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POETS AND NOVELISTS

POETS AND NOVELISTS

A SERIES OF LITERARY STUDIES

BY

GEORGE BARNETT SMITH

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1875

[All rights reserved]

i.

r

I INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME

TO

ROBERT BROWNING

IN REMEMBRANCE OF HIS PERSONAL KINDNESS

AND

AS A TRIBUTE TO HIS GENIUS

G. B. S.

LONDON : 1875

rro

PREFACE.

THE following Studies however defective in other re-
spects possess some claim to exhaustiveness, and con-
sequently I have ventured to hope that with many
persons they may have a permanent value. They have
been revised, and in some cases extended, from the
leading Reviews and Magazines. Notwithstanding, how-
ever, the favourable reception the Essays met with on
their original appearance, I might not now have collected
them, and endeavoured to give to them 'a local habitation
and a name,' but for the fact that I have been repeatedly
pressed to do so by numerous individuals whose tribute
(in some cases, at least) I cannot but regard as flattering
who were desirous of possessing them in a volume. I
can only trust that the public and the press will now en-
dorse their verdict. The subjects of the papers, however
imperfectly treated, are amongst the most attractive which
can be named for lovers of books. With regard to the
Essay on Thomas Love Peacock, I may be pardoned for

a

viii PREFACE.

claiming that it was the first full and substantial recog-
nition of his genius; since it appeared; an admirable
edition of his works has been issued, and I am glad
that this really remarkable writer has received a much
fuller attention than he enjoyed during his lifetime, and
even down to the last two or three years. As for the
volume generally, my end will have been answered if it
should hi any appreciable degree strengthen the taste for
our noble English Literature.

G. B. S.

CONTENTS

PAGE

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY . I

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING . 57

THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK IIJ

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE . *5 l
THE BRONTES .

HENRY FIELDING . . . 251

ROBERT BUCHANAN . 37

ENGLISH FUGITIVE POETS . 3^5

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

[EDINBURGH REVIEW]

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

THE pure humourist is one of the rarest of literary
characters. His nature is not content with detecting
foibles, nor his pen with pointing them out for derision ;
his purpose is infinitely higher and nobler. The humour-
ist must have emotions, nerves, sensibilities, and that
marvellous sympathy with human nature which enables
him to change places at will with other members of his
species. Humour does not produce the sneer of
Voltaire ; it rather smiles through the tear of Montaigne.
* True humour,' it has been wisely said, c springs not
more from the head than from the heart ; it is not con-
tempt, its essence is love ; it issues not in laughter, but
in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of in-
verse sublimity ; exalting as it were into our affections
what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our
affections what is above us. It is, in fact, the bloom and
perfume, the purest effluence of a deep, fine, and loving
nature.' Without humour, society would exist in Ice-

B 2

POETS AND NOVELISTS.

landic snows : wit, like the winter sun, might glint upon
the icebergs, but they would not be plastic in its glance
calm, lofty, and cold they must remain. But humour
is the summer heat that generates while it smiles the
power which touches dead things and revivifies them
with its generous warmth and geniality. Wit engages
and amuses the individual intellect ; humour knits hearts
together ; is, in truth, in a broad sense, that ' touch of
nature which makes the whole world kin.' Now the
world may be regarded as being composed of three
classes, viz., those of us who laugh, those with whom we
laugh, and those at whom we laugh ; and the tenderest
solicitude is experienced by each unit of humanity lest,
through some fortuitous circumstances, he should irre-
trievably find himself a denizen of the last-named class.
To some of the first class is given the power of directing
the laugh of others, and this power is current as wit ;
when to the faculty of originating ridicule is added the
power of concentrating pity or pathos upon the subject,
this may be styled humour. But the irony must be
subjugated to the feeling. The heart must love while
the countenance may smile. It will, then, be perceived,
in view of these distinctions, how the humourist may
assert a claim in all great and essential things superior
to that which can be advanced by the wit. Humourists

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 5

are the salt of the national intellectual life. England,
who occasionally claims a questionable superiority in
some respects over other nations, may, in the growth of
genuine humour, be allowed the pre-eminence, Germany
approaching her perhaps in the nearest degree. What
other literature, since the days of Elizabeth, can show
such a roll of humourists as that which is inscribed with
the names (amongst others) of Richardson, Addison,
Steele, Prior, Gay, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and Gold-
smith ? Yet after the closing names of this galaxy a
dearth was witnessed like that which immediately pre-
ceded their advent. It appears as though the soil of
literature, having grown to its utmost capacity the pro-
duct of humour, demanded time for recuperating its
powers. During the past thirty or forty years another
growth sprang up, and Hood, Lamb, and other inheritors
of the marvellous gift have enriched the world with the
perfume of their lives and works. Amongst the latest
band of humourists, however, there is no name more
remarkable or more justly distinguished than that which
is now under consideration.

From the operation of various causes, the works of
Thackeray have not hitherto enjoyed a circulation com-
mensurate with their intrinsic merits. The sale of the
best of his writings in his lifetime fell far short of the

POETS AND NOVELISTS.

popular demand for the works of Scott or Dickens. But
their hold on society, and the recognition of their per-
manent value and excellence, have gone on steadily
increasing with each succeeding year, and very recently
new and complete editions of them have been issued,
which are within the reach of all readers. At this period,
then, it may be fitting to consider the life's work of this
deepest and purest of modern English satirists.

It was in these pages that the first substantial recog-
nition of the genius of the author of ' Vanity Fair ' ap-
peared : a quarter of a century has elapsed since then ;
but in the short period between that epoch in his career
and his death, a series of brilliant works issued rapidly
from his pen a pen facile to charm, to instruct, and to
reprove. These works have fully justified the terms of
praise in which we referred to his first great fiction. Yet
it would be difficult to name a writer of fiction of equal
excellence who had so little of the inventive or imagi-
native faculty. Keenness of observation and a nice
appreciation of character supplied him with all the ma-
terials of his creations. He wrote from the experience
of life, and the foibles of mankind which he satirised
were those that had fallen under his notice in the vicissi-
tudes of his own career, or might sometimes be traced in
the recesses of his own disposition. The key, therefore,

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 7

to Thackeray's works is to be found in his life ; and few
literary biographies would be more interesting, if it were
written with a just and discriminating pen. We would
venture to suggest to his accomplished daughter, who
has shown by her own writings that some at least of his
gifts have descended to her by inheritance, that she
should undertake a task which no one else can fulfil with
so natural and delicate a feeling of her father's genius.
Probably it might already have been attempted, but for
the extreme repugnance of Thackeray himself to allow
his own person to be brought before the world, or to
suffer the sanctity of private correspondence to be in-
vaded. Nobody wrote more amusing letters ; but he
wrote them not for the public. As it is, even his birth
and descent have not been correctly stated in the current
works of the day. His great-grandfather was in the
Church, once Master of Harrow, and afterwards an
Archdeacon. He had seven sons, one of whom, also
named William Makepeace Thackeray, entered the Civil
Service of India, became a Member of Council, and sat
at the Board with Warren Hastings, some of whose
minutes he signed. The son of this gentleman, and the
father of our novelist, was Richmond Thackeray, also a
Civil servant, who died, in 1816, at the early age of thirty.
Thackeray himself was born at Calcutta, in 1811, and

8 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

was sent to England when he was seven years old. On
the voyage home the vessel touched at St. Helena, where
the child saw Napoleon Bonaparte. The black servant
who attended him attributed to the ex-Emperor the most
ravenous propensities. ' He eats,' said the sable exagge-
rator, ' three sheep every day, and all the children he can
lay hands on.' The joke figured years afterwards in one
of Thackeray's sketches. This early connection with
India left its mark in his memory, and the pleasant allu-
sions to the great Ramchunder and the Bundelcund Bank
were suggested by the traditions of his own infancy, He
inherited from his father (who died when he was five
years old) a considerable fortune, part of which had
fortunately been settled on his mother, who was re-
married to Major Carmichael Smyth. The remainder
was left at his own disposal, and rendered him an object
of envy and admiration to his less fortunate contempo-
raries. The boy was sent to the Charter House, where
he remained for some years ; and here again the reader
familiar with his works may trace a multitude of allusions
to his school-days under Dr. Russell, then the master of
that school. About the year 1828 he went up to Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he was the friend and con-
temporary of Tennyson, Venables, John Mitchell Kem-
ble, Charles and Arthur Buller, John Sterling, R. Monck-

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 9

ton Mimes, and of that distinguished set of men, some of
whom had preceded him by a year or two, who formed
what was called the Society of the Apostles, though he
was not himself a member of that society. It must be
confessed that at Cambridge Thackeray gave no signs of
distinguished ability. He was chiefly known for his in-
exhaustible drollery, his love of repartee, and for his
humourous command of the pencil. But his habits were
too desultory for him to enter the lists of academic com-
petition, and, like Arthur Pendennis, he left the Univer-
sity without taking a degree. At the age of twenty-one
he entered upon London life ; he visited Weimar, which
he afterwards portrayed as the Court of Pumpernickel ;
and he was frequently in Paris, where his mother resided
since her second marriage. His fortune and position in
society seemed to permit him to indulge his tastes and
to live as a gentleman at large. But the dream was of
short duration. Within a few months he contracted a
sleeping partnership which placed his property in the
hands of a man who turned out to be insolvent, and the
fortune he relied on was lost before he had enjoyed it.
The act was one of gross imprudence, no doubt, and he
suffered bitterly for it ; but it is not true, as has some-
times been supposed, from his lively description of scenes
of folly and vice, that he lost his money by his own per-

io POETS AND NOVELISTS.

sonal extravagance. Thus, then, he found himself, at two
or three and twenty, with very reduced means, for he
had nothing to live on but the allowance his mother and
grandmother were able to make him ; with no profession,
with desultory tastes and habits, and with no definite
prospects in life before him. His first scheme was to
turn artist and to cultivate painting in the Louvre, for he
now resided chiefly with his relatives in Paris. But in
the art of design he was, in truth, no more than an ac-
complished amateur. The drawings with which he after-
wards illustrated his own books are full of expression,
humour, grace, and feeling; but they want the correct-
ness and mastery of the well-trained artist. He turned
then, with more hope, at the age of thirty, to the resources
of the pen. But it is remarkable that all his literary pro-
ductions of this, his earlier period, were anonymous ; and
his literary efforts, though not wanting in pungency and
an admirable style, were scattered in multifarious publi-
cations, and procured for him but small profit and no
fame. These years, from thirty to seven-and-thirty,
which ought to have been the brightest, were the most
cheerless of his existence. He wrote letters in the
'Times' under the signature of Manlius Pennialinus.
He wrote an article on Lord Brougham in the ' British
and Foreign Review,' which excited attention. But po-

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 11

litical writing even political sarcasm was not his forte ;
and when politics ceased to be a joke, they became to
him a bore. Amongst other experiments he accepted
the editorship of a London daily newspaper, called ' The
Constitutional and Public Ledger/ but like its name-
sake, which had been started and edited, a few years
before, by another man of great literary genius, destined
to achieve in after-life a more illustrious career this
journal lingered for ten months and then expired. The
foundation of ' Punch ' was a work after Thackeray's own
heart, and he contributed largely to the earlier numbers.
But it was not till 1841 that he really began to make his
mark in literature, under the well-known pseudonym of
Michael Angelo Titmarsh, a name in which the dream of
the artist still haunted the fancy of the humourist. In
the midst of his perplexities, with that genuine tenderness
of feeling which lay at the bottom of all his sarcasms,
Thackeray fell in love, and married a young lady who
might have sat for the portrait of his own Amelia, but
who was not better endowed than himself with the world's
goods, and much less able than himself to battle with
adverse fortune. But his domestic life was overclouded
by a greater calamity than these, and the malady of his
wife threw a permanent shadow over the best affections
of his heart, which were thenceforward devoted to his

12 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

children alone. Such was the school in which the genius
of Thackeray was educated. It was not imaginative ; it
was not spontaneous ; it was the result of a hard and
varied experience of life and the world. It left him
somewhat prone to exaggerate the follies and baseness of
mankind, but it never froze or extinguished his love and
sympathy for justice, tenderness, and truth. In 1847,
when he was six-and-thirty years of age, he braced him-
self up, for the first time, for a great and continuous
literary effort, and he came before the world, which
hitherto had known him only as a writer of jests and
magazine articles, as the author of 'Vanity Fair.' His
style, which was the result of the most careful and fasti-
dious study, had now attained a high degree of perfec-
tion. In the comparison which was naturally drawn
between himself and Dickens, then in the heyday of
popularity, it was obvious that in the command of the
English language Thackeray was incomparably the
master. His style was to the style of Dickens what marble
is to clay ; and although he never attained to the suc-
cessful vogue of his contemporary, in his lifetime, it was
evident to the critical eye that the writings of Thackeray
had in them that which no time could dim or obliterate.

