Halleck's New English Literature Part 60

The gift of verse was denied him, but he is one of the great prose poets of the nineteenth century. Much of _Sartor Resartus_ is highly poetic and parts of _The French Revolution_ resemble a dramatic poem.

JOHN RUSKlN, 1819-1900

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN RUSKIN. _From a photograph_]

Life.--The most famous disciple of Carlyle is John Ruskin, the only child of wealthy parents, who was born in London in 1819. When he was four years old the family moved to Herne Hill, a suburb south of London, where his intense love of nature developed as he looked over open fields, "animate with cow and b.u.t.tercup," "over softly wreathing distances of domestic wood," to the distant hills. His entertaining autobiography, _Praeterita_ (1885-1889), relates how he was reared:--

"I had never heard my father's or mother's voice once raised in any question with each other ... I had never heard a servant scolded ...

I obeyed word or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm ...nothing was ever promised me that was not given; nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and nothing ever told me that was not true... Peace, obedience, faith; these three for chief good; next to these, the habit of fixed attention with both eyes and mind."

He grew up a solitary child without playmates. This solitude was relieved when his parents took him on occasional trips through England, Switzerland, and Italy. In _Praeterita_ he tells in an inimitable way how the most portentious interruption to his solitude came in 1836, when his father's Spanish partner came with his four beautiful daughters to visit Herne Hill. These were the first girls in his own station to whom he had spoken. "Virtually convent-bred more closely than the maids themselves," says Ruskin, "I was thrown, bound hand and foot, in my unaccomplished simplicity, into the fiery furnace." In four days he had fallen so desperately in love with the oldest, Clotilde Adele Domecq, a "graceful blonde" of fifteen, that he was more than four years in recovering his equilibrium. She laughed at his protestations of love; but she repeatedly visited his parents, and he did not give up hope until 1840, when she married a French baron.

His biographer says that the resulting "emotional strain doubtless was contributory to his breakdown at Oxford" and to his enforced absence for a recuperative trip on the continent.

His feminine attachments usually showed some definite results in his writing. Miss Domecq's influence during the long period of his devotion inspired him to produce much verse, which received such high praise that his father desired him to become a poet. Although some of Ruskin's verse was good, he finally had the penetration to see that it ranked decidedly below the greatest, and he later laid down the dictum: "with second-rate poetry _in quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind." In 1886, he had the humor to allude as follows to Miss Domecq and her influence on his rimes, "...her sisters called her Clotilde, after the queen-saint, and I, Adele, because it rimed to sh.e.l.l, spell, and knell."

Before he was graduated from Oxford in 1842, he wrote the beautiful altruistic story, _The King of the Golden River_ (1841) for Euphemia Gray, the young girl unhappily chosen by his mother to become his wife. He married her in 1848, but was divorced from her in 1854. In 1855 she was married to the Pre-Raphaelite artist, John Millais.

Another attachment led to his writing some of the finest parts of his most popular work, _Sesame and Lilies_ (1864). "I wrote Lilies," he says, "to please one girl." He is here referring to Rose La Touche, a bright, ardent, religious enthusiast, to whom he began to teach drawing when she was ten years old. His affection for her grew so strong that he finally asked her to become his wife. He was then a man of forty while she was scarcely grown. Her religious scruples kept her from definitely accepting him, because his belief was not sufficiently orthodox. The attachment, however, continued until her early death.

She was in some respects a remarkable character, and he seems to have had her in mind when he wrote in _Sesame and Lilies_ the "pearly"

pa.s.sage about Shakespeare's heroines.

Although Ruskin's wealth relieved him from earning a living, he was rarely idle. He studied, sketched, arranged collections of minerals, prepared Turner's pictures for the National Gallery, became professor of art at Oxford University, and wrote and lectured on art and social subjects. His later activities, before his health gave way, were in many respects similar to those of a twentieth-century social-service worker. The realization of the misery that overwhelmed so much of human life caused him to turn from art to consider remedies for the evils that developed as the compet.i.tive industries of the nation expanded. He endeavored to improve the condition of the working cla.s.ses in such ways as building sanitary tenements, establishing a tea shop, and forming an altruistic a.s.sociation, known as St. George's Guild. Nearly all his inheritance of 180,000 was expended in such activities. The royalties coming from the sale of his books supported him in old age.

Ruskin suffered from periods of mental depression during his last years, which were spent at Brantwood on Coniston Water in the Lake District. He died in 1900 at the age of eighty-one and was buried in the cemetery at Coniston.

