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LANDMARKS 


OF 


ENGLISH    LITERATURE. 


BY 

HENRY    J.    NICOLL, 

AUTHOR  OF  "GREAT  MOVEMENTS,"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK: 
D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY, 

i,  3,  AND  5  BOND   STREET. 
1886. 


V 


• 


PR 


CONTENTS  AND  CHRONOLOGY. 


INTRODUCTION. 

PLAN    OF   THE  WORK.  —  SOME    HINTS 
ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


ON 


THE   STUDY  OF 
Pp.  7-24 


CHAPTER  I. — THE  DAWN  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Chnuccr ;  James  I.  of  Scotland,  Dunbar,  Gawain  Douglas,  Sir 
David  Lyndsay  ;  Mandeville,  Wiclif,  Tyndale,  Coverdale, 
Rogers  (translations  of  the  Bible);  Sir  Thomas  Malory, 
More,  Latimer,  Foxe,  ....  Pp.  25-48 


1300.  Mandeville  born. 

1324.  Wicklif  born. 

1340.  Chaucer  born. 

1356.  Mandeville's  "  Travels." 

1371.  Mandeville  died. 

1380.  Wicklifs  translation  of  the 

Bible. 
1380-1400.  Chaucer's  "  Canterbury 

Tales." 

1384.  Wicklif  died. 

1394.  James  I.  born. 

1400.  Chaucer  died. 

1437.  James  I.  died. 

1460.  Dunbar  born. 

1470.  Sir  Thomas  Malory,  fl. 

1475.  Gawain  Douglas  born. 

1476.  Caxton  settled  in  England. 
1480.  More  born. 

1484.  Tyndale  born. 

1490.  Sir  David  Lyndsay  born. 

1491,  Latimer  born. 

1508,  Dunbar's  "  Golden  Targe." 


1513.   Douglas's  translation  of  the 

"jEneid." 
1513.  More's  "  History  of  Edward 

the  Fifth."  (?) 

1516.  More's  "Utopia." 

1517.  Foxe  born. 
1520.   Dunbar  died. 

1522.  Gawain  Douglas  died. 
1526.  Tyndale's  translation  of  the 

New  Testament. 
1535-   Coverdale's  Bible. 

1535.  More  died. 

1536.  Tyndale  died. 

1537.  "'Matthew's  Bible." 
1539.   Cranmer's  Bible. 

1539.    Lyndsay's    "Satire    of    the 

Three  Estates." 
1549.   Latimer's   "  Sermon  on  the 

Ploughers." 

IS53-  Lyndsay's    "Monarchy." 
1555.   Latimer  died. 
1557.   Lyndsay  died. 
1587.   Foxe  died. 


IV 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


CHAPTER  IT. — THE  ELIZABETHAN  ERA. 

Ascham  ;  Wyatt,  and  Surrey  ;  Spenser  ;  Sidney,  Hooker,  Raleigh, 
Lyly;  the  Elizibethan  dramatists:  Lyly,  Marlowe,  Greene, 
Peele,  Shakespeare,  Chapman,  Ben  Jonson,  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  and  others,  ....  Pp.  49-88 


1503.  Wyatt  born. 

1515.  Ascham  born. 

1516.  Surrey  born. 
1541.  Wyatt  died. 

1545.  Ascham's  "  Toxophilus." 
1547.  Surrey  died. 
I552(?).  Spenser  born. 
1552.  Raleigh  born. 

Hooker  born. 

Sidney  born. 

Lyly  born. 

Totiel's  "  Miscellany." 

Ascham  died. 

Ascham's  "  Schoolmaster." 
1579-  Spenser's  "Shepherd's  Calen- 
dar. " 

1579.  Lyly's   "  Euphues,  the  Ana- 

tomy of  Wit." 

1580.  Sidney's  "  Arcadia." 


1554.. 
1554. 
1557. 
1568. 
1570. 


1580.  Lyly's     "  Euphues    and    his 

England." 

1581.  Sidney's       "  Apologie       for 

Poetry." 

1586.  Sidney  died. 

1590.  Spenser's  "Faerie  Queen" 
(first  three  books). 

1594.  Hooker's  "Ecclesiastical  Po- 
lity" (first  four  books). 

I595-  Spenser's  "  Epithalamion." 

1596.  Spenser's    "Faerie   Queen" 

(last  three  books). 

1597.  Hooker's  "  Ecclesiastical  Po- 

lity "  (fifth  book) 

1599.  Spenser  died. 

1600.  Hooker  died. 
1606.  Lyly  died. 

1611.  Authorised    Version   of    the 

Bible. 
1618.   Raleigh  died. 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMATISTS. 


1551.  Udall's  "Ralph  Roister 
Doister"  (first  English 
comedy)  acted. 

1558.  Peele  born. 

1559.  Chapman  born. 
1560  (?).  Greene  born. 

1562.  Sackville  and  Norton's  "Gor- 
boduc"  (first  English  tra- 
gedy) acted. 

1564.  Marlowe  born. 

1564.  Shakespeare  born. 

1573.  Ben  Jonson  born. 

1576.  First  theatre  erected  in 
London. 

1579.  Fletcher  born. 

1582.  Shakespeare's  marriage. 

1584.  Massinger  born. 

1586  (?).  Shakespeare  goes  to  Lon- 
don. 


1586.  Ford  born. 

1586.  Beaumont  born. 

1587.  Marlowe's  "Tamburlaine." 
1588-94.      Shakespeare's       "First 

Period." 

1592.   Greene  died. 

1592.  Greene's  reference  to  Shake- 
speare. 

1592.  Peele  died. 

1593.  Marlowe  died. 

1593.  Shakespeare's    "Venus    and 
Adonis." 

1594.  Shakespeare's  "  Rape  of  Lu- 

crece." 
1595-1601.  Shakespeare's  "Second 

Period." 

1596.   Shirley  born. 
1596.   Ben  Jonson's    "Every  Man 

in  his  Humour." 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


l6oi-8.      Shakespeare's       "Third 

Period." 

1603.  Ben  Jonson's  "  Sejanus." 
1605.  Ben  Jonson's  "Volpone." 

1609.  Shakespeare's  Sonnets. 
1609-13  (?).  Shakespeare's  "  Fourth 

Period." 

1610.  Ben  Jonson's  "Alchemist." 
1612.  Webster's  "  Vittoria  Corom- 

bona." 

1612   (?).    Sliakespeare    returns   to 
Stratford. 


1616.   Shakespeare  died. 

1616.   Beaumont  died. 

1623.  Webster's       "Duchess 

Malfi." 

1625.  Fletcher  died. 
1634.  Chapmnn  died. 
1637.  Ben  Jonson  died. 
1640.  Ford  died. 
1640.  Massinger  died. 
1642.  Theatres  closed. 
1667.  Shirley  died. 


of 


CHAPTER  III. — THE  SUCCESSORS  OF  THE  ELIZABETHANS. 

Bacon  ;  Fuller,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Baxter,  Bunyan  ;  Walton ;  Browne  ; 
Clarendon;   Hobbes  ;  Lovelace,  Suckling,  Herbert,    Herrick 
Milton,  Donne,  Cowley,  Denham,  Waller,         .         Pp.  89-128 


1561.  Bacon  born. 

1573.  Donne  born. 

1588.   Hobbes  born. 

1593.  Isaak  Walton  born. 

1597.  First     edition     of     Bacon's 

"Essays." 
1605.  Bacon's    "Advancement   of 

Learning." 
1605.  Waller  born. 
1605.  Browne  born. 
1608.  Fuller  born. 
1608.  Suckling  born. 
1608.  Clarendon  born. 
1608.  Milton  born. 

1612.  Second   edition    of    Bacon's 

"  Essays." 

1613.  Jeremy  Taylor  born. 
1615.   Baxter  born. 

1615.  Denham  born. 
1618.  Bacon  made  Lord  Chancel- 
lor. 

1618.  Lovelace  born. 
1618.  Cowley  born. 

1620.  Bacon's  "  NovumOrganum." 

1621.  Bacon's  fall  from  power. 

1625.  Third    edition     of     Bacon's 

"  Essays." 

1626.  Bacon  died. 
1628.   Bunvan  born. 


1629.  Milton  B.A.  at  Cambridge. 

1631.  Donne  died. 

1633.   Herbert's  "Temple." 

1633.  Milton's  "Arcades,"  "  L' Al- 

legro," "II  Penseroso." 

1634.  Milton's  "  Comus  "  acted. 
1637.  Milton's  "  Lycidas." 
1640-78.  Walton's  "Lives." 

1641.  Suckling  died. 

1641-42.  Milton's    Pamphlets      on 
Church   Government. 

1642.  Fuller's  "  Holy  State." 

1643.  Browne's  "  Religio  Medici." 

1644.  Milton's  "  Areopagitica." 
1644-45.  Milton's  Divorce  Tracts. 

1645.  Fuller's  "Good  Thoughts  in 

Bad  Times." 

1646.  Browne's  "Vulgar  Errors." 

1646.  Collected  edition  of  Milton's 

Poems. 

1647.  Cowley's  "  Mistress." 

1648.  Fuller's  "  Profane  State." 

1648.  Ilerrick's  "  Hesperiues." 

1649.  Milton's  "  Eikonoclastes." 
1653.  Walton's  "Complete  Angler." 
1656.  Fuller's  "Church  History." 
1658.   Lovelace  died. 

1659-60.  Milton's  Restoration  Pam- 
phlets. 


VI 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


1661.  Fuller  died. 

1662.  Fuller's  "Worthies  of  Eng- 

land." 

1667.  Miiton's  "  Paradise  Lost." 
1667.  Cowley  died. 

1667.  Jeremy  Taylor  died. 

1668.  Denham  died. 

1671.  Milton's  "  Paradise  Re- 
gained "  and  "  Samson 
Agonistes." 


1674.  Clarendon  died. 

1674.  Milton  died. 

1678.  Banyan's     "Pilgrim's 

gress." 

1679.  Hobhes  died. 

1682.  Browne  died. 

1683.  Walton  died. 

1687.  Waller  died. 

1688.  Bunyan  died. 
1691.  Baxter  died. 


Pro- 


CHAPTER  IV.— THE  RESTORATION. 

Butler ;  Dryden  ;  Wycherley,  Congreve,  Vanbrugh,  Farquhar, 
Sheridan  ;  Otway,  Lee,  R'nve  ;  Barrow,  Tillotson,  Stillingfleer, 
Sherlock,  South  ;  Gilbert  Burnet ;  Locke  ;  Newton,  Pp.  129-161 


1612.  Butler  born. 

1630.  John  Tillotson  bom. 

1630.  Dr.  Isaac  Barrow  born. 

1631.  John  Drvden  born. 

1632.  John  Locke  born. 

1633.  Robert  South  born. 
1635.  Edward  Stillinyfleet  born. 

1640.  William  \Vyche:  ley  born. 

1641.  William  Sherlock  born. 

1642.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  born. 

1643.  Gilbert  Burnet  born. 
1651.  Thomas  Otway  born. 

1658.  Drydtn's  first  poem  published. 

1660.  Dryden's  "Astvzea  Redux." 

1661.  Diyden's  "Panegyric  on  the 

Coronation." 

1662.  Royal  Society  incorporated. 
1662.  First  part  of  Butler's  "  Hudi- 
bras." 

1662.  Dryden's    "  Epis'le    on    the 

Lord  Chancellor." 

1663.  Second  part  of  "  Hudibras." 
1663.  Dryden's    "Epistle    to    Dr. 

Charlton"     and     "Wild 
Gallant." 
1663.  Dryden  married. 

1666.  Sir  John  Vanbrugh  born. 

1667.  Dryden's  "An nus  Mirabilis." 

1668.  Drvden's  "  Essay  of  Dramatic 

Poesy." 


1670.  Drvden's  "  Conquest  of 
Granada." 

1670.  Dryden  appointed  Historio- 
grapher Royal  and  Poet 
Laureate. 

1670.  Congreve  born. 

1671.  The  •' Rehearsal." 

1672.  Wycherley's     "  Love    in    a 

Wood." 

1673.  Nicholas  Rowe  born. 

1675.  Wycherley's  "  Country  Wife." 
1677.  Dryden's  "All  for  Love." 
1677.  Wycherley's  "Plain  Dealer." 

1677.  Dr.  Isaac  Barrow  died. 

1678.  Third  part  of  "  Hudibras." 
1678.  George  Farquhar  born. 
1680.  Gilbert  Burnet's  "  Account  of 

the  Life  and  Death  of  the 
Earl  of  Rochester." 
1680.   Butler  died. 

1680.  Sir  Robert  Filmer's  "  PatrU 

archa." 

1681.  Dryden's      "Absalom      art*} 

Achitophel." 

1682.  Dryden's      "The      Medal," 

"  MacFlecknoe,"         and 
"  Religio  Laid." 

1685.  Thomas  Otway  died. 

1686.  Dryden  joined  the  Church  of 

Rome. 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


1686.  Dryden's    poem     "To    the 

Memory    of    Miss    Anne 
Killegrew." 

1687.  Dryden's   "Hind   and    Pan- 

ther." 
1687.  Sir   Isanc  Newton's    "  Prin- 

cipia." 

1689.  Dryden's  "  Don  Sebastian." 
1689.  Burnet  appointed  Bishop  of 

Salisbury. 

1689.  Locke's  "  Letter  on  Tolera- 

tion "  and  "  Two  Treatises 
on  Government." 

1690.  Locke's  "  Essay  on  the  Hu- 

man Understanding." 

1691.  Tillotson     appointed    Arch- 

bishop of  Canterbury. 

1692.  Locke    made    Secretary    of 

Prosecutions. 

1692.  Nathaniel  Lee  died. 

1693.  Congreve's  "  Old  Bachelor." 

1694.  Dryden's      "  Love     Trium- 

phant." 
1694.  Congreve's  "  Double  Dealer." 

1694.  Tillotson  died. 

1695.  Congreve's  "  Love  for  Love." 
1697.  Dryden's  translation  of  "  Vir- 
gil." 

1697.  Congreve's      "  Mourning 

Bride." 
1697.  Vanbrugh's  "Relapse"   and 

"  Provoked  Wife." 


Vll 


Short 


1698.  Teremv      Collier's 

View." 

1699.  Edward  Stillingfleet  died. 

1699.  Dryden's  "  Fables." 

1700.  Diyden  died. 

1700.  Congreve's     "Way     of    the 

World." 
1704.  John  Locke  died. 

1706.  Farqxihar's  "  Recruiting  Offi- 

cer." 

1707.  Farquhar's   "  Beaux    Stiata- 

gem." 

1707.  William  Sherlock  died. 
1707.  Sir  Isaac  Newton  died. 
1715.  Gilbert  Burnet  died. 

1715.  Wycherlry  died. 

1716.  Robert  South  died. 
1718.  Nicholas  Rowe  died. 
1726.  Sir  John  Vanbiugh  died. 
1728.  Congreve  died. 

1751.   Richard  B.  Sheridan  born. 

1759.  Butler's  "  Genuine  Prose  Re- 
mains" published. 

1775.  Sheridan's  "The  Rivals," 
"  St.  Patrick's  Day,11  and 
41  The  Duenna." 

1777.  Sheridan's  "  School  for 
Scandal." 

1779.  Sheridan's  "The  Critic." 

1780.  Sheridan  became  a  Member 

of  Parliament 
1816.   Sheridan  died. 


CHAPTER  V. — THE  WITS  OF  QUEEN  ANNE'S  TIME. 

Swiff, Addisdn,  Steele,  Arbuthnott,  Bolingbroke,  Berkeley,  Butler; 
Pope,  Prior,  Gay,  Young,  Churchill,  Gray,  Collins,  and  Akeh- 
side,  ......  Pp.  162-202 


1664. 
1667. 
1667. 
1671. 
1672. 
1678. 
1681. 
1684. 
1688. 
1692. 


Prior  born. 
Arbuthnott  born. 
Swift  born. 
Steele  born. 
Adciison  born. 
Bolingbroke  born. 
Young  born. 
Bei  keley  born. 
Pope  born. 
Butler  born. 


1698.  Warburton  born. 

1699.  Thomson  born. 
1701.  Swift's  "Discourse." 

1701.  Steele's      "The      Christian 

Hero." 

1702.  Steele's  "  The  Funeral." 

1703.  Steele's  "The  Tender  Hus- 

band" and   "The  Dying 
Lover." 

1704.  Swift's  "Tale  of  a  Tub." 


VI11 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


1704.  Addison's  "  The  Campaign." 

1726-27. 

1707.   Addison's  "  Present.  State  of 

the  War." 

1726-30. 

1708-9.   Swift's  "Argument  against 

1728.  G 

the   Abolishing   of  Chris. 

1728.  P< 

tianity"  and  "  Predictions 

1729.   St 

of  Isaac  Biekerstaff." 

1731.  ci 

1709.   Steele's  "Tatler"  begun. 

1732.  PC 

1709.   Pope's  "  Pastorals."  * 

1732.  G 

1711.  Pope's  "  Essay  on  Criticism." 
1711.  The  "Tatler"  closed. 

1733-38. 

1711.  The  "Spectator"  begun. 

1735-  A 

1712.   Pope's   first    edition   of   the 

1736.  B 

"Rape  of  the  Lock." 

1713.   Gay's  "  Rural  Sports." 
1713.  Addison's  "Cato." 

1741.  Pt 

1713.  Steele's  "Guardian." 

1744.  Y( 

1714.  Steele's  "Englishman"  and 

1744.  P< 

"  The  Crisis." 

1744.  Al 

1714.   Pope's  second  edition  of  the 

"  Rape  of  the  Lock." 

1745.  Sv 

1715-16.  Addison's  "Freeholder." 

1748.  Tl 

1716.   Gray  born. 

1719.  Aduison  died. 

1748.  Tl 

1720.  Swift's   "  Universal    Use   of 

1750.  Gi 

Irish  Manufactures." 

1720.  Collins  born. 

1751.  B< 

1720.   Pope's  "Iliad." 

1752.  Bi 

1721.   Prior  dead. 

1753-  Be 

1722.  Steele's      "The      Conscious 

1756.  Cc 

Lovers." 

1764.  Cl 

1723.  Swift's  "Drapiei's  Letters." 

1765-  Yc 

1725.   Pope's  "  Odyssey." 

1771.  Gi 

1779.  \V 

27.  Swift's   "Gulliver's  Tra- 
vels." 
-30.  Thomson's  "  Seasons." 

Gay's  "  Beggar's  Opera." 

Pope's  "  Dunciad." 

Steele  died. 

Churchill  born. 

Pope's  "  Essay  on  Man." 

Gay  died. 

38.   Pope's  "  Satires  and  Ep- 
istles  of  Horace  Imitated." 

Arbuthnott  died. 

Butler's  "  Analogy  of  Reli- 
gion." 

Pope's  revised  edition  of  the 
"Dunciad." 

Young's  "  Night  Thoughts." 

Pope  died. 

Akenside's    "  Pleasures      of 
the  Imagination." 

Swift  died. 

Thomson's  "  Castle  of  Indo- 
lence." 

Thomson  died. 

Gray's  "  Elegy  in  a  Country 
Churchyard." 

Bolingbroke  died. 

Butler  died. 

Berkeley  died. 

Collins  died. 

Churchill  died. 

Young  died. 

Gray  died. 

Warburton  died. 


CHAPTER  VI. — OUR  FIRST  GREAT  NOVELISTS. 
Defoe  ;  Richardson  ;  Fielding  ;  Smollett ;  Sterne.       Pp.  203-236 


1 66 1.  Defoe  born. 

1689.  Richardson  born. 

1704.  Defoe's  "  Review"  started. 

1 707.  Fielding  born. 

1713.  Sterne  born. 

1719.  Defoe's  "  Robinson  Crusoe." 

1721.  Smollett  born. 

1722.  Defoe's     "Journal    of    the 

Plague." 


1731.   Defoe  died. 

1740.   Richardson's  "Pamela." 

1742.  Fielding's     "Joseph     And- 

rews." 

1743.  Fielding's  "Jonathan  Wild." 
1748.   Richardson's  "Clarissa." 

1748.  Smollett's   "Roderick   Ran- 

dom." 

1749.  Fielding's  "Tom  Jones." 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


ix 


1751.   Fielding's  "Amelia." 
1751.   Smollett's      "Peregrine 
Pickle." 

1753.  Smollett's       "Count       Fa- 

thom." 

1754.  Richardson's    "Sir    Charles 

Grand  ison." 
1754.   Fielding  died. 
1759-67.   Sterne's     "Tristram 

Shandy." 

1761.   Richatdson  died. 
1764.   Wai  pole's    "Castle    of    Ot- 

ranto." 
1768.  Sterne's     "Sentimental 

Journey." 
1768.  Sterne  died. 
1771.  Smollett's  "Humphrey 

Clinker." 
1771.  Smollett  died. 


1771.   Mackenzie's  "Man  of  Feel- 
ing." 

1778.  Fanny  Burney's  "Evelina." 
1784.   Becklord's  "  Vnthek." 
1794.   Mrs.    KaHcliffc's  "Mysteries 

of  Udolpho." 
1794.   Godwin's  "  Caleb  William?." 

1811.  Miss   Austen's    "Sense    and 

Sensibility." 

1812.  Miss     Edgeworth's      "Ab- 

sentee." 
1812.  Miss   Austen's    "Pride  and 

Prejudice." 
1814.  Miss    Austen's     "Mansfield 

Park." 

1816.  Miss  Austen's  "  Emma." 
1818.  Miss  Austen's   "  Northanger 

Abbey." 
1818.  Miss  Austen's  "  Persuasion." 


CHAPTER  VII. — DR.  JOHNSON  AND  HIS  CONTEMPORARIES. 

Johnson";  Goldsmith  ;  Burke  ;  Boswell ;  Junius ;  Hume  ;  Robert- 

Pp.  237-275 


son  ;  Gibbon     . 

1709.  Johnson  born. 
1711.   Hume  born. 
1721.   Robertson  born. 

1728.  Goldsmith  born. 

1729.  Burke  born. 

1735.  Johnson's  translation  of 
Lobo's  "Voyage  to  Abys- 
sinia." 

1737.  Gibbon  born. 

1 738.  Hume's  "  Treatise  of  Human 

Nature." 

1738.  Johnson's  "London." 
1740.  Boswell  born 
1742.   Hume's  "  Essays." 
1744.  Johnson's  "  Life  of  Savage." 
1749.  Johnson's  "  Vanity  of  Human 

Wishes." 

