Halleck's New English Literature Part 71

The Brownings.--From Elizabeth Barrett Browning, read _Cowper's Grave, the Cry of the Children_, and from her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, Nos. I., III., VI., X., XVIII., XX., XXVI., XXVIII., XLI., XLIII.

Mrs. Browning's verse comes from the heart and should be felt rather than criticized. Fresh interest may, however, by given to a study of her _Sonnets from the Portuguese_, by comparing them with any other series of love sonnets, excepting Shakespeare's.

Robert Browning's shorter poems are best for the beginner, who should read _Rabbi Ben Ezra, Abt Vogler, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Prospice, Saul, The Pied Piper of Hamelin._ Baker's _Browning's Shorter Poems (Macmillan's Pocket Cla.s.sics)_ contains a very good collection of his shorter poems. Representative selections from Browning's poems are given in Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century, Oxford Book of Victorian Verse_, Bronson, IV., Manly, I., and _Century_.

Browning's masterpiece, _The Ring and the Book (Oxford Edition_, Oxford University Press) would be apt to repel beginners. This should be studied only after a previous acquaintance with his shorter poems.

Define Browning's creed as found in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_. Is he an ethical teacher? Is there any similarity between his teaching and Carlyle's?

What most interests Browning,--word-painting, narration, action, psychological a.n.a.lysis, or technique of verse? See whether a comparison of his _Prospice_ with Tennyson's _Crossing the Bar_ does not help you to understand Browning's peculiar cast of mind. What qualities in Browning ent.i.tle him to be ranked as a great poet?

Tennyson.--From his 1842 volume, read the poems mentioned on page 556. From _The Princess_, read the lyrical songs; from _In Memoriam_, the parts numbered XLI., LIV., LVII., and Cx.x.xI.; from _Maud_, the eleven stanzas beginning: "Come into the garden, Maud"; from _The Idylls of the King_, read _Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, The Pa.s.sing of Arthur_ (Van d.y.k.e's edition in _Gateway Series_); from his later poems, _The Higher Pantheism, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_, and _Crossing the Bar_.

The best single volume edition of Tennyson's works is published in Macmillan's _Globe Poets_. Selections are given in Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_, Bronson, IV., _Oxford Book of Victorian Verse_, Manly, I., and _Century_.

In _The Palace of Art_, study carefully the stanzas from XIV. to XXIII., which are ill.u.s.trative of Tennyson's characteristic style of description. Compare _Locksley Hall_ with _Locksley Hall Sixty Years After_, and note the difference in thought and metrical form. Does the later poem show a gain over the earlier? Compare Tennyson's nature poetry with that of Keats and Wordsworth. To what is chiefly due the pleasure in reading Tennyson's poetry: to the imagery, form, thought?

What idea of his faith do you gain from _In Memoriam_ and _The Pa.s.sing of Arthur_? In what is Tennyson the poetic exponent of the age? Is it probable that Tennyson's popularity will increase or wane? Select some of his verse that you think will be as popular a hundred years hence as now.

Swinburne.--Read _A Song in Time of Order, The Youth of the Year (Atlanta in Calydon), A Match, The Garden of Proserpine, Hertha, By the North Sea, The Hymn of Man, The Roundel, A Child's Laughter_.

The most of the above are given in Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_, Bronson, IV., Manly, I., _Century, Oxford Book of Victorian Verse_.

Compare both the metrical skill and poetic ideas of Swinburne and Tennyson. Can you find any poet who surpa.s.ses Swinburne in the technique of verse? What are his chief excellencies and faults?

Kipling.--Read _The Jungle Books_. The following are among the best of his short stories: _The Man Who Would be King, The Brushwood Boy, The Courting of Dinah Shadd, Drums of the Fore and Aft, Without Benefit of Clergy, On Greenhow Hill_.

From his poems read _Mandalay, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, Danny Deever, The 'Eathen, Ballad of East and West, Recessional, The White Man's Burden_; also _Song of the Banjo_, and _L'Envoi_ from _Seven Seas_, published by Doubleday, Page and Company.

Why is _The Jungle Book_ called an original creation? What are the most distinctive dualities of Kipling's short stories? Point out in what respects they show the methods of the journalist. How does Kipling sustain the interest? What limitations do you notice? What is specially remarkable about his style? What are the princ.i.p.al characteristics of his verse? What subjects appeal to him? Why is his verse so popular?

Minor Poets.--Read the selections from Clough, Henley, Bridges, Davidson, Thompson, Watson, Dobson and Symons in either _The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse_ or Stevenson's _The Home Book of Verse. The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges_ is inexpensively published by the Oxford University Press. Dobson's verse has been gathered into the single volume _Collected Poems_ (1913).

What are the chief characteristics of each of the above authors? Do these minor versifiers fill a want not fully supplied by the great poets?

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER IX:

[Footnote 1: _A Liberal Education and Where to Find It_ (_Lay Sermons_).]

[Footnote 2: For suggested readings in Pater, see p. 584.]

[Footnote 3: Pp. 225-364 of the Oxford University Press edition of his _Poetical Works_.]

[Footnote 4: Printed by permission of The Macmillan Company.]