With this novel, then, so surprising in its frankness
and in its knowledge of human nature, commenced a

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 13

career which could know no repression. A mine of gold
had been struck, and the nuggets were cast up freely by
the hands of the hard and honest worker. In the writing
of books admired by every hater of pretence, and the
delivery of lectures which were as new in their style and
treatment as his novels, the rest of the life of Thackeray
passed away. The last fifteen years of it were years of
success, celebrity, and comparative affluence. He had
attained a commanding position in literature and in
society, though it must be acknowledged that except in
a very small circle of intimate friends, he rarely put forth
any brilliant social qualities. How he impaled snobbery
in ' Punch ' and gave a new impetus to serial literature
by his editorship of the ' Cornhill Magazine,' are facts
too widely disseminated to be dilated upon. A most
good-natured editor, conscientious as well as kind, was
Thackeray ; but the work was not to his taste, and after
a short period he relinquished it at a large pecuniary
sacrifice. To that terrible person, the owner of a ' re-
jected contribution/ he was frequently most generous,
breaking the literary disappointment with the solace of a
bank-note in many instances. But finding it painfully
difficult to say ' No ' when it became imperative to
reject would-be contributors, he fled from the field in
despair. To a friend he said on one occasion, 'How

14 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

can I go into society with comfort ? I dined the other

day at 's, and at the table were four gentlemen

whose masterpieces of literary art I had been compelled
to decline with thanks.' So he informed his readers for
the last time that he would ' not be responsible for re-
jected communications.' On Christmas Eve, 1863, came
the event which touched the heart of Britain with a
genuine grief. The not altogether uneventful career of
one of the truest and best of men was closed. When it
was known that the author of ' Vanity Fair ' would charm
the world no longer by his truthful pictures of English
life, the grief was what we would always have it be when
a leader of the people in war, arts, or letters is stricken
down in the strife deep, general, and sincere.

Postponing for the moment a consideration of what
we conceive to be the leading characteristics of
Thackeray's genius, a certain measure of insight into the
author's mind may be gained by a glance at his works
premising that they are not taken in strict chronological
order. First, with regard to his more important novels.
The key with which he opened the door of fame was un-
doubtedly ' Vanity Fair.' Though other writings of a
less ambitious nature had previously come from his pen,
until the production of this book there was no evidence
that Thackeray would ever assume the high position in

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 15

letters now unanimously awarded to him. But here, at
any rate, was demonstrative proof that a new star had
arisen. And yet, general as was this belief, no intelligible
grounds were for a time assigned for it. The novelist
himself always regarded his first work as his best ; though
we think that in this respect he has followed the example
of Milton and other celebrated authors, and chosen as
his favourite that which is not absolutely the best, though
it may be equal to any which succeeded it. Probably
the book was one round whose pages a halo had been
thrown by various personal circumstances. But the
famous yellow covers in which the ' Novel without a
Hero ' originally appeared were not at first sought after
with much avidity. Soon, however, it became known
that a new delineator of life was at work in society, and
one whose pen was as keen as the dissecting knife of the
surgeon. An author had sprung up who dared to shame
society by a strong and manly scorn, and by proclaiming
that it ought to loathe itself in dust and ashes. The
world was not unwilling to read the reflection of its
weaknesses and its vices mirrored with so much wit,
originality, and genius. How account otherwise for the
favour which the work subsequently attained, when it
lacked as a novel many of those characteristics for which
novels are most eagerly read ? To the initial difficulty

1 6 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

of a story without a hero, the writer had voluntarily
added that of a lack of consecutiveness and complete-
ness. It was probably begun by the author not only
without a hero, but without a plot. We doubt whether
any of his novels were written on a plan. Several of them
evidently turned under his pen into something quite
different from what he had originally intended. 'The
Virginians ' completely reversed, for instance, his first
conception. But the novelist had what he considered a
greater end in view than mere plot, one which has been
well summed up by La Bruyere, who says : * Tout
fesprii d'un auteur consiste a bien definir et a bien peindre?
This sentence concisely expresses the fulfilled genius of
Thackeray. His mode of narrative consists in a series
of pictures after the manner of Hogarth, but their popu-
larity sufficiently attested their accuracy. There is no
one character in ' Vanity Fair ' which can be deemed
perfectly satisfactory not that the reader always cares
for that, preferring sometimes the most thoroughpaced
villainy (viewing authorship as a question of art) to the
most superlative virtue. Becky Sharp, the unprincipled
governess, has been as unduly detested as Amelia Sedley
has been too lavishly praised. There is nothing in the
earlier chapters to prove that Becky Sharp was naturally
and entirely unprincipled and unscrupulous, and it was

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 17

obviously the intention of the author to show that society
might justly assume a great portion of the responsibility
for the after-development of those qualities. With
certain ground to work upon, and given conditions as
adjuncts, the influence of society on natures like Becky
Sharp's would be to encrust them with selfishness and
superinduce complete hypocrisy. If heroine there be in
the novel it is this clever adventuress, and except on
some half-dozen occasions it is scarcely possible to avoid
a pity approaching to contempt for the character of
Amelia Sedley, who is intended to personify the good
element an author generally casts about to discover when
concocting a story. Captain Dobbin is overdrawn, and
one is well-nigh tempted to wish that he had a little less
virtue and a little more selfishness. While we love him
he has a tendency to make us angry. The most masterly
touches in the volume are those in which the portraits of
the Marquis of Steyne and of Sir Pitt Crawley are
sketched. The aristocracy furnish the villains and the
most contemptible specimens of the race, whilst the
excellent persons come from the ranks of the middle
class and the poor their namby-pambyism, however,
now and then reducing their claims to our regard. The
author speaks for the most part in his own person^ and
herein lies one of the principal reasons for the success of

c

1 8 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

the book. We feel the satirist at our elbow ; he is not
enveloped in thick folds in the distance ; as we read his
trenchant observations and withering sarcasms we can
almost see the glances of scorn or of pity which he would
assume when engaged in his task. Well might the world
exclaim that this was no novice who thus wrote of its
meannesses and its glory, its virtues and its vices. This
novel lifted him at once into the position of one of
the ablest writers of subjective fiction. It is especially
remarkable in connection with 'Vanity Fair' to note
the extremely little conversational matter in a tale of
this great length ; another proof that the strength of
the author lay not in the conventional groove of the
novelist, but in those other powers -of Thackeray rare
observation, an acute penetration of motives, an abhor-
rence of sham or pretence, and an entirely new and
genuine humour.

In ' Pendennis/ the next great work by Thackeray,
there is not only some approach to a consecutive plot,
but we are inclined to think finer drawing of individual
character than in its predecessor. There is not so much
brilliancy of writing, but there is a considerable advance
in the art of the novelist. With all the graphic touches
which took form in the features of Becky Sharp, Amelia
Sedley, and Captain Dobbin, there is nothing in the

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 19

earlier work to compare with the portraits of George
Warrington, Helen Pendennis, and Laura. The hero,
Arthur, is one who succumbs to the ordinary temptations
of life, and has very little attaching to him of that ro-
mance in which a hero is generally expected to be en-
shrined. Because it was so natural the book was not
regarded at first as very successful : nothing could be
truer to the original than the manner in which Arthur
Pendennis is sketched, and his love passages with Miss
Fotheringay, the actress, are naively related ; but it was
of course impossible to become inspired with the same
feelings towards him as are excited by the chivalric
heroes of Scott. A man who resorts in the morning to a
bottle of soda-water to correct the exuberant spirits of
the night before is not calculated to awaken much per-
sonal adoration. He is too fallible, and the novel-reading
community demands sinless heroes and heroines ere it
consents to raise them to the lofty pedestal accorded to
its greatest favourites. There is no exaggeration in a
single portrait to be found in ' Pendennis j ' all are true ;
are true to the minutest detail, and the author has simply
acted as the photographer to his clients he 'nothing
extenuates or sets down aught in malice.' The early
follies of Pendennis, and his University career which
was chiefly noticeable for splendid suppers and dealings

c 2

20 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

with money-lenders at a hundred per cent. are de-
scribed with no sparing pen. The case is typical of
thousands now, and is no credit to the youth of the
Universities. ' Only wild oats,' the apologists for under-
graduate extravagance remind us ; but there is no natural
necessity that this particular University crop should be
sown ; many men, worthy men too, are compelled to go
through life without the satisfaction of having ruined their
friends by their follies. The result overtook Pendennis
which righteously succeeds, or ought to succeed, to dissi-
pation and neglect of study. When the degree examina-
tions came, ' many of his own set who had not half his
brains, but a little regularity and constancy of occupation,
took high places in the honours, or passed with decent
credit. And where in the list was Pen the superb. Pen
the wit and dandy, Pen the poet and orator? Ah, where
was Pen the widow's darling and sole pride? Let us
hide our heads and shut up the page. The lists came
out ; and a dreadful rumour rushed through the Univer-
sity that Pendennis of Boniface was plucked.' Yet
though he fled from the University the widow went on
loving him still, just the same, and little Laura hugged to
her heart with a secret passion the image of the young
scapegrace. So inexplicable and so devoted is the
character, of woman ! The little oiphan paid the debts

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 21

of the dashing, clever hero. More sketches of society
with its hollowness and pretence follow this revelation,
and then we find Arthur in the modern Babylon soon to
become the friend of George Warrington, who was des-
tined to be his guide, philosopher, and friend. The
brains of our hero now became of service, and in dwell-
ing on his intellectual labour Thackeray details the secret
history of a literary hack, together with the story of the
establishment of a newspaper for 'the gentlemen of
England,' the prospectus of which was written by Captain
Shandon in Fleet Prison. Brilliant indeed were the in-
tellectual Bohemians who wrote for that witty and critical
journal. There are no more interesting or amusing
sketches in the whole of the author's novels than those
relating to this paper, and the intimate knowledge dis-
played in the details of the schemes of rival printers and
publishers was a part of the author's own dearly-bought
experience. Arthur is strangely consoled in his endea-
vours to live by the aid of literature by his uncle Major
Pendennis, who assures him that ' poetry and genius, and
that sort of thing, were devilishly disreputable' in his
time. But success waits on him, and he can afford to
smile at the eccentric officer. Were it not for the closing
pages of ' Pendennis ' we could almost feel angry with
Thackeray for challenging our interest in Arthur. But

22 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

the lesson he had to teach compensates for all disappoint-
ments. No stones are to be unnecessarily thrown at the
erring, and the shadows in Pendennis's life are to teach
others how to avoid similar errors. The unworthy often
run away with the honours. The history of Pendennis
closes with fruition for the hero, while the nobler cha-
racter, George Warrington, suffers loss. But then the
novelist justly observes :

' If the best men do not draw the great prizes in life, we
know that it has been so ordained by the Ordainer of the
lottery ; we own, and see daily, how the false and worthless
live and prosper, while the good are .called away, and the
dear and young perish untimely. We perceive in every
man's life maimed happiness, the frequent falling, the boot-
less endeavour, the struggle of right and wrong, in which
the strong often succumb and the swift fail ; we see flowers
of good blooming in foul places, as in the most lofty and
splendid fortunes, flaws of vice and meanness, and stains of
evil, and, knowing how mean the best of us is, let us give a
hand of charity to Arthur Pendennis, with all his faults and
shortcomings, who does not claim to be a hero, but only a
man and a brother.'