1749.  Johnson's  "Irene." 
1750-52.  Johnson's  "Rambler." 
1752.   Hume's       "Political       Dis- 
courses." 

1754-61.  Hume's  "History  of 
England." 


1755.  Johnson's  Dictionary. 

1756.  Burke  on  the  "Sublime  and 

Beautiful." 
1758-60.  Johnson's  "Idler." 

1758.  Robertson's      "History     of 

Scotland." 

1759.  Johnson's  "  Rasselas." 
1759.  Goldsmith's    "Enquiry   into 

the  State  of  Literature." 
1764.  Goldsmith's  "Traveller." 
1766.  Goldsmith's  "Vicar  of  Wake- 
field." 

1768.  Goldsmith's  "  Good-Natured 

Man." 

1769.  Robertson's  "Charles  V." 
1769-72.    "Letters  of  Junius." 

1770.  Goldsmith's  "Deserted  Vil- 

lage." 

1770.  Burke's  "Thoughts  on  Pre- 
sent Discontents." 

1773.  Goldsmith's  "She  Stoops  to 

Conquer." 

1774.  Goldsmith  died. 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


1775.  Johnson's     "Tour     to     the 

Western  Isles." 

1776.  Hume  died. 

1776.  Adam  Smith's  "Wealth  of 
Nations." 

1776.  Campbell's    "Philosophy  of 

Rhetoric." 

1776-88.  Gibbon's  "Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire." 

1777.  Robertson's      "History      of 

America." 
1779-81.    Johnson's  "Lives  of  the 

Poets." 
1784.  Johnson  died. 


1785.  Burke's  speech  on  the  "  Na» 

bob  of  Arcot's  Debts." 

1786.  Burke's  speech  on   the  Im- 

peachment    of      Warren 
Hastings. 

1790.  Burke's       "  Reflections     on 

the  French  Revolution." 

1791.  Robertson's  "  Disquisition  on 

Ancient  India. 
1791.  Bos  well's  "  Life  of  Johnson.** 

1793.  Robertson  died. 

1794.  Gibbon  died. 

1795.  Boswell  died. 
1797.  Burke  died. 


CHAPTER  VIII. — THE  NEW  ERA  IN  POETRY. 

Pery's  "Reliques;"  Warton's  "History  of  English  Poetry;" 
Ossian^  Chattertorr;  Shenstone,  Beattie ;  Blake ;  Cowpef^ 
Burns,  Crabbe;  Words  worth,  Coleridge,  Southey;  Byron, 
Shellev,  Keats  ;  Rogers,  Hogg,  Campbell,  Moore,  Pp.  276-322 


I725- 


Gentle      Shep- 


"  Schoolmis- 


Ramsay's 
herd." 

1731.   Cowper  born. 

1742.   Shenstone's 
tress." 

1754.  Crabbe  born. 

1757.   Blake  born. 

1759.    Burns  born. 

1762.  "  Ossian." 

1765.  Percy's  "  Reliques." 

1768.  Chatterton's  '•  Mediaeval  Ro- 
mances." 

1770.  Wordsworth  born. 

1772.   Coleridge  born. 

1774.  Beattie's  "  Minstrel." 

1774.   Southey  born. 

1774-78.  Warton's     "History      of 
English  Poetry." 

1777.  Blake's  "  Poetical  Sketches." 

1779.  "Olney  Hymns." 

1782.  Cowper's  "  Table-Talk, "  &c. 

1783.  Crabbe's  "  Village." 

1785.  Cowper's  "  Task." 

1786.  Burns's  Poems. 
1 788.  Byron  born. 


of 


of 


1791.  Cowper's       translation 

"  Homer." 

1792.  Shelley  born. 

1792.  Rogers's       "Pleasures 
Memory." 

1795.  Keats  born. 

1796.  Burns  died. 

1796.  Southey's  "Joan  of  Arc." 

1798.  Wordsworth's  "  Lyrical  Bal- 

lads." 

1799.  Campbell's     "Pleasures    of 

Hope." 

1800.  Cowper  died.  , 

1801.  Southey's  "  Thalaba." 
1805.  Southey's  "  Madoc." 
1807.   Wordsworth's  Poems. 

1 807.  Byron's ' '  Hours  of  Idleness.** 
1809.  Byron's  "  English  Bards  and 
Scotch  Reviewers." 

1809.  Campbell's     "Gertrude     of 

Wyoming." 

1810.  Southey's  "  Kehama." 

1812.  Crabbe's  "Tales  in  Verse.'* 
1812-18.   Byron's  "Childe  Harold." 

1813.  Southey's  "  Life  of  Nelson." 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


XI 


1813.  Hogg's  "  Queen's  Wake." 

1814.  Southey's  "Roderick." 

1814.  Wordsworth's  "Excursion." 

1815.  Wordsworth's  "White  Doe 

of  Rylstone." 

1816.  Coleridge's  "  Christabel." 

1817.  Culeridge's          "  Biographia 

Literaria." 
1817.  Shelley's  "Revolt  of  Islam." 

1817.  Moore's  "Lalla  Rookh." 

1818.  Coleridge's  "  Friend." 

1818.  Keats's  "Endymion." 

1819.  Crabbe's     "tales     of     the 

HalL" 


1819.  Shelley's  "  Prometheus  Un- 

bound "  and  "TheCenci." 
1819-24.  Byron's  "  Childe  Harold." 

1820.  Keats's  "  Lamia,"  &c. 

1821.  Keats  died. 

1822.  Shelley  died. 

1824.  Byron  died.  [tion." 

1825.  Coleridge's  "Aids  to  Reflec- 
1828.  Blake  died. 

1832.  Crabbe  died. 

1834.   Coleridge  died. 

1843.  Southey  died. 

1850.  Wordsworth  died. 

1850.  Wordsworth's  "  Recluse." 


CHAPTER  IX. — SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  AND  THE  PROSE  LITERA- 
TURE OF  THE  EARLY  PART  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CEN- 
TURY. 

SirJWalter_Scott ;  Mackintosh,  Hallam,  Alison  ;  Jeffrey,  Sydney 
Smith  ;  Wilson,  Lockhart,  De  Quincey ;  Lamb,  Hazlitt, 
Hunt ;  Landor,  Chalmers,  .  .  .  Pp.  323  376 


1765.  Sir  James  Mackintosh  born. 

1771.  Scott  born. 

1771.  Sydney  Smith  born. 

1773.  Jeffrey  born. 

1775.  Lamb  born. 

1775.  Landor  born. 

1777.  Hallam  born. 

1778.  Hazlitt  born. 
1780.  Chalmers  born. 

1784.  Leigh  Hunt  born. 

1785.  John  Wilson  born. 
1785.  *De  Quincey  born. 
1792.  Alison  born. 
1794.  Lockhart  born. 

1802-3.  Scott's  "  Minstrelsy  of  the 
Border." 


1802-28.  Sydney  Smith's  Contribu- 
tions to  "  The  Edinburgh 
Review." 

1802-40.  Jeffrey's  Contributions  to 
"  The  Edinburgh  Review." 

1805.  Scott's  "Lay  of  the  Last 
Minstrel." 

1808.   Scott's  "  Marmion." 

1810.  Scott's  "  Lady  of  the  Lake." 

1811.  Scott's  "Vision  of  Don  Ro- 

derick." 

1812.  Scott's  "Rokeby." 

1812.  Wilson's  "  Isle  of  Palms." 

1813.  Scott's     "  Bridal    of   Trier- 

main." 


THE  WAVFRLEY  NOVELS. 


1814.  "Waverley." 

1815.  "  Guy  Mannering." 

1816.  "The  Antiquary;"    "Black 

Dwarf;"     "Old     Morta- 
lity." 


1817.  "Rob  Roy." 

1818.  "The  Heart  of  Midlothian.'1 

1819.  "Bride   of    Lammermoor;" 

"Legend   of  Montrose  ;" 
"  Ivanhoe," 


Xll 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


1820.  "The    Monastery;"    "The 

Abbot." 

1821.  "Kenilworth  ;"    "The    Pi- 

rate." 

1822.  "  The  Fortunes  of  Nigel." 

1823.  "Peveril    of     the     Peak;" 

"Quentin      Durward;" 
"  St.  Ronan's  Well." 

1824.  "  Redgauntlet." 


1825.  "The    Betrothed;"    «' The 

Talisman." 

1826.  "Woodstock." 

1827.  "  The  Two  Drovers  ;  "  "  The 

Highland  Widow;  ""The 
Surgeon's  Daughter." 

1828.  "  The  Fair  Maid  of  Perth," 

1829.  "  Anne  of  Geierstein." 
1831.  "Count   Robert  of  Paris;" 

"  Castle  Dangerous." 


1816.  Wilson's  "City  of  the  Plague." 
1816.  Leigh      Hunt's     "  Story    of 
Rimini." 

1818.  1 1 al  lam's  "  State  of  Europe 

during  the  Middle  Ages." 

1819.  Lockhart's   "Peter's  Letters 

to  his  Kinsfolk." 

1821.  Lockhart's    "  Spanish     Bal- 
lads." 
1821.  De   Quincey's    "Confessions 

of  an  Opium- Eater." 
1823.  Lamb's  "  Essays  of  Elia." 
1824-29.   Lander's     "  Imaginary 

Conversations." 

1825.  TIazlitt's  "Spirit  of  the  Age." 
1827.  Lockhart's  "'Life  of  Burns." 
1827.  Scott's  "  Life  of  Napoleon." 
1827.  llallam's  "  Constituiional 

History  of  England." 
1828-30.   Hazlitt's  "life  of  Napo- 
leon." 

1830.   Hazlitt  died. 
1830.  Mackintosh's    "  Dissertation 

on  Ethical  Philosophy." 
1830-32.  Mackintosh's  "  History  of 
England." 


1832.  Sir  James  Mackintosh  died. 

1832.  Scott  died. 

1834.  Mackintosh's  "  History  of 
the  Revolution,  1688." 

1831.  Lamb  died. 

1836-38.  Lockhart's  "Life  of 
Scott." 

1838-39.  Hallam's  "Literature  of 
Europe." 

1839-42.  Alison's  "History  of 
Europe." 

1842.  Wilson's  "Recreations  of 
Christopher  North." 

1845.  Sydney  Smith  died. 

1847.  Chalmers  died. 

1850.  Jeffrey  died. 

1850.  Leigh  Hunt's  "  Autobio- 
graphy." 

1854.  John  Wilson  died. 

1854.  Lockhart  died. 

1859.   Hal  lam  died. 

1859.  De  Quincey  died. 

1859.  Leigli  Hunt  died. 

1867.  Alison  died. 


CHAPTER  X.— OUR  OWN  TIMES. 

Dickens,  Thackeray.  Lytton,  Charlotte  Bronte,  George  Eliot,  Lever, 
Chad  s  Kingsley,  Beaconsfield,  Charles  Reade,  Anthony  Trol- 
lope,  Blackmore,  Hardy,  Black  ;  Tennyson,  B^ownirig^  Mrs. 
Browning,  Rossetti,  Morris,  Swinburne  ;  Macaulay,  Caiji 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


Xlll 


Grote,  Froucle,  Freeman,  Lecky ;  Ruskin,  Matthew  Arnoldt 
Helps,  John  Morley,  W.  H.  Pater,  Mark  Pattison  ;  Theology, 
Science,  and  Philosophy,  .  .  .Pp.  377-442 


1795.  Carlyle  bom. 
i^oo,  Macaulay  born. 
1805    Lytton  born. 
1809.  Tennyson  born. 
1809.  Mrs.  Browning  born. 
iSn.  Thackero.y  born 
1812.  D.ckens  born. 

1819.  Ruskin  born. 

1820.  George  Eliot  born. 

1825.  Macaulay's    Edinburgh    Re- 

view article  on  Milton. 

1826.  B.  Disraeli's  "Vivian  Grey." 
1828.  Lytton 's  "  Pelham." 

1831.  Lytton's  "  Paul  Clifford." 
1833-34.  Carlyle's  "Sartor  Resar- 

tus  "  published  in  Eraser's 

Magazine. 
1834.  Lytton's     "  Last     Days     of 

Pompeii." 

1836.  Dickens's  "Sketches by  Boz." 

1837.  DickensVPickwick  Papers." 
1837.  Carlyle's    "  French   Revolu- 
tion." 

1839.  Lever's  "  Harry  Lorrequer." 
1839.  Carlyle's  "Chariism." 

1841.  Carlyle's  "Herot:s  and  Hero- 

Worship." 

1841-46.  Browning's    "  Bells    and 
Pomegranates." 

1842.  MacauiayVLays  of  Ancient 

Rome." 

1842.  Tennyson's  Poems. 

1843.  Macaulay's    Edinburgh    Re- 

view Articles  republished. 

1843.  Carlyle's  "  Past  and  Present." 
1843-60.  Ruskin's     "  Modern 

Painters." 

1844.  Dickens's  "  Martin  Chuzzle- 

wit." 

1845.  Carlyle's  "Cromwell." 
1846-48.  Thackeray's         "  Vanity 

Fair." 
1846-56.  G rote's      "  History       of 

Greece." 
1847.  Charlotte     Bronte's     "  Jane 

Eyre." 


1847.  Tennyson's  "  Princess." 
1847-49.  Helps's       "Friends       in 

Council." 
1848-55.  Macaulay's    "  History  of 

England." 
1849.  Lytton's  "  Caxtons." 

1849.  Charlotte  Bronte's  "  Shirley." 
1849    Ruskin's   "  Seven  Lamps  of 

Architecture." 

1850.  Thackeray's  "  Pendennis." 
1850.  Kingsley's  "Alton  Locke." 
1850.  Tennyson's    "In    Memo- 

riam." 

1850.  Carlyle's  "  Latter-Day  Pam- 

phlets." 

1851.  Carlyle's  "Life  of  Sterling." 

1851.  Mrs.  Browning's  "Casa  Guidi 

Windows." 

1851-53.  Ruskin's      "  Stones      of 
Venice." 

1852.  Charlotte  Bronte's  "Villette." 

1852.  Thackeray's  "  Esmond." 

1853.  Dickens's  "  Bleak  House." 
1853.  Matthew  Arnold's  "Poems." 
1855.  Tennyson's  "  Maud." 

1855.  Thackeray's  "  Newcomes." 

1855.  Charlotte'Bronte  died. 
1856-70.  Froude's     "  Histoiy     of 

England." 

1856.  Mrs.     Browning's    "Aurora 

Leigh." 

1857.  George  Eliot's  "Scenes  from 

Clerical  Life," 

1857.  Dickens's  "Little  Dorrit." 
1858-65.  Carlyle's  "Frederick  the 

Great." 

1859.  George  Eliot's  "Adam  Bede." 
1859.  Tennyson's    "  Idylls  of    the 

King." 

1859.  Macaulay  died. 
1859.  Darwin's  "Origin  of  Species." 

1 86 1.  Mrs.  Bro\vmrj£,dJ£d. 

1862.  Thackerays  ''Adventures  of 

Philip." 

1863.  George  Eliot's  "  Romola." 
1863,  Thackeray  died. 


XIV 


Contents  and  Chronology. 


1864    Tennyson's  "Enoch  Arden." 

1865.  Matthew  Arnold's  "  Essays 
in  Criticism." 

1867-79.  Freeman's  "Norman  Con- 
quest." 

1868.  George  Eliot's  "  Spanish 
Gipsy." 

1870.  Dickens's  "  Mystery  of  Edwin 
Drood." 

1870.  Dickens  died. 

1872.  George  Eliot's  "  Middle- 
march." 


1873.  Lytton's  "Kenelm  Chilling. 

ly." 

1873.  Lytton  died. 
1875.  Tennyson's  "Queen  Mary." 
1877.  George  Eliot's  "Daniel  De- 

ronda." 

1877.  Tennyson's  "  Harold." 
1880.  Lord  Beaconsfield's  "  Endy- 

mion." 

1880.  George  Eliot  died. 

1 88 1.  Tenny.son's  "  Poems  and  Bal- 

lads." 


CHAP.  XL —PERIODICALS,  REVIEWS,  AND  ENCYCLOPEDIAS. 

The  Eighteenth-Century  Periodical  Essayists ;  New  Departures 
in  Periodical  Literature  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  ;  the  great 
English  Encyclopaedias,  .  .  .  Pp.  443-458 


INTRODUCTION. 


PLAN  OF  THE  WORK— SOME  HINTS  ON  THE  STUDY 
OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

| HE  present  volume  does  not  pretend  to  be  a  full  record 
of  the  literary  activity  of  our  country.  Not  only  are 
many  writers  omitted  whose  works  are  dear  to  those 
laborious  pedants  who  speak  contemptuously  of  the 
literature  of  our  own  time,  but  regard  with  admiring  reverence 
the  rubbish  bequeathed  to  us  by  wretched  playwrights  and  dreary 
prose  writers  of  three  or  four  centuries  ago ;  not  only  are  the 
names  of  these  forgotten  worthies,  whose  proper  place  is  in 
bibliographies  and  biographical  dictionaries,  passed  over,  but 
a  great  number  of  authors  whose  writings  are  of  real  and  per- 
manent value,  and  should  in  nowise  be  neglected  by  those  who 
can  find  time  and  opportunity  for  the  thoroughgoing  study  of 
our  noble  literature,  are  either  not  mentioned  at  all,  or  only 
very  slightly  alluded  to.  The  plan  adopted  in  this  book  has 
been  to  deal  solely  with  the  very  greatest  names  in  the  several 
departments  of  English  literature — with  those  writers  whose 
works  are  among  the  most  imperishable  glories  of  Britain, 
and  with  whom  it  is  a  disgrace  for  even  the  busiest  to  remain 
unacquainted.  The  time  which  most  people  are  able  to 
devote  to  literature  proper  is  very  limited  ;  and  if  second  or 
third  rate  authors  are  read  by  them,  the  result  must  in- 
evitably be  that  first-rate  authors  will  be  neglected.  "Always 
in  books  keep  the  best  company,"  wrote  Sydney  Smith 
to  his  son  with  his  usual  good  sense.  "  Don't  read  a  line  of 
Ovid  till  you  have  mastered  Virgil,  nor  a  line  of  Thomson 
till  you  have  exhausted  Pope,  nor  of  Massinger  till  you  are 
familiar  with  Shakespeare."  It  is  very  obvious  that  those  who 


8  Introduction. 

read  Pollok's  "  Course  of  Time  "  while  remaining  ignorant  of 
Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  or  the  writings  of  "  A.  K.  H.  B." 
while  neglecting  Bacon's  "Essays"  and  Addison's  Specta- 
tory  are  guilty  of  a  lamentable  waste  of  time  and  misex- 
penditure  of  energy.  "If  you  should  transfer  the  amount  of 
your  reading  day  by  day,"  says  Emerson,1  "from  the  news- 
papers to  the  standard  authors — but  who  dare  speak  of  such 
a  thing?"  To  expect  people  to  give  up  newspaper-reading 
is  certainly  a  very  Utopian  speculation,  nor,  indeed,  is  it 
desirable  in  many  respects  that  they  should  give  it  up.  -But  it 
is  a  very  easy  and  practicable  thing  to  obey  the  rule  to  study 
the  best  authors  first,  for  it  may  be  safely  laid  down  as  a 
general  principle  that  the  greatest  works  of  our  literature  are 
also  the  most  attractive.  No  dramatist  is  so  readable  as 
Shakespeare ;  to  no  works  of  fiction  can  we  return  again  and 
again  with  greater  pleasure  than  to  the  masterpieces  of 
Fielding  and  Scott ;  nowhere  can  the  blood-stained  story  of 
the  French  Revolution  be  followed  with  keener  interest  than 
in  the  pages  of  Carlyle. 

Literature  is  a  word  often  so  loosely  applied,  that  it  may 
be  well  at  the  outset  to  define  exactly  what  we  mean  by  it. 
By  people  in  general  it  is  used  with  a  very  wide  range  of 
meaning.  Milton's  "Paradise  Lost"  and  Buchan's  "  Domes- 
tic Medicine;"  Rhymer's  "Foedera"  and  Macaulay's  "  History 
of  England,"  are  ranked  under  the  same  all-embracing  name. 
But  literature  rightly  so  termed  is  a  word  of  much  narrower 
signification.  To  entitle  anything  to  be  classed  as  literature, 
it  must  be  so  written  that,  apart  from  the  meaning  conveyed, 
its  mere  style  shall  be  such  as  to  give  pleasure.  Neither 
wealth  of  information  nor  depth  of  thought  gives  a  work  a  right 
to  be  called  literature  unless  the  information  and  the  thought 
be  attractively  expressed.  From  this  it  is  clear  that  many 
books,  otherwise  of  great  merit,  have  no  claim  to  considera- 
tion in  a  literary  history.  A  plan  of  a  country  may  have 
more  practical  utility  than  the  most  beautiful  landscape  ever 
painted,  but  as  it  lacks  the  essential  element  of  beauty,  it  will 
not  be  placed  in  the  same  category.  In  like  manner  many 
1  "  Society  and  Solitude,"  p.  164  (English  edition). 


The  Study  of  English  Literature.  9 

books  which  we  could  very  ill  afford  to  dispense  with,  being 
destitute  of  attractiveness  and  distinction  of  style,  have  no 
value  viewed  merely  as  literature.  The  true  literary  man  is 
an  artist,  using  his  words  and  phrases  with  the  same  felicity 
and  care  as  a  painter  uses  his  colours  ;  and  whoever  aspires  to 
win  literary  fame  must  pay  the  closest  attention  not  only  to 
what  he  says,  but  to  how  he  says  it. 

