A History of English Literature

by Robert Huntington Fletcher

TO MY MOTHER TO WHOM I OWE A LIFETIME OF A MOTHER'S MOST SELF-SACRIFICINGDEVOTION

PREFACE

This book aims to provide a general manual of English Literature forstudents in colleges and universities and others beyond the high-schoolage. The first purposes of every such book must be to outline thedevelopment of the literature with due regard to national life, and to giveappreciative interpretation of the work of the most important authors. Ihave written the present volume because I have found no other that, to mymind, combines satisfactory accomplishment of these ends with a selectionof authors sufficiently limited for clearness and with adequate accuracyand fulness of details, biographical and other. A manual, it seems to me, should supply a systematic statement of the important facts, so that thegreater part of the student's time, in class and without, may be left freefor the study of the literature itself. 

I hope that the book may prove adaptable to various methods and conditionsof work. Experience has suggested the brief introductory statement of mainliterary principles, too often taken for granted by teachers, with muchresulting haziness in the student's mind. The list of assignments andquestions at the end is intended, of course, to be freely treated. I hopethat the list of available inexpensive editions of the chief authors maysuggest a practical method of providing the material, especially forcolleges which can provide enough copies for class use. Poets, of course, may be satisfactorily read in volumes of, selections; but to me, at least, a book of brief extracts from twenty or a hundred prose authors is anabsurdity. Perhaps I may venture to add that personally I find it advisableto pass hastily over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and so gainas much time as possible for the nineteenth. 

R. H. F. 

_August, 1916. _

CONTENTS

 PRELIMINARY. HOW TO STUDY AND JUDGE LITERATURE

 A TABULAR VIEW OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

 REFERENCE BOOKS

I. PERIOD I. THE BRITONS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. TO A. D. 1066

II. PERIOD II. THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD. A. D. 1066 TO ABOUT 1350

III. PERIOD III. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. ABOUT 1350 TO ABOUT 1500

IV. THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA

V. PERIOD IV. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH

VI. THE DRAMA FROM ABOUT 1550 TO 1642

VII. PERIOD V. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 1603-1660. PROSE AND POETRY

VIII. PERIOD VI. THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700

IX. PERIOD VII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, PSEUDO-CLASSICISM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN ROMANTICISM

X. PERIOD VIII. THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH, 1798 TO ABOUT 1830

XI. PERIOD IX. THE VICTORIAN PERIOD. ABOUT 1830 TO 1901

 A LIST OF AVAILABLE EDITIONS FOR THE STUDY OF IMPORTANT AUTHORS

 ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY

 INDEX

PRELIMINARY. HOW TO STUDY AND JUDGE LITERATURE

TWO ASPECTS OF LITERARY STUDY. Such a study of Literature as that for whichthe present book is designed includes two purposes, contributing to acommon end. In the first place (I), the student must gain some generalknowledge of the conditions out of which English literature has come intobeing, as a whole and during its successive periods, that is of theexternal facts of one sort or another without which it cannot beunderstood. This means chiefly (1) tracing in a general way, from period toperiod, the social life of the nation, and (2) getting some acquaintancewith the lives of the more important authors. The principal thing, however(II), is the direct study of the literature itself. This study in turnshould aim first at an _understanding_ of the literature as anexpression of the authors' views of life and of their personalities andespecially as a portrayal and interpretation of the life of their periodsand of all life as they have seen it; it should aim further at an_appreciation_ of each literary work as a product of Fine Art, appealing with peculiar power both to our minds and to our emotions, notleast to the sense of Beauty and the whole higher nature. In the presentbook, it should perhaps be added, the word Literature is generallyinterpreted in the strict sense, as including only writing of permanentsignificance and beauty. 

The outline discussion of literary qualities which follows is intended tohelp in the formation of intelligent and appreciative judgments. 

SUBSTANCE AND FORM. The most thoroughgoing of all distinctions inliterature, as in the other Fine Arts, is that between (1) Substance, theessential content and meaning of the work, and (2) Form, the manner inwhich it is expressed (including narrative structure, external style, inpoetry verse-form, and many related matters). This distinction should bekept in mind, but in what follows it will not be to our purpose toemphasize it. 

GENERAL MATTERS. 1. First and always in considering any piece of literaturea student should ask himself the question already implied: Does it presenta true portrayal of life--of the permanent elements in all life and inhuman nature, of the life or thought of its own particular period, and (inmost sorts of books) of the persons, real or imaginary, with whom it deals?If it properly accomplishes this main purpose, when the reader finishes ithe should feel that his understanding of life and of people has beenincreased and broadened. But it should always be remembered that truth isquite as much a matter of general spirit and impression as of literalaccuracy in details of fact. The essential question is not, Is thepresentation of life and character perfect in a photographic fashion? butDoes it convey the _underlying_ realities? 2. Other things beingequal, the value of a book, and especially of an author's whole work, isproportional to its range, that is to the breadth and variety of the lifeand characters which it presents. 3. A student should not form hisjudgments merely from what is technically called the _dogmatic_ pointof view, but should try rather to adopt that of _historical_criticism. This means that he should take into account the limitationsimposed on every author by the age in which he lived. If you find that thepoets of the Anglo-Saxon 'Béowulf' have given a clear and interestingpicture of the life of our barbarous ancestors of the sixth or seventhcentury A. D. , you should not blame them for a lack of the finer elementsof feeling and expression which after a thousand years of civilizationdistinguish such delicate spirits as Keats and Tennyson. 4. It is oftenimportant to consider also whether the author's personal method is_objective_, which means that he presents life and character withoutbias; or _subjective_, coloring his work with his personal tastes, feelings and impressions. Subjectivity may be a falsifying influence, butit may also be an important virtue, adding intimacy, charm, or force. 5. Further, one may ask whether the author has a deliberately formed theory oflife; and if so how it shows itself, and, of course, how sound it is. 

INTELLECT, EMOTION, IMAGINATION, AND RELATED QUALITIES. Another mainquestion in judging any book concerns the union which it shows: (1) of theIntellectual faculty, that which enables the author to understand andcontrol his material and present it with directness and clearness; and (2)of the Emotion, which gives warmth, enthusiasm, and appealing human power. The relative proportions of these two faculties vary greatly in books ofdifferent sorts. Exposition (as in most essays) cannot as a rule bepermeated with so much emotion as narration or, certainly, as lyric poetry. In a great book the relation of the two faculties will of course properlycorrespond to form and spirit. Largely a matter of Emotion is the PersonalSympathy of the author for his characters, while Intellect has a largeshare in Dramatic Sympathy, whereby the author enters truly into thesituations and feelings of any character, whether he personally likes himor not. Largely made up of Emotion are: (1) true Sentiment, which is finefeeling of any sort, and which should not degenerate into Sentimentalism(exaggerated tender feeling); (2) Humor, the instinctive sense for thatwhich is amusing; and (3) the sense for Pathos. Pathos differs from Tragedyin that Tragedy (whether in a drama or elsewhere) is the suffering ofpersons who are able to struggle against it, Pathos the suffering of thosepersons (children, for instance) who are merely helpless victims. Wit, thebrilliant perception of incongruities, is a matter of Intellect and thecomplement of Humor. 

IMAGINATION AND FANCY. Related to Emotion also and one of the mostnecessary elements in the higher forms of literature is Imagination, thefaculty of making what is absent or unreal seem present and real, andrevealing the hidden or more subtile forces of life. Its main operationsmay be classified under three heads: (1) Pictorial and Presentative. Itpresents to the author's mind, and through him to the minds of his readers, all the elements of human experience and life (drawing from his actualexperience or his reading). 2. Selective, Associative, and Constructive. From the unorganized material thus brought clearly to the author'sconsciousness Imagination next selects the details which can be turned topresent use, and proceeds to combine them, uniting scattered traits andincidents, perhaps from widely different sources, into new characters, stories, scenes, and ideas. The characters of 'Silas Marner, ' for example, never had an actual existence, and the precise incidents of the story nevertook place in just that order and fashion, but they were all constructed bythe author's imagination out of what she had observed of many real personsand events, and so make, in the most significant sense, a true picture oflife. 3. Penetrative and Interpretative. In its subtlest operations, further, Imagination penetrates below the surface and comprehends andbrings to light the deeper forces and facts--the real controlling instinctsof characters, the real motives for actions, and the relations of materialthings to those of the spiritual world and of Man to Nature and God. 

Fancy may for convenience be considered as a distinct faculty, though it isreally the lighter, partly superficial, aspect of Imagination. It dealswith things not essentially or significantly true, amusing us with strikingor pleasing suggestions, such as seeing faces in the clouds, which vanishalmost as soon as they are discerned. Both Imagination and Fancy naturallyexpress themselves, often and effectively, through the use of metaphors, similes, and suggestive condensed language. In painful contrast to themstands commonplaceness, always a fatal fault. 

IDEALISM, ROMANCE, AND REALISM. Among the most important literary qualitiesalso are Idealism, Romance, and Realism. Realism, in the broad sense, meanssimply the presentation of the actual, depicting life as one sees it, objectively, without such selection as aims deliberately to emphasize someparticular aspects, such as the pleasant or attractive ones. (Of course allliterature is necessarily based on the ordinary facts of life, which we maycall by the more general name of Reality. ) Carried to the extreme, Realismmay become ignoble, dealing too frankly or in unworthy spirit with thebaser side of reality, and in almost all ages this sort of Realism hasactually attempted to assert itself in literature. Idealism, the tendencyopposite to Realism, seeks to emphasize the spiritual and other higherelements, often to bring out the spiritual values which lie beneath thesurface. It is an optimistic interpretation of life, looking for what isgood and permanent beneath all the surface confusion. Romance may be calledIdealism in the realm of sentiment. It aims largely to interest anddelight, to throw over life a pleasing glamor; it generally deals with loveor heroic adventure; and it generally locates its scenes and characters indistant times and places, where it can work unhampered by our consciousnessof the humdrum actualities of our daily experience. It may always be askedwhether a writer of Romance makes his world seem convincingly real as weread or whether he frankly abandons all plausibility. The presence orabsence of a supernatural element generally makes an important difference. Entitled to special mention, also, is spiritual Romance, where attention iscentered not on external events, which may here be treated in somewhatshadowy fashion, but on the deeper questions of life. Spiritual Romance, therefore, is essentially idealistic. 

DRAMATIC POWER. Dramatic power, in general, means the presentation of lifewith the vivid active reality of life and character which especiallydistinguishes the acted drama. It is, of course, one of the main things tobe desired in most narrative; though sometimes the effect sought may besomething different, as, for instance, in romance and poetry, an atmosphereof dreamy beauty. In a drama, and to some extent in other forms ofnarrative, dramatic power culminates in the ability to bring out the greatcrises with supreme effectiveness. 

CHARACTERS. There is, generally speaking, no greater test of an author'sskill than his knowledge and presentation of characters. We should considerwhether he makes them (1) merely caricatures, or (2) type characters, standing for certain general traits of human nature but not convincinglyreal or especially significant persons, or (3) genuine individuals with allthe inconsistencies and half-revealed tendencies that in actual life belongto real personality. Of course in the case of important characters, thegreater the genuine individuality the greater the success. But withsecondary characters the principles of emphasis and proportion generallyforbid very distinct individualization; and sometimes, especially in comedy(drama), truth of character is properly sacrificed to other objects, suchas the main effect. It may also be asked whether the characters are simple, as some people are in actual life, or complex, like most interestingpersons; whether they develop, as all real people must under the action ofsignificant experience, or whether the author merely presents them in briefsituations or lacks the power to make them anything but stationary. Ifthere are several of them it is a further question whether the authorproperly contrasts them in such a way as to secure interest. And a mainrequisite is that he shall properly motivate their actions, that is maketheir actions result naturally from their characters, either theircontrolling traits or their temporary impulses. 

STRUCTURE. In any work of literature there should be definite structure. This requires, (1) Unity, (2) Variety, (3) Order, (4) Proportion, and (5)due Emphasis of parts. Unity means that everything included in the workought to contribute directly or indirectly to the main effect. Very often adefinite theme may be found about which the whole work centers, as forinstance in 'Macbeth, ' The Ruin of a Man through Yielding to Evil. Sometimes, however, as in a lyric poem, the effect intended may be therendering or creation of a mood, such as that of happy content, and in thatcase the poem may not have an easily expressible concrete theme. 

Order implies a proper beginning, arrangement, progress, and a definiteending. In narrative, including all stories whether in prose or verse andalso the drama, there should be traceable a Line of Action, comprisinggenerally: (1) an Introduction, stating the necessary preliminaries; (2)the Initial Impulse, the event which really sets in motion this particularstory; (3) a Rising Action; (4) a Main Climax. Sometimes (generally, inComedy) the Main Climax is identical with the Outcome; sometimes (regularlyin Tragedy) the Main Climax is a turning point and comes near the middle ofthe story. In that case it really marks the beginning of the success of theside which is to be victorious at the end (in Tragedy the side opposed tothe hero) and it initiates (5) a Falling Action, corresponding to theRising Action, and sometimes of much the same length, wherein the losingside struggles to maintain itself. After (6) the Outcome, may come (7) abrief tranquilizing Conclusion. The Antecedent Action is that part of thecharacters' experiences which precedes the events of the story. If it has abearing, information about it must be given either in the Introduction orincidentally later on. Sometimes, however, the structure just indicated maynot be followed; a story may begin in the middle, and the earlier part maybe told later on in retrospect, or incidentally indicated, like theAntecedent Action. 

If in any narrative there is one or more Secondary Action, a story whichmight be separated from the Main Action and viewed as complete in itself, criticism should always ask whether the Main and Secondary Actions areproperly unified. In the strictest theory there should be an essentialconnection between them; for instance, they may illustrate different andperhaps contrasting aspects of the general theme. Often, however, an authorintroduces a Secondary Action merely for the sake of variety or to increasethe breadth of his picture--in order to present a whole section of societyinstead of one narrow stratum or group. In such cases, he must generally bejudged to have succeeded if he has established an apparent unity, say bymingling the same characters in the two actions, so that readers are notreadily conscious of the lack of real structural unity. 

Other things to be considered in narrative are: Movement, which, unless forspecial reasons, should be rapid, at least not slow and broken; Suspense;general Interest; and the questions whether or not there are goodsituations and good minor climaxes, contributing to the interest; andwhether or not motivation is good, apart from that which results fromcharacter, that is whether events are properly represented as happening inaccordance with the law of cause and effect which inexorably governs actuallife. But it must always be remembered that in such writing as Comedy andRomance the strict rules of motivation must be relaxed, and indeed in allliterature, even in Tragedy, the idealization, condensation, andheightening which are the proper methods of Art require them to be slightlymodified. 

DESCRIPTIVE POWER. Usually secondary in appearance but of vital artisticimportance, is the author's power of description, of picturing both theappearance of his characters and the scenes which make his background andhelp to give the tone of his work. Perhaps four subjects of description maybe distinguished: 1. External Nature. Here such questions as the followingare of varying importance, according to the character and purpose of thework: Does the author know and care for Nature and frequently introducedescriptions? Are the descriptions concrete and accurate, or on the otherhand purposely general (impressionistic) or carelessly superficial? Do theygive fine variations of appearance and impression, such as delicateshiftings of light and shade and delicate tones of color? Are theypowerfully sensuous, that is do they appeal strongly to the physicalsenses, of sight (color, light, and movement), sound (including music), smell, taste, touch, and general physical sensation? How great is theirvariety? Do they deal with many parts of Nature, for example the sea, mountains, plains, forests, and clouds? Is the love of external beauty apassion with the author? What is the author's attitude toward Nature--(1)does he view Nature in a purely objective way, as a mass of materialthings, a series of material phenomena or a mere embodiment of sensuousbeauty; or (2) is there symbolism or mysticism in his attitude, thatis--does he view Nature with awe as a spiritual power; or (3) is hethoroughly subjective, reading his own moods into Nature or using Naturechiefly for the expression of his moods? Or again, does the author describewith merely expository purpose, to make the background of his work clear?2. Individual Persons and Human Life: Is the author skilful in descriptionsof personal appearance and dress? Does he produce his impressions by fullenumeration of details, or by emphasis on prominent or characteristicdetails? How often and how fully does he describe scenes of human activity(such as a street scene, a social gathering, a procession on the march)? 3. How frequent and how vivid are his descriptions of the inanimate backgroundof human life--buildings, interiors of rooms, and the rest? 4. Does theauthor skilfully use description to create the general atmosphere in whichhe wishes to invest his work--an atmosphere of cheerfulness, of mystery, ofactivity, or any of a hundred other moods?

STYLE. Style in general means 'manner of writing. ' In the broad sense itincludes everything pertaining to the author's spirit and point ofview--almost everything which is here being discussed. More narrowlyconsidered, as 'external style, ' it designates the author's use oflanguage. Questions to be asked in regard to external style are such asthese: Is it good or bad, careful or careless, clear and easy or confusedand difficult; simple or complex; terse and forceful (perhaps colloquial)or involved and stately; eloquent, balanced, rhythmical; vigorous, ormusical, languid, delicate and decorative; varied or monotonous; plain orfigurative; poor or rich in connotation and poetic suggestiveness;beautiful, or only clear and strong? Are the sentences mostly long orshort; periodic or loose; mostly of one type, such as the declarative, orwith frequent introduction of such other forms as the question and theexclamation?

POETRY. Most of what has thus far been said applies to both Prose andPoetry. But in Poetry, as the literature especially characterized ingeneral by high Emotion, Imagination, and Beauty, finer and more delicateeffects are to be sought than in Prose. Poetry, generally speaking, is theexpression of the deeper nature; it belongs peculiarly to the realm of thespirit. On the side of poetical expression such imaginative figures ofspeech as metaphors and similes, and such devices as alliteration, proveespecially helpful. It may be asked further of poetry, whether the meterand stanza structure are appropriate to the mood and thought and so handledas to bring out the emotion effectively; and whether the sound is adaptedto the sense (for example, musical where the idea is of peace or quietbeauty). If the sound of the words actually imitates the sound of the thingindicated, the effect is called Onomatopoeia. Among kinds of poetry, according to form, the most important are: (1) Narrative, which includesmany subordinate forms, such as the Epic. (2) Lyric. Lyric poems areexpressions of spontaneous emotion and are necessarily short. (3) Dramatic, including not merely the drama but all poetry of vigorous action. (4)Descriptive, like Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village' and Tennyson's 'Dream ofFair Women. ' Minor kinds are: (5) Satiric; and (6) Didactic. 

Highly important in poetry is Rhythm, but the word means merely 'flow, ' sothat rhythm belongs to prose as well as to poetry. Good rhythm is merely apleasing succession of sounds. Meter, the distinguishing formal mark ofpoetry and all verse, is merely rhythm which is regular in certainfundamental respects, roughly speaking is rhythm in which the recurrence ofstressed syllables or of feet with definite time-values is regular. Thereis no proper connection either in spelling or in meaning between rhythm andrime (which is generally misspelled 'rhyme'). The adjective derived from'rhythm' is 'rhythmical'; there is no adjective from 'rime' except 'rimed. 'The word 'verse' in its general sense includes all writing in meter. Poetryis that verse which has real literary merit. In a very different andnarrower sense 'verse' means 'line' (never properly 'stanza'). 

CLASSICISM AND ROMANTICISM. Two of the most important contrastingtendencies of style in the general sense are Classicism and Romanticism. Classicism means those qualities which are most characteristic of the bestliterature of Greece and Rome. It is in fact partly identical withIdealism. It aims to express the inner truth or central principles ofthings, without anxiety for minor details, and it is by nature largelyintellectual in quality, though not by any means to the exclusion ofemotion. In outward form, therefore, it insists on correct structure, restraint, careful finish and avoidance of all excess. 'Paradise Lost, 'Arnold's 'Sohrab and Rustum, ' and Addison's essays are modern examples. Romanticism, which in general prevails in modern literature, lays mostemphasis on independence and fulness of expression and on strong emotion, and it may be comparatively careless of form. The Classical style has wellbeen called sculpturesque, the Romantic picturesque. The virtues of theClassical are exquisiteness and incisive significance; of the Romantic, richness and splendor. The dangers of the Classical are coldness andformality; of the Romantic, over-luxuriance, formlessness and excess ofemotion. [Footnote: All these matters, here merely suggested, are fullydiscussed in the present author's 'Principles of Composition andLiterature. ' (The A. S. Barnes Co. )]

A TABULAR VIEW OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

I. The Britons and the Anglo-Saxon Period, from the beginning to the Norman Conquest in 1066 A. D. A. The Britons, before and during the Roman occupation, to the fifth century. B. Anglo-Saxon Poetry, on the Continent in prehistoric times before the migration to England, and in England especially during the Northumbrian Period, seventh and eighth centuries A. D. Ballads, 'Beowulf, ' Caedmon, Bede (Latin prose), Cynewulf. C. Anglo-Saxon Prose, of the West Saxon Period, tenth and eleventh centuries, beginning with King Alfred, 871-901. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. II. The Norman-French, Period, 1066 to about 1350. Literature in Latin, French, and English. Many different forms, both religious and secular, including the religious drama. The Metrical Romances, including the Arthurian Cycle. Geoffrey of Monmouth, 'Historia Regum Britanniae' (Latin), about 1136. Wace, 'Brut' (French), about 1155. Laghamon, 'Brut' (English), about 1200. III. The End of the Middle Ages, about 1350 to about 1500. The Hundred Years' War. 'Sir John Mandeyille's' 'Voyage. ' Chaucer, 1338-1400. John Gower. 'The Vision Concerning Piers the Plowman. ' Wiclif and the Lollard Bible, about 1380. Popular Ballads. The War of the Roses. Malory's 'Morte Darthur, ' finished 1467. Caxton and the printing press, 1476. Morality Plays and Interludes. IV. The Renaissance and the Elizabethan Period, about 1500 to 1603. Great discoveries and activity, both intellectual and physical. Influence of Italy. The Reformation. Henry VIII, 1509-47. Edward VI, to 1553. Mary, to 1558. Elizabeth, 1558-1603. Defeat of the Armada, 1588. Sir Thomas More, 'Utopia. ' Tyndale's New Testament and other translations of the Bible. Wyatt and Surrey, about 1540. Prose Fiction. Lyly's 'Euphues, ' 1578. Sidney's 'Arcadia. ' Spenser, 1552-1599. 'The Shepherd's Calendar, ' 1579. 'The Faerie Queene, ' 1590 and later. Lyric poetry, including sonnet sequences. John Donne. The Drama. Classical and native influences. Lyly, Peele, Greene, Marlowe. Shakspere, 1564-1616. Ben Jonson and other dramatists. V. The Seventeenth Century, 1603-1660. The First Stuart Kings, James I (to 1625) and Charles I. Cavaliers and Puritans. The Civil War and the Commonwealth. Cromwell. The Drama, to 1642. Francis Bacon. The King James Bible, 1611. Lyric Poets. Herrick. The 'Metaphysical' religious poets--Herbert, Crashaw, and Vaughan. Cavalier and Puritan poets. Milton, 1608-1674. John Bunyan, 'Pilgrim's Progress. ' 1678. 

VI. The Restoration Period, from the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 to the death of Dryden in 1700. Charles II, 1660-1685. James II, 1685 to the Revolution in 1688. William and Mary, 1688-1702. Butler's 'Hudibras. ' Pepys' 'Diary. ' The Restoration Drama. Dryden, 1631-1700. 

VII. The Eighteenth Century. Queen Anne, 1702-1715. The four Georges, 1715-1830. 

 PSEUDO-CLASSIC LITERATURE. Swift, 1667-1745. Addison, 1672-1719. Steele, 1672-1729. Pope, 1688-1744. Johnson, 1709-1784. 

 THE LATER PROSE. Burke, 1729-1797. Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall, ' 1776-1788. Boswell, 'Life of Johnson, ' 1791. 

 THE NOVEL. 'Sir Roger de Coverly, ' 1711-12. Defoe, 1661-1731. 'Robinson Crusoe, ' 1718-20. Richardson, 1689-1761. 'Clarissa Harlowe, ' 1747-8. Fielding, 1707-1754. Smollett. Sterne. Goldsmith, 'Vicar of Wakefield, ' 1766. Historical and 'Gothic' Novels. Miss Burney, 'Evelina, ' 1778. Revolutionary Novels of Purpose. Godwin, 'Caleb Williams. ' Miss Edgeworth. Miss Austen. 

 THE ROMANTIC REVOLT --Poetry. Thomson, 'The Seasons, ' 1726-30. Collins, 'Odes, ' 1747. Gray, 1716-71. Percy's 'Reliques, ' 1765. Goldsmith, 'The Deserted Village, ' 1770. Cowper. Chatterton. Macpherson, Ossianic imitations. Burns, 1759-96. Blake. 

 THE DRAMA. Pseudo-Classical Tragedy, Addison's 'Cato, ' 1713. Sentimental Comedy. Domestic Tragedy. Revival of genuine Comedy of Manners. Goldsmith, 'She Stoops to Conquer, ' 1773. Sheridan. 

VIII. The Romantic Triumph, 1798 to about 1830. Coleridge, 1772-1834. Wordsworth, 1770-1850. Southey, 1774-1843. Scott, 1771-1832. Byron, 1788-1824. Shelley, 1792-1822. Keats, 1759-1821. 

IX. The Victorian Period, about 1830-1901. Victoria Queen, 1837-1901. 

 ESSAYISTS. POETS. NOVELISTS. 

 Macaulay, 1800-1859. Mrs. Browning, 1806- Charlotte Bronté, Carlyle, 1795-1881. 1861. 1816-1855. Ruskin, 1819-1900. Tennyson, 1809-1892. Dickens, 1812-1870. Browning, 1812-1889. Thackeray, 1811-1863. Matthew Arnold, Kingsley, 1819-1875. Poems, 1848-58. George Eliot, 1819- Rossetti, 1828-82. 1880. Matthew Arnold, Morris, 1834-96. Reade, 1814-1884. Essays, 1861-82. Swinburne, 1837-1909. Trollope, 1815-1882. Blackmore, 'Lorna Doone, ' 1869. Shorthouse, ' John Inglesant, ' 1881. Meredith, 1828-1910. Thomas Hardy, 1840- Stevenson, 1850-1894. Kipling, 1865- Kipling, 1865-

REFERENCE BOOKS

It is not a part of the plan of this book to present any extendedbibliography, but there are certain reference books to which the student'sattention should be called. 'Chambers' Cyclopedia of English Literature, 'edition of 1910, published in the United States by the J. B. Lippincott Co. In three large volumes at $15. 00 (generally sold at about half that price)is in most parts very satisfactory. Garnett and Gosse's 'IllustratedHistory of English Literature, four volumes, published by the Macmillan Co. At $20. 00 and in somewhat simpler form by Grosset and Dunlap at $12. 00(sold for less) is especially valuable for its illustrations. Jusserand's'Literary History of the English People' (to 1642, G. P. Putnam's Sons, three volumes, $3. 50 a volume) should be mentioned. Courthope's 'History ofEnglish Poetry' (Macmillan, six volumes, $3. 25 a volume), is full and afterthe first volume good. 'The Cambridge History of English Literature, ' nownearing completion in fourteen volumes (G. P. Putnam's Sons, $2. 50 avolume) is the largest and in most parts the most scholarly general work inthe field, but is generally too technical except for special students. Theshort biographies of many of the chief English authors in the English Menof Letters Series (Macmillan, 30 and 75 cents a volume) are generallyadmirable. For appreciative criticism of some of the great poets the essaysof Lowell and of Matthew Arnold are among the best. Frederick Byland's'Chronological Outlines of English Literature' (Macmillan, $1. 00) is veryuseful for reference though now much in need of revision. It is much to bedesired that students should have at hand for consultation some good shorthistory of England, such as that of S. E. Gardiner (Longmans, Green, andCo. ) or that of J. R. Green. 

CHAPTER I

PERIOD I. THE BRITONS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. TO A. D. 1066. 

FOREWORD. The two earliest of the nine main divisions of English Literatureare by far the longest--taken together are longer than all the otherscombined--but we shall pass rather rapidly over them. This is partlybecause the amount of thoroughly great literature which they produced issmall, and partly because for present-day readers it is in effect a foreignliterature, written in early forms of English or in foreign languages, sothat to-day it is intelligible only through special study or intranslation. 

THE BRITONS. The present English race has gradually shaped itself out ofseveral distinct peoples which successively occupied or conquered theisland of Great Britain. The earliest one of these peoples which need herebe mentioned belonged to the Celtic family and was itself divided into twobranches. The Goidels or Gaels were settled in the northern part of theisland, which is now Scotland, and were the ancestors of the presentHighland Scots. On English literature they exerted little or no influenceuntil a late period. The Britons, from whom the present Welsh aredescended, inhabited what is now England and Wales; and they were stillfurther subdivided, like most barbarous peoples, into many tribes whichwere often at war with one another. Though the Britons were conquered andchiefly supplanted later on by the Anglo-Saxons, enough of them, as weshall see, were spared and intermarried with the victors to transmitsomething of their racial qualities to the English nation and literature. 

The characteristics of the Britons, which are those of the Celtic family asa whole, appear in their history and in the scanty late remains of theirliterature. Two main traits include or suggest all the others: first, avigorous but fitful emotionalism which rendered them vivacious, lovers ofnovelty, and brave, but ineffective in practical affairs; second, asomewhat fantastic but sincere and delicate sensitiveness to beauty. Intoimpetuous action they were easily hurried; but their momentary ardor easilycooled into fatalistic despondency. To the mysterious charm of Nature--ofhills and forests and pleasant breezes; to the loveliness and grace ofmeadow-flowers or of a young man or a girl; to the varied sheen of richcolors--to all attractive objects of sight and sound and motion their fancyresponded keenly and joyfully; but they preferred chiefly to weave thesethings into stories and verse of supernatural romance or vaguesuggestiveness; for substantial work of solider structure either in life orin literature they possessed comparatively little faculty. Here is adescription (exceptionally beautiful, to be sure) from the story 'Kilhwchand Olwen':

'The maid was clothed in a robe of flame-colored silk, and about her neckwas a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and rubies. More yellow was her head than the flowers of the broom, and her skin waswhiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingersthan the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadowfountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of the three-mewedfalcon, was not brighter than hers. Her bosom was more snowy than thebreast of the white swan, her cheeks were redder than the reddest roses. Who beheld her was filled with her love. Pour white trefoils sprang upwherever she trod. And therefore was she called Olwen. '

This charming fancifulness and delicacy of feeling is apparently the greatcontribution of the Britons to English literature; from it may perhaps bedescended the fairy scenes of Shakspere and possibly to some extent thelyrical music of Tennyson. 

THE ROMAN OCCUPATION. Of the Roman conquest and occupation of Britain(England and Wales) we need only make brief mention, since it producedvirtually no effect on English literature. The fact should not be forgottenthat for over three hundred years, from the first century A. D. To thebeginning of the fifth, the island was a Roman province, with Latin as thelanguage of the ruling class of Roman immigrants, who introduced Romancivilization and later on Christianity, to the Britons of the towns andplains. But the interest of the Romans in the island was centered on otherthings than writing, and the great bulk of the Britons themselves seem tohave been only superficially affected by the Roman supremacy. At the end ofthe Roman rule, as at its beginning, they appear divided into mutuallyjealous tribes, still largely barbarous and primitive. 

The Anglo-Saxons. Meanwhile across the North Sea the three Germanic tribeswhich were destined to form the main element in the English race weremultiplying and unconsciously preparing to swarm to their new home. TheAngles, Saxons, and Jutes occupied territories in the region which includesparts of the present Holland, of Germany about the mouth of the Elbe, andof Denmark. They were barbarians, living partly from piratical expeditionsagainst the northern and eastern coasts of Europe, partly from their flocksand herds, and partly from a rude sort of agriculture. At home they seem tohave sheltered themselves chiefly in unsubstantial wooden villages, easilydestroyed and easily abandoned; For the able-bodied freemen among them thechief occupation, as a matter of course, was war. Strength, courage, andloyalty to king and comrades were the chief virtues that they admired;ferocity and cruelty, especially to other peoples, were necessarily amongtheir prominent traits when their blood was up; though among themselvesthere was no doubt plenty of rough and ready companionable good-humor. Their bleak country, where the foggy and unhealthy marshes of the coastgave way further inland to vast and somber forests, developed in themduring their long inactive winters a sluggish and gloomy mood, in which, however, the alternating spirit of aggressive enterprise was neverquenched. In religion they had reached a moderately advanced state ofheathenism, worshipping especially, it seems, Woden, a 'furious' god aswell as a wise and crafty one; the warrior Tiu; and the strong-armed Thunor(the Scandinavian Thor); but together with these some milder deities likethe goddess of spring, Éostre, from whom our Easter is named. For thepeople on whom they fell these barbarians were a pitiless and terriblescourge; yet they possessed in undeveloped form the intelligence, theenergy, the strength--most of the qualities of head and heart andbody--which were to make of them one of the great world-races. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT. The process by which Britainbecame England was a part of the long agony which transformed the RomanEmpire into modern Europe. In the fourth century A. D. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes began to harry the southern and eastern shores of Britain, wherethe Romans were obliged to maintain a special military establishmentagainst them. But early in the fifth century the Romans, hard-pressed evenin Italy by other barbarian invaders, withdrew all their troops andcompletely abandoned Britain. Not long thereafter, and probably before thetraditional date of 449, the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons began to come inlarge bands with the deliberate purpose of permanent settlement. Theirconquest, very different in its methods and results from that of theRomans, may roughly be said to have occupied a hundred and fifty or twohundred years. The earlier invading hordes fixed themselves at variouspoints on the eastern and southern shore and gradually fought their wayinland, and they were constantly augmented by new arrivals. In general theAngles settled in the east and north and the Saxons in the south, while theless numerous Jutes, the first to come, in Kent, soon ceased to count inthe movement. In this way there naturally came into existence a group ofseparate and rival kingdoms, which when they were not busy with the Britonswere often at war with each other. Their number varied somewhat from timeto time as they were united or divided; but on the whole, seven figuredmost prominently, whence comes the traditional name 'The Saxon Heptarchy'(Seven Kingdoms). The resistance of the Britons to the Anglo-Saxon advancewas often brave and sometimes temporarily successful. Early in the sixthcentury, for example, they won at Mount Badon in the south a great victory, later connected in tradition with the legendary name of King Arthur, whichfor many years gave them security from further aggressions. But in the longrun their racial defects proved fatal; they were unable to combine inpermanent and steady union, and tribe by tribe the newcomers drove themslowly back; until early in the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons were inpossession of nearly all of what is now England, the exceptions being theregions all along the west coast, including what has ever since been, knownas Wales. 

Of the Roman and British civilization the Anglo-Saxons were ruthlessdestroyers, exulting, like other barbarians, in the wanton annihilation ofthings which they did not understand. Every city, or nearly every one, which they took, they burned, slaughtering the inhabitants. They themselvesoccupied the land chiefly as masters of scattered farms, each warriorestablished in a large rude house surrounded by its various outbuildingsand the huts of the British slaves and the Saxon and British bondmen. Justhow largely the Britons were exterminated and how largely they were keptalive as slaves and wives, is uncertain; but it is evident that at least aconsiderable number were spared; to this the British names of many of ourobjects of humble use, for example _mattoc_ and _basket_, testify. 

In the natural course of events, however, no sooner had the Anglo-Saxonsdestroyed the (imperfect and partial) civilization of their predecessorsthan they began to rebuild one for themselves; possessors of a fertileland, they settled down to develop it, and from tribes of lawless fighterswere before long transformed into a race of farmer-citizens. Graduallytrade with the Continent, also, was reestablished and grew; but perhaps themost important humanizing influence was the reintroduction of Christianity. The story is famous of how Pope Gregory the Great, struck by the beauty ofcertain Angle slave-boys at Rome, declared that they ought to be called not_Angli_ but _Angeli_ (angels) and forthwith, in 597, sent toBritain St. Augustine (not the famous African saint of that name), wholanded in Kent and converted that kingdom. Within the next two generations, and after much fierce fighting between the adherents of the two religions, all the other kingdoms as well had been christianized. It was only thesouthern half of the island, however, that was won by the Romanmissionaries; in the north the work was done independently by preachersfrom Ireland, where, in spite of much anarchy, a certain degree ofcivilization had been preserved. These two types of Christianity, those ofIreland and of Rome, were largely different in spirit. The Irishmissionaries were simple and loving men and won converts by the beauty oftheir lives; the Romans brought with them the architecture, music, andlearning of their imperial city and the aggressive energy which in thefollowing centuries was to make their Church supreme throughout the Westernworld. When the inevitable clash for supremacy came, the king of thethen-dominant Anglian kingdom, Northumbria, made choice of the Roman asagainst the Irish Church, a choice which proved decisive for the entireisland. And though our personal sympathies may well go to thefiner-spirited Irish, this outcome was on the whole fortunate; for onlythrough religious union with Rome during the slow centuries of medievalrebirth could England be bound to the rest of Europe as one of the familyof coöperating Christian states; and outside that family she would havebeen isolated and spiritually starved. 

One of the greatest gifts of Christianity, it should be observed, and oneof the most important influences in medieval civilization, was the networkof monasteries which were now gradually established and became centers ofactive hospitality and the chief homes of such learning as was possible tothe time. 

ANGLO-SAXON POETRY. THE EARLY PAGAN POETRY AND 'BÉOWULF. ' The Anglo-Saxonsdoubtless brought with them from the Continent the rude beginnings ofpoetry, such as come first in the literature of every people and consistlargely of brief magical charms and of rough 'popular ballads' (ballads ofthe people). The charms explain themselves as an inevitable product ofprimitive superstition; the ballads probably first sprang up and developed, among all races, in much the following way. At the very beginning of humansociety, long before the commencement of history, the primitive groups ofsavages who then constituted mankind were instinctively led to expresstheir emotions together, communally, in rhythmical fashion. Perhaps afteran achievement in hunting or war the village-group would mechanically fallinto a dance, sometimes, it might be, about their village fire. Suddenlyfrom among the inarticulate cries of the crowd some one excited individualwould shout out a fairly distinct rhythmical expression. This expression, which may be called a line, was taken up and repeated by the crowd; othersmight be added to it, and thus gradually, in the course of generations, arose the regular habit of communal composition, composition of somethinglike complete ballads by the throng as a whole. This procedure ceased to beimportant everywhere long before the literary period, but it led to thefrequent composition by humble versifiers of more deliberate poems whichwere still 'popular' because they circulated by word of mouth, only, fromgeneration to generation, among the common people, and formed one of thebest expressions of their feeling. At an early period also professionalminstrels, called by the Anglo-Saxons scops or gleemen, disengagedthemselves from the crowd and began to gain their living by wandering fromvillage to village or tribe to tribe chanting to the harp either thepopular ballads or more formal poetry of their own composition. Among allraces when a certain stage of social development is reached at least onesuch minstrel is to be found as a regular retainer at the court of everybarbarous chief or king, ready to entertain the warriors at their feasts, with chants of heroes and battles and of the exploits of their presentlord. All the earliest products of these processes of 'popular' andminstrel composition are everywhere lost long before recorded literaturebegins, but the processes themselves in their less formal stages continueamong uneducated people (whose mental life always remains more or lessprimitive) even down to the present time. 

Out of the popular ballads, or, chiefly, of the minstrel poetry which ispartly based on them, regularly develops epic poetry. Perhaps a minstrelfinds a number of ballads which deal with the exploits of a single hero orwith a single event. He combines them as best he can into a unified storyand recites this on important and stately occasions. As his work passesinto general circulation other minstrels add other ballads, until at last, very likely after many generations, a complete epic is formed, outwardlycontinuous and whole, but generally more or less clearly separable onanalysis into its original parts. Or, on the other hand, the combinationmay be mostly performed all at once at a comparatively late period by asingle great poet, who with conscious art weaves together a great mass ofseparate materials into the nearly finished epic. 

Not much Anglo-Saxon poetry of the pagan period has come down to us. By farthe most important remaining example is the epic 'Béowulf, ' of about threethousand lines. This poem seems to have originated on the Continent, butwhen and where are not now to be known. It may have been carried to Englandin the form of ballads by the Anglo-Saxons; or it may be Scandinavianmaterial, later brought in by Danish or Norwegian pirates. At any rate itseems to have taken on its present form in England during the seventh andeighth centuries. It relates, with the usual terse and unadorned power ofreally primitive poetry, how the hero Beowulf, coming over the sea to therelief of King Hrothgar, delivers him from a monster, Grendel, and thenfrom the vengeance of Grendel's only less formidable mother. Returned homein triumph, Beowulf much later receives the due reward of his valor bybeing made king of his own tribe, and meets his death while killing afire-breathing dragon which has become a scourge to his people. As heappears in the poem, Béowulf is an idealized Anglo-Saxon hero, but inorigin he may have been any one of several other different things. Perhapshe was the old Germanic god Béowa, and his exploits originally allegories, like some of those in the Greek mythology, of his services to man; he may, for instance, first have been the sun, driving away the mists and cold ofwinter and of the swamps, hostile forces personified in Grendel and hismother. Or, Béowulf may really have been a great human fighter who actuallykilled some especially formidable wild beasts, and whose superhumanstrength in the poem results, through the similarity of names, from hisbeing confused with Béowa. This is the more likely because there is in thepoem a slight trace of authentic history. (See below, under the assignmentsfor study. )

'Béowulf' presents an interesting though very incomplete picture of thelife of the upper, warrior, caste among the northern Germanic tribes duringtheir later period of barbarism on the Continent and in England, a lifemore highly developed than that of the Anglo-Saxons before their conquestof the island. About King Hrothgar are grouped his immediate retainers, thewarriors, with whom he shares his wealth; it is a part of the character, ofa good king to be generous in the distribution of gifts of gold andweapons. Somewhere in the background there must be a village, where thebondmen and slaves provide the daily necessaries of life and where some ofthe warriors may have houses and families; but all this is beneath thenotice of the courtly poet. The center of the warriors' life is the greathall of the king, built chiefly of timber. Inside, there are benches andtables for feasting, and the walls are perhaps adorned with tapestries. Near the center is the hearth, whence the smoke must escape, if it escapesat all, through a hole in the roof. In the hall the warriors banquet, sometimes in the company of their wives, but the women retire before thelater revelry which often leaves the men drunk on the floor. Sometimes, itseems, there are sleeping-rooms or niches about the sides of the hall, butin 'Béowulf' Hrothgar and his followers retire to other quarters. War, feasting, and hunting are the only occupations in which the warriors careto be thought to take an interest. 

The spirit of the poem is somber and grim. There is no unqualifiedhappiness of mood, and only brief hints of delight in the beauty and joy ofthe world. Rather, there is stern satisfaction in the performance of thewarrior's and the sea-king's task, the determination of a strong-willedrace to assert itself, and do, with much barbarian boasting, what its handfinds to do in the midst of a difficult life and a hostile nature. For theultimate force in the universe of these fighters and their poets (in spiteof certain Christian touches inserted by later poetic editors before thepoem crystallized into its present form) is Wyrd, the Fate of the Germanicpeoples, cold as their own winters and the bleak northern sea, irresistible, despotic, and unmoved by sympathy for man. Great as thedifferences are, very much of this Anglo-Saxon pagan spirit persistscenturies later in the English Puritans. 

For the finer artistic graces, also, and the structural subtilties of amore developed literary period, we must not, of course, look in 'Béowulf. 'The narrative is often more dramatic than clear, and there is no thought ofany minuteness of characterization. A few typical characters stand outclearly, and they were all that the poet's turbulent and not very attentiveaudience could understand. But the barbaric vividness and power of the poemgive it much more than a merely historical interest; and the careful readercannot fail to realize that it is after all the product of a long period ofpoetic development. 

THE ANGLO-SAXON VERSE-FORM. The poetic form of 'Béowulf' is that ofvirtually all Anglo-Saxon poetry down to the tenth century, or indeed tothe end, a form which is roughly represented in the present book in apassage of imitative translation two pages below. The verse is unrimed, notarranged in stanzas, and with lines more commonly end-stopped (withdistinct pauses at the ends) than is true in good modern poetry. Each lineis divided into halves and each half contains two stressed syllables, generally long in quantity. The number of unstressed syllables appears to amodern eye or ear irregular and actually is very unequal, but they arereally combined with the stressed ones into 'feet' in accordance withcertain definite principles. At least one of the stressed syllables in eachhalf-line must be in alliteration with one in the other half-line; and mostoften the alliteration includes both stressed syllables in the firsthalfline and the first stressed syllable in the second, occasionally allfour stressed syllables. (All vowels are held to alliterate with eachother. ) It will be seen therefore that (1) emphatic stress and (2)alliteration are the basal principles of the system. To a present-dayreader the verse sounds crude, the more so because of the harshlyconsonantal character of the Anglo-Saxon language; and in comparison withmodern poetry it is undoubtedly unmelodious. But it was worked out onconscious artistic principles, carefully followed; and when chanted, as itwas meant to be, to the harp it possessed much power and even beauty of avigorous sort, to which the pictorial and metaphorical wealth of theAnglo-Saxon poetic vocabulary largely contributed. 

This last-named quality, the use of metaphors, is perhaps the mostconspicuous one in the _style_, of the Anglo-Saxon poetry. Thelanguage, compared to that of our own vastly more complex time, wasundeveloped; but for use in poetry, especially, there were a great numberof periphrastic but vividly picturesque metaphorical synonyms (technicallycalled _kennings_). Thus the spear becomes 'the slaughter-shaft';fighting 'hand-play'; the sword 'the leavings of the hammer' (or 'of theanvil'); and a ship 'the foamy-necked floater. ' These kennings add muchimaginative suggestiveness to the otherwise over-terse style, and oftencontribute to the grim irony which is another outstanding trait. 

ANGLO-SAXON POETRY. THE NORTHUMBRIAN PERIOD. The Anglo-Saxons were for along time fully occupied with the work of conquest and settlement, andtheir first literature of any importance, aside from 'Beowulf, ' appears atabout the time when 'Beowulf' was being put into its present form, namelyin the seventh century. This was in the Northern, Anglian, kingdom ofNorthumbria (Yorkshire and Southern Scotland), which, as we have alreadysaid, had then won the political supremacy, and whose monasteries andcapital city, York, thanks to the Irish missionaries, had become the chiefcenters of learning and culture in Western Christian Europe. Still pagan inspirit are certain obscure but, ingenious and skillfully developed riddlesin verse, representatives of one form of popular literature only less earlythan the ballads and charms. There remain also a few pagan lyric poems, which are all not only somber like 'Beowulf' but distinctly elegiac, thatis pensively melancholy. They deal with the hard and tragic things in life, the terrible power of ocean and storm, or the inexorableness and drearinessof death, banishment, and the separation of friends. In their frequenttender notes of pathos there may be some influence from the Celtic spirit. The greater part of the literature of the period, however, was Christian, produced in the monasteries or under their influence. The first Christianwriter was Caedmon (pronounced Kadmon), who toward the end of the seventhcentury paraphrased in Anglo-Saxon verse some portions of the Bible. Thelegend of his divine call is famous. [Footnote: It may be found in Garnettand Gosse, I, 19-20. ] The following is a modern rendering of the hymn whichis said to have been his first work:

 Now must we worship the heaven-realm's Warder, The Maker's might and his mind's thought, The glory-father's work as he every wonder, Lord everlasting, of old established. He first fashioned the firmament for mortals, Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator. Then the midearth mankind's Warder, Lord everlasting, afterwards wrought, For men a garden, God almighty. 

After Caedmon comes Bede, not a poet but a monk of strong and beautifulcharacter, a profound scholar who in nearly forty Latin prose workssummarized most of the knowledge of his time. The other name to beremembered is that of Cynewulf (pronounced Kinnywulf), the author of somenoble religious poetry (in Anglo-Saxon), especially narratives dealing withChrist and Christian Apostles and heroes. There is still other Anglo-SaxonChristian poetry, generally akin in subjects to Cynewulf's, but in most ofthe poetry of the whole period the excellence results chiefly from thesurvival of the old pagan spirit which distinguishes 'Beowulf'. Where thepoet writes for edification he is likely to be dull, but when his storyprovides him with sea-voyages, with battles, chances for dramatic dialogue, or any incidents of vigorous action or of passion, the zest for adventureand war rekindles, and we have descriptions and narratives of picturesquecolor and stern force. Sometimes there is real religious yearning, andindeed the heroes of these poems are partly medieval hermits and asceticsas well as quick-striking fighters; but for the most part the ChristianProvidence is really only the heathen Wyrd under another name, and God andChrist are viewed in much the same way as the Anglo-Saxon kings, theobjects of feudal allegiance which is sincere but rather self-assertive andworldly than humble or consecrated. 

On the whole, then, Anglo-Saxon poetry exhibits the limitations of aculturally early age, but it manifests also a degree of power which givesto Anglo-Saxon literature unquestionable superiority over that of any otherEuropean country of the same period. 

THE WEST-SAXON, PROSE, PERIOD. The horrors which the Anglo-Saxons hadinflicted on the Britons they themselves were now to suffer from theirstill heathen and piratical kinsmen the 'Danes' or Northmen, inhabitants orthe Scandinavian peninsula and the neighboring coasts. For a hundred years, throughout the ninth century, the Danes, appearing with unweariedpersistence, repeatedly ravaged and plundered England, and they finallymade complete conquest of Northumbria, destroyed all the churches andmonasteries, and almost completely extinguished learning. It is a familiarstory how Alfred, king from 871 to 901 of the southern kingdom of Wessex(the land of the West Saxons), which had now taken first place among theAnglo-Saxon states, stemmed the tide of invasion and by ceding to the'Danes' the whole northeastern half of the island obtained for theremainder the peace which was the first essential for the reestablishmentof civilization. Peace secured, Alfred, who was one of the greatest of allEnglish kings, labored unremittingly for learning, as for everything elsethat was useful, and he himself translated from Latin into Anglo-Saxon halfa dozen of the best informational manuals of his time, manuals of history, philosophy, and religion. His most enduring literary work, however, was theinspiration and possibly partial authorship of the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'a series of annals beginning with the Christian era, kept at variousmonasteries, and recording year by year (down to two centuries and a halfafter Alfred's own death), the most important events of history, chieflythat of England. Most of the entries in the 'Chronicle' are bare and brief, but sometimes, especially in the accounts of Alfred's own splendidexploits, a writer is roused to spirited narrative, occasionally in verse;and in the tenth century two great battles against invading Northmen, atBrunanburh and Maldon, produced the only important extant pieces ofAnglo-Saxon poetry which certainly belong to the West Saxon period. 

For literature, indeed, the West-Saxon period has very little permanentsignificance. Plenty of its other writing remains in the shape of religiousprose--sermons, lives and legends of saints, biblical paraphrases, andsimilar work in which the monastic and priestly spirit took delight, butwhich is generally dull with the dulness of medieval commonplacedidacticism and fantastic symbolism. The country, too, was still distractedwith wars. Within fifty years after Alfred's death, to be sure, hisdescendants had won back the whole of England from 'Danish' rule (thoughthe 'Danes, ' then constituting half the population of the north and east, have remained to the present day a large element in the English race). Butnear the end of the tenth century new swarms of 'Danes' reappeared from theBaltic lands, once more slaughtering and devastating, until at last in theeleventh century the 'Danish' though Christian Canute ruled for twentyyears over all England. In such a time there could be little intellectualor literary life. But the decline of the Anglo-Saxon literature speaks alsopartly of stagnation in the race itself. The people, though still sturdy, seem to have become somewhat dull from inbreeding and to have required aninfusion of altogether different blood from without. This necessaryrenovation was to be violently forced upon them, for in 1066 Duke Williamof Normandy landed at Pevensey with his army of adventurers and hisill-founded claim to the crown, and before him at Hastings fell the gallantHarold and his nobles. By the fortune of this single fight, followed onlyby stern suppression of spasmodic outbreaks, William established himselfand his vassals as masters of the land. England ceased to be Anglo-Saxonand became, altogether politically, and partly in race, Norman-French, achange more radical and far-reaching than any which it has since undergone. [Footnote: Vivid though inaccurate pictures of life and events at the timeof the Norman Conquest are given in Bulwer-Lytton's 'Harold' and CharlesKingsley's 'Hereward the Wake. ' Tennyson's tragedy 'Harold' is much betterthan either, though more limited in scope. ]

CHAPTER II

PERIOD II. THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD. A. D. 1066 TO ABOUT 1350 [Footnote:Scott's 'Ivanhoe, ' the best-known work of fiction dealing with any part ofthis period, is interesting, but as a picture of life at the end of thetwelfth century is very misleading. The date assigned to his 'Betrothed, 'one of his less important, novels, is about the same. ]

THE NORMANS. The Normans who conquered England were originally members ofthe same stock as the 'Danes' who had harried and conquered it in thepreceding centuries--the ancestors of both were bands of Baltic and NorthSea pirates who merely happened to emigrate in different directions; and alittle farther back the Normans were close cousins, in the general Germanicfamily, of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The exploits of this whole race ofNorse sea-kings make one of the most remarkable chapters in the history ofmedieval Europe. In the ninth and tenth centuries they mercilessly ravagedall the coasts not only of the West but of all Europe from the Rhine to theAdriatic. 'From the fury of the Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us!' was aregular part of the litany of the unhappy French. They settled Iceland andGreenland and prematurely discovered America; they established themselvesas the ruling aristocracy in Russia, and as the imperial body-guard andchief bulwark of the Byzantine empire at Constantinople; and in theeleventh century they conquered southern Italy and Sicily, whence in thefirst crusade they pressed on with unabated vigor to Asia Minor. Thosebands of them with whom we are here concerned, and who became knowndistinctively as Normans, fastened themselves as settlers, early in theeleventh century, on the northern shore of France, and in return for theiracceptance of Christianity and acknowledgment of the nominal feudalsovereignty of the French king were recognized as rightful possessors ofthe large province which thus came to bear the name of Normandy. Here byintermarriage with the native women they rapidly developed into a racewhich while retaining all their original courage and enterprise took onalso, together with the French language, the French intellectual brilliancyand flexibility and in manners became the chief exponent of medievalchivalry. 

The different elements contributed to the modern English character by thelatest stocks which have been united in it have been indicated by MatthewArnold in a famous passage ('On the Study of Celtic Literature'): 'TheGermanic [Anglo-Saxon and 'Danish'] genius has steadiness as its mainbasis, with commonness and humdrum for its defect, fidelity to nature forits excellence. The Norman genius, talent for affairs as its main basis, with strenuousness and clear rapidity for its excellence, hardness andinsolence for its defect. ' The Germanic (Anglo-Saxon and 'Danish') elementexplains, then, why uneducated Englishmen of all times have beenthick-headed, unpleasantly self-assertive, and unimaginative, but sturdyfighters; and the Norman strain why upper-class Englishmen have beenself-contained, inclined to snobbishness, but vigorously aggressive andpersevering, among the best conquerors, organizers, and administrators inthe history of the world. 

SOCIAL RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST. In most respects, or all, the Normanconquest accomplished precisely that racial rejuvenation of which, as wehave seen, Anglo-Saxon England stood in need. For the Normans brought withthem from France the zest for joy and beauty and dignified and statelyceremony in which the Anglo-Saxon temperament was poor--they brought thelove of light-hearted song and chivalrous sports, of rich clothing, offinely-painted manuscripts, of noble architecture in cathedrals andpalaces, of formal religious ritual, and of the pomp and display of allelaborate pageantry. In the outcome they largely reshaped the heavy mass ofAnglo-Saxon life into forms of grace and beauty and brightened its dullersurface with varied and brilliant colors. For the Anglo-Saxons themselves, however, the Conquest meant at first little else than that bitterest andmost complete of all national disasters, hopeless subjection to atyrannical and contemptuous foe. The Normans were not heathen, as the'Danes' had been, and they were too few in number to wish to supplant theconquered people; but they imposed themselves, both politically andsocially, as stern and absolute masters. King William confirmed in theirpossessions the few Saxon nobles and lesser land-owners who accepted hisrule and did not later revolt; but both pledges and interest compelled himto bestow most of the estates of the kingdom, together with the widows oftheir former holders, on his own nobles and the great motley throng ofturbulent fighters who had made up his invading army. In the lordships andmanors, therefore, and likewise in the great places of the Church, wereestablished knights and nobles, the secular ones holding in feudal tenurefrom the king or his immediate great vassals, and each supported in turn byNorman men-at-arms; and to them were subjected as serfs, workers bound tothe land, the greater part of the Saxon population. As visible signs of thechanged order appeared here and there throughout the country massive andgloomy castles of stone, and in the larger cities, in place of the simpleAnglo-Saxon churches, cathedrals lofty and magnificent beyond allAnglo-Saxon dreams. What sufferings, at the worst, the Normans inflicted onthe Saxons is indicated in a famous passage of the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'an entry seventy years subsequent to the Conquest, of which the leastdistressing part may be thus paraphrased:

'They filled the land full of castles. [Footnote: This was only during aperiod of anarchy. For the most part the nobles lived in manor-houses, veryrude according to our ideas. See Train's 'Social England, ' I, 536 ff. ] Theycompelled the wretched men of the land to build their castles and wore themout with hard labor. When the castles were made they filled them withdevils and evil men. Then they took all those whom they thought to have anyproperty, both by night and by day, both men and women, and put them inprison for gold and silver, and tormented them with tortures that cannot betold; for never were any martyrs so tormented as these were. '

THE UNION OF THE RACES AND LANGUAGES. LATIN, FRENCH, AND ENGLISH. Thattheir own race and identity were destined to be absorbed in those of theAnglo-Saxons could never have occurred to any of the Normans who stood withWilliam at Hastings, and scarcely to any of their children. Yet this resultwas predetermined by the stubborn tenacity and numerical superiority of theconquered people and by the easy adaptability of the Norman temperament. Racially, and to a less extent socially, intermarriage did its work, andthat within a very few generations. Little by little, also, Norman contemptand Saxon hatred were softened into tolerance, and at last even into asentiment of national unity. This sentiment was finally to be confirmed bythe loss of Normandy and other French possessions of the Norman-Englishkings in the thirteenth century, a loss which transformed England from aprovince of the Norman Continental empire and of a foreign nobility into anindependent country, and further by the wars ('The Hundred Years' War')which England-Norman nobility and Saxon yeomen fighting together--carriedon in France in the fourteenth century. 

In language and literature the most general immediate result of theConquest was to make of England a trilingual country, where Latin, French, and Anglo-Saxon were spoken separately side by side. With Latin, the tongueof the Church and of scholars, the Norman clergy were much more thoroughlyfamiliar than the Saxon priests had been; and the introduction of thericher Latin culture resulted, in the latter half of the twelfth century, at the court of Henry II, in a brilliant outburst of Latin literature. InEngland, as well as in the rest of Western Europe, Latin long continued tobe the language of religious and learned writing--down to the sixteenthcentury or even later. French, that dialect of it which was spoken by theNormans--Anglo-French (English-French) it has naturally come to becalled--was of course introduced by the Conquest as the language of thegoverning and upper social class, and in it also during the next three orfour centuries a considerable body of literature was produced. Anglo-Saxon, which we may now term English, remained inevitably as the language of thesubject race, but their literature was at first crushed down intoinsignificance. Ballads celebrating the resistance of scattered Saxons totheir oppressors no doubt circulated widely on the lips of the people, butEnglish writing of the more formal sorts, almost absolutely ceased for morethan a century, to make a new beginning about the year 1200. In theinterval the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' is the only important document, andeven this, continued at the monastery of Peterboro, comes to an end in1154, in the midst of the terrible anarchy of Stephen's reign. 

It must not be supposed, notwithstanding, that the Normans, however muchthey despised the English language and literature, made any effort todestroy it. On the other hand, gradual union of the two languages was noless inevitable than that of the races themselves. From, the very first theneed of communication, with their subjects must have rendered it necessaryfor the Normans to acquire some knowledge of the English language; and thechildren of mixed parentage of course learned it from their mothers. Theuse of French continued in the upper strata of society, in the fewchildren's schools that existed, and in the law courts, for something likethree centuries, maintaining itself so long partly because French was thenthe polite language of Western Europe. But the dead pressure of English wasincreasingly strong, and by the end of the fourteenth century and ofChaucer's life French had chiefly given way to it even at Court. [Footnote:For details see O. F. Emerson's 'History of the English Language, ' chapter4; and T. B. Lounsbury's 'History of the English Language. '] As we havealready implied, however, the English which triumphed was in factEnglish-French--English was enabled to triumph partly because it had nowlargely absorbed the French. For the first one hundred or one hundred andfifty years, it seems, the two languages remained for the most part prettyclearly distinct, but in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries English, abandoning its first aloofness, rapidly took into itself a large part ofthe French (originally Latin) vocabulary; and under the influence of theFrench it carried much farther the process of dropping its owncomparatively complicated grammatical inflections--a process which hadalready gained much momentum even before the Conquest. This absorption ofthe French was most fortunate for English. To the Anglo-Saxonvocabulary--vigorous, but harsh, limited in extent, and lacking in finediscriminations and power of abstract expression, was now added nearly thewhole wealth of French, with its fullness, flexibility, and grace. As adirect consequence the resulting language, modern English, is the richestand most varied instrument of expression ever developed at any time by anyrace. 

THE RESULT FOR POETRY. For poetry the fusion meant even more than forprose. The metrical system, which begins to appear in the thirteenthcentury and comes to perfection a century and a half later in Chaucer'spoems combined what may fairly be called the better features of both thesystems from which it was compounded. We have seen that Anglo-Saxon versedepended on regular stress of a definite number of quantitatively longsyllables in each line and on alliteration; that it allowed much variationin the number of unstressed syllables; and that it was without rime. Frenchverse, on the other hand, had rime (or assonance) and carefully preservedidentity in the total number of syllables in corresponding lines, but itwas uncertain as regarded the number of clearly stressed ones. The derivedEnglish system adopted from the French (1) rime and (2) identicalline-length, and retained from the Anglo-Saxon (3) regularity of stress. (4) It largely abandoned the Anglo-Saxon regard for quantity and (5) itretained alliteration not as a basic principle but as an (extremely useful)subordinate device. This metrical system, thus shaped, has provided theindispensable formal basis for making English poetry admittedly thegreatest in the modern world. 

THE ENGLISH DIALECTS. The study of the literature of the period is furthercomplicated by the division of English into dialects. The Norman Conquestput a stop to the progress of the West-Saxon dialect toward completesupremacy, restoring the dialects of the other parts of the island to theirformer positions of equal authority. The actual result was the developmentof three groups of dialects, the Southern, Midland (divided into East andWest) and Northern, all differing among themselves in forms and even invocabulary. Literary activity when it recommenced was about equallydistributed among the three, and for three centuries it was doubtful whichof them would finally win the first place. In the outcome success fell tothe East Midland dialect, partly through the influence of London, whichunder the Norman kings replaced Winchester as the capital city and seat ofthe Court and Parliament, and partly through the influence of the twoUniversities, Oxford and Cambridge, which gradually grew up during thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries and attracted students from all parts ofthe country. This victory of the East Midland form was marked by, though itwas not in any large degree due to, the appearance in the fourteenthcentury of the first great modern English poet, Chaucer. To the presentday, however, the three dialects, and subdivisions of them, are easilydistinguishable in colloquial use; the common idiom of such regions asYorkshire and Cornwall is decidedly different from that of London or indeedany other part of the country. 

THE ENGLISH LITERATURE AS A PART OF GENERAL MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN LITERATURE. One of the most striking general facts in the later Middle Ages is theuniformity of life in many of its aspects throughout all Western Europe. [Footnote: Differences are clearly presented in Charles Reade's novel, 'TheCloister and the Hearth, ' though this deals with the period following thatwith which we are here concerned. ] It was only during this period that themodern nations, acquiring national consciousness, began definitely to shapethemselves out of the chaos which had followed the fall of the RomanEmpire. The Roman Church, firmly established in every corner of every land, was the actual inheritor of much of the unifying power of the Romangovernment, and the feudal system everywhere gave to society the samepolitical organization and ideals. In a truer sense, perhaps, than at anylater time, Western Europe was one great brotherhood, thinking much thesame thoughts, speaking in part the same speech, and actuated by the samebeliefs. At least, the literature of the period, largely composed andcopied by the great army of monks, exhibits everywhere a thoroughuniformity in types and ideas. 

We of the twentieth century should not allow ourselves to think vaguely ofthe Middle Ages as a benighted or shadowy period when life and the peoplewho constituted it had scarcely anything in common with ourselves. Inreality the men of the Middle Ages were moved by the same emotions andimpulses as our own, and their lives presented the same incongruous mixtureof nobility and baseness. Yet it is true that the externals of theirexistence were strikingly different from those of more recent times. Insociety the feudal system--lords with their serfs, towns struggling formunicipal independence, kings and nobles doing, peaceably or with violence, very much what they pleased; a constant condition of public or private war;cities walled as a matter of course for protection against bands of robbersor hostile armies; the country still largely covered with forests, wildernesses, and fens; roads infested with brigands and so bad that travelwas scarcely possible except on horseback; in private life, most of themodern comforts unknown, and the houses, even of the wealthy, so filthy anduncomfortable that all classes regularly, almost necessarily, spent most ofthe daylight hours in the open air; in industry no coal, factories, orlarge machinery, but in the towns guilds of workmen each turning out byhand his slow product of single articles; almost no education except forpriests and monks, almost no conceptions of genuine science or history, butinstead the abstract system of scholastic logic and philosophy, highlyingenious but highly fantastic; in religion no outward freedom of thoughtexcept for a few courageous spirits, but the arbitrary dictates of adespotic hierarchy, insisting on an ironbound creed which the remorselessprocess of time was steadily rendering more and more inadequate--thisoffers some slight suggestion of the conditions of life for severalcenturies, ending with the period with which we are now concerned. 

In medieval literature likewise the modern student encounters much whichseems at first sight grotesque. One of the most conspicuous examples is thepervasive use of allegory. The men of the Middle Ages often wrote, as wedo, in direct terms and of simple things, but when they wished to riseabove the commonplace they turned with a frequency which to-day appearsastonishing to the devices of abstract personification and veiled meanings. No doubt this tendency was due in part to an idealizing dissatisfactionwith the crudeness of their actual life (as well as to frequent inabilityto enter into the realm of deeper and finer thought without the aid ofsomewhat mechanical imagery); and no doubt it was greatly furthered also bythe medieval passion for translating into elaborate and fantastic symbolismall the details of the Bible narratives. But from whatever cause, thetendency hardened into a ruling convention; thousands upon thousands ofmedieval manuscripts seem to declare that the world is a mirage of shadowyforms, or that it exists merely to body forth remote and highly surprisingideas. 

Of all these countless allegories none was reiterated with more unweariedpersistence than that of the Seven Deadly Sins (those sins which in thedoctrine of the Church lead to spiritual death because they are wilfullycommitted). These sins are: Covetousness, Unchastity, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Sloth, and, chief of all, Pride, the earliest of all, through whichLucifer was moved to his fatal rebellion against God, whence spring allhuman ills. Each of the seven, however, was interpreted as including somany related offences that among them they embraced nearly the whole rangeof possible wickedness. Personified, the Seven Sins in themselves almostdominate medieval literature, a sort of shadowy evil pantheon. Moral andreligious questions could scarcely be discussed without regard to them; andthey maintain their commanding place even as late as in Spenser's 'FaerieQueene, ' at the very end of the sixteenth century. To the Seven Sins werecommonly opposed, but with much less emphasis, the Seven Cardinal Virtues, Faith, Hope, Charity (Love), Prudence, Temperance, Chastity, and Fortitude. Again, almost as prominent as the Seven Sins was the figure of Fortune withher revolving wheel, a goddess whom the violent vicissitudes and tragediesof life led the men of the Middle Ages, in spite of their Christianity, tobring over from classical literature and virtually to accept as a realdivinity, with almost absolute control in human affairs. In the seventeenthcentury Shakspere's plays are full of allusions to her, but so for thatmatter is the everyday talk of all of us in the twentieth century. 

LITERATURE IN THE THREE LANGUAGES. It is not to the purpose in a study likethe present to give special attention to the literature written in Englandin Latin and French; we can speak only briefly of that composed in English. But in fact when the English had made its new beginning, about the year1200, the same general forms flourished in all three languages, so thatwhat is said in general of the English applies almost as much to the othertwo as well. 

RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. We may virtually divide all the literature of theperiod, roughly, into (1) Religious and (2) Secular. But it must beobserved that religious writings were far more important as literatureduring the Middle Ages than in more recent times, and the separationbetween religious and secular less distinct than at present. The forms ofthe religious literature were largely the same as in the previous period. There were songs, many of them addressed to the Virgin, some not onlybeautiful in their sincere and tender devotion, speaking for the finerspirits in an age of crudeness and violence, but occasionally beautiful aspoetry. There were paraphrases of many parts of the Bible, lives of saints, in both verse and prose, and various other miscellaneous work. Perhapsworthy of special mention among single productions is the 'Cursor Mundi'(Surveyor of the World), an early fourteenth century poem of twenty-fourthousand lines ('Paradise Lost' has less than eleven thousand), relatinguniversal history from the beginning, on the basis of the Biblicalnarrative. Most important of all for their promise of the future, therewere the germs of the modern drama in the form of the Church plays; but tothese we shall give special attention in a later chapter. 

SECULAR LITERATURE. In secular literature the variety was greater than inreligious. We may begin by transcribing one or two of the songs, which, though not as numerous then as in some later periods, show that the greattradition of English secular lyric poetry reaches back from our own time tothat of the Anglo-Saxons without a break. The best known of all is the'Cuckoo Song, ' of the thirteenth century, intended to be sung in harmony byfour voices:

 Sumer is icumen in; Lhudè sing, cuccu! Groweth sed and bloweth med And springth the wdè nu. Sing, cuccu! Awè bleteth after lomb, Lhouth after calvè cu. Bulluc sterteth, buckè verteth; Murie sing, cuccu! Cuccu, cuccu, Wel singès thu, cuccu; Ne swik thu never nu. 

Summer is come in; loud sing, cuckoo! Grows the seed and blooms the mead[meadow] and buds the wood anew. Sing, cuckoo! The ewe bleats for the lamb, lows for the calf the cow. The bullock gambols, the buck leaps; merrilysing, cuckoo! Cuckoo, cuckoo, well singest thou, cuckoo; cease thou nevernow. 

The next is the first stanza of 'Alysoun' ('Fair Alice'):

 Bytuenè Mersh ant Averil, When spray beginnth to springè, The lútel foul hath hire wyl On hyre lud to syngè. Ieh libbe in love-longingè For semlokest of allè thingè; He may me blissè bringè; Icham in hire baundoun. An hendy hap ichabbe ybent; Iehot from hevene it is me sent; From allè wymmen mi love is lent Ant lyht on Alysoun. 

Between March and April, When the sprout begins to spring, The little birdhas her desire In her tongue to sing. I live in love-longing For thefairest of all things; She may bring me bliss; I am at her mercy. A luckylot I have secured; I think from heaven it is sent me; From all women mylove is turned And is lighted on Alysoun. 

There were also political and satirical songs and miscellaneous poems ofvarious sorts, among them certain 'Bestiaries, ' accounts of the supposedhabits of animals, generally drawn originally from classical tradition, andmost of them highly fantastic and allegorized in the interests of moralityand religion. There was an abundance of extremely realistic coarse tales, hardly belonging to literature, in both prose and verse. The popularballads of the fourteenth century we must reserve for later consideration. Most numerous of all the prose works, perhaps, were the Chronicles, whichwere produced generally in the monasteries and chiefly in the twelfth andthirteenth centuries, the greater part in Latin, some in French, and a fewin rude English verse. Many of them were mere annals like the Anglo-SaxonChronicle, but some were the lifelong works of men with genuine historicalvision. Some dealt merely with the history of England, or a part of it, others with that of the entire world as it was known to medieval Europe. The majority will never be withdrawn from the obscurity of the manuscriptson which the patient care of their authors inscribed them; others have beenprinted in full and serve as the main basis for our knowledge of the eventsof the period. 

THE ROMANCES. But the chief form of secular literature during the period, beginning in the middle of the twelfth century, was the romance, especiallythe metrical (verse) romance. The typical romances were the literaryexpression of chivalry. They were composed by the professional minstrels, some of whom, as in Anglo-Saxon times, were richly supported and rewardedby kings and nobles, while others still wandered about the country, alwayswelcome in the manor-houses. There, like Scott's Last Minstrel, theyrecited their sometimes almost endless works from memory, in the greathalls or in the ladies' bowers, to the accompaniment of occasional strainson their harps. For two or three centuries the romances were to the lordsand ladies, and to the wealthier citizens of the towns, much what novelsare to the reading public of our own day. By far the greater part of theromances current in England were written in French, whether by Normans orby French natives of the English provinces in France, and the English oneswhich have been preserved are mostly translations or imitations of Frenchoriginals. The romances are extreme representatives of the whole class ofliterature of all times to which they have given the name. Franklyabandoning in the main the world of reality, they carry into that ofidealized and glamorous fancy the chief interests of the medieval lords andladies, namely, knightly exploits in war, and lovemaking. Love in theromances, also, retains all its courtly affectations, together with thatworship of woman by man which in the twelfth century was exalted into asentimental art by the poets of wealthy and luxurious Provence in SouthernFrance. Side by side, again, with war and love, appears in the romancesmedieval religion, likewise conventionalized and childishly superstitious, but in some inadequate degree a mitigator of cruelty and a restrainer oflawless passion. Artistically, in some respects or all, the greater part ofthe romances are crude and immature. Their usual main or only purpose is tohold attention by successions of marvellous adventures, natural orsupernatural; of structure, therefore, they are often destitute; thecharacters are ordinarily mere types; and motivation is little considered. There were, however, exceptional authors, genuine artists, masters of meterand narrative, possessed by a true feeling for beauty; and in some of theromances the psychological analysis of love, in particular, is subtile andpowerful, the direct precursor of one of the main developments in modernfiction. 

The romances may very roughly be grouped into four great classes. First intime, perhaps, come those which are derived from the earlier French epicsand in which love, if it appears at all, is subordinated to the militaryexploits of Charlemagne and his twelve peers in their wars against theSaracens. Second are the romances which, battered salvage from a greaterpast, retell in strangely altered romantic fashion the great stories ofclassical antiquity, mainly the achievements of Alexander the Great and thetragic fortunes of Troy. Third come the Arthurian romances, and fourththose scattering miscellaneous ones which do not belong to the otherclasses, dealing, most of them, with native English heroes. Of these, two, 'King Horn' and 'Havelok, ' spring direct from the common people and in bothsubstance and expression reflect the hard reality of their lives, while'Guy of Warwick' and 'Bevis of Hampton, ' which are among the best known butmost tedious of all the list, belong, in their original form, to the upperclasses. 

Of all the romances the Arthurian are by far the most important. Theybelong peculiarly to English literature, because they are based ontraditions of British history, but they have assumed a very prominent placein the literature of the whole western world. Rich in varied characters andincidents to which a universal significance could be attached, in their owntime they were the most popular works of their class; and living onvigorously after the others were forgotten, they have continued to form oneof the chief quarries of literary material and one of the chief sources ofinspiration for modern poets and romancers. It seems well worth while, therefore, to outline briefly their literary history. 

The period in which their scene is nominally laid is that of theAnglo-Saxon conquest of Great Britain. Of the actual historical events ofthis period extremely little is known, and even the capital questionwhether such a person as Arthur ever really existed can never receive adefinite answer. The only contemporary writer of the least importance isthe Briton (priest or monk), Gildas, who in a violent Latin pamphlet ofabout the year 550 ('The Destruction and Conquest of Britain') denounceshis countrymen for their sins and urges them to unite against the Saxons;and Gildas gives only the slightest sketch of what had actually happened. He tells how a British king (to whom later tradition assigns the nameVortigern) invited in the Anglo-Saxons as allies against the troublesomenorthern Scots and Picts, and how the Anglo-Saxons, victorious againstthese tribes, soon turned in furious conquest against the Britonsthemselves, until, under a certain Ambrosius Aurelianus, a man 'of Romanrace, ' the Britons successfully defended themselves and at last in thebattle of Mount Badon checked the Saxon advance. 

Next in order after Gildas, but not until about the year 800, appears astrangely jumbled document, last edited by a certain Nennius, and entitled'Historia Britonum' (The History of the Britons), which adds to Gildas'outline traditions, natural and supernatural, which had meanwhile beengrowing up among the Britons (Welsh). It supplies the names of the earliestSaxon leaders, Hengist and Horsa (who also figure in the 'Anglo-SaxonChronicle'), and narrates at length their treacherous dealings withVortigern. Among other stories we find that of Vortigern's tower, whereGildas' Ambrosius appears as a boy of supernatural nature, destined todevelop in the romances into the great magician Merlin. In Nennius' bookoccurs also the earliest mention of Arthur, who, in a comparatively soberpassage, is said, some time after the days of Vortigern, to have 'foughtagainst the Saxons, together with the kings of the Britons, but he himselfwas leader in the battles. ' A list, also, is given of his twelve victories, ending with Mount Badon. It is impossible to decide whether there is reallyany truth in this account of Nennius, or whether it springs wholly from theimagination of the Britons, attempting to solace themselves for theirnational overthrow; but it allows us to believe if we choose that sometimein the early sixth century there was a British leader of the name ofArthur, who by military genius rose to high command and for a while beatback the Saxon hordes. At most, however, it should be clearly realized, Arthur was probably only a local leader in some limited region, and, farfrom filling the splendid place which he occupies in the later romances, was but the hard-pressed captain of a few thousand barbarous and half-armedwarriors. 

For three hundred years longer the traditions about Arthur continued todevelop among the Welsh people. The most important change which took placewas Arthur's elevation to the position of chief hero of the British (Welsh)race and the subordination to him, as his followers, of all the othernative heroes, most of whom had originally been gods. To Arthur himselfcertain divine attributes were added, such as his possession of magicweapons, among them the sword Excalibur. It also came to be passionatelybelieved among the Welsh that he was not really dead but would some dayreturn from the mysterious Other World to which he had withdrawn andreconquer the island for his people. It was not until the twelfth centurythat these Arthurian traditions, the cherished heritage of the Welsh andtheir cousins, the Bretons across the English Channel in France, weresuddenly adopted as the property of all Western Europe, so that Arthurbecame a universal Christian hero. This remarkable transformation, no doubtin some degree inevitable, was actually brought about chiefly through theinstrumentality of a single man, a certain English archdeacon of Welshdescent, Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey, a literary and ecclesiasticaladventurer looking about for a means of making himself famous, put forthabout the year 1136, in Latin, a 'History of the Britons' from the earliesttimes to the seventh century, in which, imitating the form of the seriouschronicles, he combined in cleverly impudent fashion all the adaptablemiscellaneous material, fictitious, legendary, or traditional, which hefound at hand. In dealing with Arthur, Geoffrey greatly enlarges on Gildasand Nennius; in part, no doubt, from his own invention, in part, perhaps, from Welsh tradition. He provides Arthur with a father, King Uther, makesof Arthur's wars against the Saxons only his youthful exploits, relates atlength how Arthur conquered almost all of Western Europe, and adds to theearlier story the figures of Merlin, Guenevere, Modred, Gawain, Kay, andBedivere. What is not least important, he gives to Arthur's reign much ofthe atmosphere of feudal chivalry which was that of the ruling class of hisown age. 

Geoffrey may or may not have intended his astonishing story to be seriouslyaccepted, but in fact it was received with almost universal credence. Forcenturies it was incorporated in outline or in excerpts into almost all thesober chronicles, and what is of much more importance for literature, itwas taken up and rehandled in various fashions by very numerous romancers. About twenty years after Geoffrey wrote, the French poet Wace, an Englishsubject, paraphrased his entire 'History' in vivid, fluent, and diffuseverse. Wace imparts to the whole, in a thorough-going way, the manners ofchivalry, and adds, among other things, a mention of the Round Table, whichGeoffrey, somewhat chary of the supernatural, had chosen to omit, though itwas one of the early elements of the Welsh tradition. Other poets followed, chief among them the delightful Chrêtien of Troyes, all writing mostly ofthe exploits of single knights at Arthur's court, which they made over, probably, from scattering tales of Welsh and Breton mythology. To declarethat most romantic heroes had been knights of Arthur's circle now becamealmost a matter of course. Prose romances also appeared, vast formlesscompilations, which gathered up into themselves story after story, according to the fancy of each successive editor. Greatest of the additionsto the substance of the cycle was the story of the Holy Grail, originallyan altogether independent legend. Important changes necessarily developed. Arthur himself, in many of the romances, was degraded from his position ofthe bravest knight to be the inactive figurehead of a brilliant court; andthe only really historical element in the story, his struggle against theSaxons, was thrust far into the background, while all the emphasis was laidon the romantic achievements of the single knights. 

LAGHAMON'S 'BRUT. ' Thus it had come about that Arthur, originally thenational hero of the Welsh, and the deadly foe of the English, was adopted, as a Christian champion, not only for one of the medieval Nine Worthies ofall history, but for the special glory of the English race itself. In thatlight he figures in the first important work in which native Englishreemerges after the Norman Conquest, the 'Brut' (Chronicle) wherein, aboutthe year 1200, Laghamon paraphrased Wace's paraphrase of Geoffrey. [Footnote: Laghamon's name is generally written 'Layamon, ' but this isincorrect. The word 'Brut' comes from the name 'Brutus, ' according toGeoffrey a Trojan hero and eponymous founder of the British race. Standingat the beginning of British (and English) history, his name came to beapplied to the whole of it, just as the first two Greek letters, alpha andbeta, have given the name to the alphabet. ] Laghamon was a humble parishpriest in Worcestershire, and his thirty-two thousand half-lines, in whichhe imperfectly follows the Anglo-Saxon alliterative meter, are rathercrude; though they are by no means dull, rather are often strong with theold-time Anglo-Saxon fighting spirit. In language also the poem is almostpurely Saxon; occasionally it admits the French device of rime, but it issaid to exhibit, all told, fewer than a hundred words of French origin. Expanding throughout on Wace's version, Laghamon adds some minor features;but English was not yet ready to take a place beside French and Latin withthe reading class, and the poem exercised no influence on the developmentof the Arthurian story or on English literature. 

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. We can make special mention of only oneother romance, which all students should read in modern translation, namely, 'Sir Gawain (pronounced Gaw'-wain) and the Green Knight. ' This isthe brief and carefully constructed work of an unknown but very real poeticartist, who lived a century and more later than Laghamon and probably alittle earlier than Chaucer. The story consists of two old folk-tales, herefinely united in the form of an Arthurian romance and so treated as tobring out all the better side of knightly feeling, with which the author isin charming sympathy. Like many other medieval writings, this one ispreserved by mere chance in a single manuscript, which contains also threeslightly shorter religious poems (of a thousand or two lines apiece), allpossibly by the same author as the romance. One of them in particular, 'ThePearl, ' is a narrative of much fine feeling, which may well have come fromso true a gentleman as he. The dialect is that of the Northwest Midland, scarcely more intelligible to modern readers than Anglo-Saxon, but itindicates that the author belonged to the same border region betweenEngland and Wales from which came also Geoffrey of Monmouth and Laghamon, aregion where Saxon and Norman elements were mingled with Celtic fancy anddelicacy of temperament. The meter, also, is interesting--the Anglo-Saxonunrimed alliterative verse, but divided into long stanzas of irregularlength, each ending in a 'bob' of five short riming lines. 

'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' may very fittingly bring to a close ourhasty survey of the entire Norman-French period, a period mainly offormation, which has left no literary work of great and permanent fame, butin which, after all, there were some sincere and talented writers, who havefallen into forgetfulness rather through the untoward accidents of timethan from lack of genuine merit in themselves. 

CHAPTER III

PERIOD III. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. ABOUT 1350 TO ABOUT 1500

THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS. Of the century anda half, from 1350 to 1500, which forms our third period, the most importantpart for literature was the first fifty years, which constitutes the age ofChaucer. 

The middle of the fourteenth century was also the middle of the externallybrilliant fifty years' reign of Edward III. In 1337 Edward had begun theterrible though often-interrupted series of campaigns in France whichhistorians group together as the Hundred Tears' War, and having won thebattle of Crecy against amazing odds, he had inaugurated at his court aperiod of splendor and luxury. The country as a whole was really increasingin prosperity; Edward was fostering trade, and the towns and some of thetown-merchants were becoming wealthy; but the oppressiveness of the feudalsystem, now becoming outgrown, was apparent, abuses in society and stateand church were almost intolerable, and the spirit which was to create ourmodern age, beginning already in Italy to move toward the Renaissance, wasfelt in faint stirrings even so far to the North as England. 

The towns, indeed, were achieving their freedom. Thanks to compactorganization, they were loosening the bonds of their dependence on thelords or bishops to whom most of them paid taxes; and the alliance of theirrepresentatives with the knights of the shire (country gentlemen) in theHouse of Commons, now a separate division of Parliament, was laying thefoundation of the political power of the whole middle class. But the feudalsystem continued to rest cruelly on the peasants. Still bound, most ofthem, to the soil, as serfs of the land or tenants with definite and heavyobligations of service, living in dark and filthy hovels underindescribably unhealthy conditions, earning a wretched subsistence byceaseless labor, and almost altogether at the mercy of masters who regardedthem as scarcely better than beasts, their lot was indeed pitiable. Nevertheless their spirit was not broken nor their state so hopeless as itseemed. It was by the archers of the class of yeomen (small free-holders), men akin in origin and interests to the peasants, that the victories in theFrench wars were won, and the knowledge that this was so created in thepeasants an increased self-respect and an increased dissatisfaction. Theirgroping efforts to better their condition received strong stimulus alsofrom the ravages of the terrible Black Death, a pestilence which, sweepingoff at its first visitation, in 1348, at least half the population, and ontwo later recurrences only smaller proportions, led to a scarcity oflaborers and added strength to their demand for commutation of personalservices by money-payments and for higher wages. This demand was met by theruling classes with sternly repressive measures, and the socialisticPeasants' Revolt of John Ball and Wat Tyler in 1381 was violently crushedout in blood, but it expressed a great human cry for justice which couldnot permanently be denied. 