Passing by temporarily the lectures on the Humourists
in order to preserve the chain of novels unbroken, we
come to a work which is perhaps the most satisfactory
of all Thackeray's writings, regarding them purely in
the light of literary art. There are few productions in

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 23

the world of fiction which exhibit the finish of ' Esmond/
for the author has not only drawn his characters with
unusual skill, but delighted the reader with repeated
bursts of natural, unaffected eloquence, in language
sedulously borrowed from the age of Steele and Addison.
As regards style, indeed, 'Esmond' is an incredible
tour- de-force, and is by far the most original of all his
books. For the first time the author transplants us to
that age which afterwards became of such absorbing
interest to him that he could not tear himself away from
it ; so imbued was he altogether with the literature of
the time of Queen Anne and George I. that at last he
seemed to live in it. At his death he had another work
in contemplation whose period was fixed in the eighteenth
century. It is easy even to the uninitiated to discover
that Thackeray wrote this history of Esmond, a colonel
in the service of Her Majesty Queen Anne, thoroughly
con amore. He revelled in his theme and in the associa-
tions it brought with it. Genial, witty Dick Steele and
Mr. Joseph Addison are introduced to us, and we see
them, along with Esmond, drinking the Burgundy, which,
says Addison, 'my Lord Halifax sent me.' We are
carried through portions of Marlborough's campaigns,
and the spirit blazes with enthusiasm at the pluck which
wrought such valiant deeds, and brought undying honour

24 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

on the British arms. The avarice and ambition of the
brilliant Churchill are forgotten as the plans of his con-
summate genius are unravelled. Esmond's career with
General Webb is traced with intense interest, and the
scenes become as real to us as they undoubtedly seemed
to the author. The plot of the book is not of the
happiest description, the machinations of the Jacobites
being interwoven largely with the thread of the narrative.
The hero loves in the outset Beatrix Esmond, daughter
of a viscount, and the devotion he exhibits to the idol of
his heart and his imagination is something extraordinary
even in comparison with the loves of other heroes.
Beatrix, however, was unworthy of it: homage she would
receive, true passion she seemed incapable of returning.
Self-willed to a degree, the noble nature of such a man
as Esmond was as a sealed book to her. His gravest
feelings she treated with levity, and at length her con-
duct with the Pretender broke the spell, and threw down
from its lofty pedestal, once and for ever, the idol he had
set up. Like the marble it was beautiful to the eye ; like
the marble it was cold and insensible to the touch.
Finally, Esmond contracts a union with Beatrix's mother,
Lady Castlewood, still handsome and comparatively
young, and who had always cherished the memory of
Esmond as one whom she dearly loved in his youth.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 25

Her affection for him had never waned. The volume
closes with their settlement on the banks of the Potomac,
in a calm and serene happiness. The autobiographer, in
describing their Virginian estate and Transatlantic life,
says : ' Our diamonds are turned into ploughs and axes
for our plantations, and into negroes, the happiest and
merriest, I think, in all this country; and the only jewel
by which my wife sets any store, and from which she
hath never parted, is that gold button she took from my
arm on the day when she visited me in prison, and which
she wore ever after, as she told me, on the tenderest
heart in the world.' In reading ' Esmond/ so cleverly is
the story told, and with such ease and truthfulness, that
the reader does not stay to note what a difficult task the
novelist has set himself in venturing to deal with a plot
more than commonly unattractive. Thackeray, however,
is nowhere the slave of a story; and in sometimes deli-
berately fighting against conventional construction and
probability, he has proved by his success in enlisting
interest and sympathy that he wielded the pen of a
master. The world can forgive its hero for not doing
what ninety-nine heroes in a hundred perform, when his
history is related with the fidelity and ability which dis-
tinguish ' Esmond.' There are more characters carefully
and vividly drawn in this book than are to be found in

26 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

the entire novels of many popular writers; and that
pungency of Thackeray's pen which cuts through indi-
vidualities as sharply and clearly as the diamond cuts
through the glass, is here in full operation. It was as
superior to its predecessor as the latter was to almost
all the novels of the time. In regard to historical por-
traiture it has never been excelled; to read it once is to
be struck with its eloquence and power ; to read it a
second time is to be impressed with its fidelity and
photographic accuracy.

Thackeray rose to the perfection of his art in fiction
in 'The Newcomes;' and it is such books as this which
show us what a fine teacher and instructor the novel may
become in the hands of genius. In the representation
of human nature this story is worthy of Richardson or
Fielding. It is the chef-d'oetivre, in our opinion, of its
author. There is not lacking that infinite sarcasm
observable in previous works, but the writer has touched
more deeply the springs of human sympathy. Within
the whole scope of fiction there is no single character
which stands out more nobly for the admiration of
readers to all time than that of Colonel Newcome.
The painter of that portrait alone might well lay claim to
an undying canvas. As faithfully and as naturally as
though limned by the hand of Sir Joshua Reynolds

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 27

himself the features of the old soldier appear before us.
Having written ' The Newcomes,' Thackeray may be
said to have shaken hands as an equal with the two or
three great masters of fiction. If it be the province of
the novelist to depict human nature as it is, it must be
conceded, at any rate, that there was nothing else left
for the author to do to entitle him to the highest honours
of his class. Nor is it a little singular too that in the
story just mentioned Thackeray has given us the best
female character which has proceeded from his fertile
brain Ethel Newcome. She comes to us as the sweet
teacher of more goodness and religion than a whole
company of preachers. We are inclined to agree with
her cousin Clive Newcome that to look into her eyes
would be almost too much for such unworthy imperfect
creatures as men, and that she is one of that rare class of
beings sent into the world occasionally to tell us that
Heaven has not altogether forgotten us. What a story
of society ' The Newcomes ' is ! First we have the
Newcome family, with Sophia Alethea, whose mission
and self-imposed duty it was ' to attend to the interests
of the enslaved negro; to awaken the benighted Hot-
tentot to a sense of the truth; to convert Jews, Turks,
Infidels, and Papists ; to arouse the indifferent and often
blasphemous mariner; to guide the washerwoman in the

28 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

right way ; to head all the public charities of her sect;
and do a thousand secret kindnesses that none knew of ;
to answer myriads of letters, pension endless ministers,
and supply their teeming wives with continuous baby
linen/ all which she did ' womanfully ' for nigh fourscore
years. Then we have the Honeymans, with the singular
story of the Rev. Charles Honeyman. Clive Newcome's
uncles occupy a large portion of the narrative, and Sir
Barnes Newcome appears and contrives to earn our
unmitigated contempt. Grey Friars looms into view,
with the hero Clive at school within its precincts. Good
James Binnie is introduced, and honest J. J. Ridley.
Electioneering contests, with all their humour, are por-
trayed, while the scheming members of society are also
flayed for their snobbery. From the heartlessness of
vampires and fools the Floracs, the Kews, &c. we
are pleased to hurry away and to light upon such pas-
sages of sweetness and beauty as this, where the Colonel
on his arrival in England from India is welcomed by his
little niece Ethel :

1 He took a little slim white hand and laid it down on his
brown palm, where it looked all the whiter ; he cleared the
grizzled moustachio from his mouth, and stooping down he
kissed the little white hand with a great deal of grace and
dignity. There was no point of resemblance, and yet a
something in the girl's look, voice, and movements, which

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 29

caused his heart to thrill, and an image out of the past to
rise up and salute him. The eyes which had brightened his
youth (and which he saw in his dreams and thoughts for
faithful years afterwards as though they looked at him out
of heaven) seemed to shine upon him after five-and-thirty
years. He remembered such a fair bending neck and
clustering hair, such a light foot and airy figure, such a slim
hand lying in his own and now parted from it with a gap
of ten thousand long days between. . . . Parting is death,
at least as far as life is concerned. A passion comes to
an end ; it is carried off in a coffin, or weeping in a post-
chaise ; it drops out of life one way or other, and the earth
clods close over it, and we see it no more. But it has been
part of our souls and it is eternal. Does a mother not love
her dead infant ? a man his lost mistress ? with the fond
wife nestling at his side, yes, with twenty children smiling
round her knee. No doubt, as the old soldier held the girl's
hand in his, the little talisman led him back to Hades, and
he saw Leonora.'

The book has its love passages in some cases sad
and miserable. Chapters of pathetic interest abound,
where the world is exhibited at its old tricks of topsy-
turvy Lady Clara loving Jack Belsize and being be-
loved madly in return, while her hand is sold to Sir
Barnes Newcome, ' society,' forsooth, blessing the bar-
gain : Clive married to Rosey Mackenzie, whom he
loves in a way, though his real devotion belongs to his
cousin, who is put into the matrimonial auction and
knocked down to an idiotic member of the peerage. As

30 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

for the marriages which 'have been arranged,' who has
not heard uttered, as our satirist asks, 'the ancient
words, " I promise to take thee," &c.> knowing them to
be untrue; and is there a bishop on the bench that has
not Amen'd the humbug in his lawn sleeves, and called
a blessing over the kneeling pair of perjurers ? ' Hypo-
crisy and humbug are succeeded by disaster in the novel.
The grand old Colonel is ruined by the failure of the
celebrated Bundelcund Bank, but when there comes in
his need a cheque from one whom he had helped in days
gone by, the bankrupt Colonel only exclaims, ' I thank
my God Almighty for this ! ' and passes on the cheque
immediately to another sufferer. The story rapidly pro-
gresses. The death of Colonel Newcome is told with a
pathos almost unequalled, and dear old Grey Friars
becomes once more the witness of a scene to be ever
held in remembrance. After this sad incident the novel
speedily ends, with the united happiness of the two chil-
dren whom the Colonel had most dearly loved. It is
one of the few books which we close with regret when we
have finished them. Genial, generous, and noble in its
sentiments, we seem almost to reach the mind of
Thackeray while perusing it. It gives us full assurance
that his mission was of far wider import than that of a
mere scourger of society. It is evidently written by a

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 31

man who loves the world, though he hates its follies.
He has scorn for its dissimulation, indignation for its
oppression, smiles for its happiness, and tears for its
woes.

In continuation of his previous novel ' Esmond,'
Thackeray returned to the historical vein in ' The Vir-
ginians,' which follows the fortunes of the Esmond family
after its migration to America. It was one of his cha-
racteristics that the creations of his art acquired so com-
plete a reality that he could not part from them, and they
continued, as it were, to live on, and reappeared in his
later works long after the fiction which had given birth to
them had come to a close. Thus his i Virginians ' grew
out of ' Esmond/ and it is one of the pleasantest of his
works. The course of true love pursues a devious way,
and the weaknesses of one character serve to set in bold
relief the heroism of others. The fairer sex have no reason
to complain of the treatment they receive at the hands
of our author, and in this story two of their species
are immortalised in a setting for which we must ever be
grateful. But while we are interested in much love we
are also admonished by much morality, though the
moralising of Thackeray on all occasions is anything but
offensive. He has the gift of so exhibiting foibles and
idiosyncrasies that there is no need for him to lash himself

32 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

into a furious state of indignation, as the manner of some
is ; that calm, sneering smile is sufficiently effectual ;
heavy, clumsy weapons or bludgeons may make much
demonstration, but it is the light, piercing touch of the
pointed steel which is the most dangerous. Thackeray
manages to find the one vulnerable point in our armour ;
he introduces the rapier of his sarcasm, and we are slain.
There is no withstanding his weapon. Surely the world
should be the better for the fearless work which this man
accomplished ! Honestly has he besought it to discard
its deceit and selfishness, and who knows but vast results
have followed the teaching of the life-long lesson ? Does
he not ask us. brother man ! to be more true to ourselves,
to our own nature ; to drop the cloak which we perpetu-
ally wear when we step forth into the world ? He would
have man walk abroad upright, strong in his own virtue,
and not ashamed to meet his fellows, as though in the
great game of life he was determined to revoke through
every trick in order to seize upon the stakes. And is it
so very inhuman to help a friend or a brother that it has
become so uncommon? Are the heavens always to
appear as brass when the cry for help is raised ? Harry
Esmond Warrington ' in his distress asked help from his
relations ; his aunt sent him a tract and her blessing ;
his uncle had business out of town, and could not, of

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 33

course, answer the poor boy's petition. . . . My Lord
and Lady Skinflint, when they consult in their bedroom
about giving their luckless nephew a helping hand, and
determine to refuse, and go down to family prayers and
meet their children and domestics, and discourse vir-
tuously before them and then remain together and talk
nose to nose what can they think of one another ? and
of the poor kinsman falling among thieves and groaning
for help unheeded? How can they go on with those
virtuous airs ? How can they dare look each other in
the face ? ' Brave writer ! these are manly words, but
the world in great part still practises the selfish principle.
It takes a long time to make it understand that a reli-
gious tract, though possibly very cheap, is not very filling
to the hungry stomach, nor does it go far in clothing the
shivering limbs. Cropping up here and there in his
sparkling leaves, such are the lessons Thackeray would
teach. In novels like ' The Virginians ' they are sub-
ordinate to the more leading purposes of the story, but
human nature has changed little since the period when
its scenes were fixed. Graphic pictures of American
scenery abound in its pages, and celebrated characters of
the reign of George II. appear on the stage. The philo-
sophy of the novel may not be profound, but it is always
plain and unmistakable. If there be any failure per-

D

34 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

ceptible, it is a failure possessed in common with the
greatest writers and dramatists, who, in attempting to
depict the men, the morals, and the manners of a pre-
ceding age, have never been able entirely to get rid of
their own.

The remaining works of fiction produced subsequently
to * The Virginians ' are somewhat slight in their con-
struction (with the exception of one to be named), but
generally exhibit great power. The exception, as regards
length and plot, is * The Adventures of Philip,' a work
worthy almost to take rank with any of those which are
more widely known, on account of its extremely realistic
pictures of life, and its depth of human interest. In the
sketches of those ' who robbed Philip, those who helped
him, and those who passed him by,' we come upon
varieties of love, passion, and duplicity drawn with won-
drous skill. The sad parts of the story are written with
indelible ink, and all through that fine nervous sensibility
which should distinguish the highest novelists is strikingly
apparent. The same remark applies to the beautiful
story of the ' Hoggarty Diamond.' Of the memoirs of
that extraordinary youth Barry Lyndon, it is scarcely
necessary to say more than that they are told with no
diminution of vigour ; all the later short stories of
Thackeray, in fact, are written in English noticeable for

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 35

its simplicity and purity. The wine is not so tart, does
not sparkle quite so much, but it is mellower, and there
is greater body in it. What could more conclusively
exhibit this than the story the author left unfinished,
' Denis Duval ' ? Here we have the last lines he ever
wrote lines which triumphantly dispose of the taunt
that Thackeray was writing himself out. Of few can it
be said that their later works exhibit a strength and
genius undimmed by time. Yet Thackeray was one of
that rare minority. The period of decadence ha not
set in with him. He had only just reached the top
of the hill, he had taken no steps on his descent,
To his powers of perception, and his possession of the
critical faculty in no small degree, ' The Roundabout
Papers/ the inimitable Paris, Irish, and Eastern
Sketches, and his imitations of contemporary authors,
bear ample testimony; while 'The Snob Papers,' bur-
lesques, and ballads, overflow with comic humour.
As regards the authorship of ballads alone, we have
no writer of vers de societ'e at the present time who
could be put into competition with him. 'Please-
man X/ is famous ; yet even Praed or Father Prout
can show nothing better than ' Peg of Limavaddy,'
'At the Church Gate,' and 'Little Billee.' Novel,
sketch, ballad, or essay, Thackeray has summed up in

D 2

36 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

great part the lessons he would inculcate in these well-
known verses :

1 O, Vanity of Vanities !

How wayward the decrees of Fate are ;
How very weak the very wise,
How very small the very great are !