Art Works.--Ruskin published the first volume of _Modern Painters_ in 1843, the year after he was graduated from Oxford, and the fifth and last volume, seventeen years later, in 1860. Many of his views changed during this period; but he honestly declared them and left to his readers the task of reconciling the divergent ideas in _Modern Painters_. The purpose of this book was, in his own words, "to declare the perfectness and eternal beauty of the work of G.o.d; and test all works of man by concurrence with, or subjection to that."

_Modern Painters_ contains painstaking descriptions of G.o.d's handiwork in cloud formation, mountain structure, tree architecture, and water forms. In transferring these aspects of nature to canvas, Ruskin shows the superiority of modern to ancient painting. He emphasizes the moral basis of true beauty, and the necessity of right living as a foundation for the highest type of art. Perhaps _Modern Painters_ achieved its greatest success in freeing men from the bondage of a conventional criticism that was stifling art, in sending them direct to nature as a guide, and in developing a love for her varied manifestations of beauty.

Two of Ruskin's works on architecture, _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ (1849) and _The Stones of Venice_ (1851-1853), had a decided effect on British taste in building. The three volumes of the _The Stones of Venice_ give a history of the Venetians and of their Gothic architecture. He aims to show that the beauty of such buildings as St. Mark's Cathedral and the Doges' Palace is due to the virtue and patriotism of the people, the n.o.bility of the designers, and the joy of the individual workmen, whose chisels made the very stones of Venice tell beautiful stories.

The most important of his many other writings on art is the volume ent.i.tled _Lectures on Art, Delivered before the University of Oxford, 1870_. In his famous _Inaugural_ of this series, he thus states what he considers the central truth of his teaching: "The art of any country is the exponent of its social and political virtues."

Social Works.--By turning from the criticism of art to consider the cause of humanity, Ruskin shows the influence of the ethical and social forces of the age. In middle life he was overwhelmed with the amount of human misery and he determined to do his best to relieve it.

He wrote:--

"I simply cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky, when there is any--which is seldom, nowadays, near London--has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of, where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly."[9]

After 1860 his main efforts with both pen and purse were devoted to improving the condition of his fellow men. His attempts to provide a remedy led him to write _Unto this Last_ (1860), his first and most complete work on political economy, _Munera Pulveris_ (1863), _Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne_ (1868), _Fors Clavigera_ (1871-1884), which is a long series of letters to workingmen, and a number of other works, that also present his views on social questions.

He abhorred the old political economy, which he defined as "the professed and organized pursuit of money." Instead of considering merely the question of the production and distribution of articles, his interest lay in the causes necessary to produce healthy, happy workmen. It seemed to him that the manufacture "of souls" ought to be "exceedingly lucrative." This statement and his maxim, "There is no wealth but life," were called "unscientific." In his fine book of essays, ent.i.tled _Sesame and Lilies_ (1864), he actually had printed in red those pathetic pages describing how an old cobbler and his son worked night and day to try to keep a little home of one room, until the father died from exhaustion and the son had a film come over his eyes.

John Ruskin, social reformer, has an important place in the social movement of the nineteenth century. Many of his theories, which were considered revolutionary, have since become the commonplace expressions of twentieth-century social economists.

General Characteristics.--Ruskin was a champion of the Pre-Raphaelite school of art. He used his powerful influence to free art from its conventional fetters and to send people direct to nature for careful loving study of her beautiful forms. His chief strength lies in his moral enthusiasm and his love of the beautiful in nature.

Like his master, Carlyle, Ruskin is a great ethical teacher; but he aimed at more definite results in the reformation of art and of social life. He moralized art and humanized political economy.

Some of his art criticisms and social theories are fanciful, narrow, and sometimes even absurd. He did not seem to recognize with sufficient clearness the fact that immoral individuals might produce great works of art; but no one can successfully a.s.sail his main contention that there must be a connection between great art and the moral condition of a people. His rejection of railroads and steam machinery as necessary factors in modern civilization caused many to pay little attention to any of his social theories. Much of the gospel that he preached has, however, been accepted by the twentieth century.

He was in advance of his time when he said in 1870 that the object of his art professorship would be accomplished if "the English nation could be made to understand that the beauty which is indeed to be a joy forever must be a joy for all."