Hand in hand with the State and its institutions, in this period as before, stood the Church. Holding in the theoretical belief of almost every one theabsolute power of all men's salvation or spiritual death, monopolizingalmost all learning and education, the Church exercised in the spiritualsphere, and to no small extent in the temporal, a despotic tyranny, atyranny employed sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. As the only evenpartially democratic institution of the age it attracted to itself the mostambitious and able men of all classes. Though social and personal influencewere powerful within its doors, as always in all human organizations, nevertheless the son of a serf for whom there was no other means of escapefrom his servitude might steal to the nearest monastery and there, gaininghis freedom by a few months of concealment, might hope, if he proved hisability, to rise to the highest position, to become abbot, bishop orperhaps even Pope. Within the Church were many sincere and able menunselfishly devoting their lives to the service of their fellows; but themoral tone of the organization as a whole had suffered from its worldlyprosperity and power. In its numerous secular lordships and monastic ordersit had become possessor of more than half the land in England, a proportionconstantly increased through the legacies left by religious-minded personsfor their souls' salvation; but from its vast income, several times greaterthan that of the Crown, it paid no taxes, and owing allegiance only to thePope it was in effect a foreign power, sometimes openly hostile to thenational government. The monasteries, though still performing importantpublic functions as centers of education, charity, and hospitality, hadrelaxed their discipline, and the lives of the monks were often scandalous. The Dominican and Franciscan friars, also, who had come to England in thethirteenth century, soon after the foundation of their orders in Italy, andwho had been full at first of passionate zeal for the spiritual andphysical welfare of the poor, had now departed widely from their earlycharacter and become selfish, luxurious, ignorant, and unprincipled. Muchthe same was true of the 'secular' clergy (those not members of monasticorders, corresponding to the entire clergy of Protestant churches). Thenthere were such unworthy charlatans as the pardoners and professionalpilgrims, traveling everywhere under special privileges and fleecing thecredulous of their money with fraudulent relics and preposterous stories ofedifying adventure. All this corruption was clear enough to everyintelligent person, and we shall find it an object of constant satire bythe authors of the age, but it was too firmly established to be easily orquickly rooted out. 

'MANDEVILLE'S VOYAGE. ' One of the earliest literary works of the period, however, was uninfluenced by these social and moral problems, being rathera very complete expression of the naïve medieval delight in romanticmarvels. This is the highly entertaining 'Voyage and Travels of Sir JohnMandeville. ' This clever book was actually written at Liège, in what is nowBelgium, sometime before the year 1370, and in the French language; fromwhich, attaining enormous popularity, it was several times translated intoLatin and English, and later into various other languages. Five centurieshad to pass before scholars succeeded in demonstrating that the assertedauthor, 'Sir John Mandeville, ' never existed, that the real author isundiscoverable, and that this pretended account of his journeyings over allthe known and imagined world is a compilation from a large number ofprevious works. Yet the book (the English version along with the others)really deserved its long-continued reputation. Its tales of the EthiopianPrester John, of diamonds that by proper care can be made to grow, of treeswhose fruit is an odd sort of lambs, and a hundred other equally remarkablephenomena, are narrated with skilful verisimilitude and still strongly holdthe reader's interest, even if they no longer command belief. With all hiscredulity, too, the author has some odd ends of genuine science, amongothers the conviction that the earth is not flat but round. In style theEnglish versions reflect the almost universal medieval uncertainty ofsentence structure; nevertheless they are straightforward and clear; andthe book is notable as the first example in English after the NormanConquest of prose used not for religious edification but for amusement(though with the purpose also of giving instruction). 'Mandeville, 'however, is a very minor figure when compared with his greatcontemporaries, especially with the chief of them, Geoffrey Chaucer. 

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 1338-1400. Chaucer (the name is French and seems to havemeant originally 'shoemaker') came into the world probably in 1338, thefirst important author who was born and lived in London, which with himbecomes the center of English literature. About his life, as about those ofmany of our earlier writers, there remains only very fragmentaryinformation, which in his case is largely pieced together from scatteringentries of various kinds in such documents as court account books andpublic records of state matters and of lawsuits. His father, a winemerchant, may have helped supply the cellars of the king (Edward III) andso have been able to bring his son to royal notice; at any rate, whilestill in his teens Geoffrey became a page in the service of one of theking's daughters-in-law. In this position his duty would be partly toperform various humble work in the household, partly also to help amuse theleisure of the inmates, and it is easy to suppose that he soon won favor asa fluent story-teller. He early became acquainted with the seamy as well asthe brilliant side of courtly life; for in 1359 he was in the campaign inFrance and was taken prisoner. That he was already valued appears from theking's subscription of the equivalent of a thousand dollars of present-daymoney toward his ransom; and after his release he was transferred to theking's own service, where about 1368 he was promoted to the rank ofesquire. He was probably already married to one of the queen'sladies-in-waiting. Chaucer was now thirty years of age, and his practicalsagacity and knowledge of men had been recognized; for from this time on heheld important public positions. He was often sent to the Continent--toFrance, Flanders, and Italy--on diplomatic missions; and for eleven yearshe was in charge of the London customs, where the uncongenial drudgeryoccupied almost all his time until through the intercession of the queen hewas allowed to perform it by deputy. In 1386 he was a member of Parliament, knight of the shire for Kent; but in that year his fortune turned--he lostall his offices at the overthrow of the faction of his patron, Duke John ofGaunt (uncle of the young king, Richard II, who had succeeded hisgrandfather, Edward III, some years before). Chaucer's party and himselfwere soon restored to power, but although during the remaining dozen yearsof his life he received from the Court various temporary appointments andrewards, he appears often to have been poor and in need. When Duke Henry ofBolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, deposed the king and himself assumed thethrone as Henry IV, Chaucer's prosperity seemed assured, but he lived afterthis for less than a year, dying suddenly in 1400. He was buried inWestminster Abbey, the first of the men of letters to be laid in the nookwhich has since become the Poets' Corner. 

Chaucer's poetry falls into three rather clearly marked periods. First isthat of French influence, when, though writing in English, he drewinspiration from the rich French poetry of the period, which was producedpartly in France, partly in England. Chaucer experimented with the numerouslyric forms which the French poets had brought to perfection; he alsotranslated, in whole or in part, the most important of medieval Frenchnarrative poems, the thirteenth century 'Romance of the Rose' of Guillaumede Lorris and Jean de Meung, a very clever satirical allegory, in manythousand lines, of medieval love and medieval religion. This poem, with itsGallic brilliancy and audacity, long exercised over Chaucer's mind the samedominant influence which it possessed over most secular poets of the age. Chaucer's second period, that of Italian influence, dates from his firstvisit to Italy in 1372-3, where at Padua he may perhaps have met the fluentItalian poet Petrarch, and where at any rate the revelation of Italian lifeand literature must have aroused his intense enthusiasm. From this time, and especially after his other visit to Italy, five years later, he mademuch direct use of the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio and to a less degreeof those of their greater predecessor, Dante, whose severe spirit was toounlike Chaucer's for his thorough appreciation. The longest and finest ofChaucer's poems of this period, 'Troilus and Criseyde' is based on a workof Boccaccio; here Chaucer details with compelling power the sentiment andtragedy of love, and the psychology of the heroine who had become for theMiddle Ages a central figure in the tale of Troy. Chaucer's third period, covering his last fifteen years, is called his English period, because nowat last his genius, mature and self-sufficient, worked in essentialindependence. First in time among his poems of these years stands 'TheLegend of Good Women, ' a series of romantic biographies of famous ladies ofclassical legend and history, whom it pleases Chaucer to designate asmartyrs of love; but more important than the stories themselves is theProlog, where he chats with delightful frankness about his own ideas andtastes. 

The great work of the period, however, and the crowning achievement ofChaucer's life, is 'The Canterbury Tales. ' Every one is familiar with theplan of the story (which may well have had some basis in fact): how Chaucerfinds himself one April evening with thirty other men and women, allgathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark (a suburb of London and just acrossthe Thames from the city proper), ready to start next morning, as thousandsof Englishmen did every year, on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas aBecket at Canterbury. The travelers readily accept the proposal of HarryBailey, their jovial and domineering host, that he go with them as leaderand that they enliven the journey with a story-telling contest (two storiesfrom each pilgrim during each half of the journey) for the prize of adinner at his inn on their return. Next morning, therefore, the Knightbegins the series of tales and the others follow in order. This literaryform--a collection of disconnected stories bound together in a fictitiousframework--goes back almost to the beginning of literature itself; butChaucer may well have been directly influenced by Boccaccio's famous bookof prose tales, 'The Decameron' (Ten Days of Story-Telling). Between thetwo works, however, there is a striking contrast, which has often beenpointed out. While the Italian author represents his gentlemen and ladiesas selfishly fleeing from the misery of a frightful plague in Florence to acharming villa and a holiday of unreflecting pleasure, the gaiety ofChaucer's pilgrims rests on a basis of serious purpose, howeverconventional it may be. 

Perhaps the easiest way to make clear the sources of Chaucer's power willbe by means of a rather formal summary. 

1. _His Personality_. Chaucer's personality stands out in his writingsplainly and most delightfully. It must be borne in mind that, like someothers of the greatest poets, he was not a poet merely, but also a man ofpractical affairs, in the eyes of his associates first and mainly acourtier, diplomat, and government official. His wide experience of men andthings is manifest in the life-likeness and mature power of his poetry, andit accounts in part for the broad truth of all but his earliest work, whichmakes it essentially poetry not of an age but for all time. Something ofconventional medievalism still clings to Chaucer in externals, as we shallsee, but in alertness, independence of thought, and a certain directness ofutterance, he speaks for universal humanity. His practical experience helpsto explain as well why, unlike most great poets, he does not belongprimarily with the idealists. Fine feeling he did not lack; he lovedexternal beauty--some of his most pleasing passages voice his enthusiasmfor Nature; and down to the end of his life he never lost the zest forfanciful romance. His mind and eye were keen, besides, for moral qualities;he penetrated directly through all the pretenses of falsehood andhypocrisy; while how thoroughly he understood and respected honest worthappears in the picture of the Poor Parson in the Prolog to 'The CanterburyTales. ' Himself quiet and self-contained, moreover, Chaucer was genial andsympathetic toward all mankind. But all this does not declare him apositive idealist, and in fact, rather, he was willing to accept the worldas he found it--he had no reformer's dream of 'shattering it to bits andremoulding it nearer to the heart's desire. ' His moral nature, indeed, waseasy-going; he was the appropriate poet of the Court circle, with very muchof the better courtier's point of view. At the day's tasks he worked longand faithfully, but he also loved comfort, and he had nothing of themartyr's instinct. To him human life was a vast procession, of boundlessinterest, to be observed keenly and reproduced for the reader's enjoymentin works of objective literary art. The countless tragedies of life henoted with kindly pity, but he felt no impulse to dash himself against theexisting barriers of the world in the effort to assure a better future forthe coming generations. In a word, Chaucer is an artist of broad artisticvision to whom art is its own excuse for being. And when everything is saidfew readers would have it otherwise with him; for in his art he hasaccomplished what no one else in his place could have done, and he has leftbesides the picture of himself, very real and human across the gulf of halfa thousand years. Religion, we should add, was for him, as for so many menof the world, a somewhat secondary and formal thing. In his early worksthere is much conventional piety, no doubt sincere so far as it goes; andhe always took a strong intellectual interest in the problems of medievaltheology; but he became steadily and quietly independent in his philosophicoutlook and indeed rather skeptical of all definite dogmas. 

Even in his art Chaucer's lack of the highest will-power produced onerather conspicuous formal weakness; of his numerous long poems he reallyfinished scarcely one. For this, however, it is perhaps sufficient excusethat he could write only in intervals hardly snatched from business andsleep. In 'The Canterbury Tales' indeed, the plan is almost impossiblyambitious; the more than twenty stories actually finished, with theireighteen thousand lines, are only a fifth part of the intended number. Evenso, several of them do not really belong to the series; composed in stanzaforms, they are selected from his earlier poems and here pressed intoservice, and on the average they are less excellent than those which hewrote for their present places (in the rimed pentameter couplet that headopted from the French). 

2. _His Humor_. In nothing are Chaucer's personality and his poetrymore pleasing than in the rich humor which pervades them through andthrough. Sometimes, as in his treatment of the popular medieval beast-epicmaterial in the Nun's Priest's Tale of the Fox and the Cock, the humortakes the form of boisterous farce; but much more often it is of the finerintellectual sort, the sort which a careless reader may not catch, butwhich touches with perfect sureness and charming lightness on all theincongruities of life, always, too, in kindly spirit. No foible is tootrifling for Chaucer's quiet observation; while if he does not choose todenounce the hypocrisy of the Pardoner and the worldliness of the Monk, hehas made their weaknesses sources of amusement (and indeed object-lessonsas well) for all the coming generations. 

3. _He is one of the greatest of all narrative poets_. Chaucer is anexquisite lyric poet, but only a few of his lyrics have come down to us, and his fame must always rest largely on his narratives. Here, first, hepossesses unfailing fluency. It was with rapidity, evidently with ease, andwith masterful certainty, that he poured out his long series of vivid anddelightful tales. It is true that in his early, imitative, work he sharesthe medieval faults of wordiness, digression, and abstract symbolism; and, like most medieval writers, he chose rather to reshape material from thegreat contemporary store than to invent stories of his own. But these arereally very minor matters. He has great variety, also, of narrative forms:elaborate allegories; love stories of many kinds; romances, both religiousand secular; tales of chivalrous exploit, like that related by the Knight;humorous extravaganzas; and jocose renderings of coarse popularmaterial--something, at least, in virtually every medieval type. 

4. _The thorough knowledge and sure portrayal of men and women which, belong to his mature work extend through, many various types ofcharacter. _ It is a commonplace to say that the Prolog to 'TheCanterbury Tales' presents in its twenty portraits virtually everycontemporary English class except the very lowest, made to live forever inthe finest series of character sketches preserved anywhere in literature;and in his other work the same power appears in only less conspicuousdegree. 

5. _His poetry is also essentially and thoroughly dramatic_, dealingvery vividly with life in genuine and varied action. To be sure, Chaucerpossesses all the medieval love for logical reasoning, and he takes a keendelight in psychological analysis; but when he introduces these things(except for the tendency to medieval diffuseness) they are true to thesituation and really serve to enhance the suspense. There is much interestin the question often raised whether, if he had lived in an age like theElizabethan, when the drama was the dominant literary form, he too wouldhave been a dramatist. 

6. _As a descriptive poet (of things as well as persons) he displaysequal skill. _ Whatever his scenes or objects, he sees them with perfectclearness and brings them in full life-likeness before the reader's eyes, sometimes even with the minuteness of a nineteenth century novelist. And noone understands more thoroughly the art of conveying the general impressionwith perfect sureness, with a foreground where a few characteristic detailsstand out in picturesque and telling clearness. 

7. _Chaucer is an unerring master of poetic form. _ His stanzacombinations reproduce all the well-proportioned grace of his Frenchmodels, and to the pentameter riming couplet of his later work he gives theperfect ease and metrical variety which match the fluent thought. In allhis poetry there is probably not a single faulty line. And yet within ahundred years after his death, such was the irony of circumstances, Englishpronunciation had so greatly altered that his meter was held to be rude andbarbarous, and not until the nineteenth century were its principles againfully understood. His language, we should add, is modern, according to thetechnical classification, and is really as much like the form of our ownday as like that of a century before his time; but it is still only_early_ modern English, and a little definitely directed study isnecessary for any present-day reader before its beauty can be adequatelyrecognized. 

The main principles for the pronunciation of Chaucer's language, so far asit differs from ours, are these: Every letter should be sounded, especiallythe final _e_ (except when it is to be suppressed before anothervowel). A large proportion of the rimes are therefore feminine. Thefollowing vowel sounds should be observed: Stressed _a_ like modern_a_ in father. Stressed _e_ and _ee_ like _e_ in_fête_ or _ea_ in breath. Stressed _i_ as in _machine_, _oo_ like _o_ in _open_. _u_ commonly as in _push_or like _oo_ in _spoon_, _y_ like _i_ in _machine_or _pin_ according as it is stressed or not. _ai_, _ay_, _ei_, and _ey_ like _ay_ in _day_. _au_ commonlylike _ou_ in _pound_, _ou_ like _oo_ in _spoon_. _-ye_ (final) is a diphthong. _g_ (not in _ng_ and not initial)before _e_ or _i_is like _j_. 

Lowell has named in a suggestive summary the chief quality of each of thegreat English poets, with Chaucer standing first in order: 'Actual life isrepresented by Chaucer; imaginative life by Spenser; ideal life byShakspere; interior life by Milton; conventional life by Pope. ' We mightadd: the life of spiritual mysticism and simplicity by Wordsworth; thecompletely balanced life by Tennyson; and the life of moral issues anddramatic moments by Robert Browning. 

JOHN GOWER. The three other chief writers contemporary with Chaucercontrast strikingly both with him and with each other. Least important isJohn Gower (pronounced either Go-er or Gow-er), a wealthy landowner whosetomb, with his effigy, may still be seen in St. Savior's, Southwark, thechurch of a priory to whose rebuilding he contributed and where he spenthis latter days. Gower was a confirmed conservative, and time has left himstranded far in the rear of the forces that move and live. UnlikeChaucer's, the bulk of his voluminous poems reflect the past and scarcelyhint of the future. The earlier and larger part of them are written inFrench and Latin, and in 'Vox Clamantis' (The Voice of One Crying in theWilderness) he exhausts the vocabulary of exaggerated bitterness indenouncing the common people for the insurrection in which they threatenedthe privileges and authority of his own class. Later on, perhaps throughChaucer's example, he turned to English, and in 'Confessio Amantis' (ALover's Confession) produced a series of renderings of traditional storiesparallel in general nature to 'The Canterbury Tales. ' He is generally asmooth and fluent versifier, but his fluency is his undoing; he wraps uphis material in too great a mass of verbiage. 

THE VISION CONCERNING PIERS THE PLOWMAN. The active moral impulse whichChaucer and Gower lacked, and a consequent direct confronting of the evilsof the age, appear vigorously in the group of poems written during the lastforty years of the century and known from the title in some of themanuscripts as 'The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman. ' Fromthe sixteenth century, at least, until very lately this work, the variousversions of which differ greatly, has been supposed to be the single poemof a single author, repeatedly enlarged and revised by him; and ingeniousinference has constructed for this supposed author a brief but picturesquebiography under the name of William Langland. Recent investigation, however, has made it seem at least probable that the work grew, to itsfinal form through additions by several successive writers who have notleft their names and whose points of view were not altogether identical. 

Like the slightly earlier poet of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ' theauthors belonged to the region of the Northwest Midland, near the MalvernHills, and like him, they wrote in the Anglo-Saxon verse form, alliterative, unrimed, and in this case without stanza divisions. Theirlanguage, too, the regular dialect of this region, differs very greatly, aswe have already implied, from that of Chaucer, with much less infusion fromthe French; to the modern reader, except in translation, it seems uncouthand unintelligible. But the poem, though in its final state prolix andstructurally formless, exhibits great power not only of moral convictionand emotion, but also of expression--vivid, often homely, but not seldomeloquent. 

The 'first passus' begins with the sleeping author's vision of 'a fieldfull of folk' (the world), bounded on one side by a cliff with the tower ofTruth, and on the other by a deep vale wherein frowns the dungeon of Wrong. Society in all its various classes and occupations is very dramaticallypresented in the brief description of the 'field of folk, ' with incisivepassing satire of the sins and vices of each class. 'Gluttonous wasters'are there, lazy beggars, lying pilgrims, corrupt friars and pardoners, venal lawyers, and, with a lively touch of realistic humour, cooks andtheir 'knaves' crying, 'Hot pies!' But a sane balance is preserved--thereare also worthy people, faithful laborers, honest merchants, and sincerepriests and monks. Soon the allegory deepens. Holy Church, appearing, instructs the author about Truth and the religion which consists in lovingGod and giving help to the poor. A long portrayal of the evil done by LadyMeed (love of money and worldly rewards) prepares for the appearance of thehero, the sturdy plowman Piers, who later on is even identified in a hazyway with Christ himself. Through Piers and his search for Truth isdeveloped the great central teaching of the poem, the Gospel of Work--thedoctrine, namely, that society is to be saved by honest labor, or ingeneral by the faithful service of every class in its own sphere. The SevenDeadly Sins and their fatal fruits are emphasized, and in the later formsof the poem the corruptions of wealth and the Church are indignantlydenounced, with earnest pleading for the religion of practical social loveto all mankind. 

In its own age the influence of 'Piers the Plowman' was very great. Despiteits intended impartiality, it was inevitably adopted as a partisan documentby the poor and oppressed, and together with the revolutionary songs ofJohn Ball it became a powerful incentive to the Peasant's Insurrection. Piers himself became and continued an ideal for men who longed for a lessselfish and brutal world, and a century and a half later the poem was stillcherished by the Protestants for its exposure of the vices of the Church. Its medieval form and setting remove it hopelessly beyond the horizon ofgeneral readers of the present time, yet it furnishes the most detailedremaining picture of the actual social and economic conditions of its age, and as a great landmark in the progress of moral and social thought it cannever lose its significance. 

THE WICLIFITE BIBLE. A product of the same general forces which inspired'Piers the Plowman' is the earliest in the great succession of the modernEnglish versions of the Bible, the one connected with the name of JohnWiclif, himself the first important English precursor of the Reformation. Wiclif was born about 1320, a Yorkshireman of very vigorous intellect aswell as will, but in all his nature and instincts a direct representativeof the common people. During the greater part of his life he was connectedwith Oxford University, as student, teacher (and therefore priest), andcollege head. Early known as one of the ablest English thinkers andphilosophers, he was already opposing certain doctrines and practices ofthe Church when he was led to become a chief spokesman for King Edward andthe nation in their refusal to pay the tribute which King John, a centuryand a half before, had promised to the Papacy and which was now actuallydemanded. As the controversies proceeded, Wiclif was brought at last toformulate the principle, later to be basal in the whole Protestantmovement, that the final source of religious authority is not the Church, but the Bible. One by one he was led to attack also other fundamentaldoctrines and institutions of the Church--transubstantiation, the temporalpossessions of the Church, the Papacy, and at last, for their corruption, the four orders of friars. In the outcome the Church proved too strong foreven Wiclif, and Oxford, against its will, was compelled to abandon him;yet he could be driven no farther than to his parish of Lutterworth, wherehe died undisturbed in 1384. 

His connection with literature was an unforeseen but natural outgrowth ofhis activities. Some years before his death, with characteristic energy andzeal, he had begun to spread his doctrines by sending out 'poor priests'and laymen who, practicing the self-denying life of the friars of earlierdays, founded the Lollard sect. [Footnote: The name, given by theirenemies, perhaps means 'tares. '] It was inevitable not only that he and hisassociates should compose many tracts and sermons for the furtherance oftheir views, but, considering their attitude toward the Bible, that theyshould wish to put it into the hands of all the people in a form which theywould be able to understand, that is in their own vernacular English. Hencesprang the Wiclifite translation. The usual supposition that from theoutset, before the time of Wiclif, the Church had prohibited translationsof the Bible from the Latin into the common tongues is a mistake; thatpolicy was a direct result of Wiclif's work. In England from Anglo-Saxontimes, as must be clear from what has here already been said, partialEnglish translations, literal or free, in prose or verse, had been incirculation among the few persons who could read and wished to have them. But Wiclif proposed to popularize the entire book, in order to make theconscience of every man the final authority in every question of belief andreligious practice, and this the Church would not allow. It is altogetherprobable that Wiclif personally directed the translation which has eversince borne his name; but no record of the facts has come down to us, andthere is no proof that he himself was the actual author of any part ofit--that work may all have been done by others. The basis of thetranslation was necessarily the Latin 'Vulgate' (Common) version, made ninehundred years before from the original Hebrew and Greek by St. Jerome, which still remains to-day, as in Wiclif's time, the official version ofthe Roman church. The first Wiclifite translation was hasty and ratherrough, and it was soon revised and bettered by a certain John Purvey, oneof the 'Lollard' priests. 

Wiclif and the men associated with him, however, were always reformersfirst and writers only to that end. Their religious tracts are formless andcrude in style, and even their final version of the Bible aims chiefly atfidelity of rendering. In general it is not elegant, the more so becausethe authors usually follow the Latin idioms and sentence divisions insteadof reshaping them into the native English style. Their text, again, isoften interrupted by the insertion of brief phrases explanatory of unusualwords. The vocabulary, adapted to the unlearned readers, is more largelySaxon than in our later versions, and the older inflected forms appearoftener than in Chaucer; so that it is only through our knowledge of thelater versions that we to-day can read the work without frequent stumbling. Nevertheless this version has served as the starting point for almost allthose that have come after it in English, as even a hasty reader of thisone must be conscious; and no reader can fail to admire in it the sturdySaxon vigor which has helped to make our own version one of the greatmasterpieces of English literature. 

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. With Chaucer's death in 1400 the half century oforiginal creative literature in which he is the main figure comes to anend, and for a hundred and fifty years thereafter there is only a singleauthor of the highest rank. For this decline political confusion is thechief cause; first, in the renewal of the Hundred Years' War, with itssordid effort to deprive another nation of its liberty, and then in thebrutal and meaningless War of the Roses, a mere cut-throat civil butcheryof rival factions with no real principle at stake. Throughout the fifteenthcentury the leading poets (of prose we will speak later) were avowedimitators of Chaucer, and therefore at best only second-rate writers. Mostof them were Scots, and best known is the Scottish king, James I. Fortradition seems correct in naming this monarch as the author of a prettypoem, 'The King's Quair' ('The King's Quire, ' that is Book), which relatesin a medieval dream allegory of fourteen hundred lines how the captiveauthor sees and falls in love with a lady whom in the end Fortune promisesto bestow upon him. This may well be the poetic record of King James'eighteen-year captivity in England and his actual marriage to a nobleEnglish wife. In compliment to him Chaucer's stanza of seven lines (riming_ababbcc_), which King James employs, has received the name of 'rimeroyal. '

THE 'POPULAR' BALLADS. Largely to the fifteenth century, however, belongthose of the English and Scottish 'popular' ballads which the accidents oftime have not succeeded in destroying. We have already considered thetheory of the communal origin of this kind of poetry in the remotepre-historic past, and have seen that the ballads continue to flourishvigorously down to the later periods of civilization. The still existingEnglish and Scottish ballads are mostly, no doubt, the work of individualauthors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but none the less theyexpress the little-changing mind and emotions of the great body of thecommon people who had been singing and repeating ballads for so manythousand years. Really essentially 'popular, ' too, in spirit are the morepretentious poems of the wandering professional minstrels, which have beenhanded down along with the others, just as the minstrels were accustomed torecite both sorts indiscriminately. Such minstrel ballads are the famousones on the battle of Chevy Chase, or Otterburn. The production of genuinepopular ballads began to wane in the fifteenth century when the printingpress gave circulation to the output of cheap London writers andsubstituted reading for the verbal memory by which the ballads had beentransmitted, portions, as it were, of a half mysterious and almost sacredtradition. Yet the existing ballads yielded slowly, lingering on in theremote regions, and those which have been preserved were recovered duringthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by collectors from simple men andwomen living apart from the main currents of life, to whose hearts and lipsthey were still dear. Indeed even now the ballads and ballad-making are notaltogether dead, but may still be found nourishing in such outskirts ofcivilization as the cowboy plains of Texas, Rocky Mountain mining camps, orthe nooks and corners of the Southern Alleghenies. 

The true 'popular' ballads have a quality peculiarly their own, whichrenders them far superior to the sixteenth century imitations and which noconscious literary artist has ever successfully reproduced. Longfellow's'Skeleton in Armor' and Tennyson's 'Revenge' are stirring artistic ballads, but they are altogether different in tone and effect from the authentic'popular' ones. Some of the elements which go to make this peculiar'popular' quality can be definitely stated. 

1. The 'popular' ballads are the simple and spontaneous expression of theelemental emotion of the people, emotion often crude but absolutely genuineand unaffected. Phrases are often repeated in the ballads, just as in thetalk of the common man, for the sake of emphasis, but there is neithercomplexity of plot or characterization nor attempt at decorative literaryadornment--the story and the emotion which it calls forth are all in all. It is this simple, direct fervor of feeling, the straightforward outpouringof the authors' hearts, that gives the ballads their power and entitlesthem to consideration among the far more finished works of consciousliterature. Both the emotion and the morals of the ballads, also, arepagan, or at least pre-Christian; vengeance on one's enemies is as much avirtue as loyalty to one's friends; the most shameful sins are cowardiceand treachery in war or love; and the love is often lawless. 

2. From first to last the treatment of the themes is objective, dramatic, and picturesque. Everything is action, simple feeling, or vivid scenes, with no merely abstract moralizing (except in a few unusual cases); andoften much of the story or sentiment is implied rather than directlystated. This too, of course, is the natural manner of the common man, amanner perfectly effective either in animated conversation or in the chantof a minstrel, where expression and gesture can do so much of the workwhich the restraints of civilized society have transferred to words. 

3. To this spirit and treatment correspond the subjects of the ballads. They are such as make appeal to the underlying human instincts--braveexploits in individual fighting or in organized war, and the romance andpathos and tragedy of love and of the other moving situations of simplelife. From the 'popular' nature of the ballads it has resulted that many ofthem are confined within no boundaries of race or nation, but, originatingone here, one there, are spread in very varying versions throughout thewhole, almost, of the world. Purely English, however, are those which dealwith Robin Hood and his 'merry men, ' idealized imaginary heroes of theSaxon common people in the dogged struggle which they maintained forcenturies against their oppressive feudal lords. 

4. The characters and 'properties' of the ballads of all classes aregenerally typical or traditional. There are the brave champion, whethernoble or common man, who conquers or falls against overwhelming odds; thefaithful lover of either sex; the woman whose constancy, proving strongerthan man's fickleness, wins back her lover to her side at last; thetraitorous old woman (victim of the blind and cruel prejudice which after acentury or two was often to send her to the stake as a witch); the loyallittle child; and some few others. 

5. The verbal style of the ballads, like their spirit, is vigorous andsimple, generally unpolished and sometimes rough, but often powerful withits terse dramatic suggestiveness. The usual, though not the only, poeticform is the four-lined stanza in lines alternately of four and threestresses and riming only in the second and fourth lines. Besides therefrains which are perhaps a relic of communal composition and theconventional epithets which the ballads share with epic poetry there arenumerous traditional ballad expressions--rather meaningless formulas andline-tags used only to complete the rime or meter, the common usefulscrap-bag reserve of these unpretentious poets. The license of Anglo-Saxonpoetry in the number of the unstressed syllables still remains. But it isevident that the existing versions of the ballads are generally moreimperfect than the original forms; they have suffered from the corruptionsof generations of oral repetition, which the scholars who have recoveredthem have preserved with necessary accuracy, but which for appreciativereading editors should so far as possible revise away. 

Among the best or most representative single ballads are: The Hunting ofthe Cheviot (otherwise called The Ancient Ballad of Chevy Chase--clearly ofminstrel authorship); Sir Patrick Spens; Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne;Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudeslee; Captain Car, orEdom o' Gordon; King Estmere (though this has been somewhat altered byBishop Percy, who had and destroyed the only surviving copy of it); Edward, Edward; Young Waters; Sweet William's Ghost; Lord Thomas and Fair Annet. Kinmont Willie is very fine, but seems to be largely the work of Sir WalterScott and therefore not truly 'popular. '

SIR THOMAS MALORY AND HIS 'MORTE DARTHUR. ' The one fifteenth century authorof the first rank, above referred to, is Sir Thomas Malory (the _a_ ispronounced as in _tally_). He is probably to be identified with theSir Thomas Malory who during the wars in France and the civil strife of theRoses that followed was an adherent of the Earls of Warwick and who died in1471 under sentence of outlawry by the victorious Edward IV. And somepassing observations, at least, in his book seem to indicate that if heknew and had shared all the splendor and inspiration of the last years ofmedieval chivalry, he had experienced also the disappointment andbitterness of defeat and prolonged captivity. Further than this we know ofhim only that he wrote 'Le Morte Darthur' and had finished it by 1467. 

Malory's purpose was to collect in a single work the great body ofimportant Arthurian romance and to arrange it in the form of a continuoushistory of King Arthur and his knights. He called his book 'Le MorteDarthur, ' The Death of Arthur, from the title of several popular Arthurianromances to which, since they dealt only with Arthur's later years anddeath, it was properly enough applied, and from which it seems to havepassed into general currency as a name for the entire story of Arthur'slife. [Footnote: Since the French word 'Morte' is feminine, the precedingarticle was originally 'La, ' but the whole name had come to be thought ofas a compound phrase and hence as masculine or neuter in gender. ] Actuallyto get together all the Arthurian romances was not possible for any man inMalory's day, or in any other, but he gathered up a goodly number, most ofthem, at least, written in French, and combined them, on the whole withunusual skill, into a work of about one-tenth their original bulk, whichstill ranks, with all qualifications, as one of the masterpieces of Englishliterature. Dealing with such miscellaneous material, he could not whollyavoid inconsistencies, so that, for example, he sometimes introduces infull health in a later book a knight whom a hundred pages earlier he hadkilled and regularly buried; but this need not cause the reader anythingworse than mild amusement. Not Malory but his age, also, is to blame forhis sometimes hazy and puzzled treatment of the supernatural element in hismaterial. In the remote earliest form of the stories, as Celtic myths, thissupernatural element was no doubt frank and very large, but Malory'sauthorities, the more skeptical French romancers, adapting it to their ownage, had often more or less fully rationalized it; transforming, forinstance, the black river of Death which the original heroes often had tocross on journeys to the Celtic Other World into a rude and forbidding moatabout the hostile castle into which the romancers degraded the Other Worlditself. Countless magic details, however, still remained recalcitrant tosuch treatment; and they evidently troubled Malory, whose devotion to hisstory was earnest and sincere. Some of them he omits, doubtless asincredible, but others he retains, often in a form where the impossible ismerely garbled into the unintelligible. For a single instance, in hisseventh book he does not satisfactorily explain why the valiant Gareth onhis arrival at Arthur's court asks at first only for a year's food anddrink. In the original story, we can see to-day, Gareth must have beenunder a witch's spell which compelled him to a season of distastefulservitude; but this motivating bit of superstition Malory discards, orrather, in this case, it had been lost from the story at a much earlierstage. It results, therefore, that Malory's supernatural incidents areoften far from clear and satisfactory; yet the reader is little troubled bythis difficulty either in so thoroughly romantic a work. 

Other technical faults may easily be pointed out in Malory's book. Thoroughunity, either in the whole or in the separate stories so loosely woventogether, could not be expected; in continual reading the long successionof similar combat after combat and the constant repetition of stereotypedphrases become monotonous for a present-day reader; and it must beconfessed that Malory has little of the modern literary craftsman's powerof close-knit style or proportion and emphasis in details. But these faultsalso may be overlooked, and the work is truly great, partly because it isan idealist's dream of chivalry, as chivalry might have been, a chivalry offaithful knights who went about redressing human wrongs and were loyallovers and zealous servants of Holy Church; great also because Malory'sheart is in his stories, so that he tells them in the main well, andinvests them with a delightful atmosphere of romance which can never loseits fascination. 

The style, also, in the narrower sense, is strong and good, and does itspart to make the book, except for the Wiclif Bible, unquestionably thegreatest monument of English prose of the entire period before thesixteenth century. There is no affectation of elegance, but rather knightlystraightforwardness which has power without lack of ease. The sentences areoften long, but always 'loose' and clear; and short ones are often usedwith the instinctive skill of sincerity. Everything is picturesque anddramatic and everywhere there is chivalrous feeling and genuine humansympathy. 

WILLIAM CAXTON AND THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING TO ENGLAND, 1476. Malory'sbook is the first great English classic which was given to the world inprint instead of written manuscript; for it was shortly after Malory'sdeath that the printing press was brought to England by William Caxton. Theinvention of printing, perhaps the most important event of modern times, took place in Germany not long after the middle of the fifteenth century, and the development of the art was rapid. Caxton, a shrewd and enterprisingKentishman, was by first profession a cloth merchant, and having taken uphis residence across the Channel, was appointed by the king to theimportant post of Governor of the English Merchants in Flanders. Employedlater in the service of the Duchess of Burgundy (sister of Edward IV), hisardent delight in romances led him to translate into English a French'Recueil des Histoires de Troye' (Collection of the Troy Stories). Tosupply the large demand for copies he investigated and mastered the new artby which they might be so wonderfully multiplied and about 1475, at fiftyyears of age, set up a press at Bruges in the modern Belgium, where heissued his 'Recueil, ' which was thus the first English book ever put intoprint. During the next year, 1476, just a century before the first theaterwas to be built in London, Caxton returned to England and established hisshop in Westminster, then a London suburb. During the fifteen remainingyears of his life he labored diligently, printing an aggregate of more thana hundred books, which together comprised over fourteen thousand pages. Aside from Malory's romance, which he put out in 1485, the most importantof his publications was an edition of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales. ' Whilelaboring as a publisher Caxton himself continued to make translations, andin spite of many difficulties he, together with his assistants, turned intoEnglish from French no fewer than twenty-one distinct works. From everypoint of view Caxton's services were great. As translator and editor hisstyle is careless and uncertain, but like Malory's it is sincere and manly, and vital with energy and enthusiasm. As printer, in a time of rapidchanges in the language, when through the wars in France and her growinginfluence the second great infusion of Latin-French words was coming intothe English language, he did what could be done for consistency in formsand spelling. Partly medieval and partly modern in spirit, he may fittinglystand at the close, or nearly at the close, of our study of the medievalperiod. 

CHAPTER IV

THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA

For the sake of clearness we have reserved for a separate chapter thediscussion of the drama of the whole medieval period, which, though it didnot reach a very high literary level, was one of the most characteristicexpressions of the age. It should be emphasized that to no other form doeswhat we have said of the similarity of medieval literature throughoutWestern Europe apply more closely, so that what we find true of the dramain England would for the most part hold good for the other countries aswell. 

JUGGLERS, FOLK-PLAYS, PAGEANTS. At the fall of the Roman Empire, whichmarks the beginning of the Middle Ages, the corrupt Roman drama, proscribedby the Church, had come to an unhonored end, and the actors had been mergedinto the great body of disreputable jugglers and inferior minstrels whowandered over all Christendom. The performances of these social outcasts, crude and immoral as they were, continued for centuries unsuppressed, because they responded to the demand for dramatic spectacle which is one ofthe deepest though not least troublesome instincts in human nature. Thesame demand was partly satisfied also by the rude country folk-plays, survivals of primitive heathen ceremonials, performed at such festivaloccasions as the harvest season, which in all lands continue to flourishamong the country people long after their original meaning has beenforgotten. In England the folk-plays, throughout the Middle Ages and inremote spots down almost to the present time, sometimes took the form ofenergetic dances (Morris dances, they came to be called, through confusionwith Moorish performances of the same general nature). Others of them, however, exhibited in the midst of much rough-and-tumble fighting andbuffoonery, a slight thread of dramatic action. Their characters graduallycame to be a conventional set, partly famous figures of popular tradition, such as St. George, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, and the Green Dragon. Otheroffshoots of the folk-play were the 'mummings' and 'disguisings, 'collective names for many forms of processions, shows, and otherentertainments, such as, among the upper classes, that precursor of theElizabethan Mask in which a group of persons in disguise, invited oruninvited, attended a formal dancing party. In the later part of the MiddleAges, also, there were the secular pageants, spectacular displays (ratherdifferent from those of the twentieth century) given on such occasions aswhen a king or other person of high rank made formal entry into a town. They consisted of an elaborate scenic background set up near the city gateor on the street, with figures from allegorical or traditional history whoengaged in some pantomime or declamation, but with very little dramaticdialog, or none. 

TROPES, LITURGICAL PLAYS, AND MYSTERY PLAYS. But all these forms, thoughthey were not altogether without later influence, were very minor affairs, and the real drama of the Middle Ages grew up, without design and by themere nature of things, from the regular services of the Church. 

We must try in the first place to realize clearly the conditions underwhich the church service, the mass, was conducted during all the medievalcenturies. We should picture to ourselves congregations of persons for themost part grossly ignorant, of unquestioning though very superficial faith, and of emotions easily aroused to fever heat. Of the Latin words of theservice they understood nothing; and of the Bible story they had only avery general impression. It was necessary, therefore, that the serviceshould be given a strongly spectacular and emotional character, and to thisend no effort was spared. The great cathedrals and churches were much thefinest buildings of the time, spacious with lofty pillars and shadowyrecesses, rich in sculptured stone and in painted windows that cast on thewalls and pavements soft and glowing patterns of many colors and shiftingforms. The service itself was in great part musical, the confident notes ofthe full choir joining with the resonant organ-tones; and after all therest the richly robed priests and ministrants passed along the aisles instately processions enveloped in fragrant clouds of incense. That the eyeif not the ear of the spectator, also, might catch some definite knowledge, the priests as they read the Bible stories sometimes displayed paintedrolls which vividly pictured the principal events of the day's lesson. 

Still, however, a lack was strongly felt, and at last, accidentally andslowly, began the process of dramatizing the services. First, inevitably, to be so treated was the central incident of Christian faith, the story ofChrist's resurrection. The earliest steps were very simple. First, duringthe ceremonies on Good Friday, the day when Christ was crucified, the crosswhich stood all the year above the altar, bearing the Savior's figure, wastaken down and laid beneath the altar, a dramatic symbol of the Death andBurial; and two days later, on 'the third day' of the Bible phraseology, that is on Easter Sunday, as the story of the Resurrection was chanted bythe choir, the cross was uncovered and replaced, amid the rejoicings of thecongregation. Next, and before the Norman Conquest, the Gospel dialogbetween the angel and the three Marys at the tomb of Christ came sometimesto be chanted by the choir in those responses which are called 'tropes':'Whom seek ye in the sepulcher, O Christians ?' 'Jesus of Nazareth thecrucified, O angel. ' 'He is not here; he has arisen as he said. Go, announce that he has risen from the sepulcher. ' After this a littledramatic action was introduced almost as a matter of course. One priestdressed in white robes sat, to represent the angel, by one of thesquare-built tombs near the junction of nave and transept, and threeothers, personating the Marys, advanced slowly toward him while theychanted their portion of the same dialog. As the last momentous words ofthe angel died away a jubilant 'Te Deum' burst from, organ and choir, andevery member of the congregation exulted, often with sobs, in the greattriumph which brought salvation to every Christian soul. 

Little by little, probably, as time passed, this Easter scene was furtherenlarged, in part by additions from the closing incidents of the Savior'slife. A similar treatment, too, was being given to the Christmas scene, still more humanly beautiful, of his birth in the manger, and occasionallythe two scenes might be taken from their regular places in the service, combined, and presented at any season of the year. Other Biblical scenes, as well, came to be enacted, and, further, there were added stories fromChristian tradition, such as that of Antichrist, and, on their particulardays, the lives of Christian saints. Thus far these compositions are calledLiturgical Plays, because they formed, in general, a part of the churchservice (liturgy). But as some of them were united into extended groups andas the interest of the congregation deepened, the churches began to seemtoo small and inconvenient, the excited audiences forgot the properreverence, and the performances were transferred to the churchyard, andthen, when the gravestones proved troublesome, to the market place, thevillage-green, or any convenient field. By this time the people had ceasedto be patient with the unintelligible Latin, and it was replaced at first, perhaps, and in part, by French, but finally by English; though probablyverse was always retained as more appropriate than prose to the sacredsubjects. Then, the religious spirit yielding inevitably in part to that ofmerrymaking, minstrels and mountebanks began to flock to the celebrations;and regular fairs, even, grew up about them. Gradually, too, the priestslost their hold even on the plays themselves; skilful actors from among thelaymen began to take many of the parts; and at last in some towns thetrade-guilds, or unions of the various handicrafts, which had securedcontrol of the town governments, assumed entire charge. 

These changes, very slowly creeping in, one by one, had come about in mostplaces by the beginning of the fourteenth century. In 1311 a new impetuswas given to the whole ceremony by the establishment of the late springfestival of Corpus Christi, a celebration of the doctrine oftransubstantiation. On this occasion, or sometimes on some other festival, it became customary for the guilds to present an extended series of theplays, a series which together contained the essential substance of theChristian story, and therefore of the Christian faith. The Church generallystill encouraged attendance, and not only did all the townspeople joinwholeheartedly, but from all the country round the peasants flocked in. Onone occasion the Pope promised the remission of a thousand days ofpurgatory to all persons who should be present at the Chester plays, and tothis exemption the bishop of Chester added sixty days more. 

The list of plays thus presented commonly included: The Fall of Lucifer;the Creation of the World and the Fall of Adam; Noah and the Flood; Abrahamand Isaac and the promise of Christ's coming; a Procession of the Prophets, also foretelling Christ; the main events of the Gospel story, with someadditions from Christian tradition; and the Day of Judgment. The longestcycle now known, that at York, contained, when fully developed, fiftyplays, or perhaps even more. Generally each play was presented by a singleguild (though sometimes two or three guilds or two or three plays might becombined), and sometimes, though not always, there was a special fitness inthe assignment, as when the watermen gave the play of Noah's Ark or thebakers that of the Last Supper. In this connected form the plays are calledthe Mystery or Miracle Cycles. [Footnote: 'Miracle' was the medieval wordin England; 'Mystery' has been taken by recent scholars from the medievalFrench usage. It is not connected with our usual word 'mystery, ' butpossibly is derived from the Latin 'ministerium, ' 'function, ' which was thename applied to the trade-guild as an organization and from which our title'Mr. ' also comes. ] In many places, however, detached plays, or groups ofplays smaller than the full cycles, continued to be presented at one seasonor another. 

Each cycle as a whole, it will be seen, has a natural epic unity, centeringabout the majestic theme of the spiritual history and the final judgment ofall Mankind. But unity both of material and of atmosphere suffers not onlyfrom the diversity among the separate plays but also from the violentintrusion of the comedy and the farce which the coarse taste of theaudience demanded. Sometimes, in the later period, altogether original andvery realistic scenes from actual English life were added, like the veryclever but very coarse parody on the Nativity play in the 'Towneley' cycle. More often comic treatment was given to the Bible scenes and charactersthemselves. Noah's wife, for example, came regularly to be presented as ashrew, who would not enter the ark until she had been beaten intosubmission; and Herod always appears as a blustering tyrant, whose famestill survives in a proverb of Shakspere's coinage--'to out-Herod Herod. '

The manner of presentation of the cycles varied much in different towns. Sometimes the entire cycle was still given, like the detached plays, at asingle spot, the market-place or some other central square; but often, toaccommodate the great crowds, there were several 'stations' at convenientintervals. In the latter case each play might remain all day at aparticular station and be continuously repeated as the crowd moved slowlyby; but more often it was the, spectators who remained, and the plays, mounted on movable stages, the 'pageant'-wagons, were drawn in turn by theguild-apprentices from one station to another. When the audience wasstationary, the common people stood in the square on all sides of thestage, while persons of higher rank or greater means were seated ontemporary wooden scaffolds or looked down from the windows of the adjacenthouses. In the construction of the 'pageant' all the little that waspossible was done to meet the needs of the presentation. Below the mainfloor, or stage, was the curtained dressing-room of the actors; and whenthe play required, on one side was attached 'Hell-Mouth, ' a great andhorrible human head, whence issued flames and fiendish cries, often thefiends themselves, and into which lost sinners were violently hurled. Onthe stage the scenery was necessarily very simple. A small raised platformor pyramid might represent Heaven, where God the Father was seated, andfrom which as the action required the angels came down; a single tree mightindicate the Garden of Eden; and a doorway an entire house. In partialcompensation the costumes were often elaborate, with all the finery of thechurch wardrobe and much of those of the wealthy citizens. The expenseaccounts of the guilds, sometimes luckily preserved, furnish manypicturesque and amusing items, such as these: 'Four pair of angels' wings, 2 shillings and 8 pence. ' 'For mending of hell head, 6 pence. ' 'Item, linkfor setting the world on fire. ' Apparently women never acted; men and boystook the women's parts. All the plays of the cycle were commonly performedin a single day, beginning, at the first station, perhaps as early as fiveo'clock in the morning; but sometimes three days or even more wereemployed. To the guilds the giving of the plays was a very serious matter. Often each guild had a 'pageant-house' where it stored its 'properties, 'and a pageant-master who trained the actors and imposed substantial fineson members remiss in coöperation. 

We have said that the plays were always composed in verse. The stanza formsemployed differ widely even within the same cycle, since the single playswere very diverse in both authorship and dates. The quality of the verse, generally mediocre at the outset, has often suffered much in transmissionfrom generation to generation. In other respects also there are greatcontrasts; sometimes the feeling and power of a scene are admirable, revealing an author of real ability, sometimes there is only crude andwooden amateurishness. The medieval lack of historic sense gives to all theplays the setting of the authors' own times; Roman officers appear asfeudal knights; and all the heathens (including the Jews) are Saracens, worshippers of 'Mahound' and 'Termagaunt'; while the good characters, however long they may really have lived before the Christian era, swearstoutly by St. John and St. Paul and the other medieval Christiandivinities. The frank coarseness of the plays is often merely disgusting, and suggests how superficial, in most cases, was the medieval religioussense. With no thought of incongruity, too, these writers brought God theFather onto the stage in bodily form, and then, attempting in all sincerityto show him reverence, gilded his face and put into his mouth long speechesof exceedingly tedious declamation. The whole emphasis, as generally in thereligion of the times, was on the fear of hell rather than on the love ofrighteousness. Yet in spite of everything grotesque and inconsistent, theplays no doubt largely fulfilled their religious purpose and exercised onthe whole an elevating influence. The humble submission of the boy Isaac tothe will of God and of his earthly father, the yearning devotion of Marythe mother of Jesus, and the infinite love and pity of the tortured Christhimself, must have struck into even callous hearts for at least a littletime some genuine consciousness of the beauty and power of the finer andhigher life. A literary form which supplied much of the religious andartistic nourishment of half a continent for half a thousand years cannotbe lightly regarded or dismissed. 

THE MORALITY PLAYS. The Mystery Plays seem to have reached their greatestpopularity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the dawning lightof the Renaissance and the modern spirit they gradually waned, though inexceptional places and in special revivals they did not altogether cease tobe given until the seventeenth century. On the Continent of Europe, indeed, they still survive, after a fashion, in a single somewhat modernized form, the celebrated Passion Play of Oberammergau. In England by the end of thefifteenth century they had been for the most part replaced by a kindredspecies which had long been growing up beside them, namely the MoralityPlays. 

The Morality Play probably arose in part from the desire of religiouswriters to teach the principles of Christian living in a more direct andcompact fashion than was possible through the Bible stories of theMysteries. In its strict form the Morality Play was a dramatized moralallegory. It was in part an offshoot from the Mysteries, in some of whichthere had appeared among the actors abstract allegorical figures, eithergood or bad, such as The Seven Deadly Sins, Contemplation, andRaise-Slander. In the Moralities the majority of the characters are of thissort--though not to the exclusion of supernatural persons such as God andthe Devil--and the hero is generally a type-figure standing for allMankind. For the control of the hero the two definitely opposing groups ofVirtues and Vices contend; the commonest type of Morality presents in briefglimpses the entire story of the hero's life, that is of the life of everyman. It shows how he yields to temptation and lives for the most part inreckless sin, but at last in spite of all his flippancy and folly is savedby Perseverance and Repentance, pardoned through God's mercy, and assuredof salvation. As compared with the usual type of Mystery plays theMoralities had for the writers this advantage, that they allowed someindependence in the invention of the story; and how powerful they might bemade in the hands of a really gifted author has been finely demonstrated inour own time by the stage-revival of the best of them, 'Everyman' (which isprobably a translation from a Dutch original). In most cases, however, thespirit of medieval allegory proved fatal, the genuinely abstract charactersare mostly shadowy and unreal, and the speeches of the Virtues are extremeexamples of intolerable sanctimonious declamation. Against this tendency, on the other hand, the persistent instinct for realism provided a partialantidote; the Vices are often very lifelike rascals, abstract only in name. In these cases the whole plays become vivid studies in contemporary lowlife, largely human and interesting except for their prolixity and thecoarseness which they inherited from the Mysteries and multiplied on theirown account. During the Reformation period, in the early sixteenth century, the character of the Moralities, more strictly so called, underwentsomething of a change, and they were--sometimes made the vehicle forreligious argument, especially by Protestants. 

THE INTERLUDES. Early in the sixteenth century, the Morality in its turnwas largely superseded by another sort of play called the Interlude. Butjust as in the case of the Mystery and the Morality, the Interludedeveloped out of the Morality, and the two cannot always be distinguished, some single plays being distinctly described by the authors as 'MoralInterludes. ' In the Interludes the realism of the Moralities became stillmore pronounced, so that the typical Interlude is nothing more than acoarse farce, with no pretense at religious or ethical meaning. The nameInterlude denotes literally 'a play between, ' but the meaning intended(between whom or what) is uncertain. The plays were given sometimes in thehalls of nobles and gentlemen, either when banquets were in progress or onother festival occasions; sometimes before less select audiences in thetown halls or on village greens. The actors were sometimes strollingcompanies of players, who might be minstrels 'or rustics, and weresometimes also retainers of the great nobles, allowed to practice theirdramatic ability on tours about the country when they were not needed fortheir masters' entertainment. In the Interlude-Moralities and Interludesfirst appears _The_ Vice, a rogue who sums up in himself all the Vicesof the older Moralities and serves as the buffoon. One of his most popularexploits was to belabor the Devil about the stage with a wooden dagger, ahabit which took a great hold on the popular imagination, as numerousreferences in later literature testify. Transformed by time, the Viceappears in the Elizabethan drama, and thereafter, as the clown. 

THE LATER INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA. The various dramatic forms fromthe tenth century to the middle of the sixteenth at which we have thushastily glanced--folk-plays, mummings and disguisings, secular pageants, Mystery plays, Moralities, and Interludes--have little but a historicalimportance. But besides demonstrating the persistence of the popular demandfor drama, they exerted a permanent influence in that they formed certainstage traditions which were to modify or largely control the great drama ofthe Elizabethan period and to some extent of later times. Among thesetraditions were the disregard for unity, partly of action, but especiallyof time and place; the mingling of comedy with even the intensest scenes oftragedy; the nearly complete lack of stage scenery, with a resultantwillingness in the audience to make the largest possible imaginativeassumptions; the presence of certain stock figures, such as the clown; andthe presentation of women's parts by men and boys. The plays, therefore, must be reckoned with in dramatic history. 

CHAPTER V

PERIOD IV. THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REIGN OFELIZABETH [Footnote: George Eliot's 'Romola' gives one of the best picturesof the spirit of the Renaissance in Italy. Tennyson's 'Queen Mary, ' thoughit is weak as a drama, presents clearly some of the conditions of theReformation period in England. ]

THE RENAISSANCE. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are the period ofthe European Renaissance or New Birth, one of the three or four greattransforming movements of European history. This impulse by which themedieval society of scholasticism, feudalism, and chivalry was to be madeover into what we call the modern world came first from Italy. Italy, likethe rest of the Roman Empire, had been overrun and conquered in the fifthcentury by the barbarian Teutonic tribes, but the devastation had been lesscomplete there than in the more northern lands, and there, even more, perhaps, than in France, the bulk of the people remained Latin in blood andin character. Hence it resulted that though the Middle Ages were in Italy aperiod of terrible political anarchy, yet Italian culture recovered farmore rapidly than that of the northern nations, whom the Italians continueddown to the modern period to regard contemptuously as still merebarbarians. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, further, theItalians had become intellectually one of the keenest races whom the worldhas ever known, though in morals they were sinking to almost incrediblecorruption. Already in fourteenth century Italy, therefore, the movementfor a much fuller and freer intellectual life had begun, and we have seenthat by Petrarch and Boccaccio something of this spirit was transmitted toChaucer. In England Chaucer was followed by the medievalizing fifteenthcentury, but in Italy there was no such interruption. 

The Renaissance movement first received definite direction from therediscovery and study of Greek literature, which clearly revealed theunbounded possibilities of life to men who had been groping dissatisfiedwithin the now narrow limits of medieval thought. Before Chaucer was deadthe study of Greek, almost forgotten in Western Europe during the MiddleAges, had been renewed in Italy, and it received a still further impulsewhen at the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 Greek scholarsand manuscripts were scattered to the West. It is hard for us to-day torealize the meaning for the men of the fifteenth century of this revivedknowledge of the life and thought of the Greek race. The medieval Church, at first merely from the brutal necessities of a period of anarchy, had forthe most part frowned on the joy and beauty of life, permitting pleasure, indeed, to the laity, but as a thing half dangerous, and declaring thatthere was perfect safety only within the walls of the nominally asceticChurch itself. The intellectual life, also, nearly restricted to priestsand monks, had been formalized and conventionalized, until in spite of thekeenness of its methods and the brilliancy of many of its scholars, it hadbecome largely barren and unprofitable. The whole sphere of knowledge hadbeen subjected to the mere authority of the Bible and of a few great mindsof the past, such as Aristotle. All questions were argued and decided onthe basis of their assertions, which had often become wholly inadequate andwere often warped into grotesquely impossible interpretations andapplications. Scientific investigation was almost entirely stifled, andprogress was impossible. The whole field of religion and knowledge hadbecome largely stagnant under an arbitrary despotism. 

To the minds which were being paralyzed under this system, Greek literaturebrought the inspiration for which they longed. For it was the literature ofa great and brilliant people who, far from attempting to make a divorcewithin man's nature, had aimed to 'see life steadily and see it whole, 'who, giving free play to all their powers, had found in pleasure and beautysome of the most essential constructive forces, and had embodied beauty inworks of literature and art where the significance of the whole spirituallife was more splendidly suggested than in the achievements of any, oralmost any, other period. The enthusiasm, therefore, with which theItalians turned to the study of Greek literature and Greek life wasboundless, and it constantly found fresh nourishment. Every year restoredfrom forgotten recesses of libraries or from the ruins of Roman villasanother Greek author or volume or work of art, and those which had neverbeen lost were reinterpreted with much deeper insight. Aristotle was againvitalized, and Plato's noble idealistic philosophy was once moreappreciatively studied and understood. In the light of this new revelationLatin literature, also, which had never ceased to be almost superstitiouslystudied, took on a far greater human significance. Vergil and Cicero wereregarded no longer as mysterious prophets from a dimly imagined past, butas real men of flesh and blood, speaking out of experiences remote in timefrom the present but no less humanly real. The word 'human, ' indeed, becamethe chosen motto of the Renaissance scholars; 'humanists' was the titlewhich they applied to themselves as to men for whom 'nothing human waswithout appeal. ' New creative enthusiasm, also, and magnificent actual newcreation, followed the discovery of the old treasures, creation inliterature and all the arts; culminating particularly in the earlysixteenth century in the greatest group of painters whom any country hasever seen, Lionardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. In Italy, to besure, the light of the Renaissance had its palpable shadow; in breakingaway from the medieval bondage into the unhesitating enjoyment of allpleasure, the humanists too often overleaped all restraints and plungedinto wild excess, often into mere sensuality. Hence the Italian Renaissanceis commonly called Pagan, and hence when young English nobles began totravel to Italy to drink at the fountain head of the new inspirationmoralists at home protested with much reason against the ideas and habitswhich many of them brought back with their new clothes and flaunted asevidences of intellectual emancipation. History, however, shows no greatprogressive movement unaccompanied by exaggerations and extravagances. 

The Renaissance, penetrating northward, past first from Italy to France, but as early as the middle of the fifteenth century English students werefrequenting the Italian universities. Soon the study of Greek wasintroduced into England, also, first at Oxford; and it was cultivated withsuch good results that when, early in the sixteenth century, the greatDutch student and reformer, Erasmus, unable through poverty to reach Italy, came to Oxford instead, he found there a group of accomplished scholars andgentlemen whose instruction and hospitable companionship aroused hisunbounded delight. One member of this group was the fine-spirited JohnColet, later Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, who was to bring newlife into the secondary education of English boys by the establishment ofSt. Paul's Grammar School, based on the principle of kindness in place ofthe merciless severity of the traditional English system. 

Great as was the stimulus of literary culture, it was only one of severalinfluences that made up the Renaissance. While Greek was speaking sopowerfully to the cultivated class, other forces were contributing torevolutionize life as a whole and all men's outlook upon it. The inventionof printing, multiplying books in unlimited quantities where before therehad been only a few manuscripts laboriously copied page by page, absolutelytransformed all the processes of knowledge and almost of thought. Not muchlater began the vast expansion of the physical world through geographicalexploration. Toward the end of the fifteenth century the Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama, finishing the work of Diaz, discovered the sea route toIndia around the Cape of Good Hope. A few years earlier Columbus hadrevealed the New World and virtually proved that the earth is round, aproof scientifically completed a generation after him when Magellan's shipactually circled the globe. Following close after Columbus, the Cabots, Italian-born, but naturalized Englishmen, discovered North America, and fora hundred years the rival ships of Spain, England, and Portugal filled thewaters of the new West and the new East. In America handfuls of Spanishadventurers conquered great empires and despatched home annual treasurefleets of gold and silver, which the audacious English sea-captains, halfexplorers and half pirates, soon learned to intercept and plunder. Themarvels which were constantly being revealed as actual facts seemed no lesswonderful than the extravagances of medieval romance; and it was scarcelymore than a matter of course that men should search in the new strangelands for the fountain of perpetual youth and the philosopher's stone. Thesupernatural beings and events of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' could scarcelyseem incredible to an age where incredulity was almost unknown because itwas impossible to set a bound how far any one might reasonably believe. Butthe horizon of man's expanded knowledge was not to be limited even to hisown earth. About the year 1540, the Polish Copernicus opened a stillgrander realm of speculation (not to be adequately possessed for severalcenturies) by the announcement that our world is not the center of theuniverse, but merely one of the satellites of its far-superior sun. 

The whole of England was profoundly stirred by the Renaissance to a new andmost energetic life, but not least was this true of the Court, where for atime literature was very largely to center. Since the old nobility hadmostly perished in the wars, both Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor line, and his son, Henry VIII, adopted the policy of replacing it with able andwealthy men of the middle class, who would be strongly devoted tothemselves. The court therefore became a brilliant and crowded circle ofunscrupulous but unusually adroit statesmen, and a center of lavishentertainments and display. Under this new aristocracy the rigidity of thefeudal system was relaxed, and life became somewhat easier for all thedependent classes. Modern comforts, too, were largely introduced, and withthem the Italian arts; Tudor architecture, in particular, exhibited theoriginality and splendor of an energetic and self-confident age. Further, both Henries, though perhaps as essentially selfish and tyrannical asalmost any of their predecessors, were politic and far-sighted, and theytook a genuine pride in the prosperity of their kingdom. They encouragedtrade; and in the peace which was their best gift the well-being of thenation as a whole increased by leaps and bounds. 

THE REFORMATION. Lastly, the literature of the sixteenth century and laterwas profoundly influenced by that religious result of the Renaissance whichwe know as the Reformation. While in Italy the new impulses were chieflyturned into secular and often corrupt channels, in the Teutonic lands theydeeply stirred the Teutonic conscience. In 1517 Martin Luther, protestingagainst the unprincipled and flippant practices that were disgracingreligion, began the breach between Catholicism, with its insistence on thesupremacy of the Church, and Protestantism, asserting the independence ofthe individual judgment. In England Luther's action revived the spirit ofLollardism, which had nearly been crushed out, and in spite of a minoritydevoted to the older system, the nation as a whole began to move rapidlytoward change. Advocates of radical revolution thrust themselves forward inlarge numbers, while cultured and thoughtful men, including the Oxfordgroup, indulged the too ideal hope of a gradual and peaceful reform. 

The actual course of the religious movement was determined largely by thepersonal and political projects of Henry VIII. Conservative at the outset, Henry even attacked Luther in a pamphlet, which won from the Pope forhimself and his successors the title 'Defender of the Faith. ' But when thePope finally refused Henry's demand for the divorce from Katharine ofSpain, which would make possible a marriage with Anne Boleyn, Henry angrilythrew off the papal authority and declared himself the Supreme Head of theChurch in England, thus establishing the separate English (Anglican, Episcopal) church. In the brief reign of Henry's son, Edward VI, theseparation was made more decisive; under Edward's sister, Mary, Catholicismwas restored; but the last of Henry's children, Elizabeth, coming to thethrone in 1558, gave the final victory to the English communion. Under allthese sovereigns (to complete our summary of the movement) the more radicalProtestants, Puritans as they came to be called, were active in agitation, undeterred by frequent cruel persecution and largely influenced by thecorresponding sects in Germany and by the Presbyterianism established byCalvin in Geneva and later by John Knox in Scotland. Elizabeth's skilfulmanagement long kept the majority of the Puritans within the EnglishChurch, where they formed an important element, working for simplerpractices and introducing them in congregations which they controlled. Buttoward the end of the century and of Elizabeth's reign, feeling grewtenser, and groups of the Puritans, sometimes under persecution, definitelyseparated themselves from the State Church and established varioussectarian bodies. Shortly after 1600, in particular, the Independents, orCongregationalists, founded in Holland the church which was soon tocolonize New England. At home, under James I, the breach widened, until thenation was divided into two hostile camps, with results most radicallydecisive for literature. But for the present we must return to the earlypart of the sixteenth century. 

SIR THOMAS MORE AND HIS 'UTOPIA. ' Out of the confused and bitter strife ofchurches and parties, while the outcome was still uncertain, issued a greatmass of controversial writing which does not belong to literature. A fewworks, however, more or less directly connected with the religiousagitation, cannot be passed by. 

One of the most attractive and finest spirits of the reign of Henry VIIIwas Sir Thomas More. A member of the Oxford group in its second generation, a close friend of Erasmus, his house a center of humanism, he became evenmore conspicuous in public life. A highly successful lawyer, he was rapidlyadvanced by Henry VIII in court and in national affairs, until on the fallof Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 he was appointed, much against his will, to thehighest office open to a subject, that of Lord Chancellor (head of thejudicial system). A devoted Catholic, he took a part which must have beenrevolting to himself in the torturing and burning of Protestants; but hisabsolute loyalty to conscience showed itself to better purpose when in thealmost inevitable reverse of fortune he chose harsh imprisonment and deathrather than to take the formal oath of allegiance to the king in oppositionto the Pope. His quiet jests on the scaffold suggest the never-failingsense of humor which was one sign of the completeness and perfect poise ofhis character; while the hair-shirt which he wore throughout his life andthe severe penances to which he subjected himself reveal strikingly how theexpression of the deepest convictions of the best natures may be determinedby inherited and outworn modes of thought. 

More's most important work was his 'Utopia, ' published in 1516. The name, which is Greek, means No-Place, and the book is one of the most famous ofthat series of attempts to outline an imaginary ideal condition of societywhich begins with Plato's 'Republic' and has continued to our own time. 'Utopia, ' broadly considered, deals primarily with the question which iscommon to most of these books and in which both ancient Greece and Europeof the Renaissance took a special interest, namely the question of therelation of the State and the individual. It consists of two parts. In thefirst there is a vivid picture of the terrible evils which England wassuffering through war, lawlessness, the wholesale and foolish applicationof the death penalty, the misery of the peasants, the absorption of theland by the rich, and the other distressing corruptions in Church andState. In the second part, in contrast to all this, a certain imaginaryRaphael Hythlodaye describes the customs of Utopia, a remote island in theNew World, to which chance has carried him. To some of the ideals thus setforth More can scarcely have expected the world ever to attain; and some ofthem will hardly appeal to the majority of readers of any period; but inthe main he lays down an admirable program for human progress, no smallpart of which has been actually realized in the four centuries which havesince elapsed. 

The controlling purpose in the life of the Utopians is to secure both thewelfare of the State and the full development of the individual under theascendancy of his higher faculties. The State is democratic, socialistic, and communistic, and the will of the individual is subordinated to theadvantage of all, but the real interests of each and all are recognized asidentical. Every one is obliged to work, but not to overwork; six hours aday make the allotted period; and the rest of the time is free, but withplentiful provision of lectures and other aids for the education of mindand spirit. All the citizens are taught the fundamental art, that ofagriculture, and in addition each has a particular trade or profession ofhis own. There is no surfeit, excess, or ostentation. Clothing is made fordurability, and every one's garments are precisely like those of every oneelse, except that there is a difference between those of men and women andthose of married and unmarried persons. The sick are carefully tended, butthe victims of hopeless or painful disease are mercifully put to death ifthey so desire. Crime is naturally at a minimum, but those who persist init are made slaves (not executed, for why should the State be deprived oftheir services?). Detesting war, the Utopians make a practice of hiringcertain barbarians who, conveniently, are their neighbors, to do whateverfighting is necessary for their defense, and they win if possible, not bythe revolting slaughter of pitched battles, but by the assassination oftheir enemies' generals. In especial, there is complete religioustoleration, except for atheism, and except for those who urge theiropinions with offensive violence. 

'Utopia' was written and published in Latin; among the multitude oftranslations into many languages the earliest in English, in which it isoften reprinted, is that of Ralph Robinson, made in 1551. 

THE ENGLISH BIBLE AND BOOKS OF DEVOTION. To this century of religiouschange belongs the greater part of the literary history of the EnglishBible and of the ritual books of the English Church. Since the suppressionof the Wiclifite movement the circulation of the Bible in English had beenforbidden, but growing Protestantism insistently revived the demand for it. The attitude of Henry VIII and his ministers was inconsistent anduncertain, reflecting their own changing points of view. In 1526 WilliamTyndale, a zealous Protestant controversialist then in exile in Germany, published an excellent English translation of the New Testament. Based onthe proper authority, the Greek original, though with influence from Wiclifand from the Latin and German (Luther's) version, this has been directly orindirectly the starting-point for all subsequent English translationsexcept those of the Catholics. 

Ten years later Tyndale suffered martyrdom, but in 1535 Miles Coverdale, later bishop of Exeter, issued in Germany a translation of the whole Biblein a more gracious style than Tyndale's, and to this the king and theestablished clergy were now ready to give license and favor. Still twoyears later appeared a version compounded of those of Tyndale and Coverdaleand called, from the fictitious name of its editor, the 'Matthew' Bible. In1539, under the direction of Archbishop Cranmer, Coverdale issued a revisededition, officially authorized for use in churches; its version of thePsalms still stands as the Psalter of the English Church. In 1560 EnglishPuritan refugees at Geneva put forth the 'Geneva Bible, ' especiallyaccurate as a translation, which long continued the accepted version forprivate use among all parties and for all purposes among the Puritans, inboth Old and New England. Eight years later, under Archbishop Parker, therewas issued in large volume form and for use in churches the 'Bishops'Bible, ' so named because the majority of its thirteen editors were bishops. This completes the list of important translations down to those of 1611 and1881, of which we shall speak in the proper place. The Book of CommonPrayer, now used in the English Church coordinately with Bible and Psalter, took shape out of previous primers of private devotion, litanies, andhymns, mainly as the work of Archbishop Cranmer during the reign of EdwardVI. 

Of the influence of these translations of the Bible on English literatureit is impossible to speak too strongly. They rendered the whole nationfamiliar for centuries with one of the grandest and most varied of allcollections of books, which was adopted with ardent patriotic enthusiasm asone of the chief national possessions, and which has served as an unfailingstorehouse of poetic and dramatic allusions for all later writers. ModernEnglish literature as a whole is permeated and enriched to an incalculabledegree with the substance and spirit of the English Bible. 

WYATT AND SURREY AND THE NEW POETRY. In the literature of fine art also thenew beginning was made during the reign of Henry VIII. This was through theintroduction by Sir Thomas Wyatt of the Italian fashion of lyric poetry. Wyatt, a man of gentle birth, entered Cambridge at the age of twelve andreceived his degree of M. A. Seven years later. His mature life was that ofa courtier to whom the king's favor brought high appointments, with suchvicissitudes of fortune, including occasional imprisonments, as formed atthat time a common part of the courtier's lot. Wyatt, however, was not amerely worldly person, but a Protestant seemingly of high and somewhatsevere moral character. He died in 1542 at the age of thirty-nine of afever caught as he was hastening, at the king's command, to meet andwelcome the Spanish ambassador. 

On one of his missions to the Continent, Wyatt, like Chaucer, had visitedItaly. Impressed with the beauty of Italian verse and the contrastingrudeness of that of contemporary England, he determined to remodel thelatter in the style of the former. Here a brief historical retrospect isnecessary. The Italian poetry of the sixteenth century had itself beenoriginally an imitation, namely of the poetry of Provence in SouthernFrance. There, in the twelfth century, under a delightful climate and in aregion of enchanting beauty, had arisen a luxurious civilization whosepoets, the troubadours, many of them men of noble birth, had carried to thefurthest extreme the woman-worship of medieval chivalry and had enshrinedit in lyric poetry of superb and varied sweetness and beauty. In thishighly conventionalized poetry the lover is forever sighing for his lady, acorrespondingly obdurate being whose favor is to be won only by years ofthe most unqualified and unreasoning devotion. From Provence, Italy hadtaken up the style, and among the other forms for its expression, in thetwelfth and thirteenth centuries, had devised the poem of a singlefourteen-line stanza which we call the sonnet. The whole movement had foundits great master in Petrarch, who, in hundreds of poems, mostly sonnets, ofperfect beauty, had sung the praises and cruelty of his nearly imaginaryLaura. 

It was this highly artificial but very beautiful poetic fashion which Wyattdeliberately set about to introduce into England. The nature and success ofhis innovation can be summarized in a few definite statements. 

1. Imitating Petrarch, Wyatt nearly limits himself as regards substance tothe treatment of the artificial love-theme, lamenting the unkindness ofladies who very probably never existed and whose favor in any case heprobably regarded very lightly; yet even so, he often strikes a manlyEnglish note of independence, declaring that if the lady continuesobstinate he will not die for her love. 

2. Historically much the most important feature of Wyatt's experiment wasthe introduction of the sonnet, a very substantial service indeed; for notonly did this form, like the love-theme, become by far the most popular oneamong English lyric poets of the next two generations, setting a fashionwhich was carried to an astonishing excess; but it is the only artificialform of foreign origin which has ever been really adopted and naturalizedin English, and it still remains the best instrument for the terseexpression of a single poetic thought. Wyatt, it should be observed, generally departs from the Petrarchan rime-scheme, on the wholeunfortunately, by substituting a third quatrain for the first four lines ofthe sestet. That is, while Petrarch's rime-arrangement is either _a b b aa b b a c d c d c d_, or _a b b a a b b a c d e c d e_, Wyatt's isusually _a b b a a b b a c d d c e e_. 

3. In his attempted reformation of English metrical irregularity Wyatt, inhis sonnets, shows only the uncertain hand of a beginner. He generallysecures an equal number of syllables in each line, but he often merelycounts them off on his fingers, wrenching the accents all awry, and oftenviolently forcing the rimes as well. In his songs, however, which are muchmore numerous than the sonnets, he attains delightful fluency and melody. His 'My Lute, Awake, ' and 'Forget Not Yet' are still counted among thenotable English lyrics. 

4. A particular and characteristic part of the conventional Italian lyricapparatus which Wyatt transplanted was the 'conceit. ' A conceit may bedefined as an exaggerated figure of speech or play on words in whichintellectual cleverness figures at least as largely as real emotion andwhich is often dragged out to extremely complicated lengths of literalapplication. An example is Wyatt's declaration (after Petrarch) that hislove, living in his heart, advances to his face and there encamps, displaying his banner (which merely means that the lover blushes with hisemotion). In introducing the conceit Wyatt fathered the most conspicuous ofthe superficial general features which were to dominate English poetry fora century to come. 

5. Still another, minor, innovation of Wyatt was the introduction intoEnglish verse of the Horatian 'satire' (moral poem, reflecting on currentfollies) in the form of three metrical letters to friends. In these themeter is the _terza rima_ of Dante. 

Wyatt's work was continued by his poetical disciple and successor, HenryHoward, who, as son of the Duke of Norfolk, held the courtesy title of Earlof Surrey. A brilliant though wilful representative of Tudor chivalry, anddistinguished in war, Surrey seems to have occupied at Court almost thesame commanding position as Sir Philip Sidney in the following generation. His career was cut short in tragically ironical fashion at the age ofthirty by the plots of his enemies and the dying bloodthirstiness of KingHenry, which together led to his execution on a trumped-up charge oftreason. It was only one of countless brutal court crimes, but it seems themore hateful because if the king had died a single day earlier Surrey couldhave been saved. 

Surrey's services to poetry were two: 1. He improved on the versificationof Wyatt's sonnets, securing fluency and smoothness. 2. In a translation oftwo books of Vergil's 'Æneid' he introduced, from the Italian, pentameterblank verse, which was destined thenceforth to be the meter of Englishpoetic drama and of much of the greatest English non-dramatic poetry. Further, though his poems are less numerous than those of Wyatt, his rangeof subjects is somewhat broader, including some appreciative treatment ofexternal Nature. He seems, however, somewhat less sincere than his teacher. In his sonnets he abandoned the form followed by Wyatt and adopted (stillfrom the Italian) the one which was subsequently used by Shakspere, consisting of three independent quatrains followed, as with Wyatt, by acouplet which sums up the thought with epigrammatic force, thus: _a b a bc d c d e f e f g g_. 

Wyatt and Surrey set a fashion at Court; for some years it seems to havebeen an almost necessary accomplishment for every young noble to turn offlove poems after Italian and French models; for France too had now taken upthe fashion. These poems were generally and naturally regarded as theproperty of the Court and of the gentry, and circulated at first only inmanuscript among the author's friends; but the general public becamecurious about them, and in 1557 one of the publishers of the day, RichardTottel, securing a number of those of Wyatt, Surrey, and a few other nobleor gentle authors, published them in a little volume, which is known as'Tottel's Miscellany. ' Coming as it does in the year before the accessionof Queen Elizabeth, at the end of the comparatively barren reigns of Edwardand Mary, this book is taken by common consent as marking the beginning ofthe literature of the Elizabethan period. It was the premature predecessor, also, of a number of such anthologies which were published during thelatter half of Elizabeth's reign. 

THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD. [Footnote: Vivid pictures of the Elizabethan periodare given in Charles Kingsley's 'Westward, ho!' and in Scott's'Kenilworth. ' Scott's 'The Monastery' and 'The Abbot' deal lesssuccessfully with the same period in Scotland. ] The earlier half ofElizabeth's reign, also, though not lacking in literary effort, produced nowork of permanent importance. After the religious convulsions of half acentury time was required for the development of the internal quiet andconfidence from which a great literature could spring. At length, however, the hour grew ripe and there came the greatest outburst of creative energyin the whole history of English literature. Under Elizabeth's wise guidancethe prosperity and enthusiasm of the nation had risen to the highest pitch, and London in particular was overflowing with vigorous life. A specialstimulus of the most intense kind came from the struggle with Spain. Aftera generation of half-piratical depredations by the English seadogs againstthe Spanish treasure fleets and the Spanish settlements in America, KingPhilip, exasperated beyond all patience and urged on by a bigot's zeal forthe Catholic Church, began deliberately to prepare the Great Armada, whichwas to crush at one blow the insolence, the independence, and the religionof England. There followed several long years of breathless suspense; thenin 1588 the Armada sailed and was utterly overwhelmed in one of the mostcomplete disasters of the world's history. Thereupon the released energy ofEngland broke out exultantly into still more impetuous achievement inalmost every line of activity. The great literary period is taken by commonconsent to begin with the publication of Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar' in1579, and to end in some sense at the death of Elizabeth in 1603, though inthe drama, at least, it really continues many years longer. 

Several general characteristics of Elizabethan literature and writersshould be indicated at the outset. 1. The period has the great variety ofalmost unlimited creative force; it includes works of many kinds in bothverse and prose, and ranges in spirit from the loftiest Platonic idealismor the most delightful romance to the level of very repulsive realism. 2. It was mainly dominated, however, by the spirit of romance (above, pp. 95-96). 3. It was full also of the spirit of dramatic action, as befittedan age whose restless enterprise was eagerly extending itself to everyquarter of the globe. 4. In style it often exhibits romantic luxuriance, which sometimes takes the form of elaborate affectations of which thefavorite 'conceit' is only the most apparent. 5. It was in part a period ofexperimentation, when the proper material and limits of literary forms werebeing determined, oftentimes by means of false starts and grandiosefailures. In particular, many efforts were made to give prolonged poeticaltreatment to many subjects essentially prosaic, for example to systems oftheological or scientific thought, or to the geography of all England. 6. It continued to be largely influenced by the literature of Italy, and to aless degree by those of France and Spain. 7. The literary spirit wasall-pervasive, and the authors were men (not yet women) of almost everyclass, from distinguished courtiers, like Ralegh and Sidney, to the companyof hack writers, who starved in garrets and hung about the outskirts of thebustling taverns. 

PROSE FICTION. The period saw the beginning, among other things, of Englishprose fiction of something like the later modern type. First appeared aseries of collections of short tales chiefly translated from Italianauthors, to which tales the Italian name 'novella' (novel) was applied. Most of the separate tales are crude or amateurish and have only historicalinterest, though as a class they furnished the plots for many Elizabethandramas, including several of Shakspere's. The most important collection wasPainter's 'Palace of Pleasure, ' in 1566. The earliest original, or partlyoriginal, English prose fictions to appear were handbooks of morals andmanners in story form, and here the beginning was made by John Lyly, who isalso of some importance in the history of the Elizabethan drama. In 1578Lyly, at the age of twenty-five, came from Oxford to London, full of theenthusiasm of Renaissance learning, and evidently determined to fix himselfas a new and dazzling star in the literary sky. In this ambition heachieved a remarkable and immediate success, by the publication of a littlebook entitled 'Euphues and His Anatomie of Wit. ' 'Euphues' means 'thewell-bred man, ' and though there is a slight action, the work is mainly aseries of moralizing disquisitions (mostly rearranged from Sir ThomasNorth's translation of 'The Dial of Princes' of the Spaniard Guevara) onlove, religion, and conduct. Most influential, however, for the time-being, was Lyly's style, which is the most conspicuous English example of thelater Renaissance craze, then rampant throughout Western Europe, forrefining and beautifying the art of prose expression in a mincinglyaffected fashion. Witty, clever, and sparkling at all costs, Lyly takesespecial pains to balance his sentences and clauses antithetically, phraseagainst phrase and often word against word, sometimes emphasizing thebalance also by an exaggerated use of alliteration and assonance. Arepresentative sentence is this: 'Although there be none so ignorant thatdoth not know, neither any so impudent that will not confesse, friendshipto be the jewell of humaine joye; yet whosoever shall see this amitiegrounded upon a little affection, will soone conjecture that it shall bedissolved upon a light occasion. ' Others of Lyly's affectations arerhetorical questions, hosts of allusions to classical history, andliterature, and an unfailing succession of similes from all the reconditeknowledge that he can command, especially from the fantastic collection offables which, coming down through the Middle Ages from the Roman writerPliny, went at that time by the name of natural history and which we havealready encountered in the medieval Bestiaries. Preposterous by anyreasonable standard, Lyly's style, 'Euphuism, ' precisely hit the Courttaste of his age and became for a decade its most approved conversationaldialect. 

In literature the imitations of 'Euphues' which flourished for a while gaveway to a series of romances inaugurated by the 'Arcadia' of Sir PhilipSidney. Sidney's brilliant position for a few years as the noblestrepresentative of chivalrous ideals in the intriguing Court of Elizabeth isa matter of common fame, as is his death in 1586 at the age of thirty-twoduring the siege of Zutphen in Holland. He wrote 'Arcadia' for theamusement of his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, during a period ofenforced retirement beginning in 1580, but the book was not published untilten years later. It is a pastoral romance, in the general style of Italianand Spanish romances of the earlier part of the century. The pastoral isthe most artificial literary form in modern fiction. It may be said to havebegun in the third century B. C. With the perfectly sincere poems of theGreek Theocritus, who gives genuine expression to the life of actualSicilian shepherds. But with successive Latin, Medieval, and Renaissancewriters in verse and prose the country characters and setting had becomemere disguises, sometimes allegorical, for the expression of the very farfrom simple sentiments of the upper classes, and sometimes for their partlygenuine longing, the outgrowth of sophisticated weariness and ennui, forrural naturalness. Sidney's very complicated tale of adventures in love andwar, much longer than any of its successors, is by no means free fromartificiality, but it finely mirrors his own knightly spirit and remains apermanent English classic. Among his followers were some of the betterhack-writers of the time, who were also among the minor dramatists andpoets, especially Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge. Lodge's 'Rosalynde, ' alsomuch influenced by Lyly, is in itself a pretty story and is noteworthy asthe original of Shakspere's 'As You Like It. '

Lastly, in the concluding decade of the sixteenth century, came a series ofrealistic stories depicting chiefly, in more or less farcical spirit, thelife of the poorer classes. They belonged mostly to that class of realisticfiction which is called picaresque, from the Spanish word 'picaro, ' arogue, because it began in Spain with the 'Lazarillo de Tormes' of Diego deMendoza, in 1553, and because its heroes are knavish serving-boys orsimilar characters whose unprincipled tricks and exploits formed thesubstance of the stories. In Elizabethan England it produced nothing ofindividual note. 