De  Quincey,  whose  speculations  on  such  subjects  are 
always  ingenious  and  worth  attending  to,  if  sometimes  over- 
refined  and  far-fetched,  in  one  of  his  essays1  lays  down  a 
distinction,  first  suggested  by  Wordsworth,  which  bears  upon 
what  we  have  been  saying.  As  De  Quincey's  critical  writings 
are  not  so  generally  read  as  they  should  be,  we  may  quote 
part  of  his  remarks.  "In  that  great  social  organ,  which 
collectively  we  call  literature,  there  may  be  distinguished  two 
separate  offices,  that  may  blend,  and  often  do  so,  but  capable 
severally  of  a  severe  insulation,  and  naturally  fitted  for  reci- 
procal repulsion.  There  is  first  the  literature  of  knowledge,  and 
secondly  the  literature  of  power.  The  function  of  the  first  is 
to  teach  ;  the  function  of  the  second  is  to  move.  The  first  is 
a  rudder,  the  second  an  oar  or  a  sail.  The  first  speaks  to  the 
mere  discursive  understanding  ;  the  second  speaks  ultimately, 
it  may  happen,  to  the  higher  understanding  or  reason,  but 
always  through  affections  of  pleasure  or  sympathy.  .  .  . 
What  do  you  learn  from  'Paradise  Lost?'  Nothing  at  all. 
What  do  you  learn  from  a  cookery-book?  Something  new, 
something  that  you  did  not  know  before,  in  every  paragraph. 
But  would  you  therefore  put  the  wretched  cookery-book  on  a 
higher  level  of  estimation  than  the  divine  poem  ?  What  you 
owe  to  Milton  is  not  any  knowledge,  of  which  a  million 
separate  items  are  still  but  a  million  of  advancing  steps  on  the 
same  earthly  level ;  what  you  owe  is  power,  that  is,  exercise 
and  expansion  to  your  own  latent  capacity  of  sympathy  with 
the  infinite,  when  every  pulse  and  each  separate  influx  is  a 
step  upwards — a  step  ascending  as  from  a  Jacob's  ladder  from 

1  Originally  published  in  North  British  Review  for  August  1848, 
article  on  Pope. 


io  Introduction. 

earth  to  mysterious  altitudes  above  the  earth.  .  .  .  Air  the 
literature  of  knowledge  builds  only  ground  nests,  that  are  swept 
away  by  floods,  or  confounded  by  the  plough ;  but  the  litera- 
ture of  power  builds  nests  in  aerial  altitudes  of  temples  sacred 
from  violation,  or  of  forests  inaccessible  to  fraud.  This  is  a 
great  prerogative  of  the  power  literature ;  and  it  is  a  greater 
which  lies  in  the  mode  of  its  influence.  The  knowledge 
literature,  like  the  fashion  of  this  world,  passeth  away.  An 
Encyclopaedia  is  its  abstract ;  and,  in  this  respect,  it  may 
be  taken  for  its  speaking  symbol,  that,  before  one  generation 
has  passed,  an  Encyclopaedia  is  superannuated,  for  it  speaks 
through  the  dead  memory  and  unimpassioned  understanding, 
which  have  not  the  rest  of  higher  faculties,  but  are  continually 
enlarging  and  varying  their  phylacteries." 

In  the  preceding  extracts,  as  will  be  seen,  De  Quincey  uses 
the  phrase  "  literature  of  knowledge  "  to  express  that  class  of 
writings  to  which  the  term  literature  cannot,  as  he  himself 
afterwards  says,  be  with  propriety  applied — writings  the  sole 
aim  of  which  is  to  convey  information  without  any  effort  after 
beauty  of  style;  and  the  phrase  "literature  of  power"  to  ex- 
press that  class  of  writings — fiction  and  poetry — of  which  the 
object  is,  not  to  instruct,  but  to  move  the  feelings  and  to  give 
pleasure,  and  of  which,  therefore,  attractiveness  of  style  is  an 
essential  characteristic.  But,  as  he  himself  says  in  a  note,  a 
great  proportion  of  books — history,  biography,  travels,  miscel- 
laneous essays,  &c. — belong  strictly  to  neither  of  these  two 
classes.  Macaulay's  "History  of  England"  contains  avast 
amount  of  information,  but  it  is  not  its  stores  of  information 
which  have  attracted  to  it  millions  of  readers ;  it  is  the  fasci- 
nating style  in  which  the  information  is  conveyed,  making  the 
narrative  as  pleasing  as  a  novel,  and  giving  some  passages  a 
power  of  exciting  the  emotions  which  not  many  poems  possess. 
And  though  to  instruct  be  not  the  prime  function  of  the  novel, 
or  the  poem,  a  great  fund  of  instruction  as  to  morals  and  manners 
is  embodied  in  almost  all  good  poems  and  novels.  Shake- 
speare abounds  in  pithy  aphorisms  as  to  the  conduct  of  life, 
which  have  become  part  of  the  moralist's  stock-in-trade; 


7^ he  Study  of  English  Literature.  1 1 

Scott,  in  the  "  Heart  of  Midlothian  "  (to  give  only  one  ex- 
ample out  of  many),  preaches  a  very  effective  homily  on  the 
evil  consequences  of  giving  up  inward  peace  of  mind  for  the 
sake  of  outward  grandeur;  and  such  writers  as  Thackeray 
and  Miss  Austen  have  done  much  to  make  people  ashamed  of 
angularities  and  affectations  of  manner.  So  that  De  Quincey's 
distinction,  though  true  in  a  wide  sense,  and  very  suggestive 
in  many  ways,  is  not  to  be  accepted  as  absolutely  correct. 
All  literature  worthy  of  the  name  is  "literature  of  power,"  but 
it  may  be,  and  very  often  is,  "  literature  of  knowledge  "  also. 

Having  defined  what  literature  is,  we  now  proceed  to  con- 
sider the  way  in  which  its  study  may  be  most  profitably  pur- 
sued. In  order  fully  to  comprehend  any  author's  work,  and 
to  place  him  in  his  true  position  among  his  fellows,  not  only 
must  his  writings  be  studied  with  due  care,  but  we  must  pay 
regard  to  his  outward  ''environment"  and  to  the  circum- 
stances of  the  times  in  which  he  lived.  Sainte  Beuve,  the 
prince  of  French  critics,  in  all  his  inquiries  made  it  a  rule 
before  studying  the  author  to  study  the  man,  thinking  that  "as 
the  tree  is  so  will  be  the  fruit."  He  was  of  opinion  "  that  so 
long  as  you  have  not  asked  yourself  a  certain  number  of 
questions  and  answered  them  satisfactorily — if  only  for  your 
own  private  benefit  and  sotto  voce — you  cannot  be  sure  of 
thoroughly  understanding  your  model,  and  that  even  though 
these  questions  may  seem  to  be  quite  foreign  to  the  nature  of 
his  writings.  For  instance,  what  were  his  religious  views? 
how  did  the  sight  of  nature  affect  him  ?  what  was  he  in  his 
dealings  with  women  and  in  his  feelings  respecting  money? 
was  he  rich,  was  he  poor  ?  what  was  his  regimen  ?  what  his 
daily  manner  of  life?  &c.  Finally,  to  what  vice  was  he 
addicted  or  to  what  weakness  subject?  for  no  man  is  entirely 
free  from  such.  There  is  not  one  of  the  answers  to  these 
questions  that  is  without  its  value  in  judging  the  author  of  a 
book,  or  even  the  book  itself,  if  it  be  not  a  treatise  on  pure 
mathematics,  but  a  literary  work  into  the  composition  of 
which  some  of  the  writer's  whole  nature  has  perforce  entered." 
The  practice  which  now  prevails  of  publishing  full  and  authen. 


1 2  Introduction. 

tic  memoirs  of  celebrities,  if  perhaps  not  unobjectionable  in 
some  respects,  is  certainly  an  incalculable  gain  to  the  fruitful 
and  intelligent  study  of  literature.  If  we  were  so  fortunate  as 
to  find  a  Life  of  Shakespeare  similar  to  that  which  Boswell 
wrote  of  Dr.  Johnson,  can  any  one  doubt  that  it  would  throw 
an  immense  light  upon  the  many  literary  puzzles  which  are 
to  be  found  in  his  writings,  and  which  have  perplexed  genera- 
tions of  commentators  and  evoked  hundreds  of  volumes  ? 
How  many  ingenious  and  elaborate  studies  on  "Hamlet" 
would  be  shown  to  be  as  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision  ?  how 
many  passages  which  verbal  critics  have  (as  they  thought) 
proved  to  demonstration  not  to  have  come  from  Shakespeare's 
pen  would  be  claimed  as  his?  how,  perchance,  every  one  of  the 
theories  about  the  Sonnets  would  crumble  into  dust,  never  again 
to  be  mentioned  but  with  laughter  after  their  mystery  had  been 
unveiled  by  unimpeachable  evidence  ?  Again,  to  take  a  case 
from  our  own  time,  how  would  we  explain  the  gloomy  pes- 
simism of  the  latter  writings  of  Carlyle  as  contrasted  with  the 
sanguine  optimism  of  Macaulay  if  no  records  of  his  life  were 
to  be  found,  and  we  were  compelled  to  judge  of  him  by  his 
works  alone  ?  Carlyle's  temperament,  no  doubt,  was  naturally 
gloomy,  but  that  fact  alone  would  not  be  a  sufficient  solution 
of  the  enigma.  But  when  we  study  the  story  of  his  life,  and 
learn  how  he  was  constantly  tormented  by  ill-health ;  how, 
eagerly  ambitious  of  literary  fame,  he  had  to  toil  on  for  many 
a  long  year  unnoticed  and  unknown,  with  bitter  experience 
of  that  deferred  hope  which  makes  the  heart  sick ;  how,  when 
the  day  of  triumph  came,  it  came  so  late  that  the  flower  of 
success  had  well-nigh  lost  its  fragrance — then  we  have  no 
difficulty  in  understanding  the  cause  of  his  frequently  dark 
and  harsh  views  of  human  character  and  destiny.  We  need 
hardly  dwell  on  the  additional  interest  given  to  a  book  by  a 
knowledge  of  the  circumstances  under  which  it  was  composed. 
Byron's  poetry  owes  half  its  attractiveness  to  the  fascination 
exercised  by  his  singular  and  strongly  marked  personality. 
Johnson's  works,  excellent  though  some  of  them  are,  would 
now,  we  imagine,  be  very  little  read  if  Boswell's  Life  of 


The  Study  of  English  Literature.  13 

him  had  not  made  him  one  of  the  best  known,  and  (with  all 
his  eccentricities)  one  of  the  best-loved  characters  in  our  lite- 
rary history.  One's  interest  even  in  such  a  book  as  Gibbon's 
"  Decline  and  Fall "  is  perceptibly  quickened  by  the  full  and 
curious  portrait  of  himself  which  he  has  drawn  in  his  Auto- 
biography. 

But  for  the  thorough  and  profitable  study  of  an  author,  it 
is  not  enough  that  we  know  the  circumstances  of  his  private 
history  :  we  must  also  make  ourselves  acquainted  with  the 
period  in  which  his  lot  was  cast.  No  writer,  however  great 
and  original  his  genius,  can  escape  the  influence  of  the  spirit 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lives ;  whether  with  or  without  his 
consent,  his  way  of  looking  at  things  will  be  modified  by  the 
intellectual  atmosphere  by  which  he  is  surrounded.  Literary 
men  alike  influence  and  are  influenced  by  their  time ;  and  as 
no  history  of  a  country  can  be  considered  complete  which 
ignores  the  influence  exerted  by  its  literature,  so  any  literary 
history  which  ignores  the  currents  of  thought  and  opinion  set 
afloat  by  political  movements  must  necessarily  be  partial  and 
inadequate.  There  is  no  greater  desideratum  in  our  literature 
at  present  than  a  complete  and  able  account  of  the  history 
of  English  literature,  in  which  the  connection  between  the 
literary  and  political  history  of  our  country  shall  be  fully 
dealt  with ;  and  it  is  very  much  to  be  desired  that  some  one 
of  sufficient  talents  and  acquirements  may  be  induced  to 
undertake  the  task.  He  will  have  comparatively  unbeaten 
ground  to  deal  with.  M.  Taine,  indeed,  in  his  "  History  of 
English  Literature/'  has  done  something  in  this  direction; 
but  his  erratic  brilliancy  is  not  to  be  implicitly  relied  upon.1 
In  periods  of  great  national  emotion,  the  influence  exerted  on 
literature  by  the  powerful  currents  of  thought  and  action 

1  It  is  not  to  the  credit  of  England  that  the  only  full  survey  of  its 
literature  possessing  any  high  merit  from  a  purely  literary  point  of  view 
should  be  the  work  of  a  Frenchman.  We  have  among  us  not  a  few  writers, 
any  one  of  whom,  if  they  would  abandon  for  a  few  years  the  practice,  now 
unhappily  too  prevalent,  of  writing  merely  Review  articles  and  brief  mono- 
graphs, could  produce  a  work  on  the  subject  worthy  of  so  great  a  theme. 


1 4  Introduction. 

sweeping  on  around  it  is  so  strong  and  so  manifest  that  it 
cannot  escape  the  notice  of  the  most  careless  observer.  The 
mighty  burst  of  song  in  England  during  the  reign  of  Elizabeth, 
a  time  of  great  men  and  great  deeds,  when  new  ideas  and 
new  influences  were  powerfully  at  work  among  all  sections  of 
society,  has  often  been  commented  on.  The  impurity  and 
heartlessness  of  the  drama  of  the  Restoration  was  a  true  type 
of  the  nation's  wild  outburst  of  revelry  after  its  escape  from 
the  austere  chains  of  Puritanism.  Not  so  strikingly  apparent, 
yet  very  noticeable,  is  the  connection  between  the  tortuous 
and  shifty  politics  of  the  early  years  of  the  eighteenth  century 
and  the  absence  from  the  literature  of  that  period  of  any  high 
ideal  or  elevating  principle.  Coming  nearer  our  own  time, 
all  are  aware  that  the  revolutionary  movement  of  the  close 
of  the  last  century  was  active  not  only  in  politics  but  in  letters; 
that  as  old  laws  and  old  principles  were  found  inadequate  to 
the  needs  of  the  time,  so  the  literary  forms  and  rules  of  the 
preceding  generation  were  cast  to  the  winds  as  quite  incapable 
of  expressing  the  novel  ideas  and  imaginations  of  a  race  of 
writers  who  possessed  little  or  nothing  in  common  with  their 
predecessors.  But  even  in  quieter  times,  when  the  broad 
river  of  national  life  is  unruffled  by  violent  storms,  careful 
inquiry  will  make  it  apparent  that  its  influence  upon  literature 
is  very  close  and  very  real. 

The  most  useful  commentary  on  a  great  writer  is  to  be 
found  in  the  works  of  his  contemporaries.  It  is  mainly  the 
service  which  they  render  in  this  direction  that  prevents  one 
from  agreeing  with  Emerson  when  he  says  that  perhaps  the 
human  mind  would  be  a  gainer  if  all  secondary  writers  were 
lost.  From  an  author's  contemporaries  we  may  learn  what 
ideas  in  his  time  were,  to  use  Dr.  Newman's  phrase,  "  in  the 
air,"  and  thus  be  able  to  gauge  with  some  degree  of  accuracy 
the  extent  of  his  originality.  We  have  all  been  taught  that 
Shakespeare  far  outshone  any  of  the  brilliant  constellations  of 
dramatic  stars  which  adorned  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  ;  but  this 
is  only  a  barren  phrase  to  us  till  we  have  studied  the  other 
dramatists  of  his  time,  and  are  thus  in  a  position  to  realise 


The  Study  of  English  Literature.  15 

what  it  really  means.  The  writings  of  contemporaries,  more- 
over, often  help  us  to  account  for  the  flaws  and  deficiencies 
which  not  unfrequently  occur  even  in  authors  of  the  highest 
class,  by  giving  us  a  clue  to  the  literary  fashions  which  pre- 
vailed in  their  time.  Shakespeare's  tendency  to  indulge  in 
puns  and  verbal  quibbles,  which  mars  some  of  his  finest  pas- 
sages, was,  no  doubt,  due  not  so  much  to  any  natural  inclina- 
tion as  because  he  lived  in  an  age  extravagantly  fond  of  such 
ingenuities ;  and  even  he,  immeasurably  great  man  as  he  was, 
proved  unable  to  resist  the  contagion  which  spread  everywhere 
around  him.  In  this  connection  we  should  not  omit  to  notice 
the  valuable  aid  which  writers  destitute  of  original  power,  but 
with  a  faculty  for  assimilating  the  ideas  and  imitating  the  style 
of  others,  often  afford  to  the  study  of  those  whose  voices  they 
echo.  Every  great  writer,  while  his  popularity  is  at  its  height, 
is  surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  imitators,  who  copy  in  an  ex- 
aggerated fashion  his  peculiar  mannerism,  and  thus  afford  a 
very  ready  means  of  observing  the  minute  traits  of  its  style, 
and  its  little  weaknesses  and  affectations,  which  might  other- 
wise escape  our  notice.  If  imitation  be  the  sincerest  form  of 
flattery,  it  is  often  also  the  bitterest  satire.  The  severest  critics 
of  Mr.  Tennyson  and  Mr.  Swinburne  have  not  so  accurately 
shown  the  imperfections  in  the  work  of  these  writers,  nor 
have  they,  it  is  probable,  caused  them  so  much  pain  as  the 
verses  of  certain  minor  singers  of  our  day  have  done.  No 
parody  is  at  once  so  scathing  and  so  ridiculous  as  an  attempt 
made  by  a  writer  of  feeble  powers  to  emulate  the  production 
of  a  man  of  genius. 

If  ten  men  of  literary  culture  were  asked  to  write  down  the 
names  of  the  thirty  English  writers  (exclusive  of  authors  of 
our  own  time)  who  are  their  greatest  favourites,  of  whom  they 
make  as  it  were  companions  and  friends,  the  lists,  we  may  be 
sure,  would  differ  widely.  But  if  these  ten  men  were  asked 
to  write  down  the  names  of  the  thirty  English  writers  who 
occupy  the  highest  rank,  who  are  accepted  as  the  best  repre- 
sentatives of  our  literature,  the  lists  would  probably  resemble 
each  other  very  closely.  In  the  former  case,  single  lists  would 


1 6  Introduction. 

contain  names  which  were  found  in  none  of  the  others  ;  in  the 
latter  case,  it  is  very  unlikely  that  any  list  would  contain  a 
name  which  was  not  also  mentioned  in  several.  "  If  I  were 
confined  to  a  score  of  English  books,"  said  Southey,  "Sir 
Thomas  Browne  would,  I  think,  be  one  of  them  ;  nay,  pro- 
bably it  would  be  one  if  the  selection  were  cut  down  to  twelve. 
My  library,  if  reduced  to  these  bounds,  would  consist  of 
Shakespeare,  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Milton  ;  Jackson,  Jeremy 
Taylor,  and  South  ;  Isaac  Walton,  Sydney's  "  Arcadia,"  Ful- 
ler's "Church  History,"  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne;1  and  what 
a  wealthy  and  well-stored  mind  would  that  man  have,  what  an 
inexhaustible  reservoir,  what  a  Bank  of  England  to  draw  upon 
for  profitable  thoughts  and  delightful  associations,  who  should 
have  fed  upon  them."  Some  of  the  names  in  the  above  list 
will  strike  the  reader  as  curious.  Jackson,  South,  and  even 
Fuller's  "Church  History"  and  Sydney's  "Arcadia"  are  not 
books  which  can  be  ranked  among  general  favourites.  But 
Southey  found  in  them  the  mental  food  best  adapted  to  his 
constitution,  and  therefore  preferred  them  to  others  of  greater 
intrinsic  merit  and  much  wider  popularity.  In  books,  as  in 
other  things,  tastes  differ  very  much.  Not  a  few,  whether  they 
are  honest  enough  to  confess  it  or  not,  agree  with  worthy 
George  III.  in  thinking  that  Shakespeare  often  wrote  "sad 
stuff;"  some  people,  by  no  means  deficient  in  abilities,  can 
read  "Pickwick"  without  a  laugh  or  even  a  smile;  Macaulay, 
Mr.  Trevelyan  tells  us,  was  so  disgusted  with  the  unconven- 
tional style  of  Ruskin  and  Carlyle  that  he  refused  even  to  look 
at  their  works. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  at  all  surprising  that  when  a  young 
reader  takes  up  a  book  which,  he  has  heard,  is  enrolled  in  the 
list  of  English  classics,  he  should  not  unfrequently  find  little 
in  it  to  please  him,  and  thus  be  tempted  to  think  that  it  has 
been  overrated.  But  if,  as  in  the  case  we  suppose,  the  book 
is  one  which  has  stood  the  test  of  time,  he  may  be  sure  he  is 
wrong.  "Nature,"  writes  Emerson,  "is  much  our  friend  in 

1  Doubtless  from  inadvertence,  Southey  mentions"  only  eleven  writers. 
Who  the  twelfth  was  affords  matter  for  curious  speculation. 


The  Study  of  English  Literature.          17 

this  matter.  Nature  is  always  clarifying  her  water  and  her 
wine  ;  no  filtration  can  be  so  perfect.  She  does  the  same 
thing  by  books  as  by  her  gases  and  plants.  There  is  always 
a  selection  in  writers,  and  then  a  selection  from  the  selection. 
In  the  first  place,  all  books  that  get  fairly  into  the  open  air  of 
the  world  were  written  by  the  successful  class,  by  the  affirming 
and  advancing  class,  who  utter  what  tens  of  thousands  feel 
though  they  cannot  say.  There  has  already  been  a  scrutiny 
and  choice  from  many  hundreds  of  young  pens  before  the 
pamphlet  or  political  chapter  which  you  read  in  a  fugitive 
journal  comes  to  your  eye.  All  these  are  young  adventurers, 
who  produce  their  performances  to  the  wise  ear  of  Time,  who 
sits  and  weighs,  and  ten  years  hence  out  of  a  million  of  pages 
reprints  one.  Again,  it  is  judged,  it  is  winnowed  by  all  the 
winds  of  opinion — and  what  terrific  selection  has  not  passed 
on  it  before  it  can  be  reprinted  after  twenty  years — and  re- 
printed after  a  century  I  It  is  as  if  Minos  and  Rhadamanthus 
had  indorsed  the  writing.  'Tis  therefore  an  economy  of  time 
to  read  old  and  famed  books.  Nothing  can  be  preserved 
which  is  not  good."  We  might  almost  add  that  whatever  has 
not  been  preserved  is  not  good.  Those  whose  duty  or  inclina- 
tion leads  them  to  wander  in  literary  bypaths  sometimes  come 
across  forgotten  writers  in  whom  they  find  a  certain  tone  of 
manner  or  feeling  which  gives  them,  in  their  eyes,  more  attrac- 
tiveness than  is  possessed  by  writers  whose  praises  are  echoed 
by  thousands.  But  all  attempts  to  resuscitate  such  books  fail 
as  utterly  as  attempts  to  lower  the  position  of  books  which 
have  been  accepted  as  classical.  The  opinion  of  the  majority 
of  readers  during  many  years  is  better  than  that  of  any  indi- 
vidual reader,  or  any  small  coterie  of  readers,  however  high 
their  gifts  or  attainments  may  be. 

