint work of Wordsworth and Coleridge, marks the complete victory of the romantic movement.

The Position of Prose.--The eighteenth century, until near its end, was, broadly speaking, an age of prose. In excellence and variety the prose surpa.s.sed the poetry; but in this age (1780-1837) their position was reversed and poetry regained almost an Elizabethan ascendancy.

Much good prose was written, but it ranks decidedly below the enchanting romantic poetry.

Prose writers were laying the foundations for the new science of political economy and endeavoring to ascertain how the condition of the ma.s.ses could be improved. While investigating this subject, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), an Episcopal clergyman, announced his famous proposition, since known as the Malthusian theorem, that population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence.

Political economists and philosophers like Adam Smith (1723-1790), professor in the University of Glasgow, agreed on the "let-alone"

doctrine of government. They held that individuals could succeed best when least interfered with by government, that a government could not set aside natural law, but could only impede it and cause harm, as for instance, in framing laws to tempt capital into forms of industry less productive than others and away from the employment that it would naturally seek. Many did not even believe in legislation affecting the hours of labor or the work of children. This "let-alone" theory was widely held until the close of the nineteenth century.

In moral philosophy, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), lawyer and philosopher, laid down the principle that happiness is the prime object of existence, and that the basis of legislation should be the greatest happiness to the greatest number, instead of to the privileged few. He measured the morality of actions by their efficiency in producing this happiness, and he said that pushpin is as good as poetry, if it gives as much pleasure. He was followed by James Mill (1773-1836), who maintained that the morality of actions is measured by their utility. The fault with many of the prevalent theories of government and morals lay in their narrow standards of immediate utility, their failure to measure remote spiritual effects.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROBERT SOUTHEY.]

The taste of the age encouraged poetry. Scott, although a natural born writer of prose romance, made his early reputation by such poems as _Marmion_ and _The Lady of the Lake_. Robert Southey (1774-1843) usually cla.s.sed with Wordsworth and Coleridge as one of the three so-called Lake Poets, wrote much better prose than poetry. His prose _Life of Nelson_ outranks the poetry in his _Curse of Kehama_. It is probable that, had he lived in an age of prose ascendancy, he would have written little poetry, for he distinctly says that the desire of making money "has already led me to write sometimes in poetry what would perhaps otherwise have been better written in prose." This statement shows in a striking way the spirit of those times. If Coleridge had not written such good poetry, his excellent critical prose would probably be more read to-day; but he doubtless continues to have a thousand readers for _The Ancient Mariner_ to one for his prose.

Among the prose writers of this age, the fiction of Scott and Jane Austen seems destined to the longest lease of life and the widest circle of readers. De Quincey's work, especially his artistic presentation of his thrilling dreams, has many admirers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES LAMB. _From a drawing by Maclise_.]

The _Essays of Elia_ of Charles Lamb (1775-1834) still charms many readers. For over thirty years he was by day a clerk in the India House and by night a student of the Elizabethan drama and a writer of periodical essays, suggestive of the work of Addison and Steele.

Lamb's pervasive humor in discussing trivial subjects makes him very delightful reading. His well-known _Essays of Elia_ first appeared in the _London Magazine_ between 1820 and 1833. The peculiar flavor of his style and humor is shown in his _A Dissertation upon Roast-Pig_, as one of the most popular of these _Essays_ is called. Lamb relates how a Chinese boy, Bo-bo, having accidentally set his house an fire and roasted a litter of pigs, happened to acquire a liking for roast pig when he sucked his fingers to cool them after touching a crackling pig. It was considered a crime to eat meat that was not raw; but the jury fortunately had their fingers burned in the same way and tried Bo-bo's method of cooling them. The boy was promptly acquitted. Lamb gravely proceeds:--

"The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision, and when the court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my ma.n.u.script, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (_burnt_ as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then began the rude form of a gridiron."

[Ill.u.s.tration: BO-BO AND ROAST PIG. _From a drawing by B.

Westmacott_.]

Other enjoyable essays are _Old China_, a lovable picture of his home life with his sister, _Dream Children_, _New Year's Eve_, and _Poor Relations_.

The results of Lamb's Elizabethan studies appeared in the excellent _Tales from Shakespeare_, which he wrote with his sister, and in his _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who wrote about the Time of Shakespeare_.