'Though thrice a thousand years are past,

Since David's son the sad and splendid,
The weary King Ecclesiast,

Upon his awful tablets penned it,

' Methinks the text is never stale,
And life is every day renewing
Fresh comments on the old, old tale,
Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.'

In noticing the various works of Thackeray thus
briefly, we have purposely left the lectures on the Four
Georges and the English Humourists till the close, as
they belong to a new and entirely distinct class of effort.
Probably this was the first occasion on which a writer
assumed the lecturer and the critic in one. Those who
were privileged to hear the author deliver his lectures in
person will remember how he took the town by storm,
and the same enthusiasm was manifested when Thackeray
went to Edinburgh and visited the principal towns in
England and America, where the whole of the intellectual
classes of the population flocked to hear him. To get

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 37

the opinions of a famous literary man on his distinguished
predecessors delivered vM voce was naturally attractive,
and the imposing form of Titmarsh with his snowy hair
has not yet passed out of the recollection of his auditors.
We heard him on the age in which he was thoroughly at
home. He had made that period in a manner his own
by an intimate knowledge of all its leading spirits, and he
appeared to strike a chord of self-satisfaction when he
said, ' I knew familiarly a lady who had been asked in
marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been patted on
the head by George I.' This immediately takes him to
the time of Johnson, Goldsmith, Steele, Pope, and Swift,
and he is happy. He then goes on to talk pleasantly of
the times and manners of the Four Georges, not sparing
the gall of satire, however, when he deems it necessary
to mix it with his ink. As a citizen of the time he thus
describes the advent of the First George, and the facts
of history but too fully justify the sweeping condemna-
tion :

' Here we are, all on our knees. Here is the Archbishop
of Canterbury prostrating himself to the head of his church,
with Kielmansegge and Schulenberg with their ruddled
cheeks grinning behind the Defender of the Faith. Here
is my Lord Duke of Marlborough kneeling, too, the greatest
warrior of all times ; he who betrayed King William be-
trayed King James I. betrayed Queen Anne betrayed

38 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

England to the French, the Elector to the Pretender, the
Pretender to the Elector ; there are my Lords Oxford and
Bolingbroke, the latter of whom has just tripped up the heels
of the former ; and if a month's more time had been allowed
him, would have had King James at Westminster/

But foolish as the foreign gentleman was, he was
astute enough to see through loyalty of this description.
The bargain with England was that she wanted a Pro-
testant puppet, and as George was not unwilling, for a
consideration, to become one, matters were arranged.
Though not without his faults, George I. had, as
Thackeray points out, the countervailing virtues of
justice, courage, and moderation. In introducing his
immediate successor, the essayist sketches a memorable
scene. An eager messenger in jack-boots, who had
ridden from London, forced his way into a bedroom in
Richmond Lodge, where the master was taking a nap
after dinner. With a strong German accent and many
oaths, the man on the bed, starting up, asked who dared
to disturb him ? ' I am Sir Robert Walpole,' said the
messenger. The awakened sleeper hated Sir Robert.
' I have the honour to announce to your Majesty, that
your royal father, King George I., died at Osnaburg, on
Saturday last, the roth instant' ' Dat is one big lief
roared out his Sacred Majesty King George II., but that
was how he came to be monarch nevertheless. The

WILLIAM: MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 39

Second George was more wrongheaded than his father,
and England was saved during many years of his reign
by the strong will of that strange mixture of courage,
dissoluteness, statesmanship, and meanness, Sir Robert
Walpole, and by the good sense and tact of Queen
Caroline. Brave the King undoubtedly was, but in and
around his court there was the old sickly air of corruption,
fed rather than suppressed by a sycophant clergy. The
trenchant words of the great satirist are not a whit too
strong in which to describe the godlessness and hypocrisy
of the period. And when the sovereign died, some of
the divines carried their cant behind the grave, and re-
ferred to their master as one too good for earth. They
had crawled in the dust before his mistresses for prefer-
ment, and having got it, must of course pay for it some-
how. Diving beneath the surface of society, Thackeray
wisely says, * It is to the middle class we must look for
the safety of England ; the working educated men, away
from Lord North's bribery in the senate ; the good
clergy not corrupted into parasites by the hope of prefer-
ment ; the tradesmen rising into manly opulence ; the
painters pursuing their gentle calling ; the men of letters
in their quiet studies ; these are the men whom we love
and like to read of in the last age.' With these classes
pure and sound, kings and puppets may sport with im-

40 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

punity ; the kingdom is safe ; it is when the middle
classes are corrupt and worthless that the foundations of
society begin to break up. Pleasant gossip of the good
but obstinate King George, the third of his name, is
vouchsafed to us, with glimpses of his pure court would
it had always remained so within whose precincts many
a battle was won over his opponents by the dogged
monarch. Then we come to the period of his terrible
malady, and in describing the closing scene of all, the
essayist breaks out into a passage of touching eloquence,
which we transcribe here as being in his most successful
vein :

1 What preacher need moralise on this story ; what words
save the simplest are requisite to tell it ? It is too terrible
for tears. The thought of such a misery smites me down in
submission before the Ruler of kings and men, the Monarch
Supreme over empires and republics, the inscrutable Dis-
penser of life, death, happiness, victory. " O brothers ! " I
said to those who heard me first in America " O, brothers
speaking the same mother tongue O comrades ! enemies
no more, let us take a mournful hand together as we stand
by this royal corpse, and call a truce to battle ! Low he
lies to whom the proudest used to kneel once, and who was
cast lower than the poorest ; dead, whom millions prayed for
in vain." Driven off the throne ; buffeted by rude hands ;
with his children in revolt ; the darling of his old age killed
before him untimely ; our Lear hangs over her breathless
lips and cries : " Cordelia, Cordelia, stay a little !"

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 41

" Vex not his ghost oh ! let him pass he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer ! "

Hush ! strife and quarrel, over the solemn grave ! Sound,
trumpets, a mournful march. Fall, dark curtain, upon his
pageant, his pride, his grief, his awful tragedy.'

The lectures on the English Humourists, a subject
peculiarly adapted to the bent of Thackeray, commence
with Swift, the genius who had a life-hunt for a bishopric
and missed it. The bitterness of a generation of man-
kind seemed to be concentrated in that one spirit. We
scarcely understand him now, or if we do, then genius is
miserably weak and vulnerable in some points if strong as
adamant in others. He did not succeed, and it was his
constant habit, we are assured, to keep his birthday as a
day of mourning. Yet there are some aspects in which
we like to regard him. We admire his utter scorn at
times, his contempt for the tinsel, and the power of his
eagle eye to pierce to the heart of things. He could also
crush pretence, at once and effectually. A bumptious
young wit said to him in company, ' You must know, Mr.
Dean, that I set up for a wit ! ' 'Do you so ? ' said the
Dean. ' Take my advice and sit down again.' Thackeray
mistrusts the religion of Swift, and mentions as one of the
strongest reasons for doing so, the fact of his recommend-
ing the dissolute author of ' The Beggar's Opera ' to turn

42 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

clergyman, and look out for a seat on the bench. But
this master of irony varied so in his moods, that it
is impossible to know whether this advice was not simply
the result of that intense chagrin which possessed him,
rather than of a deliberate recklessness of the good.
That Swift suffered, mentally, more than almost any man
history takes note of may be accepted, but it was partly
due to the workings of an ' evil spirit.' It is justly said
of him that 'he goes through life, tearing, like a man
possessed of a devil. Like Abudah in the Arabian story,
he is always looking out for the Fury, and knows that
the night will come and the inevitable hag with it. What
a night, my God ! it was, what a lonely rage of long
agony what a vulture that tore the heart of that giant !
It is awful to think of the great sufferings of this great
man. Through life he always seems alone, somehow.
Goethe was so. I can't fancy Shakspeare otherwise.
The giants must live apart. The kings can have no
company. But this man suffered so ; and deserved so to
suffer. One hardly reads anywhere of such a pain.'
And this pain went through life in darkness, rage, and
misery he spent his days ; no light broke through the
starless night. The end came, and terrible is the story,
the witty, the eloquent, the gifted, the godlike in in-
tellect, the devilish in heart, Swift passed away in a state

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 43

not unlike that against which he had prayed in a letter to
Bolingbroke, when he said, ' It is time for me to have
done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a
better before I was called into the best, and not die here
in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.' Excellent talk
follows this sketch gossip of Congreve and Addison,
with wise critical remarks interspersed by the author, who
may be said to have established a prescriptive right to
the age of which he wrote. Somewhat too mudh, we are
inclined to think, Thackeray made of Pope, though the
executive ability of the young poet was of the most mar-
vellous description. Poor Dick Steele, that bundle of
failings and weaknesses, has a paper all to himself, and
we rise from its perusal with our love for the kindly,
miserable sinner intensified. It was surface wickedness
with Steele entirely : his heart was tender, and his cha-
racter simple as a child's. For the genius and character
of Fielding Thackeray had of course the highest admira-
tion. Very few lines need be read before it is apparent
that the modern novelist had studied his predecessor
minutely. He quotes Gibbon's famous saying about
Fielding with intense relish. ' The successors of Charles V.
may disdain their brethren (the Fieldings) of England :
but the romance of " Tom Jones," that exquisite picture
of humour and manners, will outlive the palace of the

44 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

Escurial, and the Imperial Eagle of Austria.' But here
our pleasant reminiscences of the English humourists
must end, and some observations of a general nature be
made upon the genius of him who has bequeathed to us
his thoughts and judgments on his illustrious prede-
cessors.

The first characteristic which strikes the reader of
Thackeray is unquestionably his humour. It does not
gleam forth as flashes of lightning, rare and vivid, but is
more like the ever-bubbling fountain, the perennial
spring. It is a kind of permeating force throughout all
his works works now lashed into sarcasm and anon dis
solved in pathos. It is one of the great mistakes regarding
this author that he is satirical and nothing else. No
critic who thus represents him can have either studied
his novels or caught the spirit and purpose of the man.
He is one of the best of English humourists simply be-
cause his nature is sensitive at all points. What Carlyle
has said of Jean Paul may be said of him ' In his smile
itself a touching pathos may lie hidden, a pity too deep
for tears. He is a man of feeling, in the noblest sense
of that word; for he loves all living with the heart of a
brother ; his soul rushes forth, in sympathy with gladness
and sorrow, with goodness or grandeur, over all creation.
Every gentle and generous affection, every thrill of

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 45

mercy, every glow of nobleness, awakens in his bosom a
response; nay, strikes his spirit into harmony.' It must
ever be so. But when the first satirical papers of
Thackeray were published the world had only seen one
side of his humour. The 'Snob Papers' and burles-
ques, and the memoirs of Mr. Yellowplush, gave place in
due time to a richer vein in more important works. The
sparkling Champagne was followed, as it were, by the
deep rich Burgundy. As Dickens was his superior in
the faculty of invention, so was the former eclipsed by
the greater depth of Thackeray's penetration. Truth to
life distinguishes nearly all the characters of Dickens,
those at least which belong to the lower classes; but this
truth is the obvious truth of caricature rather than of
reality : Thackeray takes us below the surface ; we travel
through the dark scenes of the human drama with him ;
he makes his notes and comments without flattery and
with astounding realism, and when we part company
from his side we wish human nature were somewhat
nobler than it is. But his wit does not preclude him
from being fair and just. He is indeed scrupulously so,
and to the erring kind and tender. It used to be said
occasionally of his works as they appeared, ' Ah, there's
the same old sneer' so ready is the world to follow the
course in which its attention is directed. Speaking of

4 6 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

the maligners of Society, he says, ' You who have ever
listened to village bells, or have walked to church as
children on sunny Sabbath mornings ; you who have
ever seen the parson's wife tending the poor man's bed-
side ; or the town clergyman threading the dirty stairs of
noxious alleys upon his sacred business ; do not raise a
shout when one of these falls away, or yell with the mob
that howls after him.' Surely these are noble words to
come from one whose intellectual current was set in the
direction of contempt ! With all his keen sense of the
ridiculous and his scathing powers of invective, there is
no one instance where for the sake of the brilliancy of
his satire he ever cast a slur upon truly philanthropic
labour, or perilled his reputation for the worship of the
pure and the good. If ever man's humour were useful
to instruct as well as to delight, it is that of Michael
Angelo Titmarsh. When he laughs we know he will do
it fairly his eye wanders round all, and neither friend
nor foe, if vulnerable, can keep out the arrows of his wit.
His position, as a humourist, is certainly that of the
equal of most of the wits of whom he has written, and
one scarcely inferior to even Swift or Sterne.