It  often  happens  that  wider  knowledge  and  culture  lead 
one  who  at  first  was  unable  to  recognise  the  merits  of  a  classi- 
cal author  to  see  his  error  and  acquiesce  in  the  general  verdict 
In  the  case  of  our  older  authors,  there  are  preliminary  diffi- 
culties of  style  and  language,  which  must,  at  the  cost  of  some 
trouble,  be  vanquished  before  they  can  be  read  with  pleasure. 


1 8  Introduction. 

The  practice  of  "dipping  into"  an  author  and  reading  biti 
here  and  there  is  productive  of  a  great  deal  of  literary  hetero- 
doxy. It  is,  for  example,  a  not  uncommon  remark  th,at 
articles,  of  which  the  writers  are  never  heard  of,  but  which  are 
as  good  as  any  in  the  Spectator  or  Tatler,  appear  in  our  news- 
papers every  day.  No  doubt  there  is  a  very  large  amount  of 
talent  now  employed  in  newspaper-writing ;  nevertheless  our 
average  journalists  are  not  Steeles  or  Addisons.  The  reason, 
in  most  cases,  why  newspaper  articles  are  thought  equal  to 
the  Spectator  is  because  the  former  deal  with  living  subjects, 
subjects  which  are  interesting  people  at  the  moment,  while 
the  latter,  having  been  written  more  than  a  century  and  a 
half  ago,  has  an  antique  flavour  about  it.  The  Spectator 
cannot  be  appreciated  but  by  those  who,  not  content  with 
dipping  into  it  here  and  there,  have  read  at  least  a  consider- 
able portion  of  it,  and  thus  gained  such  a  knowledge  of  the 
manners  and  opinions  which  prevailed  when  it  was  written  as 
to  be  able  to  enter  into  the  spirit  of  the  work.  A  newspaper 
article,  referring  to  matters  occupying  the  minds  of  all,  may 
be  perused  with  pleasure  without  any  preparation. 

But  though  increased  knowledge  and  wider  culture  generally 
lead  one  to  acquiesce  in  received  opinions  regarding  the 
value  of  authors,  they  do  not  always  do  so.  Every  critic, 
however  large  his  range  and  however  keen  his  discernment, 
occasionally  meets  in  with  works  of  great  fame  of  which  he 
cannot  appreciate  the  merit.  He  may,  indeed,  be  able  to 
perceive  the  qualities  which  cause  others  to  admire  them,  but 
they  are  written  in  a  vein  which  he  cannot  bring  himself  to 
like :  the  tone  of  sentiment  running  through  them,  or  the 
style  in  which  they  are  written,  is  repugnant  to  his  nature. 
The  fact  that  this  is  so,  generally  leads  to  a  plentiful  indul- 
gence in  what  Mr.  James  Payn  has  so  happily  christened 
"  sham  admiration  in  literature."  People  praise  books  which 
they  have  never  been  able  to  read,  or  which  they  have  only 
read  at  the  cost  of  much  labour  and  weariness,  not  because 
they  like  them  themselves,  but  simply  because  they  have 
heard  others  praise  them.  It  is  melancholy  to  reflect  how 


The  Stiidy  of  English  Literature.          19 

much  of  our  current  criticism  upon  classical  authors  is  of 
this  nature,  consisting  of  mere  windy  rhetoric,  not  of  the  un- 
biassed and  honest  expression  of  the  critic's  real  opinions. 
The  practice  is  both  an  unprofitable  and  a  dishonest  one. 
Much  more  is  to  be  learned  from  the  genuine  opinions  of  an 
able  man,  even  though  these  opinions  be  erroneous,  than  from 
the  repetition  of  conventional  critical  dicta.  Johnson's  "  Lives 
of  the  Poets  "  contain  many  incorrect  critical  judgments  ;  but 
does  any  one  suppose  that  the  work  would  have  been  of  more 
value  if,  instead  of  relating  in  manly  and  straightforward 
fashion  the  opinions  of  his  own  powerful,  if  somewhat  narrow, 
understanding,  he  had  merely  repeated  the  "orthodox"  criti- 
cisms on  such  writers  as  Milton  and  Gray?  Even  Jeffrey's 
articles  on  Wordsworth  —  those  standing  examples  of  blunder- 
ing criticism  —  are  much  more  useful  and  interesting  to  the 
intelligent  reader  than  the  thrice-repeated  laudatory  criticisms 
which  are  now  so  often  uttered  by  countless  insincere  devotees 
of  the  poet  of  the  Lakes.  Every  student  of  literature  should 
make  an  honest  effort  to  form  opinions  for  himself,  and  not 
take  up  too  much  with  borrowed  criticism.  Critical  essays, 
books  of  literary  history,  books  of  select  extracts,  are  all  very 
useful  as  aids  to  the  study  of  great  writers,  but  they  ought  not, 
as  is  too  often  the  case,  to  be  made  a  substitute  for  the  study  of 
the  writers  themselves.  Infinitely  more  is  to  be  learned  from 
the  reading  of  "  Hamlet  "  than  from  the  reading  of  a  hundred 
studies  on  that  drama.  If,  after  having  made  a  fair  attempt 
to  peruse  some  author  whose  works  are  in  high  repute,  the 
reader  finds  that  he  is  engaged  in  a  field  of  literature  which 
presents  no  attractions  to  him  ;  that  he  is  studying  a  writer 
with  whom  he  has  no  sympathy,  who  strikes  no  respondent 
chord  in  his  own  nature  ;  the  best  course  for  him  is  to  abandon 
the  vain  attempt  to  like  what  he  does  not  like,  to  admire  what 
he  really  does  not  admire.  Shakespeare's  famous  lines  — 


profit  goes  where  is  no  pleasure  ta'en, 
In  brief,  sir,  study  what  you  most  affect,"  — 

convey  thoroughly  sound  advice,  provided,  of  course,  that 


2O  Introduction. 

proper  pains  be  taken  to  extend  one's  culture  as  widely  as 
possible,  and  that  opinions  regarding  the  profitableness  or 
unprofitableness  of  studying  certain  authors  be  not  formed 
without  due  deliberation.  In  the  study  of  literature,  as  in 
other  studies,  interest  advances  as  knowledge  increases ;  very 
frequently  books  which  to  the  tyro  seem  "  weary,  stale,  flat, 
and  unprofitable,"  are  those  which  he  afterwards  comes  to 
regard  as  among  his  most  cherished  intellectual  possessions. 

.  A  very  attractive  and  instructive  way  of  studying  literature 
is  to  select  some  great  book  or  some  great  author  as  a  nucleus 
round  which  to  group  one's  knowledge  of  the  writers  of  a 
period.  If,  for  example,  one  studies  that  universally  delight- 
ful book,  Boswell's  "  Life  of  Johnson,"  and  follows  up  the 
clues  which  its  perusal  suggests,  a  very  competent  knowledge 
of  a  large  part  of  the  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century  may 
DC  acquired.  Boswell's  frequent  cutting  allusions  to  his  rival, 
Sir  John  Hawkins,  naturally  induce  us  to  read  that  worthy's 
Life  of  the  "great  lexicographer,"  in  which,  amid  much  trash 
and  tedious  moralising,  many  curious  and  suggestive  details 
are  to  be  found.  In  a  similar  way,  his  obvious  dislike  of  Mrs. 
Piozzi  draws  attention  to  that  lively  lady's  entertaining  gossip ; 
while  the  glimpses  he  gives  of  the  life  and  conversation  of 
most  of  the  celebrated  writers  of  the  period,  such  as  Burke, 
Goldsmith,  Robertson,  Hume,  inspire  us  with  a  desire  to  be- 
come acquainted  with  their  writings  and  with  the  particulars 
of  their  lives.  Or  if  Pope  be  taken  as  the  vantage-ground 
from  which  to  survey  the  literary  landscape  around,  how 
easily  and  pleasantly  are  we  introduced  to  the  acquaintance, 
not  only  of  the  greater  figures  of  the  time, — Addison,  Swift, 
Bolingbroke,  Arbuthnot,  and  others,— but  of  the  smaller  fry,' 
the  ragged  denizens  of  Grub  Street,  so  mercilessly  satirised 
in  the  "  Dunciad."  No  one  can  know  Dryden  thoroughly 
without  picking  up,  almost  imperceptibly  it  may  be,  an  im- 
mense fund  of  information  about  the  many  curious  literary 
products  of  the  Restoration  ;  and  few  more  interesting  literary 
studies  could  be  suggested  than,  taking  Shakespeare  as  a 
centre,  to  mark  wherein  he  differed  from  his  predecessors  and 


The  Study  of  English  Literature.  21 

contemporaries,  how  far  he  availed  himself  of  what  they  had 
done,  how  far  he  influenced  them,  and  how  far  he  was  influ- 
enced by  them,  and  to  trace  the  whole  course  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama  from  its  first  dim  dawnings  to  its  melancholy 
but  not  inglorious  close.  When  one  has  made  oneself  at 
home  in  the  literature  of  any  period,  so  as  to  be  able  to  con- 
jure up  before  the  mind's  eye  its  more  important  writers,  even 
its  minutest  details,  which  in  themselves  seem  trifling  and 
tedious,  acquire  an  interest  and  importance,  every  fresh  parti- 
cular adding  a  new  shade  of  colour  to  the  mental  picture  we 
form  of  the  epoch. 

In  the  pages  which  follow,  considerable  space  has  been 
devoted  to  the  literature  of  the  last  hundred  years,  while  our 
earlier  writers  have  been  dealt  with  briefly,  many  of  consider- 
able importance  having  been  altogether  omitted.  To  this 
arrangement  not  a  few  may  possibly  be  inclined  to  object ; 
nevertheless,  I  believe  that,  for  a  work  like  the  present, 
intended  mainly  for  young  readers  and  others  whose  time  is 
limited,  it  is  the  best  arrangement.  Literary  history  becomes 
much  more  interesting  to  most  people  the  nearer  it  approaches 
to  our  own  time ;  and  very  few  are  likely  to  acquire  a 
taste  for  reading  by  having  their  attention  directed  mainly  to 
our  older  authors.  Now,  what  every  writer  of  a  book  like  the 
present  and  every  teacher  of  English  literature  ought  to  aim 
at  is,  to  give  his  readers  or  his  pupils  a  taste  for  literature.  If 
the  teacher  of  English  literature  fails  in  this,  his  labours  are 
almost  in  vain.  The  amount  of  knowledge  which  he  is  able 
to  communicate  is  comparatively  small ;  but  if  he  manages  to 
impress  on  his  pupils  a  sense  of  the  greatness  and  importance 
of  literature,  and  of  the  countless  benefits  and  pleasures  which 
may  be  derived  from  its  study,  he  has  sown  the  seeds  of  what 
will  yet  produce  a  very  abundant  harvest.  The  remark  is 
very  often  made  that  young  people  are  of  their  own  accord 
likely  to  peruse  writers  of  the  day,  while  leaving  the  classical 
writers  of  former  generations  neglected.  No  doubt  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  truth  in  this ;  but  I  am  disposed  to  question  very 
much  whether  the  practice  of  using  mainly  our  older  writers 


2  2  Introduction. 

for  educational  purposes  has  any  appreciable  effect  whatever 
in  extending  their  general  perusal ;  and  when  one  considers 
how  literature — even  literature  of  the  day — is  neglected  by 
numbers  of  educated  people,  one  is  inclined  to  have  some 
doubt  as  to  the  wisdom  of  leaving  recent  writers  out  of  the 
educational  curriculum.  Few  will  be  disposed  to  deny  that 
the  most  important  section  of  political  history  is  that  which 
relates  to  recent  times.  To  a  large  extent,  the  same  is  true 
of  literature.  Nothing  is  more  likely  to  quicken  one's  interest 
in  books,  and  to  serve  as  an  incentive  to  further  research,  than 
an  acquaintance  with  the  various  literary  modes  that  have 
been  prevalent  in  recent  times  or  which  are  still  in  vogue. 
Moreover,  if  the  study  of  English  literature  is  pursued  partly 
as  a  means  of  acquiring  a  correct  style,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
whatever  that  the  prose  writers  of  the  last  two  centuries  will 
prove  much  more  useful  guides  than  their  predecessors.  The 
following  interesting  remarks  on  this  subject,  quoted  from  a 
lecture  "  On  Teaching  English,"  recently  delivered  by  Dr. 
Alexander  Bain  before  the  Birmingham  Teachers'  Association, 
appear  to  me  to  have  much  force,  though  the  views  expressed 
are  perhaps  rather  extreme.  "  Irrespective  of  any  question 
as  to  the  superiority  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  it  must  from 
necessity  be  the  case  that  the  recent  classics  possess  the 
greatest  amount  of  unexhausted  interest.  Their  authors  have 
studied  and  been  guided  by  the  greatest  works  of  the  past, 
have  reproduced  many  of  their  effects,  as  well  as  added  new 
strokes  of  genius  ;  and  thus  our  reading  is  naturally  directed 
to  them  by  preference.  A  canto  of  '  Childe  Harold'  has  not 
the  genius  of  'Macbeth'  or  of  the  second  book  of 'Paradise 
Lost,'  but  it  has  more  freshness  of  interest.  This  is  as  regards 
the  reader  of  mature  years,  but  it  must  be  taken  into  account 
in  the  case  of  the  youthful  reader  also. 

"  So  with  regard  to  the  older  prose.  The  '  Essays '  of  Bacon 
cannot  interest  this  generation  in  any  proportion  to  the 
author's  transcendent  genius.  They  have  passed  into  subse- 
quent literature  until  their  interest  is  exhausted,  except  from 
the  occasional  quaint  felicity  of  the  phrases.  Bacon's  maxims 


The  Study  of  English  Literature.          23 

on  the  conduct  of  business  are  completely  superseded  by  Sir 
Arthur  Helps's  essay  on  that  subject,  simply  because  Sir 
Arthur  absorbed  all  that  was  in  Bacon,  and  augmented  it  by 
subsequent  wisdom  and  experience.  To  make  Bacon's  origi- 
nal a  text-book  of  the  present  day,  whether  for  thought  or  for 
style,  is  to  abolish  the  three  intervening  centuries. 

"  Of  Richard  Hooker's  '  Ecclesiastical  Polity,'  another  lite- 
rary monument  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  while  I  give  it  every 
credit  as  a  work  suited  to  its  own  time,  I  am  obliged  to  con- 
cur in  the  judgment  of  an  authority  great  both  in  jurisprudence 
and  in  English  style — the  late  John  Austin — who  denounced 
its  language  as  *  fustian,' 

"So  much  as  regards  the  decay  of  interest  in  the  old 
classics.  Next  as  to  their  use  in  teaching  style  or  in  exercis- 
ing pupils  in  the  practice  of  good  composition.  Here,  too,  I 
think,  they  labour  under  incurable  defects.  Their  language 
is  not  our  language  ;  their  best  expressions  are  valuable  as 
having  the  stamp  of  genius,  and  are  quotable  to  all  time,  but 
we  cannot  work  them  into  the  tissue  of  our  own  familiar 
discourse." 

The  concluding  chapter  of  this  book,  dealing  with  Periodi- 
cals, Reviews,  and  Encyclopaedias,  gives  a  brief  account  of 
the  more  remarkable  papers  of  the  Spectator  class,  which  form 
a  noticeable  feature  of  the  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century ; 
of  the  origin  of  the  two  great  Quarterlies,  which  exercised  an 
almost  fabulous  influence  over  criticism  in  the  beginning  of 
their  career;  of  some  of  the  more  prominent  new  departures  in 
periodical  literature  made  during  the  present  century;  and  of  the 
various  great  English  Encyclopaedias.  A  good  deal  of  our  best 
literature,  especially  of  a  critical  kind,  has  appeared  in  serial 
publications;  and  Encyclopaedias,  besides  having  been  in  recent 
times  adorned  by  contributions  from  the  ablest  pens  of  the 
day,  have,  as  digests  of  knowledge,  afforded  immense  aid  to 
all  sorts  of  literary  workers.  No  apology  accordingly  is  re- 
quired for  devoting  a  chapter  to  the  origin  and  history  of  pub- 
lications belonging  to  the  classes  mentioned. 

Much  difference  of  opinion  will  naturally  prevail  as  to  the 


24  Introduction. 

writers  selected  for  notice  in  this  work.  Some  will  think  that 
names  are  included  which  would  have  been  better  omitted; 
others,  that  names  are  omitted  which  ought  to  have  been  in- 
cluded. I  can  only  say  that  I  have  endeavoured  to  make  as 
representative  and  catholic  a  selection  as  possible  ;  and  that, 
in  choosing  writers  for  brief  notice,  I  have  tried  to  fix  on  such 
as  are  especially  remarkable,  not  only  on  account  of  their 
intrinsic  merit,  but  as  showing  the  literary  tendencies  of  their 
time.  It  is  with  great  regret  that  many  authors  of  high  merit 
and  interest  have  been  altogether  left  unnoticed;  but  more 
names  could  not  have  been  inserted  without  destroying  the 
distinctive  character  of  the  work. 

As  strict  chronological  order  has  not  been  adopted  in  deal- 
ing with  the  various  authors  mentioned,  chronological  tables 
giving  the  leading  dates  belonging  to  each  chapter  have  been 
given  in  the  Contents.  These  will,  it  is  hoped,  be  useful  for 
reference. 


LANDMARKS  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 


THE  DAWN  OF  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Chaucer ;  James  7.  of  Scotland,  Dunbar,  Gawain  Douglas,  Sir  David 
Lyndsay  ;  Mandtville  ;  Wiclif,  Tyndak,  Coverdale,  Rogers  (trans- 
lations cfthe  Bible};  Sir  Thomas  Malory ',  More,  Latimert  Foxt. 


"  Dan  Chaucer,  the  first  warbler,  whose  sweet  breath 

Preluded  those  melodious  bursts,  that  fill 
The  spacious  times  of  great  Elizabeth 

With  sounds  that  echo  still." — TENNYSON. 

F  this  book  were  a  history  of  the  English  language, 
or  if  it  dealt  with  such  writers  as  have  an  interest 
only  to  those  who  have  made  them  the  subjects  of 
special  study,  not  a  few  names  would  have  to  be 
mentioned  ere  we  came  to  deal  with  our  first  really  great  poet. 
Literature  is  a  plant  of  slow  and  gradual  growth  :  its  begin- 
nings, like  the  source  of  some  great  river,  are  obscure  and  diffi- 
cult to  trace :  it  is  not  till  many  influences  have  been  at  work, 
and  many  busy  pens  employed  in  moulding  and  forming  the 
language,  that  the  appearance  of  a  writer  who  deserves  to  be 
ranked  as  a  classic  is  possible.  The  authors  before  Chaucer 
(be  it  said  with  reverence  to  those  zealous  antiquaries  whose 
enthusiasm  has  done  so  much  to  make  the  study  of  our  old 
literature  attractive  and  profitable)  are  interesting  only  for 


26          The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

historical  reasons :  Chaucer  is  interesting  for  himself  alone, 
apart  from  all  considerations  regarding  his  influence  upon  the 
language,  or  the  admirable  representations  which  his  works 
afford  of  the  social  life  of  his  time.  His  was  a  genial,  sunny 
nature,  Shakespearean  in  its  breadth  and  sweet  placidity; 
and  hence  he  was  able  to  look  human  life  straight  in  the  face 
and  to  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature  without  flinching.  "All 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men "  are  described  by  him  with  sly 
humour,  and,  in  general,  a  strong  undercurrent  of  sympathy : 
like  the  character  in  Terence,  he  might  have  said,  "  I  am  a 
man,  and  think  nothing  human  alien  from  me."  Had  he 
lived  in  our  day,  we  cannot  doubt  that  he  would  have  made 
an  admirable  novelist  had  he  chosen  to  employ  his  pen  in 
that  direction.  But  in  addition  to  his  gifts  as  a  story-teller, 
he  was  a  genuine  poet :  our  first,  and  still,  after  the  lapse  of 
more  than  six  centuries,  one  of  our  greatest.  He  had  the 
poet's  command  of  language,  the  poet's  ear  for  rhythm,  the 
poet's  love  of  the  beautiful,  the  poet's  love  of  nature.  So 
great  was  he,  that  we  have  to  leap  over  nearly  two  centuries 
ere  we  come  to  a  poet  fit  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath 
with  him. 

Of  the  story  of  Chaucer's  life  we  do  not  know  so  much  as 
could  be  wished,  but  within  the  past  few  years  a  good  deal 
has  been  done  by  earnest  students  both  in  the  way  of  finding 
out  new  facts  and  in  demolishing  traditional  fictions.  He  was 
the  son  of  a  London  vintner,  and  was  born  about  1340,  the 
date  given  in  all  the  older  biographies,  1328,  being  now  almost 
universally  abandoned  as  inconsistent  with  certain  other  facts 
in  his  life.  Of  his  early  years  almost  nothing  is  known.  It 
has  been  supposed  that  he  studied  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge ; 
but  this  is  mere  baseless  conjecture.  At  all  events,  we  are  safe 
to  imagine  that  from  his  childhood  he  was  fond  of  reading, 
and  improved  his  opportunities  in  that  direction  to  the  best  of 
his  ability.  Few,  indeed,  are  the  men  who  neglect  books  in 
their  youth,  and  find  pleasure  in  them  when  they  are  grown 
up;  and  Chaucer's  works  conclusively  prove  that  he  was,  for 
his  time,  a  man  of  great  learning.  "  The  acquaintance," 


Chaucer.  27 

writes  Sir  Harris  Nicolas,  "  he  possessed  with  the  classics,  with 
divinity,  with  astronomy,  with  so  much  as  was  then  known  of 
chemistry,  and  indeed  with  every  other  branch  of  the  scholas- 
tic learning  of  the  age,  proves  that  his  education  had  been 
particularly  attended  to ;  and  his  attainments  render  it  impos- 
sible to  believe  that  he  quitted  college  at  the  early  period  at 
which  persons  destined  for  a  military  life  usually  began  their 
career.  It  was  not  then  the  custom  for  men  to  pursue  learning 
for  its  own  sake;  and  the  most  natural  manner  of  accounting 
for  the  extent  of  Chaucer's  acquirements  is  to  suppose  that  he 
was  educated  for  a  learned  profession.  The  knowledge  he 
displays  of  divinity  would  make  it  more  likely  that  he  was 
intended  for  the  Church  than  for  the  Bar,  were  it  not  that  the 
writings  of  the  Fathers  were  generally  read  by  all  classes  of 
students." 