EDMUND SPENSER, 1552-1599. The first really commanding figure in theElizabethan period, and one of the chief of all English poets, is EdmundSpenser. [Footnote: His name should never be spelled with a _c_. ] Bornin London in 1552, the son of a clothmaker, Spenser past from the newlyestablished Merchant Taylors' school to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as asizar, or poor student, and during the customary seven years of residencetook the degrees of B. A. And, in 1576, of M. A. At Cambridge heassimilated two of the controlling forces of his life, the moderatePuritanism of his college and Platonic idealism. Next, after a year or twowith his kinspeople in Lancashire, in the North of England, he came toLondon, hoping through literature to win high political place, and attachedhimself to the household of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, QueenElizabeth's worthless favorite. Together with Sidney, who was Leicester'snephew, he was for a while a member of a little group of students whocalled themselves 'The Areopagus' and who, like occasional otherexperimenters of the later Renaissance period, attempted to make overEnglish versification by substituting for rime and accentual meter theGreek and Latin system based on exact quantity of syllables. Spenser, however, soon outgrew this folly and in 1579 published the collection ofpoems which, as we have already said, is commonly taken as marking thebeginning of the great Elizabethan literary period, namely 'The Shepherd'sCalendar. ' This is a series of pastoral pieces (eclogues, Spenser callsthem, by the classical name) twelve in number, artificially assigned one toeach month in the year. The subjects are various--the conventionalized loveof the poet for a certain Rosalind; current religious controversies inallegory; moral questions; the state of poetry in England; and the praisesof Queen Elizabeth, whose almost incredible vanity exacted the most fulsomeflattery from every writer who hoped to win a name at her court. Thesignificance of 'The Shepherd's Calendar' lies partly in its genuinefeeling for external Nature, which contrasts strongly with the hollowconventional phrases of the poetry of the previous decade, and especiallyin the vigor, the originality, and, in some of the eclogues, the beauty, ofthe language and of the varied verse. It was at once evident that here areal poet had appeared. An interesting innovation, diversely judged at thetime and since, was Spenser's deliberate employment of rustic and archaicwords, especially of the Northern dialect, which he introduced partlybecause of their appropriateness to the imaginary characters, partly forthe sake of freshness of expression. They, like other features of the work, point forward to 'The Faerie Queene. '

In the uncertainties of court intrigue literary success did not gain forSpenser the political rewards which he was seeking, and he was obliged tocontent himself, the next year, with an appointment, which he viewed assubstantially a sentence of exile, as secretary to Lord Grey, the governorof Ireland. In Ireland, therefore, the remaining twenty years of Spenser'sshort life were for the most part spent, amid distressing scenes of Englishoppression and chronic insurrection among the native Irish. After variousactivities during several years Spenser secured a permanent home inKilcolman, a fortified tower and estate in the southern part of the island, where the romantic scenery furnished fit environment for a poet'simagination. And Spenser, able all his life to take refuge in his art fromthe crass realities of life, now produced many poems, some of them short, but among the others the immortal 'Faerie Queene. ' The first three books ofthis, his crowning achievement, Spenser, under enthusiastic encouragementfrom Ralegh, brought to London and published in 1590. The dedication is toQueen Elizabeth, to whom, indeed, as its heroine, the poem pays perhaps themost splendid compliment ever offered to any human being in verse. Sheresponded with an uncertain pension of £50 (equivalent to perhaps $1500 atthe present time), but not with the gift of political preferment which wasstill Spenser's hope; and in some bitterness of spirit he retired toIreland, where in satirical poems he proceeded to attack the vanity of theworld and the fickleness of men. His courtship and, in 1594, his marriageproduced his sonnet sequence, called 'Amoretti' (Italian for 'Love-poems'), and his 'Epithalamium, ' the most magnificent of marriage hymns in Englishand probably in world-literature; though his 'Prothalamium, ' in honor ofthe marriage of two noble sisters, is a near rival to it. 

Spenser, a zealous Protestant as well as a fine-spirited idealist, was inentire sympathy with Lord Grey's policy of stern repression of the CatholicIrish, to whom, therefore, he must have appeared merely as one of the hatedcrew of their pitiless tyrants. In 1598 he was appointed sheriff of thecounty of Cork; but a rebellion which broke out proved too strong for him, and he and his family barely escaped from the sack and destruction of histower. He was sent with despatches to the English Court and died in Londonin January, 1599, no doubt in part as a result of the hardships that he hadsuffered. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

Spenser's 'Faerie Queene' is not only one of the longest but one of thegreatest of English poems; it is also very characteristically Elizabethan. To deal with so delicate a thing by the method of mechanical analysis seemsscarcely less than profanation, but accurate criticism can proceed in noother way. 

1. _Sources and Plan_. Few poems more clearly illustrate the varietyof influences from which most great literary works result. In many respectsthe most direct source was the body of Italian romances of chivalry, especially the 'Orlando Furioso' of Ariosto, which was written in the earlypart of the sixteenth century. These romances, in turn, combine thepersonages of the medieval French epics of Charlemagne with something ofthe spirit of Arthurian romance and with a Renaissance atmosphere of magicand of rich fantastic beauty. Spenser borrows and absorbs all these thingsand moreover he imitates Ariosto closely, often merely translating wholepassages from his work. But this use of the Italian romances, further, carries with it a large employment of characters, incidents, and imageryfrom classical mythology and literature, among other things the elaboratedsimiles of the classical epics. Spenser himself is directly influenced, also, by the medieval romances. Most important of all, all these elementsare shaped to the purpose of the poem by Spenser's high moral aim, which inturn springs largely from his Platonic idealism. 

What the plan of the poem is Spenser explains in a prefatory letter to SirWalter Ralegh. The whole is a vast epic allegory, aiming, in the firstplace, to portray the virtues which make up the character of a perfectknight; an ideal embodiment, seen through Renaissance conceptions, of thebest in the chivalrous system which in Spenser's time had passed away, butto which some choice spirits still looked back with regretful admiration. As Spenser intended, twelve moral virtues of the individual character, suchas Holiness and Temperance, were to be presented, each personified in thehero of one of twelve Books; and the crowning virtue, which Spenser, inRenaissance terms, called Magnificence, and which may be interpreted asMagnanimity, was to figure as Prince (King) Arthur, nominally the centralhero of the whole poem, appearing and disappearing at frequent intervals. Spenser states in his prefatory letter that if he shall carry this firstprojected labor to a successful end he may continue it in still twelveother Books, similarly allegorizing twelve political virtues. Theallegorical form, we should hardly need to be reminded, is another heritagefrom medieval literature, but the effort to shape a perfect character, completely equipped to serve the State, was characteristically of thePlatonizing Renaissance. That the reader may never be in danger offorgetting his moral aim, Spenser fills the poem with moral observations, frequently setting them as guides at the beginning of the cantos. 

2. _The Allegory. Lack of Unity_. So complex and vast a plan couldscarcely have been worked out by any human genius in a perfect and clearunity, and besides this, Spenser, with all his high endowments, wasdecidedly weak in constructive skill. The allegory, at the outset, even inSpenser's own statement, is confused and hazy. For beyond the primary moralinterpretation, Spenser applies it in various secondary or parallel ways. In the widest sense, the entire struggle between the good and evilcharacters is to be taken as figuring forth the warfare both in theindividual soul and in the world at large between Righteousness and Sin;and in somewhat narrower senses, between Protestantism and Catholicism, andbetween England and Spain. In some places, also, it represents other eventsand aspects of European politics. Many of the single persons of the story, entering into each of these overlapping interpretations, bear double ortriple roles. Gloriana, the Fairy Queen, is abstractly Glory, but humanlyshe is Queen Elizabeth; and from other points of view Elizabeth isidentified with several of the lesser heroines. So likewise the witchDuessa is both Papal Falsehood and Mary Queen of Scots; Prince Arthur bothMagnificence and (with sorry inappropriateness) the Earl of Leicester; andothers of the characters stand with more or less consistency for suchactual persons as Philip II of Spain, Henry IV of France, and Spenser'schief, Lord Grey. In fact, in Renaissance spirit, and following Sidney's'Defense of Poesie, ' Spenser attempts to harmonize history, philosophy, ethics, and politics, subordinating them all to the art of poetry. The planis grand but impracticable, and except for the original moralinterpretation, to which in the earlier books the incidents are skilfullyadapted, it is fruitless as one reads to undertake to follow theallegories. Many readers are able, no doubt, merely to disregard them, butthere are others, like Lowell, to whom the moral, 'when they come suddenlyupon it, gives a shock of unpleasant surprise, as when in eatingstrawberries one's teeth encounter grit. '

The same lack of unity pervades the external story. The first Book beginsabruptly, in the middle; and for clearness' sake Spenser had been obligedto explain in his prefatory letter that the real commencement must besupposed to be a scene like those of Arthurian romance, at the court andannual feast of the Fairy Queen, where twelve adventures had been assignedto as many knights. Spenser strangely planned to narrate this beginning ofthe whole in his final Book, but even if it had been properly placed at theoutset it would have served only as a loose enveloping action for a seriesof stories essentially as distinct as those in Malory. More serious, perhaps, is the lack of unity within the single books. Spenser's genius wasnever for strongly condensed narrative, and following his Italianoriginals, though with less firmness, he wove his story as a tangled web ofintermingled adventures, with almost endless elaboration and digression. Incident after incident is broken off and later resumed and episode afterepisode is introduced, until the reader almost abandons any effort to tracethe main design. A part of the confusion is due to the mechanical plan. Each Book consists of twelve cantos (of from forty to ninety stanzas each)and oftentimes Spenser has difficulty in filling out the scheme. No one, certainly, can regret that he actually completed only a quarter of hisprojected work. In the six existing Books he has given almost exhaustiveexpression to a richly creative imagination, and additional prolongationwould have done little but to repeat. 

Still further, the characteristic Renaissance lack of certainty as to theproper materials for poetry is sometimes responsible for a rudelyinharmonious element in the otherwise delightful romantic atmosphere. For asingle illustration, the description of the House of Alma in Book II, CantoNine, is a tediously literal medieval allegory of the Soul and Body; andoccasional realistic details here and there in the poem at large are merelyrepellent to more modern taste. 

3. _The Lack of Dramatic Reality_. A romantic allegory like 'TheFaerie Queene' does not aim at intense lifelikeness--a certain remotenessfrom the actual is one of its chief attractions. But sometimes in Spenser'spoem the reader feels too wide a divorce from reality. Part of this faultis ascribable to the use of magic, to which there is repeated butinconsistent resort, especially, as in the medieval romances, for theprotection of the good characters. Oftentimes, indeed, by the persistentloading of the dice against the villains and scapegoats, the reader'ssympathy is half aroused in their behalf. Thus in the fight of the RedCross Knight with his special enemy, the dragon, where, of course, theKnight must be victorious, it is evident that without the author's help thedragon is incomparably the stronger. Once, swooping down on the Knight, heseizes him in his talons (whose least touch was elsewhere said to be fatal)and bears him aloft into the air. The valor of the Knight compels him torelax his hold, but instead of merely dropping the Knight to certain death, he carefully flies back to earth and sets him down in safety. More definiteregard to the actual laws of life would have given the poem greaterfirmness without the sacrifice of any of its charm. 

4. _The Romantic Beauty. General Atmosphere and Description. _ Criticalsincerity has required us to dwell thus long on the defects of the poem;but once recognized we should dismiss them altogether from mind and turnattention to the far more important beauties. The great qualities of 'TheFaerie Queene' are suggested by the title, 'The Poets' Poet, ' which CharlesLamb, with happy inspiration, applied to Spenser. Most of all are weindebted to Spenser's high idealism. No poem in the world is nobler than'The Faerie Queene' in atmosphere and entire effect. Spenser himself isalways the perfect gentleman of his own imagination, and in his company weare secure from the intrusion of anything morally base or mean. But in him, also, moral beauty is in full harmony with the beauty of art and thesenses. Spenser was a Puritan, but a Puritan of the earlier EnglishRenaissance, to whom the foes of righteousness were also the foes ofexternal loveliness. Of the three fierce Saracen brother-knights whorepeatedly appear in the service of Evil, two are Sansloy, the enemy oflaw, and Sansfoy, the enemy of religion, but the third is Sansjoy, enemy ofpleasure. And of external beauty there has never been a more gifted loverthan Spenser. We often feel, with Lowell, that 'he is the pure sense of thebeautiful incarnated. ' The poem is a romantically luxuriant wilderness ofdreamily or languorously delightful visions, often rich with all theharmonies of form and motion and color and sound. As Lowell says, 'The trueuse of Spenser is as a gallery of pictures which we visit as the mood takesus, and where we spend an hour or two, long enough to sweeten ourperceptions, not so long as to cloy them. ' His landscapes, to speak of oneparticular feature, are usually of a rather vague, often of a vast nature, as suits the unreality of his poetic world, and usually, since Spenser wasnot a minute observer, follow the conventions of Renaissance literature. They are commonly great plains, wide and gloomy forests (where the trees ofmany climates often grow together in impossible harmony), cool caves--ingeneral, lonely, quiet, or soothing scenes, but all unquestionable portionsof a delightful fairyland. To him, it should be added, as to most menbefore modern Science had subdued the world to human uses, the sublimeaspects of Nature were mainly dreadful; the ocean, for example, seemed tohim a raging 'waste of waters, wide and deep, ' a mysterious and insatiatedevourer of the lives of men. 

To the beauty of Spenser's imagination, ideal and sensuous, corresponds hismagnificent command of rhythm and of sound. As a verbal melodist, especially a melodist of sweetness and of stately grace, and as a harmonistof prolonged and complex cadences, he is unsurpassable. But he has fullcommand of his rhythm according to the subject, and can range from the mostdelicate suggestion of airy beauty to the roar of the tempest or thestrident energy of battle. In vocabulary and phraseology his fluencyappears inexhaustible. Here, as in 'The Shepherd's Calendar, ' hedeliberately introduces, especially from Chaucer, obsolete words and forms, such as the inflectional ending in _-en_, which distinctly contributeto his romantic effect. His constant use of alliteration is very skilful;the frequency of the alliteration on _w_ is conspicuous but apparentlyaccidental. 

5. _The Spenserian Stanza. _ For the external medium of all this beautySpenser, modifying the _ottava rima_ of Ariosto (a stanza which rimes_abababcc_), invented the stanza which bears his own name and which isthe only artificial stanza of English origin that has ever passed intocurrency. [Footnote: Note that this is not inconsistent with what is saidabove, p. 102, of the sonnet. ] The rime-scheme is _ababbcbcc_, and inthe last line the iambic pentameter gives place to an Alexandrine (aniambic hexameter). Whether or not any stanza form is as well adapted asblank verse or the rimed couplet for prolonged narrative is an interestingquestion, but there can be no doubt that Spenser's stanza, firmly unified, in spite of its length, by its central couplet and by the finality of thelast line, is a discovery of genius, and that the Alexandrine, 'foreverfeeling for the next stanza, ' does much to bind the stanzas together. Ithas been adopted in no small number of the greatest subsequent Englishpoems, including such various ones as Burns' 'Cotter's Saturday Night, 'Byron's 'Childe Harold, ' Keats' 'Eve of St. Agnes, ' and Shelley's'Adonais. '

In general style and spirit, it should be added, Spenser has been one ofthe most powerful influences on all succeeding English romantic poetry. Twofurther sentences of Lowell well summarize his whole general achievement:'His great merit is in the ideal treatment with which he glorified commonthings and gilded them with a ray of enthusiasm. He is a standing protestagainst the tyranny of the Commonplace, and sows the seeds of a noblediscontent with prosaic views of life and the dull uses to which it may beput. '

ELIZABETHAN LYRIC POETRY. 'The Faerie Queene' is the only long Elizabethanpoem of the very highest rank, but Spenser, as we have seen, is almostequally conspicuous as a lyric poet. In that respect he was one among athrong of melodists who made the Elizabethan age in many respects thegreatest lyric period in the history of English or perhaps of anyliterature. Still grander, to be sure, by the nature of the two forms, wasthe Elizabethan achievement in the drama, which we shall consider in thenext chapter; but the lyrics have the advantage in sheer delightfulnessand, of course, in rapid and direct appeal. 

The zest for lyric poetry somewhat artificially inaugurated at Court byWyatt and Surrey seems to have largely subsided, like any other fad, aftersome years, but it vigorously revived, in much more genuine fashion, withthe taste for other imaginative forms of literature, in the last twodecades of Elizabeth's reign. It revived, too, not only among the courtiersbut among all classes; in no other form of literature was the diversity ofauthors so marked; almost every writer of the period who was not purely aman of prose seems to have been gifted with the lyric power. 

The qualities which especially distinguish the Elizabethan lyrics arefluency, sweetness, melody, and an enthusiastic joy in life, allspontaneous, direct, and exquisite. Uniting the genuineness of the popularballad with the finer sense of conscious artistic poetry, these poemspossess a charm different, though in an only half definable way, from thatof any other lyrics. In subjects they display the usual lyric variety. There are songs of delight in Nature; a multitude of love poems of allmoods; many pastorals, in which, generally, the pastoral conventions sitlightly on the genuine poetical feeling; occasional patriotic outbursts;and some reflective and religious poems. In stanza structure the number offorms is unusually great, but in most cases stanzas are internally variedand have a large admixture of short, ringing or musing, lines. The lyricswere published sometimes in collections by single authors, sometimes in theseries of anthologies which succeeded to Tottel's 'Miscellany. ' Some ofthese anthologies were books of songs with the accompanying music; formusic, brought with all the other cultural influences from Italy andFrance, was now enthusiastically cultivated, and the soft melody of many ofthe best Elizabethan lyrics is that of accomplished composers. Many of thelyrics, again, are included as songs in the dramas of the time; andShakspere's comedies show him nearly as preëminent among the lyric poets asamong the playwrights. 

Some of the finest of the lyrics are anonymous. Among the best of the knownpoets are these: George Gascoigne (about 1530-1577), a courtier andsoldier, who bridges the gap between Surrey and Sidney; Sir Edward Dyer(about 1545-1607), a scholar and statesman, author of one perfect lyric, 'My mind to me a kingdom is'; John Lyly (1553-1606), the Euphuist anddramatist; Nicholas Breton (about 1545 to about 1626), a prolific writer inverse and prose and one of the most successful poets of the pastoral style;Robert Southwell (about 1562-1595), a Jesuit intriguer of ardent piety, finally imprisoned, tortured, and executed as a traitor; George Peele (1558to about 1598), the dramatist; Thomas Lodge (about 1558-1625), poet, novelist, and physician; Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), the dramatist;Thomas Nash (1567-1601), one of the most prolific Elizabethan hack writers;Samuel Daniel (1562-1619), scholar and critic, member in his later years ofthe royal household of James I; Barnabe Barnes (about 1569-1609); RichardBarnfield (1574-1627); Sir Walter Ralegh (1552-1618), courtier, statesman, explorer, and scholar; Joshua Sylvester (1563-1618), linguist and merchant, known for his translation of the long religious poems of the Frenchman DuBartas, through which he exercised an influence on Milton; Francis Davison(about 1575 to about 1619), son of a counsellor of Queen Elizabeth, alawyer; and Thomas Dekker (about 1570 to about 1640), a ne'er-do-weeldramatist and hack-writer of irrepressible and delightful good spirits. 

THE SONNETS. In the last decade, especially, of the century, no other lyricform compared in popularity with the sonnet. Here England was stillfollowing in the footsteps of Italy and France; it has been estimated thatin the course of the century over three hundred thousand sonnets werewritten in Western Europe. In England as elsewhere most of these poems wereinevitably of mediocre quality and imitative in substance, ringing thechanges with wearisome iteration on a minimum of ideas, often with the mostextravagant use of conceits. Petrarch's example was still commonlyfollowed; the sonnets were generally composed in sequences (cycles) of ahundred or more, addressed to the poet's more or less imaginary cruel lady, though the note of manly independence introduced by Wyatt is frequent. First of the important English sequences is the 'Astrophel and Stella' ofSir Philip Sidney, written about 1580, published in 1591. 'Astrophel' is afanciful half-Greek anagram for the poet's own name, and Stella (Star)designates Lady Penelope Devereux, who at about this time married LordRich. The sequence may very reasonably be interpreted as an expression ofPlatonic idealism, though it is sometimes taken in a sense less consistentwith Sidney's high reputation. Of Spenser's 'Amoretti' we have alreadyspoken. By far the finest of all the sonnets are the best ones (aconsiderable part) of Shakspere's one hundred and fifty-four, which werenot published until 1609 but may have been mostly written before 1600. Their interpretation has long been hotly debated. It is certain, however, that they do not form a connected sequence. Some of them are occupied withurging a youth of high rank, Shakspere's patron, who may have been eitherthe Earl of Southampton or William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, to marry andperpetuate his race; others hint the story, real or imaginary, ofShakspere's infatuation for a 'dark lady, ' leading to bitter disillusion;and still others seem to be occasional expressions of devotion to otherfriends of one or the other sex. Here as elsewhere Shakspere's genius, atits best, is supreme over all rivals; the first recorded criticism speaksof the 'sugared sweetness' of his sonnets; but his genius is not always atits best. 

JOHN DONNE AND THE BEGINNING OF THE 'METAPHYSICAL' POETRY. The last decadeof the sixteenth century presents also, in the poems of John Donne, [Footnote: Pronounced _Dun_] a new and very strange style of verse. Donne, born in 1573, possessed one of the keenest and most powerfulintellects of the time, but his early manhood was largely wasted indissipation, though he studied theology and law and seems to have seenmilitary service. It was during this period that he wrote his love poems. Then, while living with his wife and children in uncertain dependence onnoble patrons, he turned to religious poetry. At last he entered theChurch, became famous as one of the most eloquent preachers of the time, and through the favor of King James was rapidly promoted until he was madeDean of St. Paul's Cathedral. He died in 1631 after having furnished astriking instance of the fantastic morbidness of the period(post-Elizabethan) by having his picture painted as he stood wrapped in hisshroud on a funeral urn. 

The distinguishing general characteristic of Donne's poetry is theremarkable combination of an aggressive intellectuality with the lyric formand spirit. Whether true poetry or mere intellectual cleverness is thepredominant element may reasonably be questioned; but on many readersDonne's verse exercises a unique attraction. Its definite peculiarities areoutstanding: 1. By a process of extreme exaggeration and minute elaborationDonne carries the Elizabethan conceits almost to the farthest possiblelimit, achieving what Samuel Johnson two centuries later described as'enormous and disgusting hyperboles. ' 2. In so doing he makes relentlessuse of the intellect and of verbally precise but actually preposterouslogic, striking out astonishingly brilliant but utterly fantastic flashesof wit. 3. He draws the material of his figures of speech from highlyunpoetical sources--partly from the activities of every-day life, butespecially from all the sciences and school-knowledge of the time. Thematerial is abstract, but Donne gives it full poetic concretepicturesqueness. Thus he speaks of one spirit overtaking another at deathas one bullet shot out of a gun may overtake another which has lesservelocity but was earlier discharged. It was because of these last twocharacteristics that Dr. Johnson applied to Donne and his followers therather clumsy name of 'Metaphysical' (Philosophical) poets. 'Fantastic'would have been a better word. 4. In vigorous reaction against thesometimes nerveless melody of most contemporary poets Donne often makes hisverse as ruggedly condensed (often as obscure) and as harsh as possible. Its wrenched accents and slurred syllables sometimes appear absolutelyunmetrical, but it seems that Donne generally followed subtle rhythmicalideas of his own. He adds to the appearance of irregularity byexperimenting with a large number of lyric stanza forms--a different form, in fact, for nearly every poem. 5. In his love poems, while his sentimentis often Petrarchan, he often emphasizes also the English note ofindependence, taking as a favorite theme the incredible fickleness ofwoman. 

In spirit Donne belongs much less to Elizabethan poetry than to thefollowing period, in which nearly half his life fell. Of his greatinfluence on the poetry of that period we shall speak in the proper place. 

CHAPTER VI

THE DRAMA FROM ABOUT 1550 TO 1642

THE INFLUENCE OF CLASSICAL COMEDY AND TRAGEDY. In Chapter IV we left thedrama at that point, toward the middle of the sixteenth century, when theMystery Plays had largely declined and Moralities and Interlude-Farces, themselves decadent, were sharing in rather confused rivalry that degree ofpopular interest which remained unabsorbed by the religious, political, andsocial ferment. There was still to be a period of thirty or forty yearsbefore the flowering of the great Elizabethan drama, but they were to beyears of new, if uncertain, beginnings. 

The first new formative force was the influence of the classical drama, forwhich, with other things classical, the Renaissance had aroused enthusiasm. This force operated mainly not through writers for popular audiences, likethe authors of most Moralities and Interludes, but through men of theschools and the universities, writing for performances in their own circlesor in that of the Court. It had now become a not uncommon thing for boys atthe large schools to act in regular dramatic fashion, at first in Latin, afterward in English translation, some of the plays of the Latin comedianswhich had long formed a part of the school curriculum. Shortly after themiddle of the century, probably, the head-master of Westminister School, Nicholas Udall, took the further step of writing for his boys on theclassical model an original farce-comedy, the amusing 'Ralph RoisterDoister. ' This play is so close a copy of Plautus' 'Miles Gloriosus' andTerence's 'Eunuchus' that there is little that is really English about it;a much larger element of local realism of the traditional English sort, ina classical framework, was presented in the coarse but really skillful'Gammer Gurton's Needle, ' which was probably written at about the sametime, apparently by the Cambridge student William Stevenson. 

Meanwhile students at the universities, also, had been acting Plautus andTerence, and further, had been writing and acting Latin tragedies, as wellas comedies, of their own composition. Their chief models for tragedy werethe plays of the first-century Roman Seneca, who may or may not have beenidentical with the philosopher who was the tutor of the Emperor Nero. Boththrough these university imitations and directly, Seneca's very faultyplays continued for many years to exercise a great influence on Englishtragedy. Falling far short of the noble spirit of Greek tragedy, which theyin turn attempt to copy, Seneca's plays do observe its mechanicalconventions, especially the unities of Action and Time, the use of thechorus to comment on the action, the avoidance of violent action and deathson the stage, and the use of messengers to report such events. For properdramatic action they largely substitute ranting moralizing declamation, with crudely exaggerated passion, and they exhibit a great vein ofmelodramatic horror, for instance in the frequent use of the motive ofimplacable revenge for murder and of a ghost who incites to it. In theearly Elizabethan period, however, an age when life itself was dramaticallyintense and tragic, when everything classic was looked on with reverence, and when standards of taste were unformed, it was natural enough that suchplays should pass for masterpieces. 

A direct imitation of Seneca, famous as the first tragedy in English onclassical lines, was the 'Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, ' of Thomas Nortonand Thomas Sackville, acted in 1562. Its story, like those of some ofShakspere's plays later, goes back ultimately to the account of one of theearly reigns in Geoffrey of Monmouth's 'History. ' 'Gorboduc' outdoes itsSenecan models in tedious moralizing, and is painfully wooden in allrespects; but it has real importance not only because it is the firstregular English tragedy, but because it was the first play to use theiambic pentameter blank verse which Surrey had introduced to English poetryand which was destined to be the verse-form of really great Englishtragedy. When they wrote the play Norton and Sackville were law students atthe Inner Temple, and from other law students during the following yearscame other plays, which were generally acted at festival seasons, such, asChristmas, at the lawyers' colleges, or before the Queen, though the commonpeople were also admitted among the audience. Unlike 'Gorboduc, ' theseother university plays were not only for the most part crude and coarse inthe same manner as earlier English plays, but in accordance also with thenative English tradition and in violent defiance of the classical principleof Unity, they generally combined tragical classical stories with realisticscenes of English comedy (somewhat later with Italian stories). Nevertheless, and this is the main thing, the more thoughtful members ofthe Court and University circles, were now learning from the study ofclassical plays a sense for form and the fundamental distinction betweentragedy and comedy. 

THE CHRONICLE-HISTORY PLAY. About twenty years before the end of thecentury there began to appear, at first at the Court and the Universities, later on the popular stage, a form of play which was to hold, along withtragedy and comedy, an important place in the great decades that were tofollow, namely the Chronicle-History Play. This form of play generallypresented the chief events in the whole or a part of the reign of someEnglish king. It was largely a product of the pride which was beingawakened among the people in the greatness of England under Elizabeth, andof the consequent desire to know something of the past history of thecountry, and it received a great impulse from the enthusiasm aroused by thestruggle with Spain and the defeat of the Armada. It was not, however, altogether a new creation, for its method was similar to that of theuniversity plays which dealt with monarchs of classical history. It partlyinherited from them the formless mixture of farcical humor with historicalor supposedly historical fact which it shared with other plays of the time, and sometimes also an unusually reckless disregard of unity of action, time, and place. Since its main serious purpose, when it had one, was toconvey information, the other chief dramatic principles, such as carefulpresentation of a few main characters and of a universally significanthuman struggle, were also generally disregarded. It was only in the handsof Shakspere that the species was to be moulded into true dramatic form andto attain real greatness; and after a quarter century of popularity it wasto be reabsorbed into tragedy, of which in fact it was always only aspecial variety. 

JOHN LYLY. The first Elizabethan dramatist of permanent individualimportance is the comedian John Lyly, of whose early success at Court withthe artificial romance 'Euphues' we have already spoken. From 'Euphues'Lyly turned to the still more promising work of writing comedies for theCourt entertainments with which Queen Elizabeth was extremely lavish. Thecharacter of Lyly's plays was largely determined by the light andspectacular nature of these entertainments, and further by the fact that onmost occasions the players at Court were boys. These were primarily the'children [choir-boys] of the Queen's Chapel, ' who for some generations hadbeen sought out from all parts of England for their good voices and werevery carefully trained for singing and for dramatic performances. Thechoir-boys of St. Paul's Cathedral, similarly trained, also often actedbefore the Queen. Many of the plays given by these boys were of theordinary sorts, but it is evident that they would be most successful indainty comedies especially adapted to their boyish capacity. Such comediesLyly proceeded to write, in prose. The subjects are from classicalmythology or history or English folk-lore, into which Lyly sometimes weavesan allegorical presentation of court intrigue. The plots are very slight, and though the structure is decidedly better than in most previous plays, the humorous sub-actions sometimes have little connection with the mainaction. Characterization is still rudimentary, and altogether the playspresent not so much a picture of reality as 'a faint moonlight reflectionof life. ' None the less the best of them, such as 'Alexander and Campaspe, 'are delightful in their sparkling delicacy, which is produced partly by thecarefully-wrought style, similar to that of 'Euphues, ' but less artificial, and is enhanced by the charming lyrics which are scattered through them. For all this the elaborate scenery and costuming of the Courtentertainments provided a very harmonious background. 

These plays were to exert a strong influence on Shakspere's early comedies, probably suggesting to him: the use of prose for comedy; the value ofsnappy and witty dialog; refinement, as well as affectation, of style;lyric atmosphere; the characters and tone of high comedy, contrasting sofavorably with the usual coarse farce of the period; and further suchdetails as the employment of impudent boy-pages as a source of amusement. 

PEELE, GREENE, AND KYD. Of the most important early contemporaries ofShakspere we have already mentioned two as noteworthy in other fields ofliterature. George Peele's masque-like 'Arraignment of Paris' helps to showhim as more a lyric poet than a dramatist. Robert Greene's plays, especially 'Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, ' reveal, like his novels, somereal, though not very elaborate, power of characterization. They areespecially important in developing the theme of romantic love with realfineness of feeling and thus helping to prepare the way for Shakspere in avery important particular. In marked contrast to these men is Thomas Kyd, who about the year 1590 attained a meteoric reputation with crude'tragedies of blood, ' specialized descendants of Senecan tragedy, one ofwhich may have been the early play on Hamlet which Shakspere used as thegroundwork for his masterpiece. 

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, 1564-1593. Peele and Greene were University men whowrote partly for Court or academic audiences, partly for the popular stage. The distinction between the two sorts of drama was still further brokendown in the work of Christopher Marlowe, a poet of real genius, decidedlythe chief dramatist among Shakspere's early contemporaries, and the onefrom whom Shakspere learned the most. 

Marlowe was born in 1564 (the same year as Shakspere), the son of ashoemaker at Canterbury. Taking his master's degree after seven years atCambridge, in 1587, he followed the other 'university wits' to London. There, probably the same year and the next, he astonished the public withthe two parts of 'Tamburlaine the Great, ' a dramatization of the stupendouscareer of the bloodthirsty Mongol fourteenth-century conqueror. Theseplays, in spite of faults now conspicuous enough, are splendidlyimaginative and poetic, and were by far the most powerful that had yet beenwritten in England. Marlowe followed them with 'The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus, ' a treatment of the medieval story which two hundred years laterwas to serve Goethe for his masterpiece; with 'The Jew of Malta, ' which wasto give Shakspere suggestions for 'The Merchant of Venice'; and with'Edward the Second, ' the first really artistic Chronicle History play. Among the literary adventurers of the age who led wild lives in the Londontaverns Marlowe is said to have attained a conspicuous reputation forviolence and irreligion. He was killed in 1593 in a reckless and foolishbrawl, before he had reached the age of thirty. 

If Marlowe's life was unworthy, the fault must be laid rather at the doorof circumstances than of his own genuine nature. His plays show him to havebeen an ardent idealist and a representative of many of the qualities thatmade the greatness of the Renaissance. The Renaissance learning, theapparently boundless vistas which it had opened to the human spirit, andthe consciousness of his own power, evidently intoxicated Marlowe with avast ambition to achieve results which in his youthful inexperience hecould scarcely even picture to himself. His spirit, cramped and outraged bythe impassable limitations of human life and by the conventions of society, beat recklessly against them with an impatience fruitless but partly grand. This is the underlying spirit of almost all his plays, struggling in themfor expression. The Prolog to 'Tamburlaine' makes pretentious announcementthat the author will discard the usual buffoonery of the popular stage andwill set a new standard of tragic majesty:

 From jigging veins of rhyming mother wits, And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay, We'll lead you to the stately tent of war, Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine Threatening the world with high astounding terms, And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword. 

Tamburlaine himself as Marlowe presents him is a titanic, almostsuperhuman, figure who by sheer courage and pitiless unbending will raiseshimself from shepherd to general and then emperor of countless peoples, andsweeps like a whirlwind over the stage of the world, carrying everywhereoverwhelming slaughter and desolation. His speeches are outbursts ofincredible arrogance, equally powerful and bombastic. Indeed hisblasphemous boasts of superiority to the gods seem almost justified by hisapparently irresistible success. But at the end he learns that the laws oflife are inexorable even for him; all his indignant rage cannot redeem hisson from cowardice, or save his wife from death, or delay his own end. Ashas been said, [Footnote: Professor Barrett Wendell, 'William Shakspere, 'p. 36. ] 'Tamburlaine' expresses with 'a profound, lasting, noble sense andin grandly symbolic terms, the eternal tragedy inherent in the conflictbetween human aspiration and human power. '

For several other reasons 'Tamburlaine' is of high importance. It givesrepeated and splendid expression to the passionate haunting Renaissancezest for the beautiful. It is rich with extravagant sensuous descriptions, notable among those which abound gorgeously in all Elizabethan poetry. Butfinest of all is the description of beauty by its effects which Marloweputs into the mouth of Faustus at the sight of Helen of Troy:

 Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Much of Marlowe's strength, again, lies in his powerful and beautiful useof blank verse. First among the dramatists of the popular stage hediscarded rime, and taking and vitalizing the stiff pentameter line of'Gorboduc, ' gave it an immediate and lasting vogue for tragedy and highcomedy. Marlowe, virtually a beginner, could not be expected to carry blankverse to that perfection which his success made possible for Shakspere; hedid not altogether escape monotony and commonplaceness; but he gained ahigh degree of flexibility and beauty by avoiding a regularly end-stoppedarrangement, by taking pains to secure variety of pause and accent, and bygiving his language poetic condensation and suggestiveness. His workmanshipthoroughly justifies the characterization 'Marlowe's mighty line, ' whichBen Jonson in his tribute to Shakspere bestowed on it long after Marlowe'sdeath. 

The greatest significance of 'Tamburlaine, ' lastly, lies in the fact thatit definitely established tragedy as a distinct form on the English popularstage, and invested it with proper dignity. 

These are Marlowe's great achievements both in 'Tamburlaine' and in hislater more restrained plays. His limitations must also be suggested. Likeother Elizabethans he did not fully understand the distinction betweendrama and other literary forms; 'Tamburlaine' is not so much a regularlyconstructed tragedy, with a struggle between nearly equal persons andforces, artistically complicated and resolved, as an epic poem, asuccession of adventures in war (and love). Again, in spite of the prologin 'Tamburlaine, ' Marlowe, in almost all his plays, and following theElizabethan custom, does attempt scenes of humor, but he attains only tothe coarse and brutal horse-play at which the English audiences had laughedfor centuries in the Mystery plays and the Interludes. Elizabethan also(and before that medieval) is the lack of historical perspective whichgives to Mongol shepherds the manners and speech of Greek classicalantiquity as Marlowe had learned to know it at the university. More seriousis the lack of mature skill in characterization. Tamburlaine the man is anexaggerated type; most of the men about him are his faint shadows, andthose who are intended to be comic are preposterous. The women, though theyhave some differentiating touches, are certainly not more dramatically andvitally imagined. In his later plays Marlowe makes gains in this respect, but he never arrives at full easy mastery and trenchantly convincinglifelikeness either in characterization, in presentation of action, or infine poetic finish. It has often been remarked that at the age when Marlowedied Shakspere had produced not one of the great plays on which hisreputation rests; but Shakspere's genius came to maturity more surely, aswell as more slowly, and there is no basis for the inference sometimesdrawn that if Marlowe had lived he would ever have equalled or evenapproached Shakespere's supreme achievement. 

THEATRICAL CONDITIONS AND THE THEATER BUILDINGS. Before we pass toShakspere we must briefly consider those external facts which conditionedthe form of the Elizabethan plays and explain many of those things in themwhich at the present time appear perplexing. 

[Illustration: TIMON OF ATHENS, v, 4. OUTER SCENE. 

 _Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his Powers before Athens. _

 "_Alc_. Sound to this Coward, and lascivious Towne, Our terrible approach. "

 _Sounds a parly. The Senators appears upon the Wals. _

Reproduced from _The Shakespearean Stage_, by V. E. Albright, throughthe courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia University Press. 

AN ELIZABETHAN STAGE]

The medieval religious drama had been written and acted in many townsthroughout the country, and was a far less important feature in the life ofLondon than of many other places. But as the capital became more and morethe center of national life, the drama, with other forms of literature, wasmore largely appropriated by it; the Elizabethan drama of the great periodwas altogether written in London and belonged distinctly to it. Until wellinto the seventeenth century, to be sure, the London companies madefrequent tours through the country, but that was chiefly when theprevalence of the plague had necessitated the closing of the Londontheaters or when for other reasons acting there had become temporarilyunprofitable. The companies themselves had now assumed a regularorganization. They retained a trace of their origin (above, page 90) inthat each was under the protection of some influential noble and wascalled, for example, 'Lord Leicester's Servants, ' or 'The Lord Admiral'sServants. ' But this connection was for the most part nominal--the companieswere virtually very much like the stock-companies of the nineteenthcentury. By the beginning of the great period the membership of each troupewas made up of at least three classes of persons. At the bottom of thescale were the boy-apprentices who were employed, as Shakspere is said tohave been at first, in miscellaneous menial capacities. Next came the paidactors; and lastly the shareholders, generally also actors, some or all ofwhom were the general managers. The writers of plays were sometimes membersof the companies, as in Shakspere's case; sometimes, however, they wereindependent. 

Until near the middle of Elizabeth's reign there were no special theaterbuildings, but the players, in London or elsewhere, acted wherever theycould find an available place--in open squares, large halls, or, especially, in the quadrangular open inner yards of inns. As the professionbecame better organized and as the plays gained in quality, such makeshiftaccommodations became more and more unsatisfactory; but there were specialdifficulties in the way of securing better ones in London. For thepopulation and magistrates of London were prevailingly Puritan, and thegreat body of the Puritans, then as always, were strongly opposed to thetheater as a frivolous and irreligious thing--an attitude for which thelives of the players and the character of many plays afforded, then asalmost always, only too much reason. The city was very jealous of itsprerogatives; so that in spite of Queen Elizabeth's strong patronage of thedrama, throughout her whole reign no public theater buildings were allowedwithin the limits of the city corporation. But these limits were narrow, and in 1576 James Burbage inaugurated a new era by erecting 'The Theater'just to the north of the 'city, ' only a few minutes' walk from the centerof population. His example was soon followed by other managers, though thefavorite place for the theaters soon came to be the 'Bankside, ' the regionin Southwark just across the Thames from the 'city' where Chaucer's TabardInn had stood and where pits for bear-baiting and cock-fighting had longflourished. 

The structure of the Elizabethan theater was naturally imitated from itschief predecessor, the inn-yard. There, under the open sky, opposite thestreet entrance, the players had been accustomed to set up their stage. About it, on three sides, the ordinary part of the audience had stoodduring the performance, while the inn-guests and persons able to pay afixed price had sat in the open galleries which lined the building and ranall around the yard. In the theaters, therefore, at first generallysquare-built or octagonal, the stage projected from the rear wall welltoward the center of an unroofed pit (the present-day 'orchestra'), where, still on three sides of the stage, the common people, admitted for sixpenceor less, stood and jostled each other, either going home when it rained orstaying and getting wet as the degree of their interest in the play mightdetermine. The enveloping building proper was occupied with tiers ofgalleries, generally two or three in number, provided with seats; and here, of course, sat the people of means, the women avoiding embarrassment andannoyance only by being always masked. Behind the unprotected front part ofthe stage the middle part was covered by a lean-to roof sloping down fromthe rear wall of the building and supported by two pillars standing on thestage. This roof concealed a loft, from which gods and goddesses or anyappropriate properties could be let down by mechanical devices. Stillfarther back, under the galleries, was the 'rear-stage, ' which could beused to represent inner rooms; and that part of the lower galleryimmediately above it was generally appropriated as a part of the stage, representing such places as city walls or the second stories of houses. Themusicians' place was also just beside in the gallery. 

The stage, therefore, was a 'platform stage, ' seen by the audience fromalmost all sides, not, as in our own time, a 'picture-stage, ' with itsscenes viewed through a single large frame. This arrangement madeimpossible any front curtain, though a curtain was generally hung beforethe rear stage, from the floor of the gallery. Hence the changes betweenscenes must generally be made in full view of the audience, and instead ofending the scenes with striking situations the dramatists must arrange fora withdrawal of the actors, only avoiding if possible the effect of a mereanti-climax. Dead bodies must either get up and walk away in plain sight orbe carried off, either by stage hands, or, as part of the action, by othercharacters in the play. This latter device was sometimes adopted atconsiderable violence to probability, as when Shakspere makes Falstaff bearaway Hotspur, and Hamlet, Polonius. Likewise, while the medieval habit ofelaborate costuming was continued, there was every reason for adhering tothe medieval simplicity of scenery. A single potted tree might symbolize aforest, and houses and caverns, with a great deal else, might be left tothe imagination of the audience. In no respect, indeed, was realism ofsetting an important concern of either dramatist or audience; in manycases, evidently, neither of them cared to think of a scene as located inany precise spot; hence the anxious effort of Shakspere's editors on thispoint is beside the mark. This nonchalance made for easy transition fromone place to another, and the whole simplicity of staging had the importantadvantage of allowing the audience to center their attention on the playrather than on the accompaniments. On the rear-stage, however, behind thecurtain, more elaborate scenery might be placed, and Elizabethan plays, like those of our own day, seem sometimes to have 'alternation scenes, 'intended to be acted in front, while the next background was being preparedbehind the balcony curtain. The lack of elaborate settings also facilitatedrapidity of action, and the plays, beginning at three in the afternoon, were ordinarily over by the dinner-hour of five. Less satisfactory was theentire absence of women-actors, who did not appear on the public stageuntil after the Restoration of 1660. The inadequacy of the boys who tookthe part of the women-characters is alluded to by Shakspere and must havebeen a source of frequent irritation to any dramatist who was attempting topresent a subtle or complex heroine. 

Lastly may be mentioned the picturesque but very objectionable custom ofthe young dandies who insisted on carrying their chairs onto the sides ofthe stage itself, where they not only made themselves conspicuous objectsof attention but seriously crowded the actors and rudely abused them if theplay was not to their liking. It should be added that from the latter partof Elizabeth's reign there existed within the city itself certain 'private'theaters, used by the boys' companies and others, whose structure was morelike that of the theaters of our own time and where plays were given byartificial light. 

SHAKESPEARE, 1564-1616. William Shakspere, by universal consent thegreatest author of England, if not of the world, occupies chronologically acentral position in the Elizabethan drama. He was born in 1564 in thegood-sized village of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, near the middle ofEngland, where the level but beautiful country furnished full externalstimulus for a poet's eye and heart. His father, John Shakspere, who was ageneral dealer in agricultural products and other commodities, was one ofthe chief citizens of the village, and during his son's childhood waschosen an alderman and shortly after mayor, as we should call it. But by1577 his prosperity declined, apparently through his own shiftlessness, andfor many years he was harassed with legal difficulties. In the village'grammar' school William Shakspere had acquired the rudiments ofbook-knowledge, consisting largely of Latin, but his chief education wasfrom Nature and experience. As his father's troubles thickened he was verylikely removed from school, but at the age of eighteen, under circumstancesnot altogether creditable to himself, he married Anne Hathaway, a womaneight years his senior, who lived in the neighboring village of Shottery. The suggestion that the marriage proved positively unhappy is supported byno real evidence, but what little is known of Shakspere's later lifeimplies that it was not exceptionally congenial. Two girls and a boy wereborn from it. 

In his early manhood, apparently between 1586 and 1588, Shakspere leftStratford to seek his fortune in London. As to the circumstances, there isreasonable plausibility in the later tradition that he had joined inpoaching raids on the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy, a neighboring countrygentleman, and found it desirable to get beyond the bounds of thatgentleman's authority. It is also likely enough that Shakspere had beenfascinated by the performances of traveling dramatic companies at Stratfordand by the Earl of Leicester's costly entertainment of Queen Elizabeth in1575 at the castle of Kenilworth, not many miles away. At any rate, inLondon he evidently soon secured mechanical employment in a theatricalcompany, presumably the one then known as Lord Leicester's company, withwhich, in that case, he was always thereafter connected. His energy andinterest must soon have won him the opportunity to show his skill as actorand also reviser and collaborator in play-writing, then as independentauthor; and after the first few years of slow progress his rise was rapid. He became one of the leading members, later one of the chief shareholders, of the company, and evidently enjoyed a substantial reputation as aplaywright and a good, though not a great, actor. This was both at Court(where, however, actors had no social standing) and in the London dramaticcircle. Of his personal life only the most fragmentary record has beenpreserved, through occasional mentions in miscellaneous documents, but itis evident that his rich nature was partly appreciated and thoroughly lovedby his associates. His business talent was marked and before the end of hisdramatic career he seems to have been receiving as manager, shareholder, playwright and actor, a yearly income equivalent to $25, 000 in money of thepresent time. He early began to devote attention to paying the debts of hisfather, who lived until 1601, and restoring the fortunes of his family inStratford. The death of his only son, Hamnet, in 1596, must have been asevere blow to him, but he obtained from the Heralds' College the grant ofa family coat of arms, which secured the position of the family asgentlefolks; in 1597 he purchased New Place, the largest house inStratford; and later on he acquired other large property rights there. Howoften he may have visited Stratford in the twenty-five years of his careerin London we have no information; but however enjoyable London life and thesociety of the writers at the 'Mermaid' Tavern may have been to him, heprobably always looked forward to ending his life as the chief countrygentleman of his native village. Thither he retired about 1610 or 1612, andthere he died prematurely in 1616, just as he was completing hisfifty-second year. 

Shakspere's dramatic career falls naturally into four successive divisionsof increasing maturity. To be sure, no definite record of the order of hisplays has come down to us, and it can scarcely be said that we certainlyknow the exact date of a single one of them; but the evidence of thetitle-page dates of such of them as were hastily published during hislifetime, of allusions to them in other writings of the time, and otherscattering facts of one sort or another, joined with the more importantinternal evidence of comparative maturity of mind and art which shows'Macbeth' and 'The Winter's Tale, ' for example, vastly superior to 'Love'sLabour's Lost'--all this evidence together enables us to arrange the playsin a chronological order which is certainly approximately correct. Thefirst of the four periods thus disclosed is that of experiment andpreparation, from about 1588 to about 1593, when Shakspere tried his handat virtually every current kind of dramatic work. Its most importantproduct is 'Richard III, ' a melodramatic chronicle-history play, largelyimitative of Marlowe and yet showing striking power. At the end of thisperiod Shakspere issued two rather long narrative poems on classicalsubjects, 'Venus and Adonis, ' and 'The Rape of Lucrece, ' dedicating themboth to the young Earl of Southampton, who thus appears as his patron. Bothdisplay great fluency in the most luxuriant and sensuous Renaissancemanner, and though they appeal little to the taste of the present day'Venus and Adonis, ' in particular, seems to have become at once the mostpopular poem of its own time. Shakspere himself regarded them veryseriously, publishing them with care, though he, like most Elizabethandramatists, never thought it worth while to put his plays into print exceptto safeguard the property rights of his company in them. Probably at aboutthe end of his first period, also, he began the composition of his sonnets, of which we have already spoken (page 119). 

The second period of Shakspere's work, extending from about 1594 to about1601, is occupied chiefly with chronicle-history plays and happy comedies. The chronicle-history plays begin (probably) with the subtile andfascinating, though not yet absolutely masterful study of contrastingcharacters in 'Richard II'; continue through the two parts of 'Henry IV, 'where the realistic comedy action of Falstaff and his group makes historyfamiliarly vivid; and end with the epic glorification of a typical Englishhero-king in 'Henry V. ' The comedies include the charmingly fantastic'Midsummer Night's Dream'; 'The Merchant of Venice, ' where a story oftragic sternness is strikingly contrasted with the most poetical idealizingromance and yet is harmoniously blended into it; 'Much Ado About Nothing, 'a magnificent example of high comedy of character and wit; 'As You LikeIt, ' the supreme delightful achievement of Elizabethan and all Englishpastoral romance; and 'Twelfth Night, ' where again charming romanticsentiment is made believable by combination with a story of comic realism. Even in the one, unique, tragedy of the period, 'Romeo and Juliet, ' themain impression is not that of the predestined tragedy, but that of idealyouthful love, too gloriously radiant to be viewed with sorrow even in itsfatal outcome. 

The third period, extending from about 1601 to about 1609, includesShakspere's great tragedies and certain cynical plays, which formalclassification mis-names comedies. In these plays as a group Shakspere setshimself to grapple with the deepest and darkest problems of human characterand life; but it is only very uncertain inference that he was himselfpassing at this time through a period of bitterness and disillusion. 'Julius Cæsar' presents the material failure of an unpractical idealist(Brutus); 'Hamlet' the struggle of a perplexed and divided soul; 'Othello'the ruin of a noble life by an evil one through the terrible power ofjealousy; 'King Lear' unnatural ingratitude working its hateful will andyet thwarted at the end by its own excess and by faithful love; and'Macbeth' the destruction of a large nature by material ambition. Withoutdoubt this is the greatest continuous group of plays ever wrought out by ahuman mind, and they are followed by 'Antony and Cleopatra, ' whichmagnificently portrays the emptiness of a sensual passion against thebackground of a decaying civilization. 

Shakspere did not solve the insoluble problems of life, but havingpresented them as powerfully, perhaps, as is possible for humanintelligence, he turned in his last period, of only two or three years, tothe expression of the serene philosophy of life in which he himself musthave now taken refuge. The noble and beautiful romance-comedies, 'Cymbeline, ' 'The Winter's Tale, ' and 'The Tempest, ' suggest that men dobest to forget what is painful and center their attention on the pleasingand encouraging things in a world where there is at least an inexhaustiblestore of beauty and goodness and delight. 

Shakspere may now well have felt, as his retirement to Stratford suggests, that in his nearly forty plays he had fully expressed himself and hadearned the right to a long and peaceful old age. The latter, as we haveseen, was denied him; but seven years after his death two of hisfellow-managers assured the preservation of the plays whose uniqueimportance he himself did not suspect by collecting them in the first folioedition of his complete dramatic works. 

Shakspere's greatness rests on supreme achievement--the result of thehighest genius matured by experience and by careful experiment andlabor--in all phases of the work of a poetic dramatist. The surpassingcharm of his rendering of the romantic beauty and joy of life and theprofundity of his presentation of its tragic side we have alreadysuggested. Equally sure and comprehensive is his portrayal of characters. With the certainty of absolute mastery he causes men and women to live forus, a vast representative group, in all the actual variety of age andstation, perfectly realized in all the subtile diversities andinconsistencies of protean human nature. Not less notable than his strongmen are his delightful young heroines, romantic Elizabethan heroines, to besure, with an unconventionality, many of them, which does not belong tosuch women in the more restricted world of reality, but pure embodiments ofthe finest womanly delicacy, keenness, and vivacity. Shakspere, it is true, was a practical dramatist. His background characters are often present inthe plays not in order to be entirely real but in order to furnishamusement; and even in the case of the chief ones, just as in the treatmentof incidents, he is always perfectly ready to sacrifice literal truth todramatic effect. But these things are only the corollaries of allsuccessful playwriting and of all art. 

To Shakspere's mastery of poetic expression similarly strong superlativesmust be applied. For his form he perfected Marlowe's blank verse, developing it to the farthest possible limits of fluency, variety, andmelody; though he retained the riming couplet for occasional use (partlyfor the sake of variety) and frequently made use also of prose, both forthe same reason and in realistic or commonplace scenes. As regards thespirit of poetry, it scarcely need be said that nowhere else in literatureis there a like storehouse of the most delightful and the greatest ideasphrased with the utmost power of condensed expression and figurativebeauty. In dramatic structure his greatness is on the whole lessconspicuous. Writing for success on the Elizabethan stage, he seldomattempted to reduce its romantic licenses to the perfection of an absolutestandard. 'Romeo and Juliet, 'Hamlet, ' and indeed most of his plays, contain unnecessary scenes, interesting to the Elizabethans, whichSophocles as well as Racine would have pruned away. Yet when Shaksperechooses, as in 'Othello, ' to develop a play with the sternest and mostrapid directness, he proves essentially the equal even of the most rigidtechnician. 

Shakspere, indeed, although as Ben Jonson said, 'he was not for an age butfor all time, ' was in every respect a thorough Elizabethan also, and doesnot escape the superficial Elizabethan faults. Chief of these, perhaps, ishis fondness for 'conceits, ' with which he makes his plays, especially someof the earlier ones, sparkle, brilliantly, but often inappropriately. Inhis prose style, again, except in the talk of commonplace persons, he neveroutgrew, or wished to outgrow, a large measure of Elizabethanself-conscious elegance. Scarcely a fault is his other Elizabethan habit ofseldom, perhaps never, inventing the whole of his stories, but drawing theoutlines of them from previous works--English chronicles, poems, or plays, Italian 'novels, ' or the biographies of Plutarch. But in the majority ofcases these sources provided him only with bare or even crude sketches, andperhaps nothing furnishes clearer proof of his genius than the way in whichhe has seen the human significance in stories baldly and wretchedly told, where the figures are merely wooden types, and by the power of imaginationhas transformed them into the greatest literary masterpieces, profoundrevelations of the underlying forces of life. 

Shakspere, like every other great man, has been the object of muchunintelligent, and misdirected adulation, but his greatness, so far fromsuffering diminution, grows more apparent with the passage of time and theincrease of study. 

[Note: The theory persistently advocated during the last half century thatShakspere's works were really written not by himself but by Francis Baconor some other person can never gain credence with any competent judge. Ourknowledge of Shakspere's life, slight as it is, is really at least as greatas that which has been preserved of almost any dramatist of the period; fordramatists were not then looked on as persons of permanent importance. There is really much direct contemporary documentary evidence, as we havealready indicated, of Shakspere's authorship of the plays and poems. Notheory, further, could be more preposterous, to any one really acquaintedwith literature, than the idea that the imaginative poetry of Shakspere wasproduced by the essentially scientific and prosaic mind of Francis Bacon. As to the cipher systems supposed to reveal hidden messages in the plays:First, no poet bending his energies to the composition of such masterpiecesas Shakspere's could possibly concern himself at the same time with weavinginto them a complicated and trifling cryptogram. Second, the cipher systemsare absolutely arbitrary and unscientific, applied to any writings whatevercan be made to 'prove' anything that one likes, and indeed have beendiscredited in the hands of their own inventors by being made to 'prove'far too much. Third, it has been demonstrated more than once that theverbal coincidences on which the cipher systems rest are no more numerousthan the law of mathematical probabilities requires. Aside from actuallyvicious pursuits, there can be no more melancholy waste of time than theeffort to demonstrate that Shakspere is not the real author of his reputedworks. ]

NATIONAL LIFE FROM 1603 TO 1660. We have already observed that, asShakspere's career suggests, there was no abrupt change in either life orliterature at the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603; and in fact theElizabethan period of literature is often made to include the reign ofJames I, 1603-1625 (the Jacobean period [Footnote: 'Jaco'bus' is the Latinform of 'James. ']), or even, especially in the case of the drama, that ofCharles I, 1625-1649 (the Carolean period). Certainly the drama of allthree reigns forms a continuously developing whole, and should be discussedas such. None the less the spirit of the first half of the seventeenthcentury came gradually to be widely different from that of the precedingfifty years, and before going on to Shakspere's successors we must stop toindicate briefly wherein the difference consists and for this purpose tospeak of the determining events of the period. Before the end ofElizabeth's reign, indeed, there had been a perceptible change; as thequeen grew old and morose the national life seemed also to lose its youthand freshness. Her successor and distant cousin, James of Scotland (James Iof England), was a bigoted pedant, and under his rule the perennial Courtcorruption, striking in, became foul and noisome. The national Church, instead of protesting, steadily identified itself more closely with theCourt party, and its ruling officials, on the whole, grew more and moreworldly and intolerant. Little by little the nation found itself dividedinto two great factions; on the one hand the Cavaliers, the party of theCourt, the nobles, and the Church, who continued to be largely dominated bythe Renaissance zest for beauty and, especially, pleasure; and on the otherhand the Puritans, comprising the bulk of the middle classes, controlled bythe religious principles of the Reformation, often, in their opposition toCavalier frivolity, stern and narrow, and more and more inclined toseparate themselves from the English Church in denominations of their own. The breach steadily widened until in 1642, under the arbitrary rule ofCharles I, the Civil War broke out. In three years the Puritan Parliamentwas victorious, and in 1649 the extreme minority of the Puritans, supportedby the army, took the unprecedented step of putting King Charles to death, and declared England a Commonwealth. But in four years more theParliamentary government, bigoted and inefficient, made itself impossible, and then for five years, until his death, Oliver Cromwell strongly ruledEngland as Protector. Another year and a half of chaos confirmed the nationin a natural reaction, and in 1660 the unworthy Stuart race was restored inthe person of the base and frivolous Charles II. The general influence ofthe forces which produced these events shows clearly in the changing toneof the drama, the work of those dramatists who were Shakspere's latercontemporaries and successors. 

BEN JONSON. The second place among the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatistsis universally assigned, on the whole justly, to Ben Jonson, [Footnote:This name is spelled without the _h_. ] who both in temperament and inartistic theories and practice presents a complete contrast to Shakspere. Jonson, the posthumous son of an impoverished gentleman-clergyman, was bornin London in 1573. At Westminster School he received a permanent benttoward classical studies from the headmaster, William Camden, who was oneof the greatest scholars of the time. Forced into the uncongenial trade ofhis stepfather, a master-bricklayer, he soon deserted it to enlist amongthe English soldiers who were helping the Dutch to fight their Spanishoppressors. Here he exhibited some of his dominating traits by challenginga champion from the other army and killing him in classical fashion insingle combat between the lines. By about the age of twenty he was back inLondon and married to a wife whom he later described as being 'virtuous buta shrew, ' and who at one time found it more agreeable to live apart fromhim. He became an actor (at which profession he failed) and a writer ofplays. About 1598 he displayed his distinguishing realistic style in thecomedy 'Every Man in His Humour, ' which was acted by Shakspere's company, it is said through Shakspere's friendly influence. At about the same timethe burly Jonson killed another actor in a duel and escaped capitalpunishment only through 'benefit of clergy' (the exemption still allowed toeducated men). 

The plays which Jonson produced during the following years were chieflysatirical attacks on other dramatists, especially Marston and Dekker, whoretorted in kind. Thus there developed a fierce actors' quarrel, referredto in Shakspere's 'Hamlet, ' in which the 'children's' companies had someactive but now uncertain part. Before it was over most of the dramatistshad taken sides against Jonson, whose arrogant and violentself-assertiveness put him at odds, sooner or later, with nearly every onewith whom he had much to do. In 1603 he made peace, only to become involvedin other, still more, serious difficulties. Shortly after the accession ofKing James, Jonson, Chapman, and Marston brought out a comedy, 'EastwardHoe, ' in which they offended the king by satirical flings at the needyScotsmen to whom James was freely awarding Court positions. They wereimprisoned and for a while, according to the barbarous procedure of thetime, were in danger of losing their ears and noses. At a banquetcelebrating their release, Jonson reports, his 'old mother' produced apaper of poison which, if necessary, she had intended to administer to himto save him from this disgrace, and of which, she said, to show that shewas 'no churl, ' she would herself first have drunk. 

Just before this incident, in 1603, Jonson had turned to tragedy andwritten 'Sejanus, ' which marks the beginning of his most important decade. He followed up 'Sejanus' after several years with the less excellent'Catiline, ' but his most significant dramatic works, on the whole, are hisfour great satirical comedies. 'Volpone, or the Fox, ' assails gross vice;'Epicoene, the Silent Woman, ' ridicules various sorts of absurd persons;'The Alchemist' castigates quackery and its foolish encouragers; and'Bartholomew Fair' is a coarse but overwhelming broadside at Puritanhypocrisy. Strange as it seems in the author of these masterpieces of frankrealism, Jonson at the same time was showing himself the most gifted writerof the Court masks, which now, arrived at the last period of theirevolution, were reaching the extreme of spectacular elaborateness. Early inJames' reign, therefore, Jonson was made Court Poet, and during the nextthirty years he produced about forty masks, devoting to them much attentionand care, and quarreling violently with Inigo Jones, the Court architect, who contrived the stage settings. During this period Jonson was under thepatronage of various nobles, and he also reigned as dictator at the club ofliterary men which Sir Walter Raleigh had founded at the Mermaid Tavern (socalled, like other inns, from its sign). A well-known poetical letter ofthe dramatist Francis Beaumont to Jonson celebrates the club meetings; andequally well known is a description given in the next generation fromhearsay and inference by the antiquary Thomas Fuller: 'Many were thewit-combats betwixt Shakspere and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like aSpanish great galleon and an English man-of-war: Master Jonson, like theformer, was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow in hisperformances; Shakespere, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, butlighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and takeadvantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention. '

The last dozen years of Jonson's life were unhappy. Though he had a pensionfrom the Court, he was sometimes in financial straits; and for a time helost his position as Court Poet. He resumed the writing of regular plays, but his style no longer pleased the public; and he often suffered much fromsickness. Nevertheless at the Devil Tavern he collected about him a circleof younger admirers, some of them among the oncoming poets, who were proudto be known as 'Sons of Ben, ' and who largely accepted as authoritative hisopinions on literary matters. Thus his life, which ended in 1637, did notaltogether go out in gloom. On the plain stone which alone, for a longtime, marked his grave in Westminster Abbey an unknown admirer inscribedthe famous epitaph, 'O rare Ben Jonson. '

As a man Jonson, pugnacious, capricious, ill-mannered, sometimes surly, intemperate in drink and in other respects, is an object for only veryqualified admiration; and as a writer he cannot properly be said to possessthat indefinable thing, genius, which is essential to the truest greatness. But both as man and as writer he manifested great force; and in both dramaand poetry he stands for several distinct literary principles andattainments highly important both in themselves and for their subsequentinfluence. 

1. Most conspicuous in his dramas is his realism, often, as we have said, extremely coarse, and a direct reflection of his intellect, which was asstrongly masculine as his body and altogether lacking, where the regulardrama was concerned, in fineness of sentiment or poetic feeling. He earlyassumed an attitude of pronounced opposition to the Elizabethan romanticplays, which seemed to him not only lawless in artistic structure butunreal and trifling in atmosphere and substance. (That he was not, however, as has sometimes been said, personally hostile to Shakspere is clear, amongother things, from his poetic tributes in the folio edition of Shakspereand from his direct statement elsewhere that he loved Shakspere almost toidolatry. ) Jonson's purpose was to present life as he believed it to be; hewas thoroughly acquainted with its worser side; and he refused to concealanything that appeared to him significant. His plays, therefore, have verymuch that is flatly offensive to the taste which seeks in literature, prevailingly, for idealism and beauty; but they are, nevertheless, generally speaking, powerful portrayals of actual life. 

2. Jonson's purpose, however, was never unworthy; rather, it was distinctlyto uphold morality. His frankest plays, as we have indicated, are attackson vice and folly, and sometimes, it is said, had important reformatoryinfluence on contemporary manners. He held, indeed, that in the drama, evenin comedy, the function of teaching was as important as that of givingpleasure. His attitude toward his audiences was that of a learnedschoolmaster, whose ideas they should accept with deferential respect; andwhen they did not approve his plays he was outspoken in indignant contempt. 

3. Jonson's self-satisfaction and his critical sense of intellectualsuperiority to the generality of mankind produce also a marked anddisagreeable lack of sympathy in his portrayal of both life and character. The world of his dramas is mostly made up of knaves, scoundrels, hypocrites, fools, and dupes; and it includes among its really importantcharacters very few excellent men and not a single really good woman. Jonson viewed his fellow-men, in the mass, with complete scorn, which itwas one of his moral and artistic principles not to disguise. Hischaracteristic comedies all belong, further, to the particular type whichhe himself originated, namely, the 'Comedy of Humors. ' [Footnote: Themeaning of this, term can be understood only by some explanation of thehistory of the word 'Humor. ' In the first place this was the Latin name for'liquid. ' According to medieval physiology there were four chief liquids inthe human body, namely blood, phlegm, bile, and black bile, and an excessof any of them produced an undue predominance of the corresponding quality;thus, an excess of phlegm made a person phlegmatic, or dull; or an excessof black bile, melancholy. In the Elizabethan idiom, therefore, 'humor'came to mean a mood, and then any exaggerated quality or marked peculiarityin a person. ]

Aiming in these plays to flail the follies of his time, he makes his chiefcharacters, in spite of his realistic purpose, extreme and distorted'humors, ' each, in spite of individual traits, the embodiment of some oneabstract vice--cowardice, sensualism, hypocrisy, or what not. Too often, also, the unreality is increased because Jonson takes the characters fromthe stock figures of Latin comedy rather than from genuine English life. 

4. In opposition to the free Elizabethan romantic structure, Jonson stoodfor and deliberately intended to revive the classical style; though withcharacteristic good sense he declared that not all the classical practiceswere applicable to English plays. He generally observed unity not only ofaction but also of time (a single day) and place, sometimes with seriousresultant loss of probability. In his tragedies, 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline, 'he excluded comic material; for the most part he kept scenes of death andviolence off the stage; and he very carefully and slowly constructed playswhich have nothing, indeed, of the poetic greatness of Sophocles orEuripides (rather a Jonsonese broad solidity) but which move steadily totheir climaxes and then on to the catastrophes in the compact classicalmanner. He carried his scholarship, however, to the point of pedantry, notonly in the illustrative extracts from Latin authors with which in theprinted edition he filled the lower half of his pages, but in the playsthemselves in the scrupulous exactitude of his rendering of the details ofRoman life. The plays reconstruct the ancient world with much more minuteaccuracy than do Shakspere's; the student should consider for himselfwhether they succeed better in reproducing its human reality, making it aliving part of the reader's mental and spiritual possessions. 

5. Jonson's style in his plays, especially the blank verse of histragedies, exhibits the same general characteristics. It is strong, compact, and sometimes powerful, but it entirely lacks imaginative poeticbeauty--it is really only rhythmical prose, though sometimes suffused withpassion. 

6. The surprising skill which Jonson, author of such plays, showed indevising the court masks, daintily unsubstantial creations of moralallegory, classical myth, and Teutonic folklore, is rendered lesssurprising, perhaps, by the lack in the masks of any very great lyricquality. There is no lyric quality at all in the greater part of hisnon-dramatic verse, though there is an occasional delightful exception, asin the famous 'Drink to me only with thine eyes. ' But of his non-dramaticverse we shall speak in the next chapter. 

7. Last, and not least: Jonson's revolt from romanticism to classicisminitiated, chiefly in non-dramatic verse, the movement for restraint andregularity, which, making slow headway during the next half century, was toissue in the triumphant pseudo-classicism of the generations of Dryden andPope. Thus, notable in himself, he was significant also as one of themoving forces of a great literary revolution. 

THE OTHER DRAMATISTS. From the many other dramatists of this highlydramatic period, some of whom in their own day enjoyed a reputation fullyequal to that of Shakspere and Jonson, we may merely select a few for briefmention. For not only does their light now pale hopelessly in the presenceof Shakspere, but in many cases their violations of taste and moralrestraint pass the limits of present-day tolerance. Most of them, likeShakspere, produced both comedies and tragedies, prevailingly romantic butwith elements of realism; most of them wrote more often in collaborationthan did Shakspere; they all shared the Elizabethan vigorously creativeinterest in life; but none of them attained either Shakspere's wisdom, hispower, or his mastery of poetic beauty. One of the most learned of thegroup was George Chapman, whose verse has a Jonsonian solidity notunaccompanied with Jonsonian ponderousness. He won fame also innon-dramatic poetry, especially by vigorous but rather clumsy versetranslations of the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey, ' Another highly individual figureis that of Thomas Dekker, who seems to have been one of the completestembodiments of irrepressible Elizabethan cheerfulness, though this wasjoined in him with an irresponsibility which kept him commonly flounderingin debt or confined in debtor's prison. His 'Shoemaker's Holiday' (1600), still occasionally chosen by amateur companies for reproduction, gives arough-and-ready but (apart from its coarseness) charming romanticizedpicture of the life of London apprentices and whole-hearted citizens. Thomas Heywood, a sort of journalist before the days of newspapers, produced an enormous amount of work in various literary forms; in the dramahe claimed to have had 'an entire hand, or at least a maine finger' in noless than two hundred and twenty plays. Inevitably, therefore, he iscareless and slipshod, but some of his portrayals of sturdy English men andwomen and of romantic adventure (as in 'The Fair Maid of the West') are ofrefreshing naturalness and breeziness. Thomas Middleton, also a veryprolific writer, often deals, like Jonson and Heywood, with sordidmaterial. John Marston, as well, has too little delicacy or reserve; healso wrote catch-as-catch-can non-dramatic satires. 

The sanity of Shakspere's plays, continuing and indeed increasing towardthe end of his career, disguises for modern students the tendency todecline in the drama which set in at about the time of King James'accession. Not later than the end of the first decade of the century thedramatists as a class exhibit not only a decrease of originality in plotand characterization, but also a lowering of moral tone, which resultslargely from the closer identification of the drama with the Court party. There is a lack of seriousness of purpose, an increasing tendency toreturn, in more morbid spirit, to the sensationalism of the 1580's, and ananxious straining to attract and please the audiences by almost any means. These tendencies appear in the plays of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, whose reputations are indissolubly linked together in one of the mostfamous literary partnerships of all time. Beaumont, however, wasshort-lived, and much the greater part of the fifty and more playsultimately published under their joint names really belong to Fletcheralone or to Fletcher and other collaborators. The scholarship of our dayagrees with the opinion of their contemporaries in assigning to Beaumontthe greater share of judgment and intellectual power and to Fletcher thegreater share of spontaneity and fancy. Fletcher's style is veryindividual. It is peculiarly sweet; but its unmistakable mark is hisconstant tendency to break down the blank verse line by the use of extrasyllables, both within the line and at the end. The lyrics which hescatters through his plays are beautifully smooth and musical. The plays ofBeaumont and Fletcher, as a group, are sentimentally romantic, often in anextravagant degree, though their charm often conceals the extravagance aswell as the lack of true characterization. They are notable often for theirportrayal of the loyal devotion of both men and women to king, lover, orfriend. One of the best of them is 'Philaster, or Love Lies Bleeding, 'while Fletcher's 'Faithful Shepherdess' is the most pleasing example inEnglish of the artificial pastoral drama in the Italian and Spanish style. 

The Elizabethan tendency to sensational horror finds its greatest artisticexpression in two plays of John Webster, 'The White Devil, or VittoriaCorombona, ' and 'The Duchess of Malfi. ' Here the corrupt and brutal life ofthe Italian nobility of the Renaissance is presented with terriblefrankness, but with an overwhelming sense for passion, tragedy, and pathos. The most moving pathos permeates some of the plays of John Ford (of thetime of Charles I), for example, 'The Broken Heart'; but they are abnormaland unhealthy. Philip Massinger, a pupil and collaborator of Fletcher, wasof thoughtful spirit, and apparently a sincere moralist at heart, in spiteof much concession in his plays to the contrary demands of the time. Hisfamous comedy, 'A New Way to Pay Old Debts, ' a satire on greed and cruelty, is one of the few plays of the period, aside from Shakspere's, which arestill occasionally acted. The last dramatist of the whole great line wasJames Shirley, who survived the Commonwealth and the Restoration and diedof exposure at the Fire of London in 1666. In his romantic comedies andcomedies of manners Shirley vividly reflects the thoughtless life of theCourt of Charles I and of the well-to-do contemporary London citizens andshows how surprisingly far that life had progressed toward the recklessfrivolity and abandonment which after the interval of Puritan rule were torun riot in the Restoration period. 

The great Elizabethan dramatic impulse had thus become deeply degenerate, and nothing could be more fitting than that it should be brought to adefinite end. When the war broke out in 1642 one of the first acts ofParliament, now at last free to work its will on the enemies of Puritanism, was to decree that 'whereas public sports do not well agree with publiccalamities, nor public stage-plays with the seasons of humiliation, ' alldramatic performances should cease. This law, fatal, of course, to thewriting as well as the acting of plays, was enforced with only slightlyrelaxing rigor until very shortly before the Restoration of Charles II in1660. Doubtless to the Puritans it seemed that their long fight against thetheater had ended in permanent triumph; but this was only one of manyrespects in which the Puritans were to learn that human nature cannot beforced into permanent conformity with any rigidly over-severe standard, onhowever high ideals it may be based. 

SUMMARY. The chief dramatists of the whole sixty years of the great periodmay be conveniently grouped as follows: I. Shakspere's earlycontemporaries, about 1580 to about 1593: Lyly, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Marlowe. II. Shakspere. III. Shakspere's later contemporaries, underElizabeth and James I: Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Heywood, Middleton, Marston, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster. IV. The last group, under James Iand Charles I, to 1642: Ford, Massinger, and Shirley. 

CHAPTER VII

PERIOD V. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, 1603-1660. PROSE AND POETRY

(_For political and social facts and conditions, see above, page 141. _[Footnote: One of the best works of fiction dealing with the period is J. H. Shorthouse's 'John Inglesant. '])

The first half of the seventeenth century as a whole, compared with theElizabethan age, was a period of relaxing vigor. The Renaissance enthusiasmhad spent itself, and in place of the danger and glory which had longunited the nation there followed increasing dissension in religion andpolitics and uncertainty as to the future of England and, indeed, as to thewhole purpose of life. Through increased experience men were certainlywiser and more sophisticated than before, but they were also moreself-conscious and sadder or more pensive. The output of literature did notdiminish, but it spread itself over wider fields, in general fields ofsomewhat recondite scholarship rather than of creation. Nevertheless thisperiod includes in prose one writer greater than any prose writer of theprevious century, namely Francis Bacon, and, further, the book whichunquestionably occupies the highest place in English literature, that isthe King James version of the Bible; and in poetry it includes one of thevery greatest figures, John Milton, together with a varied and highlyinteresting assemblage of lesser lyrists. 

FRANCIS BACON, VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS, 1561-1626. [Footnote: Macaulay'swell-known essay on Bacon is marred by Macaulay's besetting faults ofsuperficiality and dogmatism and is best left unread. ] Francis Bacon, intellectually one of the most eminent Englishmen of all times, and chiefformulator of the methods of modern science, was born in 1561 (three yearsbefore Shakspere), the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the GreatSeal under Queen Elizabeth and one of her most trusted earlier advisers. The boy's precocity led the queen to call him her 'little Lord Keeper. ' Atthe age of twelve he, like Wyatt, was sent to Cambridge, where his chiefimpression was of disgust at the unfruitful scholastic application ofAristotle's ideas, still supreme in spite of a century of Renaissanceenlightenment. A very much more satisfactory three years' residence inFrance in the household of the English ambassador was terminated in 1579(the year of Spenser's 'Shepherd's Calendar') by the death of Sir Nicholas. Bacon was now ready to enter on the great career for which his talentsfitted him, but his uncle by marriage, Lord Burghley, though all-powerfulwith the queen, systematically thwarted his progress, from jealousconsciousness of his superiority to his own son. Bacon therefore studiedlaw, and was soon chosen a member of Parliament, where he quickly became aleader. He continued, however, throughout his life to devote much of histime to study and scholarly scientific writing. 

On the interpretation of Bacon's public actions depends the answer to thecomplex and much-debated question of his character. The most reasonableconclusions seem to be: that Bacon was sincerely devoted to the public goodand in his earlier life was sometimes ready to risk his own interests inits behalf; that he had a perfectly clear theoretical insight into theprinciples of moral conduct; that he lacked the moral force of character tolive on the level of his convictions, so that after the first, at least, his personal ambition was often stronger than his conscience; that hebelieved that public success could be gained only by conformity to the lowstandards of the age; that he fell into the fatal error of supposing thathis own preëminent endowments and the services which they might enable himto render justified him in the use of unworthy means; that his sense ofreal as distinguished from apparent personal dignity was distressinglyinadequate; and that, in general, like many men of great intellect, he wasdeficient in greatness of character, emotion, fine feeling, sympathy, andeven in comprehension of the highest spiritual principles. He certainlyshared to the full in the usual courtier's ambition for great place andwealth, and in the worldling's inclination to ostentatious display. 

Having offended Queen Elizabeth by his boldness in successfully opposing anencroachment on the rights of the House of Commons, Bacon connected himselfwith the Earl of Essex and received from him many favors; but when Essexattempted a treasonable insurrection in 1601, Bacon, as one of the Queen'slawyers, displayed against him a subservient zeal which on theoreticalgrounds of patriotism might appear praiseworthy, but which in view of hispersonal obligations was grossly indecent. For the worldly prosperity whichhe sought, however, Bacon was obliged to wait until the accession of KingJames, after which his rise was rapid. The King appreciated his ability andoften consulted him, and he frequently gave the wisest advice, whoseacceptance might perhaps have averted the worst national disasters of thenext fifty years. The advice was above the courage of both the King and theage; but Bacon was advanced through various legal offices, until in 1613 hewas made Attorney-General and in 1618 (two years after Shakspere's death)Lord High Chancellor of England, at the same time being raised to thepeerage as Baron Verulam. During all this period, in spite of his betterknowledge, he truckled with sorry servility to the King and his unworthyfavorites and lent himself as an agent in their most arbitrary acts. Retribution overtook him in 1621, within a few days after his elevation tothe dignity of Viscount St. Albans. The House of Commons, balked in anattack on the King and the Duke of Buckingham, suddenly turned on Bacon andimpeached him for having received bribes in connection with his legaldecisions as Lord Chancellor. Bacon admitted the taking of presents(against which in one of his essays he had directly cautioned judges), andthrew himself on the mercy of the House of Lords, with whom the sentencelay. He appears to have been sincere in protesting later that the presentshad not influenced his decisions and that he was the justest judge whomEngland had had for fifty years; it seems that the giving of presents bythe parties to a suit was a customary abuse. But he had technically laidhimself open to the malice of his enemies and was condemned to very heavypenalties, of which two were enforced, namely, perpetual incapacitationfrom holding public office, and banishment from Court. Even after this hecontinued, with an astonishing lack of good taste, to live extravagantlyand beyond his means (again in disregard of his own precepts), so thatPrince Charles observed that he 'scorned to go out in a snuff. ' He died in1626 from a cold caught in the prosecution of his scientific researches, namely in an experiment on the power of snow to preserve meat. 

Bacon's splendid mind and unique intellectual vision produced, perhapsinevitably, considering his public activity, only fragmentary concreteachievements. The only one of his books still commonly read is the seriesof 'Essays, ' which consist of brief and comparatively informal jottings onvarious subjects. In their earliest form, in 1597, the essays were ten innumber, but by additions from time to time they had increased at last in1625 to fifty-eight. They deal with a great variety of topics, whateverBacon happened to be interested in, from friendship to the arrangement of ahouse, and in their condensation they are more like bare synopses thancomplete discussions. But their comprehensiveness of view, sureness ofideas and phrasing, suggestiveness, and apt illustrations reveal thepregnancy and practical force of Bacon's thought (though, on the otherhand, he is not altogether free from the superstitions of his time andafter the lapse of three hundred years sometimes seems commonplace). Thewhole general tone of the essays, also, shows the man, keen and worldly, not at all a poet or idealist. How to succeed and make the most ofprosperity might be called the pervading theme of the essays, and subjectswhich in themselves suggest spiritual treatment are actually considered inaccordance with a coldly intellectual calculation of worldly advantage. 

The essays are scarcely less notable for style than for ideas. Withcharacteristic intellectual independence Bacon strikes out for himself anextremely terse and clear manner of expression, doubtless influenced bysuch Latin authors as Tacitus, which stands in marked contrast to theformless diffuseness or artificial elaborateness of most Elizabethan andJacobean prose. His unit of structure is always a short clause. Thesentences are sometimes short, sometimes consist of a number of connectedclauses; but they are always essentially loose rather than periodic; sothat the thought is perfectly simple and its movement clear and systematic. The very numerous allusions to classical history and life are not theresult of affectation, but merely indicate the natural furnishing of themind of the educated Renaissance gentleman. The essays, it should be added, were evidently suggested and more or less influenced by those of the greatFrench thinker, Montaigne, an earlier contemporary of Bacon. The hold ofmedieval scholarly tradition, it is further interesting to note, was stillso strong that in order to insure their permanent preservation Bacontranslated them into Latin--he took for granted that the English in whichhe first composed them and in which they will always be known was only atemporary vulgar tongue. 

But Bacon's most important work, as we have already implied, was not in thefield of pure literature but in the general advancement of knowledge, particularly knowledge of natural science; and of this great service wemust speak briefly. His avowal to Burghley, made as early as 1592, isfamous: 'I have taken all knowledge to be my province. ' Briefly stated, hispurposes, constituting an absorbing and noble ambition, were to survey allthe learning of his time, in all lines of thought, natural science, morals, politics, and the rest, to overthrow the current method of _a priori_deduction, deduction resting, moreover, on very insufficient andlong-antiquated bases of observation, and to substitute for it as themethod of the future, unlimited fresh observation and experiment andinductive reasoning. This enormous task was to be mapped out and itsresults summarized in a Latin work called 'Magna Instauratio Scientiarum'(The Great Renewal of Knowledge); but parts of this survey were necessarilyto be left for posterity to formulate, and of the rest Bacon actuallycomposed only a fraction. What may be called the first part appearedoriginally in English in 1605 and is known by the abbreviated title, 'TheAdvancement of Learning'; the expanded Latin form has the title, 'DeAugmentis Scientiarum. ' Its exhaustive enumeration of the branches ofthought and knowledge, what has been accomplished in each and what may behoped for it in the future, is thoroughly fascinating, though even hereBacon was not capable of passionate enthusiasm. However, the second part ofthe work, 'Novum Organum' (The New Method), written in Latin and publishedin 1620, is the most important. Most interesting here, perhaps, is theclassification (contrasting with Plato's doctrine of divinely perfectcontrolling ideas) of the 'idols' (phantoms) which mislead the human mind. Of these Bacon finds four sorts: idols of the tribe, which are inherent inhuman nature; idols of the cave, the errors of the individual; idols of themarket-place, due to mistaken reliance on words; and idols of the theater(that is, of the schools), resulting from false reasoning. 

In the details of all his scholarly work Bacon's knowledge and point ofview were inevitably imperfect. Even in natural science he was notaltogether abreast of his time--he refused to accept Harvey's discovery ofthe manner of the circulation of the blood and the Copernican system ofastronomy. Neither was he, as is sometimes supposed, the _inventor_ ofthe inductive method of observation and reasoning, which in some degree isfundamental in all study. But he did, much more fully and clearly than anyone before him, demonstrate the importance and possibilities of thatmethod; modern experimental science and thought have proceeded directly inthe path which he pointed out; and he is fully entitled to the great honorof being called their father, which certainly places him high among thegreat figures in the history of human thought. 

THE KING JAMES BIBLE, 1611. It was during the reign of James I that thelong series of sixteenth century translations of the Bible reached itsculmination in what we have already called the greatest of all Englishbooks (or rather, collections of books), the King James ('Authorized')version. In 1604 an ecclesiastical conference accepted a suggestion, approved by the king, that a new and more accurate rendering of the Bibleshould be made. The work was entrusted to a body of about fifty scholars, who divided themselves into six groups, among which the various books ofthe Bible were apportioned. The resulting translation, proceeding with theinevitable slowness, was completed in 1611, and then rather rapidlysuperseded all other English versions for both public and private use. ThisKing James Bible is universally accepted as the chief masterpiece ofEnglish prose style. The translators followed previous versions so far aspossible, checking them by comparison with the original Hebrew and Greek, so that while attaining the greater correctness at which they aimed theypreserved the accumulated stylistic excellences of three generations oftheir predecessors; and their language, properly varying according to thenature of the different books, possesses an imaginative grandeur and rhythmnot unworthy--and no higher praise could be awarded--of the themes which itexpresses. The still more accurate scholarship of a later century demandedthe Revised Version of 1881, but the superior literary quality of the KingJames version remains undisputed. Its style, by the nature of the case, wassomewhat archaic from the outset, and of course has become much more sowith the passage of time. This entails the practical disadvantage of makingthe Bible--events, characters, and ideas--seem less real and living; but onthe other hand it helps inestimably to create the finer imaginativeatmosphere which is so essential for the genuine religious spirit. 