A second quality that is observable in him is his
fidelity. And to this we do not attach the restricted
meaning that the persons of his novels are faithful to

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 47

nature though that they incontestably are but the

wide import of being true to the results of life as we see
them daily. He does not allow the development of a
story to destroy the unities of character, and in this
respect he resembles the greatest of all writers. Take
an example. At the close of * The Newcomes/ instead
of preserving alive the noble Colonel to witness the
happiness of the family in its resuscitated fortunes,
Thackeray causes him to die, and that in the humblest
manner. With most novelists we could predict a very
different ending, but one not so true as Thackeray has
had the courage to adopt. Sorrow we may indulge that
the death should thus occur, but we must acknowledge
that it is more consonant with our daily experience than
any other conclusion would have been, however pleasant
as matter of fiction. The same thing is noticed in the
character of Beatrix Esmond ; we are first interested in
her ; then our faith is gradually shattered ; and, finally,
we are thoroughly disappointed by the catastrophe. The
result is contrary to that which we expected j it is 1 other
than would have been given by most writers, but it is
none the less true. Take the whole of his creations, let
the test of fidelity be applied to each, and it will be found
that the writers are very few indeed who have been so
thoroughly able to disentangle themselves from the

48 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

common method of adapting character to plot, or who
have made their individualities so distinct, and kept
them so to the end. To place him in comparison with
other authors who are distinguished for their delineation
of character as character as witnessed at certain points
or stages is unfair both to him and to them. Conver-
sations, with one, stamp individualities, and the test of
their fidelity is the absence of contradiction in the out-
ward forms of speech and action whenever the individuals
are introduced : this was the life-painting of Dickens,
for instance. With Thackeray the case is different. He
does not depend so much on the conversational or de-
scriptive recognition of character. He gives us more of
their mind or heart than of their person. He does not
tell us what they look like, but what they are ; and
through all his novels they answer to the bent and the
natural instincts we have been led to associate with them.
It is this elevated form of fidelity that we would insist
upon as preeminently to be noticed in Thackeray : and
were it on this ground alone we should not hesitate to
place him in the very first rank of novelists. In this
essential particular, in truth, he has no rival. Others
may excel him in various arts of fiction, but with this
passport, even his superiors in minor detail will accord
to him a perfect equality, if not a superiority, in the
manifestation of the cardinal principle of novel- writing.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 49

The subjectiveness of Thackeray is another quality
which has greatly enhanced the value of his works. It
is generally admitted that subjective writers have a more
powerful influence over humanity than those of the
class styled objective. It is natural, perhaps, that the
external descriptions of circumstances or scenery should
not move us nearly so much as the life-record of a
breathing, suffering, rejoicing human being. Be his
station what it may, we are interested in every individual
of the species whose career is faithfully pictured. The
author of ' Vanity Fair ' is one of the few men who have
been able to endue their characters with being and
motion. When there were few writers who had either
the courage or the gifts to be natural, Thackeray gave a
new impetus to the world of fiction. So eminently sub-
jective are his works, that those of his friends who knew
him well are able to trace in them the successive stages
of his personal career, and to show in what manner the
incidents of his own life operated upon his novels.
There are but few occurrences in the whole series that
were not drawn either from his individual history or the
history of some one of his friends or acquaintances.
This is, doubtless, one of the most influential causes of
the reality of his stories. No stiff, formal record of
events, dispassionately told, is to be witnessed. If the

E

50 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

reader reads at all, he must perforce become interested
in his work. There probably never were novels written
in which there was so little exaggeration of colouring.
His dear Harry Fielding has been his guide, but the
author of ' Tom Jones ' has been almost outstripped by
his pupil. The latter has been able to throw away more
effectually the folds of drapery in which character has
generally been presented to us. In his model he was
happy, for, previous to Thackeray, Fielding was the most
subjective writer in the annals of fiction. One can
understand the charm which those writings exercised
over his successor, and the desire which he felt to con-
struct his novels after the fashion of which he had become
so greatly enamoured. But the pupil has the greater
claim to our regard in the fact that his work is such that
not a line of it need be excised in public reading. He
is Fielding purified. All the vivacity and the life-giving
strokes which belonged to the pencil of the earlier master
are reproduced in the younger, and the interest is also
preserved intact. But with the later age has come the
purer language, and Thackeray may be said to stand in
precisely the same relation to the nineteenth century as
Fielding stood to the eighteenth. The absence of exag-
geration in Thackeray's drawing of character is very
remarkable. Notwithstanding the multiplicity of his

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 51

personages, there are not two which in any sense
resemble each other. The faculty is very rare of being
able to transfer the lineaments of commonplace people
in such a manner as that others will care to study them.
Yet this is the result which Thackeray achieves, and
without labour. Nothing transcendental, or that which
is beyond human nature, is thrown in as a means of
bribing the reader into closer acquaintanceship. As men
passed Thackeray he observed them; as they interested
him he drew them; but in doing so he felt that to add
to the original would destroy the identity, and the conse-
quence of his consummate art is that throughout the
whole of his varied picture-gallery there is no portrait
which bears the impress of falsity or distortion. To say
the truth, and to describe what he saw before him, was
always the novelist's own boast. There could be no
nobler' ambition for any writer, but there are few who
have attained the perfect height of the standard.

Leading out of his subjectiveness, or rather being a
broader and grander development of it, we come to the
fourth great characteristic of Thackeray his humanity.
That is the crown and glory of his work. And yet this
man, who was sensitive almost beyond parallel, was
charged with having no heart! Shallow critics, who gave

E2

52 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

a surface-reading to 'Vanity Fair,' imagined they had
gauged the author, and in an off-hand manner described
him as a man of no feeling the cold, simple cynic. It
will be remembered that the same charge of having no
heart was made against Macaulay; but its baselessness
was discovered on his death, when it became known that
' the heartless ' one had for years pursued a career of
almost unexampled benevolence. So superficial are the
judgments of the world! Against Thackeray the charge
was doubly cruel; he was one of those men who are
naturally full of sensibility to a degree. Men who
understood him best knew that it cost him an effort to
subdue that part of his nature which hastened to sympa-
thise with others. Selfishness was as foreign to him as
insincerity. The man was true as the light of heaven to
the generous instincts of his nature. To veil at times
this side of his character was essential in order to give
play to that satire which kills. If his mission was to
exalt the good and the pure, it was also as decidedly his
mission to abase the false. To do this he must neces-
sarily appear severe. But who that reads him well can
fail to perceive that the eye accustomed to blaze with
scorn could also moisten with sympathy and affection ?
What man without heart could have written such passages

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 53

as that episode in the l Hoggarty Diamond ' ? Titmarsh
is describing his journey to the Fleet Prison, accompanied
by his wife :

1 There was a crowd of idlers round the door as I passed
out of it, and had I been alone I should have been ashamed
of seeing them ; but, as it was, I was only thinking of my
dear, dear wife, who was leaning trustfully on my arm, and
smiling like heaven into my face ay, and took heaven too
into the Fleet Prison with me or an angel out of heaven.
Ah ! I had loved her before, and happy it is to love when
one is hopeful and young in the midst of smiles and sun-
shine ; but be chappy, and then see what it is to be loved
by a good woman ! I declare before heaven, that of all the
joys and happy moments it has given me, that was the
crowning one that little ride, with my wife's cheek on my
shoulder, down Holborn to the prison ! Do you think I
cared for the bailiff that sat opposite ? No, by the Lord !
I kissed her and hugged her yes, and cried with her like-
wise. But before our ride was over her eyes dried up, and
she stepped blushing and happy out of the coach at the
prison-door, as if she were a princess going to the Queen's
drawing-room.'

Or is there to be found in all fiction a scene more
pathetic than the one describing the death of Colonel
Newcome? To have written that alone would have
deservedly made any man great. Though it is doubt-
less familiar to every reader, it will be impossible to
illustrate fully the human tenderness of the author with-

54 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

out quoting some portion of it here. The scene is at
Grey Friars:

' Ethel came in with a scared face to our pale group. " He
is calling for you again, dear lady," she said, going up to
Madame de Florae, who was still kneeling ; " and just now
he said he wanted Pendennis to take care of his boy. He
will not know you." She hid her tears as she spoke. She
went into the room where Clive was at the bed's foot ; the
old man within it talked on rapidly for a while ; then again
he would sigh and be still ; once more I heard him say
hurriedly : " Take care of him when I am in India ;" and
then with a heart-rending voice he called out, " Leonore,
Ldonore ! " She was kneeling by his side now. The
patient's voice sank into faint murmurs ; only a moan now
and then announced that he was not asleep. At the usual
evening hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas
Newcombe's hands outside the bed feebly beat time. And
just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over
his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said,
11 Adsum ! : ' and fell back. It was the word we used at school
when names were called ; and lo ! he, whose heart was as
that of a little child, had answered to his name and stood in
the presence of The Master/

The principal defect alleged against Thackeray is
that he is a mannerist. But when it is considered that
the same charge could be laid against every writer in the
roll of literature with the exception of the few imperial
intellects of the universe, it must be conceded that the
charge is of little moment. All men, save the Homers,

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 55

Shakspeares, and Goethes of the world, are mannerists.
There is not a writer of eminence living at the present
day who is not a mannerist. Tennyson, Browning, and
Carlyle are all mannerists. It is impossible to quarrel
with that which sets the stamp of individuality and origi-
nality on the productions of the intellect.

To assign Thackeray's ultimate position in literature
is a difficult task, for nothing is less certain than the per-
manence of literary attractiveness and fame ; but we
think that his works will be read and as keenly enjoyed
after the lapse of a century as they are now. Fielding
has survived longer than that period, and weightier
reasons for immortality than could be advanced in his
case might be advanced in favour of Thackeray. If his
works ceased to be read as pictures of society and de-
lineations of character, they would still retain no in-
glorious place in English literature from the singular
purity and beauty of their style. It is style even more
than matter which embalms a literary reputation. To
the faithfulness with which he spake the English tongue
we believe future generations will testify. Whatsoever
was good, honest, and true found in him a defender;
whatsoever was base, unmanly, or false shrank abashed
in his presence. A man with less pretence, less assump-
tion, less sham never existed: he revolted from appear-

56 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

ing that which he was not. His works were the reflex of
the man, and like a shaft of light, which, while it pierces
into the deepest recesses of dissimulation and vice,
smiles benignantly upon those aspirations and feelings
which are the noblest glory of humanity.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

[CORNHILL MAGAZINE]

ELIZABETH BARRETT BRO WNING.

WHAT are the essential attributes of the Poet's art which
cause him to be adorned with the noblest crown it is in the
power of humanity to confer ? From the period when * the
blind old man of Scio's rocky isle ' thundered that music
which was to reverberate through all time, along the
swift revolving centuries, even to our own somewhat
prosaic day, we witness an unbroken succession of kings
of song, whose thrones have been more permanent than
those of the Pharaohs and the Caesars. What allegiance
do we bear, or what sworn fealty have we kept, truer
than that which we own towards those who have touched
into activity the secret springs of our sensibility ? All
the grandeurs of birth, and dignities which have blos-
somed at the touch of monarchs, fail to move our admi-
ration as compared with the simple majesty of genius,
which has its rise in higher soil, and whose fruition is not
dependent upon the smile of human potentates. One
has somewhat bitterly said of good princes, that ail their
names might be graven within the gem of one ring. The

60 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

same cannot be said of the royal race of poets. Theirs
is not the accidental title to reverence which, with the
majority of princes, ceases with the yielding up of life.
There is nothing perishable with the poet but that clay
which has hemmed him in, and restricted the flights of
his burning and ever-aspiring spirit. His soul is im-
mortal in his verse. And he possesses the gift beyond
all others of transferring his mind and his heart into his
effusions. But a momentary consideration will demon-
strate the fact that the poet must, of necessity, have the
largest fellowship with humanity. He it is who converses
with our veritable selves, and not with our shadows ;
other men affect us at a point somewhere on the surface
by varied means, but all failing to reach the chord that
has its root in the heart's blood, and which vibrates
whenever the true singer touches his fellow-man. What
matters it whether the poet begs his bread through
opulent cities, as the godlike Homer is affirmed to have
done, or wields a powerful sceptre like that of David,
1 the sweet singer of Israel ' ? The ultimate glory of all
is the same, the difference one of degree only. Posterity
gives the crown which cannot wither. Again, the poet
appears before mankind not only as the most indepen-
dent teacher, but the most sympathetic apparently a
contradiction in terms. While the least biassed of all

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 61

teachers who instruct us, he has also the extraordinary
power of reaching to the profoundest depths of our
nature. We should regard the matter with comparative
unconcern if we witnessed the world moved from its orbit
beneath the lever of an Archimedes, provided our own
gravity were preserved; the astounding achievement
would excite little or no emotion in us ; but when the
poet gives birth to a new idea, or when he revivifies old
ones by the plastic and life-giving touch of his genius,
the world is ready with something better than its applause
it reverences and it loves. It is not our intention here
to magnify the Poet's office ; the unanimous verdict of
men, from the remotest ages, has raised him to the
highest pinnacle of fame, and in the great Valhalla of the
universe there are no dead so illustrious as those in
whom was perfected the divine melody of song. The
poet is enthroned of man by virtue of a nobility which
comes from God. His mission is to show us that to feel
nobly is to be great, and to insist, with a lofty eloquence
and in an impassioned strain, upon the importance and
sacred character of truth, beauty, and virtue. We are
not of those who restrict the scope of poetry, and con-
sider it chiefly as a refinement and a delight ; that is to
do wrong to its majestic spirit, whose wings touch the
earth, but whose glorious eyes look into Heaven.