At the age of fifty-eight, he thus summed up the princ.i.p.al work of his life:--

"_Modern Painters_ taught the claim of all lower nature on the hearts of men; of the rock, and wave, and herb, as a part of their necessary spirit life... _The Stories of Venice_ taught the laws of constructive Art, and the dependence of all human work or edifice, for its beauty, on the happy life of the workman. _Under this Last_ taught the laws of that life itself and its dependence on the Sun of Justice; the _Inaugural Oxford Lectures_, the necessity that it should be led, and the gracious laws of beauty and labor recognized, by the upper, no less than the lower cla.s.ses of England; and, lastly, _Fors Clavigera_ has declared the relation of these to each other, and the only possible conditions of peace and honor, for low and high, rich and poor..."

Ruskin has written remarkable descriptive prose. A severe English critic, George Saintsbury, says of Ruskin's works "...they will he found to contain the very finest prose (without exception and beyond comparison) which has been written in English during the last half of the nineteenth century... _The Stones of Venice_ ... is _the_ book of descriptive prose in English, and all others toil after it in vain."

Ruskin could be severely plain in expression, but much of his earlier prose is ornate and almost poetic. The following description of the Rhone deserves to be ranked with the painter's art:--

"There were pieces of wave that danced all day as if Perdita were looking on to learn; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, like crystal sand; here were currents that twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been mill streams, and were busily looking for mills to turn again."[10]

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS, 1812-1870

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES d.i.c.kENS. _From a photograph taken in America, 1868_.]

Life.--The first of the great Victorian novelists to make his mark was Charles d.i.c.kens. This great portrayer of child life had a sad painful childhood. He was born in 1812 at Landport, a district of the city of Portsmouth, Hampshire, where his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. John d.i.c.kens, the prototype of Mr. Micawber, was a kind, well-intentioned man, who knew far better how to harangue his large household of children than how to supply it with the necessities of life. He moved from place to place, sinking deeper into poverty and landing finally in a debtors' prison.

The dreams of a fine education and a brilliant career, which the future novelist had fondly cherished in his precocious little brain, had to be abandoned. At the age of eleven the delicate child was called upon to do his part toward maintaining the family. He was engaged, at six-pence a week, to paste labels on blacking bottles. He was poorly clothed, ill fed, forced to live in the cheapest place to be found, and to a.s.sociate with the roughest kind of companions. This experience was so bitter and galling to the sensitive boy that years after, when he was a successful, happy man, he could not look back upon it without tears in his eyes. Owing to a rupture between his employer and the elder Mr. d.i.c.kens, Charles was removed from this place and sent to school. At fifteen, however, he had to seek work again. This time he was employed in an attorney's office at Gray's Inn.

It was impossible, of course, for this ambitious boy to realize that he was receiving an education in the dirty streets, the warehouses, the tenements, and the prisons. Yet, for his peculiar bent of mind, these furnished far richer stores of learning than either school or college could have given. He had marvelous powers of observation. He noted everything, from the saucy street waif to the sorrowful prison child, from the poor little drudge to the brutal schoolmaster, and he transplanted them from life to fiction, in such characters as Sam Weller, Little Dorrit, the Marchioness, Mr. Squeers, and a hundred others.

While in the attorney's office, d.i.c.kens began to study shorthand, in order to become a reporter. This was the beginning of his success. His reports were accurate and racy, even when they happened to be written in the pouring rain, in a shaking stagecoach, or by the light of a lantern. They were also promptly handed in at the office, despite the fact that the stages sometimes broke down and left their pa.s.sengers to plod on foot through the miry roads leading into London. These reports and newspaper articles soon attracted attention; and d.i.c.kens received an offer for a series of humorous sketches, which grew into the famous _Pickwick Papers_, and earned 20,000 for the astonished publishers.

He was able to make his own terms for his future novels. Fame came to him almost at a bound. He was loved and toasted in England and America before he had reached the age of thirty. When, late in life, he made lecture tours through his own country, or through Scotland or America, they were like triumphal marches.

In his prime d.i.c.kens was an energetic, high-spirited, fun-loving man.

He made a charming host, and was never happier than when engineering theatrical entertainments at his delightful home, Gads Hill. He was esteemed by all the literary men of London, and idolized by his children and friends. As his strong personality was communicated to his audiences and his readers, his death in 1870 was felt as a personal loss throughout the English-speaking world.

[Ill.u.s.tration: d.i.c.kENS'S HOME, GADS HILL.]

Works.--_Pickwick Papers_ (1836-1837), d.i.c.kens's first long story, is one of his best. Mr. Pickwick, with his genial nature, his simple philosophy, and his droll adventures, and Sam Weller, with his ready wit, his acute observations, and his almost limitless resources, are amusing from start to finish. The book is brimful of its author's high spirits. It has no closely knit plot, but merely a succession of comical incidents, and vivid caricatures of Mr. Pickwick and his friends. Yet the fun is so good-natured and infectious, and the looseness of design is so frankly declared that the book possesses a certain unity arising from its general atmosphere of frolic and jollity.