MINOR PROSE WRITERS. Among the prose authors of the period who hold anassured secondary position in the history of English literature three orfour may be mentioned: Robert Burton, Oxford scholar, minister, andrecluse, whose 'Anatomy of Melancholy' (1621), a vast and quaint compendiumof information both scientific and literary, has largely influencednumerous later writers; Jeremy Taylor, royalist clergyman and bishop, oneof the most eloquent and spiritual of English preachers, author of 'HolyLiving' (1650) and 'Holy Dying' (1651); Izaak Walton, London tradesman andstudent, best known for his 'Compleat Angler' (1653), but author also ofcharming brief lives of Donne, George Herbert, and others of hiscontemporaries; and Sir Thomas Browne, a scholarly physician of Norwich, who elaborated a fastidiously poetic Latinized prose style for hispensively delightful 'Religio Medici' (A Physician's Religion--1643) andother works. 

LYRIC POETRY. Apart from the drama and the King James Bible, the mostenduring literary achievement of the period was in poetry. Milton--distinctly, after Shakspere, the greatest writer of thecentury--must receive separate consideration; the more purely lyric poetsmay be grouped together. 

The absence of any sharp line of separation between the literature of thereign of Elizabeth and of those of James I and Charles I is no less markedin the case of the lyric poetry than of the drama. Some of the poets whomwe have already discussed in Chapter V continued writing until the seconddecade of the seventeenth century, or later, and some of those whom weshall here name had commenced their career well before 1600. Just as in thedrama, therefore, something of the Elizabethan spirit remains in the lyricpoetry; yet here also before many years there is a perceptible change; theElizabethan spontaneous joyousness largely vanishes and is replaced by moreself-conscious artistry or thought. 

The Elizabethan note is perhaps most unmodified in certain anonymous songsand other poems of the early years of James I, such as the exquisite 'Weepyou no more, sad fountains. ' It is clear also in the charming songs ofThomas Campion, a physician who composed both words and music for severalsong-books, and in Michael Drayton, a voluminous poet and dramatist who isknown to most readers only for his finely rugged patriotic ballad on thebattle of Agincourt. Sir Henry Wotton, [Footnote: The first _o_ ispronounced as in _note_. ] statesman and Provost (head) of Eton School, displays the Elizabethan idealism in 'The Character of a Happy Life' and inhis stanzas in praise of Elizabeth, daughter of King James, wife of theill-starred Elector-Palatine and King of Bohemia, and ancestress of thepresent English royal family. The Elizabethan spirit is present but mingledwith seventeenth century melancholy in the sonnets and other poems of theScotch gentleman William Drummond of Hawthornden (the name of his estatenear Edinburgh), who in quiet life-long retirement lamented the untimelydeath of the lady to whom he had been betrothed or meditated on heavenlythings. 

In Drummond appears the influence of Spenser, which was strong on manypoets of the period, especially on some, like William Browne, who continuedthe pastoral form. Another of the main forces, in lyric poetry as in thedrama, was the beginning of the revival of the classical spirit, and inlyric poetry also this was largely due to Ben Jonson. As we have alreadysaid, the greater part of Jonson's non-dramatic poetry, like his dramas, expresses chiefly the downright strength of his mind and character. It isterse and unadorned, dealing often with commonplace things in the manner ofthe Epistles and Satires of Horace, and it generally has more of thequality of intellectual prose than of real emotional poetry. A veryfavorable representative of it is the admirable, eulogy on Shakspereincluded in the first folio edition of Shakspere's works. In a fewinstances, however, Jonson strikes the true lyric note delightfully. Everyone knows and sings his two stanzas 'To Celia'--'Drink to me only withthine eyes, ' which would still be famous without the exquisitelyappropriate music that has come down to us from Jonson's own time, andwhich are no less beautiful because they consist largely of ideas culledfrom the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. In all his poems, however, Jonsonaims consistently at the classical virtues of clearness, brevity, proportion, finish, and elimination of all excess. 

These latter qualities appear also in the lyrics which abound in the playsof John Fletcher, and yet it cannot be said that Fletcher's sweet melody ismore classical than Elizabethan. His other distinctive quality is the toneof somewhat artificial courtliness which was soon to mark the lyrics of theother poets of the Cavalier party. An avowed disciple of Jonson and hisclassicism and a greater poet than Fletcher is Robert Herrick, who, indeed, after Shakspere and Milton, is the finest lyric poet of these twocenturies. 

Herrick, the nephew of a wealthy goldsmith, seems, after a late graduationfrom Cambridge, to have spent some years about the Court and in the band ofJonson's 'sons. ' Entering the Church when he was nearly forty, he receivedthe small country parish of Dean Prior in the southwest (Devonshire), whichhe held for nearly twenty years, until 1647, when he was dispossessed bythe victorious Puritans. After the Restoration he was reinstated, and hecontinued to hold the place until his death in old age in 1674. Hepublished his poems (all lyrics) in 1648 in a collection which he called'Hesperides and Noble Numbers. ' The 'Hesperides' (named from the goldenapples of the classical Garden of the Daughters of the Sun) are twelvehundred little secular pieces, the 'Noble Numbers' a much less extensiveseries of religious lyrics. Both sorts are written in a great variety ofstanza forms, all equally skilful and musical. Few of the poems extendbeyond fifteen or twenty lines in length, and many are mere epigrams offour lines or even two. The chief secular subjects are: Herrick's devotionto various ladies, Julia, Anthea, Perilla, and sundry more, all presumablymore or less imaginary; the joy and uncertainty of life; the charmingbeauty of Nature; country life, folk lore, and festivals; and similar lightor familiar themes. Herrick's characteristic quality, so far as it can bedescribed, is a blend of Elizabethan joyousness with classical perfectionof finish. The finish, however, really the result of painstaking labor, such as Herrick had observed in his uncle's shop and as Jonson hadenjoined, is perfectly unobtrusive; so apparently natural are the poemsthat they seem the irrepressible unmeditated outpourings of happy and idlemoments. In care-free lyric charm Herrick can certainly never be surpassed;he is certainly one of the most captivating of all the poets of the world. Some of the 'Noble Numbers' are almost as pleasing as the 'Hesperides, ' butnot because of real religious significance. For of anything that can becalled spiritual religion Herrick was absolutely incapable; his nature wasfar too deficient in depth. He himself and his philosophy of life werepurely Epicurean, Hedonistic, or pagan, in the sense in which we use thoseterms to-day. His forever controlling sentiment is that to which he givesperfect expression in his best-known song, 'Gather ye rosebuds, ' namely theHoratian 'Carpe diem'--'Snatch all possible pleasure from therapidly-fleeting hours and from this gloriously delightful world. ' He issaid to have performed his religious duties with regularity; thoughsometimes in an outburst of disgust at the stupidity of his rusticparishioners he would throw his sermon in their faces and rush out of thechurch. Put his religion is altogether conventional. He thanks God formaterial blessings, prays for their continuance, and as the conclusion ofeverything, in compensation for a formally orthodox life, or rather creed, expects when he dies to be admitted to Heaven. The simple naïveté withwhich he expresses this skin-deep and primitive faith is, indeed, one ofthe chief sources of charm in the 'Noble Numbers. '

Herrick belongs in part to a group of poets who, being attached to theCourt, and devoting some, at least, of their verses to conventionallove-making, are called the Cavalier Poets. Among the others Thomas Carewfollows the classical principles of Jonson in lyrics which are facile, smooth, and sometimes a little frigid. Sir John Suckling, a handsome andcapricious representative of all the extravagances of the Court set, withwhom he was enormously popular, tossed off with affected carelessness amass of slovenly lyrics of which a few audaciously impudent ones are worthyto survive. From the equally chaotic product of Colonel Richard Lovelacestand out the two well-known bits of noble idealism, 'To Lucasta, Going tothe Wars, ' and 'To Althea, from Prison. ' George Wither (1588-1667), a mucholder man than Suckling and Lovelace, may be mentioned with them as thewriter in his youth of light-hearted love-poems. But in the Civil War hetook the side of Parliament and under Cromwell he rose to the rank ofmajor-general. In his later life he wrote a great quantity of Puritanreligious verse, largely prosy in spite of his fluency. 

The last important group among these lyrists is that of the more distinctlyreligious poets. The chief of these, George Herbert (1593-1633), thesubject of one of the most delightful of the short biographies of IzaakWalton, belonged to a distinguished family of the Welsh Border, one branchof which held the earldom of Pembroke, so that the poet was related to theyoung noble who may have been Shakspere's patron. He was also youngerbrother of Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury, an inveterate duellist and thefather of English Deism. [Footnote: See below, p. 212. ] Destined by hismother to peaceful pursuits, he wavered from the outset between two forces, religious devotion and a passion for worldly comfort and distinction. For along period the latter had the upper hand, and his life has been describedby his best editor, Professor George Herbert Palmer, as twenty-seven yearsof vacillation and three of consecrated service. Appointed Public Orator, or showman, of his university, Cambridge, he spent some years in enjoyingthe somewhat trifling elegancies of life and in truckling to the great. Then, on the death of his patrons, he passed through a period of intensecrisis from which he emerged wholly spiritualized. The three remainingyears of his life he spent in the little country parish of Bemerton, justoutside of Salisbury, as a fervent High Church minister, or as he preferredto name himself, priest, in the strictest devotion to his professionalduties and to the practices of an ascetic piety which to the usual Americanmind must seem about equally admirable and conventional. His religiouspoems, published after his death in a volume called 'The Temple, ' showmainly two things, first his intense and beautiful consecration to hispersonal God and Saviour, which, in its earnest sincerity, renders himdistinctly the most representative poet of the Church of England, andsecond the influence of Donne, who was a close friend of his mother. Thetitles of most of the poems, often consisting of a single word, arecommonly fantastic and symbolical--for example, 'The Collar, ' meaning theyoke of submission to God; and his use of conceits, though not so pervasiveas with Donne, is equally contorted. To a present-day reader the apparentaffectations may seem at first to throw doubt on Herbert's genuineness; butin reality he was aiming to dedicate to religious purposes what appeared tohim the highest style of poetry. Without question he is, in a true ifspecial sense, a really great poet. 

The second of these religious poets, Richard Crashaw, [Footnote: The firstvowel is pronounced as in the noun _crash_. ] whose life (1612-1649)was not quite so short as Herbert's, combined an ascetic devotion with aglowingly sensuous esthetic nature that seems rather Spanish than English. Born into an extreme Protestant family, but outraged by the wantoniconoclasm of the triumphant Puritans, and deprived by them of hisfellowship, at Cambridge, he became a Catholic and died a canon in thechurch of the miracle-working Lady (Virgin Mary) of Loretto in Italy. Hismost characteristic poetry is marked by extravagant conceits and byecstatic outbursts of emotion that have been called more ardent thananything else in English; though he sometimes writes also in a vein of calmand limpid beauty. He was a poetic disciple of Herbert, as he avowed byhumbly entitling his volume 'Steps to the Temple. '

The life of Henry Vaughan [Footnote: The second _a_ is not nowsounded. ] (1621-1695) stands in contrast to those of Herbert and Crashawboth by its length and by its quietness. Vaughan himself emphasized hisWelsh race by designating himself 'The Silurist' (native of South Wales). After an incomplete university course at Jesus College (the Welsh college), Oxford, and some apparently idle years in London among Jonson's disciples, perhaps also after serving the king in the war, he settled down in hisnative mountains to the self-denying life of a country physician. Hisimportant poems were mostly published at this time, in 1650 and 1655, inthe collection which he named 'Silex Scintillans' (The Flaming Flint), atitle explained by the frontispiece, which represents a flinty heartglowing under the lightning stroke of God's call. Vaughan's chief traitsare a very fine and calm philosophic-religious spirit and a carefullyobservant love of external Nature, in which he sees mystic revelations ofGod. In both respects he is closely akin to the later and greaterWordsworth, and his 'Retreat' has the same theme as Wordsworth's famous'Ode on Intimations of Immortality, ' the idea namely that children have agreater spiritual sensitiveness than older persons, because they have cometo earth directly from a former life in Heaven. 

The contrast between the chief Anglican and Catholic religious poets ofthis period has been thus expressed by a discerning critic: 'Herrick'sreligious emotions are only as ripples on a shallow lake when compared tothe crested waves of Crashaw, the storm-tides of Herbert, and the deep-seastirrings of Vaughan. '

We may give a further word of mention to the voluminous Francis Quarles, who in his own day and long after enjoyed enormous popularity, especiallyamong members of the Church of England and especially for his 'Emblems, ' abook of a sort common in Europe for a century before his time, in whichfantastic woodcuts, like Vaughan's 'Silex Scintillans, ' were illustratedwith short poems of religious emotion, chiefly dominated by fear. ButQuarles survives only as an interesting curiosity. 

Three other poets whose lives belong to the middle of the century may besaid to complete this entire lyric group. Andrew Marvell, a very moderatePuritan, joined with Milton in his office of Latin Secretary underCromwell, wrote much poetry of various sorts, some of it in the Elizabethanoctosyllabic couplet. He voices a genuine love of Nature, like Wither oftenin the pastoral form; but his best-known poem is the 'Horatian Ode uponCromwell's Return from Ireland, ' containing the famous eulogy of KingCharles' bearing at his execution. Abraham Cowley, a youthful prodigy andalways conspicuous for intellectual power, was secretary to Queen HenriettaMaria after her flight to France and later was a royalist spy in England. His most conspicuous poems are his so-called 'Pindaric Odes, ' in which hesupposed that he was imitating the structure of the Greek Pindar but reallyoriginated the pseudo-Pindaric Ode, a poem in irregular, non-correspondentstanzas. He is the last important representative of the 'Metaphysical'style. In his own day he was acclaimed as the greatest poet of all time, but as is usual in such cases his reputation very rapidly waned. EdmundWaller (1606-1687), a very wealthy gentleman in public life who played aflatly discreditable part in the Civil War, is most important for his sharein shaping the riming pentameter couplet into the smooth pseudo-classicalform rendered famous by Dryden and Pope; but his only notable single poemsare two Cavalier love-lyrics in stanzas, 'On a Girdle' and 'Go, LovelyRose. '

JOHN MILTON, 1608-1674. Conspicuous above all his contemporaries as therepresentative poet of Puritanism, and, by almost equally general consent, distinctly the greatest of English poets except Shakspere, stands JohnMilton. His life falls naturally into three periods: 1. Youth andpreparation, 1608-1639, when he wrote his shorter poems. 2. Public life, 1639-1660, when he wrote, or at least published, in poetry, only a fewsonnets. 3. Later years, 1660-1674, of outer defeat, but of chief poeticachievement, the period of 'Paradise Lost, ' 'Paradise Regained, ' and'Samson Agonistes. '

Milton was born in London in December, 1608. His father was a prosperousscrivener, or lawyer of the humbler sort, and a Puritan, but broad-minded, and his children were brought up in the love of music, beauty, andlearning. At the age of twelve the future poet was sent to St. Paul'sSchool, and he tells us that from this time on his devotion to study seldomallowed him to leave his books earlier than midnight. At sixteen, in 1625, he entered Cambridge, where he remained during the seven years required forthe M. A. Degree, and where he was known as 'the lady of Christ's'[College], perhaps for his beauty, of which all his life he continuedproud, perhaps for his moral scrupulousness. Milton was never, however, aconventional prig, and a quarrel with a self-important tutor led at onetime to his informal suspension from the University. His nature, indeed, had many elements quite inconsistent with the usual vague popularconception of him. He was always not only inflexible in his devotion toprinciple, but--partly, no doubt, from consciousness of his intellectualsuperiority--haughty as well as reserved, self-confident, and littlerespectful of opinions and feelings that clashed with his own. Neverthelessin his youth he had plenty of animal spirits and always for his friendswarm human sympathies. 

To his college years belong two important poems. His Christmas hymn, the'Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, ' shows the influence of his earlypoetical master, Spenser, and of contemporary pastoral poets, though italso contains some conceits--truly poetic conceits, however, not exercisesin intellectual cleverness like many of those of Donne and his followers. With whatever qualifications, it is certainly one of the great Englishlyrics, and its union of Renaissance sensuousness with grandeur ofconception and sureness of expression foretell clearly enough at twenty thepoet of 'Paradise Lost. ' The sonnet on his twenty-third birthday, further, is known to almost every reader of poetry as the best short expression inliterature of the dedication of one's life and powers to God. 

Milton had planned to enter the ministry, but the growing predominance ofthe High-Church party made this impossible for him, and on leaving theUniversity in 1632 he retired to the country estate which his parents nowoccupied at Horton, twenty miles west of London. Here, for nearly sixyears, amid surroundings which nourished his poet's love for Nature, hedevoted his time chiefly to further mastery of the whole range of approvedliterature, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English. His poems of theseyears also are few, but they too are of the very highest quality. 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' are idealized visions, in the trippingElizabethan octosyllabic couplet, of the pleasures of suburban life viewedin moods respectively of light-hearted happiness and of reflection. 'Comus, ' the last of the Elizabethan and Jacobean masks, combines anexquisite poetic beauty and a real dramatic action more substantial thanthat of any other mask with a serious moral theme (the security of Virtue)in a fashion that renders it unique. 'Lycidas' is one of the supremeEnglish elegies; though the grief which helps to create its power sprangmore from the recent death of the poet's mother than from that of thenominal subject, his college acquaintance, Edward King, and though in thehands of a lesser artist the solemn denunciation of the false leaders ofthe English Church might not have been wrought into so fine a harmony withthe pastoral form. 

Milton's first period ends with an experience designed to complete hispreparation for his career, a fifteen months' tour in France and Italy, where the highest literary circles received him cordially. From this triphe returned in 1639, sooner than he had planned, because, he said, thepublic troubles at home, foreshadowing the approaching war, seemed to him acall to service; though in fact some time intervened before his entrance onpublic life. 

The twenty years which follow, the second period of Milton's career, developed and modified his nature and ideas in an unusual degree andfashion. Outwardly the occupations which they brought him appear chiefly asan unfortunate waste of his great poetic powers. The sixteen sonnets whichbelong here show how nobly this form could be adapted to the variedexpression of the most serious thought, but otherwise Milton abandonedpoetry, at least the publication of it, for prose, and for prose which wasmostly ephemeral. Taking up his residence in London, for some time hecarried on a small private school in his own house, where he muchoverworked his boys in the mistaken effort to raise their intellectualambitions to the level of his own. Naturally unwilling to confine himselfto a private sphere, he soon engaged in a prose controversy supporting thePuritan view against the Episcopal form of church government, that isagainst the office of bishops. There shortly followed the most regrettableincident in his whole career, which pathetically illustrates also the lackof a sense of humor which was perhaps his greatest defect. At the age ofthirty-four, and apparently at first sight, he suddenly married MaryPowell, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a royalist country gentlemanwith whom his family had long maintained some business and socialrelations. Evidently this daughter of the Cavaliers met a rudedisillusionment in Milton's Puritan household and in his Old Testamenttheory of woman's inferiority and of a wife's duty of strict subjection toher husband; a few weeks after the marriage she fled to her family andrefused to return. Thereupon, with characteristic egoism, Milton put fortha series of pamphlets on divorce, arguing, contrary to English law, andwith great scandal to the public, that mere incompatibility of temper wasadequate ground for separation. He even proceeded so far as to makeproposals of marriage to another woman. But after two years and the ruin ofthe royalist cause his wife made unconditional submission, which Miltonaccepted, and he also received and supported her whole family in his house. Meanwhile his divorce pamphlets had led to the best of his prose writings. He had published the pamphlets without the license of Parliament, thenrequired for all books, and a suit was begun against him. He replied with'Areopagitica, ' an, eloquent and noble argument against the licensingsystem and in favor of freedom of publication within the widest possiblelimits. (The name is an allusion to the condemnation of the works ofProtagoras by the Athenian Areopagus. ) In the stress of public affairs theattack on him was dropped, but the book remains, a deathless plea forindividual liberty. 

Now at last Milton was drawn into active public life. The execution of theKing by the extreme Puritan minority excited an outburst of indignation notonly in England but throughout Europe. Milton, rising to the occasion, defended the act in a pamphlet, thereby beginning a paper controversy, chiefly with the Dutch scholar Salmasius, which lasted for several years. By 1652 it had resulted in the loss of Milton's eyesight, previouslyover-strained by his studies--a sacrifice in which he gloried but whichlovers of poetry must always regret, especially since the controversylargely consisted, according to the custom of the time, in a disgustingexchange of personal scurrilities. Milton's championship of the existinggovernment, however, together with his scholarship, had at once secured forhim the position of Latin secretary, or conductor of the diplomaticcorrespondence of the State with foreign countries. He held this office, after the loss of his eyesight, with Marvell as a colleague, under bothParliament and Cromwell, but it is an error to suppose that he exerted anyinfluence in the management of affairs or that he was on familiar termswith the Protector. At the Restoration he necessarily lost both theposition and a considerable part of his property, and for a while he wentinto hiding; but through the efforts of Marvell and others he was finallyincluded in the general amnesty. 

In the remaining fourteen years which make the third period of his lifeMilton stands out for subsequent ages as a noble figure. His very obstinacyand egoism now enabled him, blind, comparatively poor, and therepresentative of a lost cause, to maintain his proud and patient dignityin the midst of the triumph of all that was most hateful to him, and, as hebelieved, to God. His isolation, indeed, was in many respects extreme, though now as always he found the few sympathetic friends on whom hisnature was quite dependent. His religious beliefs had become what would atpresent be called Unitarian, and he did not associate with any of theexisting denominations; in private theory he had even come to believe inpolygamy. At home he is said to have suffered from the coldness or moreactive antipathy of his three daughters, which is no great cause for wonderif we must credit the report that he compelled them to read aloud to him inforeign languages of which he had taught them the pronunciation but not themeaning. Their mother had died some years before, and he had soon lost thesecond wife who is the subject of one of his finest sonnets. In 1663, atthe age of fifty-four, he was united in a third marriage to ElizabethMinshull, a woman of twenty-four, who was to survive him for more thanfifty years. 

The important fact of this last period, however, is that Milton now had theleisure to write, or to complete, 'Paradise Lost. ' For a quarter of acentury he had avowedly cherished the ambition to produce 'such a work asthe world would not willingly let die' and had had in mind, among others, the story of Man's Fall. Outlines for a treatment of it not in epic but indramatic form are preserved in a list of a hundred possible subjects for agreat work which he drew up as early as 1640, and during the Commonwealthperiod he seems not only to have been slowly maturing the plan but to havecomposed parts of the existing poem; nevertheless the actual work ofcomposition belongs chiefly to the years following 1660. The story as toldin Genesis had received much elaboration in Christian tradition from a veryearly period and Milton drew largely from this general tradition and nodoubt to some extent from various previous treatments of the Biblenarrative in several languages which he might naturally have read and keptin mind. But beyond the simple outline the poem, like every great work, isessentially the product of his own genius. He aimed, specifically, toproduce a Christian epic which should rank with the great epics ofantiquity and with those of the Italian Renaissance. 

In this purpose he was entirely successful. As a whole, by the consent ofall competent judges, 'Paradise Lost' is worthy of its theme, perhaps thegreatest that the mind of man can conceive, namely 'to justify the ways ofGod. ' Of course there are defects. The seventeenth century theology, likeevery successive theological, philosophical, and scientific system, haslost its hold on later generations, and it becomes dull indeed in the longexpository passages of the poem. The attempt to express spiritual ideasthrough the medium of the secular epic, with its battles and councils andall the forms of physical life, is of course rationally paradoxical. It wasearly pointed out that in spite of himself Milton has in some sense madeSatan the hero of the poem--a reader can scarcely fail to sympathize withthe fallen archangel in his unconquerable Puritan-like resistance to thearbitrary decrees of Milton's despotic Deity. Further, Milton's personal, English, and Puritan prejudices sometimes intrude in various ways. But allthese things are on the surface. In sustained imaginative grandeur ofconception, expression, and imagery 'Paradise Lost' yields to no humanwork, and the majestic and varied movement of the blank verse, here firstemployed in a really great non-dramatic English poem, is as magnificent asanything else in literature. It cannot be said that the later books alwayssustain the greatness of the first two; but the profusely scatteredpassages of sensuous description, at least, such as those of the Garden ofEden and of the beauty of Eve, are in their own way equally fine. Statelyand more familiar passages alike show that however much his experience haddone to harden Milton's Puritanism, his youthful Renaissance love of beautyfor beauty's sake had lost none of its strength, though of course it couldno longer be expressed with youthful lightness of fancy and melody. Thepoem is a magnificent example of classical art, in the best Greek spirit, united with glowing romantic feeling. Lastly, the value of Milton'sscholarship should by no means be overlooked. All his poetry, from the'Nativity Ode' onward, is like a rich mosaic of gems borrowed from a greatrange of classical and modern authors, and in 'Paradise Lost' the allusionsto literature and history give half of the romantic charm and very much ofthe dignity. The poem could have been written only by one who combined in avery high degree intellectual power, poetic feeling, religious idealism, profound scholarship and knowledge of literature, and also experiencedknowledge of the actual world of men. 

'Paradise Lost' was published in 1677. It was followed in 1671 by 'ParadiseRegained, ' only one-third as long and much less important; and by 'SamsonAgonistes' (Samson in his Death Struggle). In the latter Milton puts thestory of the fallen hero's last days into the majestic form of a Greekdrama, imparting to it the passionate but lofty feeling evoked by the closesimilarity of Samson's situation to his own. This was his last work, and hedied in 1674. Whatever his faults, the moral, intellectual and poeticgreatness of his nature sets him apart as in a sense the grandest figure inEnglish literature. 

JOHN BUNYAN. Seventeenth century Puritanism was to find a supreme spokesmanin prose fiction as well as in poetry; John Milton and John Bunyan, standing at widely different angles of experience, make one of the mostinteresting complementary pairs in all literature. By the mere chronologyof his works, Bunyan belongs in our next period, but in his case merechronology must be disregarded. 

Bunyan was born in 1628 at the village of Elstow, just outside of Bedford, in central England. After very slight schooling and some practice at hisfather's trade of tinker, he was in 1644 drafted for two years and a halfinto garrison service in the Parliamentary army. Released from thisoccupation, he married a poor but excellent wife and worked at his trade;but the important experiences of his life were the religious ones. Endowedby nature with great moral sensitiveness, he was nevertheless a person ofviolent impulses and had early fallen into profanity and laxity of conduct, which he later described with great exaggeration as a condition ofabandoned wickedness. But from childhood his abnormally active dramaticimagination had tormented him with dreams and fears of devils andhell-fire, and now he entered on a long and agonizing struggle between hisreligious instinct and his obstinate self-will. He has told the whole storyin his spiritual autobiography, 'Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 'which is one of the notable religious books of the world. A reader of itmust be filled about equally with admiration for the force of will andperseverance that enabled Bunyan at last to win his battle, and pity forthe fantastic morbidness that created out of next to nothing most of hiswell-nigh intolerable tortures. One Sunday, for example, fresh from asermon on Sabbath observance, he was engaged in a game of 'cat, ' when hesuddenly heard within himself the question, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins andgo to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' Stupefied, he looked up tothe sky and seemed there to see the Lord Jesus gazing at him 'hotlydispleased' and threatening punishment. Again, one of his favoritediversions was to watch bellmen ringing the chimes in the church steeples, and though his Puritan conscience insisted that the pleasure was 'vain, 'still he would not forego it. Suddenly one day as he was indulging in itthe thought occurred to him that God might cause one of the bells to falland kill him, and he hastened to shield himself by standing under a beam. But, he reflected, the bell might easily rebound from the wall and strikehim; so he shifted his position to the steeple-door. Then 'it came into hishead, "How if the steeple itself should fall?"' and with that he fled alikefrom the controversy and the danger. 

Relief came when at the age of twenty-four he joined a non-sectarian churchin Bedford (his own point of view being Baptist). A man of so energeticspirit could not long remain inactive, and within two years he waspreaching in the surrounding villages. A dispute with the Friends hadalready led to the beginning of his controversial writing when in 1660 theRestoration rendered preaching by persons outside the communion of theChurch of England illegal, and he was arrested and imprisoned in Bedfordjail. Consistently refusing to give the promise of submission andabstention from preaching which at any time would have secured his release, he continued in prison for twelve years, not suffering particulardiscomfort and working for the support of his family by fastening the endsonto shoestrings. During this time he wrote and published several of themost important of his sixty books and pamphlets. At last, in 1672, theauthorities abandoned the ineffective requirement of conformity, and he wasreleased and became pastor of his church. Three years later he was againimprisoned for six months, and it was at that time that he composed thefirst part of 'The Pilgrim's Progress, ' which was published in 1678. Duringthe remaining ten years of his life his reputation and authority among theDissenters almost equalled his earnest devotion and kindness, and won forhim from his opponents the good-naturedly jocose title of 'the Baptistbishop. ' He died in 1688. 

Several of Bunyan's books are strong, but none of the others is to be namedtogether with 'The Pilgrim's Progress. ' This has been translated intonearly or quite a hundred languages and dialects--a record never approachedby any other book of English authorship. The sources of its power areobvious. It is the intensely sincere presentation by a man of tremendousmoral energy of what he believed to be the one subject of eternal andincalculable importance to every human being, the subject namely ofpersonal salvation. Its language and style, further, are founded on thenoble and simple model of the English Bible, which was almost the only bookthat Bunyan knew, and with which his whole being was saturated. Histriumphant and loving joy in his religion enables him often to attain thepoetic beauty and eloquence of his original; but both by instinct and ofset purpose he rendered his own style even more simple and direct, partlyby the use of homely vernacular expressions. What he had said in 'GraceAbounding' is equally true here: 'I could have stepped into a style muchhigher . . . But I dare not. God did not play in convincing of me . . . Wherefore I may not play in my relating of these experiences. ' 'Pilgrim'sProgress' is perfectly intelligible to any child, and further, it is highlydramatic and picturesque. It is, to be sure, an allegory, but one of thoseallegories which seem inherent in the human mind and hence more naturalthan the most direct narrative. For all men life is indeed a journey, andthe Slough of Despond, Doubting Castle, Vanity Fair, and the Valley ofHumiliation are places where in one sense or another every human soul hasoften struggled and suffered; so that every reader goes hand in hand withChristian and his friends, fears for them in their dangers and rejoices intheir escapes. The incidents, however, have all the further fascination ofsupernatural romance; and the union of this element with the homelysincerity of the style accounts for much of the peculiar quality of thebook. Universal in its appeal, absolutely direct and vivid in manner--sucha work might well become, as it speedily did, one of the most famous ofworld classics. It is interesting to learn, therefore, that Bunyan hadexpected its circulation to be confined to the common people; the earlyeditions are as cheap as possible in paper, printing, and illustrations. 

Criticism, no doubt, easily discovers in 'Pilgrim's Progress' technicalfaults. The story often lacks the full development and balance of incidentsand narration which a trained literary artist would have given it; theallegory is inconsistent in a hundred ways and places; the characters areonly types; and Bunyan, always more preacher than artist, is distinctlyunfair to the bad ones among them. But these things are unimportant. Everyallegory is inconsistent, and Bunyan repeatedly takes pains to emphasizethat this is a dream; while the simplicity of character-treatment increasesthe directness of the main effect. When all is said, the book remains thegreatest example in literature of what absolute earnestness may makepossible for a plain and untrained man. Nothing, of course, can alter thefundamental distinctions. 'Paradise Lost' is certainly greater than'Pilgrim's Progress, ' because it is the work of a poet and a scholar aswell as a religious enthusiast. But 'Pilgrim's Progress, ' let it be saidfrankly, will always find a dozen readers where Milton has one by choice, and no man can afford to think otherwise than respectfully of achievementswhich speak powerfully and nobly to the underlying instincts and needs ofall mankind. 

The naturalness of the allegory, it may be added, renders the resemblanceof 'Pilgrim's Progress' to many previous treatments of the same theme andto less closely parallel works like 'The Faerie Queene' probablyaccidental; in any significant sense Bunyan probably had no other sourcethan the Bible and his own imagination. 

CHAPTER VIII

PERIOD VI. THE RESTORATION, 1660-1700. 

(_For the political events leading up to the Restoration see above, pages141-142. _) [Footnote: This is the period of Scott's 'Old Mortality' and'Legend of Montrose. ']

GENERAL CONDITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS. The repudiation of the Puritan ruleby the English people and the Restoration of the Stuart kings in the personof Charles II, in 1660, mark one of the most decisive changes in Englishlife and literature. The preceding half century had really beentransitional, and during its course, as we have seen, the Elizabethanadventurous energy and half-naif greatness of spirit had more and moredisappeared. With the coming of Charles II the various tendencies which hadbeen replacing these forces seemed to crystallize into their almostcomplete opposites. This was true to a large extent throughout the country;but it was especially true of London and the Court party, to whichliterature of most sorts was now to be perhaps more nearly limited thanever before. 

The revolt of the nation was directed partly against the irresponsibleinjustice of the Puritan military government but largely also against theexcessive moral severity of the whole Puritan régime. Accordingly a largepart of the nation, but particularly the Court, now plunged into an orgy ofself-indulgence in which moral restraints almost ceased to be regarded. Thenew king and his nobles had not only been led by years of proscription andexile to hate on principle everything that bore the name of Puritan, buthad spent their exile at the French Court, where utterly cynical andselfish pursuit of pleasure and licentiousness of conduct were merelymasked by conventionally polished manners. The upshot was that the quartercentury of the renewed Stuart rule was in almost all respects the mostdisgraceful period of English history and life. In everything, so far aspossible, the restored Cavaliers turned their backs on their immediatepredecessors. The Puritans, in particular, had inherited the enthusiasmwhich had largely made the greatness of the Elizabethan period but had ingreat measure shifted it into the channel of their religion. Hence to theRestoration courtiers enthusiasm and outspoken emotion seemed marks ofhypocrisy and barbarism. In opposition to such tendencies they aimed torealize the ideal of the man of the world, sophisticated, skeptical, subjecting everything to the scrutiny of the reason, and above all, well-bred. Well-bred, that is, according to the artificial social standardsof a selfish aristocratic class; for the actual manners of the courtiers, as of such persons at all times, were in many respects disgustingly crude. In religion most of them professed adherence to the English Church (some tothe Catholic), but it was a conventional adherence to an institution of theState and a badge of party allegiance, not a matter of spiritual convictionor of any really deep feeling. The Puritans, since they refused to returnto the English (Established) Church, now became known as Dissenters. 

The men of the Restoration, then, deliberately repudiated some of the chiefforces which seem to a romantic age to make life significant. As a naturalcorollary they concentrated their interest on the sphere of the practicaland the actual. In science, particularly, they continued with markedsuccess the work of Bacon and his followers. Very shortly after theRestoration the Royal Society was founded for the promotion of research andscientific knowledge, and it was during this period that Sir Isaac Newton(a man in every respect admirable) made his vastly important discoveries inphysics, mathematics, and astronomy. 

In literature, both prose and verse, the rationalistic and practical spiritshowed itself in the enthroning above everything else of the principles ofutility and common sense in substance and straightforward directness instyle. The imaginative treatment of the spiritual life, as in 'ParadiseLost' or 'The Faerie Queene, ' or the impassioned exaltation of imaginativebeauty, as in much Elizabethan poetry, seemed to the typical men of theRestoration unsubstantial and meaningless, and they had no ambition toattempt flights in those realms. In anything beyond the tangible affairs ofvisible life, indeed, they had little real belief, and they preferred thatliterature should restrain itself within the safe limits of the known andthe demonstrable. Hence the characteristic Restoration verse is satire of aprosaic sort which scarcely belongs to poetry at all. More fortunateresults of the prevailing spirit were the gradual abandonment of theconceits and irregularities of the 'metaphysical' poets, and, mostimportant, the perfecting of the highly regular rimed pentameter couplet, the one great formal achievement of the time in verse. In prose style thesame tendencies resulted in a distinct advance. Thitherto English prose hadseldom attained to thorough conciseness and order; it had generally beenmore or less formless or involved in sentence structure or pretentious ingeneral manner; but the Restoration writers substantially formed the morelogical and clear-cut manner which, generally speaking, has prevailed eversince. 

Quite consistent with this commonsense spirit, as the facts were theninterpreted, was the allegiance which Restoration writers rendered to theliterature of classical antiquity, an allegiance which has gained for thisperiod and the following half-century, where the same attitude was stillmore strongly emphasized, the name 'pseudo-classical. ' We have before notedthat the enthusiasm for Greek and Latin literature which so largelyunderlay the Renaissance took in Ben Jonson and his followers, in part, theform of a careful imitation of the external technique of the classicalwriters. In France and Italy at the same time this tendency was stillstronger and much more general. The seventeenth century was the greatperiod of French tragedy (Corneille and Racine), which attempted to baseitself altogether on classical tragedy. Still more representative, however, were the numerous Italian and French critics, who elaborated a complexsystem of rules, among them, for tragedy, those of the 'three unities, 'which they believed to dominate classic literature. Many of these ruleswere trivial and absurd, and the insistence of the critics upon them showedan unfortunate inability to grasp the real spirit of the classic, especially of Greek, literature. In all this, English writers and criticsof the Restoration period and the next half-century very commonly followedthe French and Italians deferentially. Hence it is that the literature ofthe time is pseudo-classical (false classical) rather than true classical. But this reduction of art to strict order and decorum, it should be clear, was quite in accord with the whole spirit of the time. 

One particular social institution of the period should be mentioned for itsconnection with literature, namely the coffee houses, which, introducedabout the middle of the century, soon became very popular and influential. They were, in our own idiom, cafés, where men met to sip coffee orchocolate and discuss current topics. Later, in the next century, theyoften developed into clubs. 

MINOR WRITERS. The contempt which fell upon the Puritans as a deposed andunpopular party found stinging literary expression in one of the mostfamous of English satires, Samuel Butler's 'Hudibras. ' Butler, a reservedand saturnine man, spent much of his uneventful life in the employ(sometimes as steward) of gentlemen and nobles, one of whom, a Puritanofficer, Sir Samuel Luke, was to serve as the central lay-figure for hislampoon. 'Hudibras, ' which appeared in three parts during a period offifteen years, is written, like previous English satires, inrough-and-ready doggerel verse, in this case verse of octosyllabic coupletsand in the form of a mock-epic. It ridicules the intolerance andsanctimonious hypocrisy of the Puritans as the Cavaliers insisted on seeingthem in the person of the absurd Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralph (partlysuggested by Cervantes' Don Quixote and Sancho). These sorry figures aremade to pass very unheroically through a series of burlesque adventures. The chief power of the production lies in its fire of witty epigrams, manyof which have become familiar quotations, for example:

 He could distinguish, and divide, A hair 'twixt south and south-west side. Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to. 

Though the king and Court took unlimited delight in 'Hudibras' theydisplayed toward Butler their usual ingratitude and allowed him to pass hislatter years in obscure poverty. 

Some of the other central characteristics of the age appear in a uniquebook, the voluminous 'Diary' which Samuel Pepys (pronounced Peps), atypical representative of the thrifty and unimaginative citizen class, keptin shorthand for ten years beginning in 1660. Pepys, who ultimately becameSecretary to the Admiralty, and was a hard-working and very able navalofficial, was also astonishingly naïf and vain. In his 'Diary' he recordsin the greatest detail, without the least reserve (and with no idea ofpublication) all his daily doings, public and private, and a large part ofhis thoughts. The absurdities and weaknesses, together with the bettertraits, of a man spiritually shallow and yet very human are here revealedwith a frankness unparalleled and almost incredible. Fascinating as apsychological study, the book also affords the fullest possible informationabout all the life of the period, especially the familiar life, not ondress-parade. In rather sharp contrast stands the 'Diary' of John Evelyn, which in much shorter space and virtually only in a series of glimpsescovers seventy years of time. Evelyn was a real gentleman and scholar whooccupied an honorable position in national life; his 'Diary, ' also, furnishes a record, but a dignified record, of his public and privateexperience. 

THE RESTORATION DRAMA. The moral anarchy of the period is most strikinglyexhibited in its drama, particularly in its comedy and 'comedy of manners. 'These plays, dealing mostly with love-actions in the setting of the Courtor of fashionable London life, and carrying still further the generalspirit of those of Fletcher and Shirley a generation or two earlier, deliberately ridicule moral principles and institutions, especiallymarriage, and are always in one degree or another grossly indecent. Technically they are often clever; according to that definition ofliterature which includes a moral standard, they are not literature at all. To them, however, we shall briefly return at the end of the chapter. 

JOHN DRYDEN, 1631-1700. No other English literary period is so thoroughlyrepresented and summed up in the works of a single man as is theRestoration period in John Dryden, a writer in some respects akin to BenJonson, of prolific and vigorous talent without the crowning quality ofgenius. 

Dryden, the son of a family of Northamptonshire country gentry, was born in1631. From Westminster School and Cambridge he went, at about the age oftwenty-six and possessed by inheritance of a minimum living income, toLondon, where he perhaps hoped to get political preferment through hisrelatives in the Puritan party. His serious entrance into literature wasmade comparatively late, in 1659, with a eulogizing poem on Cromwell on theoccasion of the latter's death. When, the next year, Charles II wasrestored, Dryden shifted to the Royalist side and wrote some poems in honorof the king. Dryden's character should not be judged from this incident andsimilar ones in his later life too hastily nor without regard to the spiritof the times. Aside from the fact that Dryden had never professed, probably, to be a radical Puritan, he certainly was not, like Milton andBunyan, a heroic person, nor endowed with deep and dynamic convictions; onthe other hand, he was very far from being base or dishonorable--no one canread his works attentively without being impressed by their spirit ofstraightforward manliness. Controlled, like his age, by cool common senseand practical judgment, he kept his mind constantly open to newimpressions, and was more concerned to avoid the appearance of bigotry andunreason than to maintain that of consistency. In regard to politics andeven religion he evidently shared the opinion, bred in many of hiscontemporaries by the wasteful strife of the previous generations, thatbeyond a few fundamental matters the good citizen should make no closescrutiny of details but rather render loyal support to the establishedinstitutions of the State, by which peace is preserved and anarchyrestrained. Since the nation had recalled Charles II, overthrownPuritanism, and reëstablished the Anglican Church, it probably appeared toDryden an act of patriotism as well as of expediency to accept itsdecision. 

Dryden's marriage with the daughter of an earl, two or three years afterthe Restoration, secured his social position, and for more than fifteenyears thereafter his life was outwardly successful. He first turned to thedrama. In spite of the prohibitory Puritan law (above, p. 150), a facilewriter, Sir William Davenant, had begun, cautiously, a few years before theRestoration, to produce operas and other works of dramatic nature; and thereturning Court had brought from Paris a passion for the stage, whichtherefore offered the best and indeed the only field for remunerativeliterary effort. Accordingly, although Dryden himself frankly admitted thathis talents were not especially adapted to writing plays, he proceeded todo so energetically, and continued at it, with diminishing productivity, nearly down to the end of his life, thirty-five years later. But hisactivity always found varied outlets. He secured a lucrative share in theprofits of the King's Playhouse, one of the two theaters of the time whichalone were allowed to present regular plays, and he held the mainlyhonorary positions of poet laureate and historiographer-royal. Later, likeChaucer, he was for a time collector of the customs of the port of London. He was not much disturbed by 'The Rehearsal, ' a burlesque play brought outby the Duke of Buckingham and other wits to ridicule current dramas anddramatists, in which he figured as chief butt under the name 'Bayes' (poetlaureate); and he took more than full revenge ten years later when in'Absalom and Achitophel' he drew the portrait of Buckingham as Zimri. Butin 1680 an outrage of which he was the victim, a brutal and unprovokedbeating inflicted by ruffians in the employ of the Earl of Rochester, seemsto mark a permanent change for the worse in his fortunes, a change notindeed to disaster but to a permanent condition of doubtful prosperity. 

The next year he became engaged in political controversy, which resulted inthe production of his most famous work. Charles II was without a legitimatechild, and the heir to the throne was his brother, the Duke of York, who afew years later actually became king as James II. But while Charles wasoutwardly, for political reasons, a member of the Church of England (atheart he was a Catholic), the Duke of York was a professed and devotedCatholic, and the powerful Whig party, strongly Protestant, was violentlyopposed to him. The monstrous fiction of a 'Popish Plot, ' brought forwardby Titus Oates, and the murderous frenzy which it produced, weredemonstrations of the strength of the Protestant feeling, and the leader ofthe Whigs, the Earl of Shaftesbury, proposed that the Duke of York shouldbe excluded by law from the succession to the throne in favor of the Dukeof Monmouth, one of the king's illegitimate sons. At last, in 1681, thenation became afraid of another civil war, and the king was enabled to haveShaftesbury arrested on the charge of treason. Hereupon Dryden, at thesuggestion, it is said, of the king, and with the purpose of securingShaftesbury's conviction, put forth the First Part of 'Absalom andAchitophel, ' a masterly satire of Shaftesbury, Monmouth, and theirassociates in the allegorical disguise of the (somewhat altered) Biblicalstory of David and Absalom. [Footnote: The subsequent history of the affairwas as follows: Shaftesbury was acquitted by the jury, and his enthusiasticfriends struck a medal in his honor, which drew from Dryden a short andless important satire, 'The Medal. ' To this in turn a minor poet namedShadwell replied, and Dryden retorted with 'Mac Flecknoe. ' The name means'Son of Flecknoe, ' and Dryden represented Shadwell as having inherited thestupidity of an obscure Irish rimester named Flecknoe, recently deceased. The piece is interesting chiefly because it suggested Pope's 'Dunciad. 'Now, in 1682, the political tide again turned against Shaftesbury, and hefled from England. His death followed shortly, but meanwhile appeared theSecond Part of 'Absalom and Achitophel, ' chiefly a commonplace productionwritten by Nahum Tate (joint author of Tate and Brady's paraphrase of thePsalms into English hymn-form), but with some passages by Dryden. ]

In 1685 Charles died and James succeeded him. At about the same time Drydenbecame a Catholic, a change which laid him open to the suspicion oftruckling for royal favor, though in fact he had nothing to gain by it andits chief effect was to identify him with a highly unpopular minority. Hehad already, in 1682, written a didactic poem, 'Religio Laici' (A Layman'sReligion), in which he set forth his reasons for adhering to the EnglishChurch. Now, in 1687, he published the much longer allegorical 'Hind andthe Panther, ' a defense of the Catholic Church and an attack on the EnglishChurch and the Dissenters. The next year, King James was driven from thethrone, his daughter Mary and her husband, William, Prince of Orange, succeeded him, and the supremacy of the Church of England was againassured. Dryden remained constant to Catholicism and his refusal to takethe oath of allegiance to the new rulers cost him all his public officesand reduced him for the rest of his life to comparative poverty. He had thefurther mortification of seeing the very Shadwell whom he had sounsparingly ridiculed replace him as poet laureate. These reverses, however, he met with his characteristic manly fortitude, and of hisposition as the acknowledged head of English letters he could not bedeprived; his chair at 'Will's' coffee-house was the throne of anunquestioned monarch. His industry, also, stimulated by necessity, wasunabated to the end. Among other work he continued, in accordance with thetaste of the age, to make verse translations from the chief Latin poets, and in 1697 he brought out a version of all the poems of Vergil. He died in1700, and his death may conveniently be taken, with substantial accuracy, as marking the end of the Restoration period. 

Variety, fluency, and not ungraceful strength are perhaps the chiefqualities of Dryden's work, displayed alike in his verse and in his prose. Since he was primarily a poet it is natural to speak first of his verse;and we must begin with a glance at the history of the rimed pentametercouplet, which he carried to the highest point of effectiveness thus farattained. This form had been introduced into English, probably from French, by Chaucer, who used it in many thousand lines of the 'Canterbury Tales. 'It was employed to some extent by the Elizabethans, especially in scatteredpassages of their dramas, and in some poems of the early seventeenthcentury. Up to that time it generally had a free form, with frequent'running-on' of the sense from one line to the next and marked irregularityof pauses. The process of developing it into the representativepseudo-classical measure of Dryden and Pope consisted in making the lines, or at least the couplets, generally end-stopt, and in securing a generalregular movement, mainly by eliminating pronounced pauses within the line, except for the frequent organic cesura in the middle. This process, likeother pseudo-classical tendencies, was furthered by Ben Jonson, who usedthe couplet in more than half of his non-dramatic verse; but it wasespecially carried on by the wealthy politician and minor poet EdmundWaller (above, page 164), who for sixty years, from 1623 on, wrote most ofhis verse (no very great quantity) in the couplet. Dryden and all hiscontemporaries gave to Waller, rather too unreservedly, the credit ofhaving first perfected the form, that is of first making it (to theirtaste) pleasingly smooth and regular. The great danger of the couplet thustreated is that of over-great conventionality, as was partly illustrated byDryden's successor, Pope, who carried Waller's method to the farthestpossible limit. Dryden's vigorous instincts largely saved him from thisfault; by skilful variations in accents and pauses and by terseforcefulness of expression he gave the couplet firmness as well assmoothness. He employed, also, two other more questionable means ofvariety, namely, the insertion (not original with him) of occasionalAlexandrine lines and of frequent triplets, three lines instead of tworiming together. A present-day reader may like the pentameter couplet ormay find it frigid and tedious; at any rate Dryden employed it in thelarger part of his verse and stamped it unmistakably with the strength ofhis strong personality. 

In satiric and didactic verse Dryden is accepted as the chief Englishmaster, and here 'Absalom and Achitophel' is his greatest achievement. Itis formally a narrative poem, but in fact almost nothing happens in it; itis really expository and descriptive--a very clever partisan analysis of asituation, enlivened by a series of the most skilful character sketcheswith very decided partisan coloring. The sketches, therefore, offer aninteresting contrast with the sympathetic and humorous portraits ofChaucer's 'Prolog. ' Among the secrets of Dryden's success in thisparticular field are his intellectual coolness, his vigorous masculinepower of seizing on the salient points of character, and his command ofterse, biting phraseology, set off by effective contrast. 

Of Dryden's numerous comedies and 'tragi-comedies' (serious plays with asub-action of comedy) it may be said summarily that some of them were amongthe best of their time but that they were as licentious as all the others. Dryden was also the chief author of another kind of play, peculiar to thisperiod in England, namely the 'Heroic' (Epic) Play. The material and spiritof these works came largely from the enormously long contemporary Frenchromances, which were widely read in England, and of which a prominentrepresentative was 'The Great Cyrus' of Mlle. De Scudéry, in ten volumes ofa thousand pages or more apiece. These romances, carrying further thetendency which appears in Sidney's 'Arcadia, ' are among the mostextravagant of all products of the romantic imagination--strange mélangesof ancient history, medieval chivalry, pastoralism, seventeenth centuryartificial manners, and allegory of current events. The English 'heroic'plays, partly following along these lines, with influence also fromFletcher, lay their scenes in distant countries; their central interest isextravagant romantic love; the action is more that of epic adventure thanof tragedy; and incidents, situations, characters, sentiments, and style, though not without power, are exaggerated or overstrained to an absurddegree. Breaking so violently through the commonplaceness and formality ofthe age, however, they offer eloquent testimony to the irrepressibility ofthe romantic instinct in human nature. Dryden's most representative play ofthis class is 'Almanzor and Almahide, or the Conquest of Granada, ' in twolong five-act parts. 

We need do no more than mention two or three very bad adaptations of playsof Shakspere to the Restoration taste in which Dryden had a hand; but hismost enduring dramatic work is his 'All for Love, or the World Well Lost, 'where he treats without direct imitation, though in conscious rivalry, thestory which Shakspere used in 'Antony and Cleopatra. ' The two plays affordan excellent illustration of the contrast between the spirits of theirperiods. Dryden's undoubtedly has much force and real feeling; but hefollows to a large extent the artificial rules of the pseudo-classicalFrench tragedies and critics. He observes the 'three unities' withconsiderable closeness, and he complicates the love-action with newelements of Restoration jealousy and questions of formal honor. Altogether, the twentieth century reader finds in 'All for Love' a strong and skilfulplay, ranking, nevertheless, with its somewhat formal rhetoric andconventional atmosphere, far below Shakspere's less regular butmagnificently emotional and imaginative masterpiece. 

A word must be added about the form of Dryden's plays. In his comedies andin comic portions of the others he, like other English dramatists, usesprose, for its suggestion of every-day reality. In plays of serious tone heoften turns to blank verse, and this is the meter of 'All for Love. ' Butearly in his dramatic career he, almost contemporaneously with otherdramatists, introduced the rimed couplet, especially in his heroic plays. The innovation was due in part to the influence of contemporary Frenchtragedy, whose riming Alexandrine couplet is very similar in effect to theEnglish couplet. About the suitability of the English couplet to the dramathere has always been difference of critical opinion; but most Englishreaders feel that it too greatly interrupts the flow of the speeches and isnot capable of the dignity and power of blank verse. Dryden himself, at anyrate, finally grew tired of it and returned to blank verse. 

Dryden's work in other forms of verse, also, is of high quality. In hisdramas he inserted songs whose lyric sweetness is reminiscent of thesimilar songs of Fletcher. Early in his career he composed (in pentameterquatrains of alternate rime, like Gray's 'Elegy') 'Annus Mirabilis' (TheWonderful Year--namely 1666), a long and vigorous though far from faultlessnarrative of the war with the Dutch and of the Great Fire of London. Moreimportant are the three odes in the 'irregular Pindaric' form introduced byCowley. The first, that to Mrs. (i. E. , Miss) Anne Killigrew, one of theQueen's maids of honor, is full, thanks to Cowley's example, of'metaphysical' conceits and science. The two later ones, 'Alexander'sFeast' and the 'Song for St. Cecilia's Day, ' both written for a musicalsociety's annual festival in honor of the patron saint of their art, arefinely spirited and among the most striking, though not most delicate, examples of onomatopoeia in all poetry. 

Dryden's prose, only less important than his verse, is mostly in the formof long critical essays, virtually the first in English, which are prefixedto many of his plays and poems. In them, following French example, hediscusses fundamental questions of poetic art or of general esthetics. Hisopinions are judicious; independent, so far as the despotic authority ofthe French critics permitted, at least honest; and interesting. Mostimportant, perhaps, is his attitude toward the French pseudo-classicalformulas. He accepted French theory even in details which we now know to beabsurd--agreed, for instance, that even Homer wrote to enforce an abstractmoral (namely that discord destroys a state). In the field of his maininterest, further, his reason was persuaded by the pseudo-classicalarguments that English (Elizabethan) tragedy, with its violent contrastsand irregularity, was theoretically wrong. Nevertheless his greatnessconsists throughout partly in the common sense which he shares with thebest English critics and thinkers of all periods; and as regards tragedy heconcludes, in spite of rules and theory, that he 'loves Shakspere. '

In expression, still again, Dryden did perhaps more than any other man toform modern prose style, a style clear, straightforward, terse, forceful, easy and simple and yet dignified, fluent in vocabulary, varied, and ofpleasing rhythm. 

Dryden's general quality and a large part of his achievement are happilysummarized in Lowell's epigram that he 'was the greatest poet who ever wasor ever could be made wholly out of prose. ' He can never again be afavorite with the general reading-public; but he will always remain one ofthe conspicuous figures in the history of English literature. 

THE OTHER DRAMATISTS. The other dramatists of the Restoration period may bedismissed with a few words. In tragedy the overdrawn but powerful plays ofThomas Otway, a man of short and pathetic life, and of Nathaniel Lee, arealone of any importance. In comedy, during the first part of the period, stand Sir George Etherege and William Wycherley. The latter's 'CountryWife' has been called the most heartless play ever written. To the nextgeneration and the end of the period (or rather of the Restorationliterature, which actually lasted somewhat beyond 1700), belong WilliamCongreve, a master of sparkling wit, Sir John Vanbrugh, and GeorgeFarquhar. So corrupt a form of writing as the Restoration comedy could notcontinue to flaunt itself indefinitely. The growing indignation was voicedfrom time to time in published protests, of which the last, in 1698, wasthe over-zealous but powerful 'Short View of the Immorality and Profanenessof the English Stage' by Jeremy Collier, which carried the more weightbecause the author was not a Puritan but a High-Church bishop and partisanof the Stuarts. Partly as a result of such attacks and partly by thenatural course of events the pendulum, by the end of the period, wasswinging back, and not long thereafter Restoration comedy died and thestage was left free for more decent, though, as it proved, not for greater, productions. 

CHAPTER IX

PERIOD VII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. PSEUDO-CLASSICISM AND THE BEGINNINGS OFMODERN ROMANTICISM [Footnote: Thackeray's 'Henry Esmond' is the greatesthistorical novel relating to the early eighteenth century. ]

POLITICAL CONDITIONS. During the first part of the eighteenth century thedirect connection between politics and literature was closer than at anyprevious period of English life; for the practical spirit of the previousgeneration continued to prevail, so that the chief writers were very readyto concern themselves with the affairs of State, and in the uncertainstrife of parties ministers were glad to enlist their aid. On the death ofKing William in 1702, Anne, sister of his wife Queen Mary and daughter ofJames II, became Queen. Unlike King William she was a Tory and at firstfilled offices with members of that party. But the English campaigns underthe Duke of Marlborough against Louis XIV were supported by the Whigs, [Footnote: The Tories were the political ancestors of the present-dayConservatives; the Whigs of the Liberals. ] who therefore gradually regainedcontrol, and in 1708 the Queen had to submit to a Whig ministry. Shesucceeded in ousting them in 1710, and a Tory cabinet was formed by HenryHarley (afterwards Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John (afterwards ViscountBolingbroke). On the death of Anne in 1714 Bolingbroke, with other Tories, was intriguing for a second restoration of the Stuarts in the person of theson of James II (the 'Old Pretender'). But the nation decided for aProtestant German prince, a descendant of James I through his daughterElizabeth, [Footnote: The subject of Wotton's fine poem, above, p. 158. ]and this prince was crowned as George I--an event which brought Englandpeace at the price of a century of rule by an unenlightened and sordidforeign dynasty. The Tories were violently turned out of office; Oxford wasimprisoned, and Bolingbroke, having fled to the Pretender, was declared atraitor. Ten years later he was allowed to come back and attempted tooppose Robert Walpole, the Whig statesman who for twenty years governedEngland in the name of the first two Georges; but in the upshot Bolingbrokewas again obliged to retire to France. How closely these events wereconnected with the fortunes of the foremost authors we shall see as weproceed. 

THE GENERAL SPIRIT OF THE PERIOD. The writers of the reigns of Anne andGeorge I called their period the Augustan Age, because they flatteredthemselves that with them English life and literature had reached aculminating period of civilization and elegance corresponding to that whichexisted at Rome under the Emperor Augustus. They believed also that both inthe art of living and in literature they had rediscovered and werepractising the principles of the best periods of Greek and Roman life. Inour own time this judgment appears equally arrogant and mistaken. Inreality the men of the early eighteenth century, like those of theRestoration, largely misunderstood the qualities of the classical spirit, and thinking to reproduce them attained only a superficial, pseudo-classical, imitation. The main characteristics of the period and itsliterature continue, with some further development, those of theRestoration, and may be summarily indicated as follows:

1. Interest was largely centered in the practical well-being either ofsociety as a whole or of one's own social class or set. The majority ofwriters, furthermore, belonged by birth or association to the upper socialstratum and tended to overemphasize its artificial conventions, oftenlooking with contempt on the other classes. To them conventional goodbreeding, fine manners, the pleasures of the leisure class, and thestandards of 'The Town' (fashionable London society) were the only part oflife much worth regarding. 2. The men of this age carried still further thedistrust and dislike felt by the previous generation for emotion, enthusiasm, and strong individuality both in life and in literature, andexalted Reason and Regularity as their guiding stars. The terms 'decency'and 'neatness' were forever on their lips. They sought a conventionaluniformity in manners, speech, and indeed in nearly everything else, andwere uneasy if they deviated far from the approved, respectable standardsof the body of their fellows. Great poetic imagination, therefore, couldscarcely exist among them, or indeed supreme greatness of any sort. 3. Theyhad little appreciation for external Nature or for any beauty except thatof formalized Art. A forest seemed to most of them merely wild and gloomy, and great mountains chiefly terrible, but they took delight in gardens ofartificially trimmed trees and in regularly plotted and alternating beds ofdomestic flowers. The Elizabethans also, as we have seen, had had much morefeeling for the terror than for the grandeur of the sublime in Nature, butthe Elizabethans had had nothing of the elegant primness of the Augustans. 4. In speech and especially in literature, most of all in poetry, they weregiven to abstractness of thought and expression, intended to secureelegance, but often serving largely to substitute superficiality fordefiniteness and significant meaning. They abounded in personifications ofabstract qualities and ideas ('Laughter, heavenly maid, ' Honor, Glory, Sorrow, and so on, with prominent capital letters), a sort of apseudo-classical substitute for emotion. 5. They were still more fullyconfirmed than the men of the Restoration in the conviction that theancients had attained the highest possible perfection in literature, andsome of them made absolute submission of judgment to the ancients, especially to the Latin poets and the Greek, Latin, and also theseventeenth century classicizing French critics. Some authors seemedtimidly to desire to be under authority and to glory in surrendering theirindependence, individuality, and originality to foreign andlong-established leaders and principles. 6. Under these circumstances theeffort to attain the finished beauty of classical literature naturallyresulted largely in a more or less shallow formal smoothness. 7. There wasa strong tendency to moralizing, which also was not altogether free fromconventionality and superficiality. 

Although the 'Augustan Age' must be considered to end before the middle ofthe century, the same spirit continued dominant among many writers untilnear its close, so that almost the whole of the century may be called theperiod of pseudo-classicism. 

DANIEL DEFOE. The two earliest notable writers of the period, however, though they display some of these characteristics, were men of strongindividual traits which in any age would have directed them largely alongpaths of their own choosing. The first of them is Daniel Defoe, whobelongs, furthermore, quite outside the main circle of high-bred andpolished fashion. 

Defoe was born in London about 1660, the son of James Foe, a butcher, towhose name the son arbitrarily and with characteristic eye to effectprefixed the 'De' in middle life. Educated for the Dissenting ministry, Defoe, a man of inexhaustible practical energy, engaged instead in severalsuccessive lines of business, and at the age of thirty-five, after variousvicissitudes, was in prosperous circumstances. He now became a pamphleteerin support of King William and the Whigs. His first very significant work, a satire against the High-Church Tories entitled 'The Shortest Way withDissenters, ' belongs early in the reign of Queen Anne. Here, parodyingextreme Tory bigotry, he argued, with apparent seriousness, that theDissenters should all be hanged. The Tories were at first delighted, butwhen they discovered the hoax became correspondingly indignant and Defoewas set in the pillory, and (for a short time) imprisoned. In thisconfinement he began _The Review_, a newspaper which he continued foreleven years and whose department called 'The Scandal Club' suggested 'TheTatler' to Steele. During many years following his release Defoe issued anenormous number of pamphlets and acted continuously as a secret agent andspy of the government. Though he was always at heart a thorough-goingDissenter and Whig, he served all the successive governments, Whig andTory, alike; for his character and point of view were those of the'practical' journalist and middle-class money-getter. This of course meansthat all his professed principles were superficial, or at least secondary, that he was destitute of real religious feeling and of the gentleman'ssense of honor. 

Defoe's influence in helping to shape modern journalism and modernevery-day English style was large; but the achievement which has given himworld-wide fame came late in life. In 1706 he had written a masterly shortstory, 'The Apparition of Mrs. Veal. ' Its real purpose, characteristicallyenough, was the concealed one of promoting the sale of an unsuccessfulreligious book, but its literary importance lies first in theextraordinarily convincing mass of minute details which it casts about anincredible incident and second in the complete knowledge (sprung fromDefoe's wide experience in journalism, politics, and business) which itdisplays of a certain range of middle-class characters and ideas. It isthese same elements, together with the vigorous presentation and emphasisof basal practical virtues, that distinguished 'Robinson Crusoe, ' of whichthe First Part appeared in 1719, when Defoe was nearly or quite sixty yearsof age. The book, which must have been somewhat influenced by 'Pilgrim'sProgress, ' was more directly suggested by a passage in William Dampier's'Voyage Round the World, ' and also, as every one knows, by the experienceof Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who, set ashore on the island of JuanFernandez, off the coast of Chile, had lived there alone from 1709 to 1713. Selkirk's story had been briefly told in the year of his return in anewspaper of Steele, 'The Englishman'; it was later to inspire the mostfamous poem of William Cowper. 'Robinson Crusoe, ' however, turned thematerial to account in a much larger, more clever, and more strikingfashion. Its success was immediate and enormous, both with the Englishmiddle class and with a wider circle of readers in the other Europeancountries; it was followed by numerous imitations and it will doubtlessalways continue to be one of the best known of world classics. The preciseelements of its power can be briefly indicated. As a story of unprecedentedadventure in a distant and unknown region it speaks thrillingly to theuniversal human sense of romance. Yet it makes a still stronger appeal tothe instinct for practical, every-day realism which is the controllingquality in the English dissenting middle class for whom Defoe was writing. Defoe has put himself with astonishingly complete dramatic sympathy intothe place of his hero. In spite of not a few errors and oversights (due tohasty composition) in the minor details of external fact, he has virtuallylived Crusoe's life with him in imagination and he therefore makes thereader also pass with Crusoe through all his experiences, his fears, hopesand doubts. Here also, as we have implied, Defoe's vivid sense for externalminutiae plays an important part. He tells precisely how many guns andcheeses and flasks of spirit Crusoe brought away from the wreck, how manydays or weeks he spent in making his earthen vessels and his canoe--in aword, thoroughly actualizes the whole story. More than this, the bookstrikes home to the English middle class because it records how a plainEnglishman completely mastered apparently insuperable obstacles through theplain virtues of courage, patience, perseverance, and mechanical ingenuity. Further, it directly addresses the dissenting conscience in its emphasis onreligion and morality. This is none the less true because the religion andmorality are of the shallow sort characteristic of Defoe, a man who, likeCrusoe, would have had no scruples about selling into slavery adark-skinned boy who had helped him to escape from the same condition. Ofany really delicate or poetic feeling, any appreciation for the finerthings of life, the book has no suggestion. In style, like Defoe's otherwritings, it is straightforward and clear, though colloquially informal, with an entire absence of pretense or affectation. Structurally, it is acharacteristic story of adventure--a series of loosely connectedexperiences not unified into an organic plot, and with no stress oncharacter and little treatment of the really complex relations andstruggles between opposing characters and groups of characters. Yet itcertainly marks a step in the development of the modern novel, as will beindicated in the proper place (below, p. 254). 

Defoe's energy had not diminished with age and a hard life, and the successof 'Robinson Crusoe' led him to pour out a series of other works ofromantic-realistic fiction. The second part of 'Robinson Crusoe' is no moresatisfactory than any other similar continuation, and the third part, acollection of moralizings, is today entirely and properly forgotten. On theother hand, his usual method, the remarkable imaginative re-creation andvivifying of a host of minute details, makes of the fictitious 'Journal ofthe Plague Year' (1666) a piece of virtual history. Defoe's other laterworks are rather unworthy attempts to make profit out of his reputation andhis full knowledge of the worst aspects of life; they are mostly very frankpresentations of the careers of adventurers or criminals, real orfictitious. In this coarse realism they are picaresque (above, p. 108), andin structure also they, like 'Robinson Crusoe, ' are picaresque in beingmere successions of adventures without artistic plot. 

In Defoe's last years he suffered a great reverse of fortune, paying thefull penalty for his opportunism and lack of ideals. His secret andunworthy long-standing connection with the Government was disclosed, sothat his reputation was sadly blemished, and he seems to have gone intohiding, perhaps as the result of half-insane delusions. He died in 1731. His place in English literature is secure, though he owes it to the luckyaccident of finding not quite too late special material exactly suited tohis peculiar talent. 

JONATHAN SWIFT. Jonathan Swift, another unique figure of very mixed traits, is like Defoe in that he connects the reign of William III with that of hissuccessors and that, in accordance with the spirit of his age, he wrote forthe most part not for literary but for practical purposes; in many otherrespects the two are widely different. Swift is one of the bestrepresentatives in English literature of sheer intellectual power, but hischaracter, his aims, his environment, and the circumstances of his lifedenied to him also literary achievement of the greatest permanentsignificance. Swift, though of unmixed English descent, related to bothDryden and Robert Herrick, was born in Ireland, in 1667. Brought up inpoverty by his widowed mother, he spent the period between his fourteenthand twentieth years recklessly and without distinction at Trinity College, Dublin. From the outbreak attending the Revolution of 1688 he fled toEngland, where for the greater part of nine years he lived in the countryas a sort of secretary to the retired statesman, Sir William Temple, whowas his distant relative by marriage. Here he had plenty of time forreading, but the position of dependence and the consciousness that hisgreat though still unformed powers of intellect and of action were rustingaway in obscurity undoubtedly did much to increase the natural bitternessof his disposition. As the result of a quarrel he left Temple for a timeand took holy orders, and on the death of Temple he returned to Ireland aschaplain to the English Lord Deputy. He was eventually given several smalllivings and other church positions in and near Dublin, and at one of these, Laracor, he made his home for another nine years. During all this periodand later the Miss Esther Johnson whom he has immortalized as 'Stella'holds a prominent place in his life. A girl of technically gentle birth, she also had been a member of Sir William Temple's household, wasinfatuated with Swift, and followed him to Ireland. About their intimacythere has always hung a mystery. It has been held that after many yearsthey were secretly married, but this is probably a mistake; the essentialfact seems to be that Swift, with characteristic selfishness, was willingto sacrifice any other possible prospects of 'Stella' to his own mereenjoyment of her society. It is certain, however, that he both highlyesteemed her and reciprocated her affection so far as it was possible forhim to love any woman. 

In 1704 Swift published his first important works (written earlier, whilehe was living with Temple), which are among the masterpieces of hissatirical genius. In 'The Battle of the Books' he supports Temple, who hadtaken the side of the Ancients in a hotly-debated and very futile quarrelthen being carried on by French and English writers as to whether ancientor modern authors are the greater. 'The Tale of a Tub' is a keen, coarse, and violent satire on the actual irreligion of all Christian Churches. Ittakes the form of a burlesque history of three brothers, Peter (theCatholics, so called from St. Peter), Martin (the Lutherans and the Churchof England, named from Martin Luther), and Jack (the Dissenters, whofollowed John Calvin); but a great part of the book is made up ofirrelevant introductions and digressions in which Swift ridicules variousabsurdities, literary and otherwise, among them the very practice ofdigressions. 

Swift's instinctive dominating impulse was personal ambition, and duringthis period he made long visits to London, attempting to push his fortuneswith the Whig statesmen, who were then growing in power; attempting, thatis, to secure a higher position in the Church; also, be it added, to getrelief for the ill-treated English Church in Ireland. He made thefriendship of Addison, who called him, perhaps rightly, 'the greatestgenius of the age, ' and of Steele, but he failed of his main purposes; andwhen in 1710 the Tories replaced the Whigs he accepted their solicitationsand devoted his pen, already somewhat experienced in pamphleteering, totheir service. It should not be overlooked that up to this time, when hewas already more than forty years of age, his life had been one ofcontinual disappointment, so that he was already greatly soured. Now, inconducting a paper, 'The Examiner, ' and in writing masterly politicalpamphlets, he found occupation for his tremendous energy and gave veryvital help to the ministers. During the four years of their control of thegovernment he remained in London on intimate terms with them, especiallywith Bolingbroke and Harley, exercising a very large advisory share in thebestowal of places of all sorts and in the general conduct of affairs. Thiswas Swift's proper sphere; in the realization and exercise of power he tooka fierce and deep delight. His bearing at this time too largely reflectedthe less pleasant side of his nature, especially his pride and arrogance. Yet toward professed inferiors he could be kind; and real playfulness andtenderness, little evident in most of his other writings, distinguish his'Journal to Stella, ' which he wrote for her with affectionate regularity, generally every day, for nearly three years. The 'Journal' is interestingalso for its record of the minor details of the life of Swift and of Londonin his day. His association, first and last, with literary men wasunusually broad; when politics estranged him from Steele and Addison hedrew close to Pope and other Tory writers in what they called theScriblérus Club. 

Despite his political success, Swift was still unable to secure thedefinite object of his ambition, a bishopric in England, since the levitywith which he had treated holy things in 'A Tale of a Tub' had hopelesslyprejudiced Queen Anne against him and the ministers could not actaltogether in opposition to her wishes. In 1713 he received the unwelcomegift of the deanship of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, and the nextyear, when the Queen died and the Tory ministry fell, he withdrew toDublin, as he himself bitterly said, 'to die like a poisoned rat in ahole. '

In Swift's personal life there were now events in which he again showed tovery little advantage. In London he had become acquainted with a certainHester Vanhomrigh, the 'Vanessa' of his longest poem, 'Cadenus and Vanessa'(in which 'Cadenus' is an anagram of 'Decanus, ' Latin for 'Dean, ' i. E. , Swift). Miss Vanhomrigh, like 'Stella, ' was infatuated with Swift, and likeher followed him to Ireland, and for nine years, as has been said, he'lived a double life' between the two. 'Vanessa' then died, probably of abroken heart, and 'Stella' a few years later. Over against this conduct, sofar as it goes, may be set Swift's quixotic but extensive and constantpersonal benevolence and generosity to the poor. 

In general, this last period of Swift's life amounted to thirty years ofincreasing bitterness. He devoted some of his very numerous pamphlets todefending the Irish, and especially the English who formed the governingclass in Ireland, against oppression by England. Most important here were'The Drapier's [i. E. , Draper's, Cloth-Merchant's] Letters, ' in which Swiftaroused the country to successful resistance against a very unprincipledpiece of political jobbery whereby a certain Englishman was to be allowedto issue a debased copper coinage at enormous profit to himself but to thecertain disaster of Ireland. 'A Modest Proposal, ' the proposal, namely, that the misery of the poor in Ireland should be alleviated by the raisingof children for food, like pigs, is one of the most powerful, as well asone of the most horrible, satires which ever issued from any humanimagination. In 1726 (seven years after 'Robinson Crusoe') appeared Swift'smasterpiece, the only one of his works still widely known, namely, 'TheTravels of Lemuel Gulliver. ' The remarkable power of this unique work liespartly in its perfect combination of two apparently inconsistent things, first, a story of marvelous adventure which must always remain (in thefirst parts) one of the most popular of children's classics; and second, abitter satire against mankind. The intensity of the satire increases as thework proceeds. In the first voyage, that to the Lilliputians, the tone isone mainly of humorous irony; but in such passages as the hideousdescription of the _Struldbrugs_ in the third voyage the cynicalcontempt is unspeakably painful, and from the distorted libel on mankind inthe _Yahoos_ of the fourth voyage a reader recoils in indignantdisgust. 

During these years Swift corresponded with friends in England, among themPope, whom he bitterly urged to 'lash the world for his sake, ' and he onceor twice visited England in the hope, even then, of securing a place in theChurch on the English side of St. George's Channel. His last years weremelancholy in the extreme. Long before, on noticing a dying tree, he hadobserved, with the pitiless incisiveness which would spare neither othersnor himself: 'I am like that. I shall die first at the top. ' His birthdayhe was accustomed to celebrate with lamentations. At length an obscuredisease which had always afflicted him, fed in part, no doubt, by his fieryspirit and his fiery discontent, reached his brain. After some years ofincreasing lethargy and imbecility, occasionally varied by fits of violentmadness and terrible pain, he died in 1745, leaving all his money to founda hospital for the insane. His grave in St. Patrick's Cathedral bears thisinscription of his own composing, the best possible epitome of his career:'Ubi saeva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit' (Where fierceindignation can no longer tear his heart). 

The complexity of Swift's character and the great difference between theviewpoints of his age and of ours make it easy at the present time to judgehim with too great harshness. Apart from his selfish egotism and hisbitterness, his nature was genuinely loyal, kind and tender to friends andconnections; and he hated injustice and the more flagrant kinds ofhypocrisy with a sincere and irrepressible violence. Whimsicalness and acontemptuous sort of humor were as characteristic of him as biting sarcasm, and his conduct and writings often veered rapidly from the one to the otherin a way puzzling to one who does not understand him. Nevertheless he wasdominated by cold intellect and an instinct for the practical. To showsentiment, except under cover, he regarded as a weakness, and it is saidthat when he was unable to control it he would retire from observation. Hewas ready to serve mankind to the utmost of his power when effort seemed tohim of any avail, and at times he sacrificed even his ambition to hisconvictions; but he had decided that the mass of men were hopelesslyfoolish, corrupt, and inferior, personal sympathy with them was impossibleto him, and his contempt often took the form of sardonic practical jokes, practised sometimes on a whole city. Says Sir Leslie Stephen in his life ofSwift: 'His doctrine was that virtue is the one thing which deserves loveand admiration, and yet that virtue in this hideous chaos of a worldinvolves misery and decay. ' Of his extreme arrogance and brutality to thosewho offended him there are numerous anecdotes; not least in the case ofwomen, whom he, like most men of his age, regarded as man's inferiors. Heonce drove a lady from her own parlor in tears by violent insistence thatshe should sing, against her will, and when he next met her, inquired, 'Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured to-day as when I saw youlast?' It seems, indeed, that throughout his life Swift's mind waspositively abnormal, and this may help to excuse the repulsive elements inhis writings. For metaphysics and abstract principles, it may be added, hehad a bigoted antipathy. In religion he was a staunch and sincere HighChurchman, but it was according to the formal fashion of many thinkers ofhis day; he looked on the Church not as a medium of spiritual life, ofwhich he, like his generation, had little conception, but as one of theorganized institutions of society, useful in maintaining decency and order. 

Swift's 'poems' require only passing notice. In any strict sense they arenot poems at all, since they are entirely bare of imagination, delicacy, and beauty. Instead they exhibit the typical pseudo-classical traits ofmatter-of-factness and clearness; also, as Swift's personal notes, cleverness, directness, trenchant intellectual power, irony, and entireease, to which latter the prevailing octosyllabic couplet metercontributes. This is the meter of 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso, ' and thecontrast between these poems and Swift's is instructive. 

Swift's prose style has substantially the same qualities. Writing generallyas a man of affairs, for practical ends, he makes no attempt at eleganceand is informal even to the appearance of looseness of expression. Ofconscious refinements and also, in his stories, of technical artisticstructural devices, he has no knowledge; he does not go out of the straightpath in order to create suspense, he does not always explain difficultiesof detail, and sometimes his narrative becomes crudely bare. He oftendisplays the greatest imaginative power, but it is always a practicalimagination; his similes, for example, are always from very matter-of-factthings. But more notable are his positive merits. He is always absolutelyclear, direct, and intellectually forceful; in exposition and argument heis cumulatively irresistible; in description and narration realisticallypicturesque and fascinating; and he has the natural instinct for narrationwhich gives vigorous movement and climax. Indignation and contempt oftenmake his style burn with passion, and humor, fierce or bitterly mirthful, often enlivens it with startling flashes. 

The great range of the satires which make the greater part of Swift's workis supported in part by variety of satiric method. Sometimes he pours out asavage direct attack. Sometimes, in a long ironical statement, he saysexactly the opposite of what he really means to suggest. Sometimes he usesapparently logical reasoning where either, as in 'A Modest Proposal, ' theproposition, or, as in the 'Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, ' thearguments are absurd. He often shoots out incidental humorous or satiricalshafts. But his most important and extended method is that of allegory. Thepigmy size of the Lilliputians symbolizes the littleness of mankind andtheir interests; the superior skill in rope-dancing which with them is theground for political advancement, the political intrigues of real men; andthe question whether eggs shall be broken on the big or the little end, which has embroiled Lilliput in a bloody war, both civil and foreign, thetrivial causes of European conflicts. In Brobdingnag, on the other hand, the coarseness of mankind is exhibited by the magnifying process. Swift, like Defoe, generally increases the verisimilitude of his fictions and hisironies by careful accuracy in details, which is sometimes arithmeticallygenuine, sometimes only a hoax. In Lilliput all the dimensions arescientifically computed on a scale one-twelfth as large as that of man; inBrobdingnag, by an exact reversal, everything is twelve times greater thanamong men. But the long list of technical nautical terms which seem to makea spirited narrative at the beginning of the second of Gulliver's voyagesis merely an incoherent hodge-podge. 

Swift, then, is the greatest of English satirists and the only one who as asatirist claims large attention in a brief general survey of Englishliterature. He is one of the most powerfully intellectual of all Englishwriters, and the clear force of his work is admirable; but being first aman of affairs and only secondarily a man of letters, he stands only on theoutskirts of real literature. In his character the elements were greatlymingled, and in our final judgment of him there must be combined somethingof disgust, something of admiration, and not a little of sympathy and pity. 

STEELE AND ADDISON AND 'THE TATLER' AND 'THE SPECTATOR' The writings ofSteele and Addison, of which the most important are their essays in 'TheTatler' and 'The Spectator, ' contrast strongly with the work of Swift andare more broadly characteristic of the pseudo-classical period. 

Richard Steele was born in Dublin in 1672 of an English father and an Irishmother. The Irish strain was conspicuous throughout his life in hiswarm-heartedness, impulsiveness and lack of self-control and practicaljudgment. Having lost his father early, he was sent to the CharterhouseSchool in London, where he made the acquaintance of Addison, and then toOxford. He abandoned the university to enlist in the aristocratic regimentof Life Guards, and he remained in the army, apparently, for seven or eightyears, though he seems not to have been in active service and became arecognized wit at the London coffee-houses. Thackeray in 'Henry Esmond'gives interesting though freely imaginative pictures of him at this stageof his career and later. His reckless instincts and love of pleasure wererather strangely combined with a sincere theoretical devotion to religion, and his first noticeable work (1701), a little booklet called 'TheChristian Hero, ' aimed, in opposition to fashionable license, to show thatdecency and goodness are requisites of a real gentleman. The resultantridicule forced him into a duel (in which he seriously wounded hisantagonist), and thenceforth in his writings duelling was a main object ofhis attacks. During the next few years he turned with the same reformingzeal to comedy, where he attempted to exalt pure love and high ideals, though the standards of his age and class leave in his own plays much thatto-day seems coarse. Otherwise his plays are by no means great; theyinitiated the weak 'Sentimental Comedy, ' which largely dominated theEnglish stage for the rest of the century. During this period Steele wasmarried twice in rather rapid succession to wealthy ladies whose fortunesserved only very temporarily to respite him from his chronic condition ofdebt and bailiff's duns. 

Now succeeds the brief period of his main literary achievement. All hislife a strong Whig, he was appointed in 1707 Gazetteer, or editor, of 'TheLondon Gazette, ' the official government newspaper. This led him in 1709 tostart 'The Tatler. ' English periodical literature, in forms which must becalled the germs both of the modern newspaper and of the modern magazine, had begun in an uncertain fashion, of which the details are too complicatedfor record here, nearly a hundred years before, and had continued eversince with increasing vigor. The lapsing of the licensing laws in 1695 hadgiven a special impetus. Defoe's 'Review, ' from 1704 to 1713, was devotedto many interests, including politics, the Church and commerce. Steele's'Tatler' at first likewise dealt in each number with several subjects, suchas foreign news, literary criticism, and morals, but his controllinginstinct to inculcate virtue and good sense more and more asserted itself. The various departments were dated from the respective coffee-houses wherethose subjects were chiefly discussed, Poetry from 'Will's, ' Foreign andDomestic News from 'St. James's, ' and so on. The more didactic papers wereascribed to an imaginary Isaac Bickerstaff, a nom-de-plume which Steeleborrowed from some of Swift's satires. Steele himself wrote two-thirds ofall the papers, but before proceeding far he accepted Addison's offer ofassistance and later he occasionally called in other contributors. 

'The Tatler' appeared three times a week and ran for twenty-one months; itcame to an end shortly after the return of the Tories to power had deprivedSteele and Addison of some of their political offices. Its discontinuancemay have been due to weariness on Steele's part or, since it was Whig intone, to a desire to be done with partisan writing; at any rate, two monthslater, in March, 1711, of Marlborough's victory at Blenheim, secured thefavor of the ministers of the day, and throughout almost all the rest ofhis life he held important political places, some even, thanks to Swift, during the period of Tory dominance. During his last ten years he was amember of Parliament; but though he was a delightful conversationalist in asmall group of friends, he was unable to speak in public. 

Addison's great fame as 'The Spectator' was increased when in 1713 hebrought out the play 'Cato, ' mostly written years before. This is acharacteristic example of the pseudo-classical tragedies of which a fewwere produced during the first half of the eighteenth century. They are thestiffest and most lifeless of all forms of pseudo-classical literature;Addison, for his part, attempts not only to observe the three unities, butto follow many of the minor formal rules drawn up by the French critics, and his plot, characterization, and language are alike excessively pale andfrigid. Paleness and frigidity, however, were taken for beauties at thetime, and the moral idea of the play, the eulogy of Cato's devotion toliberty in his opposition to Caesar, was very much in accord with theprevailing taste, or at least the prevailing affected taste. Both politicalparties loudly claimed the work as an expression of their principles, theWhigs discovering in Caesar an embodiment of arbitrary government like thatof the Tories, the Tories declaring him a counterpart of Marlborough, adangerous plotter, endeavoring to establish a military despotism. 'Cato, 'further, was a main cause of a famous quarrel between Addison and Pope. Addison, now recognized as the literary dictator of the age, had greatlypleased Pope, then a young aspirant for fame, by praising his 'Essay onCriticism, ' and Pope rendered considerable help in the final revision of'Cato. ' When John Dennis, a rather clumsy critic, attacked the play, Popecame to its defense with a reply written in a spirit of railing bitternesswhich sprang from injuries of his own. Addison, a real gentleman, disownedthe defense, and this, with other slights suffered or imagined by Pope'sjealous disposition, led to estrangement and soon to the composition ofPope's very clever and telling satire on Addison as 'Atticus, ' which Popedid not publish, however, until he included it in his 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, ' many years after Addison's death. 