62 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

All true poets themselves have felt that their marvel-
lous gift meant infinitely more than the mere utterance
of melodious numbers. The outer music is but the
shadow of that deeper soul-music which originated with
the apprehension of a new truth, or a new phase of
beauty. He is not a poet who does not possess this
strange insight, which distinctly marks off the real singer
from that adventitious writer who, in a happy moment,
may throw off verses which a simply cursory examination
might induce men to accept as the genuine presentment
of poetry. It was the neglect to take due account of
this matter which led the supporters of Pope to assume a
much higher ground in the famous controversy upon his
merits than his claims warranted. Soul, and not criticism,
is desiderated in poetry. The foibles of humanity are
excellent things as marks for the shafts of novelists and
satirists ; but the man who would assure us of his divine
mission in poetry takes a nobler range than that. He is
for ever in search of, and thirsting for, the beauty of the
universe, that he may interpret it to others. He brings
it to us from the humblest places and in the humblest
guises ; but his contact, while placing it before our
vision, has glorified it, and shown that within it of whose
existence we had iiever dreamed. Has Pope, or any
other man who taught us how to think in measured

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 63

cadence, and delighted us with rhyming intellectualism
ever got beyond didactic assertions, and seized that
fire which the real Prometheus of song invariably gains?
The poet has impulses, gigantic and irresistible ; he has
also love, ever operative and inextinguishable. His
rhyme is an accident ; his poetry is eternal. He finds
his divine manna everywhere ; he is the high-priest of
nature and of God. He sings not so much because it is
pleasant, or to direct attention to his own great and
wondrous ability, but because he must. While he lives,
he cannot avoid it. And the strange faculty of diving
into the mystery of things extends to everything he sees
around him. From no path where intuition can be of
avail is he shut out. In this respect poets might well
appropriate to themselves those lines of delightful old
George Herbert, who himself possessed some share of
the mystic gift :

' For us the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow;

Nothing we see, but means our good,

As our delight, or as our treasure ;
The whole is either our cupboard of food,

Or cabinet of pleasure.'

Now the main charge against the poetry of the Vic-
torian age, if we read it rightly, is this that however

64 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

admirable much of it may be as regards finish, it is in-
significant in conception. Emerson, who is unable to
find any poetic genius in his own country to satisfy him,
thus asks despairingly of England 'Shall I find my
heavenly bread in the reigning poets ? Where is great
design in modern English poetry? The English have
lost sight of the fact that poetry exists to speak the
spiritual law, and that no wealth of description or of
fancy is yet essentially new, and out of the limits of
prose, until this conviction is reached. Therefore the
grave old poets, like the Greek artists, heeded their
designs, and less considered the finish. It was their
office to lead to the divine sources, out of which all this,
and much more, readily springs ; and if this religion is
in the poetry, it raises us to some purpose, and we can
well afford some staidness, or hardness, or want of
popular tune in the verses.' To say that the standard
aimed at by this language is high, is a very inadequate
description of it. Emerson's ideal is evidently one that
is only reached every five hundred years. He would
appear to look for a Homer or an ^Eschylus with every
generation of humanity ; forgetting that we are not gods,
but only summed up into one with the fulness of time
as Shakspeare succeeds to the great ancients after the
lapse of centuries of mediocrity. But is it true that the

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 65

age has exhibited no design in poetry ? Did not Words-
worth exhibit any, in spite of his stuttering articulation
a helplessness probably partly induced by his excess of
spiritual vision ? Are Browning's grapplings with mag-
nificent subjects to be accounted altogether as failures ?
As for Tennyson, he has, it must be owned, never failed
in anything, for he has been careful not to overweight
himself. 1 He is the perfect singer of the time. Yet
he would fall under the reproach of Emerson if it be
a reproach that he gives the age what it asks for,
instead of striving after loftier ideas. Sympathising, how-
ever, to a certain extent with the position assumed by
the distinguished American essayist, we must admit that
what we want is not so much the laborious poet as the
emotional. Tennyson is undoubtedly both, but by no
means in the same degree. His melody is stately and
rich, but not overwhelming. He delights by grace, but
never swells by passion. The light of consummate art
gleams forth from all he does, but his moments of high
exaltation of soul are very rare.

The contrary is the case with regard to the poet

1 To this statement some critics, judging from their published
opinions, might object, alleging ' Queen Mary ' as an instance to
the contrary ; but while that drama is not so satisfactory as much
of Mr. Tennyson's previous work in the poetical sense, it is surely
so in the dramatic.

66 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

whose works we propose to discuss. She, at any rate,
has demonstrated what emotional poetry really means,
in contradistinction to the poetry of simple art ; and it
cannot be said, either, that she has altogether come short
in the matter of design the design which stamps the
greatest poets. Sensibility and intuition, those endow-
ments of supereminent importance to individuals whose
greatness is to grow in proportion to their understanding
and interpretation of human life, were in her united in a
degree seldom witnessed. Her history, sparse as it is in
facts as yet given to the world, is one of intense interest.
It is well known how that existence with her was almost
one long round of continuous suffering. Her retired life
sent her more closely to the companionship of the dead,
though she had naturally an eager and insatiable thirst
after knowledge. Her own sufferings could never daunt
her in the pursuit of learning, and accordingly we find
that as a scholar she was distinguished for the ripest
erudition. Her account of the Greek Christian poets
will serve to show in what direction a large portion of her
studies lay ; and it is in this work, we imagine, that we
discern what was her own ideal of the true nineteenth
century poet. ' We want the touch of Christ's hand
upon our literature,' she says, ' as it touched other dead
things ; we want the sense of the saturation of Christ's
blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 67

them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our
humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Something
of this has been perceived in art when its glory was at
the fullest. Something of a yearning after this may be
seen among the Greek Christian poets, something which
would have been much with a stronger faculty.' This
idea recurs again and again in different forms through her
works. She yearns for poetry to be sanctified, to be
made holy. This is how it was with the grand old
Greeks, and how it should be now. It is because poetry
is losing its sense of its intimate relations to God that it
is in danger of dying out. And how is the sacredness of
poetry to be truly apprehended ? By the method which
Mrs. Browning adopted, of looking boldly into the
human heart, and reading it fearlessly and trustfully.
' Foole, saide my muse to mee, looke in thine hearte,
and write/ And poetry thus produced is that which
preserves an everlasting freshness and fragrance. The
human heart first, and Nature afterwards, were the
teachers at whose feet our poet learned the deep lessons
she subsequently transmitted to her species. By these
were fostered in her a tenderness which breathes through
all her writings, and whose spirit is mirrored therein as
the blue sky mirrors itself upon the bosom of the deep.
To her, also, it may be said that poetry brought ' its
F 2

68 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

own exceeding great reward.' In the company of the
deep-browed poets, the monarchs of all the ages, she
found consolation as well as intellectual life. With the
fellowship of yEschylus, and Pindar, and Plato, and
Sophocles, and Euripides, of the olden world, and
Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakspeare, of the modern, the
burden of existence, that would otherwise have been in-
supportable, became comparatively light with her. When
but a girl she was able to read in the original some of the
greatest masterpieces of antiquity ; and indeed almost
her first work was an excellent translation of the ' Prome-
theus ' of her great favourite amongst the poets. Her in-
troduction to and intimate acquaintance with Greek
literature was in a large measure due to the influence of
her well-appreciated and cherished tutor, Boyd, the blind
author of a work upon the Greek Fathers, to whom she
addresses some of the best of her sonnets. But though
the Greek was the language which afforded her the most
delight, her acquaintance was not confined to this, her
knowledge of the Hebrew being also most intimate,
whilst the Bible in that language was amongst her most
continuous studies. Little would men suspect in meeting
her for the first time that within that slight and spiritual
frame burned so much of the celestial fire. It was,
perhaps, in consequence of the chance introduction of

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 69

some literary question, that it was discovered how much
learning existed beneath so unpretending an exterior.
She was like those branches which hang nearest the
ground because of the prodigious crop of luscious fruit
which is not always at first apparent to the eye. The
love of knowledge, however, deep and lasting though it
remained, never subdued or modified in her that great
gift of the poet, a burning earnestness or enthusiasm.
At the end, as at the beginning of life, the flame shone
brightly. It was no flickering, artificial light, kept alive
because the poet must simulate an earnestness that is
not possessed; but it left an impress and a character
upon her work which could not be mistaken. Her song
resembled that which fable has associated with the name
of Sappho a living voice, eloquent with passion. Some-
thing of her own intensity of feeling breathes in the lines
when she speaks of

' Electric Pindar, quick as fear,
With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear
Slant startled eyes that seem to hear

The chariot rounding the last goal,
To hurtle past it in his soul.
And Sappho, with that gloriole

Of ebon hair on calmed brows
O poet-woman ! none foregoes
The leap, attaining the repose.'

70 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

Had song been less to her than indissolubly bound up
with her life, one thinks she must have wavered in her
devotion to it. But in truth her appetite grew by what
it fed on, and the weakness of the body only led to a
further development of soul. We like to think of her as
accepted amongst the gods for her power over the divine
art, and yet dear in her human relations for the exercise
of a tenderness and a sympathy associated with the sex

which make home a second paradise.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in London, in

the year 1809, and was the daughter of Mr. Barrett, an
English country gentleman. At a very early age she
had written much that was worthy of living, though -it
was kept from all eyes save those of her father, whom
she mentions in the first collected edition of her poems
as 'my public and my critic.' Miss Mitford has de-
scribed her as a ' slight, delicate figure, with a shower of
dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face,
large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and
a smile like a sunbeam.' She possessed a grace and
delicacy which almost defied representation. With so
perfect a mental and spiritual organisation it was not
given to her to be equally blessed in the physical.
Always frail, it was her misfortune further to endanger
her existence in 1837 by the bursting of a blood-vessel

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 71

on the lungs. The extremest care preserved her life,
though the incident was succeeded by a long period of
weakness and suffering. Two years afterwards, before
she had quite recovered, she was again assailed by mis-
fortune, experiencing the keenest anguish on witnessing
the death of her favourite brother, who was drowned at
Torquay. A long period of danger followed this cata-
strophe, and when she was at length able to be removed
to her father's house, it was only to become an invalid,
with the prospect of a life couch-ridden to its close.
For seven long years this period of seclusion lasted; but
during that time Miss Barrett devoured all the books
she could bring within her reach, and cultivated the art
which was afterwards to bring her immortality. In 1846,
that is, when she was in her thirty-seventh year, came the
principal event of her life viz., her marriage with Mr.
Browning. He bore her away to Italy, where softer
skies brought back that health which had so long for-
saken her in her native land. The union was most
felicitous, and the influence upon Mrs. Browning's genius
must have been great. On this influence, however, we
cannot now enlarge, for the husband of the author of
' Aurora Leigh ' still lives. Mrs. Browning died in Flo-
rence in 1861, after testifying, in some of the noblest
strains ever penned, her extraordinary devotion to the
land of her adoption.