Whether  educated  at  a  university,  whether  intended  for 
the  Church  or  the  Bar  (all  which  conjectures  rest  on  no  real 
basis  of  fact),  it  is  certain  that  in  1359  Chaucer  accompanied 
the  expedition  of  Edward  III.  into  France.  He  was  taken 
prisoner  during  the  campaign,  but  was  promptly  released — the 
king  paying  ^16  for  his  ransom  early  in  1360.  Seven  years 
later  we  find  him  one  of  the  king's  valets,  at  the  same  time 
receiving  a  yearly  pension  of  twenty  marks  in  consideration  of 
former  and  future  services.  For  some  time  after  this  his 
career  seems  to  have  been  one  of  unbroken  prosperity.  From 
1370  to  1380  he  was  employed  in  no  fewer  than  seven  diplo- 
matic services,  in  which  he  appears  to  have  acquitted  himself 
well,  as  indeed  the  tact  and  knowledge  of  human  nature 
shown  in  his  writings  would  lead  us  to  expect.  Of  these 
diplomatic  missions,  three  were  to  Italy,  where  Chaucer  is 
supposed  by  some  to  have  met  Petrarch,  the  most  consummate 
master  of  poetical  form  then  living,  and  Boccaccio,  that  prince 
of  story-tellers,  whose  gay  raillery  and  cheerful  spirit  must 
have  been  eminently  congenial  to  Chaucer.  Whether  he 
became  personally  acquainted  with  these  great  writers  is  not 
certain  :  it  is  certain  that  he  knew  and  loved  their  works,  and 
that  they  exerted  a  great  influence  over  his  genius.  During 


28          The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

the  same  ten  years  honours  and  offices  were  freely  showered 
on  him.  In  1374  he  was  appointed  comptroller  of  the  customs 
and  subsidy  of  wools,  skins,  and  tanned  hides  in  the  port  of 
London,  and  about  the  same  time  he  received  other  remunera- 
tive appointments  which  gave  him  an  income  equivalent  to 
about  ;£iooo  a  year  of  our  money.  In  1382  he  was  made 
comptroller  of  the  petty  customs,  and  in  1386  member  of  Par- 
liament for  the  shire  of  Kent.  This  was  the  culminating  point 
of  his  fortunes.  His  patron,  John  of  Gaunt,  was  abroad,  and 
his  brother,  the  Duke  of  Gloucester,  showed  little  favour  to  the 
poet,  who  was  deprived  of  his  two  comptrollerships.  Chaucer 
seems  to  have  possessed  in  abundance  that  "  perfect  readiness 
to  spend  whatever  could  be  honestly  got,"  which  is  said  to  be 
characteristic  of  men  of  letters,  and  of  the  ample  revenues  which 
he  had  enjoyed  during  the  preceding  years  he  had  probably 
saved  little.  In  1388  we  find  him  raising  money  by  transferring 
the  two  pensions  he  enjoyed  to  another  man.  In  1389  a  gleam 
of  returning  prosperity  shone  on  him.  He  was  appointed  clerk 
of  the  king's  works,  receiving  two  shillings  a  day,  equal  to  £i 
of  our  money.  This  office,  however,  he  did  not  hold  long.  By 
the  end  of  1391  he  had  lost  it,  "and  for  the  next  three  years 
his  only  income  was  his  annuity  of  ;£io  from  the  Duke  of 
Lancaster,  and  an  allowance  of  403.,  payable  half-yearly,  for 
robes  as  the  king's  esquire."  In  1394  he  obtained  an  annuity 
of  ^20  from  the  king  for  life,  but  his  pecuniary  embarrassments 
still  continued.  To  them  he  pathetically  alludes  in  the  verses 
"  To  his  Empty  Purse :  "— 

"  To  yow,  my  Purse,  and  to  noon  other  wight, 
Complayn  I,  for  ye  be  my  lady  dere ; 
I  am  so  sory  now  that  ye  been  lyght, 
For,  certes,  but  yf  ye  make  me  hevy  chere, 
Me  were  as  leef  be  layd  upon  my  bere." 

By  and  by,  it  is  satisfactory  to  be  able  to  say,  his  purse  was 
made  heavier.  In  1398  the  king  made  him  a  grant  of  a  tun 
of  wine  a  year  for  life — a  suitable  donation  to  a  poet  who,  it 
should  seem,  was  by  no  means  destitute  of  convivial  qualities. 


Chaucer  s  Appearance.  29 

In  1399  Henry  Bolingbroke  doubled  his  annual  pension  of 
twenty  marks.  Chaucer  did  not  live  long  to  enjoy  his  newly 
recovered  prosperity.  He  died  in  a  house  in  the  garden  of  St 
Mary  at  Westminster,  on  October  25,  1400. 

Chaucer's  personal  appearance  is  well  known  from  the 
portrait  of  him  by  Occleve,  which,  in  a  greater  degree  than 
most  portraits,  confirms  the  ideas  regarding  him  which  one 
might  gather  from  reading  his  works.  There  we  see  the  medi- 
tative, downcast,  yet  slyly  observant  eyes,  the  broad  brow,  the 
sensuous  mouth,  the  general  expression  of  good-humour  which 
are  all  so  characteristic  of  the  describer  of  the  Canterbury 
pilgrims.  In  the  "  Prologue  to  the  Rime  of  Sir  Thopas," 
Chaucer  has  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  host  a  half-bantering 
description  of  his  personal  appearance  : — 

"And  then  at  first  he  looked  upon  me 
And  sayde  thus,  '  What  man  art  thou  ? '  quoth  he  ; 
'  Thou  lookest  as  thou  wouldest  find  a  hare, 
And  ever  upon  the  ground  I  see  thee  stare  ; 
Approche  near,  and  looke  merrily  ! 
Now  ware  you,  sirs,  and  let  this  man  have  space, 
He  in  the  waist  is  shaped  as  well  as  I ; 
This  were  a  puppet  in  an  arm  to  embrace 
For  any  woman,  small  and  fair  of  face. 
He  seemeth  elvish  by  his  countenance, 
For  unto  no  wight  doth  he  daliaunnce." 

Two  great  traits  of  character  prominently  distinguished  him — 
traits  not  very  often  found  united  in  the  same  individual  He 
was  an  insatiable  reader,  and  he  was  also  an  enthusiastic 
admirer  of  the  beauties  of  nature.  When  the  two  tastes  came 
in  conflict,  it  was  the  latter  that  had  to  give  way,  as  he  tells  us 
in  a  charming  passage  : — 

"And  as  for  me,  though  I  have  knowledge  slight, 
In  bookes  for  to  read  I  me  delight, 
And  to  them  give  I  faith  and  full  credence, 
And  in  my  heart  have  them  in  reverence 
So  heartily,  that  there  is  game  none 
That  from  my  bookes  maketh  me  begone, 


3<D          The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

But  it  be  seldom  on  the  holiday, — 
Save,  certainly,  when  that  the  month  of  May 
Is  come,  and  that  I  hear  the  fowles  sing 
And  see  the  flowers  as  they  begin  to  spring, 
Farewell  my  book,  and  my  devotion." 

Other  features  in  Chaucer  we  shall  have  occasion  to  indicate 
when  dealing  with  the  "  Canterbury  Tales." 

By  the  most  recent  critics  of  Chaucer  his  work  has  been 
divided  into  three  periods — the  French  period,  the  Italian 
period,  and  the  English  period.  To  the  first  is  assigned  his 
"  A.  B.  C,"  a  prayer  to  the  Virgin,  translated  from  the  French ; 
a  translation  of  the  "Romance  of  the  Rose;"1  the  "  Com- 
pleynte  of  Pity"  (1368?),  and  the  "Book  of  the  Duchess," 
a  poem  commemorating  the  death  in  1369  of  the  Duchess 
Blanche.  To  the  second  period,  extending  from  1372  to  1384, 
during  which,  as  we  have  seen,  Chaucer  three  times  visited 
Italy,  and  is  supposed  to  have  fallen  under  Italian  literary 
influence,  are  assigned  his  "  Parliament  of  Fowls,"  "  Troilus 
and  Cresside,"  certain  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  the  "  House 
of  Fame,"  and  some  minor  poems.  To  the  third  period  be- 
long the  rest  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales."  This  division  rests 
on  no  solid  basis  of  fact,  and  must  be  taken  for  what  it  is 
worth.  Though,  of  course,  every  deference  is  to  be  paid  to 
the  opinion  of  those  who  have  devoted  great  attention  to 
Chaucerian  study,  it  must  be  confessed  that  there  is  some- 
thing arbitrary  and  artificial  in  thus  parcelling  a  man's  work 
out  into  periods  divided  by  a  distinct  line  of  demarcation. 
Professor  Minto,  whose  soundness  of  judgment  gives  his 
opinion  great  weight,  is  inclined  to  reject  the  division  as 
throwing  a  factitious,  and,  upon  the  whole,  misleading  light 
on  the  natural  development  of  Chaucer's  genius.2  Of  certain 
other  works,  the  "  Court  of  Love,"  the  "  Flower  and  the  Leaf," 
and  Chaucer's  "  Dream,"  the  genuineness  has  been  admitted 
by  some  and  denied  by  others.  We  need  not  take  up  space 

1  It  has  been  doubted,  apparently  on  insufficient  evidence,  whether  this 
translation  was  by  Chaucer. 

2  "English  Poets,"  p.  19. 


Chaucer  s  Works.  31 

with  the  consideration  of  such  questions,  which  can  only  be 
profitably  discussed  by  those  who  have  a  very  ripe  knowledge 
of  the  literature  of  the  period.  It  shows  the  versatility  of 
CLaucer's  intellect  that  he  was  the  author  of  a  translation  of 
Boethius  on  the  "  Consolation  of  Philosophy,"  a  very  popular 
book  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  that  he  wrote  in  1391  a  trea- 
tise "  On  the  Astrolabe  "  for  the  use  of  his  little  son  Lewis. 

Having  thus  enumerated  the  chief  minor  works  of  Chaucer, 
we  pass  on  to  the  consideration  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  to 
which  alone  we  propose  to  confine  our  attention.  Chaucer's 
other  writings,  excellent  though  many  of  them  are,  and  interest- 
ing though  they  all  are,  partly  for  philological  reasons,  partly 
as  indicating  his  mental  growth,  may  be  passed  over  by  readers 
whose  time  is  short;  but  the  "  Canterbury  Tales"  is  of  peren- 
nial importance,  invaluable  alike  to  the  student  of  poetry, 
to  the  historian  who  aspires  to  delineate  the  social  life  of  the 
period,  and  to  the  philologer.  The  plan  of  the  "  Canterbury 
Tales,"  a  series  of  stories  prefixed  by  a  prologue  and  linked 
together  by  a  framework,  was  probably  derived  by  Chaucer 
from  Boccaccio's  "  Decamerone,"  though  there  are  other 
sources  from  which  he  might  have  borrowed  the  scheme. 
But  there  is  a  wide  difference,  greatly  in  favour  of  the  Eng- 
lish writer,  between  the  "  Decamerone"  and  the  "  Canterbury 
Tales."  Boccaccio's  connections  between  the  stories  might 
have  been  omitted  and  his  book  have  been  none  the  worse ; 
there  is  no  dramatic  propriety  in  the  tales  which  he  puts  in  the 
mouth  of  the  several  speakers.  One  of  the  great  attractions 
of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  on  the  other  hand,  is  that  Chaucer, 
with  the  true  instinct  of  genius,  took  care  that  each  of  the 
stories  should  be  such  as  the  speaker  would  naturally  have 
told.  In  the  "  Prologue  "  he  has  hit  off  the  points  of  the 
several  characters  with  unrivalled  grace  and  dexterity.  "I 
see  all  the  pilgrims  in  the  '  Canterbury  Tales,'"  said  Dryden, 
"  their  humours,  their  features,  and  their  very  dress,  as  dis- 
tinctly as  if  I  had  supped  with  them  at  the  Tabard  in  South- 
wark."  A  strangely  mixed  and  jocund  company  they  were 
who  set  forth  on  the  pilgrimage,  then  a  very  common  one  for 


32          The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

Londoners,  to  the  shrine  of  St.  Thomas  at  Canterbury.  We 
see  before  us  the  chivalrous  Knight ;  the  young  Squire,  "  em- 
broidered as  a  mead,"  and  "as  fresh  as  is  the  month  of  May;" 
the  Yeoman,  so  careful  of  his  accoutrements;  the  tender- 
hearted Prioress,  who  spoke  French  "  after  the  school  of  Strat 
ford-atte-Bowe  ;"  the  Monk,  who  was  so  fond  of  hunting,  and 
whose  bridle  "jingled  in  the  air  as  clear  and  eke  as  loud  as 
doth  the  chapel  bell ; "  the  Friar,  who  thought  that  instead  of 
weeping  and  of  prayers  "  men  ought  to  give  silver  to  the  poor 
friars  ;"  the  Merchant,  who  sedulously  attended  to  his  busi- 
ness, and  "  spoke  his  reasons  full  pompously ; "  the  Clerk  of 
Oxford,  who  preferred  books  to  any  other  earthly  pleasure, 
and  who  would  gladly  learn  and  gladly  teach ;  the  Sergeant  of 
Law,  who  "  ever  seemed  busier  than  he  was  ; "  the  Franklin, 
at  whose -house  it  "snowed  of  meat  and  drink;"  the  Ship- 
man,  who  "  of  nice. conscience  took  no  keep;"  the  Doctor  of 
Physic,  whose  "  study  was  but  little  in  the  Bible ; "  the  gaily- 
attired  buxom  Wife  of  Bath  ;  the  poor  Parson  and  his  brother 
the  Ploughman,  who,  if  it  lay  in  his  power,  was  always  ready 
to  work  for  the  poor  without  hire ;  the  stout  Miller,  who  was 
not  over  honest,  and  who  carried  with  him  a  bagpipe  which 
he  could  "  blow  and  sound  ;"  the  Reeve,  "  a  slender,  choleric 
man;"  the  Summoner,  with  his  "fire-red  cherubim's  face;'' 
the  Pardoner,  with  his  wallet  full  "  of  pardons  come  from  Rome 
all  hot ; "  and  a  good  many  other  equally  typical  specimens 
of  humanity,  notably  the  jovial  host  of  the  Tabard,  a  fit  pre- 
decessor to  "mine  host  of  the  Garter"  and  to  Boniface,  "it 
is  the  first  time  in  English  poetry  that  we  are  brought  face  to 
face,  not  with  characters,  or  allegories,  or  reminiscences  of  the 
past,  but  with  living  and  breathing  men,  men  distinct  in  temper 
or  sentiment  as  in  face,  or  costume,  or  mode  of  speech ;  and 
with  this  distinctness  of  each  maintained  throughout  the  story 
by  a  thousand  shades  of  expression  and  action.  It  is  the 
first  time,  too,  that  we  meet  with  the  dramatic  power  which 
not  only  creates  each  character,  but  combines  it  with  its  fellows, 
which  not  only  adjusts  each  tale  or  jest  to  the  temper  of  the 
person  who  utters  it,  but  fuses  all  into  a  poetic  unity.  It 


Pilgrimage  to  Canterbury.  33 

is  life  in  its  largeness,  its  variety,  its  complexity,  which  sur- 
rounds us  in  the  '  Canterbury  Tales.'  In  some  of  the  stories, 
indeed,  composed  no  doubt  at  an  earlier  time,  there  is  the 
tedium  of  the  old  romance  or  the  pedantry  of  the  schoolman ; 
but,  taken  as  a  whole,  the  poem  is  the  work  not  of  a  man  of 
letters,  but  of  a  man  of  action.  He  has  received  his  training 
from  war,  courts,  business,  travel — a  training  not  of  books,  but 
of  life.  And  it  is  life  that  he  loves — the  delicacy  of  its  senti- 
ment, the  breadth  of  its  farce,  its  laughter  and  its  tears,  the 
tenderness  of  its  Griseldis,  or  the  Smollett-like  adventures  of 
the  miller  and  the  schoolboy.  It  is  this  largeness  ot  heart, 
this  wide  tolerance,  which  enables  him  to  reflect  man  lor  us  as 
none  but  Shakespeare  has  ever  reflected  it,  but  to  reflect  it 
with  a  pathos,  a  shrewd  sense  and  kindly  humour,  a  freshness 
and  joyousness  of  feeling,  that  even  Shakespeare  has  not 
surpassed." J 

Pilgrimages  to  Canterbury  seem  to  have  been  joyous  affairs, 
in  which  merriment  and  not  devotion  held  the  foremost  place 
in  the  minds  of  those  who  took  part  in  them.  "  They  will 
ordain  with  them  before,"  says  an  old  writer  indignantly, 
"to  have  with  them  both  men  and  women  that  can  sing 
wanton  songs,  and  some  other  pilgrims  will  have  with  them 
bagpipes;2  so  that  every  town  they  come  through,  what  with 
the  noise  of  their  singing,  and  with  the  sound  of  their  piping, 
and  with  the  jangling  of  their  Canterbury  bells,  and  with  the 
barking  out  of  the  dogs  after  them,  that  they  make  more 
noise  than  if  the  king  came  thereaway  with  all  his  clarions 
and  many  other  minstrels.  And  if  these  men  and  women  be 
a  month  in  their  pilgrimage,  many  of  them  shall  be  a  half  year 
after  great  janglers,  tale-tellers,  and  liars."  The  "gentle" 
portion  of  Chaucer's  company  must  have  been  not  a  little 
scandalised  by  the  riotous  behaviour  of  such  "  roistering 
blades"  as  the  Miller,  the  Summoner,  and  the  Cook,  and 
by  the  grossly  indecorous  nature  of  some  of  the  stones 

1    Green's  "  Short  History  of  England,"  chap.  v. 
3  The  Miller  carried  his  bagpipes  with  him. 


34          The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

told.     For  this  indecorousness  Chaucer  makes  a  characteristic 
apology:— 

"  And,  therefore,  every  gentle  wight  I  pray, 

For  Godde's  love  deemeth  not  that  I  say 

Of  evil  intent;  but  for  I  must  rehearse 

Their  tales  all,  be  they  better  or  worse, 

Or  elle's  falsen  some  of  my  matter. 

And,  therefore,  whoso  list  it  not  to  hear, 

Turn  over  the  leaf  and  choose  another  tale ; 

For  he  shall  find  enowe  great  and  small 

Of  storial  thing  that  touches  gentilesse, 

And  eke  morality  and  holiness, 

Blameth  not  me,  if  that  ye  choose  amiss. 

The  Miller  is  a  churl,  ye  know  well  this; 

So  was  the  Reeve,  and  other  many  mo, 

And  harlotry  they  tolden  bothe  two. 

Aviseth  you,  and  put  me  out  of  blame ; 

And  eke  men  shall  not  maken  earnest  of  game." 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  Chaucer  is  here  laughing  in  his  sleeve. 
The  excuse  he  gives  will  not  hold  water.  But  we  can  forgive 
much  to  the  man  who,  whatever  his  occasional  license  of  lan- 
guage, was  capable  of  delineating  the  finer  qualities  of  human 
nature  and  the  most  tender  of  human  feelings  as  none  but  one 
who  really  deeply  sympathised  with  them  could  have  done. 
A  man  who  had  seen  much  of  the  world,  and  had  taken  part 
in  several  of  these  diplomatic  transactions  which  are  not  sup- 
posed to  raise  one's  estimate  of  humanity,  Chaucer  yet  preserved, 
amid  all  his  frolicsome  gaiety,  a  childlike  simplicity  of  spirit 
which  made  him  prompt  to  reverence  worth,  and  gentleness, 
and  mercy.  There  was  nothing  of  the  cynic  in  his  composi- 
tion. He  took  the  world  as  he  found  it,  and  was  very  well 
contented  with  it.  He  was  not  a  "  good  hater ; "  there  is  no 
trace  of  bitterness  in  his  satire,  nothing  at  all  akin  to  the  fierce 
misanthropy  of  Swift.  Yet  perhaps  his  sly  touches  of  satire 
are  none  the  less  pungent  on  that  account.  There  are  few- 
people  who  would  not  prefer  being  bitterly  railed  at  to  being 
good-humouredly  laughed  at.  His  penetrating  accuracy  of 
observation  is  perhaps  best  shown  in  what  he  says  about 
women.  Though,  as  many  passages  prove,  he  had  a  high  and 


Chaucer  s  Religious  Opinions.  35 

chivalrous  estimate  of  women,  he  was  well  aware  of  their 
weak  points,  and  from  his  works  a  choice  anthology  might  be 
compiled  of  innuendoes  or  open  sarcasms  directed  against  the 
sex.  This  must  be  partly  attributed  to  the  custom  of  age ; 
very  probably  it  is  in  greater  measure  to  be  attributed  to 
Chaucer's  experience  of  married  life,  which  is  thought  to  have 
been  far  from  a  happy  one.  A  pleasing  feature  in  Chaucer  is 
his  want  of  all  exaggerated  reverence  for  rank  and  his  total 
freedom  from  cant.  Sprung  from  the  people  himself,  he  knew 
that  it  is  neither  long  descent,  nor  high  position,  nor  great 
wealth,  that  constitutes  a  gentleman  : — 

"  Look,  who  that  is  most  virtuous  alvvay, 
Privy  and  open,  and  most  intendeth  aye 
To  do  the  gentle  deedes  that  he  can, 
Take  him  for  the  greatest  gentleman." 

His  freedom  from  cant,  and  his  contempt  for  those  poetical 
commonplaces  which  form  the  stock-in-trade  of  minor  versifiers, 
are  shown  by  such  passages  as  the  following : — 

"  Till  that  the  brighte  sun  had  lost  his  hue, 
For  th*  orison  had  reft  the  sun  his  light, 
(This  is  as  much  to  sayen  as  '  it  was  night  ').* 

What  were  Chaucer's  religious  views?  The  question  is  not 
very  easy  to  answer.  That  he  was  fully  aware  of  the  abuses  of 
the  prevailing  ecclesiastical  system  is  conclusively  proved  by 
his  pictures  of  the  Monk,  the  Friar,  the  Pardoner,  and  others. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  fine  portrait  of  the  "  Poor  Parson  of  a 
Town,"  who 

" Waited  for  no  pomp  and  reverence, 

Nor  made  himself  a  spiced  conscience  ; 
But  Christe's  lore  and  His  Apostles'  twelve 
He  taught,  but  first  he  followed  it  himself," 

has  every  appearance  of  being  a  representation  of  a  Wiclifite 
priest.  Hence  some  have  rashly  inferred  that  Chaucer  himself 
was  a  Wiclifite.  "  Chaucer,"  wrote  John  Foxe,  "  seems  to 
have  been  a  right  Wyclevian,  or  else  there  never  was  any ;  and 
that  all  his  works  almost,  if  they  be  thoroughly  advised,  will 


36  The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

testify."  But  portions  of  the  "  Parson's  Tale  "  are  inconsistent 
with  this  supposition,  which,  indeed,  other  facts  do  not  seem 
to  corroborate.  Chaucer  was  not  a  man  to  hold  very  pro- 
nounced religious  views.  Like  many  other  people  of  his  time, 
he  was  disgusted  with  the  insolence  and  avarice  of  the  eccle- 
siastical dignitaries,  and,  with  his  genuine  appreciation  of 
human  excellence,  could  not  look  but  with  sympathy  and 
admiration  on  the  faithful  pastors  like  the  "  Poor  Parson," 
whom  he  saw  amid  discouragement  and  poverty  striving  to  do 
their  duty,  and  animated  by  a  genuine  religious  spirit.  But  it 
is  not  likely  that  he  ever  desired  or  looked  for  an  overthrow 
of  the  power  of  the  Church  of  Rome  in  England  :  he  was  not 
the  stuff  of  which  reformers  are  made. 