The few remaining years of Addison's life were rather unhappy. He marriedthe widowed Countess of Warwick and attained a place in the Ministry as oneof the Secretaries of State; but his marriage was perhaps incompatible andhis quarrel with Steele was regrettable. He died in 1719 at the age of onlyforty-seven, perhaps the most generally respected and beloved man of histime. On his deathbed, with a somewhat self-conscious virtue characteristicboth of himself and of the period, he called his stepson to come and 'seein what peace a Christian could die. '

'The Tatler' and the more important 'Spectator' accomplished two results ofmain importance: they developed the modern essay as a comprehensive andfluent discussion of topics of current interest; and they performed a verygreat service in elevating the tone of English thought and life. The later'Tatlers' and all the 'Spectators' dealt, by diverse methods, with a greatrange of themes--amusements, religion, literature, art, dress, clubs, superstitions, and in general all the fashions and follies of the time. Thewriters, especially Addison, with his wide and mature scholarship, aimed toform public taste. But the chief purpose of the papers, professedly, was'to banish Vice and Ignorance' (though here also, especially in Steele'spapers, the tone sometimes seems to twentieth-century readers far fromunexceptionable). When the papers began to appear, in spite of someweakening of the Restoration spirit, the idea still dominated, or wasallowed to appear dominant, that immorality and lawlessness were the propermarks of a gentleman. The influence of the papers is thus summarized by thepoet Gray: 'It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to haveasserted that anything witty could be said in praise of a married state orthat Devotion and Virtue were in any way necessary to the character of afine gentleman. . . . Instead of complying with the false sentiments orvicious tastes of the age he [Steele] has boldly assured them that theywere altogether in the wrong. . . . It is incredible to conceive the effecthis writings have had upon the Town; how many thousand follies they haveeither quite banished or given a very great check to! how much countenancethey have added to Virtue and Religion! how many people they have renderedhappy by showing them it was their own faults if they were not so. '

An appeal was made, also, to women no less than to men. During the previousperiod woman, in fashionable circles, had been treated as an elegant toy, of whom nothing was expected but to be frivolously attractive. Addison andSteele held up to her the ideal of self-respecting intellectual developmentand of reasonable preparation for her own particular sphere. 

The great effectiveness of 'The Spectator's' preaching was due largely toits tactfulness. The method was never violent denunciation, rather gentleadmonition, suggestion by example or otherwise, and light or humorousraillery. Indeed, this almost uniform urbanity and good-nature makes thechief charm of the papers. Their success was largely furthered, also, bythe audience provided in the coffee-houses, virtually eighteenth centurymiddle-class clubs whose members and points of view they primarilyaddressed. 

The external style has been from the first an object of unqualified andwell-merited praise. Both the chief authors are direct, sincere, andlifelike, and the many short sentences which they mingle with the longer, balanced, ones give point and force. Steele is on the whole somewhat morecolloquial and less finished, Addison more balanced and polished, thoughwithout artificial formality. Dr. Johnson's repeatedly quoted descriptionof the style can scarcely be improved on--'familiar but not coarse, andelegant but not ostentatious. '

It still remains to speak of one particular achievement of 'The Spectator, 'namely the development of the character-sketch, accomplished by means ofthe series of De Coverly papers, scattered at intervals among the others. This was important because it signified preparation for the modern novelwith its attention to character as well as action. The character-sketch asa distinct form began with the Greek philosopher, Theophrastus, of thethird century B. C. , who struck off with great skill brief humorouspictures of typical figures--the Dissembler, the Flatterer, the Coward, andso on. This sort of writing, in one form or another, was popular in Franceand England in the seventeenth century. From it Steele, and following himAddison, really derived the idea for their portraits of Sir Roger, WillHoneycomb, Will Wimble, and the other members of the De Coverly group; butin each case they added individuality to the type traits. Students shouldconsider how complete the resulting characterizations are, and in generaljust what additions and changes in all respects would be needed totransform the De Coverly papers into a novel of the nineteenth centurytype. 

ALEXANDER POPE, 1688-1744. The chief representative of pseudo-classicism inits most particular field, that of poetry, is Dryden's successor, AlexanderPope. 

Pope was born in 1688 (just a hundred years before Byron), the son of aCatholic linen-merchant in London. Scarcely any other great writer has everhad to contend against such hard and cruel handicaps as he. He inherited adeformed and dwarfed body and an incurably sickly constitution, whichcarried with it abnormal sensitiveness of both nerves and mind. Though henever had really definite religious convictions of his own, he remained allhis life formally loyal to his parents' faith, and under the laws of thetime this closed to him all the usual careers of a gentleman. But he waspredestined by Nature to be a poet. Brought up chiefly at the country homenear Windsor to which his father had retired, and left to himself formental training, he never acquired any thoroughness of knowledge or powerof systematic thought, but he read eagerly the poetry of many languages. Hewas one of the most precocious of the long list of precocious versifiers;his own words are: 'I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. ' Theinfluences which would no doubt have determined his style in any case wereearly brought to a focus in the advice given him by an amateur poet andcritic, William Walsh. Walsh declared that England had had great poets, 'but never one great poet that was correct' (that is of thoroughly regularstyle). Pope accepted this hint as his guiding principle and proceeded toseek correctness by giving still further polish to the pentameter coupletof Dryden. 

At the age of twenty-one, when he was already on familiar terms withprominent literary men, he published some imitative pastorals, and twoyears later his 'Essay on Criticism. ' This work is thoroughlyrepresentative both of Pope and of his period. In the first place thesubject is properly one not for poetry but for expository prose. In thesecond place the substance is not original with Pope but is a restatementof the ideas of the Greek Aristotle, the Roman Horace, especially of theFrench critic Boileau, who was Pope's earlier contemporary, and of variousother critical authorities, French and English. But in terse andepigrammatic expression of fundamental or pseudo-classical principles ofpoetic composition and criticism the 'Essay' is amazingly brilliant, and itshows Pope already a consummate master of the couplet. The reputation whichit brought him was very properly increased by the publication the next yearof the admirable mock-epic 'The Rape of the Lock, ' which Pope soonimproved, against Addison's advice, by the delightful 'machinery' of theRosicrucian sylphs. In its adaptation of means to ends and its attainmentof its ends Lowell has boldly called this the most successful poem inEnglish. Pope now formed his lifelong friendship with Swift (who was twicehis age), with Bolingbroke, and other distinguished persons, and attwenty-five or twenty-six found himself acknowledged as the chief man ofletters in England, with a wide European reputation. 

For the next dozen years he occupied himself chiefly with the formidabletask (suggested, no doubt, by Dryden's 'Virgil, ' but expressive also of theage) of translating 'The Iliad' and 'The Odyssey. ' 'The Iliad' he completedunaided, but then, tiring of the drudgery, he turned over half of 'TheOdyssey' to two minor writers. So easy, however, was his style to catchthat if the facts were not on record the work of his assistants wouldgenerally be indistinguishable from his own. From an absolute point of viewmany criticisms must be made of Pope's version. That he knew little Greekwhen he began the work and from first to last depended much on translationswould in itself have made his rendering inaccurate. Moreover, the noble butdirect and simple spirit and language of Homer were as different aspossible from the spirit and language of the London drawing-rooms for whichPope wrote; hence he not only expands, as every author of averse-translation must do in filling out his lines, but inserts new ideasof his own and continually substitutes for Homer's expressions theperiphrastic and, as he held, elegant ones of the pseudo-classic diction. The polished rimed couplet, also, pleasing as its precision and smoothnessare for a while, becomes eventually monotonous to most readers of aromantic period. Equally serious is the inability which Pope shared withmost of the men of his time to understand the culture of the stillhalf-barbarous Homeric age. He supposes (in his Preface) that it was by adeliberate literary artifice that Homer introduced the gods into hisaction, supposes, that is, that Homer no more believed in the Greek godsthan did he, Pope, himself; and in general Pope largely obliterates thedifferences between the Homeric warrior-chief and the eighteenth centurygentleman. The force of all this may be realized by comparing Pope'stranslation with the very sympathetic and skilful one made (in prose) inour own time by Messrs. Lang, Leaf, and Myers. A criticism of Pope's workwhich Pope never forgave but which is final in some aspects was made by thegreat Cambridge professor, Bentley: 'It's a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but youmust not call it Homer. ' Yet after all, Pope merited much higher praisethan this, and his work was really, a great achievement. It has been trulysaid that every age must have the great classics translated into its owndialect, and this work could scarcely have been better done for the earlyeighteenth century than it is done by Pope. 

The publication of Pope's Homer marks an important stage in the developmentof authorship. Until the time of Dryden no writer had expected to earn hiswhole living by publishing works of real literature. The medieval minstrelsand romancers of the higher class and the dramatists of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries had indeed supported themselves largely or wholly bytheir works, but not by printing them. When, in Dryden's time, with thegreat enlargement of the reading public, conditions were about to change, the publisher took the upper hand; authors might sometimes receive giftsfrom the noblemen to whom they inscribed dedications, but for their mainreturns they must generally sell their works outright to the publisher andaccept his price. Pope's 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' afforded the first notablysuccessful instance of another method, that of publication bysubscription--individual purchasers at a generous price being securedbeforehand by solicitation and in acknowledgment having their names printedin a conspicuous list in the front of the book. From the two Homeric poemstogether, thanks to this device, Pope realized a profit of nearly £9000, and thus proved that an author might be independent of the publisher. Onthe success of 'The Iliad' alone Pope had retired to an estate at a Londonsuburb, Twickenham (then pronounced 'Twitnam'), where he spent theremainder of his life. Here he laid out five acres with skill, though inthe formal landscape-garden taste of his time. In particular, he excavatedunder the road a 'grotto, ' which he adorned with mirrors and glitteringstones and which was considered by his friends, or at least by himself, asa marvel of artistic beauty. 

Only bare mention need here be made of Pope's edition of Shakspere, prepared with his usual hard work but with inadequate knowledge andappreciation, and published in 1725. His next production, 'The Dunciad, 'can be understood only in the light of his personal character. Somewhatlike Swift, Pope was loyal and kind to his friends and inoffensive topersons against whom he did not conceive a prejudice. He was an unusuallyfaithful son, and, in a brutal age, a hater of physical brutality. But, aswe have said, his infirmities and hardships had sadly warped hisdisposition and he himself spoke of 'that long disease, my life. ' He wasproud, vain, abnormally sensitive, suspicious, quick to imagine an injury, incredibly spiteful, implacable in resentment, apparently devoid of anysense of honesty--at his worst hateful and petty-minded beyond any otherman in English literature. His trickiness was astonishing. Dr. Johnsonobserves that he 'hardly drank tea without a stratagem, ' and indeed heseems to have been almost constitutionally unable to do anything in an openand straightforward way. Wishing, for example, to publish hiscorrespondence, he not only falsified it, but to preserve an appearance ofmodesty engaged in a remarkably complicated series of intrigues by which hetrapped a publisher into apparently stealing a part of it--and then loudlyprotested at the theft and the publication. It is easy to understand, therefore, that Pope was readily drawn into quarrels and was not anagreeable antagonist. He had early taken a violent antipathy to the host ofpoor scribblers who are known by the name of the residence of most of them, Grub Street--an antipathy chiefly based, it would seem, on his contempt fortheir worldly and intellectual poverty. For some years he had been carryingon a pamphlet war against them, and now, it appears, he deliberatelystirred them up to make new attacks upon him. Determined, at any rate, tooverwhelm all his enemies at once in a great satire, he bent all hisenergies, with the utmost seriousness, to writing 'The Dunciad' on themodel of Dryden's 'Mac Flecknoe' and irresponsibly 'dealt damnation 'roundthe land. ' Clever and powerful, the poem is still more disgusting--grosslyobscene, pitifully rancorous against scores of insignificant creatures, andno less violent against some of the ablest men of the time, at whom Popehappened to have taken offense. Yet throughout the rest of his life Popecontinued with keen delight to work the unsavory production over and tobring out new editions. 

During his last fifteen years Pope's original work was done chiefly in twovery closely related fields, first in a group of what he called 'Moral'essays, second in the imitation of a few of the Satires and Epistles ofHorace, which Pope applied to circumstances of his own time. In the 'Moral'Essays he had intended to deal comprehensively with human nature andinstitutions, but such a systematic plan was beyond his powers. The longestof the essays which he accomplished, the 'Essay on Man, ' aims, like'Paradise Lost, ' to 'vindicate the ways of God to man, ' but as regardslogic chiefly demonstrates the author's inability to reason. He derived theideas, in fragmentary fashion, from Bolingbroke, who was an amateur Deistand optimist of the shallow eighteenth century type, and so far was Popefrom understanding what he was doing that he was greatly disturbed when itwas pointed out to him that the theology of the poem was Deistic ratherthan Christian [Footnote: The name Deist was applied rather generally inthe eighteenth century to all persons who did not belong to some recognizedChristian denomination. More strictly, it belongs to those men whoattempted rationalistic criticism of the Bible and wished to go back towhat they supposed to be a primitive pure religion, anterior to revealedreligion and free from the corruptions and formalism of actualChristianity. The Deistic ideas followed those expressed in the seventeenthcentury by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, brother of George Herbert, who heldthat the worship due to the Deity consists chiefly in reverence andvirtuous conduct, and also that man should repent of sin and forsake it andthat reward and punishment, both in this life and hereafter, follow fromthe goodness and justice of God. ] In this poem, as in all Pope's others ofthis period, the best things are the detached observations. Some of theother poems, especially the autobiographical 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 'are notable for their masterly and venomous satirical sketches of variouscontemporary characters. 

Pope's physical disabilities brought him to premature old age, and he diedin 1744. His declining years were saddened by the loss of friends, and hehad never married, though his dependent and sensitive nature would havemade marriage especially helpful to him. During the greater part of hislife, however, he was faithfully watched over by a certain Martha Blount, whose kindness he repaid with only less selfishness than that which'Stella' endured from Swift. Indeed, Pope's whole attitude toward woman, which appears clearly in his poetry, was largely that of the Restoration. Yet after all that must be said against Pope, it is only fair to conclude, as does his biographer, Sir Leslie Stephen: 'It was a gallant spirit whichgot so much work out of this crazy carcase, and kept it going, spite of allits feebleness, for fifty-six years. '

The question of Pope's rank among authors is of central importance for anytheory of poetry. In his own age he was definitely regarded by hisadherents as the greatest of all English poets of all time. As thepseudo-classic spirit yielded to the romantic this judgment was modified, until in the nineteenth century it was rather popular to deny that in anytrue sense Pope was a poet at all. Of course the truth lies somewherebetween these extremes. Into the highest region of poetry, that of greatemotion and imagination, Pope scarcely enters at all; he is not a poet inthe same sense as Shakspere, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, or Browning;neither his age nor his own nature permitted it. In lyric, originalnarrative, and dramatic poetry he accomplished very little, though thesuccess of his 'Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady' and 'Eloisa to Abelard' mustbe carefully weighed in this connection. On the other hand, it may well bedoubted if he can ever be excelled as a master in satire and kindredsemi-prosaic forms. He is supreme in epigrams, the terse statement of pithytruths; his poems have furnished more brief familiar quotations to ourlanguage than those of any other writer except Shakspere. For this sort ofeffect his rimed couplet provided him an unrivalled instrument, and heespecially developed its power in antithesis, very frequently balancing oneline of the couplet, or one half of a line, against the other. He hadreceived the couplet from Dryden, but he polished it to a greater finish, emphasizing, on the whole, its character as a single unit by making it moreconsistently end-stopped. By this means he gained in snap and point, thoughfor purposes of continuous narrative or exposition he increased themonotony and somewhat decreased the strength. Every reader must decide forhimself how far the rimed couplet, in either Dryden's or Pope's use of it, is a proper medium for real poetry. But it is certain that within thelimits which he laid down for himself, there never was a more finishedartist than Pope. He chooses every word with the greatest care for itsvalue as both sound and sense; his minor technique is well-night perfect, except sometimes in the matter of rimes; and in particular the varietywhich he secures, partly by skilful shifting of pauses and use of extrasyllables, is remarkable; though it is a variety less forceful thanDryden's. 

[Note: The judgments of certain prominent critics on the poetry of Pope andof his period may well be considered. Professor Lewis E. Gates has said:'The special task of the pseudo-classical period was to order, tosystematize, and to name; its favorite methods were, analysis andgeneralization. It asked for no new experience. The abstract, the typical, the general--these were everywhere exalted at the expense of the image, thespecific experience, the vital fact. ' Lowell declares that it 'ignored theimagination altogether and sent Nature about her business as an impertinentbaggage whose household loom competed unlawfully with the machine-madefabrics, so exquisitely uniform in pattern, of the royal manufactories. 'Still more hostile is Matthew Arnold: 'The difference between genuinepoetry and the poetry of Dryden, Pope, and all their school, is brieflythis: Their poetry is conceived and composed in their wits, genuine poetryis conceived and composed in the soul. The difference is immense. ' Taine iscontemptuous: 'Pope did not write because he thought, but thought in orderto write. Inky paper, and the noise it makes in the world, was his idol. 'Professor Henry A. Beers is more judicious: 'Pope did in some inadequatesense hold the mirror up to Nature. . . . It was a mirror in a drawing-room, but it gave back a faithful image of society, powdered and rouged, to besure, and intent on trifles, yet still as human in its own way as theheroes of Homer in theirs, though not broadly human. '

It should be helpful also to indicate briefly some of the more specificmannerisms of pseudo-classical poetry, in addition to the generaltendencies named above on page 190. Almost all of them, it will beobserved, result from the habit of generalizing instead of searching forthe pictorial and the particular. 1. There is a constant preference (toenlarge on what was briefly stated above) for abstract expressions insteadof concrete ones, such expressions as 'immortal powers' or 'Heaven' for'God. ' These abstract expressions are especially noticeable in thedescriptions of emotion, which the pseudo-classical writers often describewithout really feeling it, in such colorless words as 'joys, 'delights, 'and 'ecstasies, ' and which they uniformly refer to the conventionalized'heart, 'soul, ' or 'bosom. ' Likewise in the case of personal features, instead of picturing a face with blue eyes, rosy lips, and pretty color, these poets vaguely mention 'charms, ' 'beauties, ' 'glories, ''enchantments, ' and the like. These three lines from 'The Rape of the Lock'are thoroughly characteristic:

 The fair [the lady] each moment rises in her charms, Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace, And calls forth all the, wonders of her face. 

The tendency reaches its extreme in the frequent use of abstract and oftenabsurdly pretentious expressions in place of the ordinary ones which tothese poets appeared too simple or vulgar. With them a field is generally a'verdant mead'; a lock of hair becomes 'The long-contended honours of herhead'; and a boot 'The shining leather that encased the limb. '

2. There is a constant use of generic or generalizing articles, pronouns, and adjectives, 'the, ' 'a, ' 'that, ' 'every, ' and 'each' as in some of thepreceding and in the following examples: 'The wise man's passion and thevain man's boast. ' 'Wind the shrill horn or spread the waving net. ' 'To acta Lover's or a Roman's part. ' 'That bleeding bosom. ' 3. There is anexcessive use of adjectives, often one to nearly every important noun, which creates monotony. 4. The vocabulary is largely conventionalized, with, certain favorite words usurping the place of a full and free variety, such words as 'conscious, ' 'generous, 'soft, ' and 'amorous. ' The metaphorsemployed are largely conventionalized ones, like 'Now burns with glory, andthen melts with love. ' 5. The poets imitate the Latin language to someextent; especially they often prefer long words of Latin origin to shortSaxon ones, and Latin names to English--'Sol' for 'Sun, 'temple' for'church, ' 'Senate' for 'Parliament, ' and so on. ]

SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1709-1784. To the informal position of dictator of Englishletters which had been held successively by Dryden, Addison, and Pope, succeeded in the third quarter of the eighteenth century a man verydifferent from any of them, one of the most forcefully individual of allauthors, Samuel Johnson. It was his fortune to uphold, largely by thestrength of his personality, the pseudo-classical ideals which Dryden andAddison had helped to form and whose complete dominance had contributed toPope's success, in the period when their authority was being undermined bythe progress of the rising Romantic Movement. 

Johnson was born in 1709, the son of a bookseller in Lichfield. Heinherited a constitution of iron, great physical strength, and fearlessself-assertiveness, but also hypochondria (persistent melancholy), uncouthness of body and movement, and scrofula, which disfigured his faceand greatly injured his eyesight. In his early life as well as later, spasmodic fits of abnormal mental activity when he 'gorged' books, especially the classics, as he did food, alternated with other fits ofindolence. The total result, however, was a very thorough knowledge of anextremely wide range of literature; when he entered Oxford in 1728 theMaster of his college assured him that he was the best qualified applicantwhom he had ever known. Johnson, on his side, was not nearly so wellpleased with the University; he found the teachers incompetent, and hispride suffered intensely from his poverty, so that he remained at Oxfordlittle more than a year. The death of his father in 1731 plunged him into adistressingly painful struggle for existence which lasted for thirty years. After failing as a subordinate teacher in a boarding-school he became ahack-writer in Birmingham, where, at the age of twenty-five, he made amarriage with a widow, Mrs. Porter, an unattractive, rather absurd, butgood-hearted woman of forty-six. He set up a school of his own, where hehad only three pupils, and then in 1737 tramped with one of them, DavidGarrick, later the famous actor, to London to try his fortune in anotherfield. When the two reached the city their combined funds amounted tosixpence. Sir Robert Walpole, ruling the country with unscrupulousabsolutism, had now put an end to the employment of literary men in publiclife, and though Johnson's poem 'London, ' a satire on the city written inimitation of the Roman poet Juvenal and published in 1738, attracted muchattention, he could do no better for a time than to become one of thatundistinguished herd of hand-to-mouth and nearly starving Grub Streetwriters whom Pope was so contemptuously abusing and who chiefly depended onthe despotic patronage of magazine publishers. Living in a garret or evenwalking the streets at night for lack of a lodging, Johnson was sometimesunable to appear at a tavern because he had no respectable clothes. It wasten years after the appearance of 'London' that he began to emerge, throughthe publication of his 'Vanity of Human Wishes, ' a poem of the same kind as'London' but more sincere and very powerful. A little later Garrick, whohad risen very much more rapidly and was now manager of Drury Lane theater, gave him substantial help by producing his early play 'Irene, ' arepresentative pseudo-classical tragedy of which it has been said that aperson with a highly developed sense of duty may be able to read itthrough. 

Meanwhile, by an arrangement with leading booksellers, Johnson had enteredon the largest, and, as it proved, the decisive, work of his life, thepreparation of his 'Dictionary of the English Language. ' The earliestmentionable English dictionary had appeared as far back as 1604, 'containing 3000 hard words . . . Gathered for the benefit and help ofladies, gentle women, or any other unskilful persons. ' Others had followed;but none of them was comprehensive or satisfactory. Johnson, planning a farmore thorough work, contracted to do it for £1575--scanty pay for himselfand his copyists, the more so that the task occupied more than twice asmuch time as he had expected, over seven years. The result, then, of verygreat labor, the 'Dictionary' appeared in 1755. It had distinctlimitations. The knowledge of Johnson's day was not adequate for tracingthe history and etymology of words, and Johnson himself on being asked thereason for one of his numerous blunders could only reply, with hischaracteristic blunt frankness, 'sheer ignorance. ' Moreover, he allowed hisstrong prejudices to intrude, even though he colored them with humor; forexample in defining 'oats' as 'a grain which in England is generally givento horses, but in Scotland supports the people. ' Jesting at himself hedefined 'lexicographer' as 'a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge. 'Nevertheless the work, though not creative literature, was a great andnecessary one, and Johnson did it, on the whole, decidedly well. The'Dictionary, ' in successive enlargements, ultimately, though not untilafter Johnson's death, became the standard, and it gave him at once thedefinite headship of English literary life. Of course, it should be added, the English language has vastly expanded since his time, and Johnson'sfirst edition contained only a tithe of the 400, 000 words recorded in thelatest edition of Webster (1910). 

With the 'Dictionary' is connected one of the best-known incidents inEnglish literary history. At the outset of the undertaking Johnson exertedhimself to secure the patronage and financial aid of Lord Chesterfield, anelegant leader of fashion and of fashionable literature. At the timeChesterfield, not foreseeing the importance of the work, was coldlyindifferent, but shortly before the Dictionary appeared, being betterinformed, he attempted to gain a share in the credit by commending it in aperiodical. Johnson responded with a letter which is a perfect masterpieceof bitter but polished irony and which should be familiar to every student. 

The hard labor of the 'Dictionary' had been the only remedy for Johnson'sprofound grief at the death of his wife, in 1752; and how intensively hecould apply himself at need he showed again some years later when to payhis mother's funeral expenses he wrote in the evenings of a single week his'Rasselas, ' which in the guise of an Eastern tale is a series ofphilosophical discussions of life. 

Great as were Johnson's labors during the eight years of preparation of the'Dictionary' they made only a part of his activity. For about two years heearned a living income by carrying on the semi-weekly 'Rambler, ' one of thenumerous imitations of 'The Spectator. ' He was not so well qualified asAddison or Steele for this work, but he repeated it some years later in'The Idler. '

It was not until 1775 that Johnson received from Oxford the degree of LL. D. Which gave him the title of 'Dr. , ' now almost inseparable from his name;but his long battle with poverty had ended on the accession of George IIIin 1762, when the ministers, deciding to signalize the new reign byencouraging men of letters, granted Johnson a pension of £300 for life. Inhis Dictionary Johnson had contemptuously defined a pension thus: 'Anallowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England, it isgenerally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason tohis country. ' This was embarrassing, but Johnson's friends rightlypersuaded him to accept the pension, which he, at least, had certainlyearned by services to society very far from treasonable. However, with theremoval of financial pressure his natural indolence, increased by thestrain of hardships and long-continued over-exertion, asserted itself inspite of his self-reproaches and frequent vows of amendment. Henceforth hewrote comparatively little but gave expression to his ideas inconversation, where his genius always showed most brilliantly. At thetavern meetings of 'The Club' (commonly referred to as 'The LiteraryClub'), of which Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Goldsmith, Gibbon, and others, were members, he reigned unquestioned conversational monarch. Here or inother taverns with fewer friends he spent most of his nights, talking anddrinking incredible quantities of tea, and going home in the small hours tolie abed until noon. 

But occasionally even yet he aroused himself to effort. In 1765 appearedhis long-promised edition of Shakspere. It displays in places much of thesound sense which is one of Johnson's most distinguishing merits, as in theterse exposure of the fallacies of the pseudo-classic theory of the threedramatic unities, and it made some interpretative contributions; but as awhole it was carelessly and slightly done. Johnson's last importantproduction, his most important really literary work, was a series of 'Livesof the English Poets' from the middle of the seventeenth century, which hewrote for a publishers' collection of their works. The selection of poetswas badly made by the publishers, so that many of the lives deal with veryminor versifiers. Further, Johnson's indolence and prejudices are hereagain evident; often when he did not know the facts he did not take thetrouble to investigate; a thorough Tory himself he was often unfair to menof Whig principles; and for poetry of the delicately imaginative andromantic sort his rather painfully practical mind had little appreciation. Nevertheless he was in many respects well fitted for the work, and some ofthe lives, such as those of Dryden, Pope, Addison and Swift, men in whom hetook a real interest, are of high merit. 

Johnson's last years were rendered gloomy, partly by the loss of friends, partly by ill-health and a deepening of his lifelong tendency to morbiddepression. He had an almost insane shrinking from death and with it apathetic apprehension of future punishment. His melancholy was perhaps thegreater because of the manly courage and contempt for sentimentality whichprevented him from complaining or discussing his distresses. His religiousfaith, also, in spite of all intellectual doubts, was strong, and he diedcalmly, in 1784. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. 

Johnson's picturesque surface oddities have received undue attention, thanks largely to his friend and biographer Boswell. Nearly every oneknows, for example, that he superstitiously made a practice of enteringdoorways in a certain manner and would rather turn back and come in againthan fail in the observance; that he was careless, even slovenly, in dressand person, and once remarked frankly that he had no passion for cleanlinen; that he ate voraciously, with a half-animal eagerness; that in theintervals of talking he 'would make odd sounds, a half whistle, or aclucking like a hen's, and when he ended an argument would blow out hisbreath like a whale. ' More important were his dogmatism of opinion, hisintense prejudices, and the often seemingly brutal dictatorial violencewith which he enforced them. Yet these things too were really on thesurface. It is true that his nature was extremely conservative; that aftera brief period of youthful free thinking he was fanatically loyal to thenational Church and to the king (though theoretically he was a Jacobite, asupporter of the supplanted Stuarts as against the reigning House ofHanover); and that in conversation he was likely to roar down or scowl downall innovators and their defenders or silence them with such observationsas, 'Sir, I perceive you are a vile Whig. ' At worst it was not quitecertain that he would not knock them down physically. Of women's preachinghe curtly observed that it was like a dog walking on its hind legs: 'It isnot done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all. ' Englishinsular narrowness certainly never had franker expression than in hisexclamation: 'For anything I can see, all foreigners are fools. ' For theAmerican colonists who had presumed to rebel against their king hisbitterness was sometimes almost frenzied; he characterized them as'rascals, robbers and pirates. ' His special antipathy to Scotland and itspeople led him to insult them repeatedly, though with some individual Scotshe was on very friendly terms. Yet after all, many of these prejudicesrested on important principles which were among the most solid foundationsof Johnson's nature and largely explain his real greatness, namely on soundcommonsense, moral and intellectual independence, and hatred ofinsincerity. There was really something to be said for his refusal tolisten to the Americans' demand for liberty while they themselves heldslaves. Living in a period of change, Johnson perceived that in many casesinnovations prove dangerous and that the progress of society largelydepends on the continuance of the established institutions in which thewisdom of the past is summed up. Of course in specific instances, perhapsin the majority of them, Johnson was wrong; but that does not alter thefact that he thought of himself as standing, and really did stand, fororder against a freedom which is always more or less in danger of leadingto anarchy. 

Johnson's personality, too, cannot be fairly judged by its more grotesqueexpression. Beneath the rough surface he was a man not only of veryvigorous intellect and great learning, but of sincere piety, a very warmheart, unusual sympathy and kindness, and the most unselfish, thougheccentric, generosity. Fine ladies were often fascinated by him, and he wasno stranger to good society. On himself, during his later years, he spentonly a third part of his pension, giving away the rest to a small army ofbeneficiaries. Some of these persons, through no claim on him but theirneed, he had rescued from abject distress and supported in his own house, where, so far from being grateful, they quarreled among themselves, complained of the dinner, or even brought their children to live with them. Johnson himself was sometimes exasperated by their peevishness and evendriven to take refuge from his own home in that 'of his wealthy friends theThrales, where, indeed, he had a room of his own; but he never allowed anyone else to criticize or speak harshly of them. In sum, no man was everloved or respected more deeply, or with better reason, by those who reallyknew him, or more sincerely mourned when he died. 

Johnson's importance as a conservative was greatest in his professionalcapacity of literary critic and bulwark of pseudo-classicism. In this case, except that a restraining influence is always salutary to hold a newmovement from extremes, he was in opposition to the time-spirit;romanticism was destined to a complete triumph because it was theexpression of vital forces which were necessary for the rejuvenation ofliterature. Yet it is true that romanticism carried with it much vague andinsincere sentimentality, and it was partly against this that Johnsonprotested. Perhaps the twentieth-century mind is most dissatisfied with hislack of sympathy for the romantic return to an intimate appreciation ofexternal Nature. Johnson was not blind to the charm of Nature and sometimesexpresses it in his own writing; but for the most part his interest, likethat of his pseudo-classical predecessors, was centered in the world ofman. To him, as he flatly declared, Fleet Street, in the midst of the hurryof London life, was the most interesting place in the world. 

In the substance of his work Johnson is most conspicuously, and of setpurpose, a moralist. In all his writing, so far as the subject permitted, he aimed chiefly at the inculcation of virtue and the formation ofcharacter. His uncompromising resoluteness in this respect accounts formuch of the dulness which it is useless to try to deny in his work. 'TheRambler' and 'The Idler' altogether lack Addison's lightness of touch andof humor; for Johnson, thoroughly Puritan at heart, and dealing generallywith the issues of personal conduct and responsibility, can never greatlyrelax his seriousness, while Addison, a man of the world, is content if hecan produce some effect on society as a whole. Again, a present-day readercan only smile when he finds Johnson in his Preface to Shakspere blamingthe great dramatist for omitting opportunities of instructing anddelighting, as if the best moral teachers were always explicit. ButJohnson's moral and religious earnestness is essentially admirable, themore so because his deliberate view of the world was thoroughlypessimistic. His own long and unhappy experience had convinced him thatlife is for the most part a painful tribulation, to be endured with as muchpatience and courage as possible, under the consciousness of the duty ofdoing our best where God has put us and in the hope (though with Johnsonnot a confident hope) that we shall find our reward in another world. 

It has long been a popular tradition, based largely on a superficial pageof Macaulay, that Johnson's style always represents the extreme ofponderous pedantry. As usual, the tradition must be largely discounted. Itis evident that Johnson talked, on the whole, better than he wrote, thatthe present stimulus of other active minds aroused him to a completeexertion of his powers, but that in writing, his indolence often allowedhim to compose half sleepily, at a low pressure. In some of his works, especially 'The Rambler, ' where, it has been jocosely suggested, he wasexercising the polysyllables that he wished to put into his 'Dictionary, 'he does employ a stilted Latinized vocabulary and a stilted style, with toomuch use of abstract phrases for concrete ones, too many long sentences, much inverted order, and over-elaborate balance. His style is always insome respects monotonous, with little use, for instance, as critics havepointed out, of any form of sentence but the direct declarative, and withfew really imaginative figures of speech. In much of his writing, on theother hand, the most conspicuous things are power and strong effectiveexposition. He often uses short sentences, whether or not in contrast tohis long ones, with full consciousness of their value; when he will takethe trouble, no one can express ideas with clearer and more forcefulbrevity; and in a very large part of his work his style carries the finelytonic qualities of his clear and vigorous mind. 

JAMES BOSWELL AND HIS 'LIFE OF JOHNSON. ' It is an interesting paradox thatwhile Johnson's reputation as the chief English man of letters of his ageseems secure for all time, his works, for the most part, do not belong tothe field of pure literature, and, further, have long ceased, almostaltogether, to be read. His reputation is really due to the interest of hispersonality, and that is known chiefly by the most famous of allbiographies, the life of him by James Boswell. 

Boswell was a Scotch gentleman, born in 1740, the son of a judge who wasalso laird of the estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire, near the Englishborder. James Boswell studied law, but was never very serious in anyregular activity. Early in life he became possessed by an extremeboyish-romantic admiration for Johnson's works and through them for theirauthor, and at last in 1763 (only twenty years before Johnson's death)secured an introduction to him. Boswell took pains that acquaintance shouldsoon ripen into intimacy, though it was not until nine years later that hecould be much in Johnson's company. Indeed it appears from Boswell'saccount that they were personally together, all told, only during a totalof one hundred and eighty days at intermittent intervals, plus a hundredmore continuously when in 1773 they went on a tour to the Hebrides. Boswell, however, made a point of recording in minute detail, sometimes onthe spot, all of Johnson's significant conversation to which he listened, and of collecting with the greatest care his letters and all possibleinformation about him. He is the founder and still the most thoroughrepresentative of the modern method of accurate biographical writing. AfterJohnson's death he continued his researches, refusing to be hurried ordisturbed by several hasty lives of his subject brought out by otherpersons, with the result that when his work appeared in 1791 it at onceassumed the position among biographies which it has ever since occupied. Boswell lived only four years longer, sinking more and more under the habitof drunkenness which had marred the greater part of his life. 

Boswell's character, though absolutely different from Johnson's, wasperhaps as unusual a mixture. He was shallow, extremely vain, oftenchildishly foolish, and disagreeably jealous of Johnson's other friends. Only extreme lack of personal dignity can account for the servility of hisattitude toward Johnson and his acceptance of the countless rebuffs fromhis idol some of which he himself records and which would have driven anyother man away in indignation. None the less he was good-hearted, and theother members of Johnson's circle, though they were often vexed by him andadmitted him to 'The Club' only under virtual compulsion by Johnson, seemon the whole, in the upshot, to have liked him. Certainly it is only byforce of real genius of some sort, never by a mere lucky chance, that a manachieves the acknowledged masterpiece in any line of work. 

Boswell's genius, one is tempted to say, consists partly of his absorptionin the worship of his hero; more largely, no doubt, in his inexhaustibledevotion and patience. If the bulk of his book becomes tiresome to somereaders, it nevertheless gives a picture of unrivalled fulness andlife-likeness. Boswell aimed to be absolutely complete and truthful. Whenthe excellent Hannah More entreated him to touch lightly on the lessagreeable traits of his subject he replied flatly that he would not cut offJohnson's claws, nor make a tiger a cat to please anybody. The only veryimportant qualification to be made is that Boswell was not altogethercapable of appreciating the deeper side of Johnson's nature. It scarcelyneeds to be added that Boswell is a real literary artist. He knows how toemphasize, to secure variety, to bring out dramatic contrasts, and also toheighten without essentially falsifying, as artists must, giving point andcolor to what otherwise would seem thin and pale. 

EDWARD GIBBON AND 'THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. ' The latterpart of the eighteenth century produced not only the greatest of allbiographies but also the history which can perhaps best claim the samerank, Edward Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. ' History ofthe modern sort, aiming at minute scientific accuracy through widecollection of materials and painstaking research, and at vivid reproductionof the life, situations and characters of the past, had scarcely existedanywhere, before Gibbon, since classical times. The medieval chroniclerswere mostly mere annalists, brief mechanical recorders of external events, and the few more philosophic historians of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies do not attain the first rank. The way was partly prepared forGibbon by two Scottish historians, his early contemporaries, thephilosopher David Hume and the clergyman William Robertson, but they havelittle of his scientific conscientiousness. 

Gibbon, the son of a country gentleman in Surrey, was born in 1737. FromWestminster School he passed at the age of fifteen to Oxford. Ill-healthand the wretched state of instruction at the university made his residencethere, according to his own exaggerated account, largely unprofitable, buthe remained for little more than a year; for, continuing the reading oftheological works, in which he had become interested as a child, he wasconverted to Catholicism, and was hurried by his father to the care of aProtestant pastor in Lausanne, Switzerland. The pastor reconverted him in ayear, but both conversions were merely intellectual, since Gibbon was ofall men the most incapable of spiritual emotion. Later in life he became aphilosophic sceptic. In Lausanne he fell in love with the girl who lateractually married M. Necker, minister of finance under Louis XVI, and becamethe mother of the famous Mme. De Staël; but to Gibbon's father a foreignmarriage was as impossible as a foreign religion, and the son, again, obediently yielded. He never again entertained the thought of marriage. Inhis five years of study at Lausanne he worked diligently and laid the broadfoundation of the knowledge of Latin and Greek which was to beindispensable for his great work. His mature life, spent mostly on hisancestral estate in England and at a villa which he acquired in Lausanne, was as externally uneventful as that of most men of letters. He was forseveral years a captain in the English militia and later a member ofParliament and one of the Lords of Trade; all which positions were ofcourse practically useful to him as a historian. He wrote a brief andinteresting autobiography, which helps to reveal him as sincere andgood-hearted, though cold and somewhat self-conceited, a rather formal mannot of a large nature. He died in 1794. 

The circumstances under which the idea of his history first entered hismind were highly dramatic, though his own account of the incident is briefand colorless. He was sitting at vespers on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, the center of ancient Roman greatness, and the barefooted Catholic friarswere singing the service of the hour in the shabby church which has longsince supplanted the Roman Capitol. Suddenly his mind was impressed withthe vast significance of the transformation, thus suggested, of the ancientworld into the modern one, a process which has rightly been called thegreatest of all historical themes. He straightway resolved to become itshistorian, but it was not until five years later that he really began thework. Then three years of steady application produced his first volume, in1773, and fourteen years more the remaining five. 

The first source of the greatness of Gibbon's work is his conscientiousindustry and scholarship. With unwearied patience he made himselfthoroughly familiar with the great mass of materials, consisting largely ofhistories and works of general literature in many languages, belonging tothe fourteen hundred years with which he dealt. But he had also theconstructive power which selects, arranges, and proportions, the faculty ofclear and systematic exposition, and the interpretative historical visionwhich perceives and makes clear the broad tendencies in the apparent chaosof mere events. Much new information has necessarily been discovered sinceGibbon wrote, but he laid his foundation so deep and broad that though hiswork may be supplemented it can probably never be superseded, and stands inthe opinion of competent critics without an equal in the whole field ofhistory except perhaps for that of the Greek Thucydides. His one greatdeficiency is his lack of emotion. By intellectual processes he realizesand partly visualizes the past, with its dramatic scenes and moments, buthe cannot throw himself into it (even if the material afforded by hisauthorities had permitted) with the passionate vivifying sympathy of later, romantic, historians. There are interest and power in his narratives ofJulian's expedition into Assyria, of Zenobia's brilliant career, and of thecapture of Constantinople by the Turks, but not the stirring power of Greenor Froude or Macaulay. The most unfortunate result of this deficiency, however, is his lack of appreciation of the immense meaning of spiritualforces, most notoriously evident in the cold analysis, in his fifteenthchapter, of the reasons for the success of Christianity. 

His style possesses much of the same virtues and limitations as hissubstance. He has left it on record that he composed each paragraphmentally as a whole before committing any part of it to paper, balancingand reshaping until it fully satisfied his sense of unity and rhythm. Something of formality and ponderousness quickly becomes evident in hisstyle, together with a rather mannered use of potential instead of directindicative verb forms; how his style compares with Johnson's and how far itshould be called pseudo-classical, are interesting questions to consider. One appreciative description of it may be quoted: 'The language of Gibbonnever flags; he walks forever as to the clash of arms, under an imperialbanner; a military music animates his magnificent descriptions of battles, of sieges, of panoramic scenes of antique civilization. '

A longer eulogistic passage will sum up his achievement as a whole:[Footnote: Edmund Gosse, 'History of Eighteenth Century Literature, ' p. 350. ]

'The historian of literature will scarcely reach the name of Edward Gibbonwithout emotion. It is not merely that with this name is associated one ofthe most splendid works which Europe produced in the eighteenth century, but that the character of the author, with all its limitations and evenwith all its faults, presents us with a typical specimen of the courage andsingleheartedness of a great man of letters. Wholly devoted to scholarshipwithout pedantry, and to his art without any of the petty vanity of theliterary artist, the life of Gibbon was one long sacrifice to the purestliterary enthusiasm. He lived to know, and to rebuild his knowledge in ashape as durable and as magnificent as a Greek temple. He was content foryears and years to lie unseen, unheard of, while younger men rose past himinto rapid reputation. No unworthy impatience to be famous, no sense of theuncertainty of life, no weariness or terror at the length or breadth of hisself-imposed task, could induce him at any moment of weakness to give wayto haste or discouragement in the persistent regular collection anddigestion of his material or in the harmonious execution of every part ofhis design. . . . No man who honors the profession of letters, or regards withrespect the higher and more enlightened forms of scholarship, will everthink without admiration of the noble genius of Gibbon. ' It may be addedthat Gibbon is one of the conspicuous examples of a man whose success wasmade possible only by the possession and proper use of inherited wealth, with the leisure which it brings. 

EDMUND BURKE. The last great prose-writer of the eighteenth century, EdmundBurke, is also the greatest of English orators. Burke is the only writerprimarily a statesman and orator who can be properly ranked among Englishauthors of the first class. The reasons, operating in substantially thesame way in all literature, are not hard to understand. The interests withwhich statesmen and orators deal are usually temporary; the spirit andstyle which give a spoken address the strongest appeal to an audience oftenhave in them something of superficiality; and it is hard for the oratoreven to maintain his own mind on the higher level of rational thought anddisinterested purpose. Occasionally, however, a man appears in public lifewho to the power of compelling speech and the personality on which it isbased adds intellect, a philosophic temperament, and the real literary, poetic, quality. Such men were Demosthenes, Cicero, Webster, and at timesLincoln, and beside them in England stands Burke. It is certainly aninteresting coincidence that the chief English representatives of fouroutlying regions of literature should have been closelycontemporaneous--Johnson the moralist and hack writer, Boswell thebiographer, Gibbon the historian, and Burke the orator. 

Burke was born in Dublin in 1729 of mixed English and Irish parentage. Bothstrains contributed very important elements to his nature. As English werecognize his indomitable perseverance, practical good sense, and devotionto established principles; as largely Irish his spontaneous enthusiasm, ardent emotion, and disinterested idealism. Always brilliant, in hisearlier years he was also desultory and somewhat lawless. From TrinityCollege in Dublin he crossed over to London and studied law, which he soonabandoned. In 1756 he began his career as an author with 'A Vindication ofNatural Society, ' a skilful satire on the philosophic writings whichBolingbroke (the friend of Swift and Pope) had put forth after hispolitical fall and which, while nominally expressing the deistic principlesof natural religion, were virtually antagonistic to all religious faith. Burke's 'Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublimeand Beautiful, ' published the same year, and next in time after Drydenamong important English treatises on esthetics, has lost all authority withthe coming of the modern science of psychology, but it is at least sincereand interesting. Burke now formed his connection with Johnson and hiscircle. An unsatisfactory period as secretary to an official in Irelandproved prolog to the gift of a seat in Parliament from a Whig lord, andthus at the age of thirty-six Burke at last entered on the public lifewhich was his proper sphere of action. Throughout his life, however, hecontinued to be involved in large debts and financial difficulties, thepressure of which on a less buoyant spirit would have been a very serioushandicap. 

As a politician and statesman Burke is one of the finest figures in Englishhistory. He was always a devoted Whig, because he believed that the partysystem was the only available basis for representative government; but hebelieved also, and truly, that the Whig party, controlled though it was bya limited and largely selfish oligarchy of wealthy nobles, was the onlyeffective existing instrument of political and social righteousness. Tothis cause of public righteousness, especially to the championing offreedom, Burke's whole career was dedicated; he showed himself altogetherpossessed by the passion for truth and justice. Yet equally conspicuous washis insistence on respect for the practicable. Freedom and justice, healways declared, agreeing thus far with Johnson, must be secured not byhasty violence but under the forms of law, government, and religion whichrepresent the best wisdom of past generations. Of any proposal he alwaysasked not only whether it embodied abstract principles of right but whetherit was workable and expedient in the existing circumstances and amongactual men. No phrase could better describe Burke's spirit and activitythan that which Matthew Arnold coined of him--'the generous application ofideas to life. ' It was England's special misfortune that, lagging farbehind him in both vision and sympathy, she did not allow him to save herfrom the greatest disaster of her history. Himself she repaid with theusual reformer's reward. Though he soon made himself 'the brains of theWhig party, ' which at times nothing but his energy and ability heldtogether, and though in consequence he was retained in Parliament virtuallyto the end of his life, he was never appointed to any office except that ofPaymaster of the Forces, which he accepted after he had himself had theannual salary reduced from £25, 000 to £4, 000, and which he held for only ayear. 

During all the early part of his public career Burke steadily foughtagainst the attempts of the King and his Tory clique to entrench themselveswithin the citadel of irresponsible government. At one time also he largelydevoted his efforts to a partly successful attack on the wastefulness andcorruption of the government; and his generous effort to secure justtreatment of Ireland and the Catholics was pushed so far as to result inthe loss of his seat as member of Parliament from Bristol. But thepermanent interest of his thirty years of political life consists chieflyin his share in the three great questions, roughly successive in time, ofwhat may be called England's foreign policy, namely the treatment of theEnglish colonies in America, the treatment of the native population of theEnglish empire in India, and the attitude of England toward the FrenchRevolution. In dealing with the first two of these questions Burke spokewith noble ardor for liberty and the rights of man, which he felt theEnglish government to be disregarding. Equally notable with his zeal forjustice, however, was his intellectual mastery of the facts. Before heattempted to discuss either subject he had devoted to it many years of themost painstaking study--in the case of India no less than fourteen years;and his speeches, long and highly complicated, were filled with minutedetails and exact statistics, which his magnificent memory enabled him todeliver without notes. 

His most important discussions of American affairs are the 'Speech onAmerican Taxation' (1774), the 'Speech on Conciliation with America'(1775), both delivered in Parliament while the controversy was bitter butbefore war had actually broken out, and 'A Letter to the Sheriffs ofBristol' (1777). Burke's plea was that although England had a theoreticalconstitutional right to tax the colonies it was impracticable to do soagainst their will, that the attempt was therefore useless and must lead todisaster, that measures of conciliation instead of force should beemployed, and that the attempt to override the liberties of Englishmen inAmerica, those liberties on which the greatness of England was founded, would establish a dangerous precedent for a similar course of action in themother country itself. In the fulfilment of his prophecies which followedthe rejection of his argument Burke was too good a patriot to takesatisfaction. 

In his efforts in behalf of India Burke again met with apparent defeat, butin this case he virtually secured the results at which he had aimed. Duringthe seventeenth century the English East India Company, originallyorganized for trade, had acquired possessions in India, which, in themiddle of the eighteenth century and later, the genius of Clive and WarrenHastings had increased and consolidated into a great empire. The work whichthese men had done was rough work and it could not be accomplished byscrupulous methods; under their rule, as before, there had been muchirregularity and corruption, and part of the native population had sufferedmuch injustice and misery. Burke and other men saw the corruption andmisery without realizing the excuses for it and on the return of Hastingsto England in 1786 they secured his impeachment. For nine years Burke, Sheridan, and Fox conducted the prosecution, vying with one another inbrilliant speeches, and Burke especially distinguished himself by thewarmth of sympathetic imagination with which he impressed on his audiencesthe situation and sufferings of a far-distant and alien race. The House ofLords ultimately acquitted Hastings, but at the bar of public opinion Burkehad brought about the condemnation and reform, for which the time was nowripe, of the system which Hastings had represented. 

While the trial of Hastings was still in progress all Europe was shaken bythe outbreak of the French Revolution, which for the remainder of his lifebecame the main and perturbing subject of Burke's attention. Here, with anapparent change of attitude, for reasons which we will soon consider, Burkeranged himself on the conservative side, and here at last he altogethercarried the judgment of England with him. One of the three or four greatestmovements in modern history, the French Revolution exercised a profoundinfluence on English thought and literature, and we must devote a few wordsto its causes and progress. During the two centuries while England had beensteadily winning her way to constitutional government, France had past moreand more completely under the control of a cynically tyrannical despotismand a cynically corrupt and cruel feudal aristocracy. [Footnote: Theconditions are vividly pictured in Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities' andCarlyle's 'French Revolution. '] For a generation, radical Frenchphilosophers had been opposing to the actual misery of the peasants theideal of the natural right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit ofhappiness, and at last in 1789 the people, headed by the lawyers andthinkers of the middle class, arose in furious determination, swept awaytheir oppressors, and after three years established a republic. Theoutbreak of the Revolution was hailed by English liberals with enthusiasmas the commencement of an era of social justice; but as it grew in violenceand at length declared itself the enemy of all monarchy and of religion, their attitude changed; and in 1793 the execution of the French king andqueen and the atrocities of the Reign of Terror united all but the radicalsin support of the war against France in which England joined with the otherEuropean countries. During the twenty years of struggle that followed theportentous figure of Napoleon soon appeared, though only as Burke wasdying, and to oppose and finally to suppress him became the duty of allEnglishmen, a duty not only to their country but to humanity. 

At the outbreak of the Revolution Burke was already sixty, and theinevitable tendency of his mind was away from the enthusiastic liberalismwhich had so strongly moved him in behalf of the Americans and the Hindoos. At the very outset he viewed the Revolution with distrust, and thisdistrust soon changed to the most violent opposition. Of actual conditionsin France he had no adequate understanding. He failed to realize that theFrench people were asserting their most elementary rights against anoppression a hundred times more intolerable than anything that theAmericans had suffered; his imagination had long before been dazzled duringa brief stay in Paris by the external glitter of the French Court; his ownchivalrous sympathy was stirred by the sufferings of the queen; and most ofall he saw in the Revolution the overthrow of what he held to be the onlysafe foundations of society--established government, law, socialdistinctions, and religion--by the untried abstract theories which he hadalways held in abhorrence. Moreover, the activity of the English supportersof the French revolutionists seriously threatened an outbreak of anarchy inEngland also. Burke, therefore, very soon began to oppose the wholemovement with all his might. His 'Reflections on the Revolution in France, 'published in 1790, though very one-sided, is a most powerful model ofreasoned denunciation and brilliant eloquence; it had a wide influence andrestored Burke to harmony with the great majority of his countrymen. Hisremaining years, however, were increasingly gloomy. His attitude caused ahopeless break with the liberal Whigs, including Fox; he gave up his seatin Parliament to his only son, whose death soon followed to prostrate him;and the successes of the French plunged him into feverish anxiety. Afteragain pouring out a flood of passionate eloquence in four letters entitled'Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace' (with France) he died in1797. 

We have already indicated many of the sources of Burke's power as a speakerand writer, but others remain to be mentioned. Not least important are hisfaculties of logical arrangement and lucid statement. He was the firstEnglishman to exemplify with supreme skill all the technical devices ofexposition and argument--a very careful ordering of ideas according to aplan made clear, but not too conspicuous, to the hearer or reader; the useof summaries, topic sentences, connectives; and all the others. In style hehad made himself an instinctive master of rhythmical balance, withsomething, as contrasted with nineteenth century writing, of eighteenthcentury formality. Yet he is much more varied, flexible, and fluent thanJohnson or Gibbon, with much greater variety of sentence forms and with farmore color, figurativeness and picturesqueness of phrase. In his mosteloquent and sympathetic passages he is a thorough poet, splendidlyimaginative and dramatic. J. R. Greene in his 'History of England' has wellspoken of 'the characteristics of his oratory--its passionate ardor, itspoetic fancy, its amazing prodigality of resources; the dazzling successionin which irony, pathos, invective, tenderness, the most brilliant wordpictures, the coolest argument, followed each other. ' Fundamental, lastly, in Burke's power, is his philosophic insight, his faculty of correlatingfacts and penetrating below this surface, of viewing events in the light oftheir abstract principles, their causes and their inevitable results. 

In spite of all this, in the majority of cases Burke was not a successfulspeaker. The overwhelming logic and feeling of his speech 'On the Nabob ofArcot's Debts' produced so little effect at its delivery that the ministersagainst whom it was directed did not even think necessary to answer it. Oneof Burke's contemporaries has recorded that he left the Parliament house(crawling under the benches to avoid Burke's notice) in order to escapehearing one of his speeches which when it was published he read with themost intense interest. In the latter part of his life Burke was even called'the dinner-bell of the House' because his rising to speak was a signal fora general exodus of the other members. The reasons for this seeming paradoxare apparently to be sought in something deeper than the mere prejudice ofBurke's opponents. He was prolix, but, chiefly, he was undignified inappearance and manner and lacked a good delivery. It was only when thesympathy or interest of his hearers enabled them to forget these thingsthat they were swept away by the force of his reason or the contagion ofhis wit or his emotion. On such occasions, as in his first speech in theimpeachment of Hastings, he was irresistible. 

From what has now been said it must be evident that while Burke'stemperament and mind were truly classical in some of their qualities, as inhis devotion to order and established institutions, and in the clearness ofhis thought and style, and while in both spirit and style he manifests aregard for decorum and formality which connects him with thepseudo-classicists, nevertheless he shared to at least as great a degree inthose qualities of emotion and enthusiasm which the pseudo-classic writersgenerally lacked and which were to distinguish the romantic writers of thenineteenth century. How the romantic movement had begun, long before Burkecame to maturity, and how it had made its way even in the midst of thepseudo-classical period, we may now consider. 

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. The reaction which was bound to accompany thetriumph of Pseudo-classicism, as a reassertion of those instincts in humannature which Pseudo-classicism disregarded, took the form of a distinctRomantic Revival. Beginning just about as Pope's reputation was reachingits climax, and gathering momentum throughout the greater part of theeighteenth century, this movement eventually gained a predominance ascomplete as that which Pseudo-classicism had enjoyed, and became the chiefforce, not only in England but in all Western Europe, in the literature ofthe whole nineteenth century. The impulse was not confined to literature, but permeated all the life of the time. In the sphere of religion, especially, the second decade of the eighteenth century saw the awakeningof the English church from lethargy by the great revival of John andCharles Wesley, whence, quite contrary to their original intention, sprangthe Methodist denomination. In political life the French Revolution was aresult of the same set of influences. Romanticism showed itself partly inthe supremacy of the Sentimental Comedy and in the great share taken bySentimentalism in the development of the novel, of both of which we shallspeak hereafter; but its fullest and most steadily progressivemanifestation was in non-dramatic poetry. Its main traits as they appear inthe eighteenth century are as clearly marked as the contrasting ones ofPseudo-classicism, and we can enumerate them distinctly, though it must ofcourse be understood that they appear in different authors in verydifferent degrees and combinations. 

1. There is, among the Romanticists, a general breaking away not only fromthe definite pseudo-classical principles, but from the whole idea ofsubmission to fixed authority. Instead there is a spirit of independenceand revolt, an insistence on the value of originality and the right of theindividual to express himself in his own fashion. 2. There is a strongreassertion of the value of emotion, imagination, and enthusiasm. Thisnaturally involves some reaction against the pseudo-classic, and also thetrue classic, regard for finished form. 3. There is a renewal of genuineappreciation and love for external Nature, not least for her large andgreat aspects, such as mountains and the sea. The contrast between thepseudo-classical and the romantic attitude in this respect is clearlyillustrated, as has often been pointed out, by the difference between theimpressions recorded by Addison and by the poet Gray in the presence of theAlps. Addison, discussing what he saw in Switzerland, gives most of hisattention to the people and politics. One journey he describes as 'verytroublesome, ' adding: 'You can't imagine how I am pleased with the sight ofa plain. ' In the mountains he is conscious chiefly of difficulty anddanger, and the nearest approach to admiration which he indicates is 'anagreeable kind of horror. ' Gray, on the other hand, speaks of the GrandeChartreuse as 'one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the mostastonishing scenes. . . . I do not remember to have gone ten paces without anexclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, nor a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. ' 4. The samepassionate appreciation extends with the Romanticists to all full and richbeauty and everything grand and heroic. 5. This is naturally connected alsowith a love for the remote, the strange, and the unusual, for mystery, thesupernatural, and everything that creates wonder. Especially, there is agreat revival of interest in the Middle Ages, whose life seemed to the menof the eighteenth century, and indeed to a large extent really was, picturesque and by comparison varied and adventurous. In the eighteenthcentury this particular revival was called 'Gothic, ' a name which thePseudo-classicists, using it as a synonym for 'barbarous, ' had applied tothe Middle Ages and all their works, on the mistaken supposition that allthe barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire and founded the medievalstates were Goths. 6. In contrast to the pseudo-classical preference forabstractions, there is, among the Romanticists, a devotion to concretethings, the details of Nature and of life. In expression, of course, thisbrings about a return to specific words and phraseology, in the desire topicture objects clearly and fully. 7. There is an increasing democraticfeeling, a breaking away from the interest in artificial social life and aconviction that every human being is worthy of respect. Hence sprang thesentiment of universal brotherhood and the interest in universal freedom, which finally extended even to the negroes and resulted in the abolition ofslavery. But from the beginning there was a reawakening of interest in thelife of the common people--an impulse which is not inconsistent with thelove of the remote and unusual, but rather means the discovery of aneglected world of novelty at the very door of the educated and literaryclasses. 8. There is a strong tendency to melancholy, which is oftencarried to the point of morbidness and often expresses itself in meditationand moralizing on the tragedies of life and the mystery of death. Thisinclination is common enough in many romantic-spirited persons of alltimes, and it is always a symptom of immaturity or lack of perfect balance. Among the earlier eighteenth century Romanticists there was a verynourishing crop of doleful verse, since known from the place where most ofit was located, as the 'Graveyard poetry. ' Even Gray's 'Elegy in a CountryChurchyard' is only the finest representative of this form, just asShakspere's 'Hamlet' is the culmination of the crude Elizabethan tragedy ofblood. So far as the mere tendency to moralize is concerned, the eighteenthcentury Romanticists continue with scarcely any perceptible change thepractice of the Pseudo-classicists. 9. In poetic form, though theRomanticists did not completely abandon the pentameter couplet for ahundred years, they did energetically renounce any exclusive allegiance toit and returned to many other meters. Milton was one of their chiefmasters, and his example led to the revival of blank verse and of theocto-syllabic couplet. There was considerable use also of the Spenserianstanza, and development of a great variety of lyric stanza forms, thoughnot in the prodigal profusion of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period. 

JAMES THOMSON. The first author in whom the new impulse found reallydefinite expression was the Scotsman James Thomson. At the age oftwenty-five, Thomson, like many of his countrymen during his century andthe previous one, came fortune-hunting to London, and the next year, 1726, while Pope was issuing his translation of 'The Odyssey, ' he published ablank-verse poem of several hundred lines on 'Winter. ' Its genuine thoughimperfect appreciation and description of Nature as she appears on thebroad sweeps of the Scottish moors, combined with its novelty, gave itgreat success, and Thomson went on to write also of Summer, Spring andAutumn, publishing the whole work as 'The Seasons' in 1730. He was rewardedby the gift of sinecure offices from the government and did some furtherwriting, including, probably, the patriotic lyric, 'Rule, Britannia, ' andalso pseudo-classical tragedies; but his only other poem of much importanceis 'The Castle of Indolence' (a subject appropriate to his owngood-natured, easy-going disposition), which appeared just before hisdeath, in 1748. In it he employs Spenser's stanza, with real skill, but ina half-jesting fashion which the later eighteenth-century Romanticists alsoseem to have thought necessary when they adopted it, apparently as a sortof apology for reviving so old-fashioned a form. 

'The Seasons' was received with enthusiasm not only in England but inFrance and Germany, and it gave an impulse for the writing of descriptivepoetry which lasted for a generation; but Thomson's romantic achievement, though important, is tentative and incomplete, like that of all beginners. He described Nature from full and sympathetic first-hand observation, butthere is still a certain stiffness about his manner, very different fromthe intimate and confident familiarity and power of spiritualinterpretation which characterizes the great poets of three generationslater. Indeed, the attempt to write several thousand lines of puredescriptive poetry was in itself ill-judged, since as the German criticLessing later pointed out, poetry is the natural medium not for descriptionbut for narration; and Thomson himself virtually admitted this in part byresorting to long dedications and narrative episodes to fill out hisscheme. Further, romantic as he was in spirit, he was not able to freehimself from the pseudo-classical mannerisms; every page of his poemabounds with the old lifeless phraseology--'the finny tribes' for 'thefishes, ' 'the vapoury whiteness' for 'the snow' or 'the hard-won treasuresof the year' for 'the crops. ' His blank verse, too, is comparativelyclumsy--padded with unnecessary words and the lines largely end-stopped. 

WILLIAM COLLINS. There is marked progress in romantic feeling and power ofexpression as we pass from Thomson to his disciple, the frail lyric poet, William Collins. Collins, born at Chichester, was an undergraduate atOxford when he published 'Persian Eclogues' in rimed couplets to which thewarm feeling and free metrical treatment give much of romantic effect. InLondon three years later (1746) Collins put forth his significant work in alittle volume of 'Odes. ' Discouraged by lack of appreciation, alwaysabnormally high-strung and neurasthenic, he gradually lapsed into insanity, and died at the age of thirty-seven. Collins' poems show most of theromantic traits and their impetuous emotion often expresses itself in theform of the false Pindaric ode which Cowley had introduced. His 'Ode on thePopular Superstitions of the Highlands, ' further, was one of the earliestpieces of modern literature to return for inspiration to the store ofmedieval supernaturalism, in this case to Celtic supernaturalism. ButCollins has also an exquisiteness of feeling which makes others of hispieces perfect examples of the true classical style. The two poems in'Horatian' ode forms, that is in regular short stanzas, the 'Ode Written inthe Year 1746' and the 'Ode to Evening' (unrimed), are particularly fine. With all this, Collins too was not able to escape altogether frompseudo-classicism. His subjects are often abstract--'The Passions, ''Liberty, ' and the like; his characters, too, in almost all his poems, aremerely the old abstract personifications, Fear, Fancy, Spring, and manyothers; and his phraseology is often largely in the pseudo-classicalfashion. His work illustrates, therefore, in an interesting way theconflict of poetic forces in his time and the influence of environment on apoet's mind. The true classic instinct and the romanticism are both hisown; the pseudo-classicism belongs to the period. 

THOMAS GRAY. Precisely the same conflict of impulses appears in the lyricsof a greater though still minor poet of the same generation, a man ofperhaps still more delicate sensibilities than Collins, namely Thomas Gray. Gray, the only survivor of many sons of a widow who provided for him bykeeping a millinery shop, was born in 1716. At Eton he became intimate withHorace Walpole, the son of the Prime Minister, who was destined to becomean amateur leader in the Romantic Movement, and after some years atCambridge the two traveled together on the Continent. Lacking the money forthe large expenditure required in the study of law, Gray took up hisresidence in the college buildings at Cambridge, where he lived as arecluse, much annoyed by the noisy undergraduates. During his last threeyears he held the appointment and salary of professor of modern history, but his timidity prevented him from delivering any lectures. He died in1771. He was primarily a scholar and perhaps the most learned man of histime. He was familiar with the literature and history not only of theancient world but of all the important modern nations of western Europe, with philosophy, the sciences of painting, architecture, botany, zoölogy, gardening, entomology (he had a large collection of insects), and evenheraldry. He was himself an excellent musician. Indeed almost the onlysubject of contemporary knowledge in which he was not proficient wasmathematics, for which he had an aversion, and which prevented him fromtaking a college degree. 

The bulk of Gray's poetry is very small, no larger, in fact, than that ofCollins. Matthew Arnold argued in a famous essay that his productivity waschecked by the uncongenial pseudo-classic spirit of the age, which, saysArnold, was like a chill north wind benumbing his inspiration, so that 'henever spoke out. ' The main reason, however, is really to be found in Gray'sown over-painstaking and diffident disposition. In him, as in Hamlet, anxious and scrupulous striving for perfection went far to paralyze thepower of creation; he was unwilling to write except at his best, or topublish until he had subjected his work to repeated revisions, whichsometimes, as in the case of his 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 'extended over many years. He is the extreme type of the academic poet. Hiswork shows, however, considerable variety, including real appreciation forNature, as in the 'Ode on the Spring, ' delightful quiet humor, as in the'Ode on a Favorite Cat, ' rather conventional moralizing, as in the 'Ode ona Distant Prospect of Eton College, ' magnificent expression of thefundamental human emotions, as in the 'Elegy, ' and warlike vigor in the'Norse Ode' translated from the 'Poetic Edda' in his later years. In thelatter he manifests his interest in Scandinavian antiquity, which had thenbecome a minor object of romantic enthusiasm. The student should considerfor himself the mingling of the true classic, pseudo-classic, and romanticelements in the poems, not least in the 'Elegy, ' and the precise sources oftheir appeal and power. In form most of them are regular 'Horatian' odes, but 'The Bard' and 'The Progress of Poesy' are the best English examples ofthe genuine Pindaric ode. 

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Next in order among the romantic poets after Gray, andmore thoroughly romantic than Gray, was Oliver Goldsmith, though, withcharacteristic lack of the power of self-criticism, he supposed himself tobe a loyal follower of Johnson and therefore a member of the opposite camp. Goldsmith, as every one knows, is one of the most attractive and lovablefigures in English literature. Like Burke, of mixed English and Irishancestry, the son of a poor country curate of the English Church inIreland, he was born in 1728. Awkward, sensitive, and tender-hearted, hesuffered greatly in childhood from the unkindness of his fellows. As a poorstudent at the University of Dublin he was not more happy, and his lack ofapplication delayed the gaining of his degree until two years after theregular time. The same Celtic desultoriness characterized all the rest ofhis life, though it could not thwart his genius. Rejected as a candidatefor the ministry, he devoted three years to the nominal study of medicineat the Universities of Edinburgh and Leyden (in Holland). Next he spent ayear on a tramping trip through Europe, making his way by playing the fluteand begging. Then, gravitating naturally to London, he earned his living byworking successively for a druggist, for the novelist-printer SamuelRichardson, as a teacher in a boys' school, and as a hack writer. At lastat the age of thirty-two he achieved success with a series of periodicalessays later entitled 'The Citizen of the World, ' in which he criticizedEuropean politics and society with skill and insight. Bishop Percy nowintroduced him to Johnson, who from this time watched over him and savedhim from the worst results of his irresponsibility. He was one of theoriginal members of 'The Club. ' In 1764 occurred the well-known andcharacteristic incident of the sale of 'The Vicar of Wakefield. ' Arrestedfor debt at his landlady's instance, Goldsmith sent for Johnson and showedhim the manuscript of the book. Johnson took it to a publisher, and thoughwithout much expectation of success asked and received £60 for it. It waspublished two years later. Meanwhile in 1764 appeared Goldsmith'sdescriptive poem, 'The Traveler, ' based on his own experiences in Europe. Six years later it was followed by 'The Deserted Village, ' which wasreceived with the great enthusiasm that it merited. 

Such high achievement in two of the main divisions of literature was initself remarkable, especially as Goldsmith was obliged to the end of hislife to spend much of his time in hack writing, but in the later years ofhis short life he turned also with almost as good results to the drama(comedy). We must stop here for the few words of general summary which areall that the eighteenth century drama need receive in a brief survey likethe present one. During the first half of the century, as we have seen, anoccasional pseudo-classical tragedy was written, none of them of anygreater excellence than Addison's 'Cato' and Johnson's 'Irene' (above, pages 205 and 217). The second quarter of the century was largely givenover to farces and burlesques, which absorbed the early literary activityof the novelist Henry Fielding, until their attacks on Walpole's governmentled to a severe licensing act, which suppressed them. But the mostdistinctive and predominant forms of the middle and latter half of thecentury were, first, the Sentimental Comedy, whose origin may be roughlyassigned to Steele, and, second, the domestic melodrama, which grew out ofit. In the Sentimental Comedy the elements of mirth and romance which arethe legitimate bases of comedy were largely subordinated to exaggeratedpathos, and in the domestic melodrama the experiences of insignificantpersons of the middle class were presented for sympathetic consideration inthe same falsetto fashion. Both forms (indeed, they were one in spirit)were extreme products of the romantic return to sentiment and democraticfeeling. Both were enormously popular and, crossing the Channel, likeThomson's poetic innovation, exerted a great influence on the drama ofFrance and Germany (especially in the work of Lessing), and in general onthe German Romantic Movement. Goldsmith was inferior to no one in genuinesentiment, but he was disgusted at the sentimental excesses of these plays. His 'Good Natured Man, ' written with the express purpose of opposing them, and brought out in 1768, was reasonably successful, and in 1771 his farsuperior 'She Stoops to Conquer' virtually put an end to SentimentalComedy. This is one of the very few English comedies of a former generationwhich are still occasionally revived on the stage to-day. Goldsmith'scomedies, we may add here for completeness, were shortly followed by themore brilliant ones of another Irish-Englishman, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who displayed Congreve's wit without his cynicism. These were 'The Rivals, 'produced in 1775, when Sheridan was only twenty-four, and 'The School forScandal, ' 1777. Sheridan, a reckless man of fashion, continued most of hislife to be owner of Drury Lane Theater, but he soon abandoned playwritingto become one of the leaders of the Whig party. With Burke and Fox, as wehave seen, he conducted the impeachment of Hastings. 

'She Stoops to Conquer' was Goldsmith's last triumph. A few months later, in 1774, he died at the age of only forty-five, half submerged, as usual, in foolish debts, but passionately mourned not only by his acquaintances inthe literary and social worlds, but by a great army of the poor and needyto whom he had been a benefactor. In the face of this testimony to hishuman worth his childish vanities and other weaknesses may well bepardoned. All Goldsmith's literary work is characterized by one mainquality, a charming atmosphere of optimistic happiness which is theexpression of the best side of his own nature. The scene of all his mostimportant productions, very appropriately, is the country--the idealizedEnglish country. Very much, to be sure, in all his works has to be concededto the spirit of romance. Both in 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and in 'SheStoops to Conquer' characterization is mostly conventional, and events arevery arbitrarily manipulated for the sake of the effects in ratherfree-and-easy disregard of all principles of motivation. But the kindlyknowledge of the main forces in human nature, the unfailing sympathy, andthe irrepressible conviction that happiness depends in the last analysis onthe individual will and character make Goldsmith's writings, especially'The Vicar, ' delightful and refreshing. All in all, however, 'The DesertedVillage' is his masterpiece, with its romantic regret, verging on tragedybut softened away from it, and its charming type characterizations, asincisive as those of Chaucer and Dryden, but without any of Dryden's bitingsatire. In the choice of the rimed couplet for 'The Traveler' and 'TheDeserted Village' the influence of pseudo-classicism and of Johnsonappears; but Goldsmith's treatment of the form, with his variety in pausesand his simple but fervid eloquence, make it a very different thing fromthe rimed couplet of either Johnson or Pope. 'The Deserted Village, ' itshould be added, is not a description of any actual village, but ageneralized picture of existing conditions. Men of wealth in England andIreland were enlarging their sheep pastures and their hunting grounds bybuying up land and removing villages, and Goldsmith, like Sir Thomas More, two hundred years earlier, and likewise patriots of all times, deeplyregretted the tendency. 

PERCY, MACPHERSON, AND CHATTERTON. The appearance of Thomson's 'Winter' in1726 is commonly taken as conveniently marking the beginning of theRomantic Movement. Another of its conspicuous dates is 1765, the year ofthe publication of the 'Reliques [pronounced Relics] of Ancient EnglishPoetry' of the enthusiastic antiquarian Thomas (later Bishop) Percy. Percydrew from many sources, of which the most important was a manuscriptvolume, in which an anonymous seventeenth century collector had copied alarge number of old poems and which Percy rescued just in the nick of time, as the maids in the house of one of his friends were beginning to use it askindling for the fires. His own book consisted of something less than twohundred very miscellaneous poems, ranging in date from the fourteenthcentury to his own day. Its real importance, however, lies in the fact thatit contained a number of the old popular ballads (above, pp. 74 ff). Neither Percy himself nor any one else in his time understood the realnature of these ballads and their essential difference from other poetry, and Percy sometimes tampered with the text and even filled out gaps withstanzas of his own, whose sentimental style is ludicrously inconsistentwith the primitive vigor of the originals. But his book, which attainedgreat popularity, marks the beginning of the special study of the balladsand played an important part in the revival of interest in medieval life. 

Still greater interest was aroused at the time by the Ossianic poems ofJames Macpherson. From 1760 to 1763 Macpherson, then a young Highland Scotsschoolmaster, published in rapid succession certain fragments of Gaelicverse and certain more extended works in poetical English prose which, heasserted, were part of the originals, discovered by himself, andtranslations, of the poems of the legendary Scottish bard Ossian, of thethird Christian century. These productions won him substantial materialrewards in the shape of high political offices throughout the rest of hislong life. About the genuineness of the compositions, however, a violentcontroversy at once arose, and Dr. Johnson was one of the skeptics whovigorously denounced Macpherson as a shameless impostor. The generalconviction of scholars of the present day is that while Macpherson may havefound some fragments of very ancient Gaelic verse in circulation among theHighlanders, he fabricated most of what he published. These works, however, 'Fingal' and the rest, certainly contributed to the Romantic Movement; andthey are not only unique productions, but, in small quantities, stillinteresting. They can best be described as reflections of the misty scenesof Macpherson's native Highlands--vague impressionistic glimpses, succeeding one another in purposeless repetition, of bands of marchingwarriors whose weapons intermittently flash and clang through the fog, andof heroic women, white-armed and with flowing hair, exhorting the heroes tothe combat or lamenting their fall. 

A very minor figure, but one of the most pathetic in the history of Englishliterature, is that of Thomas Chatterton. While he was a boy in Bristol, Chatterton's imagination was possessed by the medieval buildings of thecity, and when some old documents fell into his hands he formed the idea ofcomposing similar works in both verse and prose and passing them off asmedieval productions which he had discovered. To his imaginary author hegave the name of Thomas Rowley. Entirely successful in deceiving hisfellow-townsmen, and filled with a great ambition, Chatterton went toLondon, where, failing to secure patronage, he committed suicide as theonly resource against the begging to which his proud spirit could notsubmit. This was in 1770, and he was still only eighteen years old. Chatterton's work must be viewed under several aspects. His imitation ofthe medieval language was necessarily very imperfect and could mislead noone to-day; from this point of view the poems have no permanentsignificance. The moral side of his action need not be seriously weighed, as Chatterton never reached the age of responsibility and if he had livedwould soon have passed from forgery to genuine work. That he might haveachieved much is suggested by the evidences of real genius in his boyishoutput, which probably justify Wordsworth's description, of him as 'themarvelous boy. ' That he would have become one of the great English poets, however, is much more open to question. 

WILLIAM COWPER. Equally pathetic is the figure of William Cowper(pronounced either Cowper or Cooper), whose much longer life (1731-1800)and far larger literary production give him a more important actual placethan can be claimed for Chatterton, though his natural ability was far lessand his significance to-day is chiefly historical. Cowper's career, also, was largely frustrated by the same physical weaknesses which had ruinedCollins, present in the later poet in still more distressing degree. Cowperis clearly a transition poet, sharing largely, in a very mild fashion, insome of the main romantic impulses, but largely pseudo-classical in hismanner of thought and expression. His life may be briefly summarized. Morbid timidity and equally morbid religious introspection, aggravated bydisappointments in love, prevented him as a young man from accepting a verycomfortable clerkship in the House of Lords and drove him into intermittentinsanity, which closed more darkly about him in his later years. He livedthe greater part of his mature life in the household of a Mrs. Unwin, awidow for whom he had a deep affection and whom only his mental afflictionprevented him from marrying. A long residence in the wretched village ofOlney, where he forced himself to cooperate in all phases of religious workwith the village clergyman, the stern enthusiast John Newton, producedtheir joint collection of 'Olney Hymns, ' many of which deservedly remainamong the most popular in our church song-books; but it inevitablyincreased Cowper's disorder. After this he resigned himself to a perfectlysimple life, occupied with the writing of poetry, the care of pets, gardening, and carpentry. The bulk of his work consists of long moralizingpoems, prosy, prolix, often trivial, and to-day largely unreadable. Same ofthem are in the rimed couplet and others in blank verse. His blank-versetranslation of Homer, published in 1791, is more notable, and 'AlexanderSelkirk' and the humorous doggerel 'John Gilpin' are famous; but his mostsignificant poems are a few lyrics and descriptive pieces in which hespeaks out his deepest feelings with the utmost pathetic or tragic power. In the expression of different moods of almost intolerable sadness 'On theReceipt of My Mother's Picture' and 'To Mary' (Mrs. Unwin) can scarcely besurpassed, and 'The Castaway' is final as the restrained utterance ofmorbid religious despair. Even in his long poems, in his minutely lovingtreatment of Nature he is the most direct precursor of Wordsworth, and heis one of the earliest outspoken opponents of slavery and cruelty toanimals. How unsuited in all respects his delicate and sensitive nature wasto the harsh experiences of actual life is suggested by Mrs. Browning withvehement sympathy in her poem, 'Cowper's Grave. '

WILLIAM BLAKE. Still another utterly unworldly and frankly abnormal poet, though of a still different temperament, was William Blake (1757-1827), whoin many respects is one of the most extreme of all romanticists. Blake, theson of a London retail shopkeeper, received scarcely any book education, but at fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver, who stimulated hisimagination by setting him to work at making drawings in Westminster Abbeyand other old churches. His training was completed by study at the RoyalAcademy of Arts, and for the rest of his life he supported himself, inpoverty, with the aid of a devoted wife, by keeping a print-and-engravingshop. Among his own engravings the best known is the famous picture ofChaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, which is not altogether free from the weirdstrangeness that distinguished most of his work in all lines. For in spiteof his commonplace exterior life Blake was a thorough mystic to whom theangels and spirits that he beheld in trances were at least as real as thematerial world. When his younger brother died he declared that he saw thereleased soul mount through the ceiling, clapping its hands in joy. Thebulk of his writing consists of a series of 'prophetic books' in verse andprose, works, in part, of genius, but of unbalanced genius, and virtuallyunintelligible. His lyric poems, some of them composed when he was no morethan thirteen years old, are unlike anything else anywhere, and some ofthem are of the highest quality. Their controlling trait is childlikeness;for Blake remained all his life one of those children of whom is theKingdom of Heaven. One of their commonest notes is that of childlikedelight in the mysterious joy and beauty of the world, a delight sometimestouched, it is true, as in 'The Tiger, ' with a maturer consciousness of thewonderful and terrible power behind all the beauty. Blake has intenseindignation also for all cruelty and everything which he takes for cruelty, including the shutting up of children in school away from the happy life ofout-of-doors. These are the chief sentiments of 'Songs of Innocence. ' In'Songs of Experience' the shadow of relentless fact falls somewhat moreperceptibly across the page, though the prevailing ideas are the same. Blake's significant product is very small, but it deserves much greaterreputation than it has actually attained. One characteristic external factshould be added. Since Blake's poverty rendered him unable to pay forhaving his books printed, he himself performed the enormous labor of_engraving_ them, page by page, often with an ornamental margin aboutthe text. 

ROBERT BURNS. Blake, deeply romantic as he is by nature, virtually standsby himself, apart from any movement or group, and the same is equally trueof the somewhat earlier lyrist in whom eighteenth century poetryculminates, namely Robert Burns. Burns, the oldest of the seven children oftwo sturdy Scotch peasants of the best type, was born in 1759 in Ayrshire, just beyond the northwest border of England. In spite of extreme poverty, the father joined with some of his neighbors in securing the services of ateacher for their children, and the household possessed a few good books, including Shakspere and Pope, whose influence on the future poet was great. But the lot of the family was unusually hard. The father's health failedearly and from childhood the boys were obliged to do men's work in thefield. Robert later declared, probably with some bitter exaggeration, thathis life had combined 'the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasingmoil of a galley slave. ' His genius, however, like his exuberant spirit, could not be crushed out. His mother had familiarized him from thebeginning with the songs and ballads of which the country was full, andthough he is said at first to have had so little ear for music that hecould scarcely distinguish one tune from another, he soon began to composesongs (words) of his own as he followed the plough. In the greatness of hislater success his debt to the current body of song and music should not beoverlooked. He is only the last of a long succession of rural Scottishsong-writers; he composed his own songs to accompany popular airs; and manyof them are directly based on fragments of earlier songs. None the less hiswork rises immeasurably above all that had gone before it. 

The story of Burns' mature life is the pathetic one of a very vigorousnature in which genius, essential manliness, and good impulses struggledagainst and were finally overcome by violent passions, aggravated by thebitterness of poverty and repeated disappointments. His first effort, ateighteen, to better his condition, by the study of surveying at aneighboring town, resulted chiefly in throwing him into contact with badcompanions; a venture in the business of flax-dressing ended in disaster;and the same ill-fortune attended the several successive attempts which hemade at general farming. He became unfortunately embroiled also with theChurch, which (the Presbyterian denomination) exercised a very strictcontrol in Scotland. Compelled to do public penance for some of hisoffenses, his keen wit could not fail to be struck by the inconsistencybetween the rigid doctrines and the lives of some of the men who wereproceeding against him; and he commemorated the feud in his series ofoverwhelming but painfully flippant satires. 

His brief period of dazzling public success dawned suddenly out of thedarkest moment of his fortunes. At the age of twenty-seven, abandoning thehope which he had already begun to cherish of becoming the national poet ofScotland, he had determined in despair to emigrate to Jamaica to become anoverseer on a plantation. (That this chief poet of democracy, the author of'A Man's a Man for a' That, ' could have planned to become a slave-driversuggests how closely the most genuine human sympathies are limited by habitand circumstances. ) To secure the money for his voyage Burns had publishedhis poems in a little volume. This won instantaneous and universalpopularity, and Burns, turning back at the last moment, responded to thesuggestion of some of the great people of Edinburgh that he should come tothat city and see what could be done for him. At first the experimentseemed fortunate, for the natural good breeding with which this untrainedcountryman bore himself for a winter as the petted lion of the society offashion and learning (the University) was remarkable. None the less thesituation was unnatural and necessarily temporary, and unluckily Burnsformed associations also with such boon companions of the lower sort as hadhitherto been his undoing. After a year Edinburgh dropped him, thussupplying substantial fuel for his ingrained poor man's jealousy and rancorat the privileged classes. Too near his goal to resume the idea ofemigrating, he returned to his native moors, rented another farm, andmarried Jean Armour, one of the several heroines of his love-poems. Theonly material outcome of his period of public favor was an appointment asinternal revenue collector, an unpopular and uncongenial office which heaccepted with reluctance and exercised with leniency. It required him tooccupy much of his time in riding about the country, and contributed to hisfinal failure as a farmer. After the latter event he removed to theneighboring market-town of Dumfries, where he again renewed hiscompanionship with unworthy associates. At last prospects for promotion inthe revenue service began to open to him, but it was too late; hisnaturally robust constitution had given way to over-work and dissipation, and he died in 1796 at the age of thirty-seven. 

Burns' place among poets is perfectly clear. It is chiefly that of asong-writer, perhaps the greatest songwriter of the world. At work in thefields or in his garret or kitchen after the long day's work was done, hecomposed songs because he could not help it, because his emotion wasirresistibly stirred by the beauty and life of the birds and flowers, thesnatch of a melody which kept running through his mind, or the memory ofthe girl with whom he had last talked. And his feelings expressedthemselves with spontaneous simplicity, genuineness, and ease. He is athoroughly romantic poet, though wholly by the grace of nature, not at allfrom any conscious intention--he wrote as the inspiration moved him, not inaccordance with any theory of art. The range of his subjects and emotionsis nearly or quite complete--love; comradeship; married affection, as in'John Anderson, My Jo'; reflective sentiment; feeling for nature; sympathywith animals; vigorous patriotism, as in 'Scots Wha Hae' (and Burns didmuch to revive the feeling of Scots for Scotland); deep tragedy and pathos;instinctive happiness; delightful humor; and the others. It should beclearly recognized, however, that this achievement, supreme as it is in itsown way, does not suffice to place Burns among the greatest poets. Thebrief lyrical outbreaks of the song-writer are no more to be compared withthe sustained creative power and knowledge of life and character which makethe great dramatist or narrative poet than the bird's song is to becompared with an opera of Wagner. But such comparisons need not be pressed;and the song of bird or poet appeals instantly to every normal hearer, while the drama or narrative poem requires at least some specialaccessories and training. Burns' significant production, also, is notaltogether limited to songs. 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' (in Spenser'sstanza) is one of the perfect descriptive poems of lyrical sentiment; andsome of Burns' meditative poems and poetical epistles to acquaintances aredelightful in a free-and-easy fashion. The exuberant power in the religioussatires and the narrative 'Tam o' Shanter' is undeniable, but they belongto a lower order of work. 