_Oliver Twist_ (1837-1838) is a powerful story, differing widely from _Pickwick Papers_. While the earlier work is delightful chiefly for its humor, _Oliver Twist_ is strong in its pictures of pa.s.sion and crime. Bill Sykes the murderer, f.a.gin the Jew, who teaches the boys deftness of hand in stealing, and poor Nancy, are drawn with such power that they seem to be still actually living in some of London's dark alleys. Little Oliver, born in the poor-house, clothed by charity, taught by the evil genius of the streets, starved in body and soul, is one of the many pathetic portraits of children drawn with a sure and loving hand by d.i.c.kens. There are some improbable features about the plot and some overwrought sentimental scenes in this story.

d.i.c.kens reveled in the romantic and found it in robbers' dens, in bare poverty, in red-handed crime. The touching pathos and thrilling adventures of _Oliver Twist_ make a strong appeal to the reader's emotions.

With the prodigality of a fertile genius, d.i.c.kens presented his expectant and enthusiastic public with a new novel on an average of once a year for fourteen years; and, even after that, his productivity did not fall off materially. The best and most representative of these works are _Nicholas Nickleby_ (1838-1839), _Barnaby Rudge_ (1841), _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-1844), _Dombey and Son_ (1846-1848), _David Copperfield_ (1849-1850), _Bleak House_ (1852-1853), _Hard Times_ (1854), _A Tale of Two Cities_ (1859), and _Our Mutual Friend_ (1864).

Of these, _David Copperfield_ is at once d.i.c.kens's favorite work and the one which the world acclaims as his masterpiece. The novel is in part an autobiography. Some incidents are taken directly from d.i.c.kens's early experiences and into many more of David's childish sorrows, boyish dreams, and manly purposes, d.i.c.kens has breathed the breath of his own life. David Copperfield is thus a vitally interesting and living character. The book contains many of d.i.c.kens's most human men and women. Petted Little Em'ly with her pathetic tragedy is handled with deep sympathy and true artistic delicacy.

Peggotty and Mrs. Steerforth are admirably drawn and contrasted. Mrs.

Gummidge's thoughtful care of Peggotty exhibits d.i.c.kens's fine perception of the self-sacrificing spirit among the very poor. Uriah Heep remains the type of the humble sycophant, and Mr. Micawber, the representative of the man of big words and pompous manners. These various characters and separate life histories are bound in same way to the central story of David. General Characteristics.--England has produced no more popular novelist than Charles d.i.c.kens. His novels offer sound and healthy entertainment, hearty laughter, a wide range of emotions, and a wonderful array of personalities. He presents the universal physical experiences of life that are understood by all men, and irradiates this life with emotion and romance. He keeps his readers in an active state of feeling. They laugh at the broad humor in Sam Weller's jokes; they chuckle over the sly exposure of Mr.

Pecksniff in _Martin Chuzzlewit_; they weep in _Dombey and Son_ over poor Paul crammed with grown-up learning when he wanted to be just a child; they rejoice over David Copperfield's escape from his stepfather into the loving arms of whimsical, clever Aunt Betsey Trotwood; they shiver with horror in _Our Mutual Friend_ during the search for floating corpses on the dark river; and they feel more kindly toward the whole world after reading _A Christmas Carol_ and taking Tiny Tim into their hearts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF MS. OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL.]

d.i.c.kens excels in the portrayal of humanity born and reared in poverty and disease. He grasps the hand of these unfortunates in a brother's clasp. He says in effect "I present to you my friends, the beggar, the thief, the outcast. They are men worth knowing." He does not probe philosophically into complex causes of poverty and crime. His social creed was well formulated by Dowden in these words: "Banish from earth some few monsters of selfishness, malignity, and hypocrisy, set to rights a few obvious imperfections in the machinery of society, inspire all men with a cheery benevolence, and everything will go well with this excellent world of ours."

Every student of the science of society, however, owes a debt to d.i.c.kens. He did what no science or knowledge or logic can do alone. He reached the heart, awoke the conscience, and pierced the obtuseness of the public. He aroused its protests because his genius painted prisons and hovels and dens of vice so vividly that his readers actually suffered from the scenes thus presented and wanted such horrors abolished.

d.i.c.kens's infectious humor is a remarkable and an unfailing quality of his works. It pervades entire chapters, colors complete incidents, and displays the temper of the optimist through the darkest pictures of human suffering.