72 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

One beneficial result of the comparative seclusion of
Mrs. Browning's life was the habit of introspection which
it induced, and which, fortunately for posterity, led to
the production of some of the finest subjective poetry
extant. We can understand to some extent her admira-
tion for Wordsworth, after noticing the tenor of her own
existence, which ran in somewhat similar grooves.
Where, but for the seclusion of her life, would have been
that wealth of ancient lore which, while not destroying
the freshness of her poetry, has added to it a classic grace
and a finish most admirable and remarkable ? The excel-
lent balancing of her faculties had a happy effect on
her work, which is always good in conception, however
defective it may occasionally be in expression. Her in-
tellect was keen and comprehensive, not deficient even
in masculinity ; and it was only in her theories witness,
for instance, references to social questions in her greatest
poem that she occasionally failed to exhibit that solidity
of judgment, or practicality of judgment rather, which is
generally associated with the opposite sex. As a poet
she undoubtedly looked at men and things from the
intensely personal view, in the sense, we mean, of in-
dividuality. Instead of taking a broad sweep as Dante
whom we conceive as being merged in the mighty con-
ceptions of his spirit she had rather that other gift of

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 73

the poet, of making herself, the individual, apparent in
all her writings. It is this quality which adds so greatly
to the force of her lyrical effusions indeed, without this
quality no poet had better attempt the writing of lyrics.
So far as regards this form of poetry, we understand its
force and value to be that it is an appeal from one indivi-
dual mind to another; and the most successful lyrics
have been those which have excited in us a particular,
and not a general, interest. A momentary reflection
upon the lyrics of Burns and Beranger will attest the
truth of this assertion. It was a portion of Mrs. Brown-
ing's strength and by no means an unimportant one
that she was able to achieve this result. Who will not
continually feel indebted to her for many of her shorter
poems, which have revealed so much of the human heart
in them, and awakened impulses and sensations which
have delighted and cheered the spirit? That was a
happy observation passed upon her by one critic, who
described her as Shakspeare's daughter. The same large-
heartedness which pertained to the great dramatist is
shown by the later poet. The benevolent eye looks out
on men and nature with the same imperishable love. If
the world has at any time possessed its ideal poets, she
is worthy to be counted one of them.

From her earliest years, as will, indeed, have been

74 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

discovered already, Mrs. Browning appears to have had
the passion for books a passion which is referred to
more than once in 'Aurora Leigh' and her studious
habits, as well as that of writing, were encouraged by her
father. Her early years are a reproach to any who, with
stronger health and equal opportunities, take no heed to
the storing and assimilation of knowledge. In all that
we read of her subsequent works, the value of those early
habits of insatiable study is apparent. Knowledge has
made the full mind, and the richness of the stores is not
without effect upon her original compositions. How
must her fragile frame have thrilled when, in the course
of her reading, as she says

Because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.

Doubtless, the slumbering possibilities in her nature were
touched by this, and it must have been with wonder that
the lights of the great bards first flashed across her vision :
something, it would have appeared to her, of the nature
of coming into a priceless inheritance. And the time
arrived when all that she had acquired became of real
moment to her. Let those who would despise erudition
in a poet place Mrs. Browning beside other female poets,
and see how they lose by comparison not only in that

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 75

original power in which she was undoubtedly stronger.
The poet cannot gain one fact too many; the poorest
and commonest coinage which he receives from other
mints may be transmuted into the purest gold in his
own. The best minds have recognised this, and have
laboured diligently after the perfection of knowledge,
feeling that none are so gifted, even the gods, but that
they may learn somewhat from men.

To attempt to pass in review all that Elizabeth
Barrett Browning has left as her legacy for future ages is
not our intention. We purpose, however, to examine
some of her works individually before offering any criti-
cisms of a general character upon her genius. ' A Drama
of Exile,' which was a comparatively early production, is
acknowledged to possess great sublimity in its ideas,
though the conception as a whole is asserted to be a
failure. For ourselves we were struck with the poetic
wealth which it displays, and failure as applied to it must
be taken in the comparative form. There are those
whom the majestic Milton has not satisfied by his chef-
d'ceuvre \ but the most fastidious will admit that if he has
not touched the highest heavens he has come very near
them. Of course, it is not pretended for a moment that
{fie Drama of Exile ' stands forth as magnificent a con-
ception as ' Paradise Lost,' which Mrs. Browning's poem

76 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

compels us to bring to memory, being upon the same
subject ; neither can it be said to be perfectly original,
coming after that epic : but in the later poem we find
much in point of sustained language which reminds us of
Milton's work. Milton's feet were more firmly set, and
he has the stately march of a conqueror. Mrs. Browning
can only in this work show her possibilities, not her
ultimate perfection. This is an excellent touch, due,
probably, partly to the fact that it was written by a
woman; Gabriel, addressing Lucifer, says :

' If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God
This morning for a moment, thou hadst known
That only pity fitly can chastise :
Hate but avenges.'

These lines, put into the mouth of Adam, are also ex-
quisite :

' The Highest being the Holy and the Glad,
Whoever rises must approach delight
And sanctity in the act.'

But for a passage of unfaltering eloquence, and one
instinct with true poetic fire, take the address of Adam
to Eve after the twain have left Paradise. To demon-
strate Mrs. Browning's power over blank verse, we cannot
refrain from citing a portion of it :

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 77

' Raise the majesties

Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with level eyelids the To come,
And all the dark o' the world !

******

Thy love

Shall chant itself its own beatitudes
After its own life-working. A child's kiss,
Set on thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad ;
A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich ;
A sick man helped by thee, shall make thee strong ;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown
I set upon thy head, Christ witnessing
With looks of prompting love to keep thee clear
Of all reproach against the sin foregone,
From all the generations which succeed.
Thy hand, which plucked the apple, I clasp close,
Thy lips, which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close,
I bless thee in the name of Paradise,
And by the memory of Edenic joys
Forfeit and lost, by that last cypress tree
Green at the gatQ, which thrilled as we came out,
And by the blessed nightingale which threw
Its melancholy music after us,
And by the flowers, whose spirits full of smells,
Did follow softly, plucking us behind
Back to the gradual banks and vernal bowers
And fourfold river-courses By all these,
I bless thee to the contraries of these,
I bless thee to the desert and the thorns,
To the elemental change and turbulence,

78 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

And to the roar of the estranged beasts,
And to the solemn dignities of grief,
To each one of these ends, and to their END
Of Death and the Hereafter.'

It will be apparent that for one who had not yet
attained the full maturity of her powers to write like this
there must have been a great future in store. Whatever
deductions might have to be made as regards the want
of stupendousness in her conceptions, there was still
sufficient breadth in her earlier work to prove that there
were scarcely any heights to which she might not subse-
quently attain. In the chorus of Eden spirits which
comes into the ' Drama of Exile ' there is an abundance
of lyrical music and power, given in metres which have
since been most successfully adopted by other poets.
In another poem, ' The Seraphim/ we observe the
same noble moral glow which pervaded the drama to
which we have just alluded. The time of the poem is
that of the Crucifixion, and the sublime tragedy is
handled with a delicacy and at the same time a force as
nearly befitting so lofty a subject as we can well imagine.
The deep religious spirit which pervaded Mrs. Browning
led her frequently to the choice of topics in some way
connected with the great verities of the Christian religion,
in which she had a profound and intense belief, as will

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 79

have been gathered, not only from repute, but from the
attitude assumed in her works, by anyone who has made
acquaintance with them. The faults which are princi-
pally to be noted in her earliest poems are those related
to art, a knowledge of which rarely comes at the outset
to the most precocious. Before art can be exhibited,
there must not only be capacity, but work accomplished
work compared with previous work, and each stage
showing an advance upon that which went before. Al-
though Mrs. Browning was never at any period of her
career as distinguished for finish as she was for other and
more important qualities, there is yet a considerable
difference in this respect between her first effusions and
her later lyrics. Her strength and pathos, however,
generally overwhelm all other considerations in the
reader's mind, whose attention is seized and retained by
personal influence. It is the poet who does not throw
himself entirely into his creations who is mostly eminent
for finish. The value of the diamond to him consists in
the way in which it is set, and he would prefer a stone
of inferior water if it exhibited excess of polish to one
much more massive if some touches of the rough still
adhered to it. Yet, we are by no means contending that
great poets are not also great in art. We are, speaking
only of finish, which is but a portion of art, and that not

8o POETS AND NOVELISTS.

the most important. In art are combined the larger
qualities of fitness, proportion, and truth, which are the
masters of finish the world over. In all these three
points Mrs. Browning was the successful artist ; and he
who objected to her because he discovered here and
there a false rhyme or a defective line, would have lost
sight of the towering mountain ahead in stumbling over
a mole-hill. Having said thus much, let us at the same
time frankly admit that the sense of adequateness is not
strongly perceived in the lengthy poems to which we
have adverted. We discover it in the highest degree in
' Paradise Lost,' and ought, of course, to find it in all
work which is the matured result of a grand imagination
work that has attained solidity by frequent communing
with and lifelong study of the bases on which it was
grounded. So, had these poems of Mrs. Browning's
been written at a later stage the beneficial result would
have been apparent, in this one point at any rate upon
which we are insisting. The unevenness in her execution
would also have been considerably diminished, a matter
of no small importance in conceptions of that nature.
But take the poem and the drama as they stand, with all
their faults, and we repeat there is still room for a
feeling of genuine admiration over the result achieved.
Mrs. Browning's chosen field of study was the one

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 81

productive of her first work of great importance, viz. her
rendering of the ' Prometheus Bound ' of ^Eschylus. She
had most probably been incited to this work by the
companion, before mentioned, of her studies in Greek.
It is a deed of no small magnitude for a young lady to
accomplish this at all, and might well daunt even deeper
students ; but she had a profound appreciation of the old
poet, and brought her love for his sublime tragedy to
bear upon the task. It was scarcely to be expected that
she would obtain a complete success, and she herself
admitted that the translation was defective. She accord-
ingly recast it, substantially changing the form of many
passages. Though on reading it we gain the impression
that it is a considerably Anglicised Greek drama, the
vigour exhibited, and the true poetical fervour which is
thrown around it, make it very welcome. The vocabulary
of passion employed is rich and varied, whilst the rhythm
affords scope for considerable poetic effects. In this, as
in her other translations, she desired it to be understood
that her one great idea was to catch the spirit of the
original. The choruses are excellent, and possess, in
addition to much music, all the fire that it is essential
should burn in poems which have for their aim the
depicting of the ecstasies and the writhings of passion.
' A Lament for Adonis,' from Bion, is very happy and

G

82 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

full of a warm imagery, and indicates, besides, the
instinct and apprehension of the original poet.

The genius of Mrs. Browning had two sides the
lyric and the dramatic : she had little special gift for
either the idyllic or the epic. For the idyllic she was
not either sufficiently didactic or intransitively calm ; for
the epic her emotions were too keen and her sensibilities
too quick and lively. Her longest poem has nothing of
the epic about it, being in fact neither more nor less
than a series of dramatic scenes. It does not profess to
give the triumphant progress of a hero or a heroine, but
to unfold to us the inner life of its principal character.
In a word, it is an Autobiography in verse.

Considering first her lyrical capabilities for it is
really by means of these that her immortality is most
secured we are bound to say that they are of the highest
order. Campbell was a great artist, but on reading his
lyrics we are struck with the fact that they are in a large
measure the product of a skilled mind rather than of a
real singer. He has been succeeded by Tennyson in
verbal perfection ; but to our mind neither of these true
poets is the equal of Mrs. Browning in the matter of the
lyric. Yet so high is our estimate of the authors of
' Hohenlinden ' and * Locksley Hall ' that no other poets
in these later times, save Mrs. Browning and perhaps

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 83

two others, can be put into comparison with them for
real lyrical power. One of the two latter is Shelley, the
other Burns, who is the superior of Shelley, and indubi-
tably at the head of his race : and for this reason, that he
invariably put his heart into his verse. Soul, not culture,
thus gave us the best of our lyric poets. It is on the
ground assigned in regard to Burns that we should give
Mrs. Browning the next place amongst the moderns for
lyrical genius, though these two poets were as wide
asunder as the poles in all other respects. Let the reader
dispassionately compare the lyrics which have been
written by our principal singers during the past two or
three generations. He will find, we think, that the
position we have assumed is one which can be main-
tained. Shelley undoubtedly exhibits the true lyrical
fire, but his poems are not so varied as those of Mrs.
Browning ; while her pathos is deeper than his and that
of all his compeers. His imagination was, perhaps,
somewhat higher, and he soared into cloud-land more fre-
quently ; but the heart, which gave Burns his power, was
the strength of Mrs. Browning. Shelley was almost too
ethereal, too spiritual, and the consequence was that the
human was somewhat overshadowed. His sensibility
was of the keenest description, and many of his lyrics
bear testimony to the truth of his averment that

G 2

84 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

1 Most men

Are cradled into poetry by wrong ;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.'