Many of Burns' poems are in the Lowland Scots dialect; a few are wholly inordinary English; and some combine the two idioms. It is an interestingquestion whether Burns wins distinctly greater success in one than in theother. In spite of his prevailing literary honesty, it may be observed, hisEnglish shows some slight traces of the effort to imitate Pope and thefeeling that the pseudo-classical style with its elegance was really thehighest--a feeling which renders some of his letters painfully affected. [Footnote: For the sake of brevity the sternly realistic poet George Crabbeis here omitted. ]

THE NOVEL. We have traced the literary production of the eighteenth centuryin many different forms, but it still remains to speak of one of the mostimportant, the novel, which in the modern meaning of the word had itsorigin not long before 1750. Springing at that time into apparently suddenpopularity, it replaced the drama as the predominant form of literature andhas continued such ever since. The reasons are not hard to discover. Thedrama is naturally the most popular literary form in periods like theElizabethan when the ability (or inclination) to read is not general, whenmen are dominated by the zest for action, and when cities have becomesufficiently large to keep the theaters well filled. It is also the naturalform in such a period as that of the Restoration, when literary lifecenters about a frivolous upper class who demand an easy and social form ofentertainment. But the condition is very different when, as in theeighteenth and still more in the nineteenth century, the habit of reading, and some recognition of its educating influence, had spread throughoutalmost all classes and throughout the country, creating a public far toolarge, too scattered, and too varied to gain access to the London andprovincial theaters or to find all their needs supplied by a somewhatartificial literary form. The novel, on the other hand, gives a much fullerportrayal of life than does the drama, and allows the much more detailedanalysis of characters and situations which the modern mind has come moreand more to demand. 

The novel, which for our present purpose must be taken to include theromance, is, of course, only a particular and highly developed kind of longstory, one of the latest members of the family of fiction, or the largerfamily of narrative, in prose and verse. The medieval romances, forexample, included most of the elements of the novel, even, sometimes, psychological analysis; but the romances usually lacked the unity, thecomplex and careful structure, the thorough portrayal of character, and theserious attention to the real problems of life which in a general waydistinguish the modern novel. Much the same is true of the Elizabethan'novels, ' which, besides, were generally short as well as of smallintellectual and ethical caliber. During the Restoration period and alittle later there began to appear several kinds of works which perhapslooked more definitely toward the later novel. Bunyan's religiousallegories may likely enough have had a real influence on it, and therewere a few English tales and romances of chivalry (above, pages 184-5), anda few more realistic pieces of fiction. The habit of journal writing andthe letters about London life sent by some persons in the city to theirfriends in the country should also be mentioned. The De Coverly papers in'The Spectator' approach distinctly toward the novel. They give realpresentation of both characters and setting (social life) and lack onlyconnected treatment of the story (of Sir Roger). Defoe's fictions, picaresque tales of adventure, come still closer, but lack the deeperartistic and moral purpose and treatment suggested a moment ago. The caseis not very different with Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels, ' which, besides, isprimarily a satire. Substantially, therefore, all the materials were nowready, awaiting only the fortunate hand which should arrange and shape theminto a real novel. This proved to be the hand of a rather unlikely person, the outwardly commonplace printer, Samuel Richardson. 

SAMUEL RICHARDSON. It is difficult, because of the sentimental nature ofthe period and the man, to tell the story of Richardson's career without anappearance of farcical burlesque. Born in 1689, in Derbyshire, he earlygave proof of his special endowments by delighting his childish companionswith stories, and, a little later, by becoming the composer of the loveletters of various young women. His command of language and an insistenttendency to moralize seemed to mark him out for the ministry, but hisfather was unable to pay for the necessary education and apprenticed him toa London printer. Possessed of great fidelity and all the quieter virtues, he rose steadily and became in time the prosperous head of his own printinghouse, a model citizen, and the father of a large family of children. Before he reached middle life he was a valetudinarian. His householdgradually became a constant visiting place for a number of young ladiestoward whom he adopted a fatherly attitude and who without knowing it werehelping him to prepare for his artistic success. 

When he was not quite fifty his great reputation among his acquaintances asa letter-writer led some publishers to invite him to prepare a series of'Familiar [that is, Friendly] Letters' as models for inexperienced youngpeople. Complying, Richardson discovered the possibilities of the letterform as a means of telling stories, and hence proceeded to write his firstnovel, 'Pamela, [Footnote: He wrongly placed the accent on the firstsyllable. ] or Virtue Rewarded, ' which was published in 1740. It attainedenormous success, which he followed up by writing his masterpiece, 'Clarissa Harlowe' (1747-8), and then 'The History of Sir CharlesGrandison' (1753). He spent his latter years, as has been aptly said, in asort of perpetual tea-party, surrounded by bevies of admiring ladies, andlargely occupied with a vast feminine correspondence, chiefly concerninghis novels. He died of apoplexy in 1761. 

At this distance of time it is easy to summarize the main traits ofRichardson's novels. 

1. He gave form to the modern novel by shaping it according to a definiteplot with carefully selected incidents which all contributed directly tothe outcome. In this respect his practice was decidedly stricter than thatof most of his English successors down to the present time. Indeed, heavowedly constructed his novels on the plan of dramas, while laternovelists, in the desire to present a broader picture of life, havegenerally allowed themselves greater range of scenes and a larger number ofcharacters. In the instinct for suspense, also, no one has surpassedRichardson; his stories are intense, not to say sensational, and oncelaunched upon them we follow with the keenest interest to the outcome. 

2. Nevertheless, he is always prolix. That the novels as published variedin length from four to eight volumes is not really significant, since thesewere the very small volumes which (as a source of extra profit) were to bethe regular form for novels until after the time of Scott. Even 'Clarissa, 'the longest, is not longer than some novels of our own day. Yet they domuch exceed the average in length and would undoubtedly gain bycondensation. Richardson, it may be added, produced each of them in thespace of a few months, writing, evidently, with the utmost fluency, andwith little need for revision. 

3. Most permanently important, perhaps, of all Richardson's contributions, was his creation of complex characters, such as had thitherto appeared notin English novels but only in the drama. In characterization Richardson'sgreat strength lay with his women--he knew the feminine mind and spiritthrough and through. His first heroine, Pamela, is a plebeian serving-maid, and his second, Clarissa, a fine-spirited young lady of the wealthy class, but both are perfectly and completely true and living, throughout all theirterribly complex and trying experiences. Men, on the other hand, thosebeyond his own particular circle, Richardson understood only from theoutside. Annoyed by criticisms to this effect, he attempted in the hero ofhis last book to present a true gentleman, but the result is only amechanical ideal figure of perfection whose wooden joints creak painfullyas he moves slowly about under the heavy load of his sternly self-consciousgoodness and dignity. 

4. Richardson's success in his own time was perhaps chiefly due to hisstriking with exaggerated emphasis the note of tender sentiment to whichthe spirit of his generation was so over-ready to respond. The substance ofhis books consists chiefly of the sufferings of his heroines underingeniously harrowing persecution at the hands of remorseless scoundrels. Pamela, with her serving-maid's practical efficiency, proves able to takecare of herself, but the story of the high-bred and noble-minded Clarissais, with all possible deductions, one of the most deeply-moving tragediesever committed to paper. The effect in Richardson's own time may easily beimagined; but it is also a matter of record that his novels were commonlyread aloud in the family circle (a thing which some of their incidentswould render impossible at the present day) and that sometimes when theemotional strain became too great the various listeners would retire totheir own rooms to cry out their grief. Richardson appealed directly, then, to the prevailing taste of his generation, and no one did more than he toconfirm its hold on the next generation, not only in England, but also inFrance and Germany. 

5. We have not yet mentioned what according to Richardson's own reiteratedstatement was his main purpose in writing, namely, the conveying of moraland religious instruction. He is extremely anxious to demonstrate to hisreaders that goodness pays and that wickedness does not, generally even inthis world (though in 'Clarissa' his artistic sense refuses to be turnedaside from the inevitable tragic outcome). The spiritual vulgarity of thedoctrine, so far as material things are concerned, is clearly illustratedin the mechanically virtuous Pamela, who, even in the midst of the mostoutrageous besetments of Squire B----, is hoping with all her soul for thetriumph which is actually destined for her, of becoming his wife and sorising high above her original humble station. Moreover, Richardson oftengoes far and tritely out of his way in his preaching. At their worst, however, his sentimentality and moralizing were preferable to thecoarseness which disgraced the works of some of his immediate successors. 

6. Lastly must be mentioned the form of his novels. They all consist ofseries of letters, which constitute the correspondence between some of theprincipal characters, the great majority being written in each case by theheroine. This method of telling a story requires special concessions fromthe reader; but even more than the other first-personal method, exemplifiedin 'Robinson Crusoe, ' it has the great advantage of giving the mostintimate possible revelation of the imaginary writer's mind and situation. Richardson handles it with very great skill, though in his anxiety that hischief characters may not be misunderstood he occasionally commits theartistic blunder of inserting footnotes to explain their real motives. 

Richardson, then, must on the whole be called the first of the greatEnglish novelists--a striking case of a man in whom one special endowmentproved much weightier than a large number of absurdities and littlenesses. 

HENRY FIELDING. Sharply opposed to Richardson stands his later contemporaryand rival, Henry Fielding. Fielding was born of an aristocratic family inSomersetshire in 1707. At Eton School and the University of Leyden (inHolland) he won distinction, but at the age of twenty he found himself, avigorous young man with instincts for fine society, stranded in Londonwithout any tangible means of support. He turned to the drama and duringthe next dozen years produced many careless and ephemeral farces, burlesques, and light plays, which, however, were not without value aspreparation for his novels. Meanwhile he had other activities--spent themoney which his wife brought him at marriage in an extravagant experimentas gentleman-farmer; studied law and was admitted to the bar; and conductedvarious literary periodicals. His attacks on the government in his playshelped to produce the severe licensing act which put an end to his dramaticwork and that of many other light playwrights. When Richardson's 'Pamela'appeared Fielding was disgusted with what seemed to him its hypocriticalsilliness, and in vigorous artistic indignation he proceeded to write 'TheHistory of Joseph Andrews, ' representing Joseph as the brother of Pamelaand as a serving-man, honest, like her, in difficult circumstances. Beginning in a spirit of sheer burlesque, Fielding soon became interestedin his characters, and in the actual result produced a rough but masterfulpicture of contemporary life. The coarse Parson Trulliber and the admirableParson Adams are among the famous characters of fiction. But even in thelater part of the book Fielding did not altogether abandon his ridicule ofRichardson. He introduced among the characters the 'Squire B----' of'Pamela, ' only filling out the blank by calling him 'Squire Booby, ' andtaking pains to make him correspondingly ridiculous. 

Fielding now began to pay the penalty for his youthful dissipations infailing health, but he continued to write with great expenditure of timeand energy. 'The History of Jonathan Wild the Great, ' a notorious ruffianwhose life Defoe also had narrated, aims to show that great militaryconquerors are only bandits and cutthroats really no more praiseworthy thanthe humbler individuals who are hanged without ceremony. Fielding'smasterpiece, 'The History of Tom Jones, ' followed hard after Richardson's'Clarissa, ' in 1749. His last novel, 'Amelia, ' is a half autobiographicaccount of his own follies. His second marriage, to his first wife's maid, was intended, as he frankly said, to provide a nurse for himself and amother for his children, but his later years were largely occupied withheroic work as a police justice in Westminster, where, at the sacrifice ofwhat health remained to him, he rooted out a specially dangerous band ofrobbers. Sailing for recuperation, but too late, to Lisbon, he died thereat the age of forty-seven, in 1754. 

The chief characteristics of Fielding's nature and novels, mostly directlyopposite or complementary to those of Richardson, are these:

1. He is a broad realist, giving to his romantic actions a very prominentbackground of actual contemporary life. The portrayal is very illuminating;we learn from Fielding a great deal, almost everything, one is inclined tosay, about conditions in both country and city in his time--about the stateof travel, country inns, city jails, and many other things; but with hisvigorous masculine nature he makes abundant use of the coarser facts oflife and character which a finer art avoids. However, he is extremely humanand sympathetic; in view of their large and generous naturalness thedefects of his character and works are at least pardonable. 

2. His structure is that of the rambling picaresque story of adventure, notlacking, in his case, in definite progress toward a clearly-designed end, but admitting many digressions and many really irrelevant elements. Thenumber of his characters, especially in 'Tom Jones, ' is enormous. Indeed, the usual conception of a novel in his day, as the word 'History, ' whichwas generally included in the title, indicates, was that of the completestory of the life of the hero or heroine, at least up to the time ofmarriage. It is virtually the old idea of the chronicle-history play. Fielding himself repeatedly speaks of his masterpiece as an 'epic. '

3. His point of view is primarily humorous. He avowedly imitates the mannerof Cervantes in 'Don Quixote' and repeatedly insists that he is writing a_mock_-epic. His very genuine and clear-sighted indignation at socialabuses expresses itself through his omnipresent irony and satire, andhowever serious the situations he almost always keeps the ridiculous sidein sight. He offends some modern readers by refusing to take his art in anyaspect over-seriously; especially, he constantly asserts and exercises his'right' to break off his story and chat quizzically about questions of artor conduct in a whole chapter at a time. 

4. His knowledge of character, that of a generous-hearted man of the world, is sound but not subtile, and is deeper in the case of men than of women, especially in the case of men who resemble himself. Tom Jones is virtuallyHenry Fielding in his youth and is thoroughly lifelike, but SquireAllworthy, intended as an example of benevolent perfection, is no less of apale abstraction than Sir Charles Grandison. The women, cleverly as theirtypical feminine traits are brought out, are really viewed only fromwithout. 

THE OTHER SENTIMENTALISTS AND REALISTS. Richardson and Fielding set inmotion two currents, of sentimentalism and realism, respectively, whichflowed vigorously in the novel during the next generation, and indeed(since they are of the essence of life), have continued, with variousmodifications, down to our own time. Of the succeeding realists the mostimportant is Tobias Smollett, a Scottish ex-physician of violent and brutalnature, who began to produce his picaresque stories of adventure during thelifetime of Fielding. He made ferociously unqualified attacks on thestatesmen of his day, and in spite of much power, the coarseness of hisworks renders them now almost unreadable. But he performed one definiteservice; in 'Roderick Random, ' drawing on his early experiences as a ship'ssurgeon, he inaugurated the out-and-out sea story, that is the story whichtakes place not, like 'Robinson Crusoe, ' in small part, but mainly, onboard ship. Prominent, on the other hand, among the sentimentalists isLaurence Sterne, who, inappropriately enough, was a clergyman, the authorof 'Tristram Shandy. ' This book is quite unlike anything else ever written. Sterne published it in nine successive volumes during almost as many years, and he made a point of almost complete formlessness and every sort ofwhimsicality. The hero is not born until the third volume, the story mostlyrelates to other people and things, pages are left blank to be filled outby the reader--no grotesque device or sudden trick can be too fantastic forSterne. But he has the gift of delicate pathos and humor, and certainepisodes in the book are justly famous, such as the one where Uncle Tobycarefully puts a fly out of the window, refusing to 'hurt a hair of itshead, ' on the ground that 'the world surely is wide enough to hold boththee and me. ' The best of all the sentimental stories is Goldsmith's 'Vicarof Wakefield' (1766), of which we have already spoken (above, page 244). With its kindly humor, its single-hearted wholesomeness, and its delightfulfigure of Dr. Primrose it remains, in spite of its artlessness, one of thepermanent landmarks of English fiction. 

HISTORICAL AND 'GOTHIC' ROMANCES. Stories which purported to reproduce thelife of the Past were not unknown in England in the seventeenth century, but the real beginning of the historical novel and romance belongs to thelater part of the eighteenth century. The extravagance of romantic writersat that time, further, created a sort of subspecies called in its day andsince the 'Gothic' romance. These 'Gothic' stories are nominally located inthe Middle Ages, but their main object is not to give an accurate pictureof medieval life, but to arouse terror in the reader, by means of afantastic apparatus of gloomy castles, somber villains, distressed andsentimental heroines, and supernatural mystery. The form was inaugurated byHorace Walpole, the son of the former Prime Minister, who built nearTwickenham (Pope's home) a pseudo-medieval house which he named StrawberryHill, where he posed as a center of the medieval revival. Walpole's 'Castleof 'Otranto, ' published in 1764, is an utterly absurd little story, but itsnovelty at the time, and the author's prestige, gave it a great vogue. Thereally best 'Gothic' romances are the long ones written by Mrs. AnnRadcliffe in the last decade of the century, of which 'The Mysteries ofUdolpho, ' in particular, was popular for two generations. Mrs. Radcliffe'sbooks overflow with sentimentality, but display real power, especially inimaginative description. Of the more truly historical romances the bestwere the 'Thaddeus of Warsaw' and 'Scottish Chiefs' of Miss Jane Porter, which appeared in the first decade of the nineteenth century. None of allthese historical and 'Gothic' romances attains the rank of great orpermanent literature, but they were historically important, largely becausethey prepared the way for the novels of Walter Scott, which would hardlyhave come into being without them, and which show clear signs of theinfluence of even their most exaggerated features. 

NOVELS OF PURPOSE. Still another sort of novel was that which began to bewritten in the latter part of the century with the object of exposing someparticular abuse in society. The first representatives of the class aimed, imitating the French sentimentalist Rousseau, to improve education, and inaccordance with the sentimental Revolutionary misconception which held thatall sin and sorrow result from the corruptions of civilization, often heldup the primitive savage as a model of all the kindly virtues. The mostimportant of the novels of purpose, however, were more thorough-goingattacks on society composed by radical revolutionists, and the leastforgotten is the 'Caleb Williams' of William Godwin (1794), which isintended to demonstrate that class-distinctions result in hopeless moralconfusion and disaster. 

MISS BURNEY AND THE FEMININE NOVEL OF MANNERS. The most permanent resultsof the latter part of the century in fiction were attained by three womenwho introduced and successively continued the novel which depicts, from thewoman's point of view, with delicate satire, and at first in the hope ofaccomplishing some reform, or at least of showing the beauty of virtue andmorality, the contemporary manners of well-to-do 'society. ' The first ofthese authoresses was Miss Frances Burney, who later became MadameD'Arblay, but is generally referred to familiarly as Fanny Burney. 

The unassuming daughter of a talented and much-esteemed musician, acquainted in her own home with many persons of distinction, such asGarrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and given from girlhood to the privatewriting of stories and of a since famous Diary, Miss Burney composed her'Evelina' in leisure intervals during a number of years, and published itwhen she was twenty-five, in 1778. It recounts, in the Richardsonian letterform, the experiences of a country girl of good breeding and ideally finecharacter who is introduced into the life of London high society, isincidentally brought into contact with disagreeable people of varioustypes, and soon achieves a great triumph by being acknowledged as thedaughter of a repentant and wealthy man of fashion and by marrying animpossibly perfect young gentleman, also of great wealth. Structure andsubstance in 'Evelina' are alike somewhat amateurish in comparison with thenovels of the next century; but it does manifest, together with some lackof knowledge of the real world, genuine understanding of the core, atleast, of many sorts of character; it presents artificial society life witha light and pleasing touch; and it brought into the novel a welcomeatmosphere of womanly purity and delicacy. 'Evelina' was received withgreat applause and Miss Burney wrote other books, but they are withoutimportance. Her success won her the friendship of Dr. Johnson and theposition of one of the Queen's waiting women, a sort of gilded slaverywhich she endured for five years. She was married in middle-age to a Frenchemigrant officer, Monsieur D'Arblay, and lived in France and England untilthe age of nearly ninety, latterly an inactive but much respected figureamong the writers of a younger generation. 

MISS EDGEWORTH. Much more voluminous and varied was the work of MissBurney's successor, Maria Edgeworth, who devoted a great part of her longlife (1767-1849) to active benevolence and to attendance on her father, aneccentric and pedantic English gentleman who lived mostly on his estate inIreland and who exercised the privilege of revising or otherwise meddlingwith most of her books. In the majority of her works Miss Edgeworthfollowed Miss Burney, writing of the experiences of young ladies infashionable London life. In these novels her purpose was more obviouslymoral than Miss Burney's--she aimed to make clear the folly of frivolityand dissipation; and she also wrote moral tales for children which thoughthey now seem old-fashioned were long and widely popular. Since she had afirst-hand knowledge of both Ireland and England, she laid the scenes ofsome of her books partly in both countries, thereby creating what was latercalled 'the international novel. ' Her most distinctive achievement, however, was the introduction of the real Irishman (as distinct from thehumorous caricature) into fiction. Scott testified that it was her examplethat suggested to him the similar portrayal of Scottish character and life. 

JANE AUSTEN. Much the greatest of this trio of authoresses is the last, Jane Austen, who perhaps belongs as much to the nineteenth century as theeighteenth. The daughter of a clergyman, she past an absolutely uneventfullife of forty-two years (1775-1817) in various villages and towns inSouthern England. She had finished her masterpiece, 'Pride and Prejudice, 'at the age of twenty-two, but was unable for more than a dozen years tofind a publisher for this and her other earlier works. When at last theywere brought out she resumed her writing, but the total number of hernovels is only six. Her field, also, is more limited than that of any othergreat English novelist; for she deliberately restricted herself, withexcellent judgment, to portraying what she knew at first-hand, namely thelife of the well-to-do classes of her own 'provincial' region. Moreover, her theme is always love; desirable marriage for themselves or theirchildren seems to be the single object of almost all her characters; andshe always conducts her heroine successfully to this goal. Her artisticachievement, like herself, is so well-bred and unobtrusive that a hastyreader may easily fail to appreciate it. Her understanding of character isalmost perfect, her sense for structure and dramatic scenes (quiet ones)equally good, and her quiet and delightful humor and irony all-pervasive. Scott, with customary generosity, praised her 'power of rendering ordinarythings and characters interesting from the truth of her portrayal, ' infavorable contrast with his own facility in 'the Big Bow-Wow strain. 'Nevertheless the assertion of some present-day critics that she is thegreatest of all English authoresses is certainly extravagant. Her novels, though masterly in their own field and style, do not have the fulness ofdescription or the elaboration of action which add beauty and power to mostlater ones, and her lack of a sense for the greater issues of life deniesher legitimate comparison with such a writer as George Eliot. 

SUMMARY. The variety of the literary influences in eighteenth centuryEngland was so great that the century can scarcely be called a literaryunit; yet as a whole it contrasts clearly enough both with that which goesbefore and with that which follows. Certainly its total contribution toEnglish literature was great and varied. 

CHAPTER X

PERIOD VIII. THE ROMANTIC TRIUMPH, 1798 TO ABOUT 1830

THE GREAT WRITERS OF 1798-1830. THE CRITICAL REVIEWS. As we look backto-day over the literature of the last three quarters of the eighteenthcentury, here just surveyed, the progress of the Romantic Movement seemsthe most conspicuous general fact which it presents. But at the, death ofCowper in 1800 the movement still remained tentative and incomplete, and itwas to arrive at full maturity only in the work of the great writers of thefollowing quarter century, who were to create the finest body of literaturewhich England had produced since the Elizabethan period. All the greatestof these writers were poets, wholly or in part, and they fall roughly intotwo groups: first, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, RobertSouthey, and Walter Scott; and second, about twenty years younger, LordByron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and John Keats. This period of RomanticTriumph, or of the lives of its authors, coincides in time, and not by mereaccident, with the period of the success of the French Revolution, theprolonged struggle of England and all Europe against Napoleon (above, page233), and the subsequent years when in Continental Europe despoticgovernment reasserted itself and sternly suppressed liberal hopes anduprisings, while in England liberalism and democracy steadily and doggedlygathered force until by the Reform Bill of 1832 political power was largelytransferred from the former small governing oligarchy to the middle class. How all these events influenced literature we shall see as we proceed. Thebeginning of the Romantic triumph is found, by general consent, in thepublication in 1798 of the little volume of 'Lyrical Ballads' whichcontained the first significant poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. 

Even during this its greatest period, however, Romanticism had for a time ahard battle to fight, and a chief literary fact of the period was thefounding and continued success of the first two important English literaryand political quarterlies, 'The Edinburgh Review' and 'The QuarterlyReview, ' which in general stood in literature for the conservativeeighteenth century tradition and violently attacked all, or almost all, theRomantic poets. These quarterlies are sufficiently important to receive afew words in passing. In the later eighteenth century there had been someperiodicals devoted to literary criticism, but they were mereunauthoritative booksellers' organs, and it was left for the new reviews toinaugurate literary journalism of the modern serious type. 'The EdinburghReview, ' suggested and first conducted, in 1802, by the witty clergyman andreformer Sydney Smith, passed at once to the hands of Francis (later Lord)Jeffrey, a Scots lawyer who continued to edit it for nearly thirty years. Its politics were strongly liberal, and to oppose it the Tory 'QuarterlyReview' was founded in 1808, under the editorship of the satirist WilliamGifford and with the coöperation of Sir Walter Scott, who withdrew for thepurpose from his connection with the 'Edinburgh. ' These reviews werefollowed by other high-class periodicals, such as 'Blackwood's Magazine, 'and most of the group have maintained their importance to the present day. 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. The poets Wordsworth and Coleridge are of specialinterest not only from the primary fact that they are among the greatest ofEnglish authors, but also secondarily because in spite of their closepersonal association each expresses one of the two main contrasting orcomplementary tendencies in the Romantic movement; Coleridge the delight inwonder and mystery, which he has the power to express with marvelous poeticsuggestiveness, and Wordsworth, in an extreme degree, the belief in thesimple and quiet forces, both of human life and of Nature. 

To Coleridge, who was slightly the younger of the two, attaches the furtherpathetic interest of high genius largely thwarted by circumstances andweakness of will. Born in Devonshire in 1772, the youngest of the manychildren of a self-made clergyman and schoolmaster, he was a precocious andabnormal child, then as always a fantastic dreamer, despised by other boysand unable to mingle with them. After the death of his father he was sentto Christ's Hospital, the 'Blue-Coat' charity school in London, where hespent nine lonely years in the manner briefly described in an essay ofCharles Lamb, where Coleridge appears under a thin disguise. The verystrict discipline was no doubt of much value in giving firmness anddefinite direction to his irregular nature, and the range of his studies, both in literature and in other fields, was very wide. Through the aid ofscholarships and of contributions from his brothers he entered Cambridge in1791, just after Wordsworth had left the University; but here his moststriking exploit was a brief escapade of running away and enlisting in acavalry troop. Meeting Southey, then a student at Oxford, he drew him intoa plan for a 'Pantisocracy' (a society where all should be equal), acommunity of twelve young couples to be founded in some 'delightful part ofthe new back settlements' of America on the principles of communisticcoöperation in all lines, broad mental culture, and complete freedom ofopinion. Naturally, this plan never past beyond the dream stage. 

Coleridge left the University in 1794 without a degree, tormented by adisappointment in love. He had already begun to publish poetry andnewspaper prose, and he now attempted lecturing. He and Southey married twosisters, whom Byron in a later attack on Southey somewhat inaccuratelydescribed as 'milliners of Bath'; and Coleridge settled near Bristol. Aftercharacteristically varied and unsuccessful efforts at conducting aperiodical, newspaper writing, and preaching as a Unitarian (a creed whichwas then considered by most Englishmen disreputable and which Coleridgelater abandoned), he moved with his wife in 1797 to Nether Stowey inSomersetshire. Expressly in order to be near him, Wordsworth and his sisterDorothy soon leased the neighboring manor-house of Alfoxden, and therefollowed the memorable year of intellectual and emotional stimulus whenColeridge's genius suddenly expanded into short-lived but wonderfulactivity and he wrote most of his few great poems, 'The Ancient Mariner, ''Kubla Khan, ' and the First Part of 'Christabel. ' 'The Ancient Mariner' wasplanned by Coleridge and Wordsworth on one of their frequent rambles, andwas to have been written in collaboration; but as it proceeded, Wordsworthfound his manner so different from that of Coleridge that he withdrewaltogether from the undertaking. The final result of the incident, however, was the publication in 1798 of 'Lyrical Ballads, ' which included ofColeridge's work only this one poem, but of Wordsworth's several of hismost characteristic ones. Coleridge afterwards explained that the plan ofthe volume contemplated two complementary sorts of poems. He was to presentsupernatural or romantic characters, yet investing them with human interestand semblance of truth; while Wordsworth was to add the charm of novelty toeveryday things and to suggest their kinship to the supernatural, arousingreaders from their accustomed blindness to the loveliness and wonders ofthe world around us. No better description could be given of the poeticspirit and the whole poetic work of the two men. Like some otherepoch-marking books, 'Lyrical Ballads' attracted little attention. Shortlyafter its publication Coleridge and the Wordsworths sailed for Germany, where for the greater part of a year Coleridge worked hard, if irregularly, at the language, literature, and philosophy. 

The remaining thirty-five years of his life are a record of ambitiousprojects and fitful efforts, for the most part turned by ill-health andlack of steady purpose into melancholy failure, but with a few fragmentaryresults standing out brilliantly. At times Coleridge did newspaper work, atwhich he might have succeeded; in 1800, in a burst of energy, he translatedSchiller's tragedy 'Wallenstein' into English blank verse, a translationwhich in the opinion of most critics surpasses the original; and down to1802, and occasionally later, he wrote a few more poems of a high order. For a few years from 1800 on he lived at Greta Hall in the village ofKeswick (pronounced Kesick), in the northern end of the Lake Region(Westmoreland), fifteen miles from Wordsworth; but his marriage wasincompatible (with the fault on his side), and he finally left his wife andchildren, who were thenceforward supported largely by Southey, hissuccessor at Greta Hall. Coleridge himself was maintained chiefly by thegenerosity of friends; later, in part, by public pensions. It wasapparently about 1800, to alleviate mental distress and great physicalsuffering from neuralgia, that he began the excessive use of opium(laudanum) which for many years had a large share in paralyzing his will. For a year, in 1804-5, he displayed decided diplomatic talent as secretaryto the Governor of Malta. At several different times, also, he gavecourses, of lectures on Shakspere and Milton; as a speaker he was alwayseloquent; and the fragmentary notes of the lectures which have beenpreserved rank very high in Shaksperean criticism. His main interest, however, was now in philosophy; perhaps no Englishman has ever had a moreprofoundly philosophical mind; and through scattered writings and throughhis stimulating though prolix talks to friends and disciples he performed avery great service to English thought by introducing the viewpoint andideas of the German transcendentalists, such as Kant, Schelling, andFichte. During his last eighteen years he lived mostly in sad acceptance ofdefeat, though still much honored, in the house of a London physician. Hedied in 1834. 

As a poet Coleridge's first great distinction is that which we have alreadypointed out, namely that he gives wonderfully subtile and appealingexpression to the Romantic sense for the strange and the supernatural, andindeed for all that the word 'Romance' connotes at the present day. Heaccomplishes this result partly through his power of suggesting the realunity of the inner and outer worlds, partly through his skill, resting in alarge degree on vivid impressionistic description, in making strange scenesappear actual, in securing from the reader what he himself called 'thatwilling suspension of disbelief which constitutes poetic faith. ' Almostevery one has felt the weird charm of 'The Ancient Mariner, ' where all theunearthly story centers about a moral and religious idea, and where we aredazzled by a constant succession of such pictures as these:

 And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. 

 We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. The western wave was all aflame: The day was well nigh done: Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad, bright sun; When that strange shape drove suddenly Betwixt us and the sun. 

'Christabel' achieves what Coleridge himself described as the verydifficult task of creating witchery by daylight; and 'Kubla Khan, ' worthy, though a brief fragment, to rank with these two, is a marvelous glimpse offairyland. 

In the second place, Coleridge is one of the greatest English masters ofexquisite verbal melody, with its tributary devices of alliteration andhaunting onomatopoeia. In this respect especially his influence onsubsequent English poetry has been incalculable. The details of his methodstudents should observe for themselves in their study of the poems, but oneparticular matter should be mentioned. In 'Christabel' and to a somewhatless degree in 'The Ancient Mariner' Coleridge departed as far as possiblefrom eighteenth century tradition by greatly varying the number ofsyllables in the lines, while keeping a regular number of stresses. Thoughthis practice, as we have seen, was customary in Old English poetry and inthe popular ballads, it was supposed by Coleridge and his contemporaries tobe a new discovery, and it proved highly suggestive to other romanticpoets. From hearing 'Christabel' read (from manuscript) Scott caught theidea for the free-and-easy meter of his poetical romances. 

With a better body and will Coleridge might have been one of the supremeEnglish poets; as it is, he has left a small number of very great poems andhas proved one of the most powerful influences on later English poetry. 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850. William Wordsworth [Footnote: The firstsyllable is pronounced like the common noun 'words'] was born in 1770 inCumberland, in the 'Lake Region, ' which, with its bold and varied mountainsas well as its group of charming lakes, is the most picturesque part ofEngland proper. He had the benefit of all the available formal education, partly at home, partly at a 'grammar' school a few miles away, but hisgenius was formed chiefly by the influence of Nature, and, in a qualifieddegree, by that of the simple peasant people of the region. Already as aboy, though normal and active, he began to be sensitive to the Divine Powerin Nature which in his mature years he was to express with deeper sympathythan any poet before him. Early left an orphan, at seventeen he was sent byhis uncles to Cambridge University. Here also the things which mostappealed to him were rather the new revelations of men and life than theformal studies, and indeed the torpid instruction of the time offeredlittle to any thoughtful student. On leaving Cambridge he was uncertain asto his life-work. He said that he did not feel himself 'good enough' forthe Church, he was not drawn toward law, and though he fancied that he hadcapacity for a military career, he felt that 'if he were ordered to theWest Indies his talents would not save him from the yellow fever. ' Atfirst, therefore, he spent nearly a year in London in apparent idleness, anintensely interested though detached spectator of the city life, but moreespecially absorbed in his mystical consciousness of its underlying currentof spiritual being. After this he crossed to France to learn the language. The Revolution was then (1792) in its early stages, and in his 'Prelude'Wordsworth has left the finest existing statement of the exultantanticipations of a new world of social justice which the movement arousedin himself and other young English liberals. When the Revolution past intothe period of violent bloodshed he determined, with more enthusiasm thanjudgment, to put himself forward as a leader of the moderate Girondins. From the wholesale slaughter of this party a few months later he was savedthrough the stopping of his allowance by his more cautious uncles, whichcompelled him, after a year's absence, to return to England. 

For several years longer Wordsworth lived uncertainly. When, soon after hisreturn, England, in horror at the execution of the French king, joined thecoalition of European powers against France, Wordsworth experienced a greatshock--the first, he tells us, that his moral nature had ever suffered--atseeing his own country arrayed with corrupt despotisms against what seemedto him the cause of humanity. The complete degeneration of the Revolutioninto anarchy and tyranny further served to plunge him into a chaos of moralbewilderment, from which he was gradually rescued partly by renewedcommunion with Nature and partly by the influence of his sister Dorothy, awoman of the most sensitive nature but of strong character and admirablegood sense. From this time for the rest of her life she continued to livewith him, and by her unstinted and unselfish devotion contributed verylargely to his poetic success. He had now begun to write poetry (thoughthus far rather stiffly and in the rimed couplet), and the receipt of asmall legacy from a friend enabled him to devote his life to the art. Sixor seven years later his resources were several times multiplied by anhonorable act of the new Lord Lonsdale, who voluntarily repaid a sum ofmoney owed by his predecessor to Wordsworth's father. 

In 1795 Wordsworth and his sister moved from the Lake Region toDorsetshire, at the other end of England, likewise a country of greatnatural beauty. Two years later came their change (of a few miles) toAlfoxden, the association with Coleridge, and 'Lyrical Ballads, ' containingnineteen of Wordsworth's poems (above, page 267). After their winter inGermany the Wordsworths settled permanently in their native Lake Region, atfirst in 'Dove Cottage, ' in the village of Grasmere. This simple littlestone house, buried, like all the others in the Lake Region, in brilliantflowers, and opening from its second story onto the hillside garden whereWordsworth composed much of his greatest poetry, is now the annual centerof pilgrimage for thousands of visitors, one of the chief literary shrinesof England and the world. Here Wordsworth lived frugally for several years;then after intermediate changes he took up his final residence in a largerhouse, Rydal Mount, a few miles away. In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, who had been one of his childish schoolmates, a woman of a spirit as fineas that of his sister, whom she now joined without a thought of jealousy ina life of self-effacing devotion to the poet. 

Wordsworth's poetic inspiration, less fickle than that of Coleridge, continued with little abatement for a dozen years; but about 1815, as hehimself states in his fine but pathetic poem 'Composed upon an Evening ofExtraordinary Splendour, ' it for the most part abandoned him. He continued, however, to produce a great deal of verse, most of which his admirers wouldmuch prefer to have had unwritten. The plain Anglo-Saxon yeoman strainwhich was really the basis of his nature now asserted itself in the growingconservatism of ideas which marked the last forty years of his life. Hisearly love of simplicity hardened into a rigid opposition not only to thematerialistic modern industrial system but to all change--the Reform Bill, the reform of education, and in general all progressive political andsocial movements. It was on this abandonment of his early liberalprinciples that Browning based his spirited lyric 'The Lost Leader. '

During the first half or more of his mature life, until long after he hadceased to be a significant creative force, Wordsworth's poetry, for reasonswhich will shortly appear, had been met chiefly with ridicule orindifference, and he had been obliged to wait in patience while theslighter work first of Scott and then of Byron took the public by storm. Little by little, however, he came to his own, and by about 1830 he enjoyedwith discerning readers that enthusiastic appreciation of which he iscertain for all the future. The crowning mark of recognition came in 1843when on the death of his friend Southey he was made Poet Laureate. Thehonor, however, had been so long delayed that it was largely barren. Tenyears earlier his life had been darkened by the mental decay of his sisterand the death of Coleridge; and other personal sorrows now came upon him. He died in 1850 at the age of eighty. 

Wordsworth, as we have said, is the chief representative of some(especially one) of the most important principles in the Romantic Movement;but he is far more than a member of any movement; through his supremepoetic expression of some of the greatest spiritual ideals he belongs amongthe five or six greatest English poets. First, he is the profoundestinterpreter of Nature in all poetry. His feeling for Nature has twoaspects. He is keenly sensitive, and in a more delicately discriminatingway than any of his predecessors, to all the external beauty and glory ofNature, especially inanimate Nature--of mountains, woods and fields, streams and flowers, in all their infinitely varied aspects. A wonderfullyjoyous and intimate sympathy with them is one of his controlling impulses. But his feeling goes beyond the mere physical and emotional delight ofChaucer and the Elizabethans; for him Nature is a direct manifestation ofthe Divine Power, which seems to him to be everywhere immanent in her; andcommunion with her, the communion into which he enters as he walks andmeditates among the mountains and moors, is to him communion with God. Heis literally in earnest even in his repeated assertion that fromobservation of Nature man may learn (doubtless by the proper attuning ofhis spirit) more of moral truth than from all the books and sages. ToWordsworth Nature is man's one great and sufficient teacher. It is for thisreason that, unlike such poets as Keats and Tennyson, he so often viewsNature in the large, giving us broad landscapes and sublime aspects. Ofthis mystical semi-pantheistic Nature-religion his 'Lines composed aboveTintern Abbey' are the noblest expression in literature. All this explainswhy Wordsworth considered his function as a poet a sacred thing and how hisintensely moral temperament found complete satisfaction in his art. Itexplains also, in part, the limitation of his poetic genius. Nature indeeddid not continue to be to him, as he himself says that it was in hisboyhood, absolutely 'all in all'; but he always remained largely absorbedin the contemplation and interpretation of it and never manifested, exceptin a few comparatively short and exceptional poems, real narrative ordramatic power (in works dealing with human characters or human life). 

In the second place, Wordsworth is the most consistent of all the greatEnglish poets of democracy, though here as elsewhere his interest is mainlynot in the external but in the spiritual aspect of things. From hisinsistence that the meaning of the world for man lies not in the externalevents but in the development of character results his central doctrine ofthe simple life. Real character, he holds, the chief proper object of man'seffort, is formed by quietly living, as did he and the dalesmen around him, in contact with Nature and communion with God rather than by participationin the feverish and sensational struggles of the great world. Simplecountry people, therefore, are nearer to the ideal than are most personswho fill a larger place in the activities of the world. This doctrineexpresses itself in a striking though one-sided fashion in his famoustheory of poetry--its proper subjects, characters, and diction. He statedhis theory definitely and at length in a preface to the second edition of'Lyrical Ballads, ' published in 1800, a discussion which includesincidentally some of the finest general critical interpretation ever madeof the nature and meaning of poetry. Wordsworth declared: 1. Since thepurpose of poetry is to present the essential emotions of men, persons inhumble and rustic life are generally the fittest subjects for treatment init, because their natures and manners are simple and more genuine thanthose of other men, and are kept so by constant contact with the beauty andserenity of Nature. 2. Not only should artificial poetic diction (like thatof the eighteenth century) be rejected, but the language of poetry shouldbe a selection from that of ordinary people in real life, only purified ofits vulgarities and heightened so as to appeal to the imagination. (In thislast modification lies the justification of rime. ) There neither is nor canbe any _essential_ difference between the language of prose and thatof poetry. 

This theory, founded on Wordsworth's disgust at eighteenth century poeticartificiality, contains a very important but greatly exaggerated element oftruth. That the experiences of simple and common people, includingchildren, may adequately illustrate the main spiritual aspects of lifeWordsworth unquestionably demonstrated in such poems as 'The Reverie ofPoor Susan, ' 'Lucy Gray, ' and 'Michael. ' But to restrict poetry largely tosuch characters and subjects would be to eliminate not only most of theexternal interest of life, which certainly is often necessary in givinglegitimate body to the spiritual meanings, but also a great range ofsignificant experiences which by the nature of things can never come tolowly and simple persons. That the characters of simple country people areon the average inevitably finer and more genuine than those of others is aromantic theory rather than a fact, as Wordsworth would have discovered ifhis meditative nature had, allowed him to get into really direct andpersonal contact with the peasants about him. As to the proper language ofpoetry, no one to-day (thanks partly to Wordsworth) defends artificiality, but most of Wordsworth's own best work, as well as that of all other poets, proves clearly that there _is_ an essential difference between thelanguage of prose and that of poetry, that much of the meaning of poetryresults from the use of unusual, suggestive, words and picturesqueexpressions, which create the essential poetic atmosphere and stir theimagination in ways distinctly different from those of prose. Wordsworth'sobstinate adherence to his theory in its full extent, indeed, produced suchtrivial and absurd results as 'Goody Blake and Harry Gill, ' 'The IdiotBoy, ' and 'Peter Bell, ' and great masses of hopeless prosiness in his longblank-verse narratives. 

This obstinacy and these poems are only the most conspicuous result ofWordsworth's chief temperamental defect, which was an almost total lack ofthe sense of humor. Regarding himself as the prophet of a supremelyimportant new gospel, he never admitted the possibility of error in his ownpoint of view and was never able to stand aside from his poetry andcriticise it dispassionately. This somewhat irritating egotism, however, was perhaps a necessary element in his success; without it he might nothave been able to live serenely through the years of misunderstanding andridicule which would have silenced or embittered a more diffident spirit. 

The variety of Wordsworth's poetry deserves special mention; in addition tohis short lyric and narrative poems of Nature and the spiritual lifeseveral kinds stand out distinctly. A very few poems, the noble 'Ode toDuty, ' 'Laodamía, ' and 'Dion, ' are classical in inspiration and show thefinely severe repression and finish of classic style. Among his manyhundreds of sonnets is a very notable group inspired by the struggle ofEngland against Napoleon. Wordsworth was the first English poet afterMilton who used the sonnet powerfully and he proves himself a worthysuccessor of Milton. The great bulk of his work, finally, is made up of hislong poems in blank-verse. 'The Prelude, ' written during the years1799-1805, though not published until after his death, is the record of thedevelopment of his poet's mind, not an outwardly stirring poem, but aunique and invaluable piece of spiritual autobiography. Wordsworth intendedto make this only an introduction to another work of enormous length whichwas to have presented his views of Man, Nature, and Society. Of this planhe completed two detached parts, namely the fragmentary 'Recluse' and 'TheExcursion, ' which latter contains some fine passages, but for the most partis uninspired. 

Wordsworth, more than any other great English poet, is a poet for matureand thoughtful appreciation; except for a very small part of his work manyreaders must gradually acquire the taste for him. But of his position amongthe half dozen English poets who have made the largest contribution tothought and life there can be no question; so that some acquaintance withhim is a necessary part of any real education. 

ROBERT SOUTHEY. Robert Southey (1774-1843), a voluminous writer of verseand prose who from his friendship with Wordsworth and Coleridge has beenassociated with them as third in what has been inaptly called 'The LakeSchool' of poets, was thought in his own day to be their equal; but timehas relegated him to comparative obscurity. An insatiate reader andadmirable man, he wrote partly from irrepressible instinct and partly tosupport his own family and at times, as we have seen, that of Coleridge. Anardent liberal in youth, he, more quickly than Wordsworth, lapsed intoconservatism, whence resulted his appointment as Poet Laureate in 1813 andthe unremitting hostility of Lord Byron. His rather fantastic epics, composed with great facility and much real spirit, are almost forgotten; heis remembered chiefly by three or four short poems--'The Battle ofBlenheim, ' 'My days among the dead are past, ' 'The Old Man's Comforts' (Youare old, Father William, ' wittily parodied by 'Lewis Carroll' in 'Alice inWonderland')--and by his excellent short prose 'Life of Nelson. '

WALTER SCOTT. In the eighteenth century Scotland had contributed Thomsonand Burns to the Romantic movement; now, early in the nineteenth, shesupplied a writer of unexcelled and marvelous creative energy, whoconfirmed the triumph of the movement with work of the first importance inboth verse and prose, namely Walter Scott. Scott, further, is personallyone of the most delightful figures in English literature, and he isprobably the most famous of all the Scotsmen who have ever lived. 

He was descended from an ancient Border fighting clan, some of whosepillaging heroes he was to celebrate in his poetry, but he himself wasborn, in 1771, in Edinburgh, the son of an attorney of a privileged, thoughnot the highest, class. In spite of some serious sicknesses, one of whichleft him permanently lame, he was always a very active boy, moredistinguished at school for play and fighting than for devotion to study. But his unconscious training for literature began very early; in hischildhood his love of poetry was stimulated by his mother, and he alwaysspent much time in roaming about the country and picking up old ballads andtraditional lore. Loyalty to his father led him to devote six years of hardwork to the uncongenial study of the law, and at twenty he was admitted tothe Edinburgh bar as an advocate. Though his geniality and high-spiritedbrilliancy made him a social favorite he never secured much professionalpractice; but after a few years he was appointed permanent Sheriff ofSelkirk, a county a little to the south of Edinburgh, near the EnglishBorder. Later, in 1806, he was also made one of the Principal Clerks ofSession, a subordinate but responsible office with a handsome salary whichentailed steady attendance and work at the metropolitan law court inEdinburgh during half of each year. 

His instinct for literary production was first stimulated by the GermanRomantic poets. In 1796 he translated Bürger's fiery and melodramaticballad 'Lenore, ' and a little later wrote some vigorous though hastyballads of his own. In 1802-1803 he published 'Minstrelsy of the ScottishBorder, ' a collection of Scottish ballads and songs, which he carefullyannotated. He went on in 1805, when he was thirty-four, to his firstoriginal verse-romance, 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel. ' Carelesslyconstructed and written, this poem was nevertheless the most spiritedreproduction of the life of feudal chivalry which the Romantic Movement hadyet brought forth, and its popularity was immediate and enormous. Alwayswriting with the greatest facility, though in brief hours snatched from hisother occupations, Scott followed up 'The Lay' during the next ten yearswith the much superior 'Marmion, ' 'The Lady of the Lake, ' and otherverse-romances, most of which greatly increased both his reputation and hisincome. In 1813 he declined the offer of the Poet Laureateship, thenconsidered a position of no great dignity for a successful man, but securedthe appointment of Southey, who was his friend. In 1811 he moved from thecomparatively modest country house which he had been occupying to theestate of Abbotsford, where he proceeded to fulfill his ambition ofbuilding a great mansion and making himself a sort of feudal chieftain. Tothis project he devoted for years a large part of the previouslyunprecedented profits from his writings. For a dozen years before, itshould be added, his inexhaustible energy had found further occupation inconnection with a troop of horse which he had helped to organize on thethreat of a French invasion and of which he acted as quartermaster, training in barracks, and at times drilling for hours before breakfast. 

The amount and variety of his literary work was much greater than isunderstood by most of his admirers today. He contributed largely, insuccession, to the 'Edinburgh' and 'Quarterly' reviews, and having become asecret partner in the printing firm of the Ballantyne brothers, two of hisschool friends, exerted himself not only in the affairs of the company butin vast editorial labors of his own, which included among other thingsvoluminously annotated editions of Dryden and Swift. His productivity isthe more astonishing because after his removal to Abbotsford he gave agreat part of his time not only to his family but also to the entertainmentof the throngs of visitors who pressed upon him in almost continuouscrowds. The explanation is to be found partly in his phenomenally vigorousconstitution, which enabled him to live and work with little sleep; thoughin the end he paid heavily for this indiscretion. 

The circumstances which led him to turn from poetry to prose fiction arewell known. His poetical vein was really exhausted when in 1812 and 1813Byron's 'Childe Harold' and flashy Eastern tales captured the public fancy. Just about as Scott was goodnaturedly confessing to himself that it wasuseless to dispute Byron's supremacy he accidentally came across the firstchapters of 'Waverley, ' which he had written some years before and hadthrown aside in unwillingness to risk his fame by a venture in a new field. Taking it up with renewed interest, in the evenings of three weeks he wrotethe remaining two-thirds of it; and he published it with an ultimatesuccess even greater than that of his poetry. For a long time, however, Scott did not acknowledge the authorship of 'Waverley' and the novels whichfollowed it (which, however, was obvious to every one), chiefly because hefeared that the writing of prose fiction would seem undignified in a Clerkof Session. The rapidity of the appearance of his novels testified to thealmost unlimited accumulation of traditions and incidents with which hisastonishing memory was stored; in seventeen years he published nearlythirty 'Waverley' novels, equipping most of them, besides, with longfictitious introductions, which the present-day reader almost universallyskips. The profits of Scott's works, long amounting apparently to from tento twenty thousand pounds a year, were beyond the wildest dream of anyprevious author, and even exceeded those of most popular authors of thetwentieth century, though partly because the works were published inunreasonably expensive form, each novel in several volumes. Still moregratifying were the great personal popularity which Scott attained and hisrecognition as the most eminent of living Scotsmen, of which a symbol washis elevation to a baronetcy in 1820. 

But the brightness of all this glory was to be pathetically dimmed. In 1825a general financial panic, revealing the laxity of Scott's businesspartners, caused his firm to fail with liabilities of nearly a hundred andtwenty thousand pounds. Always magnanimous and the soul of honor, Scottrefused to take advantage of the bankruptcy laws, himself assumed theburden of the entire debt, and set himself the stupendous task of paying itwith his pen. Amid increasing personal sorrows he labored on for six yearsand so nearly attained his object that the debt was actually extinguishedsome years after his death. But in the effort he completed the exhaustionof his long-overtaxed strength, and, a trip to Italy proving unavailing, returned to Abbotsford, and died, a few weeks after Goethe, in 1832. 

As a man Scott was first of all a true and thorough gentleman, manly, openhearted, friendly and lovable in the highest degree. Truthfulness andcourage were to him the essential virtues, and his religious faith was deepthough simple and unobtrusive. Like other forceful men, he understood hisown capacity, but his modesty was extreme; he always insisted with allsincerity that the ability to compose fiction was not for a moment to becompared with the ability to act effectively in practical activities; andhe was really displeased at the suggestion that he belonged among thegreatest men of the age. In spite of his Romantic tendencies and hisabsolute simplicity of character, he clung strongly to the conservatism ofthe feudal aristocracy with which he had labored so hard to connecthimself; he was vigorously hostile to the democratic spirit, and, in hislater years, to the Reform Bill; and he felt and expressed almost childishdelight in the friendship of the contemptible George IV, because George IVwas his king. The conservatism was closely connected, in fact, with hisRomantic interest in the past, and in politics it took the form, theoretically, of Jacobitism, loyalty to the worthless Stuart race whosememory his novels have done so much to keep alive. All these traits aremade abundantly clear in the extended life of Scott written by hisson-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, which is one of the two or three greatestEnglish biographies. 

Scott's long poems, the best of them, are the chief examples in English ofdashing verse romances of adventure and love. They are hastily done, as wehave said, and there is no attempt at subtilty of characterization or atany moral or philosophical meaning; nevertheless the reader's interest inthe vigorous and picturesque action is maintained throughout at the highestpitch. Furthermore, they contain much finely sympathetic description ofScottish scenery, impressionistic, but poured out with enthusiasm. Scott'snumerous lyrics are similarly stirring or moving expressions of the primalemotions, and some of them are charmingly musical. 

The qualities of the novels, which represent the culmination of Romantichistorical fiction, are much the same. Through his bold and activehistorical imagination Scott vivifies the past magnificently; withoutdoubt, the great majority of English readers know English history chieflythrough his works. His dramatic power, also, at its best, is superb; in hisgreat scenes and crises he is masterly as narrator and describer. In thepresentation of the characters there is often much of the samesuperficiality as in the poems, but there is much also of the highestskill. The novels may be roughly divided into three classes: first those, like 'Ivanhoe, ' whose scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century;second those, like 'Kenilworth, ' which are located in the fifteenth orsixteenth; and third, those belonging to England and Scotland of theseventeenth and eighteenth. In the earlier ones sheer romance predominatesand the hero and heroine are likely to be more or less conventionalparagons, respectively, of courage and tender charm; but in the later onesScott largely portrays the life and people which he himself knew; and heknew them through and through. His Scottish characters in particular, oftenespecially the secondary ones, are delightfully realistic portraits of agreat variety of types. Mary Queen of Scots in 'The Abbot' and CalebBalderstone in 'The Bride of Lammermoor' are equally convincing in theiressential but very personal humanity. Descriptions of scenery arecorrespondingly fuller in the novels than in the poems and are equallyuseful for atmosphere and background. 

In minor matters, in the novels also, there is much carelessness. Thestyle, more formal than that of the present day, is prevailingly wordy andnot infrequently slipshod, though its vitality is a much more noticeablecharacteristic. The structure of the stories is far from compact. Scottgenerally began without any idea how he was to continue or end and sent offeach day's instalment of his manuscript in the first draft as soon as itwas written; hence the action often wanders, or even, from the structuralpoint of view, drags. But interest seldom greatly slackens until the end, which, it must be further confessed, is often suddenly brought about in avery inartistic fashion. It is of less consequence that in the details offact Scott often commits errors, not only, like all historical novelists, deliberately manipulating the order and details of the actual events tosuit his purposes, but also making frequent sheer mistakes. In 'Ivanhoe, 'for example, the picture of life in the twelfth century is altogetherincorrect and misleading. In all these matters scores of moreself-conscious later writers are superior to Scott, but mere correctnesscounts for far less than genius. 

When all is said, Scott remains the greatest historical novelist, and oneof the greatest creative forces, in world literature. 

THE LAST GROUP OF ROMANTIC POETS. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, and Scotthad mostly ceased to produce poetry by 1815. The group of younger men, thelast out-and-out Romanticists, who succeeded them, writing chiefly fromabout 1810 to 1825, in some respects contrast strongly with them. Byron andShelley were far more radically revolutionary; and Keats, in his poetry, was devoted wholly to the pursuit and worship of beauty with no concerneither for a moral philosophy of life or for vigorous external adventure. It is a striking fact also that these later men were all very short-lived;they died at ages ranging only from twenty-six to thirty-six. 

Lord Byron, 1788-1824. Byron (George Gordon Byron) expresses mainly thespirit of individual revolt, revolt against all existing institutions andstandards. This was largely a matter of his own personal temperament, butthe influence of the time also had a share in it, the time when theapparent failure of the French Revolution had thrown the pronouncedliberals back upon their own resources in bitter dissatisfaction with theexisting state of society. Byron was born in 1788. His father, the violentand worthless descendant of a line of violent and worthless nobles, wasjust then using up the money which the poet's mother had brought him, andsoon abandoned her. She in turn was wildly passionate and uncontrolled, andin bringing up her son indulged alternately in fits of genuine tendernessand capricious outbursts of mad rage and unkindness. Byron suffered alsofrom another serious handicap; he was born with deformed feet, so thatthroughout life he walked clumsily--a galling irritation to his sensitivepride. In childhood his poetic instincts were stimulated by summers spentamong the scenery of his mother's native Scottish Highlands. At the age often, on the death of his great-uncle, he succeeded to the peerage as LordByron, but for many years he continued to be heavily in debt, partlybecause of lavish extravagance, which was one expression of his inheritedreckless wilfulness. Throughout his life he was obliged to make the mostheroic efforts to keep in check another inherited tendency, to corpulence;he generally restricted his diet almost entirely to such meager fare aspotatoes and soda-water, though he often broke out also into periods ofunlimited self-indulgence. 

From Harrow School he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where Macaulayand Tennyson were to be among his successors. Aspiring to be an athlete, hemade himself respected as a fighter, despite his deformity, by his strengthof arm, and he was always a powerful swimmer. Deliberately aiming also atthe reputation of a debauchee, he lived wildly, though now as laterprobably not altogether so wickedly as he represented. After three years ofirregular attendance at the University his rank secured him the degree ofM. A. , in 1808. He had already begun to publish verse, and when 'TheEdinburgh Review' ridiculed his very juvenile 'Hours of Idleness' he addedan attack on Jeffrey to a slashing criticism of contemporary poets which hehad already written in rimed couplets (he always professed the highestadmiration for Pope's poetry), and published the piece as 'English Bardsand Scotch Reviewers. '

He was now settled at his inherited estate of Newstead Abbey (one of thereligious foundations given to members of the nobility by Henry VIII whenhe confiscated them from the Church), and had made his appearance in hishereditary place in the House of Lords; but following his instinct forexcitement and for doing the expensively conspicuous thing he next spenttwo years on a European tour, through Spain, Greece, and Turkey. In Greecehe traveled, as was necessary, with a large native guard, and he allowedreports to become current that he passed through a succession of romanticand reckless adventures. The first literary result of his journey was thepublication in 1812 of the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold'sPilgrimage. ' This began as the record of the wanderings of Childe Harold, adissipated young noble who was clearly intended to represent the authorhimself; but Byron soon dropped this figure as a useless impediment in theseries of descriptions of Spain and Greece of which the first two cantosconsist. He soon abandoned also the attempt to secure an archaic effect bythe occasional use of Spenserian words, but he wrote throughout inSpenser's stanza, which he used with much power. The public received thepoem with the greatest enthusiasm; Byron summed up the case in hiswell-known comment: 'I awoke one morning and found myself famous. ' In fact, 'Childe Harold' is the best of all Byron's works, though the third andfourth cantos, published some years later, and dealing with Belgium, thebattle of Waterloo, and central Europe, are superior to the first two. Itsexcellence consists chiefly in the fact that while it is primarily adescriptive poem, its pictures, dramatically and finely vivid inthemselves, are permeated with intense emotion and often serve only asintroductions to passionate rhapsodies, so that the effect is largelylyrical. 

Though Byron always remained awkward in company he now became the idol ofthe world of fashion. He followed up his first literary success bypublishing during the next four years his brief and vigorous metricalromances, most of them Eastern in setting, 'The Giaour' (pronounced byByron 'Jower'), 'The Bride of Abydos, ' 'The Corsair, ' 'Lara, ' 'The Siege ofCorinth, ' and 'Parisina. ' These were composed not only with remarkablefacility but in the utmost haste, sometimes a whole poem in only a few daysand sometimes in odds and ends of time snatched from social diversions. Theresults are only too clearly apparent; the meter is often slovenly, thenarrative structure highly defective, and the characterization superficialor flatly inconsistent. In other respects the poems are thoroughlycharacteristic of their author. In each of them stands out one dominatingfigure, the hero, a desperate and terrible adventurer, characterized byByron himself as possessing 'one virtue and a thousand crimes, ' mercilessand vindictive to his enemies, tremblingly obeyed by his followers, manifesting human tenderness only toward his mistress (a delicate romanticcreature to whom he is utterly devoted in the approved romantic-sentimentalfashion), and above all inscrutably enveloped in a cloud of pretentiousromantic melancholy and mystery. Like Childe Harold, this impossible andgrandiose figure of many incarnations was well understood by every one tobe meant for a picture of Byron himself, who thus posed for and received infull measure the horrified admiration of the public. But in spite of allthis melodramatic clap-trap the romances, like 'Childe Harold, ' are filledwith the tremendous Byronic passion, which, as in 'Childe Harold, ' lendsgreat power alike to their narrative and their description. 

Byron now made a strangely ill-judged marriage with a Miss Milbanke, awoman of the fashionable world but of strict and perhaps even prudish moralprinciples. After a year she left him, and 'society, ' with characteristicinconsistency, turned on him in a frenzy of superficial indignation. Heshortly (1816) fled from England, never to return, both his colossal vanityand his truer sensitive self stung by the injustice to fury against thehypocrisy and conventionalities of English life, which, in fact, he hadalways despised. He spent the following seven years as a wanderer overItaly and central Europe. He often lived scandalously; sometimes he waswith the far more fine-spirited Shelley; and he sometimes furnished moneyto the Italians who were conducting the agitation against their tyrannicalforeign governments. All the while he was producing a great quantity ofpoetry. In his half dozen or more poetic dramas he entered a new field. Inthe most important of them, 'Manfred, ' a treatment of the theme whichMarlowe and Goethe had used in 'Faust, ' his real power is largely thwartedby the customary Byronic mystery and swagger. 'Cain' and 'Heaven andEarth, ' though wretchedly written, have also a vaguely vast imaginativeimpressiveness. Their defiant handling of Old Testament material andtherefore of Christian theology was shocking to most respectable Englishmenand led Southey to characterize Byron as the founder of the 'SatanicSchool' of English poetry. More significant is the longest and chief of hissatires, 'Don Juan, ' [Footnote: Byron entirely anglicized the second wordand pronounced it in two syllables--Jú-an. ] on which he wroteintermittently for years as the mood took him. It is ostensibly thenarrative of the adventures of a young Spaniard, but as a story it rambleson formlessly without approaching an end, and its real purpose is to serveas an utterly cynical indictment of mankind, the institutions of society, and accepted moral principles. Byron often points the cynicism by lapsinginto brilliant doggerel, but his double nature appears in the occasionalintermingling of tender and beautiful passages. 

Byron's fiery spirit was rapidly burning itself out. In his uncontrolledzest for new sensations he finally tired of poetry, and in 1823 he acceptedthe invitation of the European committee in charge to become a leader ofthe Greek revolt against Turkish oppression. He sailed to the Greek camp atthe malarial town of Missolonghi, where he showed qualities of leadershipbut died of fever after a few months, in 1824, before he had time toaccomplish anything. 

It is hard to form a consistent judgment of so inconsistent a being asByron. At the core of his nature there was certainly much genuinegoodness--generosity, sympathy, and true feeling. However much we maydiscount his sacrifice of his life in the cause of a foreign people, hislove of political freedom and his hatred of tyranny were thoroughly andpassionately sincere, as is repeatedly evident in such poems as the sonneton 'Chillon, ' 'The Prisoner of Chillon, ' and the 'Ode on Venice. ' On theother hand his violent contempt for social and religious hypocrisy had asmuch of personal bitterness as of disinterested principle; and hispersistent quest of notoriety, the absence of moderation in his attacks onreligious and moral standards, his lack of self-control, and his indulgencein all the vices of the worser part of the titled and wealthy class requireno comment. Whatever allowances charity may demand on the score of taintedheredity, his character was far too violent and too shallow to approach togreatness. 

As a poet he continues to occupy a conspicuous place (especially in thejudgment of non-English-speaking nations) through the power of his volcanicemotion. It was this quality of emotion, perhaps the first essential inpoetry, which enrolled among his admirers a clear spirit in most respectsthe antithesis of his own, that of Matthew Arnold. In 'Memorial Verses'Arnold says of him:

 He taught us little, but our soul Had felt him like the thunder's roll. With shivering heart the strife we saw Of passion with eternal law. 

His poetry has also an elemental sweep and grandeur. The majesty of Nature, especially of the mountains and the ocean, stirs him to feeling which oftenresults in superb stanzas, like the well-known ones at the end of 'ChildeHarold' beginning 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll'! Toooften, however, Byron's passion and facility of expression issue in bombastand crude rhetoric. Moreover, his poetry is for the most part lacking indelicacy and fine shading; scarcely a score of his lyrics are of thehighest order. He gives us often the blaring music of a military band orthe loud, swelling volume of an organ, but very seldom the softer tones ofa violin or symphony. 

To his creative genius and power the variety as well as the amount of hispoetry offers forceful testimony. 

In moods of moral and literary severity, to summarize, a critic canscarcely refrain from dismissing Byron with impatient contempt;nevertheless his genius and his in part splendid achievement aresubstantial facts. He stands as the extreme but significant exponent ofviolent Romantic individualism in a period when Romantic aspiration waslargely disappointed and disillusioned, but was indignantly gathering itsstrength for new efforts. 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 1792-1832. Shelley resembles Byron in histhorough-going revolt against society, but he is totally unlike Byron inseveral important respects. His first impulse was an unselfish love for hisfellow-men, with an aggressive eagerness for martyrdom in their behalf; hisnature was unusually, even abnormally, fine and sensitive; and his poeticquality was a delicate and ethereal lyricism unsurpassed in the literatureof the world. In both his life and his poetry his visionary reforming zealand his superb lyric instinct are inextricably intertwined. 

Shelley, born in 1792, belonged to a family of Sussex country gentry; abaronetcy bestowed on his grandfather during the poet's youth passed fromhis father after his own death to his descendants. Matthew Arnold hasremarked that while most of the members of any aristocracy are naturallyconservative, confirmed advocates of the system under which they enjoygreat privileges, any one of them who happens to be endowed with radicalideas is likely to carry these to an extreme. In Shelley's case thisgeneral tendency was strengthened by reaction against the benighted Toryismof his father and by most of the experiences of his life from the veryoutset. At Eton his hatred of tyranny was fiercely aroused by the faggingsystem and the other brutalities of an English school; he broke into openrevolt and became known as 'mad Shelley, ' and his schoolfellows delightedin driving him into paroxysms of rage. Already at Eton he read and acceptedthe doctrines of the French pre-Revolutionary philosophers and theirEnglish interpreter William Godwin. He came to believe not only that humannature is essentially good, but that if left to itself it can be implicitlytrusted; that sin and misery are merely the results of the injusticespringing from the institutions of society, chief of which are organizedgovernment, formal religion, law, and formal marriage; and that the oneessential thing is to bring about a condition where these institutions canbe abolished and where all men may be allowed to follow their owninclinations. The great advance which has been made since Shelley's time inthe knowledge of history and the social sciences throws a pitiless light onthe absurdity of this theory, showing that social institutions, terriblyimperfect as they are, are by no means chiefly bad but rather represent theslow gains of thousands of years of painful progress; none the less thetheory was bound to appeal irresistibly to such an impulsive andinexperienced idealism as that of Shelley. It was really, of course, not somuch against social institutions themselves that Shelley revolted asagainst their abuses, which were still more flagrantly apparent in his timethan in ours. When he repudiated Christianity and declared himself anatheist, what he actually had in mind was the perverted parody of religionmainly offered by the Church of his time; and, as some one has observed, when he pronounced for love without marriage it was because of thetragedies that he had seen in marriages without love. Much must be ascribedalso to his sheer radicalism--the instinct to fly violently againstwhatever was conventionally accepted and violently to flaunt his adherenceto whatever was banned. 

In 1810 Shelley entered Oxford, especially exasperated by parentalinterference with his first boyish love, and already the author of somecrude prose-romances and poetry. In the university he devoted his timechiefly to investigating subjects not included or permitted in thecurriculum, especially chemistry; and after a few months, having written apamphlet on 'The Necessity of Atheism' and sent it with conscientious zealto the heads of the colleges, he was expelled. Still a few months later, being then nineteen years old, he allowed himself to be led, admittedlyonly through pity, into a marriage with a certain Harriet Westbrook, afrivolous and commonplace schoolgirl of sixteen. For the remaining tenyears of his short life he, like Byron, was a wanderer, sometimes instraits for money, though always supported, after some time generouslyenough, by his father. At first he tried the career of a professionalagitator; going to Ireland he attempted to arouse the people againstEnglish tyranny by such devices as scattering copies of addresses from hiswindow in Dublin or launching them in bottles in the Bristol Channel; buthe was soon obliged to flee the country. It is hard, of course, to takesuch conduct seriously; yet in the midst of much that was wild, hispamphlets contained also much of solid wisdom, no small part of which hassince been enacted into law. 

Unselfish as he was in the abstract, Shelley's enthusiast's egotism and theunrestraint of his emotions rendered him fitful, capricious, unable toappreciate any point of view but his own, and therefore when irritated orexcited capable of downright cruelty in concrete cases. The most painfulillustration is afforded by his treatment of his first wife. Three yearsafter his marriage he informed her that he considered the connection at anend and abandoned her to what proved a few years of a wretched existence. Shelley himself formed a union with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, thedaughter of his revolutionary teacher. Her sympathetic though extravagantadmiration for his genius, now beginning to express itself in really greatpoetry, was of the highest value to him, the more so that from this time onhe was viewed by most respectable Englishman with the same abhorrence whichthey felt for Byron. In 1818 the Shelleys also abandoned England(permanently, as it proved) for Italy, where they moved from place toplace, living sometimes, as we have said, with Byron, for whose genius, inspite of its coarseness, Shelley had a warm admiration. Shelley's deathcame when he was only thirty, in 1822, by a sudden accident--he wasdrowned by the upsetting of his sailboat in the Gulf of Spezia, betweenGenoa and Pisa. His body, cast on the shore, was burned in the presence ofByron and another radical, Leigh Hunt, and the ashes were buried in theProtestant cemetery just outside the wall of Rome, where Keats had beeninterred only a year earlier. 

Some of Shelley's shorter poems are purely poetic expressions of poeticemotion, but by far the greater part are documents (generally beautifulalso as poetry) in his attack on existing customs and cruelties. MatthewArnold, paraphrasing Joubert's description of Plato, has characterized himas 'a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminouswings in vain. ' This is largely true, but it overlooks the sound generalbasis and the definite actual results which belong to his work, as to thatof every great idealist. 

On the artistic side the most conspicuous thing in his poetry is theecstatic aspiration for Beauty and the magnificent embodiment of it. Shelley is the poetic disciple, but a thoroughly original disciple, ofColeridge. His esthetic passion is partly sensuous, and he often abandonshimself to it with romantic unrestraint. His 'lyrical cry, ' of whichMatthew Arnold has spoken, is the demand, which will not be denied, forbeauty that will satisfy his whole being. Sensations, indeed, he mustalways have, agreeable ones if possible, or in default of them, painfulones; this explains his occasional touches of repulsive morbidness. But therepulsive strain is exceptional. No other poetry is crowded in the same wayas his with pictures glorious and delicate in form, light, and color, or ismore musically palpitating with the delight which they create. To Shelleyas a follower of Plato, however, the beauty of the senses is only amanifestation of ideal Beauty, the spiritual force which appears in otherforms as Intellect and Love; and Intellect and Love as well are equalobjects of his unbounded devotion. Hence his sensuousness is touched with areal spiritual quality. In his poetic emotion, as in his social ambitions, Shelley is constantly yearning for the unattainable. One of our bestcritics [Footnote: Mr. R. H. Hutton. ] has observed: 'He never shows hisfull power in dealing separately with intellectual or moral or physicalbeauty. His appropriate sphere is swift sensibility, the intersecting linebetween the sensuous and the intellectual or moral. Mere sensation is tooliteral for him, mere feeling too blind and dumb, mere thought too cold. . . . Wordsworth is always exulting in the fulness of Nature, Shelley is alwayschasing its falling stars. '

The contrast, here hinted at, between Shelley's view of Nature and that ofWordsworth, is extreme and entirely characteristic; the same is true, also, when we compare Shelley and Byron. Shelley's excitable sensuousnessproduces in him in the presence of Nature a very different attitude fromthat of Wordsworth's philosophic Christian-mysticism. For the sensuousnessof Shelley gets the upper hand of his somewhat shadowy Platonism, and hecreates out of Nature mainly an ethereal world of delicate and rapidlyshifting sights and sounds and sensations. And while he is not unresponsiveto the majestic greatness of Nature in her vast forms and vistas, he isnever impelled, like Byron, to claim with them the kinship of a haughtyelemental spirit. 

A rather long passage of appreciative criticism [Footnote: Professor A. C. Bradley, 'Oxford Lectures on Poetry' (Macmillan), p. 196. ] is sufficientlysuggestive for quotation:

"From the world of [Shelley's] imagination the shapes of the old world haddisappeared, and their place was taken by a stream of radiant vapors, incessantly forming, shifting, and dissolving in the 'clear golden dawn, 'and hymning with the voices of seraphs, to the music of the stars and the'singing rain, ' the sublime ridiculous theories of Godwin. In his heartwere emotions that responded to the vision--an aspiration or ecstasy, adejection or despair, like those of spirits rapt into Paradise or mourningover its ruin. And he wrote not like Shakspere or Pope, for Londonerssitting in a theatre or a coffee-house, intelligence's vivid enough butdefinitely embodied in a definite society, able to fly, but also able tosit; he wrote, or rather he sang, to his own soul, to other spirit-sparksof the fire of Liberty scattered over the dark earth, to spirits in theair, to the boundless spirit of Nature or Freedom or Love, his one place ofrest and the one source of his vision, ecstasy, and sorrow. He sang_to_ this, and he sang _of_ it, and of the emotions it inspired, and of its world-wide contest with such shapes of darkness as Faith andCustom. And he made immortal music; now in melodies as exquisite and variedas the songs of Schubert, and now in symphonies where the crudest ofPhilosophies of History melted into golden harmony. For although there wassomething always working in Shelley's mind and issuing in those radiantvapors, he was far deeper and truer than his philosophic creed; itsexpression and even its development were constantly checked or distorted bythe hard and narrow framework of his creed. And it was one which in effectcondemned nine-tenths of the human nature that has formed the material ofthe world's great poems. " [Footnote: Perhaps the finest piece ofrhapsodical appreciative criticism written in later years is the essay onShelley (especially the last half) by Francis Thompson (Scribner). ]

The finest of Shelley's poems, are his lyrics. 'The Skylark' and 'TheCloud' are among the most dazzling and unique of all outbursts of poeticgenius. Of the 'Ode to the West Wind, ' a succession of surging emotions andvisions of beauty swept, as if by the wind itself, through the vast spacesof the world, Swinburne exclaims: 'It is beyond and outside and above allcriticism, all praise, and all thanksgiving. ' The 'Lines Written among theEuganean Hills, ' 'The Indian Serenade, ' 'The Sensitive Plant' (a briefnarrative), and not a few others are also of the highest quality. In'Adonais, ' an elegy on Keats and an invective against the reviewer whosebrutal criticism, as Shelley wrongly supposed, had helped to kill him, splendid poetic power, at least, must be admitted. Much less satisfactorybut still fascinating are the longer poems, narrative or philosophical, such as the early 'Alastor, ' a vague allegory of a poet's quest for thebeautiful through a gorgeous and incoherent succession of romanticwildernesses; the 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'; 'Julian and Maddalo, ' inwhich Shelley and Byron (Maddalo) are portrayed; and 'Epipsychidion, ' anecstatic poem on the love which is spiritual sympathy. Shelley's satiresmay be disregarded. To the dramatic form belong his two most important longpoems. 'Prometheus Unbound' partly follows AEschylus in treating thetorture of the Titan who is the champion or personification of Mankind, byZeus, whom Shelley makes the incarnation of tyranny and on whose overthrowthe Golden Age of Shelleyan anarchy succeeds. The poem is a lyrical drama, more on the Greek than on the English model. There is almost no action, andthe significance lies first in the lyrical beauty of the profuse chorusesand second in the complete embodiment of Shelley's passionate hatred oftyranny. 'The Cenci' is more dramatic in form, though the excess of speechover action makes of it also only a 'literary drama. ' The story, takenfrom family history of the Italian Renaissance, is one of the most horribleimaginable, but the play is one of the most powerful produced in Englishsince the Elizabethan period. That the quality of Shelley's genius isunique is obvious on the slightest acquaintance with him, and it is equallycertain that in spite of his premature death and all his limitations heoccupies an assured place among the very great poets. On the other hand, the vagueness of his imagination and expression has recently provokedsevere criticism. It has even been declared that the same mind cannothonestly enjoy both the carefully wrought classical beauty of Milton's'Lycidas' and Shelley's mistily shimmering 'Adonais. ' The question goesdeep and should receive careful consideration. 

JOHN KEATS, 1795-1821. No less individual and unique than the poetry ofByron and Shelley is that of the third member of this group, John Keats, who is, in a wholesome way, the most conspicuous great representative inEnglish poetry since Chaucer of the spirit of 'Art for Art's sake. ' Keatswas born in London in 1795, the first son of a livery-stable keeper. Romantic emotion and passionateness were among his chief traits from thestart; but he was equally distinguished by a generous spirit, physicalvigor (though he was very short in build), and courage. His youngerbrothers he loved intensely and fought fiercely. At boarding-school, however, he turned from headstrong play to enthusiastic reading of Spenserand other great English and Latin poets and of dictionaries of Greek andRoman mythology and life. An orphan at fourteen, the mismanagement of hisguardians kept him always in financial difficulties, and he was taken fromschool and apprenticed to a suburban surgeon. After five years of study andhospital practice the call of poetry proved too strong, and he abandonedhis profession to revel in Spenser, Shakspere, and the Italian epicauthors. He now became an enthusiastic disciple of the literary andpolitical radical, Leigh Hunt, in whose home at Hampstead he spent muchtime. Hunt was a great poetic stimulus to Keats, but he is largelyresponsible for the flippant jauntiness and formlessness of Keats' earlierpoetry, and the connection brought on Keats from the outset the relentlesshostility of the literacy critics, who had dubbed Hunt and his friends 'TheCockney [i. E. , Vulgar] School of Poetry. '

Keats' first little volume of verse, published in 1817, when he wastwenty-one, -contained some delightful poems and clearly displayed most ofhis chief tendencies. It was followed the next year by his longest poem, 'Endymion, ' where he uses, one of the vaguely beautiful Greek myths as thebasis for the expression of his own delight in the glory of the world andof youthful sensations. As a narrative the poem is wandering, almostchaotic; that it is immature Keats himself frankly admitted in his preface;but in luxuriant loveliness of sensuous imagination it is unsurpassed. Itstheme, and indeed the theme of all Keats' poetry, may be said to be foundin its famous first line--'A thing of beauty is a joy forever. ' Theremaining three years of Keats' life were mostly tragic. 'Endymion' and itsauthor were brutally attacked in 'The Quarterly Review' and 'Blackwood'sMagazine. ' The sickness and death, from consumption, of one of Keats'dearly-loved brothers was followed by his infatuation with a certain FannyBrawne, a commonplace girl seven years younger than himself. Thisinfatuation thenceforth divided his life with poetry and helped to createin him a restless impatience that led him, among other things, to anunhappy effort to force his genius, in the hope of gain, into the veryunsuitable channel of play-writing. But restlessness did not weaken hisgenuine and maturing poetic power; his third and last volume, published in1820, and including 'The Eve of St. Agnes, ' 'Isabella, ' 'Lamia, ' thefragmentary 'Hyperion, ' and his half dozen great odes, probably containsmore poetry of the highest order than any other book of original verse, ofso small a size, ever sent from the press. By this time, however, Keatshimself was stricken with consumption, and in the effort to save his life awarmer climate was the last resource. Lack of sympathy with Shelley and hispoetry led him to reject Shelley's generous offer of entertainment at Pisa, and he sailed with his devoted friend the painter Joseph Severn to southernItaly. A few months later, in 1821, he died at Rome, at the age oftwenty-five. His tombstone, in a neglected corner of the Protestantcemetery just outside the city wall, bears among other words those which inbitterness of spirit he himself had dictated: 'Here lies one whose name waswrit in water. ' But, in fact, not only had he created more great poetrythan was ever achieved by any other man at so early an age, but probably noother influence was to prove so great as his on the poets of the nextgeneration. 

The most important qualities of his poetry stand out clearly:

1. He is, as we have implied, the great apostle of full though notunhealthy enjoyment of external Beauty, the beauty of the senses. He oncesaid: 'I feel sure I should write, from the mere yearning and tenderness Ihave for the beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt everymorning and no eye ever rest upon them. ' His use of beauty in his poetry ismarked at first by passionate Romantic abandonment and always by lavishRomantic richness. This passion was partly stimulated in him by otherpoets, largely by the Italians, and especially by Spenser, from one ofwhose minor poems Keats chose the motto for his first volume: 'What morefelicity can fall to creature than to enjoy delight with liberty?'Shelley's enthusiasm for Beauty, as we have seen, is somewhat similar tothat of Keats. But for both Spenser and Shelley, in different fashions, external Beauty is only the outer garment of the Platonic spiritual Beauty, while to Keats in his poetry it is, in appearance at least, almosteverything. He once exclaimed, even, 'Oh for a life of sensations ratherthan of thoughts!' Notable in his poetry is the absence of any moralpurpose and of any interest in present-day life and character, particularlythe absence of the democratic feeling which had figured so largely in mostof his Romantic predecessors. These facts must not be over-emphasized, however. His famous final phrasing of the great poetic idea--'Beauty istruth, truth beauty'--itself shows consciousness of realities below thesurface, and the inference which is sometimes hastily drawn that he waspersonally a fiberless dreamer is as far as possible from the truth. Infact he was always vigorous and normal, as well as sensitive; he was alwaysdevoted to outdoor life; and his very attractive letters, from which hisnature can best be judged, are not only overflowing with unpretentious andcordial human feeling but testify that he was not really unaware ofspecific social and moral issues. Indeed, occasional passages in his poemsindicate that he intended to deal with these issues in other poems when heshould feel his powers adequately matured. Whether, had he lived, he wouldhave proved capable of handling them significantly is one of the questionswhich must be left to conjecture, like the other question whether his powerof style would have further developed. 

Almost all of Keats' poems are exquisite and luxuriant in their embodimentof sensuous beauty, but 'The Eve of St. Agnes, ' in Spenser's richlylingering stanza, must be especially mentioned. 

2. Keats is one of the supreme masters of poetic expression, expression themost beautiful, apt, vivid, condensed, and imaginatively suggestive. Hispoems are noble storehouses of such lines as these:

 The music, yearning like a God in pain. 

 Into her dream he melted, as the rose Blendeth its odour with the violet. 

 magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 

It is primarily in this respect that he has been the teacher of laterpoets. 

3. Keats never attained dramatic or narrative power or skill in thepresentation of individual character. In place of these elements he has thelyric gift of rendering moods. Aside from ecstatic delight, these aremostly moods of pensiveness, languor, or romantic sadness, like the one somagically suggested in the 'Ode to a Nightingale, ' of Ruth standing lonelyand 'in tears amid the alien corn. '

4. Conspicuous in Keats is his spiritual kinship with the ancient Greeks. He assimilated with eager delight all the riches of the Greek imagination, even though he never learned the language and was dependent on the dullmediums of dictionaries and translations. It is not only that hisrecognition of the permanently significant and beautiful embodiment of thecentral facts of life in the Greek stories led him to select some of themas the subjects for several of his most important poems; but his wholefeeling, notably his feeling for Nature, seems almost precisely that of theGreeks, especially, perhaps, of the earlier generations among whom theirmythology took shape. To him also Nature appears alive with divinities. Walking through the woods he almost expects to catch glimpses of hamadryadspeering from their trees, nymphs rising from the fountains, and startledfauns with shaggy skins and cloven feet scurrying away among the bushes. 

In his later poetry, also, the deeper force of the Greek spirit led himfrom his early Romantic formlessness to the achievement of the mostexquisite classical perfection of form and finish. His Romantic glow andemotion never fade or cool, but such poems as the Odes to the Nightingaleand to a Grecian Urn, and the fragment of 'Hyperion, ' are absolutelyflawless and satisfying in structure and expression. 

SUMMARY. One of the best comments on the poets whom we have just beenconsidering is a single sentence of Lowell: 'Three men, almostcontemporaneous with each other, Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron, were thegreat means of bringing back English poetry from the sandy deserts ofrhetoric and recovering for her her triple inheritance of simplicity, sensuousness, and passion. ' But justice must be done also to the'Renaissance of Wonder' in Coleridge, the ideal aspiration of Shelley, andthe healthy stirring of the elementary instincts by Scott. 