[Footnote 5: Given in Stevenson's _Home Book of Verse_ and _The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse_.]

[Footnote 6: _History of England_, Vol. III, Chap. XI.]

[Footnote 7: Morison's _Life of Macaulay_, p. 139.]

[Footnote 8: _The Idea of a University_ (_Literature: A Lecture_).]

[Footnote 9: _For Claviers_, Letter I.]

[Footnote 10: _Praeterita_, Vol. II., Chap. V.]

[Footnote 11: _Silas Marner_, Chap. VI.]

[Footnote 12: _The Scholar Gypsy_.]

[Footnote 13: _A Southern Light_.]

[Footnote 14: _The Grande Chartreuse_.]

[Footnote 15: _Home Thoughts from Abroad_.]

[Footnote 16: A.C. Benson's _Alfred Tennyson_, p. 157.]

[Footnote 17 & 18: Printed by permission of Rudyard Kipling and Doubleday, Page and Company.]

[Footnote 19: For full t.i.tles, see p. 6.]

CHAPTER X: TWENTIETH-CENTURY LITERATURE

Interest in the Present.--One result of the growing scientific spirit has been an increasing interest in contemporary problems and literature. At the beginning of the Victorian age, the chief part of the literature studied in college was nearly two thousand years old.

When English courses were finally added, they frequently ended with Milton. To-day, however, many colleges have courses in strictly contemporary literature. The scientific att.i.tude toward life has caused a recognition of the fact that he who disregards current literature remains ignorant of a part of the life and thought of to-day and that he resembles the mathematician who neglects one factor in the solution of a problem.

It is true that the future may take a different view of all contemporary things, including literature; but this possibility does not justify neglect of the present. We should also remember that different stages in the growth of nations and individuals constantly necessitate changes in estimating the relative importance of the thought of former centuries.

The Trend of Contemporary Literature.--The diversity of taste in the wide circle of twentieth-century readers has encouraged authors of both the realistic and the romantic schools. The main tendency of scientific influence and of the new interest in racial welfare is toward realism. In his stories of the "Five Towns," Arnold Bennett shows how the dull industrial life affects the character of the individual. Much of the fiction of H.G. Wells presents matter of scientific or sociological interest. Poets like John Masefield and Wilfrid Gibson sing with an almost prosaic sincerity of the life of workmen and of the squalid city streets. The drama is frequently a study of the conditions affecting contemporary life.

Twentieth-century writers are not, however, neglecting the other great function of literature,--to charm life with romantic visions and to bring to it deliverance from care. The poetry of Noyes takes us back to the days of Drake and to the Mermaid Inn, where we listen to Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Jonson. The Irish poets and dramatists disclose a world of the "Ever-Young," where there is:--

"A laughter in the diamond air, a music in the trembling gra.s.s."

The influence of the great German skeptic, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), appears in some of Shaw's dramas, as well as in the novels of Wells; but the poets of this age seem to have more faith than Swinburne or Matthew Arnold or some of the minor versifiers of the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Two prominent essayists, Arthur Christopher Benson (1862- ) and Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874- ) are sincere optimists. Such volumes of Benson's essays as _From a College Window_ (1906), _Beside Still Waters_ (1907), and _Thy Rod and Thy Staff_ (1912) have strengthened faith and proved a tonic to many. Chesterton is a suggestive and stimulating essayist in spite of the fact that he often bombards his readers with too much paradox. Early in life he was an agnostic and a follower of Herbert Spencer, but he later became a champion of Christian faith. Sometimes Chesterton seems to be merely clever, but he is usually too thought-provoking to be read pa.s.sively. His _Robert Browning_ (1903), _Varied Types_ (1903), _Heretics_ (1905), _George Bernard Shaw_ (1909), and _The Victorian Age in Literature_ (1913) keep most readers actively thinking.

THE NOVEL

Joseph Conrad.--This son of distinguished Polish exiles from Russia, Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski, as he was originally named, was born in the Ukraine, in 1857. Until his nineteenth year he was unfamiliar with the English language. Instead of following the literary or military traditions of his family, he joined the English merchant marine.

Sailing the seas of the world, touching at strange tropical ports and uncharted islands, elbowing all the races of the globe, hearing all the languages spoken by man,--such were Conrad's activities between his twentieth and thirty-seventh years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOSEPH CONRAD.]

At thirty-seven, needing a little rest, he settled in England and began to write. Short stories, novels, and an interesting autobiographical volume, _A Personal Record_ (1912), represent Conrad's production. Among his ablest books are _Tales of Unrest_ (1898), a volume of sea stories, and _Lord Jim_ (1900), a novel full of the fascination of strange seas and sh.o.r.es, but still more remarkable for its searching a.n.a.lysis of a man's recovery of self-respect after a long period of remorse for failure to meet a momentary crisis. _Youth, A Narrative, and Two Other Tales_ (1902), contains one of Conrad's strongest stories, _The End of the Tether_.

This is a tender story of an old sea captain, who for the sake of a cherished daughter holds his post against terrific odds, including blindness and disgrace. _Typhoon_ (1903) is an almost unrivaled account of a ship's fight against mad hurricanes and raging seas.