This age produced much prose criticism. Coleridge remains one of England's greatest critics, and Lamb and De Quincey are yet two of her most enjoyable ones. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) and William Hazlitt (1778-1830) also deserve mention in the history of English prose criticism. Both men were unusually combative. Landor was sent away from Oxford "for criticizing a noisy party with a shot gun,"

which he discharged against the closed shutters of the room where the roisterers were holding their festivities. He went to Italy, where most of his literary work was done. He avoided people, and even boasted that he took more pleasure with his own thoughts than with those of others. For companionship, he imagined himself conversing with other people. The t.i.tles of his best two works are _Imaginary Conversations_ (1824-1848) and _Pericles and Aspasia_ (1836), the latter a series of imaginary letters. His writings are notable for their style, for an unusual combination of dignity with simplicity and directness. A statement like the following shows how vigorous and sweeping his criticisms sometimes are: "A rib of Shakespeare would have made a Milton; the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever since." In spite of many splendid pa.s.sages and of a style that suggests sculpture in marble, twentieth-century readers often feel that he is under full sail, either bound for nowhere, or voyaging to some port where they do not care to land.

Hazlitt is less polished, but more suggestive, and in closer touch with life than Landor. In seizing the important qualities of an author's works and summarizing them in brief s.p.a.ce, Hazlitt shows the skill of a trained journalist. His three volumes, _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ (1817), _Lectures on the English Poets_ (1818), and _Lectures on the English Comic Writers_ (1819) contain criticism that remains stimulating and suggestive. He loves to arrive somewhere, to settle his points definitely. His discussion of the frequently debated question,--whether Pope is a poet, shows this characteristic:--

"The question,--whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great poet, he must have been a great prose writer, that is, he was a great writer of some sort."

His two volumes of essays, _The Round Table_ (1817) and _Table Talk_ (1821-1822), caused him to be called a "lesser Dr. Samuel Johnson."

While the combative dispositions of Landor and Hazlitt did not make them ideal critics of their contemporaries, the taste of the age liked criticism of the slashing type. The newly established periodicals and reviews, such as _The Edinburgh Review_ (started in 1802), furnished a new market for critical essays. Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), editor of _The Edinburgh Review_, accused Wordsworth of "silliness" in his _Lyrical Ballads_; and said vehemently of a later volume of the same poet's verse: "This will never do." _The Quarterly Review_ in 1818 spoke of the "insanity" of the poetry of Keats. In 1819 _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_ gave a fatherly warning to Sh.e.l.ley that Keats as a poet was "worthy of sheer and instant contempt," advised him to select better companions than "Johnny Keats," and promised that compliance with this advice would secure him "abundance of better praise."

Even the more genial Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), the friend of Sh.e.l.ley and Keats, and the writer of many pleasant essays, called Carlyle's style "a jargon got up to confound pretension with performance." We like Hunt best when he is writing in the vein of the _Spectator_ or as a "miniature Lamb." In such papers as _An Earth upon Heaven_, Hunt tells us that in heaven "there can be no clergymen if there are no official duties for them"; that we shall there enjoy the choicest books, for "Shakespeare and Spenser should write us _new ones_." He closes this entertaining paper with the novel a.s.surance: "If we choose, now and then we shall even have inconveniences."

WILLIAM COWPER, 1731-1800

[Ill.u.s.tration: WILLIAM COWPER. _From the portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence_.]

Life.--Cowper's life is a tale of almost continual sadness, caused by his morbid timidity. He was born at Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, in 1731. At the age of six, he lost his mother and was placed in a boarding school. Here his sufferings began. The child was so especially terrified by one rough boy that he could never raise his eyes to the bully's face, but knew him unmistakably by his shoe buckles.

There was some happiness for Cowper at his next school, the Westminster School, and also during the twelve succeeding years, when he studied law; but the short respite was followed by the gloom of madness. Owing to his ungovernable fear of a public examination, which was necessary to secure the position offered by an uncle, Cowper underwent days and nights of agony, during which he tried in many ways to end his miserable life. The frightful ordeal unsettled his reason, and he spent eighteen months in an insane asylum.

Upon his recovery, he was taken into the house of a Rev. Mr. Unwin, whose wife tended Cowper as a son during the rest of her life. He was never supremely happy, and he was sometimes again thrown into madness by the terrible thought of G.o.d's wrath; but his life was pa.s.sed in a quiet manner in the villages of Weston and Olney, where he was loved by every one. The simple pursuits of gardening, carpentering, visiting the sick, caring for his numerous pets, rambling through the lanes, studying nature, and writing verse, occupied his sane moments when he was not at prayer.

Works.--Cowper's first works were the _Olney Hymns_. His religious nature is manifest again in the volume which consists of didactic poems upon such subjects as _The Progress of Error, Truth, Charity, Table Talk_, and _Conversation_. These are in the spirit of the formal cla.s.sical poets, and contain sententious couplets such as

"An idler is a watch that wants both hands, As useless if it goes as when it stands."[8]