LESSER WRITERS. Throughout our discussion of the nineteenth century it willbe more than ever necessary to pass by with little or no mention variousauthors who are almost of the first rank. To our present period belong:Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), author of 'Ye Mariners of England, ''Hohenlinden, ' and other spirited battle lyrics; Thomas Moore (1779-1852), a facile but over-sentimental Irishman, author of 'Irish Melodies, ' 'LallaRookh, ' and a famous life of Byron; Charles. Lamb (1775-1834), thedelightfully whimsical essayist and lover of Shakspere; William Hazlitt(1778-1830), a romantically dogmatic but sympathetically appreciativecritic; Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), a capricious and voluminous author, master of a poetic prose style, best known for his 'Confessions of anEnglish Opium-Eater'; Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), the best nineteenthcentury English representative, both in prose and in lyric verse, of thepure classical spirit, though his own temperament was violently romantic;Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866), author of some delightful satirical andhumorous novels, of which 'Maid Marian' anticipated 'Ivanhoe'; and MissMary Russell Mitford (1787-1855), among whose charming prose sketches ofcountry life 'Our Village' is best and best-known. 

CHAPTER XI

PERIOD IX. THE VICTORIAN PERIOD, ABOUT 1830 TO 1901

GENERAL CONDITIONS. The last completed period of English literature, almostcoincident in extent with the reign of the queen whose name it bears(Victoria, queen 1837-1901), stands nearly beside The Elizabethan period inthe significance and interest of its work. The Elizabethan literature to besure, in its imaginative and spiritual enthusiasm, is the expression of aperiod more profoundly great than the Victorian; but the Victorianliterature speaks for an age which witnessed incomparably greater changesthan any that had gone before in all the conditions of life--materialcomforts, scientific knowledge, and, absolutely speaking, in intellectualand spiritual enlightenment. Moreover, to twentieth century students theVictorian literature makes a specially strong appeal because it is in partthe literature of our own time and its ideas and point of view are in largemeasure ours. We must begin by glancing briefly at some of the generaldetermining changes and conditions to which reference has just been made, and we may naturally begin with the merely material ones. 

Before the accession of Queen Victoria the 'industrial revolution, ' thevast development of manufacturing made possible in the latter part of theeighteenth century by the introduction of coal and the steam engine, hadrendered England the richest nation in the world, and the movementcontinued with steadily accelerating momentum throughout the period. Handin hand with it went the increase of population from less than thirteenmillions in England in 1825 to nearly three times as many at the end of theperiod. The introduction of the steam railway and the steamship, at thebeginning of the period, in place of the lumbering stagecoach and thesailing vessel, broke up the old stagnant and stationary habits of life andincreased the amount of travel at least a thousand times. The discovery ofthe electric telegraph in 1844 brought almost every important part ofEurope, and eventually of the world, nearer to every town dweller than thenearest county had been in the eighteenth century; and the development ofthe modern newspaper out of the few feeble sheets of 1825 (dailies andweeklies in London, only weeklies elsewhere), carried full accounts of thedoings of the whole world, in place of long-delayed fragmentary rumors, toevery door within a few hours. No less striking was the progress in publichealth and the increase in human happiness due to the enormous advance inthe sciences of medicine, surgery, and hygiene. Indeed these sciences intheir modern form virtually began with the discovery of the facts ofbacteriology about 1860, and the use of antiseptics fifteen years later, and not much earlier began the effective opposition to the frightfulepidemics which had formerly been supposed to be dependent only on the willof Providence. 

Political and social progress, though less astonishing, was substantial. In1830 England, nominally a monarchy, was in reality a plutocracy of about ahundred thousand men--landed nobles, gentry, and wealthy merchants--whoseprivileges dated back to fifteenth century conditions. The first ReformBill, of 1832, forced on Parliament by popular pressure, extended the rightof voting to men of the 'middle class, ' and the subsequent bills of 1867and 1885 made it universal for men. Meanwhile the House of Commons slowlyasserted itself against the hereditary House of Lords, and thus Englandbecame perhaps the most truly democratic of the great nations of the world. At the beginning of the period the social condition of the great body ofthe population was extremely bad. Laborers in factories and mines and onfarms were largely in a state of virtual though not nominal slavery, living, many of them, in unspeakable moral and physical conditions. Littleby little improvement came, partly by the passage of laws, partly by thegrowth of trades-unions. The substitution in the middle of the century offree-trade for protection through the passage of the 'Corn-Laws' affordedmuch relief by lowering the price of food. Socialism, taking shape as adefinite movement in the middle of the century, became one to be reckonedwith before its close, though the majority of the more well-to-do classesfailed to understand even then the growing necessity for far-reachingeconomic and social changes. Humanitarian consciousness, however, gainedgreatly during the period. The middle and upper classes awoke to someextent to their duty to the poor, and sympathetic benevolent effort, bothorganized and informal, increased very largely in amount and intelligence. Popular education, too, which in 1830 had no connection with the State andwas in every respect very incomplete, was developed and finally madecompulsory as regards the rudiments. 

Still more permanently significant, perhaps, was the transformation of theformer conceptions of the nature and meaning of the world and life, throughthe discoveries of science. Geology and astronomy now gradually compelledall thinking people to realize the unthinkable duration of the cosmicprocesses and the comparative littleness of our earth in the vast extent ofthe universe. Absolutely revolutionary for almost all lines if thought wasthe gradual adoption by almost all thinkers of the theory of Evolution, which, partly formulated by Lamarck early in the century, received definitestatement in 1859 in Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species. ' The greatmodification in the externals of religious belief thus brought about wasconfirmed also by the growth of the science of historical criticism. 

This movement of religious change was met in its early stages by the veryinteresting reactionary 'Oxford' or 'Tractarian' Movement, which assertedthe supreme authority of the Church and its traditional doctrines. The mostimportant figure in this movement, who connects it definitely withliterature, was John Henry Newman (1801-90), author of the hymn 'Lead, Kindly Light, ' a man of winning personality and great literary skill. Forfifteen years, as vicar of the Oxford University Church, Newman was a greatspiritual force in the English communion, but the series of 'Tracts for theTimes' to which he largely contributed, ending in 1841 in the famous Tract90, tell the story of his gradual progress toward Rome. Thereafter as anavowed Roman Catholic and head of a monastic establishment Newman showedhimself a formidable controversialist, especially in a literary encounterwith the clergyman-novelist Charles Kingsley which led to Newman's famous'Apologia pro Vita Sua' (Apology for My Life), one of the secondaryliterary masterpieces of the century. His services to the Catholic Churchwere recognized in 1879 by his appointment as a Cardinal. More than one ofthe influences thus hastily surveyed combine in creating the moral, social, and intellectual strenuousness which is one of the main marks of theliterature of the period. More conspicuously than ever before the majorityof the great writers, not least the poets and novelists, were impelled notmerely by the emotional or dramatic creative impulse but by the sense of amessage for their age which should broaden the vision and elevate theideals of the masses of their fellows. The literature of the period, therefore, lacks the disinterested and joyous spontaneity of, for example, the Elizabethan period, and its mood is far more complex than that of thepartly socially-minded pseudo-classicists. 

While all the new influences were manifesting themselves in Victorianliterature they did not, of course, supersede the great general inheritedtendencies. This literature is in the main romantic. On the social sidethis should be evident; the Victorian social humanitarianism is merely thedeveloped form of the eighteenth century romantic democratic impulse. Onthe esthetic side the romantic traits are also present, though not soaggressively as in the previous period; with romantic vigor the Victorianliterature often combines exquisite classical finish; indeed, it is soeclectic and composite that all the definite older terms take on new andless sharply contrasting meanings when applied to it. 

So long a period naturally falls into sub-divisions; during its middle partin particular, progress and triumphant romanticism, not yet largelyattacked by scientific scepticism, had created a prevailing atmosphere ofsomewhat passive sentiment and optimism both in society and in literaturewhich has given to the adjective 'mid-Victorian' a very definitedenotation. The adjective and its period are commonly spoken of withcontempt in our own day by those persons who pride themselves on theircomplete sophistication and superiority to all intellectual and emotionalweakness. But during the 'mid-Victorian' years, there was also acomparative healthiness in the lives of the well-to-do classes and inliterature which had never before been equalled and which may finally proveno less praiseworthy than the rather self-conscious freedom and unrestraintof the early twentieth century. 

The most important literature of the whole period falls under the threeheads of essays, poetry, and prose fiction, which we may best consider inthat order. 

LORD MACAULAY. The first great figure, chronologically, in the period, andone of the most clearly-defined and striking personalities in Englishliterature, is Thomas Babington Macaulay, [Footnote: The details ofMacaulay's life are known from the; famous biography of him by his nephew, Sir George Trevelyan. ] who represents in the fullest degree the Victorianvigor and delight in material progress, but is quite untouched by theVictorian spiritual striving. The descendant of Scottish ministers andEnglish Quakers, Macaulay was born in 1800. His father was a tireless anddevoted member of the group of London anti-slavery workers (Claphamites), and was Secretary of the company which conducted Sierra Leone (the Africanstate for enfranchised negroes); he had also made a private fortune inAfrican trade. From his very babyhood the son displayed almost incredibleintellectual precocity and power of memory. His voracious reading began atthe age of three, when he 'for the most part lay on the rug before thefire, with his book on the floor, and a piece of bread-and-butter in hishand. ' Once, in his fifth year, when a servant had spilled an urn of hotcoffee over his legs, he replied to the distressed inquiries of the lady ofthe house, 'Thank you, madam, the agony is abated. ' From the first it seemsto have been almost impossible for him to forget anything which had everfound lodgment in, or even passed through, his mind. His childishproduction of both verse and prose was immense. These qualities andaccomplishments, however, did not make him a prig. Both as child and asman, though he was aggressive and showed the prejudices of his class, hewas essentially natural and unaffected; and as man he was one of the mostcordial and affectionate of companions, lavish of his time with hisfriends, and one of the most interesting of conversationalists. As he grewtoward maturity he proved unique in his manner, as well as in his power, ofreading. It is said that he read books faster than other people skimmedthem, and skimmed them as fast as any one else could turn the leaves, this, however, without superficiality. One of the habits of his middle life wasto walk through London, even the most crowded parts, 'as fast as otherpeople walked, and reading a book a great deal faster than anybody elsecould read. ' His remarkable endowments, however, were largelycounterbalanced by his deficiency in the spiritual sense. This appears mostseriously in his writings, but it shows itself also in his personal tastes. For Nature he cared little; like Dr. Johnson he 'found London the place forhim. ' One occasion when he remarked on the playing of 'God save the Queen'is said to have been the only one when he ever appeared to distinguish onetune from another. Even on the material side of life he had limitationsvery unusual in an English gentleman. Except for walking, which mightalmost be called a main occupation with him, he neither practised nor caredfor any form of athletic exercise, 'could neither swim nor row nor drivenor skate nor shoot, ' nor scarcely ride. 

From private schools Macaulay proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained through the seven years required for the Master's degree. In spite of his aversion for mathematics, he finally won a 'lay'fellowship, which did not involve residence at the University nor any otherobligation, but which almost sufficed for his support during the sevenyears of its duration. At this time his father failed in his business, andduring several years Macaulay was largely occupied with the heavy task ofreestablishing it and paying the creditors. In college he had begun towrite in prose and verse for the public literary magazines, and in 1825appeared his essay on Milton, the first of the nearly forty literary, historical, and biographical essays which during the next thirty years ormore he contributed to 'The Edinburgh Review. ' He also nominally studiedlaw, and was admitted to the bar in 1826, but he took no interest in theprofession. In 1828 he was made a Commissioner of Bankruptcy and in 1830 heattained the immediate object of his ambition by receiving from a noblemanwho controlled it a seat in Parliament. Here he at once distinguishedhimself as orator and worker. Heart and soul a Liberal, he took a prominentpart in the passage of the first Reform Bill, of 1832, living at the sametime a busy social life in titled society. The Ministry rewarded hisservices with a position on the Board of Control, which represented thegovernment in its relations with the East India Company, and in 1834, inorder to earn the fortune which seemed to him essential to his continuancein the unremunerative career of public life, he accepted the position oflegal adviser to the Supreme Council of India, which carried with it a seatin that Council and a salary of £10, 000 a year. During the three monthsvoyage to India he 'devoured' and in many cases copiously annotated a vastnumber of books in 'Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, and English;folios, quartos, octavos, and duodecimos. ' Under the pressure of actualnecessity he now mastered the law, and the most important parts of theastonishing mass of work that he performed during his three and a halfyears in India consisted in redrafting the penal code and in helping toorganize education. 

Soon after his return to England he was elected to Parliament as member forEdinburgh, and for two years he was in the Cabinet. Somewhat later thepublication of his 'Lays of Ancient Rome' and of his collected essaysbrought him immense fame as a writer, and in 1847 his defeat at Edinburghfor reelection to Parliament gave him time for concentrated labor on the'History of England' which he had already begun as his crowning work. To ithe thenceforth devoted most of his energies, reading and sifting the wholemass of available source-material and visiting the scenes of the chiefhistorical events. The popular success of the five volumes which hesucceeded in preparing and published at intervals was enormous. In 1852 hewas reelected to Parliament at Edinburgh, but ill-health resulting from hislong-continued excessive expenditure of energy warned him that he had notlong to live. He was made a baron in 1857 and died in 1859, deeply mournedboth because of his manly character and because with him perished mostlyunrecorded a knowledge of the facts of English history more minute, probably, than that of any one else who has ever lived. 

Macaulay never married, but, warm-hearted as he was, always lived largelyin his affection for his sisters and for the children of one of them, LadyTrevelyan. In his public life he displayed as an individual a fearless andadmirable devotion to principle, modified somewhat by the practicalpolitician's devotion to party. From every point of view, his character wasremarkable, though bounded by his very definite limitations. 

Least noteworthy among Macaulay's works are his poems, of which the 'Laysof Ancient Rome' are chief. Here his purpose is to embody his conception ofthe heroic historical ballads which must have been current among the earlyRomans as among the medieval English--to recreate these ballads for modernreaders. For this sort of verse Macaulay's temperament was preciselyadapted, and the 'Lays' present the simple characters, scenes, and idealsof the early Roman republican period with a sympathetic vividness and instirring rhythms which give them an unlimited appeal to boys. None the lessthe 'Lays' really make nothing else so clear as that in the true sense ofthe word Macaulay was not at all a poet. They show absolutely nothing ofthe finer feeling which adds so much, for example, to the descriptions inScott's somewhat similar romances, and they are separated by all thebreadth of the world from the realm of delicate sensation and imaginationto which Spenser and Keats and all the genuine poets are native-born. 

The power of Macaulay's prose works, as no critic has failed to note, restson his genius as an orator. For oratory he was rarely endowed. Thecomposition of a speech was for him a matter of a few hours; with almostpreternatural mental activity he organized and sifted the material, commonly as he paced up and down his garden or his room; then, the wholeready, nearly verbatim, in his mind, he would pass to the House of Commonsto hold his colleagues spell-bound during several hours of fervideloquence. Gladstone testified that the announcement of Macaulay'sintention to speak was 'like a trumpet call to fill the benches. ' The greatqualities, then, of his essays and his 'History' are those which givesuccess to the best sort of popular oratory--dramatic vividness andclearness, positiveness, and vigorous, movement and interest. He realizescharacters and situations, on the external side, completely, and conveyshis impression to his readers with scarcely any diminution of force. Ofexpository structure he is almost as great a master as Burke, though in hisessays and 'History' the more concrete nature of his material makes himprevailingly a narrator. He sees and presents his subjects as wholes, enlivening them with realistic details and pictures, but keeping thesubordinate parts subordinate and disposing of the less important events inrapid summaries. Of clear and trenchant, though metallic, narrative andexpository style he is a master. His sentences, whether long or short, arealways lucid; he knows the full value of a short sentence suddenly snappedout after a prolonged period; and no other writer has ever made such'frequent and striking (though somewhat monotonous) use of deliberateoratorical balance of clauses and strong antithesis, or more illuminatinguse of vivid resumes. The best of his essays, like those on the Earl ofChatham and on the two men who won India for England, Clive and WarrenHastings, are models of the comparatively brief comprehensive dissertationof the form employed by Johnson in his 'Lives of the Poets. '

Macaulay, however, manifests the, defects even of his virtues. Hispositiveness, fascinating and effective as it is for an uncritical reader, carries with it extreme self-confidence and dogmatism, which render himviolently intolerant of any interpretations of characters and events exceptthose that he has formed, and formed sometimes hastily and with prejudice. The very clearness and brilliancy of his style are often obtained at theexpense of real truth; for the force of his sweeping statements and hisbalanced antitheses often requires much heightening or even distortion ofthe facts; in making each event and each character stand out in theplainest outline he has often stripped it of its background of qualifyingcircumstances. These specific limitations, it will be evident, areoutgrowths of his great underlying deficiency--the deficiency in spiritualfeeling and insight. Macaulay is a masterly limner of the external side oflife, but he is scarcely conscious of the interior world in which the finerspirits live and work out their destinies. Carlyle's description of hisappearance is significant: 'I noticed the homely Norse features that youfind everywhere in the Western Isles, and I thought to myself, "Well, anyone can see that you are an honest, good sort of fellow, made out ofoatmeal. " Macaulay's eminently clear, rapid, and practical mindcomprehended fully and respected whatever could be seen and understood bythe intellect; things of more subtle nature he generally disbelieved in ordismissed with contempt. In dealing with complex or subtle characters hecannot reveal the deeper spiritual motives from which their action sprang;and in his view of history he does not include the underlying andcontrolling spiritual forces. Macaulay was the most brilliant of those whomthe Germans have named Philistines, the people for whom life consists ofmaterial things; specifically he was the representative of the great bodyof middle-class early-Victorian liberals, enthusiastically convinced thatin the triumphs of the Liberal party, of democracy, and of mechanicalinvention, the millennium was being rapidly realized. Macaulay wrote afatal indictment of himself when in praising Bacon as the father of modernscience he depreciated Plato, the idealist. Plato's philosophy, saidMacaulay, 'began in words and ended in words, ' and he added that 'an acrein Middlesex is better than a peerage in Utopia. ' In his literary andpersonal essays, therefore, such as the famous ones on Milton and Bacon, which belong early in his career, all his immense reading did not sufficeto produce sympathetic and sensitive judgments; there is often morepretentiousness of style than significance of interpretation. In later lifehe himself frankly expressed regret that he had ever written these essays. 

Macaulay's 'History of England' shows to some degree the same faults as theessays, but here they are largely corrected by the enormous labor which hedevoted to the work. His avowed purpose was to combine with scientificaccuracy the vivid picturesqueness of fiction, and to 'supersede the lastfashionable novel on the tables of young ladies. ' His method was that of anunprecedented fulness of details which produces a crowded pageant of eventsand characters extremely minute but marvelously lifelike. After threeintroductory chapters which sketch the history of England down to the deathof Charles II, more than four large volumes are occupied with the followingseventeen years; and yet Macaulay had intended to continue to the death ofGeorge IV, nearly a hundred and thirty years later. For absolutetruthfulness of detail the 'History' cannot always be depended on, but tothe general reader its great literary merits are likely to seem fullcompensation for its inaccuracies. 

THOMAS CARLYLE. The intense spiritual striving which was so foreign toMacaulay's practical nature first appears among the Victorians in theScotsman Thomas Carlyle, a social and religious prophet, lay-preacher, andprose-poet, one of the most eccentric but one of the most stimulating ofall English writers. The descendant of a warlike Scottish Border clan andthe son of a stone-mason who is described as 'an awful fighter, ' Carlylewas born in 1795 in the village of Ecclefechan, just across the line fromEngland, and not far from Burns' county of Ayr. His fierce, intolerant, melancholy, and inwardly sensitive spirit, together with his poverty, rendered him miserable throughout his school days, though he secured, through his father's sympathy, a sound elementary education. He tramped onfoot the ninety miles from Ecclefechan to Edinburgh University, andremained there for four years; but among the subjects of study he caredonly for mathematics, and he left at the age of seventeen without receivinga degree. From this time for many years his life was a painful struggle, astruggle to earn his living, to make a place in the world, and to findhimself in the midst of his spiritual doubts and the physical distresscaused by lifelong dyspepsia and insomnia. For some years and in variousplaces he taught school and received private pupils, for very meager wages, latterly in Edinburgh, where he also did literary hack-work. He had plannedat first to be a minister, but the unorthodoxy of his opinions renderedthis impossible; and he also studied law only to abandon it. One of themost important forces in this period of his slow preparation was his studyof German and his absorption of the idealistic philosophy of Kant, Schelling, and Fichte, of the broad philosophic influence of Goethe, andthe subtile influence of Richter. A direct result was his later veryfruitful continuation of Coleridge's work in turning the attention ofEnglishmen to German thought and literature. In 1821 he passed through asudden spiritual crisis, when as he was traversing Leith Walk in Edinburghhis then despairing view of the Universe as a soulless but hostilemechanism all at once gave way to a mood of courageous self-assertion. Heafterward looked on this experience as a spiritual new birth, and describesit under assumed names at the end of the great chapter in 'Sartor Resartus'on 'The Everlasting No. '

In 1825 his first important work, a 'Life of Schiller, ' was published, andin 1826 he was married to Miss Jane Welsh. She was a brilliant but quietwoman, of social station higher than his; for some years he had been actingas counselor in her reading and intellectual development. No marriage inEnglish Literature has been more discussed, a result, primarily, of thepublication by Carlyle's friend and literary executor, the historian J. A. Froude, of Carlyle's autobiographical Reminiscences and Letters. After Mrs. Carlyle's death Carlyle blamed himself bitterly for inconsideratenesstoward her, and it is certain that his erratic and irritable temper, partlyexasperated by long disappointment and by constant physical misery, thathis peasant-bred lack of delicacy, and his absorption in his work, made aperpetual and vexatious strain on Mrs. Carlyle's forbearance throughout theforty years of their life together. The evidence, however, does not showthat the marriage was on the whole really unfortunate or indeed that it wasnot mainly a happy one. 

For six years beginning in 1828 the Carlyles lived on (though they did notthemselves carry on) the lonely farm of Craigenputtock, the property ofMrs. Carlyle. This was for both of them a period of external hardship, andthey were chiefly dependent on the scanty income from Carlyle's laboriouswork on periodical essays (among which was the fine-spirited one on Burns). Here Carlyle also wrote the first of his chief works, 'Sartor Resartus, 'for which, in 1833-4, he finally secured publication, in 'Fraser'sMagazine, ' to the astonishment and indignation of most of the readers. Thetitle means 'The Tailor Retailored, ' and the book purports to be an accountof the life of a certain mysterious German, Professor Teufelsdröckh(pronounced Toyfelsdreck) and of a book of his on The Philosophy ofClothes. Of course this is allegorical, and Teufelsdröckh is reallyCarlyle, who, sheltering himself under the disguise, and accepting onlyeditorial responsibility, is enabled to narrate his own spiritual strugglesand to enunciate his deepest convictions, sometimes, when they are likelyto offend his readers, with a pretense of disapproval. The Clothes metaphor(borrowed from Swift) sets forth the central mystical or spiritualprinciple toward which German philosophy had helped Carlyle, the idea, namely, that all material things, including all the customs and forms ofsociety, such as government and formalized religion, are merely thecomparatively insignificant garments of the spiritual reality and thespiritual life on which men should center their attention. Even Time andSpace and the whole material world are only the shadows of the trueReality, the spiritual Being that cannot perish. Carlyle has learned torepudiate, and he would have others repudiate, 'The Everlasting No, ' thematerialistic attitude of unfaith in God and the spiritual world, and heproclaims 'The Everlasting Yea, ' wherein are affirmed, the significance oflife as a means of developing character and the necessity of accepting lifeand its requirements with manly self-reliance and moral energy. 'Seek notHappiness, ' Carlyle cries, 'but Blessedness. Love not pleasure; love God. '

This is the central purport of the book. In the second place and as anatural corollary Carlyle vigorously denounces, throughout, all shams andhypocrisies, the results of inert or dishonest adherence to outgrown ideasor customs. He attacks, for instance, all empty ostentation; war, as bothfoolish and wicked; and the existing condition of society with its terriblecontrast between the rich and the poor. 

Again, he urges still a third of the doctrines which were to prove mostcharacteristic of him, that Gospel of Work which had been proclaimed soforcibly, from different premises, five hundred years before by those otheruncompromising Puritans, the authors of 'Piers Plowman. ' In courageouswork, Carlyle declares, work whether physical or mental, lies the way ofsalvation not only for pampered idlers but for sincere souls who areperplexed and wearied with over-much meditation on the mysteries of theuniverse, 'Be no, longer a Chaos, ' he urges, 'but a World, or evenWorldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal, fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hastin thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, doit with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the Nightcometh, wherein no man can work. '

It will probably now be evident that the mainspring of the undeniable andvolcanic power of 'Sartor Resartus' (and the same is true of Carlyle'sother chief works) is a tremendous moral conviction and fervor. Carlyle iseccentric and perverse--more so in 'Sartor Resartus' than elsewhere--but heis on fire with his message and he is as confident as any Hebrew prophetthat it is the message most necessary for his generation. One may like himor be repelled by him, but a careful reader cannot remain unmoved by hispersonality and his ideas. 

One of his most striking eccentricities is the remarkable style which hedeliberately invented for 'Sartor Resartus' and used thenceforth in all hiswritings (though not always in so extreme a form). Some of the specificpeculiarities of this style are taken over, with exaggeration, from Germanusage; some are Biblical or other archaisms; others spring mainly fromCarlyle's own amazing mind. His purpose in employing, in the denunciationof shams and insincerities, a form itself so far removed from directnessand simplicity was in part, evidently, to shock people into attention; butafter all, the style expresses appropriately his genuine sense of theincoherence and irony of life, his belief that truth can be attained onlyby agonizing effort, and his contempt for intellectual and spiritualcommonplaceness. 

In 1834 Carlyle moved to London, to a house in Cheyne (pronounced Cheeny)Row, Chelsea, where he lived for his remaining nearly fifty years. Thoughhe continued henceforth in large part to reiterate the ideas of 'SartorResartus, ' he now turned from biography, essays, and literary criticism tohistory, and first published 'The French Revolution. ' He had almost decidedin despair to abandon literature, and had staked his fortune on this work;but when the first volume was accidentally destroyed in manuscript heproceeded with fine courage to rewrite it, and he published the whole bookin 1837. It brought him the recognition which he sought. Like 'SartorResartus' it has much subjective coloring, which here results inexaggeration of characters and situations, and much fantasy andgrotesqueness of expression; but as a dramatic and pictorial vilificationof a great historic movement it was and remains unique, and on the whole nohistory is more brilliantly enlightening and profoundly instructive. Here, as in most of his later works, Carlyle throws the emphasis on the power ofgreat personalities. During the next years he took advantage of his successby giving courses of lectures on literature and history, though he dislikedthe task and felt himself unqualified as a speaker. Of these courses themost important was that on 'Heroes and Hero-Worship, ' in which he clearlystated the doctrine on which thereafter he laid increasing stress, that thestrength of humanity is in its strong men, the natural leaders, equipped torule by power of intellect, of spirit, and of executive force. Control bythem is government by the fit, whereas modern democracy is government bythe unfit. Carlyle called democracy 'mobocracy' and considered it a merebad piece of social and political machinery, or, in his own phrase, a mere'Morrison's pill, ' foolishly expected to cure all evils at one gulp. Lateron Carlyle came to express this view, like all his others, with muchviolence, but it is worthy of serious consideration, not least in twentiethcentury America. 

Of Carlyle's numerous later works the most important are 'Past andPresent, ' in which he contrasts the efficiency of certain strong men ofmedieval Europe with the restlessness and uncertainty of contemporarydemocracy and humanitarianism and attacks modern political economy; 'OliverCromwell's Letters and Speeches, ' which revolutionized the general opinionof Cromwell, revealing him as a true hero or strong man instead of ahypocritical fanatic; and 'The History of Frederick the Great, ' an enormouswork which occupied Carlyle for fourteen years and involved thoroughpersonal examination of the scenes of Frederick's life and battles. Duringhis last fifteen years Carlyle wrote little of importance, and the violenceof his denunciation of modern life grew shrill and hysterical. That societywas sadly wrong he was convinced, but he propounded no definite plan forits regeneration. He had become, however, a much venerated as well as apicturesque figure; and he exerted a powerful and constructive influence, not only directly, but indirectly through the preaching of his doctrines, in the main or in part, by the younger essayists and the chief Victorianpoets and novelists, and in America by Emerson, with whom he maintained analmost lifelong friendship and correspondence. Carlyle died in 1881. 

Carlyle was a strange combination of greatness and narrowness. LikeMacaulay, he was exasperatingly blind and bigoted in regard to the thingsin which he had no personal interest, though the spheres of theirrespective enthusiasms and antipathies were altogether different. Carlyleviewed pleasure and merely esthetic art with the contempt of the ScottishCovenanting fanatics, refusing even to read poetry like that of Keats; andhis insistence on moral meanings led him to equal intolerance of suchstory-tellers as Scott. In his hostility to the materialistic tendencies sooften deduced from modern science he dismissed Darwin's 'Origin of Species'with the exclamation that it showed up the capricious stupidity of mankindand that he never could read a page of it or would waste the least thoughtupon it. He mocked at the anti-slavery movement in both America and theEnglish possessions, holding that the negroes were an inferior raceprobably better off while producing something under white masters than ifleft free in their own ignorance and sloth. Though his obstinacy was a partof his national temperament, and his physical and mental irritability inpart a result of his ill-health, any candid estimate of his life cannotaltogether overlook them. On the whole, however, there is no greaterethical, moral, and spiritual force in English Literature than Carlyle, andso much of his thought has passed into the common possession of allthinking persons to-day that we are all often his debtors when we are leastconscious of it. 

JOHN RUSKIN. Among the other great Victorian writers the most obviousdisciple of Carlyle in his opposition to the materialism of modern life isJohn Ruskin. But Ruskin is much more than any man's disciple; and he alsocontrasts strongly with Carlyle, first because a large part of his life wasdevoted to the study of Art--he is the single great art-critic in EnglishLiterature--and also because he is one of the great preachers of thatnineteenth century humanitarianism at which Carlyle was wont to sneer. 

Ruskin's parents were Scotch, but his father, a man of artistic tastes, wasestablished as a wine-merchant in London and had amassed a fortune beforethe boy's birth in 1819. The atmosphere of the household was sternlyPuritan, and Ruskin was brought up under rigid discipline, especially byhis mother, who gave him most of his early education. He read, wrote, anddrew precociously; his knowledge of the Bible, in which his mother'straining was relentlessly thorough, of Scott, Pope, and Homer, dates fromhis fifth or sixth year. For many years during his boyhood he accompaniedhis parents on long annual driving trips through Great Britain and parts ofEurope, especially the Alps. By these experiences his inborn passion forthe beautiful and the grand in Nature and Art was early developed. Duringseven years he was at Oxford, where his mother lived with him and watchedover him; until her death in his fifty-second year she always continued totreat him like a child, an attitude to which, habit and affection led himto submit with a matter-of-course docility that his usual wilfulness andhis later fame render at first sight astonishing. At Oxford, as throughouthis life, he showed himself brilliant but not a close or careful student, and he was at that time theologically too rigid a Puritan to be interestedin the Oxford Movement, then in its most intense stage. 

His career as a writer began immediately after he left the University. Itfalls naturally into two parts, the first of about twenty years, when hewas concerned almost altogether with Art, chiefly Painting andArchitecture; and the second somewhat longer, when he was intenselyabsorbed in the problems of society and strenuously working as a socialreformer. From the outset, however, he was actuated by an ardent didacticpurpose; he wrote of Art in order to awake men's spiritual natures to ajoyful delight in the Beautiful and thus to lead, them to God, its Author. 

The particular external direction of Ruskin's work in Art was given, asusual, more or less by accident. His own practice in water-color drawingled him as a mere youth to a devoted admiration for the landscape paintingsof the contemporary artist J. M. W. Turner. Turner, a romantic revolutionistagainst the eighteenth century theory of the grand style, was then littleappreciated; and when Ruskin left the University he began, withcharacteristic enthusiasm, an article on 'Modern Painters, ' designed todemonstrate Turner's superiority to all possible rivals. Even the firstpart of this work expanded itself into a volume, published in 1843, whenRuskin was only twenty-four; and at intervals during the next seventeenyears he issued four additional volumes, the result of prolonged study bothof Nature and of almost all the great paintings in Europe. The completedbook is a discursive treatise, the various volumes necessarily written frommore or less different view-points, on many of the main aspects, generaland technical, of all art, literary as well as pictorial. For Ruskin held, and brilliantly demonstrated, that the underlying principles of all theFine Arts are identical, and 'Modern Painters' contains some of the mostfamous and suggestive passages of general literary criticism ever written, for example those on The Pathetic Fallacy and The Grand Style. Stillfurther, to Ruskin morality and religion are inseparable from Art, so thathe deals searchingly, if incidentally, with those subjects as well. Amonghis fundamental principles are the ideas that a beneficent God has createdthe world and its beauty directly for man's use and pleasure; that all trueart and all true life are service of God and should be filled with a spiritof reverence; that art should reveal truth; and that really great and goodart can spring only from noble natures and a sound national life. The styleof the book is as notable as the substance. It is eloquent with Ruskin'senthusiastic admiration for Beauty and with his magnificent romanticrhetoric (largely the result, according to his own testimony, of hismother's exacting drill in the Bible), which here and elsewhere make himone of the greatest of all masters of gorgeous description and of fervidexhortation. The book displays fully, too, another of his chief traits, anintolerant dogmatism, violently contemptuous of any judgments but his own. On the religious side, especially, Ruskin's Protestantism is narrow, andeven bigoted, but it softens as the book proceeds (and decidedly more inhis later years). With all its faults, 'Modern Painters' is probably thegreatest book ever written on Art and is an immense storehouse, of noblematerial, and suggestion. 

In the intervals of this work Ruskin published others less comprehensive, two of which are of the first importance. 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture'argues that great art, as the supreme expression of life, is the result ofseven moral and religious principles, Sacrifice, Truth, Power, and thelike. 'The Stones of Venice' is an, impassioned exposition of the beauty ofVenetian Gothic architecture, and here as always Ruskin expresses hisvehement preference for the Gothic art of the Middle Ages as contrastedwith the less original and as it seems to him less sincere style of theRenaissance. 

The publication of the last volume of 'Modern Painters' in 1860 roughlymarks the end of Ruskin's first period. Several influences had by this timebegun to sadden him. More than ten years before, with his usual filialmeekness, he had obeyed his parents in marrying a lady who proveduncongenial and who after a few years was divorced from him. Meanwhileacquaintance with Carlyle had combined with experience to convince him ofthe comparative ineffectualness of mere art-criticism as a social andreligious force. He had come to feel with increasing indignation that themodern industrial system, the materialistic political economy founded onit, and the whole modern organization of society reduce the mass of men toa state of intellectual, social, and religious squalor and blindness, andthat while they continue in this condition it is of little use to talk tothem about Beauty. He believed that some of the first steps in thenecessary redemptive process must be the education of the poor and a returnto what he conceived (certainly with much exaggeration) to have been theconditions of medieval labor, when each craftsman was not a mere machinebut an intelligent and original artistic creator; but the underlyingessential was to free industry from the spirit of selfish money-getting andpermeate it with Christian sympathy and respect for man as man. Theugliness of modern life in its wretched city tenements and its hideousfactories Ruskin would have utterly destroyed, substituting such abeautiful background (attractive homes and surroundings) as would help todevelop spiritual beauty. With his customary vigor Ruskin proceededhenceforth to devote himself to the enunciation, and so far as possible therealization of these beliefs, first by delivering lectures and writingbooks. He was met, like all reformers, with a storm of protest, but most ofhis ideas gradually became the accepted principles of social theory. Amonghis works dealing with these subjects may be named 'Unto This Last, ''Munera Pulveris' (The Rewards of the Dust--an attack on materialisticpolitical economy), and 'Fors Clavigera' (Fortune the Key-Bearer), thelatter a series of letters to workingmen extending over many years. To 1865belongs his most widely-read book, 'Sesame and Lilies, ' three lectures onthe spiritual meaning of great literature in contrast to materialism, theglory of womanhood, and the mysterious significance of life. 

From the death of his mother in 1871 Ruskin began to devote his largeinherited fortune to 'St. George's Guild, ' a series of industrial andsocial experiments in which with lavish generosity he attempted to put histheories into practical operation. All these experiments, as regards directresults, ended in failure, though their general influence was great. Amongother movements now everywhere taken for granted 'social settlements' are aresult of his efforts. 

All this activity had not caused Ruskin altogether to abandon the teachingof art to the members of the more well-to-do classes, and beginning in 1870he held for three or four triennial terms the newly-establishedprofessorship of Art at Oxford and gave to it much hard labor. But thisinterest was now clearly secondary in his mind. 

Ruskin's temper was always romantically high-strung, excitable, andirritable. His intense moral fervor, his multifarious activities, and hisdisappointments were also constant strains on his nervous force. In 1872, further, he was rejected in marriage by a young girl for whom he had formeda deep attachment and who on her death-bed, three years later, refused, with strange cruelty, to see him. In 1878 his health temporarily failed, and a few years later he retired to the home, 'Brantwood, ' at Coniston inthe Lake Region, which he had bought on the death of his mother. Here hismind gradually gave way, but intermittently, so that he was still able tocompose 'Præterita' (The Past), a delightful autobiography. He died in1900. 

Ruskin, like Carlyle, was a strange compound of genius, nobility, andunreasonableness, but as time goes on his dogmatism and violence may wellbe more and more forgotten, while his idealism, his penetratinginterpretation of art and life, his fruitful work for a more tolerablesocial order, and his magnificent mastery of style and description assurehim a permanent place in the history of English literature and ofcivilization. 

MATTHEW ARNOLD. Contemporary with Carlyle and Ruskin and fully worthy torank with them stands still a third great preacher of social and spiritualregeneration, Matthew Arnold, whose personality and message, however, werevery different from theirs and who was also one of the chief Victorianpoets. Arnold was born in 1822, the son--and this is decidedlysignificant--of the Dr. Thomas Arnold who later became the famousheadmaster of Rugby School and did more than any other man of the centuryto elevate the tone of English school life. Matthew Arnold proceeded fromRugby to Oxford (Balliol College), where he took the prize for originalpoetry and distinguished himself as a student. This was the period of theOxford Movement, and Arnold was much impressed by Newman's fervor andcharm, but was already too rationalistic in thought to sympathize with hisviews. After graduation Arnold taught Greek for a short time at Rugby andthen became private secretary to Lord Lansdoune, who was minister of publicinstruction. Four years later, in 1851, Arnold was appointed an inspectorof schools, a position which he held almost to the end of his life and inwhich he labored very hard and faithfully, partly at the expense of hiscreative work. His life was marked by few striking outward events. Hismarriage and home were happy. Up to 1867 his literary production consistedchiefly of poetry, very carefully composed and very limited in amount, andfor two five-year terms, from 1857 to 1867, he held the Professorship ofPoetry at Oxford. At the expiration of his second term he did not seek forreappointment, because he did not care to arouse the opposition ofGladstone--then a power in public affairs--and stir up religiouscontroversy. His retirement from this position virtually marks the verydistinct change from the first to the second main period of his career. Forwith deliberate self-sacrifice he now turned from poetry to prose essays, because he felt that through the latter medium he could render what seemedto him a more necessary public service. With characteristicself-confidence, and obeying his inherited tendency to didacticism, heappointed himself, in effect, a critic of English national life, beliefs, and taste, and set out to instruct the public in matters of literature, social relations, politics and religion. In many essays, publishedseparately or in periodicals, he persevered in this task until his death in1888. 

As a poet Arnold is generally admitted to rank among the Victorians nextafter Tennyson and Browning. The criticism, partly true, that he was notdesigned by Nature to be a poet but made himself one by hard work rests onhis intensely, and at the outset coldly, intellectual and moraltemperament. He himself, in modified Puritan spirit, defined poetry as acriticism of life; his mind was philosophic; and in his own verse, inspiredby Greek poetry, by Goethe and Wordsworth, he realized his definition. Inhis work, therefore, delicate melody and sensuous beauty were at first muchless conspicuous than a high moral sense, though after the first theelements of external beauty greatly developed, often to the finest effect. In form and spirit his poetry is one of the very best later reflections ofthat of Greece, dominated by thought, dignified, and polished with theutmost care. 'Sohrab and Rustum, ' his most ambitious and greatest singlepoem, is a very close and admirable imitation of 'The Iliad. ' Yet, as thealmost intolerable pathos of 'Sohrab and Rustum' witnesses, Arnold is notby any means deficient, any more than the Greek poets were, in emotion. Heaffords, in fact, a striking example of classical form and spirit unitedwith the deep, self-conscious, meditative feeling of modern Romanticism. 

In substance Arnold's poetry is the expression of his long and tragicspiritual struggle. To him religion, understood as a reverent devotion toDivine things, was the most important element in life, and his love of puretruth was absolute; but he held that modern knowledge had entirelydisproved the whole dogmatic and doctrinal scheme of historic Christianityand that a new spiritual revelation was necessary. To his Romantic nature, however, mere knowledge and mere modern science, which their followers wereso confidently exalting, appeared by no means adequate to the purpose;rather they seemed to him largely futile, because they did not stimulatethe emotions and so minister to the spiritual life. Further, the restlessstirrings of his age, beginning to arouse itself from the social lethargyof centuries, appeared to him pitifully unintelligent and devoid ofresults. He found all modern life, as he says in 'The Scholar-Gypsy, ' a'strange disease, ' in which men hurry wildly about in a mad activity whichthey mistake for achievement. In Romantic melancholy he looked wistfullyback by contrast to periods when 'life was fresh and young' and couldexpress itself vigorously and with no torturing introspection. Theexaggerated pessimism in this part of his outcry is explained by his ownstatement, that he lived in a transition time, when the old faith was (ashe held) dead, and the new one (partly realized in our own generation) asyet 'powerless to be born. ' Arnold's poetry, therefore, is to be viewed aslargely the expression, monotonous but often poignantly beautiful, of atemporary mood of questioning protest. But if his conclusion is notpositive, it is at least not weakly despairing. Each man, he insists, should diligently preserve and guard in intellectual and moral integritythe fortress of his own soul, into which, when necessary, he can retire inserene and stoical resignation, determined to endure and to 'see lifesteadily and see it whole. ' Unless the man himself proves traitor, thelittlenesses of life are powerless to conquer him. In fact, the invinciblecourage of the thoroughly disciplined spirit in the midst of doubt andexternal discouragement has never been, more nobly expressed than by Arnoldin such poems as 'Palladium' and (from a different point of view) 'The LastWord. '

There is a striking contrast (largely expressing an actual change of spiritand point of view) between the manner of Arnold's poetry and that of hisprose. In the latter he entirely abandons the querulous note and assumesinstead a tone of easy assurance, jaunty and delightfully satirical. Increasing maturity had taught him that merely to sit regarding the pastwas useless and that he himself had a definite doctrine, worthy of beingpreached with all aggressiveness. We have already said that his essays fallinto four classes, literary, social, religious, and political, though theycannot always be sharply distinguished. As a literary critic he is uneven, and, as elsewhere, sometimes superficial, but his fine appreciation andgenerally clear vision make him refreshingly stimulating. His point of viewis unusually broad, his chief general purpose being to free English tastefrom its insularity, to give it sympathetic acquaintance with the peculiarexcellences of other literatures. Some of his essays, like those on 'TheFunction of Criticism at the Present Time, ' 'Wordsworth, ' and 'Byron, ' areamong the best in English, while his 'Essays on Translating Homer' presentthe most famous existing interpretation of the spirit and style of thegreat Greek epics. 

In his social essays, of which the most important form the volume entitled'Culture and Anarchy, ' he continues in his own way the attacks of Carlyleand Ruskin. Contemporary English life seems to him a moral chaos ofphysical misery and of the selfish, unenlightened, violent expression ofuntrained wills. He too looks with pitying contempt on the materialachievements of science and the Liberal party as being mere 'machinery, 'means to an end, which men mistakenly worship as though it possessed a realvalue in itself. He divides English society into three classes: 1. TheAristocracy, whom he nick-names 'The Barbarians, ' because, like theGermanic tribes who overthrew the Roman Empire, they vigorously asserttheir own privileges and live in the external life rather than in the lifeof the spirit. 2. The Middle Class, which includes the bulk of the nation. For them he borrows from German criticism the name 'Philistines, ' enemiesof the chosen people, and he finds their prevailing traits to beintellectual and spiritual narrowness and a fatal and superficialsatisfaction with mere activity and material prosperity. 3. 'The Populace, 'the 'vast raw and half-developed residuum. ' For them Arnold had sinceretheoretical sympathy (though his temperament made it impossible for him toenter into the same sort of personal sympathy with them as did Ruskin); buttheir whole environment and conception of life seemed to him hideous. Withhis usual uncomplimentary frankness Arnold summarily described the threegroups as 'a materialized upper class, a vulgarized middle class, and abrutalized lower class. '

For the cure of these evils Arnold's proposed remedy was Culture, which hedefined as a knowledge of the best that has been thought and done in theworld and a desire to make the best ideas prevail. Evidently this Cultureis not a mere knowledge of books, unrelated to the rest of life. It hasindeed for its basis a very wide range of knowledge, acquired byintellectual processes, but this knowledge alone Arnold readily admitted tobe 'machinery. ' The real purpose and main part of Culture is the training, broadening, and refining of the whole spirit, including the emotions aswell as the intellect, into sympathy with all the highest ideals, andtherefore into inward peace and satisfaction. Thus Culture is notindolently selfish, but is forever exerting itself to 'make the bestideas'--which Arnold also defined as 'reason and the will, ofGod'--'prevail. '

Arnold felt strongly that a main obstacle to Culture was religiousnarrowness. He held that the English people had been too much occupied withthe 'Hebraic' ideal of the Old Testament, the interest in morality or rightconduct, and though he agreed that this properly makes three quarters oflife, he insisted that it should be joined with the Hellenic (Greek) idealof a perfectly rounded nature. He found the essence of Hellenism expressedin a phrase which he took from Swift, 'Sweetness and Light, ' interpretingSweetness to mean the love of Beauty, material and spiritual, and Light, unbiased intelligence; and he urged that these forces be allowed to havethe freest play. He vigorously attacked the Dissenting denominations, because he believed them to be a conspicuous embodiment of Philistine lackof Sweetness and Light, with an unlovely insistence on unimportant externaldetails and a fatal blindness to the meaning of real beauty and realspirituality. Though he himself was without a theological creed, he was, and held that every Englishman should be, a devoted adherent of the EnglishChurch, as a beautiful, dignified, and national expression of essentialreligion, and therefore a very important influence for Culture. 

Toward democracy Arnold took, not Carlyle's attitude of definiteopposition, but one of questioning scrutiny. He found that one actualtendency of modern democracy was to 'let people do as they liked, ' which, given the crude violence of the Populace, naturally resulted in lawlessnessand therefore threatened anarchy. Culture, on the other hand, includes thestrict discipline of the will and the sacrifice of one's own impulses forthe good of all, which means respect for Law and devotion to the State. Existing democracy, therefore, he attacked with unsparing irony, but he didnot condemn its principle. One critic has said that 'his ideal of a Statecan best be described as an Educated Democracy, working by Collectivism inGovernment, Religion and Social Order. ' But in his own writings he scarcelygives expression to so definite a conception. 

Arnold's doctrine, of course, was not perfectly comprehensive nor free fromprejudices; but none could be essentially more useful for his generation orours. We may readily grant that it is, in one sense or another, a doctrinefor chosen spirits, but if history makes anything clear it is that chosenspirits are the necessary instruments of all progress and therefore thechief hope of society. 

The differences between Arnold's teaching and that of his two greatcontemporaries are probably now clear. All three are occupied with thepressing necessity of regenerating society. Carlyle would accomplish thisend by means of great individual characters inspired by confidence in thespiritual life and dominating their times by moral strength; Ruskin wouldaccomplish it by humanizing social conditions and spiritualizing andrefining all men's natures through devotion to the principles of moralRight and esthetic Beauty; Arnold would leaven the crude mass of society, so far as possible, by permeating it with all the myriad influences ofspiritual, moral, and esthetic culture. All three, of course, like everyenlightened reformer, are aiming at ideal conditions which can be actuallyrealized only in the distant future. 

Arnold's style is one of the most charming features of his work. Clear, direct, and elegant, it reflects most attractively his own high breeding;but it is also eminently forceful, and marked by very skilful emphasis andreiteration. One of his favorite devices is a pretense of great humility, which is only a shelter from which he shoots forth incessant and pitilessvolleys of ironical raillery, light and innocent in appearance, butirresistible in aim and penetrating power. He has none of the gorgeousnessof Ruskin or the titanic strength of Carlyle, but he can be finelyeloquent, and he is certainly one of the masters of polished effectiveness. 

ALFRED TENNYSON. In poetry, apart from the drama, the Victorian period isthe greatest in English literature. Its most representative, though not itsgreatest, poet is Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson, the fourth of a large familyof children, was born in Somersby, Lincolnshire, in 1809. That year, as ithappened, is distinguished by the birth of a large number of eminent men, among them Gladstone, Darwin, and Lincoln. Tennyson's father was aclergyman, holding his appointments from a member of the landed gentry; hismother was peculiarly gentle and benevolent. From childhood the poet, though physically strong, was moody and given to solitary dreaming; fromearly childhood also he composed poetry, and when he was seventeen he andone of his elder brothers brought out a volume of verse, immature, but ofdistinct poetic feeling and promise. The next year they entered TrinityCollege, Cambridge, where Tennyson, too reserved for public prominence, nevertheless developed greatly through association with a gifted group ofstudents. Called home by the fatal illness of his father shortly before hisfour year's were completed, he decided, as Milton had done, and as Browningwas even then doing, to devote himself to his art; but, like Milton, heequipped himself, now and throughout his life, by hard and systematic studyof many of the chief branches of knowledge, including the sciences. Hisnext twenty years were filled with difficulty and sorrow. Two volumes ofpoems which he published in 1830 and 1832 were greeted by the critics withtheir usual harshness, which deeply wounded his sensitive spirit andchecked his further publication for ten years; though the second of thesevolumes contains some pieces which, in their later, revised, form, areamong his chief lyric triumphs. In 1833 his warm friend Arthur Hallam, ayoung man of extraordinary promise, who was engaged, moreover, to one ofTennyson's sisters, died suddenly without warning. Tennyson's grief, atfirst overwhelming, was long a main factor in his life and during manyyears found slow artistic expression in 'In Memoriam' and other poems. Afew years later came another deep sorrow. Tennyson formed an engagement ofmarriage with Miss Emily Sellwood, but his lack of worldly prospects ledher relatives to cancel it. 

Tennyson now spent much of his time in London, on terms of friendship withmany literary men, including Carlyle, who almost made an exception in hisfavor from his general fanatical contempt for poetry. In 1842 Tennysonpublished two volumes of poems, including the earlier ones revised; he herewon an undoubted popular success and was accepted by the best judges as thechief living productive English poet. Disaster followed in the shape of anunfortunate financial venture which for a time reduced his family toserious straits and drove him with shattered nerves to a sanitarium. Soon, however, he received from the government as a recognition of his poeticachievement a permanent annual pension of two hundred pounds, and in 1847he published the strange but delightful 'Princess. ' The year 1850 markedthe decisive turning point of his career. He was enabled to renew hisengagement and be married; the publication of 'In Memoriam' established himpermanently in a position of such popularity as few living poets have everenjoyed; and on the death of Wordsworth he was appointed Poet Laureate. 

The prosperity of the remaining half of his life was a full recompense forhis earlier struggles, though it is marked by few notable external events. Always a lover of the sea, he soon took up his residence in the Isle ofWight. His production of poetry was steady, and its variety great. Thelargest of all his single achievements was the famous series of 'Idylls ofthe King, ' which formed a part of his occupation for many years. In much ofhis later work there is a marked change from his earlier elaboratedecorativeness to a style of vigorous strength. At the age of sixty-five, fearful that he had not yet done enough to insure his fame, he gave aremarkable demonstration of poetic vitality by striking out into the to himnew field of poetic drama. His important works here are the three tragediesin which he aimed to complete the series of Shakspere's chronicle-historyplays; but he lacked the power of dramatic action, and the result is ratherthree fine poems than successful plays. In 1883, after having twice refuseda baronetcy, he, to the regret of his more democratic friends, accepted apeerage (barony). Tennyson disliked external show, but he was alwaysintensely loyal to the institutions of England, he felt that literature wasbeing honored in his person, and he was willing to secure a position ofhonor for his son, who had long rendered him devoted service. He diedquietly in 1892, at the age of eighty-three, and was buried in WestminsterAbbey beside Browning, who had found a resting-place there three yearsearlier. His personal character, despite some youthful morbidness, wasunusually delightful, marked by courage, honesty, sympathy, andstraightforward manliness. He had a fine voice and took undisguisedpleasure in reading his poems aloud. The chief traits of his poetry in formand substance may be suggested in a brief summary. 

1. Most characteristic, perhaps, is his exquisite artistry (in which helearned much from Keats). His appreciation for sensuous beauty, especiallycolor, is acute; his command of poetic phraseology is unsurpassed; hesuggests shades of, feeling and elusive aspiration with, marvelouslysubtile power; his descriptions are magnificently beautiful, often withmuch detail; and his melody is often the perfection of sweetness. Add thetruth and tenderness of his emotion, and it results that he is one of thefinest and most moving of lyric poets. Nor is all this beauty vague andunsubstantial. Not only was he the most careful of English poets, revisinghis works with almost unprecedented pains, but his scientific habit of mindinsists on the greatest accuracy; in his allusions to Nature he oftenintroduces scientific facts in a way thitherto unparalleled, and sometimeseven only doubtfully poetic. The influence of the classic literatures onhis style and expression was great; no poet combines more harmoniouslyclassic perfection and romantic feeling. 

2. The variety of his poetic forms is probably greater than that of anyother English poet. In summary catalogue may be named: lyrics, bothdelicate and stirring; ballads; romantic dreams and fancies; descriptivepoems; sentimental reveries, and idyls; long narratives, in which hedisplays perfect narrative skill; delightfully realisticcharacter-sketches, some of them in dialect; dramas; and meditative poems, long and short, on religious, ethical, and social questions. In almost allthese forms he has produced numerous masterpieces. 

3. His chief deficiency is in the dramatic quality. No one can present morefinely than he moods (often carefully set in a harmoniously appropriatebackground of external nature) or characters in stationary position; andthere is splendid spirit in his narrative passages of vigorous action. Nevertheless his genius and the atmosphere of his poems are generallydreamy, romantic, and aloof from actual life. A brilliant critic [Footnote:Professor Lewis E. Gates in a notable essay, 'Studies and Appreciations, 'p. 71. ] has caustically observed that he 'withdraws from the turmoil of thereal universe into the fortress of his own mind, and beats the enemy in toybattles with toy soldiers. ' He never succeeded in presenting to thesatisfaction of most good critics a vigorous man in vigorous action. 

4. The ideas of his poetry are noble and on the whole clear. He was anindependent thinker, though not an innovator, a conservative liberal, andwas so widely popular because he expressed in frank but reverent fashionthe moderately advanced convictions of his time. His social ideals, inwhich he is intensely interested, are those of Victorian humanitarianism. He hopes ardently for a steady amelioration of the condition of the masses, proceeding toward a time when all men shall have real opportunity for fulldevelopment; and freedom is one of his chief watchwords. But with typicalEnglish conservatism he believes that progress must be gradual, and that itshould be controlled by order, loyalty, and reverence. Like a trueEnglishman, also, he is sure that the institutions of England are the bestin the world, so that he is a strong supporter of the monarchy and thehereditary aristocracy. In religion, his inherited belief, rooted in hisdeepest fibers, early found itself confronted by the discoveries of modernscience, which at first seemed to him to proclaim that the universe is muchwhat it seemed to the young Carlyle, a remorseless monster, 'red in toothand claw, ' scarcely thinkable as the work of a Christian God who cares forman. Tennyson was too sincere to evade the issue, and after years of innerstruggle he arrived at a positive faith in the central principles ofChristianity, broadly interpreted, though it was avowedly a faith based oninstinct and emotional need rather than on unassailable reasoning. Hissomewhat timid disposition, moreover, never allowed him to enunciate hisconclusions with anything like the buoyant aggressiveness of hiscontemporary, Robert Browning. How greatly science had influenced his pointof view appears in the conception which is central in his later poetry, namely that the forces of the universe are governed by unchanging Law, through which God works. The best final expression of his spirit is thelyric 'Crossing the Bar, ' which every one knows and which at his ownrequest is printed last in all editions of his works. 

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING AND ROBERT BROWNING. Robert Browning, Tennyson'schief poetic contemporary, stands in striking artistic contrast toTennyson--a contrast which perhaps serves to enhance the reputation ofboth. Browning's life, if not his poetry, must naturally be considered inconnection with that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with whom he was unitedin what appears the most ideal marriage of two important writers in thehistory of literature. 

Elizabeth Barrett, the daughter of a country gentleman of Herefordshire(the region of the Malvern Hills and of 'Piers Plowman'), was born in 1806. She was naturally both healthy and intellectually precocious; the writingof verse and outdoor life divided all her early life, and at seventeen shepublished, a volume of immature poems. At fifteen, however, her health wasimpaired by an accident which happened as she was saddling her pony, and atthirty, after a removal of the family to London, it completely failed. Fromthat time on for ten years she was an invalid, confined often to her bedand generally to her chamber, sometimes apparently at the point of death. Nevertheless she kept on with persistent courage and energy at her studyand writing. The appearance of her poems in two volumes in 1844 gave her aplace among the chief living poets and led to her acquaintance withBrowning. 

Browning was born in a London suburb in 1812 (the same year with Dickens), of very mixed ancestry, which may partly explain the very diverse traits inhis nature and poetry. His father, a man of artistic and cultured tastes, held a subordinate though honorable position in the Bank of England. Theson inherited a strong instinct for all the fine arts, and though hecomposed verses before he could write, seemed for years more likely tobecome a musician than a poet. His formal schooling was irregular, but heearly began to acquire from his father's large and strangely-assortedlibrary the vast fund of information which astonishes the reader of hispoetry, and he too lived a healthy out-of-door life. His parents beingDissenters, the universities were not open to him, and when he wasseventeen his father somewhat reluctantly consented to his own unhesitatingchoice of poetry as a profession. For seventeen years more he continued inhis father's home, living a normal life among his friends, writingcontinuously, and gradually acquiring a reputation among some good critics, but making very little impression on the public. Some of his best shortpoems date from these years, such as 'My Last Duchess' and 'The BishopOrders His Tomb'; but his chief effort went into a series of seven or eightpoetic dramas, of which 'Pippa Passes' is best known and least dramatic. They are noble poetry, but display in marked degree the psychologicalsubtilety which in part of his poetry demands unusually close attentionfrom the reader. 

In one of the pieces in her volumes of 1844 Elizabeth Barrett mentionedBrowning, among other poets, with generous praise. This led to acorrespondence between the two, and soon to a courtship, in whichBrowning's earnestness finally overcame Miss Barrett's scrupuloushesitation to lay upon him (as she felt) the burden of her invalidism. Indeed her invalidism at last helped to turn the scales in Browning'sfavor, for the physicians had declared that Miss Barrett's life depended onremoval to a warmer climate, but to this her father, a well-intentioned butstrangely selfish man, absolutely refused to consent. The record of thecourtship is given in Mrs. Browning's 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' (awhimsical title, suggested by Mrs. Browning's childhood nickname, 'TheLittle Portuguese'), which is one of the finest of Englishsonnet-sequences. The marriage, necessarily clandestine, took place in1846; Mrs. Browning's father thenceforth treated her as one dead, but theremoval from her morbid surroundings largely restored her health for theremaining fifteen years of her life. During these fifteen years the twopoets resided chiefly in various cities of Italy, with a nominal home inFlorence, and Mrs. Browning had an inherited income which sufficed fortheir support until their poetry became profitable. Their chief worksduring this period were Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh' (1856), a long'poetic novel' in blank verse dealing with the relative claims of Art andSocial Service and with woman's place in the world; and Browning's mostimportant single publication, his two volumes of 'Men and Women' (1855), containing fifty poems, many of them among his very best. 

Mrs. Browning was passionately interested in the Italian struggle forindependence against Austrian tyranny, and her sudden death in 1861 seemsto have been hastened by that of the Italian statesman Cavour. Browning, atfirst inconsolable, soon returned with his son to London, where he againmade his home, for the rest of his life. Henceforth he published muchpoetry, for the most part long pieces of subtile psychological andspiritual analysis. In 1868-9 he brought out his characteristicmasterpiece, 'The Ring and the Book, ' a huge psychological epic, whichproved the tardy turning point in his reputation. People might notunderstand the poem, but they could not disregard it, the author becamefamous, almost popular, and a Browning cult arose, marked by the spread ofBrowning societies in both England and America. Browning enjoyed hissuccess for twenty years and died quietly in 1889 at the home of his son inVenice. 

Browning earnestly reciprocated his wife's loyal devotion and seemed reallyto believe, as he often insisted, that her poetry was of a higher orderthan his own. Her achievement, indeed, was generally overestimated, in herown day and later, but it is now recognized that she is scarcely a reallygreat artist. Her intense emotion, her fine Christian idealism, and hervery wide reading give her real power; her womanly tenderness is admirable;and the breadth of her interests and sometimes the clearness of herjudgment are notable; but her secluded life of ill-health rendered heroften sentimental, high-strung, and even hysterical. She has in her theimpulses and material of great poetry, but circumstances and hertemperament combined to deny her the patient self-discipline necessary forthe best results. She writes vehemently to assert the often-neglectedrights of women and children or to denounce negro slavery and alloppression; and sometimes, as when in 'The Cry of the Children' sherevealed the hideousness of child-labor in the factories, she is genuineand irresistible; but more frequently she produces highly romantic ormystical imaginary narrations (often in medieval settings). She not seldommistakes enthusiasm or indignation for artistic inspiration, and she isrepeatedly and inexcusably careless in meter and rime. Perhaps her mostsatisfactory poems, aside from those above mentioned, are 'The Vision ofPoets' and 'The Rime of the Duchess May. '

In considering the poetry of Robert Browning the inevitable first generalpoint is the nearly complete contrast with Tennyson. For the melody andexquisite beauty of phrase and description which make so large a part ofTennyson's charm, Browning cares very little; his chief merits as an artistlie mostly where Tennyson is least strong; and he is a much moreindependent and original thinker than Tennyson. This will become moreevident in a survey of his main characteristics. 

1. Browning is the most thoroughly vigorous and dramatic of all great poetswho employ other forms than the actual drama. Of his hundreds of poems thegreat majority set before the reader a glimpse of actual life and humanpersonalities--an action, a situation, characters, or a character--in theclearest and most vivid possible way. Sometimes the poem is a ringingnarration of a fine exploit, like 'How They Brought the Good News';sometimes it is quieter and more reflective. Whatever the style, however, in the great majority of cases Browning employs the form which withouthaving actually invented it he developed into an instrument of thithertounsuspected power, namely the dramatic monolog in which a characterdiscusses his situation or life or some central part or incident, of it, under circumstances which reveal with wonderful completeness itssignificance and his own essential character. To portray and interpret lifein this way, to give his readers a sudden vivid understanding of its mainforces and conditions in representative moments, may be called the firstobvious purpose, or perhaps rather instinct, of Browning and his poetry. The dramatic economy of space which he generally attains in his monologs ismarvelous. In 'My Last Duchess' sixty lines suffice to etch into ourmemories with incredible completeness and clearness two strikingcharacters, an interesting situation, and the whole of a life's tragedy. 

2. Despite his power over external details it is in the human characters, as the really significant and permanent elements of life, that Browning ischiefly interested; indeed he once declared directly that the only thingthat seemed to him worth while was the study of souls. The number and rangeof characters that he has portrayed are unprecedented, and so are thekeenness, intenseness, and subtilety of the analysis. Andrea del Sarto, FraLippo Lippi, Cleon, Karshish, Balaustion, and many scores of others, makeof his poems a great gallery of portraits unsurpassed in interest by thoseof any author whatever except Shakspere. It is little qualification of hisachievement to add that all his persons are somewhat colored by his ownpersonality and point of view, or that in his later poetry he often splitshairs very ingeniously in his effort to understand and presentsympathetically the motives of all characters, even the worst. These aremerely some of the secondary aspects of his peculiar genius. Browning'sfavorite heroes and heroines, it should be added, are men and women muchlike himself, of strong will and decisive power of action, able to take thelead vigorously and unconventionally and to play controlling parts in thedrama of life. 

3. The frequent comparative difficulty of Browning's poetry arises in largepart first from the subtilety of his thought and second from the obscurityof his subject-matter and his fondness for out-of-the-way characters. It isincreased by his disregard of the difference between his own extraordinarymental power and agility on the one hand and on the other the capacity ofthe average person, a disregard which leads him to take much for grantedthat most readers are obliged to study out with no small amount of labor. Moreover Browning was hasty in composition, corrected his work little, ifat all, and was downright careless in such details as sentence structure. But the difficulty arising from these various eccentricities occurs chieflyin his longer poems, and often serves mainly as a mental stimulus. Equallystriking, perhaps, is his frequent grotesqueness in choice of subject andin treatment, which seems to result chiefly from his wish to portray theworld as it actually is, keeping in close touch with genuine everydayreality; partly also from his instinct to break away from placid andfiberless conventionality. 

4. Browning is decidedly one of those who hold the poet to be a teacher, and much, indeed most, of his poetry is occupied rather directly with thequestions of religion and the deeper meanings of life. Taken all together, that is, his poetry constitutes a very extended statement of his philosophyof life. The foundation of his whole theory is a confident and aggressiveoptimism. He believes, partly on the basis of intellectual reasoning, butmainly on what seems to him the convincing testimony of instinct, that theuniverse is controlled by a loving God, who has made life primarily a thingof happiness for man. Man should accept life with gratitude and enjoy tothe full all its possibilities. Evil exists only to demonstrate the valueof Good and to develop character, which can be produced only by hard andsincere struggle. Unlike Tennyson, therefore, Browning has full confidencein present reality--he believes that life on earth is predominantly good. Nevertheless earthly life is evidently incomplete in itself, and thecentral law of existence is Progress, which gives assurance of a futurelife where man may develop the spiritual nature which on earth seems tohave its beginning and distinguishes man from the brutes. This future life, however, is probably not one but many, a long succession of lives, theearlier ones not so very different, perhaps, from the present one on earth;and even the worst souls, commencing the next life, perhaps, as a result oftheir failure here, at a spiritual stage lower than the present one, mustultimately pass through all stages of the spiritual process, and come tostand with all the others near the perfection of God himself. This wholetheory, which, because later thought has largely adopted it from Browning, seems much less original to-day than when he first propounded it, is statedand reiterated in his poems with a dynamic idealizing power which, whetheror not one assents to it in details, renders it magnificently stimulating. It is rather fully expressed as a whole, in two of Browning's best knownand finest poems, 'Rabbi ben Ezra, ' and 'Abt Vogler. ' Some critics, itshould be added, however, feel that Browning is too often and tooinsistently a teacher in his poetry and that his art would have gained ifhe had introduced his philosophy much more incidentally. 

5. In his social theory Browning differs not only from Tennyson but fromthe prevailing thought of his age, differs in that his emphasis isindividualistic. Like all the other Victorians he dwells on the importanceof individual devotion to the service of others, but he believes that thechief results of such effort must be in the development of the individual'scharacter, not greatly in the actual betterment of the world. The world, indeed, as it appears to him, is a place of probation and we cannot expectever to make it over very radically; the important thing is that theindividual soul shall use it to help him on his 'lone way' to heaven. Browning, accordingly, takes almost no interest in the specific social andpolitical questions of his day, a fact which certainly will not operateagainst the permanence of his fame. More detrimental, no doubt, aside fromthe actual faults which we have mentioned, will be his rather extravagantRomanticism--the vehemence of his passion and his insistence on the supremevalue of emotion. With these characteristics classically minded criticshave always been highly impatient, and they will no doubt prevent him fromultimately taking a place beside Shakspere and the serene Milton; but theywill not seriously interfere, we may be certain, with his recognition asone of the very great English poets. 

ROSSETTI AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITE MOVEMENT. Many of the secondary Victorianpoets must here be passed by, but several of them are too important to bedismissed without at least brief notice. The middle of the century ismarked by a new Romantic impulse, the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, which beginswith Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was born in London in 1828. His fatherwas an Italian, a liberal refugee from the outrageous government of Naples, and his mother was also half Italian. The household, though poor, was acenter for other Italian exiles, but this early and tempestuous politicalatmosphere created in the poet, by reaction, a lifelong aversion forpolitics. His desultory education was mostly in the lines of painting andthe Italian and English poets. His own practice in poetry began as early asis usual with poets, and before he was nineteen, by a special inspiration, he wrote his best and most famous poem, 'The Blessed Damosel. ' In theschool of the Royal Academy of Painting, in 1848, he met William HolmanHunt and John E. Millais, and the three formed the Pre-RaphaeliteBrotherhood, in which Rossetti, whose disposition throughout his life wasextremely self-assertive, or even domineering, took the lead. The purposeof the Brotherhood was to restore to painting and literature the qualitieswhich the three enthusiasts found in the fifteenth century Italianpainters, those who just preceded Raphael. Rossetti and his friends did notdecry the noble idealism of Raphael himself, but they felt that in tryingto follow his grand style the art of their own time had become too abstractand conventional. They wished to renew emphasis on serious emotion, imagination, individuality, and fidelity to truth; and in doing so theygave special attention to elaboration of details in a fashion distinctlyreminiscent of medievalism. Their work had much, also, of medievalmysticism and symbolism. Besides painting pictures they published a veryshort-lived periodical, 'The Germ, ' containing both literary material anddrawings. Ruskin, now arriving at fame and influence, wrote vigorously intheir favor, and though the Brotherhood did not last long as anorganization, it has exerted a great influence on subsequent painting. 

Rossetti's impulses were generous, but his habits were eccentric andselfish, and his life unfortunate. His engagement with Miss Eleanor Siddal, a milliner's apprentice (whose face appears in many of his pictures), wasprolonged by his lack of means for nine years; further, he was an agnostic, while she held a simple religious faith, and she was carrying on a losingstruggle with tuberculosis. Sixteen months after their marriage she died, and on a morbid impulse of remorse for inconsiderateness in his treatmentof her Rossetti buried his poems, still unpublished, in her coffin. Aftersome years, however, he was persuaded to disinter and publish them. Meanwhile he had formed friendships with the slightly younger artistsWilliam Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, and they established a company forthe manufacture of furniture and other articles, to be made beautiful aswell as useful, and thus to aid in spreading the esthetic sense among theEnglish people. After some years Rossetti and Burne-Jones withdrew from theenterprise, leaving it to Morris. Rossetti continued all his life toproduce both poetry and paintings. His pictures are among the best and mostgorgeous products of recent romantic art--'Dante's Dream, ' 'Beata Beatrix, ''The Blessed Damosel, ' and many others. During his later years he earned alarge income, and he lived in a large house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea (nearCarlyle), where for a while, as long as his irregular habits permitted, thenovelist George Meredith and the poet Swinburne were also inmates. Hegradually grew more morbid, and became a rather pitiful victim of insomnia, the drug chloral, and spiritualistic delusions about his wife. He died in1882. 

Rossetti's poetry is absolutely unlike that of any other English poet, andthe difference is clearly due in large part to his Italian race and hispainter's instinct. He has, in the didactic sense, absolutely no religious, moral, or social interests; he is an artist almost purely for art's sake, writing to give beautiful embodiment to moods, experiences, and strikingmoments. If it is true of Tennyson, however, that he stands aloof fromactual life, this is far truer of Rossetti. His world is a vague andlanguid region of enchantment, full of whispering winds, indistinct formsof personified abstractions, and the murmur of hidden streams; itslandscape sometimes bright, sometimes shadowy, but always delicate, exquisitely arranged for luxurious decorative effect. In hisballad-romances, to be sure, such as, 'The King's Tragedy, ' there is muchdramatic vigor; yet there is still more of medieval weirdness. Rossetti, like Dante, has much of spiritual mysticism, and his interest centers inthe inner rather than the outer life; but his method, that of a painter anda southern Italian, is always highly sensuous. His melody is superb anddepends partly on a highly Latinized vocabulary, archaic pronunciations, and a delicate genius in sound-modulation, the effect being heightened alsoby frequent alliteration and masterly use of refrains. 'Sister Helen, 'obviously influenced by the popular ballad 'Edward, Edward, ' derives muchof its tremendous tragic power from the refrain, and in the use of thisdevice is perhaps the most effective poem in the world. Rossetti isespecially facile also with the sonnet. His sonnet sequence, 'The House ofLife, ' one of the most notable in English, exalts earthly Love as thecentral force in the world and in rather fragmentary fashion traces thetragic influence of Change in both life and love. 

WILLIAM MORRIS. William Morris, a man of remarkable versatility andtremendous energy, which expressed themselves in poetry and many otherways, was the son of a prosperous banker, and was born in London in 1834. At Oxford in 1853-55 he became interested in medieval life and art, wasstimulated by the poetry of Mrs. Browning and Tennyson, became a friend ofBurne-Jones, wrote verse and prose, and was a member of a group called 'TheBrotherhood, ' while a little later published for a year a monthly magazinenot unlike 'The Germ. ' He apprenticed himself to an architect, but at thesame time also practised several decorative arts, such as woodcarving, illuminating manuscripts, and designing furniture, stained glass andembroidery. Together with Burne-Jones, moreover, he became an enthusiasticpupil of Rossetti in painting. His first volume of verse, 'The Defence ofGuinevere and Other Poems, ' put forth in 1858, shows the influence ofRossetti and Pre-Raphaelitism, but it mainly gives vivid presentation tothe spirit of fourteenth-century French chivalry. In 1861 came thefoundation of the decorative-art firm of Morris and Co. (above, p. 337), which after some years grew into a large business, continued to be Morris'main occupation to the end of his life, and has exercised a greatinfluence, both in England and elsewhere, on the beautifying of thesurroundings of domestic life. 

Meanwhile Morris had turned to the writing of long narrative poems, whichhe composed with remarkable fluency. The most important is the series ofversions of Greek and Norse myths and legends which appeared in 1868-70 as'The Earthly Paradise. ' Shortly after this he became especially interestedin Icelandic literature and published versions of some of its stories;notably one of the Siegfried tale, 'Sigurd the Volsung. ' In the decade from1880 to 1890 he devoted most of his energy to work for the Socialist party, of which he became a leader. His ideals were largely identical with thoseof Ruskin; in particular he wished to restore (or create) in the lives ofworkingmen conditions which should make of each of them an independentartist. The practical result of his experience was bitter disappointment, he was deposed from his leadership, finally abandoned the party, andreturned to art and literature. He now published a succession of proseromances largely inspired by the Icelandic sagas and composed in a strangehalf-archaic style. He also established the 'Kelmscott Press, ' which hemade famous for its production of elaborate artistic editions of greatbooks. He died in 1896. 

Morris' shorter poems are strikingly dramatic and picturesque, and hislonger narrations are remarkably facile and often highly pleasing. Hisfacility, however, is his undoing. He sometimes wrote as much as eighthundred lines in a day, and he once declared: 'If a chap can't compose anepic poem while he's weaving tapestry, he had better shut up; he'll neverdo any good at all. ' In reading his work one always feels that there is thematerial of greatness, but perhaps nothing that he wrote is strictly great. His prose will certainly prove less permanent than his verse. 

SWINBURNE. A younger disciple of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement but also astrongly original artist was Algernon Charles Swinburne. Born in 1837 intoa wealthy family, the son of an admiral, he devoted himself throughout hislife wholly to poetry, and his career was almost altogether devoid ofexternal incident. After passing through Eton and Oxford he began as authorat twenty-three by publishing two plays imitative of Shakspere. Five yearslater he put forth 'Atalanta in Calydon, ' a tragedy not only drawn fromGreek heroic legend, but composed in the ancient Greek manner, with longdialogs and choruses. These two volumes express the two intensely vigorousforces which were strangely combined in his nature; for while no man hasever been a more violent romanticist than Swinburne, yet, as one critic hassaid, 'All the romantic riot in his blood clamored for Greek severity andGreek restraint. ' During the next fifteen years he was partly occupied witha huge poetic trilogy in blank verse on Mary Queen of Scots, and from timeto time he wrote other dramas and much prose criticism, the latter largelyin praise of the Elizabethan dramatists and always wildly extravagant intone. He produced also some long narrative poems, of which the chief is'Tristram of Lyonesse. ' His chief importance, however, is as a lyric poet, and his lyric production was large. His earlier poems in this category arefor the most part highly objectionable in substance or sentiment, but hegradually worked into a better vein. He was a friend of George Meredith, Burne-Jones, Morris, Rossetti (to whom he loyally devoted himself foryears), and the painter Whistler. He died in 1909. 

Swinburne carried his radicalism into all lines. Though an ardentlypatriotic Englishman, he was an extreme republican; and many of his poemsare dedicated to the cause of Italian independence or to liberty ingeneral. The significance of his thought, however, is less than that of anyother English poet who can in any sense be called great; his poetry isnotable chiefly for its artistry, especially for its magnificent melody. Indeed, it has been cleverly said that he offers us an elaborate service ofgold and silver, but with little on it except salt and pepper. In his case, however, the mere external beauty and power often seem their own completeand satisfying justification. His command of different meters is marvelous;he uses twice as many as Browning, who is perhaps second to him in thisrespect, and his most characteristic ones are those of gloriously rapidanapestic lines with complicated rime-schemes. Others of his distinctivetraits are lavish alliteration, rich sensuousness, grandiose vagueness ofthought and expression, a great sweep of imagination, and a correspondinglove of vastness and desolation. He makes much decorative use of Biblicalimagery and of vague abstract personifications--in general creates anatmosphere similar to that of Rossetti. Somewhat as in the case of Morris, his fluency is almost fatal--he sometimes pours out his melodious but vagueemotion in forgetfulness of all proportion and restraint. From theintellectual and spiritual point of view he is nearly negligible, but as amusician in words he has no superior, not even Shelley. 

OTHER VICTORIA POETS. Among the other Victorian poets, three, at least, must be mentioned. Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861), tutor at Oxford andlater examiner in the government education office, expresses the spiritualdoubt and struggle of the period in noble poems similar to those of MatthewArnold, whose fine elegy 'Thyrsis' commemorates him. Edward Fitzgerald(1809-1883), Irish by birth, an eccentric though kind-hearted recluse, anda friend of Tennyson, is known solely for his masterly paraphrase (1859) ofsome of the Quatrains of the skeptical eleventh-century Persianastronomer-poet Omar Khayyám. The similarity of temper between the medievaloriental scholar and the questioning phase of the Victorian period isstriking (though the spirit of Fitzgerald's verse is no doubt as much hisown as Omar's), and no poetry is more poignantly beautiful than the best ofthis. Christina Rossetti (1830-94), the sister of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, lived in London with her mother in the greatest seclusion, occupied with anascetic devotion to the English Church, with her poetry, and with thecomposition, secondarily, of prose articles and short stories. Her poetryis limited almost entirely to the lyrical expression of her spiritualexperiences, much of it is explicitly religious, and all of it is religiousin feeling. It is tinged with the Pre-Raphaelite mystic medievalism; and aquiet and most affecting sadness is its dominant trait; but the power andbeauty of a certain small part of it perhaps entitle her to be called thechief of English poetesses. 

THE NOVEL. THE EARLIER SECONDARY NOVELISTS. To Scott's position ofunquestioned supremacy among romancers and novelists Charles Dickenssucceeded almost immediately on Scott's death, but certain secondary earlyVictorian novelists may be considered before him. In the lives of two ofthese, Bulwer-Lytton and Benjamin Disraeli, there are interestingparallels. Both were prominent in politics, both began writing as young menbefore the commencement of the Victorian period, and both ended theirliterary work only fifty years later. Edward Bulwer, later created SirEdward Bulwer-Lytton, and finally raised to the peerage as Lord Lytton(1803-1873), was almost incredibly fluent and versatile. Much of his life amember of Parliament and for a while of the government, he was a vigorouspamphleteer. His sixty or more really literary works are of great variety;perhaps the best known of them are his second novel, the trifling 'Pelham'(1828), which inaugurated a class of so-called 'dandy' novels, givingsympathetic presentation to the more frivolous social life of the 'upper'class, and the historical romances 'The Last Days of Pompeii' (1834) and'Harold' (1843). In spite of his real ability, Bulwer was a poser andsentimentalist, characteristics for which he was vigorously ridiculed byThackeray. Benjamin Disraeli, [Footnote: The second syllable is pronouncedlike the word 'rail' and has the accent, so that the whole name isDisraíly. ] later Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881), a much less prolificwriter, was by birth a Jew. His immature earliest novel, 'Vivian Grey'(1826), deals, somewhat more sensibly, with the same social class asBulwer's 'Pelham. ' In his novels of this period, as in his dress andmanner, he deliberately attitudinized, a fact which in part reflected acertain shallowness of character, in part was a device to attract attentionfor the sake of his political ambition. After winning his way intoParliament he wrote in 1844-7 three political novels, ' Coningsby, ' 'Sybil, 'and 'Tancred, ' which set forth his Tory creed of opposition to thedominance of middle-class Liberalism. For twenty-five years after this hewas absorbed in the leadership of his party, and he at last became PrimeMinister. In later life he so far returned to literature as to write twoadditional novels. 

Vastly different was the life and work of Charlotte Bronté (1816-1855). Miss Bronté, a product and embodiment of the strictest religious sense ofduty, somewhat tempered by the liberalizing tendency of the time, was thedaughter of the rector of a small and bleak Yorkshire village, Haworth, where she was brought up in poverty. The two of her sisters who reachedmaturity, Emily and Anne, both still more short-lived than she, also wrotenovels, and Emily produced some lyrics which strikingly express the stern, defiant will that characterized all the children of the family. Their liveswere pitifully bare, hard, and morbid, scarcely varied or enlivened exceptby a year which Charlotte and Emily spent when Charlotte was twenty-six ina private school in Brussels, followed on Charlotte's part by a return tothe same school for a year as teacher. In 1847 Charlotte's novel 'JaneEyre' (pronounced like the word 'air') won a great success. Her three laternovels are less significant. In 1854 she was married to one of her father'scurates, a Mr. Nicholls, a sincere but narrow-minded man. She was happy inthe marriage, but died within a few months, worn out by the unremittingphysical and moral strain of forty years. 

The significance of 'Jane Eyre' can be suggested by calling it the laststriking expression of extravagant Romanticism, partly Byronic, but graftedon the stern Bronté moral sense. One of its two main theses is theassertion of the supreme authority of religious duty, but it vehementlyinsists also on the right of the individual conscience to judge of duty foritself, in spite of conventional opinion, and, difficult as this may be tounderstand to-day, it was denounced at the time as irreligious. TheRomanticism appears further in the volcanic but sometimes melodramaticpower of the love story, where the heroine is a somewhat idealized doubleof the authoress and where the imperfect portrayal of the hero reflects thelimitations of Miss Bronté's own experience. 

Miss Bronté is the subject of one of the most delightfully sympathetic ofall biographies, written by Mrs. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. Mrs. Gaskellwas authoress also of many stories, long and short, of which the best knownis 'Cranford' (1853), a charming portrayal of the quaint life of a secludedvillage. 

CHARLES DICKENS. [Footnote: The life of Dickens by his friend John Forsteris another of the most famous English biographies. ] The most popular of allEnglish novelists, Charles Dickens, was born in 1812, the son of anunpractical and improvident government navy clerk whom, with questionabletaste, he later caricatured in 'David Copperfield' as Mr. Micawber. Thefuture novelist's schooling was slight and irregular, but as a boy he readmuch fiction, especially seventeenth and eighteenth century authors, whoseinfluence is apparent in the picaresque lack of structure of his own works. From childhood also he showed the passion for the drama and the theaterwhich resulted from the excitably dramatic quality of his own temperamentand which always continued to be the second moving force of his life. Whenhe was ten years old his father was imprisoned for debt (like Micawber, inthe Marshalsea prison), and he was put to work in the cellar of a Londonshoe-blacking factory. On his proud and sensitive disposition thishumiliation, though it lasted only a few months, inflicted a wound whichnever thoroughly healed; years after he was famous he would cross thestreet to avoid the smell from an altogether different blacking factory, with its reminder 'of what he once was. ' To this experience, also, mayevidently be traced no small part of the intense sympathy with theoppressed poor, especially with helpless children, which is so prominent inhis novels. Obliged from the age of fifteen to earn his own living, for themost part, he was for a while a clerk in a London lawyer's office, where heobserved all sorts and conditions of people with characteristic keenness. Still more valuable was his five or six years' experience in the verycongenial and very active work of a newspaper reporter, where his specialdepartment was political affairs. This led up naturally to his permanentwork. The successful series of lively 'Sketches by Boz' dealing with peopleand scenes about London was preliminary to 'The Pickwick Papers, ' whichmade the author famous at the age of twenty-four. 

During the remaining thirty-three years of his life Dickens produced novelsat the rate of rather more than one in two years. He composed slowly andcarefully but did not revise greatly, and generally published by monthlyinstallments in periodicals which, latterly, he himself established andedited. Next after 'The Pickwick Papers' came 'Oliver Twist, ' and 'DavidCopperfield' ten years later. Of the others, 'Martin Chuzzlewit, ' 'Dombeyand Son, ' 'Bleak House, ' and 'A Tale of Two Cities, ' are among the best. For some years Dickens also published an annual Christmas story, of whichthe first two, 'A Christmas Carol' and 'The Chimes, ' rank highest. 

His exuberant physical energy gave to his life more external variety thanis common with authors. At the age of thirty he made a visit to the UnitedStates and travelled as far as to the then extreme western town of St. Louis, everywhere received and entertained with the most extravagantenthusiasm. Even before his return to England, however, he excited areaction, by his abundantly justified but untactful condemnation ofAmerican piracy of English books; and this reaction was confirmed by hissubsequent caricature of American life in 'American Notes' and 'MartinChuzzlewit. ' For a number of years during the middle part of his careerDickens devoted a vast amount of energy to managing and taking the chiefpart in a company of amateur actors, who performed at times in variouscities. Later on he substituted for this several prolonged series ofsemi-dramatic public readings from his works, an effort which drew heavilyon his vitality and shortened his life, but which intoxicated him with itsenormous success. One of these series was delivered in America, where, ofcourse, the former ill-feeling had long before worn away. 