Though  Chaucer  was  always  a  popular  poet,  as  is  proved 
by  the  many  existing  manuscripts  of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales," 
by  the  fact  that  Caxton  (who  declares  that  "  in  all  his  works 
he  excelleth,  in  mine  opinion,  all  other  writers  in  our  English  ") 
issued  two  editions  of  his  works,  and  by  the  numerous  respect- 
ful allusions  made  to  him  by  the  poets  of  succeeding  genera- 
tions, his  versification  was  a  puzzle  to  his  readers  when  the 
language  had  become  fixed  in  substantially  its  present  form. 
"  The  verse  of  Chaucer,"  wrote  Dryden,  "  I  confess  is  not 
harmonious  to  us.  They  who  lived  with  him,  and  some  time 
after  him,  thought  it  musical,  and  it  continues  so,  even  in  our 
judgment,  if  compared  with  the  numbers  of  Lydgate  and 
Gower,  his  contemporaries :  there  is  a  rude  sweetness  of  a 
Scotch  tune  in  it,  which  is  natural  and  pleasing."  Waller 
went  further : — 

"  Chaucer  his  sense  can  only  boast, 
The  glory  of  his  numbers  lost ! 
Years  have  defaced  his  matchless  strain, 
And  yet  he  did  not  sing  in  vain." 

Chaucer  himself  perceived  that  he  lived  at  a  period  when 
the  language  was  in  a  state  of  transition.  Towards  the  close 
of  "  Troilus  and  Cresside  "  he  says  : — 

"  And  since  there  is  so  great  diversity 
In  English,  and  in  writing  of  our  tongue, 


James  I.  of  Scotland.  37 

I  pray  to  God  that  none  may  miswrite  thee, 
Nor  thee  mismetre,  for  default  of  tongue, 
And  wheresoe'er  thou  mayst  be  read  or  sung 
That  thou  be  understood,  God  I  beseech."  J 

He  was,  however,  "  mismetred  "  till  the  publication,  in  1778, 
of  Tyrwhitt's  "  Essay  on  the  Language  and  Versification  of 
Chaucer,"  which  paved  the  way  for  what  has  been  done  since 
for  the  restoration  of  the  text  of  Chaucer  and  the  accurate  know- 
ledge of  his  language.  The  student  may  now,  with  very  little 
trouble,  acquaint  himself  with  rules  which  regulate  Chaucer's 
versification  and  grammar,  and  so  be  able  to  read  him  with  a 
much  fuller  and  clearer  appreciation  than  such  a  man  as  Dryden 
could  have  done.  The  small  expenditure  of  time  necessary 
in  order  to  do  so  will  be  recompensed  a  hundredfold  by 
the  pleasure  derived  from  the  study  of  the  first  English 
classic. 

The  appearance  of  Chaucer  in  our  literature  was  compared 
by  Warton  to  a  premature  day  in  an  English  spring,  after 
which  the  gloom  of  winter  returns,  and  the  buds  and  blossoms 
which  have  been  called  forth  by  a  transient  sunshine  are 
nipped  by  frosts  and  scattered  by  storms.  The  fifteenth  cen- 
tury was  a  period  of  the  deepest  gloom,  morally,  materially, 
and  intellectually.  The  wretched  civil  wars  which  devastated 
the  country  proved  fatal  to  the  muse :  no  great  English  poet 
arose  within  the  period  ;  no  poet  worthy  even  of  a  high  place 
in  the  second  rank.  It  is  to  Scotland,  bleak,  wild,  barren,  but 
full  of  men  of  high  spirit  and  indomitable  tenacity  of  purpose^ 
that  we  must  turn  if  we  wish  to  find  a  writer  who  inherited  the 
!  genius  of  Chaucer  in  any  tolerable  measure.  James  I.  of 
Scotland,  who  has  been  styled  the  best  king  among  poets 
and  the  best  poet  among  kings,  during  his  long  captivity  in 
England,  which  extended  from  1405  to  1424,  had  the  advan- 
tage of  receiving  an  excellent  education  and  of  familiarising 
himself  with  the  works  of  the  best  English  poets.  Though 
poems  of  a  humorous  nature,  "  Peebles  to  the  Play "  and 

1  Here  and  elsewhere  the  extracts  from  Chauce;  have  been  modernised. 


38          The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

"  Christ's  Kirk  of  the  Green,"  are  generally  supposed  to  have 
been  written  by  him,  his  fame  mainly  rests  on  his  *'  King's 
Quhair"  [Book],  a  poem  in  six  cantos,  in  which  the  influence 
of  Chaucer  is  very  apparent.  It  describes,  in  allegorical 
fashion,  the  attachment  which,  while  a  prisoner  in  Windsor 
Castle,  he  formed  to  a  young  English  princess  whom  he  saw 
walking  in  an  adjacent  garden.  This  lady  is  supposed  to  have 
been  Lady  Jane  Beaufort,  whom  he  afterwards  married ;  but 
more  probably  the  account  given  of  her  appearance  is  a  pure 
poetical  fancy.  If  rather  deficient  in  originality — for  it  is  im- 
possible to  believe  that  the  "  King's  Quhair"  would  ever  have 
been  written  if  the  works  of  Chaucer  had  not  been  already  in 
existence — James  I.  had  a  fine  poetical  spirit,  and  were  it  not 
for  the  many  difficulties  of  dialect  which  it  presents,  his  poem 
would  be  much  more  generally  read  than  it  is.  The  unfor- 
tunate author,  who  was  born  in  1394,  affords  a  bright  example 
of  the  union  of  a  poetical  temperament  with  great  practical 
powers.  When  he  came  to  his  kingdom,  he  found  it  in  a  state 
of  anarchy  through  the  lawless  conduct  of  those  turbulent 
nobles  who  were  for  many  generations  the  curse  of  Scotland. 
"  Let  God  but  grant  me  life,"  he  is  reported  to  have  said, 
"  and  throughout  my  dominions  I  shall  make  the  key  keep  the 
castle  and  the  furze-bush  the  cow,  though  I  should  lead  the 
life  of  a  dog  to  accomplish  it."  He  was  in  a  fair  way  to  redeem 
his  promise  when  he  perished  by  assassination  in  1437. 

A  poet  of  less  tender  and  grateful  fancy  than  the  royal  bard, 
but  of  more  original  genius,  was  William  Dunbar,  who  has 
been  called  the  Scotch  Chaucer,  a  designation  which  recalls 
Coleridge's  remark  on  hearing  Klopstock  styled  the  German 
Milton,  "  A  very  German  Milton  indeed."  Dunbar,  who  was 
born  in  1460,  was  educated  at  the  University  of  St.  Andrews, 
and  in  early  life  became  a  Franciscan  friar — not  a  particularly 
suitable  calling  for  him,  if  one  may  judge  from  the  frequent 
license  of  his  muse.  By  James  IV.  he  was  employed  as  a  clerk 
to  foreign  embassies,  and  received  numerous  gratuities  from 
the  king  in  response  to  numerous  supplications,  for  Dunbar 
was  not  a  man  to  want  money  if  it  could  be  got  for  the  asking. 


Gawain  Douglas.  39 

His  principal  poems  are  the  "  Golden  Targe,"  the  target  being 
Reason  as  a  protection  against  the  assaults  of  Desire,  and  his 
"  Dance  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins,"  a  poem  which,  in  its  wild, 
reckless  spirit,  may  be  compared  to  the  "  Jolly  Beggars "  ot 
Burns.  The  poetry  of  Dunbar  has  been  described  by  Irving 
in  his  "Lives  of  the  Scottish  Poets"  with  something  of  a 
Scotchman's  partiality  to  his  countryman.  "  In  the  poetry  of 
Dunbar,"  he  says,  "  we  recognise  the  emanations  of  a  mind 
adequate  to  splendid  and  varied  exertion — a  mind  equally 
capable  of  soaring  into  the  higher  regions  of  fiction,  and  of 
descending  into  the  humble  walk  of  the  familiar  and  ludicrous. 
He  was  endowed  with  a  vigorous  and  well-regulated  imagina- 
tion, and  to  it  was  superadded  that  conformation  of  the  intel- 
lectual faculties  which  constitutes  the  quality  of  good  sense. 
In  his  allegorical  poems  we  discover  originality  and  even 
sublimity  of  invention,  while  those  of  a  satirical  kind  present 
us  with  striking  images  of  real  life  and  manners.  As  a 
descriptive  poet  he  has  received  superlative  praise.  In  the 
mechanism  of  poetry  he  evinces  a  wonderful  degree  of  skill. 
He  has  employed  a  great  variety  of  metres ;  and  his  versifica- 
tion, when  opposed  to  that  of  his  most  eminent  contemporaries, 
will  appear  highly  ornamental  and  varied."  The  date  of  Dun- 
bar's  death  is  uncertain,  but  is  supposed  to  have  occurred 
about  1520.  The  "Golden  Targe"  was  printed  in  1508. 

Gawain  Douglas  (1475-1522),  Bishop  of  Dunkeld,  is  memo- 
rable as  having  been  the  author  of  the  first  metrical  translation 
into  English  of  a  Latin  author.  He  translated,  with  spirit  and 
felicity,  but  with  great  diffuseness,  the  "  ^Eneid  "  of  Vergil  in 
1513.  To  each  book  he  prefixed  a  prologue,  and  these  pro- 
logues are  commonly  considered  the  most  favourable  specimens 
of  his  genius.  His  chief  original  poem  is  the  "Palace  of 
Honour,"  an  allegory  in  which  he  maintains  the  theses  that 
virtue  is  the  only  true  chivalry.  Like  all  the  old  Scottish 
poets,  Douglas  was  permeated  with  a  love  for  nature,  which 
constitutes  one  of  the  great  sources  of  his  inspiration. 

The  last  of  the  old  school  of  Scottish  poets  was  Sir  David 
Lyndsay  of  the  Mount,  whose  name  is  familiar  to  many  who 


4O          The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

know  nothing  of  his  works  by  the  ringing  lines  about  him  in 
Scott's  "  Marmion  :  "— 

'lie  was  a  man  of  middle  age ; 
In  aspect  manly,  grave,  and  sage, 

As  on  king's  errand  come ; 
But  in  the  glances  of  his  eye 
A  penetrating,  keen,  and  sly 

Expression  found  its  home  ; 
The  flash  of  that  satiric  rage, 
Which,  bursting  on  the  early  stage, 
Branded  the  vices  of  the  age 

And  broke  the  keys  of  Rome. 


Still  is  thy  name  in  high  account, 

And  still  thy  verse  hath  charms, 
Sir  David  Lindesay  of  the  Mount, 

Lord  Lion  King-at-arms." 

Lyndsay  of  the  Mount  (his  family  estate  in  Scotland)  was  no 
less  a  man  of  action  than  a  poet :  indeed  it  is  mainly  because 
he  devoted  his  poetical  talent  to  practical  ends  that  his  verses 
attained  the  wide  popularity  they  long  enjoyed  among  his 
countrymen.  He  was  born  in  1490,  and  rose  to  high  office  in 
the  court  of  James  V.,  with  whom  he  was  a  great  favourite. 
He  had  acted  as  gentleman-usher  to  that  King  in  his  youthful 
days,  and  the  relations  between  master  and  pupil  seem  to  have 
been  unusually  affectionate.  Three  of  his  poems,  the  "  Dream," 
the  "  Complaint  to  the  King,"  and  the  "  Testament  of  the 
King's  Papyngo,"  have  for  their  purpose  the  exposure  of  abuses 
prevalent  in  church  and  state.  Most  of  his  works  to  a  greater 
or  less  degree  point  in  the  same  direction.  His  "  Satire  of  the 
Three  Estates,"  which  was  represented  before  the  King  at 
Linlithgow  in  1539,  having  been  first  acted  in  1535,  is  a 
morality  play,  having  for  its  motif  the  fall  of  Cardinal  Beaton, 
and  stigmatising  the  crimes  which  led  to  that  fall.  In  his  last 
work,  the  "Monarchic"  (1553),  he  continued  in  a  graver  tone 
than  had  been  adopted  in  his  earlier  performances  to  protest 
against  the  abuses  which  had  crept  into  the  state.  Different 
though  their  characters  were,  Lyndsay  shares  with  Knox  the 


Mandeville.  41 

honour  of  being  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Reformation.  A 
clear-sighted,  practical  man,  with  considerable  humour  and 
much  satirical  power,  he  had  great  influence  in  stirring  up  the 
people  to  a  sense  of  the  wrongs  which  they  endured  and  in 
bringing  these  wrongs  under  the  attention  of  those  in  authority. 

We  now  turn  to  our  early  prose  writers.  Prose  is  a  much 
more  artificial  and  mechanical  mode  of  literary  expression 
than  verse :  the  poet's  song  (if  it  be  a  genuine  song)  is  the 
outpouring  of  his  heart  in  the  metrical  form  which  seems  to 
him  best  adapted  to  the  subject  with  which  he  deals :  ' '  he 
sings  but  as  the  linnets  do,"  from  the  uncontrollable  force  of 
his  genius.  The  prose  writer,  who  has  to  handle  all  sorts  of 
themes,  uses,  indeed,  a  much  more  commonplace  instrument— 
for  we  all  talk  in  prose — but  before  that  instrument  is  adapted 
for  literary  purposes  many  refinements  have  to  be  adopted, 
and  many  expedients  tried.  The  talk  of  an  uneducated 
person,  with  its  repetitions,  its  wanderings  from  the  point,  its 
innumerable  accessory  circumstances  heedlessly  thrown  in  at 
the  most  unsuitable  places,  its  linking  together  of  the  most 
incongruous  subjects,  its  want  of  clearness  and  precision,  con- 
veys a  good  idea  of  the  style  of  our  early  prose-writers,  who 
wrote  before  the  language  was  fully  formed  and  before  the 
pathway  to  the  art  of  English  prose  composition  had  been 
trodden  smooth  by  the  steps  of  innumerable  wayfarers.  With 
regard  to  the  merely  mechajrical  part  of  style,  literary  genius 
has  not  much  to  do :  it  may,  in  great  measure,  be  acquired  as 
grammar  is  acquired.  A  schoolboy  would  be  ashamed  of  him- 
self who  could  not  express  his  meaning  in  a  form  less  awkward 
and  cumbrous  than  that  used  by  Milton  in  his  prose  works. 

The  "  first  writer  of  formed  English "  is  commonly  said  to 
have  been  Sir  John  Mandeville  (1300-1371),  and  though  the 
general  opinion  of  experts  now  is  that  he  was  not  the  author 
of  the  English  translation  of  the  book  of  "Travels"  which 
bears  his  name,  thac  book,  whoever  translated  it,  is  the  first 
English  prose  composition  which  deserves  to  be  called  litera- 
ture. Of  his  own  life,  he  says :  "  I,  John  Maundevylle, 
Knyght,  alle  be  it  I  be  not  worthi,  that  was  born  in  Englond, 
3 


42  The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

in  the  Town  of  Seynt  Albones,  passed  the  See  in  the  Zeer  of 
our  Lord  Jesu  Crist  MCCCXXIL,  in  the  day  of  Seynt 
Michelle;  and  hidre  to  have  ben  longe  tyme  over  the  See, 
and  have  seyn  and  gon  thorghe  manye  dy verse  Londes,  and 
many  Provynces  and  Kingdomes,  and  lies,  and  have  passed 
thorghe  Lybye,  Caldee,  and  a  gret  partie  of  Tartarye,  Percye, 
Ermonye  the  litylle  and  the  grete ;  thorghe  Ethiope  ;  thorghe 
Amazoyne,  Inde  the  lasse  and  the  more,  a  gret  partie;  and 
thorghe  out  many  othere  lies,  that  ben  abouten  Inde ;  where 
dwellen  many  dyverse  Folkes,  and  of  dyverse  Maneres  and 
Lawes,  and  of  dyverse  Schappes  of  Men."  Mandeville's 
"  Travels  "  is  believed  to  have  been  translated  into  English  in 
1356,  and  its  popularity  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  many  copies 
of  it  circulated  in  manuscript.  It  is  a  strange  and  amusing 
book.  A  good  deal  of  what  he  relates  is  somewhat  of  the 
Baron  Munchausen  order ;  but  it  is  fair  to  say  that  the  most 
extraordinary  things  told  by  the  old  traveller  are  given  by  him 
as  having  been  stated  by  some  one  else,  and  not  as  the  results 
of  his  own  observation.  Distant  countries  were  then  nearly 
as  much  a  terra  incognita  to  Englishmen  as  the  mountains  of 
the  moon  are  to  us;  and  ready  credence  was  given  to  the 
most  outrageous  fables. 

The  great  reformer  John  Wiclif  (1324-1384),  the  stirring 
narrative  of  whose  active  life  belongs  more  properly  to  the 
political  than  to  the  literary  history  of  England,  was,  if  tradition 
may  be  credited,  a  very  extensive  author.  But  it  is  now 
generally  believed  that'  his  name  was  often  made  use  of  by 
other  writers  as  a  means  of  attracting  attention  to  what  they 
had  to  say.  "  Half  the  English  religious  tracts  of  the  four- 
teenth and  fifteenth  centuries  have  been  assigned  to  him  in 
the  absence  of  all  external,  and  in  defiance  of  all  internal 
evidence."  It  is  as  the  translator  of  the  Bible  into  English 
that  we  mention  Wiclif  here.  His  version,  which  was  finished 
in  1380,  is  a  remarkable  one  from  a  literary  point  of  view,  and 
justifies  his  being  called  the  first  writer  of  later  English  prose, 
as  Chaucer  was  the  first  writer  of  later  English  poetry.  Wiclif 
is  believed  to  have  received  some  assistance  in  the  translation 


Translations  of  the  Bible.  43 

of  the  Old  Testament;  but  the  translation  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  thought  to  have  been  entirely  the  work  of  his  own 
hand.  His  translation  of  the  New  Testament  was  eclipsed 
by  that  of  William  Tyndale  (1484-1536),  which  is  the  parent 
of  all  succeeding  versions.  It  was  first  published  at  Antwerp 
in  1526.  "Tyndale's  translation  of  the  New  Testament," 
says  Marsh,  "  is  the  most  important  philological  monument  oi 
the  first  half  of  the  sixteenth  century,  perhaps  I  should  say 
of  the  whole  period  between  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare,  both 
as  an  historical  relic  and  as  having  more  than  anything  else 
contributed  to  shape  and  fix  the  sacred  dialect,  and  establish 
the  form  which  the  Bible  must  permanently  assume  in  an 
English  dress.  The  best  features  of  the  translation  of  1611 
are  derived  from  the  version  of  Tyndale,  and  thus  thai 
remarkable  work  has  exerted,  directly  and  indirectly,  a  more 
powerful  influence  on  the  English  language  than  any  other 
single  production  between  the  ages  of  Richard  II.  and  Queen 
Elizabeth."  Besides  the  New  Testament,  Tyndale  translated 
the  Pentateuch,  and  published  it  in  1530.  In  1536  he  was 
martyred  at  Antwerp,  on  account  of  his  heresy ;  and  in  the 
same  year  his  version  of  the  New  Testament  was  for  the  first 
time  published  in  England.  The  next  English  Bible  was  that 
issued  by  Miles  Coverdale,  who  followed  Tyndale  closely  in  his 
translation  of  the  New  Testament  published  in  1535.  It  is  from 
this  version  that  the  Psalms  still  used  in  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  are  taken.  A  second  edition,  with  the  royal  imprima- 
tur, was  published  in  1537.  Another  translation,  commonly 
called  "  Matthew's  Bible,"  founded  chiefly  on  the  labours  of 
Tyndale  and  Coverdale,  appeared  in  the  same  year.  It  was 
the  work  of  John  Rogers,  memorable  otherwise  as  having 
been  the  first  victim  of  the  savage  persecution  of  Protestants 
in  the  reign  of  Mary.  Cranmer's  Bible,  the  "  Great  Bible " 
as  it  was  called,  which  is  substantially  the  same  as  "  Mat- 
thew's," was  published  in  1539.  Then  came,  in  1611,  the 
"  Authorised  Version,"  the  influence  of  which,  even  looked  at 
from  a  purely  literary  point  of  view,  has  been  incalculable. 
Whether  the  "Revised  Version"  issued  in  [881  is  destined  to 


44  The  Dawn  of  English  L  iterature. 

supersede  it,  it  is  yet  too  early  to  say.  The  Authorised  Version 
did  not  establish  itself  in  public  favour  till  it  had  encountered 
much  severe  opposition. 

We  have  been  led  beyond  our  chronological  limits,  and 
must  now  retrace  our  steps.  Attention  in  recent  times  has 
been  much  drawn  to  the  "  Morte  d'Arthur"  of  Sir  Thomas 
Malory,  who  flourished  about  1470,  by  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Tennyson  has  used  it  as  the  groundwork  for  much  of  his 
"  Idylls  of  the  King."  The  work,  which  is  a  condensation  of 
the  numerous  floating  legends  about  King  Arthur  and  his 
Knights  of  the  Round  Table,  was  published  by  Caxton,  the 
first  English  printer,  in  1485.  It  is  said  that  Mr.  Tennyson 
first  chanced  upon  a  copy  of  it  when  little  more  than  a  boy  : 
the  story  kindled  his  enthusiasm,  and  the  vision  of  a  great 
poem  rose  before  him.  Caxton  (1420—1492)  himself  cannot 
be  passed  over  in  a  history  of  literature.  It  is  needless  to 
enlarge  on  the  results  which  followed  the  introduction  of  the 
printing  press :  how  books  have  increased  and  multiplied  till 
in  our  own  day  many  are  inclined  to  cry  "  Hold,  enough ;" 
how  it  has  made  literature  accessible  to  all  and  attractive  to 
all,  how  it  has  swept  away  thick  mists  of  ignorance  and  pre- 
judice ;  and  how,  by  its  means,  journalism,  "  the  Fourth 
Estate,"  has  become  more  powerful  for  good  or  for  evil  than 
the  other  three  Estates  put  together.  Caxton  was  no  vulgar 
tradesman ;  he  had  a  keen  interest  in  literature ;  was  an 
industrious  translator ;  and  delighted  to  issue  fine  editions  of 
the  old  English  poets. 