One cannot help thinking that Shelley's natural place in
the world would be that of a spiritualised .Spenser ; and
if that calm could have come to him which alone can
furnish the poet with the opportunity he ought to have,
there is no knowing but he might have given us a work
rich enough to justify this fancy of him. As it is, between
writhings and groanings, the paroxysms of a much -tried
spirit, he wrote those exquisite lyrics and poems, which
we should be indeed loth to lose from our literature.
Mrs. Browning had not the intense naturalness of Burns,
and though both felt acutely, yet in character and tem-
perament they had nothing in common. But, as we have
said, the mainspring of the power of both was in the
heart. They worked upon different principles and under
different circumstances. Burns was moved to joy or
sorrow by the impressions he drew from outward nature ;
Mrs. Browning, on the contrary, found that nature re-
ceived a tinge of melancholy or happiness from her own
emotions. They are thus perfect contrasts in everything
except the one great endowment of genius. And if the
word epigrammatic may be used to denote that power
which Burns had of describing an object in nature or a

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 85

human emotion, Mrs. Browning was certainly not so
epigrammatic as the northern singer. Leigh Hunt once
referred to our poet as the sister of Alfred Tennyson, but
the relation does not strike us as of the happiest. It
does not set in the proper light either relatively to the
other. In the first place, there is a good deal that is
feminine (in the best sense) about the genius of Tenny-
son, whilst occasionally there is that in Mrs. Browning's
poetry as masculine as anything to be found in the
Poet Laureate. In truth, we do not see much good in
these comparisons at all ; the happiest expression yet
given utterance to is the one previously mentioned,
which describes her as Shakspeare's daughter. We are
able to see some meaning in this ; we can feel that her
genius stands in the same relation to that of the trans-
cendent poet of the world as does a daughter to her
parent. The lesser is the true miniature representation
of the greater.

The precise order in which Mrs. Browning's lyrics
were written has never been stated, and it is not possible
to arrive at a correct chronology with regard to them by
internal evidence. The dates of several, however, are
well known : and amongst the earliest of her productions
was that entitled ' A Vision of Poets,' written in a very
attractive, though unusual metre. This vision of men of

86 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

' foreheads royal with the truth,' as beheld in the magni-
ficent temple of poetry, is one of her most successful as
well as most graphic conceptions. No words are wasted
in painting the portraits ; to each of the world-famous
men are appropriated but a few lines, yet how telling

these are !

' Shakspeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world : O eyes sublime
With tears and laughters for all time ! '

The national poet's eminence was never more felicitously
indicated than in these simple words that is, more of
him can be grasped than pages of criticism could accom-
plish, though the poet's description is by no means
exhaustive. Other excellent touches are those devoted
to Euripides, Lucretius, ' nobler than his mood,' Goethe,
Chaucer, Milton, Schiller.

' And Burns, with pungent passionings
Set in his eyes : deep lyric springs
Are of the fire-mount's issuings.

' And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave
And salt as life ; forlornly brave,
And quiv'ring with the dart he drave.'

And the lesson it is worthy of the ' Vision.' Is it
well for the poet to be born to suffer, and to die un-
recognised and unrewarded? Verily so; he has lived
for truth and beauty scarcely two as the author tells us

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 87

and should therefore be content. His experience has
been, after all, better than that of the lower man, with
lower pains and less transporting pleasures. He will be
crowned, but crowned with no ordinary crown. His
highest glory is to know, however the end is gained.
And after death he will have two lives one in the
Beyond, and one in the Past, in the songs he has left
behind him. Thus the end of the whole matter is
reached, the conclusion being that ' Knowledge by
suffering entereth, and Life is perfected by Death.' The
lesson in some of its applications is not new ; the martyrs
to truth in whatever shape have always taught it, but
now the poet-martyrs teach it. For they are martyrs
too frequently ; and that is not martyrdom simply which
affects or destroys the body. The spirituality of Mrs.
Browning's nature shines in this poem ; she affords some
clue as to her ideal. It is a strain singularly pure and
lofty, and shows a developing imagination which augured
powerfully and well for succeeding work. Its burden is
more cheerful than that of ' The Two Voices, 7 a poem
cast in the same mould, and to which the thought of the
reader inevitably reverts while reading the ' Vision.' Its
meaning is not to be restricted alone to the class of
beings with whom it deals upon the surface, for the con-
clusion is a triumphant one for the whole of the human

POETS AND NOVELISTS.

race, whose ends of life are also made sacred by the
same method. Having read this poem, one rises with a
more hopeful heart to engage in the world's conflict

We pass on from such poems as * The Romaunt of
Margret ' and ' Isobel's Child ' with reluctance, for there
is much in them both of concentrated strength and music
which we could wish to have pointed out. Some have
chosen them as well-nigh the happiest efforts of the poet,
and they certainly are amongst the most beautiful notes
of her lyre. Even the rhymes seem to possess a melan-
choly befitting the subjects, whilst the mere repetition of
the words ' Margret, Margret,' attains to real pathos in
the cunning hands of the writer in the former poem. A
singular affection for subjects which have in them the
deepest anguish and suffering was early apparent in Mrs.
Browning. The spirit very seldom danced, though when
it did, the music was as true and fitting as the funeral
dirge, which she more frequently gives us. Wandering
amongst her poems is like standing in the forest alone,
with the wailing wind and the flying rain as the only
assurances of an existence sublimer than our own. But
the profoundest depth of our heart is reached thereby.
We would there had been no need for the lament and
the sorrow, and yet we would not have lost those mys-
terious thrills of the soul which her power has evoked-

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 89

We must follow the poet in her quest of truth, follow her
wherever she leads us, for by these means shall we
emerge out of the thick folds of darkness into the broad
light of day. This is one reason why we have such an
admiration for, and attachment to her genius. Wherever
she leads us, it is to make us better. Does she show us
the poor whom we too often oppress ? It is that we may
know wherein we have erred, and that in the future our
hands may be washed clean from oppression and cruelty.
Does she sometimes apparently darken the spirit ? It is
only to make it reflect so that it may endeavour to grope
through the mysteries of life and nature up to God.
Intellectual doubts are frequently disposed of in a very
summary method, and one which has at sundry times in
the world's history been most effective ; she sees their
lowering forms gradually attenuate and disperse before
the calm eye of Faith. Whatever of evil was rampant in
the world, this could not be crushed out of her. To her,
it was not always necessary to understand all the wrong
that she beheld; she saw it, and hated it. She has
helped men by her writings to do something towards
making an end of it. She has been a mouthpiece for
the poor and miserable ; the light of love beams on her
forehead and dwells in her eyes j the Divine feeling of
compassion has swelled in her bosom, and for this

90 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

reason, as for others, she has her place with those who
are beloved of the human race.

In proceeding to indicate what we consider some of
Mrs. Browning's most admirable lyrics, we must deci-
dedly name among the chief, ' The Rhyme of the
Duchess May.' This ballad has in it not only a quaint-
ness which conveys us back to the days of chivalry, but
a strength of expression which is generally absent in the
productions of that period. It bears unquestionably the
stamp of genius. The poet for the time has completely
forgotten herself, projecting her thoughts so far into the
subject as to realise a most intense and tragic phase of
human existence. There is the ring of melancholy in
the lines, which is deepened by the constant recurrence
of the allusion to the passing bell. The whole concep-
tion is well worked out, and the powers of the writer are
not frittered away before the close of the poem, as is too
frequently the case with lyrics of similar length. The
perfection of what is touching is reached in ' Bertha in
the Lane,' where the dying maiden tells with simple
pathos the incident which has led to her own heart's
breaking. There is nothing forced here ; indeed, the
language in some passages does not rise higher than that
of actual conversation, the only adventitious poetical aid
given to the setting of the story being that of the rhyme,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 91

which again is well chosen. The author has wisely
avoided the slightest straining after effect, leaving the
natural pathos in the story to accomplish the end which
she desires. l Lady Geraldine's Courtship ' is a romance
which almost necessarily challenges comparison with
' Locksley Hall/ and what is strange about the two, Mrs.
Browning has, in our judgment, most truthfully drawn
the male characters, while Tennyson has been the
happier in all else in his poem. The poet who loved
Lady Geraldine has many excellences, but his vocation
has not properly imbued him with the kingly spirit, and
he fails in the strength and robustness which we should
expect. Besides, we quickly grow indignant that he
should be so slow in reading that which should have
been patent to his eyes. The character of the Earl is
well drawn, his natural dignity being admirably caught in
the few lines devoted to his limning. The old story of
love springing where it listeth, unforced and unexpected, is
once more dilated upon, and brought in this instance 'to
a satisfactory consummation. As another specimen of
the perfection of lyric art we may cite * The Romance of
the Swan's Nest,' one of the most beautiful and strangely-
attractive series of stanzas ever penned.

But let us pass on to ' The Cry of the Children,' that
noble and striking remonstrance against the greed and

92 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

oppression of mankind. Its intense pathos could surely
only spring from a woman's heart, wounded in its love
for the human by deeds enough to make the heavens
blush. We have heard something of the sorrows of the
factory children, but these lines have brought them close
to us, and compelled us to feel that the poorest and
weakest are our brethren and sisters. When was the
anguish of a young spirit grasped so clearly as in the
following lines, which are supposed to be spoken by the
little workers amongst the iron wheels those wheels
which roll on ruthlessly, scarcely giving time for rest ?

' Two words, indeed, of praying we remember,

And at midnight's hour of harm,
" Our Father," looking upward in the chamber,

We say softly, for a charm.
We know no other words except " Our Father,"

And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,

And hold both within His right hand, which is strong.
" Our Father ! " If He heard us, He would surely

(For they call Him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

" Come and rest with Me, my child." '

England has cleared herself from something of the re-
proach contained in the poem from whence these lines
are taken, and by God's grace she will be, perhaps,
wholly free from stain in the (let us hope not far distant)

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 93

future. There are other poems which exhibit the same
large sympathetic heart as the one founded upon the
miseries of the factory children, such as 'Mother and
Poet/ and * The Cry of the Human,' which latter reminds
the world how many

1 Lips say, " God be pitiful,"
Who ne'er said, " God be praised !"'

She felt as did that other poet of the poor, of whom we
are proud, for all who are in any way crushed or bruised
by the pressure of society and of social distinctions, or
of social misfortunes. To be despised or to be sad was
the way to be sure of her deepest interest. This is a
trait which will serve to keep her memory green, for who
among us will willingly let die the names of our philan-
thropists those who have been genuine in the active
and written expressions of their sympathy ? One likes
to linger over the point how lofty genius steps down with
more sincerity from its high estate to acknowledge fel-
lowship with the mean and the wretched, than do the
^^/-philanthropists who consider that the claims of
humanity are met by the doling out of a pittance to any
who may appeal to their condescension. Not always,
yet very often, the great intellect is the index to the
generous and simple spirit

94 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

To mark the range of our author's powers, compare
such poems as ' A Child's Thought of God ' with those
on Napoleon, or ' Casa Guidi Windows.' How sweetly
and beautifully the first-named closes !

' God is so good, He wears a fold

Of heaven and earth across His face,
Like secrets kept, for love, untold.

' But still I feel that His embrace

Slides down by thrills, through all things made,
Through sight and sound of every place :

' As if my tender mother laid

On my shut lips her kisses' pressure,
Half waking me at night, and said,

" Who kiss'd you through the dark, dear guesser ? " '

This is better theology than the orthodox damnation
with which we were terrified in our youth by narrow-
minded bigots, who have probably ruined many a soul
by preaching that God is powerful and vindictive, instead
of God is love. We want more of the teaching which
we get in the pages of this woman-poet. Then note how
from these sweet and happy thoughts we can turn to
matter more bold and striking, as in ' The Dead Pan,'
which has a truly musical ring with it ; ' Cowper's Grave,'
an immortal tribute to a suffering singer; Crowned and
Buried,' an appreciation of the great and deathless
Napoleon; but, above all, in this class of effort, to ' Casa

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 95

Guidi Windows.' This poem exhibits Mrs. Browning in
her greatest intellectual strength. The fabric is solid and
enduring; the poem as sustained as anything which she
has written, and more perfect than her remaining longer
one. Clearly her feeling was in this work as well as her
imagination, and the combined powers have given us
something which cannot fail to live.

Everyone who knows anything at all of the poet is
familiar with her great love for Italy, one of the strongest
passions of her life. It is in this poem that she chiefly
unfolds to the world her feelings with regard to the
emancipation of that country. From the Casa Guidi
windows at Florence, her favourite city, she watched the
struggle for liberty in which Italy engaged against Austria,
and the assistance rendered towards this object by
Napoleon III., without whom probably it would nevef
have been accomplished. It was in praise of this cham-
pion that she wrote some of her most impassioned strains.
She knew the deceased Emperor at his best, when there
seemed strongly upon him an enthusiasm for the cause
which he had espoused that would be sure to go straight
to the heart of the generous and impulsive poet; and in
her utterances, therefore, she was lavish and unrestrained.
To many in England this over-warmth of feeling will
seem strange, but till we have felt all the bitterness which

96 POETS AND NOVELISTS.

she felt for a degraded nation, and have seen the con-
queror arise to lift her from the dust, we cannot say
how deep our gratitude might be to such conqueror, his
subsequent career notwithstanding. Our concern, how-
ever, is with the poems, including those entitled * Poems
before Congress,' in which Mrs. Browning set forth that
patriotism, to be true, should not be manifested in
behalf of one's own country alone. In ' Casa Guidi
Windows ' the imagery is rich and the language flowing,
worthy partners of the idea which engrossed the mind.
In the course of the poem beautiful legends of Savona-
rola and Michael Angelo are laid under contribution to
heighten the charms of the song of their country ; and
the closing pages of the poem contain an attractive
episode in relation to the poet's infant son, whom she
calls her young Florentine, he having been born in