Dickens lived during the greater part of his life in London, but in hislater years near Rochester, at Gadshill, the scene of Falstaff's exploit. He made long sojourns also on the Continent. Much social and outdoor lifewas necessary to him; he had a theory that he ought to spend as much timeout of doors as in the house. He married early and had a large family ofchildren, but pathetically enough for one whose emotions centered solargely about the home, his own marriage was not well-judged; and aftermore than twenty years he and his wife (the Dora Spenlow of 'DavidCopperfield') separated, though with mutual respect. He died in 1870 andwas buried in Westminster Abbey in the rather ostentatiously unpretentiousway which, with his deep-seated dislike for aristocratic conventions, hehad carefully prescribed in his will. 

Dickens' popularity, in his own day and since, is due chiefly: (1) to hisintense human sympathy; (2) to his unsurpassed emotional and dramaticpower; and (3) to his aggressive humanitarian zeal for the reform of allevils and abuses, whether they weigh upon the oppressed classes or uponhelpless individuals. Himself sprung from the lower middle class, andthoroughly acquainted with the life of the poor and apparently of sufferersin all ranks, he is one of the most moving spokesmen whom they have everhad. The pathos and tragedy of their experiences--aged and honest toilerssubjected to pitiless task-masters or to the yoke of social injustice;lonely women uncomplainingly sacrificing their lives for unworthy men;sad-faced children, the victims of circumstances, of cold-blooded parents, or of the worst criminals--these things play a large part in almost all ofDickens' books. In almost all, moreover, there is present, more or less inthe foreground, a definite humanitarian aim, an attack on sometime-consecrated evil--the poor-house system, the cruelties practised inprivate schools, or the miscarriage of justice in the Court of Chancery. Indramatic vividness his great scenes are masterly, for example the storm in'David Copperfield, ' the pursuit and discovery of Lady Dedlock in 'BleakHouse, ' and the interview between Mrs. Dombey and James Carker in 'Dombeyand Son. '

Dickens' magnificent emotional power is not balanced, however, by acorresponding intellectual quality; in his work, as in his temperament andbearing, emotion is always in danger of running to excess. One of his greatelements of strength is his sense of humor, which has created an almostunlimited number of delightful scenes and characters; but it very generallybecomes riotous and so ends in sheer farce and caricature, as the names ofmany of the characters suggest at the outset. Indeed Dickens has beenrightly designated a grotesque novelist--the greatest of all grotesquenovelists. Similarly his pathos is often exaggerated until it passes intomawkish sentimentality, so that his humbly-bred heroines, for example, aremade to act and talk with all the poise and certainty which can reallyspring only from wide experience and broad education. Dickens' zeal forreform, also, sometimes outruns his judgment or knowledge and leads him toassault evils that had actually been abolished long before he wrote. 

No other English author has approached Dickens in the number of characterswhom he has created; his twenty novels present literally thousands ofpersons, almost all thoroughly human, except for the limitations that wehave already noted. Their range is of course very great, though it neverextends successfully into the 'upper' social classes. For Dickens wasviolently prejudiced against the nobility and against all persons of highsocial standing, and when he attempted to introduce them created onlypitifully wooden automatons. For the actual English gentleman we must passby his Sir Leicester Dedlocks and his Mr. Veneerings to novelists of a verydifferent viewpoint, such as Thackeray and Meredith. 

Dickens' inexhaustible fertility in characters and scenes is a main causeof the rather extravagant lack of unity which is another conspicuousfeature of his books. He usually made a good preliminary general plan andproceeded on the whole with firm movement and strong suspense. But healways introduces many characters and sub-actions not necessary to the mainstory, and develops them quite beyond their real artistic importance. Notwithout influence here was the necessity of filling a specified number ofserial instalments, each of a definite number of pages, and each requiringa striking situation at the end. Moreover, Dickens often follows theeighteenth-century picaresque habit of tracing the histories of his heroesfrom birth to marriage. In most respects, however, Dickens' art improved ashe proceeded. The love element, it should be noted, as what we have alreadysaid implies, plays a smaller part than usual among the various aspects oflife which his books present. 

Not least striking among Dickens' traits is his power of description. Hisobservation is very quick and keen, though not fine; his sense for thecharacteristic features, whether of scenes in Nature or of humanpersonality and appearance, is unerring; and he has never had a superior inpicturing and conveying the atmosphere both of interiors and of all kindsof scenes of human life. London, where most of his novels are wholly orchiefly located, has in him its chief and most comprehensive portrayer. 

Worthy of special praise, lastly, is the moral soundness of all Dickens'work, praise which is not seriously affected by present-day sneers at his'middle-class' and 'mid-Victorian' point of view. Dickens' books, however, like his character, are destitute of the deeper spiritual quality, ofpoetic and philosophic idealism. His stories are all admirabledemonstrations of the power and beauty of the nobler practical virtues, ofkindness, courage, humility, and all the other forms of unselfishness; butfor the underlying mysteries of life and the higher meanings of art hispositive and self-formed mind had very little feeling. From first to lasthe speaks authentically for the common heart of humanity, but he is not oneof the rarer spirits, like Spenser or George Eliot or Meredith, whotransport us into the realm of the less tangible realities. All hislimitations, indeed, have become more conspicuous as time has passed; andcritical judgment has already definitely excluded him from the select ranksof the truly greatest authors. 

WILLIAM M. THACKERAY. Dickens' chief rival for fame during his laterlifetime and afterward was Thackeray, who presents a strong contrast withhim, both as man and as writer. 

Thackeray, the son of an East India Company official, was born at Calcuttain 1811. His father died while he was a child and he was taken to Englandfor his education; he was a student in the Charterhouse School and then fora year at Cambridge. Next, on the Continent, he studied drawing, and thoughhis unmethodical and somewhat idle habits prevented him from ever reallymastering the technique of the art, his real knack for it enabled him lateron to illustrate his own books in a semi-grotesque but effective fashion. Desultory study of the law was interrupted when he came of age by theinheritance of a comfortable fortune, which he managed to lose within ayear or two by gambling, speculations, and an unsuccessful effort atcarrying on a newspaper. Real application to newspaper and magazine writingsecured him after four years a place on 'Eraser's Magazine, ' and he wasmarried. Not long after, his wife became insane, but his warm affection forhis daughters gave him throughout his life genuine domestic happiness. 

For ten years Thackeray's production was mainly in the line of satiricalhumorous and picaresque fiction, none of it of the first rank. During thisperiod he chiefly attacked current vices, snobbishness, and sentimentality, which latter quality, Thackeray's special aversion, he found rampant incontemporary life and literature, including the novels of Dickens. Theappearance of his masterpiece, 'Vanity Fair' (the allegorical title takenfrom a famous incident in 'Pilgrim's Progress'), in 'Fraser's Magazine' in1847-8 (the year before Dickens' 'David Copperfield') brought him suddenfame and made him a social lion. Within the next ten years he produced hisother important novels, of which the best are 'Pendennis, ' 'Henry Esmond, 'and 'The Newcomes, ' and also his charming essays (first delivered aslectures) on the eighteenth century in England, namely 'English Humorists, 'and 'The Four Georges. ' All his novels except 'Henry Esmond' were publishedserially, and he generally delayed composing each instalment until thelatest possible moment, working reluctantly except under the stress ofimmediate compulsion. He was for three years, at its commencement, editorof 'The Cornhill Magazine. ' He died in 1863 at the age of fifty-two, ofheart failure. 

The great contrast between Dickens and Thackeray results chiefly from thepredominance in Thackeray of the critical intellectual quality and of thesomewhat fastidious instinct of the man of society and of the world whichDickens so conspicuously lacked. As a man Thackeray was at home and at easeonly among people of formal good breeding; he shrank from direct contactwith the common people; in spite of his assaults on the frivolity and viceof fashionable society, he was fond of it; his spirit was very keenlyanalytical; and he would have been chagrined by nothing more than byseeming to allow his emotion to get the better of his judgment. His novelsseem to many readers cynical, because he scrutinizes almost every characterand every group with impartial vigor, dragging forth every fault and everyweakness into the light. On the title page of 'Vanity Fair' he proclaimsthat it is a novel without a hero; and here, as in some of his lesserworks, most of the characters are either altogether bad or worthless andthe others very largely weak or absurd, so that the impression of humanlife which the reader apparently ought to carry away is that of a hopelesschaos of selfishness, hypocrisy, and futility. One word, which has oftenbeen applied to Thackeray, best expresses his attitude--disillusionment. The last sentences of 'Vanity Fair' are characteristic: 'Oh! VanitasVanitatum! which, of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire?or, having it, is satisfied?--Come, children, let us shut the box and thepuppets, for our play is played out. '

Yet in reality Thackeray is not a cynic and the permanent impression leftby his books is not pessimistic. Beneath his somewhat ostentatious mannerof the man of the world were hidden a heart and a human sympathy as warm asever belonged to any man. However he may ridicule his heroes and hisheroines (and there really are a hero and heroine in 'Vanity Fair'), hereally feels deeply for them, and he is repeatedly unable to refrain fromthe expression of his feeling. Nothing is more truly characteristic of himthan the famous incident of his rushing in tears from the room in which hehad been writing of the death of Colonel Newcome with the exclamation, 'Ihave killed the Colonel!' In his books as clearly as in those of the mostexplicit moralizer the reader finds the lessons that simple courage, honesty, kindliness, and unselfishness are far better than external show, and that in spite of all its brilliant interest a career of unprincipledself-seeking like that of Becky Sharp is morally squalid. Thackeraysteadily refuses to falsify life as he sees it in the interest of anydeliberate theory, but he is too genuine an artist not to be true to themoral principles which form so large a part of the substratum of all life. 

Thackeray avowedly took Fielding as his model, and though his spirit andmanner are decidedly finer than Fielding's, the general resemblance betweenthem is often close. Fielding's influence shows partly in the humorous tonewhich, in one degree or another, Thackeray preserves wherever it ispossible, and in the general refusal to take his art, on the surface, withentire seriousness. He insists, for instance, on his right to manage hisstory, and conduct the reader, as he pleases, without deferring to hisreaders' tastes or prejudices. Fielding's influence shows also in thefree-and-easy picaresque structure of his plots; though this results alsoin part from his desultory method of composition. Thackeray's great faultis prolixity; he sometimes wanders on through rather uninspired page afterpage where the reader longs for severe compression. But when the storyreaches dramatic moments there is ample compensation; no novelist has moremagnificent power in dramatic scenes, such, for instance, as in theclimactic series in 'Vanity Fair. ' This power is based largely on anabsolute knowledge of character: in spite of a delight in somewhat fancifulexaggeration of the ludicrous, Thackeray when he chooses portrays humannature with absolute finality. 

'Henry Esmond' should be spoken of by itself as a special and uniqueachievement. It is a historical novel dealing with the early eighteenthcentury, and in preparing for it Thackeray read and assimilated most of theliterature of the period, with the result that he succeeded in reproducingthe 'Augustan' spirit and even its literary style with an approach toperfection that has never been rivaled. On other grounds as well the bookranks almost if not quite beside 'Vanity Pair. ' Henry Esmond himself isThackeray's most thoroughly wise and good character, and Beatrix is as realand complex a woman as even Becky Sharp. 

GEORGE ELIOT. The perspective of time has made it clear that among theVictorian novelists, as among the poets, three definitely surpass theothers. With Dickens and Thackeray is to be ranked only 'George Eliot'(Mary Anne Evans). 

George Eliot was born in 1819 in the central county of Warwick from whichShakspere had sprung two centuries and a half before. Her father, a managerof estates for various members of the landed gentry, was to a large extentthe original both of her Adam Bede and of Caleb Garth in 'Middlemarch, 'while her own childish life is partly reproduced in the experiences ofMaggie in 'The Mill on the Floss. ' Endowed with one of the strongest mindsthat any woman has ever possessed, from her very infancy she studied andread widely. Her nature, however, was not one-sided; all her life she waspassionately fond of music; and from the death of her mother in hereighteenth year she demonstrated her practical capacity in the managementof her father's household. Circumstances. Combined with her unusual abilityto make her entire life one of too high pressure, and her first strugglewas religious. She was brought up a Methodist, and during her girlhood wasfervently evangelical, in the manner of Dinah Morris in 'Adam Bede'; butmoving to Coventry she fell under the influence of some rationalisticacquaintances who led her to adopt the scientific Positivism of the Frenchphilosopher Comte. Her first literary work, growing out of the sameinterest, was the formidable one of translating the 'Life of Jesus' of theGerman professor Strauss. Some years of conscientious nursing of herfather, terminated by his death, were followed by one in Geneva, nominallya year of vacation, but she spent it largely in the study of experimentalphysics. On her return to England she became a contributor and soonassistant editor of the liberal periodical 'The Westminster Review. ' Thisconnection was most important in its personal results; it brought her intocontact with a versatile man of letters, George Henry Lewes, [Footnote:Pronounced in two syllables. ] and in 1854 they were united as man and wife. Mr. Lewes had been unhappily married years before to a woman who was stillalive, and English law did not permit the divorce which he would havesecured in America. Consequently the new union was not a legal marriage, and English public opinion was severe in its condemnation. In the actualresult the sympathetic companionship of Mr. Lewes was of the greatest valueto George Eliot and brought her much happiness; yet she evidently feltkeenly the equivocal social position, and it was probably in large part thecause of the increasing sadness of her later years. 

She was already thirty-six when in 1856 she entered on creative authorshipwith the three 'Scenes from Clerical Life. ' The pseudonym which she adoptedfor these and her later stories originated in no more substantial reasonthan her fondness for 'Eliot' and the fact that Mr. Lewes' first name was'George. ' 'Adam Bede' in 1859 completely established her reputation, andher six or seven other books followed as rapidly as increasingly laboriousworkmanship permitted. 'Romola. ' [Footnote: Accented on the firstsyllable. ] in 1863, a powerful but perhaps over-substantial historicalnovel, was the outcome partly of residence in Florence. Not content withprose, she attempted poetry also, but she altogether lacked the poet'sdelicacy of both imagination and expression. The death of Mr. Lewes in 1878was a severe blow to her, since she was always greatly dependent onpersonal sympathy; and after a year and a half, to the surprise of everyone, she married Mr. John W. Cross, a banker much younger than herself. Buther own death followed within a few months in 1880. 

George Eliot's literary work combines in an interesting way the samedistinct and even strangely contrasting elements as her life, and in herwritings their relative proportions alter rather markedly during the courseof her career. One of the most attractive qualities, especially in herearlier books, is her warm and unaffected human sympathy, which istemperamental, but greatly enlarged by her own early experience. Theaspiration, pathos and tragedy of life, especially among the lower andmiddle classes in the country and the small towns, can scarcely beinterpreted with more feeling, tenderness, or power than in her pages. Buther sympathy does not blind her to the world of comedy; figures like Mrs. Poyser in 'Adam Bede' are delightful. Even from the beginning, however, thereally controlling forces in George Eliot's work were intellectual andmoral. She started out with the determination to render the facts of lifewith minute and conscientious accuracy, an accuracy more complete than thatof Mrs. Gaskell, who was in large degree her model; and as a result herbooks, from the beginning, are masterpieces of the best sort of realism. The characters, life, and backgrounds of many of them are taken from herown Warwickshire acquaintances and country, and for the others she made themost painstaking study. More fundamental than her sympathy, indeed, perhapseven from the outset, is her instinct for scientific analysis. Like abiologist or a botanist, and with much more deliberate effort than most ofher fellow-craftsmen, she traces and scrutinizes all the acts and motivesof her characters until she reaches and reveals their absolute inmosttruth. This objective scientific method has a tendency to become sternlyjudicial, and in extreme cases she even seems to be using her weak orimperfect characters as deterrent examples. Inevitably, with herdisposition, the scientific tendency grew upon her. Beginning with'Middlemarch' (1872), which is perhaps her masterpiece, it seems to somecritics decidedly too preponderant, giving to her novels too much theatmosphere of psychological text-books; and along with it goes muchintroduction of the actual facts of nineteenth century science. Her reallyprimary instinct, however, is the moral one. The supremacy of moral law mayfairly be called the general theme of all her works; to demonstrating ither scientific method is really in the main auxiliary; and in spite of heraccuracy it makes of her more an idealist than a realist. With unswervinglogic she traces the sequence of act and consequence, showing howapparently trifling words and deeds reveal the springs of character and howcareless choices and seemingly insignificant self-indulgences mayaltogether determine the issues of life. The couplet from Aeschylus whichshe prefixed to one of the chapters of 'Felix Holt' might stand at theoutset of all her work:

 'Tis law as steadfast as the throne of Zeus-- Our days are heritors of days gone by. 

Her conviction, or at least her purpose, is optimistic, to show that byhonest effort the sincere and high-minded man or woman may win happiness inthe face of all difficulties and disappointments; but her own actualjudgment of life was somber, not altogether different from that whichCarlyle repudiated in 'The Everlasting Yea'; so that the final effect ofher books, though stimulating, is subdued rather than cheerful. 

In technique her very hard work generally assured mastery. Her novels arefirmly knit and well-proportioned, and have the inevitable movement of lifeitself; while her great scenes equal those of Thackeray in dramatic powerand, at their best, in reserve and suggestiveness. Perhaps her chieftechnical faults are tendencies to prolixity and too much expositoryanalysis of characters and motives. 

SECONDARY MIDDLE AND LATER VICTORIAN NOVELISTS. Several of the othernovelists of the mid-century and later produced work which in a period ofless prolific and less highly developed art would have secured them highdistinction. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) spent most of his life, by hisown self-renouncing choice, as curate and rector of the little Hampshireparish of Eversley, though for some years he also held the professorship ofhistory at Cambridge. An aggressive Protestant, he drifted in his lateryears into the controversy with Cardinal Newman which opened the way forNewman's 'Apologia. ' From the outset, Kingsley was an enthusiastic workerwith F. D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement which aimed at thebetterment of the conditions of life among the working classes. 'AltonLocke' and 'Yeast, ' published in 1849, were powerful but reasonable andvery influential expressions of his convictions--fervid arguments in theform of fiction against existing social injustices. His most famous booksare 'Hypatia' (1853), a novel dealing with the Church in its conflict withGreek philosophy in fifth-century Alexandria, and 'Westward Ho!' (1855)which presents with sympathetic largeness of manner the adventurous side ofElizabethan life. His brief 'Andromeda' is one of the best English poemsin the classical dactylic hexameter. 

Charles Reade (1814-1884), a man of dramatic disposition somewhat similarto that of Dickens (though Reade had a University education and wasadmitted to the bar), divided his interest and fiery energies between thedrama and the novel. But while his plays were of such doubtful quality thathe generally had to pay for having them acted, his novels were often strongand successful. Personally he was fervently evangelical, and like Dickenshe was often inspired to write by indignation at social wrongs. His 'HardCash' (1863), which attacks private insane asylums, is powerful; but hismost important work is 'The Cloister and the Hearth' (1861), one of themost informing and vivid of all historical novels, with the father ofErasmus for its hero. No novelist can, be more thrilling and picturesquethan Reade, but he lacks restraint and is often highly sensational andmelodramatic. 

Altogether different is the method of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) in hisfifty novels. Trollope, long a traveling employé in the post-officeservice, was a man of very assertive and somewhat commonplace nature. Partly a disciple of Thackeray, he went beyond Thackeray's example in therefusal to take his art altogether seriously as an art; rather, he treatedit as a form of business, sneering at the idea of special inspiration, andholding himself rigidly to a mechanical schedule of composition--a definiteand unvarying number of pages in a specified number of hours on each of hisworking days. The result is not so disastrous as might have been expected;his novels have no small degree of truth and interest. The most notable arethe half dozen which deal with ecclesiastical life in his imaginary countyof Barsetshire, beginning with 'The Warden' and 'Barchester Towers. ' His'Autobiography' furnishes in some of its chapters one of the noteworthyexisting discussions of the writer's art by a member of the profession. 

Richard Blackmore (1825-1900), first a lawyer, later manager of amarket-garden, was the author of numerous novels, but will be rememberedonly for 'Lorna Doone' (1869), a charming reproduction of Devonshirecountry life assigned to the romantic setting of the time of James II. Itssimple-minded and gigantic hero John Ridd is certainly one of the permanentfigures of English fiction. 

Joseph H. Shorthouse (1834-1903), a Birmingham chemical manufacturer, but aman of very fine nature, is likewise to be mentioned for a single book, 'John Inglesant' (1881). Located in the middle of the seventeenth century, when the strife of religious and political parties afforded materialespecially available for the author's purpose, this is a spiritual romance, a High Churchman's assertion of the supremacy of the inner over the outerlife. From this point of view it is one of the most significant of Englishnovels, and though much of it is philosophical and though it is not freefrom technical faults, parts of it attain the extreme limit of absorbingnarrative interest. 

Walter Pater (1839-1894), an Oxford Fellow, also represents distinctly thespirit of unworldliness, which in his case led to a personal aloofness fromactive life. He was the master of a delicately-finished, somewhatover-fastidious, style, which he employed in essays on the Renaissance andother historical and artistic topics and in a spiritual romance, 'Mariusthe Epicurean' (1885). No less noteworthy than 'John Inglesant, ' and betterconstructed, this latter is placed in the reign of the Roman Emperor MarcusAurelius, but its atmosphere is only in part historically authentic. 

GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1910). Except for a lack of the elements which makefor popularity, George Meredith would hold an unquestioned place in thehighest rank of novelists. In time he is partly contemporary with GeorgeEliot, as he began to publish a little earlier than she. But he longoutlived her and continued to write to the end of his life; and hisrecognition was long delayed; so that he may properly be placed in thegroup of later Victorian novelists. His long life was devoid of externalincident; he was long a newspaper writer and afterward literary reader fora publishing house; he spent his later years quietly in Surrey, enjoyingthe friendship of Swinburne and other men of letters. 

Among novelists he occupies something the same place which Browning, aperson of very different temperament and ideas, holds among poets. Hewrites only for intelligent and thoughtful people and aims to interpret thedeeper things of life and character, not disregarding dramatic externalincident, but using it as only one of the means to his main purpose. Hisstyle is brilliant, epigrammatic, and subtile; and he prefers to imply manythings rather than to state them directly. All this makes large, perhapssometimes too large, demands on the reader's attention, but there is, ofcourse, corresponding stimulation. Meredith's general attitude toward lifeis the fine one of serene philosophic confidence, the attitude in generalof men like Shakspere and Goethe. He despises sentimentality, admireschiefly the qualities of quiet strength and good breeding which areexemplified among the best members of the English aristocracy; and in allhis interpretation is very largely influenced by modern science. His virilecourage and optimism are as pronounced as those of Browning; he wrote anoteworthy 'Essay on Comedy' and oftentimes insists on emphasizing thecomic rather than the tragic aspect of things, though he can also bepowerful in tragedy; and his enthusiasms for the beauty of the world andfor the romance of youthful love are delightful. He may perhaps best beapproached through 'Evan Harrington' (1861) and 'The Ordeal of RichardFeverel' (1859). 'The Egoist' (1879) and 'Diana of the Crossways' (1885)are among his other strongest books. In his earlier years he wrote aconsiderable body of verse, which shows much the same qualities as hisprose. Some of it is rugged in form, but other parts magnificentlydramatic, and some few poems, like the unique and superb 'Love in theValley, ' charmingly beautiful. 

THOMAS HARDY. In Thomas Hardy (born 1840) the pessimistic interpretation ofmodern science is expressed frankly and fully, with much the same pitilessconsistency that distinguishes contemporary European writers such as Zola. Mr. Hardy early turned to literature from architecture and he has lived asecluded life in southern England, the ancient Wessex, which he makes thescene of all his novels. His knowledge of life is sure and his technique inall respects masterly. He has preferred to deal chiefly with persons in themiddle and poorer classes of society because, like Wordsworth, though withvery different emphasis, he feels that in their experiences the real factsof life stand out most truly. His deliberate theory is a sheerfatalism--that human character and action are the inevitable result of lawsof heredity and environment over which man has no control. 'The Return ofthe Native' (1878) and 'Far from the Madding Crowd' (1874) are among hisbest novels, though the sensational frankness of 'Tess of theD'Urbervilles' (1891) has given it greater reputation. 

STEVENSON. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), the first of the ratherprominent group of recent Scotch writers of fiction, is as different aspossible from Hardy. Destined for the career of civil engineer andlighthouse builder in which his father and grandfather were distinguished, he proved unfitted for it by lack both of inclination and of health, andthe profession of law for which he later prepared himself was no morecongenial. From boyhood he, like Scott, studied human nature with keendelight in rambles about the country, and unlike Scott he was incessantlypractising writing merely for the perfection of his style. As an author hewon his place rather slowly; and his whole mature life was a wonderfullycourageous and persistent struggle against the sickness which generallyprevented him from working more than two or three hours a day and oftenkept him for months in bed unable even to speak. A trip to California in anemigrant train in 1879-1880 brought him to death's door but accomplishedits purpose, his marriage to an American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, whom he hadpreviously met in artist circles in France. He first secured a popularsuccess with the boys' pirate story, 'Treasure Island, ' in 1882. 'A Child'sGarden of Verses' (1885) was at once accepted as one of the mostirresistibly sympathetic of children's classics; and 'The Strange Case ofDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1886), a unique and astonishingly powerful morallesson in the form of a thrilling little romance which strangelyanticipates the later discoveries of psychology, made in its different waya still stronger impression. Stevenson produced, considering hisdisabilities, a remarkably large amount of work--essays, short stories, andromances--but the only others of his books which need here be mentioned arethe four romances of Scotch life in the eighteenth century which belong tohis later years; of these 'The Master of Ballantrae' and the fragmentary'Weir of Hermiston' are the best. His letters, also, which, like hiswidely-circulated prayers, reveal his charming and heroic personality, areamong the most interesting in the history of English Literature. His bodilyweakness, especially tuberculosis, which had kept him wandering from oneresort to another, at last drove him altogether from Europe to the SouthSeas. He finally settled in Samoa, where for the last half dozen years ofhis life he was busy not only with clearing his land, building his house, and writing, but with energetic efforts to serve the natives, then involvedin broils among themselves and with England, Germany, and the UnitedStates. His death came suddenly when he was only forty-four years old, andthe Samoans, who ardently appreciated what he had done for them, buried himhigh up on a mountain overlooking both his home and the sea. 

Stevenson, in the midst of an age perhaps too intensely occupied with thedeeper questions, stood for a return to the mere spirit of romance, and foroccasional reading he furnishes delightful recreation. In the lastanalysis, however, his general lack of serious significance condemns him atmost to a secondary position. At his best his narrative technique (as in'The Master of Ballantrae') is perfect; his portrayal of men (he almostnever attempted women) is equally certain; his style has no superior inEnglish; and his delicate sensibility and keenness of observation renderhim a master of description. But in his attitude toward life he neverreached full maturity (perhaps because of the supreme effort of willnecessary for the maintenance of his cheerfulness); not only did he retainto the end a boyish zest for mere adventure, but it is sometimes adventureof a melodramatic and unnecessarily disagreeable kind, and in his novelsand short stories he offers virtually no interpretation of the world. Norecent English prose writer has exercised a wider influence than he, butnone is likely to suffer as time goes on a greater diminution ofreputation. 

RUDYARD KIPLING. The name which naturally closes the list of Victorianwriters is that of Rudyard Kipling, though he belongs, perhaps, as much tothe twentieth century as to the one preceding. The son of a professor ofarchitecture and sculpture in the University of Bombay, India, he was bornin that city in 1865. Educated in England in the United Services College(for officers in the army and navy), he returned at the age of seventeen toIndia, where he first did strenuous editorial work on newspapers in Lahore, in the extreme northwestern part of the country. He secured his intimateknowledge of the English army by living, through the permission of thecommanding general, with the army on the frontiers. His instinct forstory-telling in verse and prose had showed itself from his boyhood, buthis first significant appearance in print was in 1886, with a volume ofpoems later included among the 'Departmental Ditties. ' 'Plain Tales fromthe Hills' in prose, and other works, followed in rapid succession and wonhim enthusiastic recognition. In 1890 he removed to the United States, where he married and remained for seven years. Since then he has lived inEngland, with an interval in South Africa. He wrote prolifically during the'90's; since then both the amount of his production and its quality havefallen off. 

Kipling is the representative of the vigorous life of action as led bymanly and efficient men, and of the spirit of English imperialism. His poem"The White Man's Burden" sums up his imperialism--the creed that it is theduty of the higher races to civilize the lower ones with a strong hand; andhe never doubts that the greater part of this obligation rests at presentupon England--a theory, certainly, to which history lends much support. Kipling is endowed with the keenest power of observation, with the mostgenuine and most democratic human sympathies, and with splendid dramaticforce. Consequently he has made a unique contribution to literature in hisportrayals, in both prose and verse, of the English common soldier and ofEnglish army life on the frontiers of the Empire. On the other hand hisverse is generally altogether devoid of the finer qualities of poetry. 'Danny Deever, ' 'Pharaoh and the Sergeant, ' 'Fuzzy Wuzzy, ' 'The Ballad ofEast and West, ' 'The Last Chantey, ' 'Mulholland's Contract, ' and manyothers, are splendidly stirring, but their colloquialism and generalrealism put them on a very different level from the work of the greatmasters who express the deeper truths in forms of permanent beauty. Attimes, however, Kipling too gives voice to religious feelings, of a simplesort, in an impressive fashion, as in 'McAndrews' Hymn, ' 'The Recessional, 'and 'When earth's last picture is painted. ' His sweeping rhythms and hisgrandiose forms of expression, suggestive of the vast spaces of ocean andplain and of inter-stellar space with which he delights to deal, have beenvery widely copied by minor verse-writers. His very vivid and activeimagination enables him not only to humanize animal life with remarkablesuccess, as in the prose 'Jungle-Books, ' but to range finely in the realmsof the mysterious, as in the short stories 'They' and 'The Brushwood Boy. 'Of short-stories he is the most powerful recent writer, as witness 'The ManWho Would Be King, ' 'The Man Who Was, ' 'Without Benefit of Clergy, ' and'Wee Willie Winkie'; though with all the frankness of modern realism hesometimes leads us into scenes of extreme physical horror. With longerstories he is generally less successful; 'Kim, ' however, has much power. 

THE HISTORIANS. The present book, as a brief sketch of English Literaturerather strictly defined, has necessarily disregarded the scientists, economists, and philosophers whose writings did much to mold the course ofthought during the Victorian period. Among the numerous prominenthistorians, however, two must be mentioned for the brilliant literaryquality of their work. James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) was a disciple ofCarlyle, from whom he took the idea of making history center around itsgreat men and of giving to it the vivid effectiveness of the drama. WithFroude too this results in exaggeration, and further he is sadlyinaccurate, but his books are splendidly fascinating. His great 'History ofEngland from the Fall of Wolsey to the Armada' is his longest work; his'Sketch' of Julius Cæsar is certainly one of the most interesting books ofbiography and history ever written. John Richard Green (1837-1883), who wasa devoted clergyman before he became a historian, struggled all his lifeagainst the ill-health which finally cut short his career. His 'History ofthe English People' is an admirable representative of the modern historicalspirit, which treats general social conditions as more important than mereexternal events; but as a narrative it vies in interest with the verydifferent one of Macaulay. Very honorable mention should be made also of W. E. H. Lecky, who belongs to the conscientiously scientific historicalschool. His 'History of Rationalism in Europe, ' for example, is a very finemonument of the most thorough research and most effective statement; but toa mature mind its interest is equally conspicuous. 

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Beginning as early as the latter part of the eighteenth century literaryproduction, thanks largely to the tremendous increase of education and ofnewspapers and magazines, has steadily grown, until now it has reachedbewildering volume and complexity, in which the old principles are partlymerged together and the new tendencies, for contemporary observers, atleast, scarcely stand out with decisive distinctness. Most significantto-day, perhaps, are the spirit of independence, now carried in somerespects beyond the farthest previous Romantic limits, and the realisticimpulse, in which the former impulses of democracy and humanitarianism playa large part. Facts not to be disregarded are the steady advance of theshort story, beginning early in the Victorian period or before, to aposition of almost chief prominence with the novel; and the rise ofAmerican literature to a position approaching equality with that ofEngland. Of single authors none have yet certainly achieved places of thefirst rank, but two or three may be named. Mr. William De Morgan, byprofession a manufacturer of artistic pottery, has astonished the world bybeginning to publish at the age of sixty-five a series of novels which showno small amount of Thackeray's power combined with too large a share ofThackeray's diffuseness. Mr. Alfred Noyes (born 1880) is a refreshinglytrue lyric poet and balladist, and Mr. John Masefield has daringly enlargedthe field of poetry by frank but very sincere treatment of extremelyrealistic subjects. But none of these authors can yet be termed great. About the future it is useless to prophesy, but the horrible war of 1914 iscertain to exert for many years a controlling influence on the thought andliterature of both England and the whole world, an influence which, it maybe hoped, will ultimately prove stimulating and renovating. 

Whatever may be true of the future, the record of the past is complete. Nointelligent person can give even hasty study to the fourteen existingcenturies of English Literature without being deeply impressed by its rangeand power, or without coming to realize that it stands conspicuous as oneof the noblest and fullest achievements of the human race. 

A LIST OF AVAILABLE EDITIONS FOR THE STUDY OF IMPORTANT AUTHORS

The author has in preparation an annotated anthology of poems from thepopular ballads down, exclusive of long poems. In the meantime existinganthologies may be used with the present volume. The following listincludes rather more of the other authors than can probably be studied atfirst hand in one college year. The editions named are chosen because theycombine inexpensiveness with satisfactory quality. It is the author'sexperience that a sufficient number of them to meet the needs of the classmay well be supplied by the college. 'Everyman' means the editions in the'Everyman Library' series of Messrs. E. P. Dutton and Co. ; 'R. L. S. ' the'Riverside Literature Series' of The Houghton Mifflin Co. 

BÉOWULF. Prose translation by Child; R. L. S. , cloth, 25 cents. Metricaltranslation by J. L. Hall; D. O. Heath & Co. , cloth, 75 cents, paper, 30cents. 

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Prose translation by Miss J. L. Weston, Scribner, 75 cents. 

CHAUCER. Among numerous school editions of the Prolog and The Knight's Talemay be named one issued by The American Book Co. , 20 cents. 

MALORY'S MORTE DARTHUR. Everyman, two vols. , 35 cents each. The MedievalDrama, Early Plays, ed. Child, R. L. S. , cloth, 40 cents. 'Everyman andOther Plays' (modernized), Everyman, 35 cents. 

SPENSER'S FAERIE QUEENE. Everyman, three vols. , 35 cents each. Vol. Icontains Books I and II. 

ELIZABETHAN LYRICS, ed. Schelling, Ginn, 75 cents. Marlowe's Plays. Mermaided. , Scribner, $1. 00. 

SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS. Among the most useful 25 cent editions are those in theR. L. S. , the Arden series of D. C. Heath and Co. , and the Tudor Series ofthe Macmillan Co. 

JONSON'S SEJANUS. Mermaid ed. Of Jonson (Scribner), Vol. II, $1. 00. 

BACON'S ESSAYS. R. L. S. , cloth, 40 cents. Everyman, 35 cents. 

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LYRICS, ed. Schelling, Ginn, 75 cents. 

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST. Astor ed. , T. Y. Crowell and Co. , 60 cents. 

BUNYAN'S PILGRIMS' PROGRESS. Everyman, 35 cents. 

DRYDEN'S ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. In Satires of Dryden, ed. Collins, Macmillan. 

DEFOE'S ROBINSON CRUSOE. Everyman. 

SWIFT'S GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Everyman. There are two excellent volumes ofSelections from Swift, ed. Craik, Oxford University Press. 

THE SPECTATOR PAPERS. Everyman, four vols. 

SAMUEL JOHNSON. Selections, ed. Osgood, Henry Holt and Co. , 50 cents. 

BURKE. Selections, ed. Perry, Holt, 50 cents. 

THOMSON'S SEASONS. Astor ed. , Crowell, 60 cents. 

MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. Everyman, three vols. Vol. I has the essays on Clive andHastings. 

CARLYLE'S SARTOR RESARTUS. Everyman. 

RUSKIN. Selections, ed. Tinker, R. L. S. , 50 cents. 

ARNOLD'S CULTURE AND ANARCHY. Nelson and Sons, 25 cents. 

NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVELS. Largely included in Everyman. 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY

These assignments must of course be freely modified in accordance withactual needs. The discussions of the authors' works should sometimes, atleast, be made by the student in writing, sometimes after a day or two ofpreliminary oral discussion in class. In addition to the special questionshere included, the treatment of the various authors in the text oftensuggests topics for further consideration; and of course the material ofthe preliminary chapter is assumed. Any discussion submitted, either orallyor in writing, may consist of a rather general treatment, dealing brieflywith several topics; or it may be a fuller treatment of a single topic. Students should always express their own actual opinions, using thejudgments of others, recorded in this book or elsewhere, as helps, not asfinal statements. Students should also aim always to be definite, terse, and clear. Do not make such vague general statements as 'He has good choiceof words, ' but cite a list of characteristic words or skilful expressions. As often as possible support your conclusions by quotations from, theauthor or by page-number references to relevant passages. 

THE ASSIGNMENTS

1. Above, Chapter I. One day. 

2. 'BÉOWULF. ' Two days. For the first day review the discussion of the poemabove, pp. 33-36; study the additional introductory statement which herefollows; and read in the poem as much as time allows. For the second daycontinue the reading, at least through the story of Béowulf's exploits inHrothgar's country (in Hall's translation through page 75, in Child'sthrough page 60), and write your discussion. Better read one day in a prosetranslation, the other in a metrical translation, which will give some ideaof the effect of the original. 

The historical element in the poem above referred to is this: In severalplaces mention is made of the fact that Hygelac, Béowulf's king, was killedin an expedition in Frisia (Holland), and medieval Latin chronicles makemention of the death of a king 'Chocilaicus' (evidently the same person) ina piratical raid in 512 A. D. The poem states that Béowulf escaped fromthis defeat by swimming, and it is quite possible that he was a realwarrior who thus distinguished himself. 

The other facts at the basis of the poem are equally uncertain. In spite ofmuch investigation we can say of the tribes and localities which appear init only that they are those of the region of Scandinavia and NorthernGermany. As to date, poems about a historical Béowulf, a follower ofHygelac, could not have existed before his lifetime in the sixth century, but there is no telling how far back the possibly mythical elements may go. The final working over of the poem into its present shape, as has beensaid, probably took place in England in the seventh or eighth century; inearlier form, perhaps in the original brief ballads, it may have beenbrought to the country either by the Anglo-Saxons or by stray 'Danes. ' Itis fundamentally a heathen work, and certain Christian ideas which havebeen inserted here and there, such as the mention of Cain as the ancestorof Grendel, and the disparagement of heathen gods, merely show that one ofthe later poets who had it in hand was a Christian. 

The genealogical introduction of something over fifty lines (down to thefirst mention of Hrothgar) has nothing to do with the poem proper; theBéowulf there mentioned is another person than the hero of the poem. In theepic itself we can easily recognize as originally separate stories: 1. Béowulf's fight with Grendel. 2. His fight with Grendel's mother. 3. Hisfight with the fire-drake. And of course, 4, the various stories referredto or incidentally related in brief. 

Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative qualities, such as Movement, Proportion, Variety, Suspense. Do the style (terse and suggestive ratherthan explicit) and the tendency to digressions seriously interfere withnarrative progress and with the reader's (or listener's) understanding? 2. Dramatic vividness of scenes and incidents. 3. Descriptive qualities. 4. Doyou recognize any specifically epic characteristics? 5. Characterization, both in general and of individuals. 6. How much of the finer elements offeeling does the poet show? What things in Nature does he appreciate? Hissense of pathos and humor? 7. Personal and social ideals and customs. 8. The style; its main traits; the effect of the figures of speech; are thethings used for comparisons in metaphors and similes drawn altogether fromthe outer world, or partly from the world of thought? 9. The main meritsand defects of the poem and its absolute poetic value?

Written discussions may well begin with a very brief outline of the story(not over a single page). 

3. Above, chapter II. One day. 

4. 'SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT' (in translation). One day. Preliminary, pages 57-58 above. The romance combines two stories whichbelong to the great body of wide-spread popular narrative and at first hadno connection with each other: 1. The beheading story. 2. The temptation. They may have been united either by the present author or by somepredecessor of his. Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative qualities--Unity, Movement, Proportion, Variety, Suspense. Is the repetition of the hunts andof Gawain's experience in the castle skilful or the reverse, in plan and inexecution? 2. Dramatic power--how vivid are the scenes and experiences? Howfully do we sympathize with the characters? 3. Power of characterizationand of psychological analysis? Are the characters types or individuals? 4. Power of description of scenes, persons, and Nature? 5. Character of theauthor? Sense of humor? How much fineness of feeling? 6. Theme of thestory? 7. Do we get an impression of actual life, or of pure romance? Notespecific details of feudal life. 8. Traits of style, such as alliterationand figures of speech, so far as they can be judged from the translation. 

5. THE PERIOD OF CHAUCER. Above, pages 59-73. One day. 

6. CHAUCER'S POEMS. Two or three days. The best poems for study are: TheProlog to the Canterbury Tales. The Nuns' Priest's Tale. The Knight's Tale. The Squire's Tale. The Prolog to the Legend of Good Women. The text, above, pp. 65 ff. , suggests topics for consideration, if general discussion isdesired in addition to reading of the poems. 

7. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY AND THE POPULAR BALLADS. One day. Study above, pages 74-77, and read as many ballads as possible. A full discussion of thequestions of ballad origins and the like is to be found in the 'Cambridge'edition (Houghton Mifflin) of the ballads, edited by Sargent and Kittredge. In addition to matters treated in the text, consider how much feeling theauthors show for Nature, and their power of description. 

8. MALORY AND CAXTON. Two or three days. Study above, pages 77-81, and readin Le Morte Darthur as much as time permits. Among the best books are: VII, XXI, I, Xlll-XVII. Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative qualities. 2. Characterization, including variety of characters. 3. Amount and quality ofdescription. 4. How far is the book purely romantic, how far does realityenter into it? Consider how much notice is given to other classes than thenobility. 5. The style. 

9. THE EARLIER MEDIEVAL DRAMA, INCLUDING THE MYSTERY PLAYS. Two days. Above, Chapter IV, through page 88. Among the best plays for study are:Abraham and Isaac (Riverside L. S. Vol. , p. 7); The Deluge or others in theEveryman Library vol. , pp. 29-135 (but the play 'Everyman' is not a Mysteryplay and belongs to the next assignment); or any in Manly's 'Specimens ofthe Pre-Shakespearean Drama, ' vol. I, pp. 1-211. The Towneley SecondShepherds' Play (so called because it is the second of two treatments ofthe Nativity theme in the Towneley manuscript) is one of the most notableplays, but is very coarse. Subjects for discussion: 1. Narrative structureand qualities. 2. Characterization and motivation. 3. How much illusion ofreality? 4. Quality of the religious and human feeling? 5. The humor andits relation to religious feeling. 6. Literary excellence of both substanceand expression (including the verse form). 

10. THE MORALITIES AND INTERLUDES. One day. Above, pp. 89-91. Students notfamiliar with 'Everyman' should read it (E. L. S. Vol. , p. 66; EverymanLibrary vol. , p. 1). Further may be read 'Mundus et Infans' (The World andthe Child. Manly's 'Specimens, ' I, 353). Consider the same questions as inthe last assignment and compare the Morality Plays with the Mysteries ingeneral excellence and in particular qualities. 

11. THE RENAISSANCE, with special study of The Faerie Queene. Four days. Above, Chapter V, through page 116. Read a few poems of Wyatt and Surrey, especially Wyatt's 'My lute, awake' and 'Forget not yet, ' and Surrey's'Give place, ye lovers, heretofore. ' In 'The Faerie Queene' read thePrefatory Letter and as many cantos of Book I (or, if you are familiar withthat, of some other Books) as you can assimilate--certainly not less thanthree or four cantos. Subjects for discussion: 1. The allegory; itssuccess; how minutely should it be applied? 2. Narrative qualities. 3. Thedescriptions. 4. General beauty. 5. The romantic quality. 6. The language. 7. The stanza, e. G. , the variety of poetical uses and of treatment in suchmatters as pauses. The teacher may well read to the class the moreimportant portions of Lowell's essay on Spenser, which occur in the latterhalf. 

12. THE ELIZABETHAN LYRIC POEMS. Two days. Above, pages 117-121. Read aswidely as possible in the poems of the authors named. Consider such topicsas: subjects and moods; general quality and its contrast with that of laterlyric poetry; emotion, fancy, and imagination; imagery; melody and rhythm;contrasts among the poems; the sonnets. Do not merely make generalstatements, but give definite references and quotations. For the second daymake special study of such particularly 'conceited' poems as the followingand try to explain the conceits in detail and to form some opinion of theirpoetic quality: Lyly's 'Apelles' Song'; Southwell's 'Burning Babe';Ralegh's 'His Pilgrimage'; and two or three of Donne's. 

13. THE EARLIER ELIZABETHAN DRAMA, with study of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Part I. Two days. Above, Chapter VI, through page 129. Historically, Tamerlane was a Mongol (Scythian) leader who in the fourteenth centuryoverran most of Western Asia and part of Eastern Europe in much the wayindicated in the play, which is based on sixteenth century Latin lives ofhim. Of course the love element is not historical but added by Marlowe. Written discussions should begin with a very brief outline of the story(perhaps half a page). Other matters to consider: 1. Is there an abstractdramatic theme? 2. Can regular dramatic structure be traced, with a clearcentral climax? 3. Variety of scenes? 4. Qualities of style, e. G. , relative prominence of bombast, proper dramatic eloquence, and sheerpoetry. 5. Qualities, merits, and faults of the blank verse, in detail. E. G. : How largely are the lines end-stopped (with a break in the sense atthe end of each line, generally indicated by a mark of punctuation), howlargely run-on (without such pause)? Is the rhythm pleasing, varied, ormonotonous? 6. Characterization and motivation. 

14. THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE; SHAKSPERE; AND 'RICHARD II' AS A REPRESENTATIVECHRONICLE-HISTORY PLAY. Three days. Above, pages 129-140. The historicalfacts on which Richard II is based may be found in any short Englishhistory, years 1382-1399, though it must be remembered that Shakspere knewthem only in the 'Chronicle' of Holinshed. In brief outline they are asfollows: King Richard and Bolingbroke (pronounced by the Elizabethans_Bullenbroke_) are cousins, grandsons of Edward III. Richard was amere child when he came to the throne and after a while five lords, amongwhom were his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester (also called in the playWoodstock), and Bolingbroke, took control of the government. Later, Richardsucceeded in recovering it and' imprisoned Gloucester at Calais in thekeeping of Mowbray. There Gloucester was murdered, probably by Richard'sorders. According to Holinshed, whom Shakspere follows, Bolingbroke accusesMowbray of the murder. (This is historically wrong; Bolingbroke's chargewas another, trumped up, one; but that does not concern us. ) Bolingbroke'spurpose is to fix the crime on Mowbray and then prove that Mowbray acted atRichard's orders. 

The story of the play is somewhat similar to that of Marlowe's 'Edward II, 'from which Shakspere doubtless took his suggestion. Main matters toconsider throughout are: The characters, especially Richard andBolingbroke; the reasons for their actions; do they change or develop? Howfar are the style and spirit like Marlowe; how far is there improvement? Isthe verse more poetic or rhetorical? In what sorts of passages or whatparts of scenes is rime chiefly used? Just what is the value of each scenein furthering the action, or for the other artistic purposes of the play?As you read, note any difficulties, and bring them up in the class. 

_For the second day, _ read through Act III. Act I: Why did Richard atfirst try to prevent the combat, then yield, and at the last moment forbidit? Are these changes significant, or important in results? (The 'longflourish' at I, iii, 122, is a bit of stage symbolism, representing aninterval of two hours in which Richard deliberated with his council. )

_For the third day, _ finish the play and write your discussion, whichshould consist of a very brief outline of the story and consideration ofthe questions that seem to you most important. Some, in addition to thoseabove stated, are: How far is it a mere Chronicle-history play, how far aregular tragedy? Has it an abstract theme, like a tragedy? Are there anyscenes which violate unity? Is there a regular dramatic line of action, with central climax? Does Shakspere indicate any moral judgment onBolingbroke's actions? General dramatic power--rapidity in getting started, in movement, variety, etc. ? Note how large a part women have in the play, and how large a purely poetic element there is, as compared with thedramatic. The actual historical time is about two years. Does it appear solong?

15. 'TWELFTH NIGHT' AS A REPRESENTATIVE ROMANTIC COMEDY. Three days, withwritten discussion. In the Elizabethan period the holiday revelry continuedfor twelve days after Christmas; the name of the play means that it is sucha one as might be used to complete the festivities. Helpful interpretationof the play is to be found in such books as: F. S. Boas, 'Shakspere and hisPredecessors, ' pp. 313 ff; Edward Dowden, 'Shakspere's Mind and Art, ' page328; and Barrett Wendell, 'William Shakspere, ' pp. 205 ff. Shakspere tookthe outline of the plot from a current story, which appears, especially, inone of the Elizabethan 'novels. ' Much of the jesting of the clown andothers of the characters is mere light trifling, which loses most of itsforce in print to-day. The position of steward (manager of the estate)which Malvolio holds with Olivia was one of dignity and importance, thoughthe steward was nevertheless only the chief servant. The unsympatheticpresentation of Malvolio is of the same sort which Puritans regularlyreceived in the Elizabethan drama, because of their opposition to thetheater. Where is Illyria, and why does Shakspere locate the play there?

_First day_: Acts I and II. 1. Make sure you can tell the storyclearly. 2. How many distinct actions? 3. Which one is chief? 4. Why doesShakspere combine them in one play? 5. Which predominates, romance orrealism? 6. Note specifically the improbable incidents. 7. For what sortsof scenes are verse and prose respectively used? Poetic quality of theverse? 8. Characterize the main persons and state their relations to theothers, or purposes in regard to them. Which set of persons is mostdistinctly characterized?

_Second day_: The rest. (The treatment given to Malvolio was theregular one for madmen; it was thought that madness was due to an evilspirit, which must be driven out by cruelty. ) Make sure of the story andcharacters as before. 9. How skilful are the interweaving and developmentof the actions? 10. How skilful the 'resolution' (straightening out) of thesuspense and complications at the end? 11. Is the outcome, in its variousdetails, probable or conventional? 12. Is there ever any approach to tragiceffect?

_Third day_: Write your discussion, consisting of: I, a rather fulloutline of the story (in condensing you will do better not always to followShakspere's order), and II, your main impressions, including some of theabove points or of the following: 13. How does the excellence of thecharacterization compare with that in 'Richard II'? 14. Work out thetime-scheme of the play--the amount of time which it covers, the end ofeach day represented, and the length of the gaps to be assumed betweenthese days. Is there entire consistency in the treatment of time? 15. Notein four parallel columns, two for the romantic action and two for theothers together, the events in the story which respectively are and are notpresented on the stage. 

16. 'HAMLET' AS A REPRESENTATIVE TRAGEDY. Four days, with writtendiscussion. Students can get much help from good interpretativecommentaries, such as: C. M. Lewis, 'The Genesis of Hamlet, ' on which thetheories here stated are partly based; A. C. Bradley, 'ShakspeareanTragedy, ' pp. 89-174; Edward Dowden, 'Shakspere Primer, ' 119 ff. ; BarrettWendell, 'William Shakspere, ' 250 ff. ; Georg Brandes, 'WilliamShakespeare, ' one vol. Ed. , book II, chaps. Xiii-xviii; F. S. Boas, 'Shakespeare and his Predecessors, ' 384 ff. ; S. T. Coleridge, 'Lectures onShakspere, ' including the last two or three pages of the twelfth lecture. 

The original version of the Hamlet story is a brief narrative in thelegendary so-called 'Danish History, ' written in Latin by the Dane Saxo theGrammarian about the year 1200. About 1570 this was put into a muchexpanded French form, still very different from Shakspere's, by the'novelist' Belleforest, in his 'Histoires Tragiques. ' (There is atranslation of Belleforest in the second volume of the 'Variorum' editionof 'Hamlet'; also in Hazlitt's 'Shakespeare Library, ' I, ii, 217 ff. )Probably on this was based an English play, perhaps written by Thomas Kyd, which is now lost but which seems to be represented, in miserably garbledform, in an existing text of a German play acted by English players inGermany in the seventeenth century. (This German play is printed in the'Variorum' edition of 'Hamlet, ' vol. II. ) This English play was probablyShakspere's source. Shakspere's play was entered in the 'Stationers'Register' (corresponding to present-day copyrighting) in 1602, and his playwas first published (the first quarto) in 1603. This is evidently onlyShakspere's early tentative form, issued, moreover, by a piraticalpublisher from the wretchedly imperfect notes of a reporter sent to thetheater for the purpose. (This first quarto is also printed in the'Variorum' edition. ) The second quarto, virtually Shakspere's finishedform, was published in 1604. Shakspere, therefore, was evidently working onthe play for at least two or three years, during which he transformed itfrom a crude and sensational melodrama of murder and revenge into aspiritual study of character and human problems. But this transformationcould not be complete--the play remains bloody--and its gradual progress, as Shakspere's conception of the possibilities broadened, has leftinconsistencies in the characters and action. 

It is important to understand the situation and events at the Danish courtjust before the opening of the play. In Saxo the time was represented asbeing the tenth century; in Shakspere, as usual, the manners and the wholeatmosphere are largely those of his own age. The king was the elder Hamlet, father of Prince Hamlet, whose love and admiration for him were extreme. Prince Hamlet was studying at the University of Wittenberg in Germany; inShakspere's first quarto it is made clear that he had been there for someyears; whether this is the assumption in the final version is one of theminor questions to consider. Hamlet's age should also be considered. Thewife of the king and mother of Prince Hamlet was Gertrude, a weak butattractive woman of whom they were both very fond. The king had a brother, Claudius, whom Prince Hamlet had always intensely disliked. Claudius hadseduced Gertrude, and a few weeks before the play opens murdered KingHamlet in the way revealed in Act I. Of the former crime no one but theprincipals were aware; of the latter at most no one but Claudius andGertrude; in the first quarto it is made clear that she was ignorant of it;whether that is Shakspere's meaning in the final version is anotherquestion to consider. After the murder Claudius got himself elected king bythe Danish nobles. There was nothing illegal in this; the story assumesthat as often in medieval Europe a new king might be chosen from among allthe men of the royal family; but Prince Hamlet had reason to feel thatClaudius had taken advantage of his absence to forestall his naturalcandidacy. The respect shown throughout the play by Claudius to Polonius, the Lord Chamberlain, now in his dotage, suggests that possibly Poloniuswas instrumental in securing Claudius' election. A very few weeks after thedeath of King Hamlet, Claudius married Gertrude. Prince Hamlet, recalled toDenmark by the news of his father's death, was plunged into a state ofwretched despondency by the shock of that terrible grief and by hismother's indecently hasty marriage to a man whom he detested. 

There has been much discussion as to whether or not Shakspere means torepresent Hamlet as mad, but very few competent critics now believe thatHamlet is mad at any time. The student should discover proof of thisconclusion in the play; but it should be added that all the earlierversions of the story explicitly state that the madness is feigned. Hamlet's temperament, however, should receive careful consideration. Theactual central questions of the play are: 1. Why does Hamlet delay inkilling King Claudius after the revelation by his father's Ghost in I iv?2. Why does he feign madness? As to the delay: It must be premised that theprimitive law of blood-revenge is still binding in Denmark, so that afterthe revelation by the Ghost it is Hamlet's duty to kill Claudius. Of courseit is dramatically necessary that he shall delay, otherwise there would beno play; but that is irrelevant to the question of the human motivation. The following are the chief explanations suggested, and students shouldcarefully consider how far each of them may be true. 1. There are externaldifficulties, _a_. In the earlier versions of the story Claudius wassurrounded by guards, so that Hamlet could not get at him. Is this true inShakspere's play? _b_. Hamlet must wait until he can justify his deedto the court; otherwise his act would be misunderstood and he might himselfbe put to death, and so fail of real revenge. Do you find indications thatShakspere takes this view? 2. Hamlet is a sentimental weakling, incapableby nature of decisive action. This was the view of Goethe. Is it consistentwith Hamlet's words and deeds? 3. Hamlet's scholar's habit of study andanalysis has largely paralyzed his natural power of action. He must stopand weigh every action beforehand, until he bewilders himself in the mazeof incentives and dissuasives. 4. This acquired tendency is greatlyincreased by his present state of extreme grief and despondency. (Especially argued by Professor Bradley. ) 5. His moral nature revolts atthe idea of assassination; in him the barbarous standard of a primitivetime and the finer feelings of a highly civilized and sensitive man are inconflict. 6. He distrusts the authenticity of the Ghost and wishes to makesure that it is not (literally) a device of the devil before obeying it. Supposing that this is so, does it suffice for the complete explanation, and is Hamlet altogether sincere in falling back on it?

In a hasty study like the present the reasons for Hamlet's pretense ofmadness can be arrived at only by starting not only with some knowledge ofthe details of the earlier versions but with some definite theory. The onewhich follows is substantially that of Professor Lewis. The pretense ofmadness was a natural part of the earlier versions, since in them Hamlet'suncle killed his father openly and knew that Hamlet would naturally wish toavenge the murder; in those versions Hamlet feigns madness in order that hemay seem harmless. In Shakspere's play (and probably in the older play fromwhich he drew), Claudius does not know that Hamlet is aware of his guilt;hence Hamlet's pretense of madness is not only useless but foolish, for itattracts unnecessary attention to him and if discovered to be a pretensemust suggest that he has some secret plan, that is, must suggest toClaudius that Hamlet may know the truth. Shakspere, therefore, retains thepretense of madness mainly because it had become too popular a part of thestory (which was known beforehand to most theater-goers) to be omitted. Shakspere suggests as explanations (motivation) for it, first that itserves as a safety-valve for Hamlet's emotions (is this an adequatereason?); and second that he resolves on it in the first heat of hisexcitement at the Ghost's revelation (I, iv). The student should considerwhether this second explanation is sound, whether at that moment Hamletcould weigh the whole situation and the future probabilities, could realizethat he would delay in obeying the Ghost and so would need the shield ofpretended madness. Whether or not Shakspere's treatment seems rational onanalysis the student should consider whether it is satisfactory as the playis presented on the stage, which is what a dramatist primarily aims at. Itshould be remembered also that Shakspere's personal interest is in thestruggle in Hamlet's inner nature. 

Another interesting question regards Hamlet's love for Ophelia. When did itbegin? Is it very deep, so that, as some critics hold, when Ophelia failshim he suffers another incurable wound, or is it a very secondary thing ascompared with his other interests? Is the evidence in the play sufficientlyclear to decide these questions conclusively? Is it always consistent?

_For the second day, _ study to the end of Act II. Suggestions ondetails (the line numbers are those adopted in the 'Globe' edition andfollowed in most others): I, ii: Notice particularly the difference in theattitude of Hamlet toward Claudius and Gertrude respectively and theattitude of Claudius toward him. At the end of the scene notice thequalities of Hamlet's temperament and intellect. Scenes iv and v: Againnotice Hamlet's temperament, v, 107: The 'tables' are the waxen tabletwhich Hamlet as a student carries. It is of course absurd for him to writeon them now; he merely does instinctively, in his excitement anduncertainty, what he is used to doing. 115-116: The falconer's cry to hisbird; here used because of its penetrating quality. 149 ff. : The speakingof the Ghost under the floor is a sensational element which Shakspere keepsfor effect from the older play, where it is better motivated--there Hamletstarted to tell everything to his companions, and the Ghost's cries aremeant to indicate displeasure. II, ii, 342; 'The city' is Wittenberg. Whatfollows is a topical allusion to the rivalry at the time of writing betweenthe regular men's theatrical companies and those of the boys. 

_Third day, _ Acts III and IV. III, i, 100-101: Professor Lewis pointsout that these lines, properly placed in the first quarto, are out of orderhere, since up to this point in the scene Ophelia has reason to tax herselfwith unkindness, but none to blame Hamlet. This is an oversight ofShakspere in revising. Scene ii, 1 ff. : A famous piece of professionalhistrionic criticism, springing from Shakspere's irritation at bad acting;of course it is irrelevant to the play. 95: Note 'I must be idle. ' Sceneiii: Does the device of the play of scene ii prove wise and successful, onthe whole? 73 ff. : Is Hamlet sincere with himself here?

_Fourth day:_ Finish the play and write your discussion. V, i: Why arethe clowns brought into the play? ii, 283: A 'union' was a large pearl, here dissolved in the wine to make it more precious. In the old playinstead of the pearl there was a diamond pounded fine, which constitutedthe poison. Why is Fortinbras included in the play?

Your discussion should include a much condensed outline of the play, astatement of its theme and main meanings as you see them, and a carefultreatment of whatever question or questions most interest you. In additionto those above suggested, the character of Hamlet is an attractive topic. 

17. The Rest of the Dramatists to 1642, and the Study of Jonson's'Sejanus. ' Three days, with written discussion of 'Sejanus. ' Above, pp. 141-150. Preliminary information about 'Sejanus:' Of the characters in theplay the following are patriots, opposed to Sejanus: Agrippina, Drusus, thethree boys, Arruntius, Silius, Sabinus, Lepidus, Cordus, Gallus, Regulus. The rest, except Macro and Laco, are partisans of Sejanus. In his estimateof Tiberius' character Jonson follows the traditional view, which scholarsnow believe unjust. Sejanus' rule actually lasted from 23-31 A. D. ; Jonsonlargely condenses. Livia Augusta, still alive at the time of the play, andthere referred to as 'the great Augusta, ' was mother of Tiberius and aDrusus (now dead) by a certain Tiberius Claudius Nero (not the EmperorNero). After his death she married the Emperor Augustus, who adoptedTiberius and whom Tiberius has succeeded. The Drusus above-mentioned hasbeen murdered by Tiberius and Sejanus. By the Agrippina of the play Drususwas mother of the three boys of the play, Nero (not the Emperor), DrususJunior, and Caligula (later Emperor). The Drusus Senior of the play is sonof Tiberius. In reading the play do not omit the various introductory proseaddresses, etc. (The collaborator whose part Jonson has characteristicallydisplaced in the final form of the play may have been Shakspere. )

_For the second day, _ read through Act IV. Questions: 1. How far doesJonson follow the classical principles of art and the drama, general andspecial? 2. Try to formulate definitely the differences between Jonson'sand Shakspere's method of presenting Roman life, and their respective powerand effects. Does Jonson's knowledge interfere with his dramaticeffectiveness? 3. The characters. Why so many? How many are distinctlyindividualized? Characterize these. What methods of characterization doesJonson use? 4. Compare Jonson's style and verse with Shakspere's. 5. Effectiveness of III, 1? Is Tiberius sincere in saying that he meant tospare Silius?

_For the third day_, finish the reading and write your discussion. 6. Excellence in general dramatic qualities, especially Movement, Suspense, Variety. Is the act-division organic? 7. State the theme. 8. Locate thepoints in the line of action, especially the central climax. 9. Specificpoints of influence from Greek and Senecan tragedy. Begin your discussionwith a summary of the story (but do not merely copy from Jonson's ownpreliminary 'argument'). 

18. Francis Bacon and his Essays. One day. Above, pp. 151-156. Read half adozen of the Essays, including those on Studies and Friendship. Thenumerous illustrations from classical history and literature were of coursenatural to Bacon and his readers. The main matters for consideration aresuggested above. It would be interesting to state definitely, withillustrations, those characteristics of Bacon's mind which make itimpossible that he should have written Shakspere's plays. Or you mightcompare and contrast his essays with others that you know, such as those ofEmerson, Addison, Macaulay, or Lamb. 

19. The King James Bible. If circumstances permit any number of hours maybe devoted to the style of the Bible or its contents--literary form, narrative qualities or a hundred other topics. Comparison with theWiclifite or other earlier versions is interesting. Above, pp. 156-157. 

20. The Seventeenth Century Minor Lyric Poets. Two days. Above, pages157-164. Read as many as possible of the poems of the authors named. Consider the differences in subjects and tone between them and theElizabethan poets on the one hand and the nineteenth century poets on theother. Form a judgment of their absolute poetic value. 

21. Milton. Above, pp. 164-170. Every one should be familiar with all thepoems of Milton mentioned in the text. Suggested assignments:

One day. The shorter poems. In the 'Nativity Hymn, ' 'L'Allegro, ' and 'IlPenseroso' note appeals to sight (especially light and color), sound, andgeneral physical sensation, and cases of onomatopoeia or especialadaptation of metrical movement to the sense. Of Lycidas write a summaryoutline, indicating thought-divisions by line numbers; state the theme; andconsider Unity. Does the conventional pastoralism render the poemartificial or insincere? Respective elements of Classicism and Romanticismin the shorter poems?

Questions on 'Paradise Lost' are included in the present author's'Principles of Composition and Literature, ' Part II, pages 204 ff. Perhapsthe most important Books are I, II, IV, and VI. 

One of the most suggestive essays on Milton is that of Walter Bagehot. 

22. Bunyan and 'Pilgrim's Progress. ' Above, pages 171-174. Many studentswill have read 'Pilgrim's Progress' as children, but most will gain bycritical study of it. Perhaps two days may be devoted to Part I. Subjectsfor discussion, in addition to those above suggested: 1. The allegory. Compare with that of 'The Faerie Queene. ' 2. The style. Compare with theBible and note words or expressions not derived from it. 3. Bunyan'sreligion--how far spiritual, how far materialistic? 4. His personalqualities--sympathy, humor, etc. 5. His descriptions. Does he care forexternal Nature? Any influence from the Bible?

23. THE RESTORATION PERIOD AND DRYDEN, Above, Chapter VIII. One day. 

24. DRYDEN'S 'ALEXANDER'S FEAST' AND ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL, ' Part I. Howdoes the lyric quality of 'Alexander's Feast' compare with that of the bestlyrics of more Romantic periods? Compare 'Absalom and Achitophel' with thesource in II Samuel, Chapter XIII, verse 23, to Chapter XVIII. 1. Howcleverly is the ancient story applied to the modern facts? (The comparisonof Charles II to David was not original with Dryden, but was a commonplaceof the Court party. Of the minor characters: Ishbosheth, line 58, isRichard Cromwell; Zimri, 544 ff. , the Duke of Buckingham; Corah, 632 ff. , Titus Dates; Bathsheba, 710, the Duchess of Portsmouth; Barzillai, 817, theDuke of Ormond; Zadoc, 864, Archbishop Bancroft. The 'progress' of 729 ff. Is that which Monmouth made in 1680 through the West of England. Who orwhat are the Jebusites, Egypt, Pharoah, and Saul?) 2. Power as a satire? 3. Qualities and effectiveness of the verse, as you see it. How regularly arethe couplets end-stopped? 4. Is it real poetry?

25. THE PSEUDO-CLASSIC PERIOD AND DANIEL DEFOE, with study of Part I of'Robinson Crusoe. ' Three days. Above, pages 189-195, and in 'RobinsonCrusoe' as much as time allows. Better begin with Robinson's fourth voyage(in the 'Everyman' edition, page 27). Consider such matters as: 1. Thesources of interest. Does the book make as strong appeal to grown personsas to children, and to all classes of persons? 2. The use of details. Arethere too many? Is there skilful choice? Try to discover some of thenumerous inconsistencies which resulted from Defoe's haste and generalmanner of composition, and cases in which he attempts to correct them bysupplementary statements. 3. The motivation. Is it always satisfactory? 4. Characterize Robinson. The nature of his religion? How far is his characterlike that of Defoe himself? 5. Success of the characterization of the otherpersons, especially Friday? Does Defoe understand savages? 6. Narrativequalities. How far has the book a plot? Value of the first-personal methodof narration? 7. The Setting. Has Defoe any feeling for Nature, or does hedescribe merely for expository purposes? 8. The style. 9. Defoe's nature asthe book shows it. His sense of humor, pathos, etc. 10. Has the book adefinite theme?

26. JONATHAN SWIFT. Two days. Above, pages 195-202. In the reading, alittle of Swift's poetry should be included, especially a part of 'On theDeath of Dr. Swift'; and of the prose 'A Modest Proposal, ' perhaps the'Journal to Stella' (in brief selections), 'A Tale of a Tub, ' and'Gulliver's Travels. ' Of course each student should center attention on theworks with which he has no adequate previous acquaintance. In 'The Tale ofa Tub' better omit the digressions; read the Author's Preface (not theApology), which explains the name, and sections 2, 4, 6, and 11. Subjectsfor discussion should readily suggest themselves. 

27. STEELE AND ADDISON AND THE 'SPECTATOR' PAPERS. Two days. Above, pages202-208. Read a dozen or more of the 'Spectator' papers, from the DeCoverly papers if you are not already familiar with them, otherwise others. Subjects: 1. The style. What gives it its smoothness-balance of clauses, the choice of words for their sound, or etc. ? The relation of long andshort sentences. 2. The moral instruction. How pervasive is it? Howagreeable? Things chiefly attacked? 3. Customs and manners as indicated inthe essays-entertainments, modes of traveling, social conventions, etc. 4. Social and moral standards of the time, especially their defects, asattacked in the papers. 5. The use of humor. 6. Characterization in the DeCoverly papers. Is the method general or detailed? Is there muchdescription of personal appearance? Is characterization mostly byexposition, action or conversation? How clear are the characters? 7. Is SirRoger real or 'idealized'? 8. General narrative skill (not merely in the DeCoverly papers). 9. How near do the De Coverly papers come to making amodern story? Consider the relative proportions of characterization, action, and setting. 10. Compare the 'Spectator' essays with any otherswith which you are familiar. 

28. ALEXANDER POPE. The number of exercises may depend on circumstances. Above, pages 190-191 and 208-215. As many as possible of the poems named inthe text (except 'The Dunciad') should be read, in whole or in part. 'AnEssay on Criticism': (By 'Nature' Pope means actual reality in anything, not merely external Nature. ) Note with examples the pseudo-classicalqualities in: 1. Subject-matter. 2. The relation of intellectual andemotional elements. 3. The vocabulary and expression. 4. How deep is Pope'sfeeling for external Nature? 5. State his ideas on the relation of'Nature, ' the ancients, and modern poets; also on authority andoriginality. 6. In relation to his capacity for clear thought note in howmany different senses he uses the word 'wit. ' 'The Rape of the Lock': Notethe attitude toward women. Your opinion of its success? How far is it like, how far unlike, the 'Essay on Criticism'? Was the introduction of thesylphs fortunate? Pope took them from current notions--books had beenwritten which asserted that there was a fantastic sect, the Rosicrucians, who believed that the air was full of them. 'Eloisa to Abelard': (Abelardwas a very famous unorthodox philosopher of the twelfth century who lovedHéloise and was barbarously parted from her. Becoming Abbot of a monastery, he had her made Abbess of a convent. From one of the passionate letterswhich later passed between them and which it is interesting to read incomparison Pope takes the idea and something of the substance of the poem. )In your opinion does it show that Pope had real poetic emotion? Does therimed pentameter couplet prove itself a possible poetic vehicle for suchemotion? The translation of 'The Iliad': Compare with correspondingpassages in the original or in the translation of Lang, Leaf, and Myers(Macmillan). Just how does Pope's version differ from the original? Howdoes it compare with it in excellence? The 'Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot': NotePope's personal traits as they appear here. How do the satirical portraitsand the poem in general compare with Dryden's 'Absalom and Achitophel'? Ingeneral summary consider: Pope's spirit, his artistry, his comparative rankas a poet, and the merits and defects of the couplet as he employs it. 

29. SAMUEL JOHNSON. Two days. Above, pages 216-223. 'The Vanity of HumanWishes': How far does it illustrate the pseudo-classical characteristics(above, pages 190 and 215) and Johnson's own traits? How does it comparewith Pope's poems in artistry and power? The prose reading should consistof or include the letter to Lord Chesterfield, a few essays from 'TheRambler, ' one or more of the 'Lives of the Poets' and perhaps a part of'Rasselas. ' 1. The style, both absolutely and in comparison with previouswriters. Is it always the same? You might make a definite study of (a) therelative number of long and short words, (b) long and short and (c) looseand balanced sentences. 2. How far do Johnson's moralizing, his pessimism, and other things in his point of view and personality deprive his work ofpermanent interest and significance? 3. His skill as a narrator? 4. Hismerits and defects as a literary critic? 5. His qualifications and successas a biographer?

30. BOSWELL AND HIS 'LIFE OF JOHNSON. ' One day. Above, pages 223-225. Readanywhere in the 'Life' as much as time allows, either consecutively or atintervals. Your impression of it, absolutely and in comparison with otherbiographies? Boswell's personality. Note an interesting incident or two forcitation in class. 

31. GIBBON AND 'THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. ' One day. Above, pages 225-229. Read a chapter or two in the history. Among the bestchapters are numbers 1, 2, 3, 11, 14, 17, 24, 26, 29, 30, 35, 39, 40, 44, 50, 52, 58, 59, 68. Questions for consideration are suggested above, suchas: his power in exposition and narration; how his history compares withlater ones; his style. 

32. EDMUND BURKE. Two days. Above, pages 229-236. Every one should befamiliar with the speech 'On Conciliation with America. ' The speeches atBristol are among the briefest of Burke's masterpieces. Beyond these, inrapid study he may best be read in extracts. Especially notable are:'Thoughts on the Present Discontents'; 'An Address to the King'; the latterhalf of the speech 'On the Nabob of Areot's Debts'; 'Reflections on theRevolution in France'; 'A Letter to a Noble Lord. ' Subjects forconsideration are suggested by the text. It would be especially interestingto compare Burke's style carefully with Gibbon's and Johnson's. Histechnique in exposition and argument is another topic; consider among otherpoints how far his order is strictly logical, how far modified forpractical effectiveness. 

33. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT, THOMSON, AND COLLINS. One day. Above, pages236-240. The reading may include extracts from Thomson and should includemost of Collins' 'Odes. ' The student should note specifically in Collinsrespective elements of classic, pseudo-classic; and romantic spirit, ingeneral and in details. 

34. GRAY, GOLDSMITH, PERCY, MACPHERSON, AND CHATTERTON. One day. Above, pages 240-247. The reading should include most of Gray's poems and 'TheDeserted Village. ' Questions for consideration are suggested in the text, but students should be able to state definitely just what are the thingsthat make Gray's 'Elegy' a great poem and should form definite opinions asto the rank of 'The Bard' and 'The Progress of Poesy' among lyrics. Thesetwo poems are the best examples in English of, the true Pindaric Ode asdevised by the ancient Greeks. By them it was intended for chanting bydancing choruses. It always consists of three stanzas or some multiple ofthree. In each set of three the first stanza is called the strophe (turn), being intended, probably, for chanting as the chorus moved in onedirection; the second stanza is called the antistrophe, chanted as thechorus executed a second, contrasting, movement; and the third stanza theepode, chanted as the chorus stood still. The metrical structure of eachstanza is elaborate (differing in different poems), but metrically all thestrophes and antistrophes in any given poem must be exactly identical witheach other and different from the epodes. The form is of course artificialin English, but the imaginative splendor and restrained power of expressionto which it lends itself in skilful and patient hands, give it especialdistinction. Lowell declares that 'The Progress of Poesy' 'overflies allother English lyrics like an eagle, ' and Mr. Gosse observes of both poemsthat the qualities to be regarded are 'originality of structure, the variedmusic of their balanced strophes, as of majestic antiphonal choruses, answering one another in some antique temple, and the extraordinary skillwith which the evolution of the theme is observed and restrained. ' 'TheProgress of Poesy' allegorically states the origin of Poetry in Greece;expresses its power over all men for all emotions; and briefly traces itspassage from Greece to Rome and then to England, with Shakspere, Milton, Dryden, and finally some poet yet to be. 'The Bard' is the imagineddenunciatory utterance of a Welsh bard, the sole survivor from theslaughter of the bards made by Edward I of England on his conquest ofWales. The speaker foretells in detail the tragic history of Edward'sdescendants until the curse is removed at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, who as a Tudor was partly of Welsh descent. 

35. COWPER, BLAKE AND BUMS. One day. Above, pages 247-253. The readingshould include a few of the poems of each poet, and students should notedefinitely the main characteristics of each, romantic and general. 

36. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NOVEL AND GOLDSMITH'S 'VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 'Above, pages 253-264. Most students will already have some acquaintancewith 'The Vicar of Wakefield. ' Read again as much as time allows, supplementing and correcting your earlier impressions. Consider: 1. Therelation of idealism, romance, and reality. 2. Probability, motivation, andthe use of accident. 3. The characterization. Characterize the mainpersons. 4. Narrative qualities, such as unity, suspense, movement. 5. Ismoralizing too prominent! 6. The style. 

37. COLERIDGE. One day. Above, pages 265-270. Read at least 'Kubla Khan, ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ' and Part I of 'Christabel. ' In 'KublaKahn' 'Xanadu' is Coleridge's form for 'Xamdu, ' the capital of Kublai Khanin Purchas's Pilgrimage, which Coleridge was reading when he fell into thesleep in which he wrote the poem. Coleridge said (though he is not to betrusted explicitly) that he composed the poem, to a length of over 200lines, without conscious effort; that on awaking he wrote down what hasbeen preserved; that he was then called out on an errand; and returningafter an hour he could recollect only this much. How far do you agree withSwinburne's judgment: 'It is perhaps the most wonderful of all poems. Weseem rapt into that paradise revealed to Swedenborg, where music and colorand perfume were one, where you could hear the hues and see the harmoniesof heaven. For absolute melody and splendor it were hardly rash to call itthe first poem in the language. An exquisite instinct married to a subtlescience of verse has made it the supreme model of music in our language, unapproachable except by Shelley. ' In all the poems consider: 1. Is hisromantic world too remote from reality to be interesting, or has it poeticimagination that makes it true in the deepest sense? 2. Which is moreimportant, the romantic atmosphere, or the story? 3. How important a partdo description or pictures play? Are the descriptions minute orimpressionistic? 4. Note some of the most effective onomatopoeic passages. What is the main meaning or idea of 'The Ancient Mariner'? With referenceto this, where is the central climax of the story? Try to interpret'Christabel. '

38. WORDSWORTH. Two days. Above, pages 270-277. Read as many as time allowsof his most important shorter poems. Your impressions about: 1. His Naturepoems. 2. His ideas of the relation of God, Nature, and Man. 3. Theapplication of his theory of simple subjects and simple style in hispoems--its consistency and success. 4. His emotion and sentiment. 5. Hispoems in the classical style. 6. His political and patriotic sonnets. 7. His power as philosopher and moralizer. 8. His rank as a poet. For the lastday write a clear but brief outline in declarative statements, withreferences to stanza numbers, of the 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality. 'What is its theme?

39. SOUTHEY, SCOTT, AND BYRON. Two days, with discussion of Byron. Above, pages 277-288. No reading is here assigned in Southey or Scott, becauseSouthey is of secondary importance and several of Scott's works, both poemsand novels, are probably familiar to most students. Of Byron should be readpart of the third and fourth cantos of 'Childe Harold' and some of thelyric poems. Subjects for discussion are suggested in the text. Especiallymay be considered his feeling for Nature, his power of description, and thequestion how far his faults as a poet nullify his merits. 

40. SHELLEY. Two days. Above, pages 288-294. The reading should include themore important lyric poems. 1. Does his romantic world attract you, or doesit seem too unreal? 2. Note specific cases of pictures, appeals to varioussenses, and melody. 3. Compare or contrast his feeling for Nature and histreatment of Nature in his poetry with that of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, or Byron. Read 'Adonais' last and include in your report an outlineof it in a dozen or two sentences, with references to stanza numbers. Theoutline should indicate the divisions of the poems and should make thethought-development clear. (The poem imitates the Greek elegies, of whichthe earliest now preserved was the Lament by Bion for Adonis, themythological youth beloved by Venus. ) Shelley seems to have invented thename 'Adonais' (standing for 'Keats') on analogy with 'Adonis. ' Stanzas 17, 27-29, and 36-38 refer to the reviewer of Keats' poems in 'The QuarterlyReview. ' In stanza 30 'The Pilgrim of Eternity' is Byron and the poet ofIerne (Ireland) is Thomas Moore. 231 ff: the 'frail Form' is Shelleyhimself. 

41. KEATS. One day. Above, pages 294-298. Read 'The Eve of St. Agnes, ' the'Ode to a Nightingale, ' 'Ode to a Grecian Urn, ' and others of the shorterpoems. 1. Note definitely for citation in class passages of strong appealto the various senses and of beautiful melody and cadence. 2. Just what arethe excellences of 'The Eve of St. Agnes'? Is it a narrative poem? 3. Consider classical and romantic elements in the poems. 

42. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VICTORIAN PERIOD, AND MACAULAY. Two days, with written discussion, of Macaulay. Above, pages 299-309. Read either (1)one of the essays, for example that on Olive or Bacon or Pitt or Chatham orWarren Hastings, or (2) a chapter in the History. Good chapters for thepurpose are: 3, 5, 8, 15, 16, 20, 25. The following topics may be used forwritten discussions, or may be assigned to individual students for oralreports in class. Oral reports should be either written out in full andread or given from notes; they should occupy five or ten minutes each andmay include illustrative quotations. 1. The effect of Macaulay'sself-confidence and dogmatism on the power of his writing and on thereader's feeling toward it. 2. His power in exposition; e. G. , the numberand concreteness of details, the power of selection, emphasis, and bringingout the essentials. 3. Structure, including Unity, Proportion, Movement. 4. Traits of style; e. G. , use of antithesis and figures of speech; sentencelength and balance. 5. How far does his lack of Idealism injure his work?Has he the power of appealing to the grand romantic imagination? 6. Hispower in description. 7. Power as a historian. Compare him with otherhistorians. 

43. CARLYLE. Two days. Above, pages 309-314. Unless you are alreadyfamiliar with 'Sartor Resartus' read in it Book II, chapters 6-9, and alsoif by any means possible Book III, chapters 5 and 8. Otherwise read in'Heroes and Hero-Worship' or 'The French Revolution. ' (The first and thirdbooks of 'Sartor Resartus' purport to consist of extracts from a printedbook of Teufelsdröckh, with comments by Carlyle; the second book outlinesTeufelsdröckh's (Carlyle's) spiritual autobiography. ) In 'Sartor Resartus':1. Make sure that you can tell definitely the precise meaning of TheEverlasting No, The Center of Indifference, and The Everlasting Yea. Lookup, e. G. In 'The Century Dictionary, ' all terms that you do notunderstand, such as 'Baphometic Fire-Baptism. ' 2. Your general opinion ofhis style? 3. Note definitely its main peculiarities in (a) spirit; (b)vocabulary and word forms; (c) grammar and rhetoric. 

44. RUSKIN. Two days. Above, pages 314-319. Most convenient for thepurposes of this study is Tinker's 'Selections from Ruskin' (RiversideLiterature Series). Everything there is worth while; but among the bestpassages are 'The Throne, ' page 138, and 'St. Mark's, ' page 150; whilepages 20-57 are rather more technical than the rest. Among Ruskin'scomplete works 'Sesame and Lilies, ' 'The Crown of Wild Olives, ' and'Præterita' are as available and characteristic as any. Subjects forwritten or oral reports: 1. His temperament and his fitness as a critic andteacher. 2. His style--eloquence, rhythm, etc. 3. His power of observation. 4. His power in description. Consider both his sensitiveness tosense-impressions and his imagination. 5. His expository power. 6. Hisideas on Art. How far are they sound? (In the 'Selections' there arerelevant passages on pages 164, 200, and 233. ) 7. His religious ideas. Howfar do they change with time? 8. His ideas on modern political economy andmodern life. How far are they reasonable? (Perhaps 'Munera Pulveris' or'Unto This Last' states his views as well as any other one of his works. )9. Compare with Carlyle in temperament, ideas, and usefulness. 

45. MATTHEW ARNOLD. Three days. Above, pages 319-325. The poems read shouldinclude 'Sohrab and Rustum' and a number of the shorter ones. Thediscussion of the poems may treat: The combination in Arnold of classic andromantic qualities; distinguishing traits of emotion and expression; and, in 'Sohrab and Rustum, ' narrative qualities. If you are familiar withHomer, consider precisely the ways in which Arnold imitates Homer's style. Of the prose works best read 'Culture and Anarchy, ' at least theintroduction (not the Preface), chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5, and the Conclusion. Otherwise read from the essays named in the text or from Professor L. E. Gates' volume of Selections from Arnold. Consider more fully any of thepoints treated above. If you read the 'Essays on Translating Homer' notethe four main qualities which Arnold finds in Homer's style. 

46. TENNYSON. Two days. Above, pages 325-329. Special attention may begiven to any one, or more, of the statements or suggestions in the text, considering its application in the poems read, with citation ofillustrative lines. Or consider some of the less simple poems carefully. E. G. , is 'The Lady of Shalott' pure romance or allegory? If allegory, what isthe meaning? Outline in detail the thought-development of 'The Two Voices. 'Meaning of such poems as 'Ulysses' and 'Merlin and the Gleam'?

47. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING AND ROBERT BROWNING. Two days. Above, pages329-335. In general consider the application of the statements in the text;and in the case of Robert Browning consider emotional, dramatic, descriptive, and narrative power, poetic beauty, and adaptation of theverse-form to the substance. Interpret the poems as carefully as possible;discussions may consist, at least in part, of such interpretations. 

48. ROSSETTI, MORRIS AND SWINBURNE. Above, pages 335-341. Students mightcompare and contrast the poetry of these three men, either on the basis ofpoints suggested in the text or otherwise. 

From this point on, the time and methods available for the study are likelyto vary so greatly in different classes that it seems not worth while tocontinue these suggestions.