Sir  Thomas  More  is  a  great  figure  both  in  political  and  in 
literary  history.  He  was  born  in  1480,  the  son  of  a  judge 
of  the  Court  of  King's  Bench.  At  Oxford  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Erasmus,  an  acquaintance  which  soon  deep- 
ened into  great  mutual  friendship.  With  a  keen  love  of 
literature,  and  filled  with  enthusiasm  for  those  classical 
studies,  the  interest  in  which  was  then  beginning  to  revive  in 
England,  More  concealed  under  a  gay  and  cheerful  exterior 
an  almost  ascetic  piety,  and  at  one  time  thought  of  becoming 
a  monk.  Instead  of  doing  so,  however,  he  began  the  study 


Sir  Thomas  More.  45 

of  law,  and  in  1529  was  appointed  by  Henry  VIII.  successor 
to  Wolsey  in  the  Lord  Chancellorship.  A  man  of  versatile 
genius,  of  gentle  disposition,  and  of  impregnable  integrity, 
More  may  justly  be  reckoned  one  of  the  most  lovable  men 
of  his  time.  It  has  been  well  remarked  that  one  of  his  most 
striking  characteristics  was  his  infinite  variety.  "  He  could 
write  epigrams  in  a  hair  shirt  at  the  Carthusian  convent ;  and 
pass  from  translating  Lucian  to  lecturing  on  Augustine  in  the 
church  of  St.  Lawrence.  Devout  almost  to  superstition,  he 
was  light-hearted  almost  to  buffoonery.  One  hour  we  see  him 
encouraging  Erasmus  in  his  love  of  Greek  and  the  new  learn- 
ing, or  charming  with  his  ready  wit  the  supper  tables  of  the 
Court,  or  turning  a  debate  in  Parliament ;  the  next  at  home, 
surrounded  by  friends  and  familiar  servants,  by  wife  and 
children,  and  children's  children,  dwelling  among  them  in  an 
atmosphere  of  love  and  music,  prayer  and  irony — throwing 
the  rein,  as  it  were,  on  the  neck  of  his  most  careless  fancies, 
and  condescending  to  follow  out  the  humours  of  his  monkey 
and  the  fool.  His  fortune  was  almost  as  various.  From  his 
utter  indifference  to  show  and  money  he  must  have  been  a 
strange  successor  to  Wolsey.  He  had  thought  as  little  about 
fame  as  Shakespeare,  yet  in  the  next  generation  it  was  an 
honour  to  an  Englishman  throughout  Europe  to  be  his 
countryman."  In  advance  of  his  age  in  many  respects, 
More  yet  shared  its  persecuting  tendencies.  A  staunch 
Romanist,  "this  most  upright  and  merciful  man  became 
a  persecutor  of  men  as  innocent,  though  not  of  such  great 
minds  as  himself."  To  the  Reformers  he  showed  no  mercy; 
and  mercy  was  in  turn  denied  him  when  he  came  to  need 
it.  He  was  beheaded  in  1535,  because  he  would  not  take 
the  oath  affirming  the  validity  of  the  King's  marriage  with 
Anne  Boleyn.  "  The  innocent  mirth,"  says  Addison  in  a 
passage  which  has  been  universally  admired,  "which  had 
been  so  conspicuous  in  his  life,  did  not  forsake  him  to  the 
last.  His  death  was  of  a  piece  with  his  life ;  there  was 
nothing  in  it  new,  forced,  or  affected.  He  did  not  look  upon 
the  severing  of  his  head  from  his  body  as  a  circumstance 


46  The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

which  ought  to  produce  any  change  in  the  disposition  of  his 
mind,  and  as  he  died  in  a  fixed  and  settled  hope  of  immor- 
tality, he  thought  any  unusual  degree  of  sorrow  and  concern 
improper." 

More's  "Utopia"  (1516),  the  picture  of  an  imaginary 
commonwealth,  in  describing  which  he  finds  an  opportunity 
for  giving  his  views  upon  various  social  and  political  problems, 
such  as  education,  the  punishment  of  criminals,  &c.,  was 
written  in  Latin  and  does  not  concern  us  here.  It  was  trans- 
lated into  English  by  Ralph  Robinson  in  1551,  and  by  Bishop 
Burnet  in  1684.  His  chief  English  work  is  his  "Life  and 
Reign  of  Edward  V.,;'  which  gives  him  a  title  to  be  cor> 
sidered  the  first  Englishman  who  wrote  the  history  of  his 
country  in  its  present  language.  It  is  believed  to  have  been 
written  in  1513,  but  was  not  printed  till  1557.  "The  histori- 
cal fragment,"  says  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  "commands  belief 
by  simplicity,  and  by  abstinence  from  too  confident  affirma- 
tion. It  betrays  some  negligence  about  minute  particulars, 
which  is  not  displeasing  as  a  symptom  of  the  absence  of  eager- 
ness to  enforce  a  narrative.  The  composition  has  an  ease  and 
a  rotundity  which  gratify  the  ear  without  awakening  the 
suspicion  of  art,  of  which  there  was  no  model  in  any  preced- 
ing writer  of  English  prose." 

A  man  as  admirable  as  More,  though  of  very  different 
temperament,  was  Hugh  Latimer,  the  great  Reformer.  He 
was  born  about  1491  at  Thurcaston  in  Leicestershire.  His 
father  was  a  yeoman  in  comfortable  circumstances.  Seeing 
the  "  ready,  prompt,  and  sharp  wit "  of  his  son,  he  wisely 
determined,  says  Foxe,  "to  train  him  up  in  erudition  and 
knowledge  of  good  literature,  wherein  he  so  profited  in  his  youth, 
at  the  common  schools  of  his  own  country,  that  at  the  age  of 
fourteen  years  he  was  sent  to  the  University  of  Cambridge." 
In  due  time  he  obtained  a  fellowship  there,  and  having  been 
led  to  embrace  Protestantism  by  the  arguments  of  a  certain 
"  Maister  Bylney,"  began,  with  characteristic  impetuosity,  to 
utter  his  protest  against  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 
The  University  authorities  brought  his  "  heresies "  under  the 


Latimer.  47 

notice  of  Cardinal  Wolsey,  but  he  was  triumphantly  acquitted. 
In  i53°>  he  says,  "I  was  called  to  preach  before  the  King, 
which  was  the  first  sermon  that  I  made  before  his  Majesty, 
and  it  was  done  at  Windsor,  where  his  Majesty,  after  the 
sermon  was  done,  did  most  familiarly  talk  with  me  in  the 
gallery."  The  King  seems  to  have  liked  the  fearless  out- 
spoken spirit  of  the  man,  who  never  hesitated  to  speak  out 
his  mind  either  to  prince  or  to  peasant  In  1535  Latimer 
was  appointed  Bishop  of  Worcester,  an  office  he  did  not  long 
retain,  being  deprived  of  it  in  1539,  because  he  refused  to 
sign  the  "  Act  of  the  Six  Articles/'  For  some  time  he  suf- 
fered imprisonment  in  the  Tower,  and  during  the  rest  of 
Henry's  reign  was  "  commanded  to  silence."  On  the  accession 
of  Edward  VI.,  in  1546,  he  again  had  an  opportunity,  of  which 
he  took  full  advantage,  of  exercising  his  gifts  as  a  preacher. 
When  Mary  came  to  the  throne  in  1553,  the  tide  again  turned. 
Soon  after  her  accession,  Latimer  was  thrown  into  the  Tower. 
In  1555  he  was  burned  at  the  stake  at  Oxford.  "Be  of  good 
cheer,  Master  Ridley,"  he  said  to  his  fellow-martyr,  "  and  play 
the  man  :  we  shall  this  day  light  such  a  candle  by  God's  grace 
in  England,  as  (I  trust)  shall  never  be  put  out." 

Latimer's  sermons,  of  which  that  on  "  The  Ploughers,"  de- 
livered at  St.  Paul's  in  1549,  is  the  most  famous,  show  that  he 
possessed  in  an  extraordinary  degree  the  highest  gift  of  the 
preacher — that  of  arousing  men's  consciences,  and  of  impressing 
them  with  the  belief  that  what  he  says  is  really  true.  He  is  not 
a  seeker  after  fine  phrases:  the  homeliest  illustrations  and  the 
homeliest  expressions  are  welcomed  by  him  provided  they  clearly 
express  the  meaning  he  wishes  to  convey.  A  scorner  of  conven- 
tionality, he  talked  to  his  hearers  as  one  plain  man  might  talk 
to  another,  never  mincing  matters,  and  always  anxious  to  set 
forth  his  subject  in  the  most  lucid  way.  He  did  not  hesitate 
to  address  his  remarks  to  individual  hearers  when  he  thought 
himself  called  upon  to  do  so,  careless  if  his  remarks  gave 
offence  or  not,  so  long  as  he  did  his  duty.  Latimer  was 
no  sour  ascetic :  he  loved  a  racy  anecdote  or  a  humorous 
saying,  and  was  ready  to  make  use  of  them  even  when  dealing 


48  The  Dawn  of  English  Literature. 

with  the  most  serious  subject.  A  true  Englishman,  somewhat 
of  the  "  John  Bull "  type,  frank,  manly,  honest,  courageous, 
he  exerted  a  wonderful  influence  over  the  minds  of  his  con- 
temporaries, and  his  sermons,  though  their  diction  is  occasion- 
ally rather  startling,  are  still  well  worth  reading  as  the  utterances 
of  a  brave,  thoroughly  sincere  man. 

The  story  of  Latimer's  martyrdom,  and  of  the  other  per- 
secutions suffered  by  Protestants,  was  touchingly  related  by 
John  Foxe  (1517-1587)  in  his  "Book  of  Martyrs"  as  it  is 
commonly  called,  a  title  better  expressing  the  nature  of  the 
work  than  its  original  one,  "  History  of  the  Acts  and  Monu- 
ments of  the  Church."  Foxe  himself  had  to  flee  to  the  Con- 
tinent to  escape  persecution  during  Mary's  reign,  and  his 
"  Book  of  Martyrs ''  was  written  on  his  return.  It  has  great 
literary  merit,  but  is  often  inaccurate  and  prejudiced.  He 
lived  too  near  the  time  with  which  he  deals  to  write  with 
impartiality. 

We  now  quit  the  regions  of  the  dawn,  to  enter  on  the  broad 
effulgence  of  the  Elizabethan  period. 


II. 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  ERA. 

Ascham  ;  Wyatt  and  Surrey  ;  Spenser  ;  Sidney,  Hooker,  Raleigh,  Lyly  ;  77u 
Elizabethan  Dramatists:  Lyly,  Alarlowt,  Greene,  Peele,  Shakespeare p, 
Chapman,  Benjonson,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  others. 


N  this  chapter  we  have  to  deal  with  what  is,  upon  the 
whole,  the  greatest  period  in  our  literature.  In  it 
flourished  Sidney  and  Hooker,  Spenser  and  Shake- 
speare, and  a  crowd  of  writers,  inferior,  indeed,  to 
these  great  names,  but  possessed  of  so  much  fertility  and 
spontaneity  of  genius,  of  so  much  vehement  energy  and  native 
talent,  that  in  any  other  era  they  would  have  won  for  them- 
selves a  foremost  place.  Under  the  rule  of  the  Maiden  Queen, 
the  pulse  of  the  nation  beat  high ;  all  human  energies  were 
cultivated  to  the  utmost;  the  seas  were  scoured  by  daring 
buccaneers ;  enterprising  travellers  penetrated  to  distant  places, 
bringing  back  accounts  of  the  wonderful  things  they  had  seen 
and  heard;  English  commerce  increased  to  an  unexampled 
extent;  and  the  comparative  isolation  in  which  Protestant 
England  stood  apart  from  the  Catholic  nations  of  the  Continent, 
made  her  proudly  defiant  and  confident  in  her  own  resources. 
The  love  of  gorgeous  apparel  and  of  splendid  pageants  which 
then  prevailed  is  an  apt  symbol  of  the  unpruned  luxuriance, 
the  wealth  of  high-coloured  phrases  and  extravagant  expressions 
which  pervaded  the  literature.  Men  lived  intensely,  thought 
intensely,  and  wrote  intensely. 

Between  the   Elizabethan   literature  proper  and  the  writers 


50  The  Elizabethan  Erct. 

of  the  preceding  age,  there  are  two  or  three  authors  who  form 
as  it  were  connecting  links.  Great  poets  and  great  prose- 
writers  are  always  preceded  by  others,  by  far  their  inferiors  in 
genius  it  may  be,  but  in  whose  works  we  can  trace  the  beginnings 
of  the  literary  tendency  which  pervades  their  successors.  We 
shall  begin  with  a  prose-writer,  who  might  with  equal  propriety 
have  been  included  among  the  authors  mentioned  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter,  were  it  not  for  his  close  connection  with  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Roger  Ascham  (1515-1568)  lived  in  the  reign  of 
Henry,  of  Edward,  of  Mary,  and  of  Elizabeth,  and,  more 
fortunate  than  many  of  his  contemporaries,  held  comfortable 
offices  under  all  those  sovereigns.  A  cautious,  conciliatory 
man,  of  no  very  pronounced  religious  opinions,  he  took  care 
never  to  give  offence ;  while  his  polished  manners  and  cultivated 
mind  made  him  a  very  attractive  companion  to  his  royal 
patrons.  His  first  work,  "  Toxophilus,"  published  in  1545,  is 
a  dialogue  on  archery,  praising  the  national  weapon,  the  bow, 
and  advocating  its  use  with  the  enthusiasm  of  one  who  was 
himself  a  proficient  in  the  art.1  No  one  is  likely  to  find  fault 
with  Ascham  for  being  fond  of  archery,  but  his  love  of  cock- 
fighting,  which,  we  are  told,  was  his  pastime  in  old  age,  was 
certainly  reprehensible.  Ascham's  most  famous  work,  the 
"Schoolmaster,"  was  published  in  1570,  two  years  after  his 
death.  It  is  a  very  sensible,  meritorious  performance,  abound- 
ing in  digressions,  but  containing  much  advice,  which  is  worth 
attending  to,  even  in  this  era  of  universal  education.  The 
numerous  anecdotes  and  reminiscences  with  which  he  diversi- 
fies his  work,  add  greatly  to  its  attractiveness.  "  Old  Ascham," 
wrote  Carlyle,  "  is  one  of  the  freshest,  truest  spirits  I  have  met 
with ;  a  scholar  and  writer,  yet  a  genuine  man."2 

In  the  preceding  chapter  we  have  seen  that  the  old  Scottish 
poets  derived  their  main  impulse  from  Chaucer,  whom  they 
reverenced  as  their  master.  The  same  was  the  case  with 
Chaucer's  English  successors.  But  a  new  epoch  in  the  history 

1  Fuller  quaintly  describes  Ascham  as  "an  honest  man  and  a  good 
shooter." 

3  Correspondence  of  Macvey  Napiei,  p.  77. 


Wyatt  and  Surrey.  5 1 

of  English  poetry  dawned  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  Foreign 
travel  was  becoming  common  among  the  higher  classes,  and 
the  nobility,  headed  by  a  king  who  valued  his  learning  not  the 
least  among  his  accomplishments,  began  to  pride  themselves 
as  much  upon  their  literary  taste  as  upon  their  proficiency  in 
manly  exercises.  It  was  from  Italy,  then  the  queen  of  the 
intellectual  world,  that  the  new  school  of  poets  obtained  their 
inspiration — from  Dante,  Ariosto,  Tasso,  and  Petrarch.  Two 
courtly  gentlemen  who  "had  travelled  into  Italy  and  thus 
tasted  the  sweet  and  stately  measures  and  style  of  the  Italian 
poesy,"  introduced  into  England  an  entirely  new  fashion  of 
writing,  which  took  root  and  flourished.  These  were  Sir 
Thomas  Wyatt,  and  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of  Surrey,  whose 
names  are  generally  linked  together.  Their  poems  appeared 
in  the  collection  known  as  "Tottel's  Miscellany,"  which  was  pub- 
lished in  1557,  and  which  contained  poems  by  other  versifiers. 
Wyatt  (1503-1541),  the  elder  of  the  two,  was  a  man  of  grave 
and  sombre  genius,  prone  to  look  upon  the  dark  side  of  things. 
His  love-sonnets  and  songs  have  none  of  that  lightness  and 
gaiety  which  we  are  apt  to  associate  with  such  verses,  but  they 
contain  much  subtle  thought,  and  bear  the  appearance  of  ex- 
pressing a  genuine  passion.  Surrey  (1516-1547)  was  a  person- 
age of  different  character.  Impetuous  and  headstrong,  he 
led  a  stirring  and  adventurous  life,  holding  commands  in  Scot- 
land and  France,  and  being  one  of  the  most  prominent  figures 
at  Court.  He  was  executed  for  high  treason  in  1547.  "Com- 
pared with  Wyatt,  Surrey  strikes  one  as  having  much  greater 
affluence  of  words — the  language  is  more  plastic  in  his  hands. 
When  his  mind  is  full  of  an  idea  he  pours  it  forth  with  soft 
voluble  eloquence ;  he  commands  such  abundance  of  words 
that  he  preserves  with  ease  a  uniform  measure.  Uniformity, 
indeed,  is  almost  indispensable  to  such  abundance :  we  read 
him  with  the  feeling  that  in  a  *  tumbling  metre '  his  fluency 
would  run  away  with  him.  Such  impetuous  affluent  natures  as 
his  need  to  be  held  in  with  the  bit  and  bridle  of  uniformity.  A 
calm  composed  man  like  Wyatt,  with  a  fine  ear  for  varied 
melodies,  may  be  trusted  to  elaborate  tranquilly  irregular  and 


52  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

subtle  rhythms ;  to  men  like  Surrey  there  is  a  danger  in 
any  medium  between  'correctness*  and  Skeltonian  license."  * 
Surrey  was  a  much  more  lively  and  gay-hearted  singer  than 
Wyatt;  we  have  in  his  works,  instead  of  the  dolorous  strains 
of  a  lover,  the  cruelty  of  whose  mistress  has  really  sunk  deep 
in  his  heart,  rather  the  affected  passion  of  a  poet  who  makes 
it  his  business  to  write  love-verses.  One  of  Surrey's  best  titles 
to  remembrance  is  his  introduction  of  blank  verse.  In  this 
metre  he  translated  the  second  and  fourth  books  of  Vergil's 
"^Eneid."  His  blank  verse  is  neither  harmonious  nor  metri- 
cally correct;  but  the  first  user  of  an  instrument  cannot  be 
expected  to  employ  it  with  the  same  facility  and  precision  as 
those  who  come  after  him. 

We  now  come  to  the  second  of  England's  great  poets — 
Edmund  Spenser.  A  greater  contrast  to  Chaucer  it  would  be 
difficult  to  imagine.  Spenser  "dwelt  in  a  world  ideal;"  the 
visionary  sights  and  beings  which  fill  the  land  of  Faerie  floated 
round  him  continually ;  his  imagination  rose  above  the  rough 
practical  world  in  which  he  lived  to  take  refuge  with  the  alle- 
gorical beings  who  occupied  his  thoughts.  Chaucer,  on  the 
other  hand,  as  we  have  seen,  was  very  well  satisfied  with  this 
world,  enjoying  heartily  the  frolics,  the  eccentricities,  the 
virtues,  nay  even  the  vices  of  its  inhabitants,  ready  always 
to  laugh  with  those  who  laughed,  and  to  weep  with  those 
who  wept.  There  is,  as  will  be  admitted  even  by  his  warmest 
admirers,  a  want  of  human  interest  about  Spenser's  works; 
it  is  just  their  deep  human  interest  which  makes  Chaucer's 
works  so  constantly  attractive  in  spite  of  their  antique  dialect, 
and  the  fact  that  they  refer  to  a  condition  of  society  which 
can  now  be  conceived  only  by  an  effort  of  the  imagination. 
Like  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  Spenser  derived  his  chief  impulse 
from  Italy.  He  knew  and  admired  Chaucer  and  the  other 
old  English  poets,  but  his  real  masters  were  Ariosto  and 
Tasso. 

Spenser  was  born  in  London  about  1552.     He  was  distantly 

1  Minto's  English  Poets,  p.  163. 


Spenser s  "Shepherds  Calendar?  53 

connected  with  the  noble  family  of  the  Spensers,  a  fact  in 
which  he  took  not  a  little  pride,  and  which  is  referred  to  by 
Gibbon,  when  he  says,  "The  nobility  of  the  Spensers  has 
been  illustrated  and  enriched  by  the  trophies  of  Marlborough ; 
but  I  exhort  them  to  consider  the  '  Faery  Queen '  as  the  most 
precious  jewel  in  their  coronet."  Spenser  was  educated  at 
Cambridge,  where  he  graduated  M.A.  in  1576.  After  leaving 
the  University  he  seems  to  have  resided  for  some  time  as  a 
tutor  in  Lancashire.  On  the  advice  of  his  college  friend 
Gabriel  Harvey,  he  returned  to  London  in  1578,  and  was 
introduced  by  Harvey  to  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  the  Earl  of 
Leicester,  who  took  the  poet  under  their  patronage.  Next 
year  appeared  Spenser's  first  publication,  "The  Shepherd's 
Calendar,"  a  collection  of  twelve  pastorals,  one  for  each  month 
of  the  year.  The  work  is  not  very  easy  to  criticise.  It 
indubitably  proved  that  Spenser  was  the  greatest  English 
poet  then  living ;  but  would  his  name  now  have  been  more 
familiar  to  readers  in  general  than  that  of  Wyatt  or  of  Surrey 
if  he  had  written  nothing  else  ?  We  are  inclined  to  think  not. 
There  is  a  certain  artificiality  about  all  pastoral  poetry  which 
prevents  it  from  ever  being  popular,  except  among  cultured 
readers.  "  The  shepherds  of  Spenser's  '  Calendar,'  "  says 
Campbell  in  his  "Specimens  of  the  British  Poets,"  a  work 
containing  much  sound  and  excellent  criticism,  "are  parsons 
in  disguise,  who  converse  about  heathen  divinities  and  points 
of  Christian  theology."  The  antique  language  of  the  pastorals, 
which  was  adopted  by  Spenser  of  set  purpose,  was  condemned 
by  his  patron  Sidney,  and  Ben  Jonson  went  so  far  as  to  say 
that  the  author  in  affecting  the  ancients  had  written  no  lan- 
guage at  all.  The  mysterious  commentator  on  the  "  Shepherds' 
Calendar,"  who  is  generally  believed  to  have  been  the  poet  him- 
self, and  who,  at  any  rate,  certainly  was  inspired  by  Spenser, 
thus  refers  to  the  antique  phraseology.  "And  first,"  he  says, 
"  of  the  words  to  speak,  I  grant  they  be  something  hard,  and 
of  most  men  unused,  yet  both  English,  and  also  used  of  most 
excellent  authors  and  most  famous  poets.  In  whom  whereas 
this  our  poet  hath  been  much  travelled  and  thoroughly  read, 


54  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

how  could  it  be  (as  that  worthy  orator  said)  but  that,  walking 
in  the  sun,  although  for  other  causes  he  walked,  yet  needs  he 
mought  be  sun-burnt;  and,  having  the  sound  of  these  ancient 
poets  still  ringing  in  his  ears,  he  mought  needs  in  singing  hit 
out  some  of  their  tunes."  He  then  goes  on  at  considerable 
length  to  defend  this  practice  of  the  poet,  but  his  defence  is 
not  very  convincing. 

In  1580  Spenser  went  to  Ireland,  as  secretary  to  the  Vice- 
roy, Lord  Grey  of  Wilton.  There  he  remained,  with  the  ex- 
ception of  two  visits  to  England,  for  eighteen  years,  holding 
various  offices  and  writing  the  "Faerie  Queen,"  which  had 
been  begun  ere  he  quitted  England.  In  1586  he  obtained, 
by  the  intercession  of  his  friends,  a  grant  of  three  thousand 
acres  of  land  from  the  forfeited  estates  of  the  Earl  of  Desmond 
at  Kilcolman,  near  Cork*  In  this  beautiful  and  romantic  dis- 
trict, through  which  flowed  the  river  Mulla  which  has  obtained 
an  eternity  of  poetic  fame  by  its  frequent  mention  in  Spenser's 
works,  he  was  visited  in  1589  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  who 
listened  with  admiration  to  the  portion  of  the  "Faerie  Queen" 
already  written.  This  visit  is  thus,  in  figurative  language, 
commemorated  by  Spenser : — 

"  '  One  day,'  quoth  he,  '  I  sate  (as  was  my  trade) 

Under  the  foot  of  Mole,  that  mountain  hoar, 
Keeping  my  sheep  amongst  the  cooly  shade 

Of  the  green  alders  by  the  Mulla's  shore  j 
There  a  strange  shepherd  chanced  to  find  me  out, 

Whether  allured  with  my  pipe's  delight, 
Whose  pleasing  sound  yshrilled  far  about, 

Or  thither  led  by  chance,  I  know  not  right ; 
Whom  when  I  asked  from  what  place  he  came, 

And  how  he  hight,  himself  he  did  ycleepe 
The  Shepherd  of  the  ocean  by  name, 

And  said  he  came  far  from  the  mjftn-sea  deep." 

In  1590  Spenser  accompanied  Raleigh  to  England,  carrying 
with  him  the  three  first  books  of  the  "Faerie  Queen."  They 
were  published  in  that  year,  and  at  once  received  with  favour. 
Elizabeth  bestowed  on  the  poet  an  annual  pension  of  ^50, 


Spenser  s  Personal  Characteristics.          55 

no  mean  sum  in  the  sixteenth  century.  In  1591  Spenser 
returned  to  Ireland,  and  in  the  same  year  appeared  a  volume 
of  minor  poems  from  his  pen,  of  which  the  most  noticeable  is 
"  Mother  Hubbard's  Tale,"  a  pleasing  imitation  of  Chaucer. 
In  1595  appeared  at  different  times  his  "Colin  Clout's  Come 
Home  Again,"  from  which  the  verse  above  cited  is  taken,  and 
which  describes  his  voyage  to  England  and  his  reception  there ; 
his  "  Amoretti,"  love-sonnets  which  do  not  add  materially  to 
his  fame ;  and  his  "  Epithalamion,"  that  magnificent  marriage 
song,  in  which  he  celebrates  in  triumphant  and  richly  jewelled 
verse  the  successful  termination  of  his  wooing.  It  has  been 
called  "  the  most  glorious  love-song  in  the  English  language," 
nor  is  this  praise  too  high.  In  the  following  year,  Spenser 
returned  to  London  and  published  the  last  three  books  of 
the  "  Faerie  Queen,"  and  certain  minor  poems.  In  1598  the 
Irish  Rebellion  took  place ;  Spenser's  castle  was  sacked  and 
burned,  and  he  and  his  household  had  to  fly  to  England  for 
their  lives.  He  died  in  London  in  January  1599,  in  very 
destitute  circumstances  if  tradition  may  be  trusted.  His  only 
prose  work  (if  we  accept  the  lucubrations  of  "  E.  K.,"  the 
Commentator  on  the  "Shepherds'  Calendar")  was  a  dialogue 
entitled  "A  View  of  the  State  of  Ireland,"  written  in  1596, 
but  not  published  till  1633. 

Of  Spenser's  personal  characteristics  much  cannot  be  said 
with  certainty.  It  is  difficult  tq  believe  that  he  was  a  happy 
man  ;  he  had  none  of  Chaucer's  broad  geniality,  and  could 
never  have  described  the  Canterbury  Pilgrims  with  any  ap- 
proach to  dramatic  impartiality.  That  he  was  vain  is  proved 
by  the  remarks  on  him  put  in  the  mouth  of  his  alter  ego,  "  E. 
K.,"  and  it  is  probable  that  he  was  proud  also.  He  was  an 
extremely  learned  poet,  acquainted  with  the  best  models  not 
only  in  English,  but  in  Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  and  French. 
His  appearance  is  thus  described  by  Mr.  Kitchin  in  the 
Clarendon  Press  edition  of  the  "  Faerie  Queen : "  "  Short 
curling  hair,  a  full  moustache,  cut  after  the  pattern  of  Lord 
Leicester's,  close-clipped  beard,  heavy  eyebrows,  and  under 
them  thoughtful  brown  eyes,  whose  upper  eyelids  weigh  them 


56  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

dreamily  down  ;  a  long  and  straight  nose,  strongly  developed, 
answering  to  a  long  and  somewhat  spare  face,  with  a  well- 
formed  sensible-looking  forehead  ;  a  mouth  almost  obscured 
by  the  moustache,  but  still  showing  rather  full  lips,  denoting 
feeling,  well  set  together,  so  that  the  warmth  of  feeling  shall 
not  run  riot,  with  a  touch  of  sadness  in  them — such  is  the 
look  of  Spenser  as  his  portrait  hands  it  down  to  us." 

The  "  Faerie  Queen "  was  intended  to  have  extended  to 
twelve  books,  but  only  six  books  and  two  cantos  were  written — 
at  least  that  is  all  which  has  survived.  Whether  it  is  a  matter 
for  regret  that  the  poem  is  incomplete  may  be  disputed. 
Ardent  admirers  of  the  bard  who  sang  of  "heavenly  Una 
and  her  milk-white  lamb,"  who  revel  in  his  luxuriant  descrip- 
tions and  in  his  "  linked  sweetness  long  drawn  out,"  who,  like 
Christopher  North,  find  something  attractive  even  in  such 
passages  of  his  as  are  most  repellent  to  the  ordinary  mind, 
may  sigh  when  they  think  that  half  of  the  poetical  feast  which 
they  might  have  enjoyed  has  been  denied  them.  But  it  may 
well  be  doubted  whether  Spenser's  popularity  among  readers 
in  general  would  not  have  been  diminished  had  the  "  Faerie 
Queen  "  extended  to  twelve  books.  Macaulay  expressed  the 
opinion  of  thousands  when  he  said,  "  One  unpardonable  fault, 
the  fault  of  tediousness,  pervades  the  whole  of  the  *  Fairy 
Queen.'  We  become  sick  of  cardinal  virtues  and  deadly  sins, 
and  long  for  the  society  of  plain  men  and  women.  Of  the 
persons  who  read  the  first  canto  not  one  in  ten  reaches  the 
end  of  the  first  book,  and  not  one  in  a  hundred  perseveres  to 
the  end  of  the  poem.  Very  few  and  very  weary  are  those  who 
are  in  at  the  death  of  the  Blatant  Beast.  If  the  last  six 
books,  which  are  said  to  have  been  destroyed  in  Ireland,  had 
been  preserved,  we  doubt  whether  any  heart  less  stout  than 
that  of  a  commentator  would  have  held  out  to  the  end."  This 
extract  (which  proves  that  Macaulay,  indefatigable  reader 
though  he  was,  had  not  been  able  to  hold  out  to  the  end  of 
the  "  Faerie  Queen,"  for  the  Blatant  Beast  does  not  die) 
doubtless  appears  to  those  whose  admiration  of  Spenser's 
beauties  blinds  them  to  a  sense  of  his  faults,  one  of  the  many 


The  "  Faerie  Queen"  57 

proofs  of  Macaulay's  deficiencies  as  a  literary  critic.  Never- 
theless the  majority  of  readers  will  agree  that  in  this  instance 
Macaulay  was  substantially  right.  Books  are  written  to  be 
read ;  and  surely  a  poem,  which  many  who  love  poetry  can 
with  difficulty  finish,  is  liable  to  the  charge  of  tediousness. 
Now  tediousness  is  so  serious  a  fault  that  it  needs  many  sur- 
passing excellences  to  compensate  for  it.  These  excellences 
Spenser  possesses.  Perhaps  no  poet  ever  had  so  truly  poetical 
a  spirit — the  power  of  viewing  everything  in  a  poetical  light 
"  His  command  of  imagery,"  writes  Campbell,  "  is  wide,  easy, 
and  luxuriant  He  threw  the  soul  of  harmony  into  our  verse, 
and  made  it  more  warmly,  tenderly,  and  magnificently  descrip- 
tive than  it  ever  was  before,  or,  with  a  few  exceptions,  than 
it  has  ever  been  since.  It  must  certainly  be  owned  that 
in  description  he  exhibits  nothing  of  the  brief  strokes  and 
robust  power  which  characterise  the  very  greatest  poets,  but 
we  shall  nowhere  find  more  airy  and  expansive  images  of 
visionary  things,  a  sweeter  tone  of  sentiment,  or  a  finer  flush 
in  the  colours  of  language  than  in  this  Rubens  of  English 
poetry." 

If  we  wish  fully  to  understand  the  "  Faerie  Queen,"  and  to 
appreciate  Spenser's  mode  of  literary  workmanship,  we  must 
note  carefully  the  allegory  which  runs  through  the  poem. 
This  is  no  easy  task,  for  not  only  are  virtues  and  vices  per- 
sonified, but  the  personificatiops  are  made  also  to  represent 
personages  of  Spenser's  time,  whom  he  wished  to  compliment 
or  the  reverse.  Fortunately,  however,  the  beauties  of  the 
poem  may  be  felt  though  the  allegory  is  disregarded,  and  per- 
haps the  best  advice  to  give  to  one  reading  Spenser  for  the 
first  time  is  to  let  the  allegory  alone  altogether.  Spenser  is  a 
poet  to  be  read  leisurely:  we  must  fully  surrender  ourselves  to 
his  spell  before  we  can  feel  its  power;  and  nothing  is  more 
apt  to  break  the  spell  than  to  pause  in  the  middle  of  some 
fine  passage  and  endeavour  to  find  out,  either  from  commen- 
tators or  from  one's  own  resources,  what  Spenser  meant  to 
typify  in  the  passage,  and  what  living  character,  if  any,  was 
therein  personified.  Impatient  readers,  who  wish  for  some- 


58  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

thing  clear  and  definite,  must  seek  for  it  elsewhere  than  in  the 
shadowy  dreamland  of  the  "  Faerie  Queen." 

To  the  fastidious  critics  of  Queen  Anne's  time,  to  whom 
"  correctness "  and  good  taste  seemed  the  highest  virtues  of 
poetry,  Spenser,  if  they  read  him  at  all,  must  have  proved  a 
terrible  stumbling-block.  Keen  as  was  his  sense  of  beauty,  he 
sometimes  draws  pictures  which,  to  present-day  readers  at  any 
rate,  are  intolerably  repulsive.  Such  are  his  description  of 
Error,  and,  in  an  even  higher  degree,  the  picture  of  Duessa 
unmasked.  Burke  is  said  to  have  admired  the  former,  dis- 
gusting though  it  be,  and  in  his  old  age  repeated  it  to  Sir 
James  Mackintosh  as  reminding  him  "  of  that  putrid  carcase, 
that  mother  of  all  evil,  the  French  Revolution."  That  Burke 
should  have  been  fond  of  the  passage  appears  le.^s  singular 
when  we  remember  that  his  own  speeches  are  now  and  again 
stained  by  similar  violations  of  good  taste. 

The  language  of  the  "  Faerie  Queen,"  like  that  of  the 
"  Shepherd's  Calendar,"  is  more  archaic  than  that  in  general 
use  at  the  time  when  it  was  written.  The  antique  phraseology 
employed  is  not  displeasing  in  a  poem  of  the  kind ;  perhaps 
upon  the  whole  it  rather  adds  to  its  attractiveness.  The  metre 
in  which  it  is  written,  the  "  Spenserian  stanza,"  as  it  is  called, 
has  been  employed  by  so  many  great  poets  in  great  poems  as 
to  conclusively  prove  how  admirably  it  is  adapted  for  certain 
kinds  of  metrical  effect.  It  is  the  stanza  adopted  by  Thomson 
in  the  "Castle  of  Indolence;"  by  Burns  in  the  "Cottar's 
Saturday  Night;"  by  Campbell  in  "Gertrude  of  Wyoming;" 
by  Scott  in  "  Don  Roderick  ;"  by  Wordsworth  in  the  "  Female 
Vagrant ;"  by  Shelley  in  the  "  Revolt  of  Islam  ;"  by  Keats  in 
the  "  Eve  of  St.  Agnes;"  and  by  Byron  in  "  Childe  Harold." 

Spenser's  patron,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  may  be  taken  as  a 
typical  example  of  all  that  was  greatest  and  best  among  the 
courtiers  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  Handsome  in  appearance, 
richly  cultivated  in  mind,  a  proficient  in  all  manly  exercises, 
of  unimpeachable  courage,  and  great  skill  in  the  management 
of  affairs,  he  was  regarded  by  the  aspiring  young  noblemen  of 
his  time  as  a  model  whom  they  would  do  well  to  emulate ; 


Sir  Philip  Sidney.  59 

while  his  courtesy  to  inferiors,  his  liberal  benefactions,  and 
his  early  and  melancholy  death,  threw  a  halo  around  his 
name  which  even  yet  has  not  grown  dim.  He  was  born  in 
1554  at  Penshurst,  and  was  the  son  of  Sir  Henry  Sidney, 
nephew  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  and  of  Mary  Dudley, 
daughter  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland.  Sidney  is  a 
good  illustration  of  the  axiom  that  the  child  is  father  of  the 
man.  From  his  earliest  years  he  exerted  his  faculties  to  the 
utmost,  striving  to  improve  himself  in  every  available  way. 
He  never  seems  to  have  been  a  boy.  His  friend,  Fulke 
Greville,  who  was  with  him  at  Shrewsbury  School,  tells  us  that, 
though  he  knew  him  from  a  child,  he  never  knew  him  other 
than  a  man,  with  such  staidness  of  mind,  lovely  and  familiar 
gravity,  as  earned  grace  and  reverence  above  greater  years. 
He  goes  on  to  say  that  Sidney's  talk  was  ever  of  knowledge,  and 
his  very  play  tending  to  enrich  his  mind,  so  that  even  his  teachers 
found  something  in  him  to  admire  and  learn  above  what  they 
usually  read  and  taught.  It  must  not  be  supposed  from  this 
that  Sidney  was  a  mere  plodding  bookworm,  buried  in  his  studies, 
and  with  all  the  freshness  and  elasticity  of  youth  crushed  out  of. 
him.  On  the  contrary,  he  cultivated  his  body  as  carefully  as 
his  mind,  and  attained  high  excellence  in  all  the  athletic  sports 
which  then  prevailed.  Spenser  describes  him  as — 

"  In  wrestling  nimble,  and  in  running  swift ; 

In  shooting  steady,  and  in  swimming  strong; 
Well  made  to  strike,  to  throw,  to  leap,  to  lift, 

And  all  the  sports  that  shepherds  are  among. 
In  every  one  he  vanquished  every  one, 
He  vanquished  all,  and  vanquished  was  of  none." 

From  Shrewsbury  Sidney  proceeded  to  Oxford,  which  he 
quitted  at  the  age  of  seventeen  to  undertake  a  prolonged  tour 
on  the  Continent.  He  visited  Paris,  where  he  was  during  the 
terrible  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  the  horrors  of  which 
no  doubt  did  something  to  confirm  him  in  his  strongly  Pro- 
testant principles,  and  afterwards  went  to  Frankfort,  Vienna, 
Padua,  and  other  places.  Every  where  his  accomplishments 
and  courtesy  made  him  sure  of  a  kind  reception ;  and  he  formed 


60  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

a  close  friendship  with  some  of  the  most  eminent  men  of  the 
Continent.  On  his  return  to  England  in  1575,  he  was  re- 
ceived with  enthusiasm  at  Court,  and  won  the  favour  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  who  was  pleased  to  address  him  as  "  her 
Philip."  In  1577  he  was  employed  on  a  diplomatic  mission,  in 
which  he  acquitted  himself  so  well  as  to  excite  the  admiration 
of  William  the  Silent,  who  pronounced  him  one  of  the  ripest 
and  greatest  counsellors  of  state  in  Europe.  On  his  return  to 
England,  Sidney  for  eight  years  devoted  himself  mainly  to  lite- 
rary pursuits,  associating  with  men  of  letters,  who  found  in  him 
a  bountiful  patron,  and  writing  his  "Sonnets,"  the  "Arcadia," 
and  the  "  Apologie  for  Poetry."  He  did  not  neglect  politics 
altogether,  however,  although  he  held  no  public  appointment; 
on  the  contrary,  he  actively  exerted  himself  in  endeavouring 
to  provide  measures  in  defence  of  the  Protestant  religion  and 
to  thwart  the  power  of  Spain.  In  1585  came  the  crowning 
event  of  his  life.  He  was  sent  to  the  Netherlands  as  Governor 
of  Flushing  along  with  an  army  under  Leicester.  There  he  soon 
distinguished  himself  by  his  valour  and  his  prudence,  but  his 
bright  career  was  destined  to  be  a  brief  one.  In  October 
1586,  at  a  skirmish  at  Zutphen  he  received  a  mortal  wound. 
As  he  rode  from  the  battle-field  occurred  the  touching  incident 
which  has  done  more  than  either  his  writings  or  his  contem- 
porary fame  to  keep  Sidney's  memory  alive.  "  Being  thirsty 
with  excess  of  bleeding,  he  called  for  drink,  which  was  pre- 
sently brought  him ;  but  as  he  was  putting  the  bottle  to  his 
mouth,  he  saw  a  poor  soldier  carried  along,  who  had  eaten  his 
last  at  the  same  feast,  ghastly,  casting  up  his  eyes  at  the  bottle, 
which  Sir  Philip  perceiving,  took  it  from  his  head  before  he 
drunk  and  delivered  it  to  the  poor  man  with  these  words, 
*  Thy  necessity  is  greater  than  mine.' " 

None  of  Sidney's  works  were  printed  in  his  lifetime,  though, 
as  he  was  well  known  to  be  an  author,  writings  of  his  were  pro- 
bably rather  extensively  handed  about  in  manuscript.  His  most 
famous  work  is  the  "Arcadia,"  written  in  1580,  and  dedicated  to 
"  Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother,"  the  illustrious  Countess 
of  Pembroke.  It  was  not  published  till  1590.  It  is  a  pastoral 


Sidneys  Writings.  61 

romance,  "  containing  discourses  on  the  affections,  passions, 
and  events  of  life,  observations  on  human  nature,  and  the 
social  and  political  relations  of  men,  and  all  the  deductions 
which  a  richly  endowed  and  cultivated  mind  had  drawn  from 
actual  experience."  Such  is  an  admirer's  view  of  the  "  Arcadia." 
Hear  now  what  Hazlitt,  who  never  did  a  thing  by  halves,  says 
of  it :  "  It  is  to  me  one  of  the  greatest  monuments  of  the 
abuse  of  intellectual  power  upon  record.  It  puts  one  in  mind 
of  the  court  dresses  and  preposterous  fashions  of  the  time,  which 
are  grown  obsolete  and  disgusting.  It  is  not  romantic,  but 
scholastic ;  not  poetry,  but  casuistry ;  not  nature,  but  art,  and 
the  worst  sort  of  art,  which  thinks  it  can  do  better  than  nature. 
...  In  a  word,  and  not  to  speak  it  profanely,  the  *  Arcadia ' 
is  a  riddle,  a  rebus,  an  acrostic  in  folio ;  it  contains  about  4000 
far-fetched  similes,  and  6000  impracticable  dilemmas,  about 
10,000  reasons  for  doing  nothing  at  all,  and  as  many  against 
it ;  numberless  alliterations,  puns,  questions,  and  commands, 
and  other  figures  of  rhetoric;  about  a  score  good  passages, 
that  one  may  turn  to  with  pleasure,  and  the  most  involved, 
irksome,  unprogressive,  and  heteroclite  subject  that  ever  was 
chosen  to  exercise  the  pen  or  the  patience  of  man."  This  is 
half-humorous  exaggeration,  but  it  must  be  confessed  that 
the  "  Arcadia,"  though  full  of  sweetness  and  gentle  feeling,  is 
tedious,  and  not  likely  to  be  ever  much  read,  except  in  ex- 
tracts. The  "  Apologie  for  Poetry,"  written,  it  is  supposed,  in 
1581,  and  printed  in  1595,  is  valuable  both  for  its  intrinsic  merits 
and  as  an  indication  of  the  literary  taste  of  the  period.  It  is 
Sidney's  best  work  in  literature,  and  shows  that  he  had  a  fine 
natural  taste  in  poetry,  and  possessed  a  high  degree  of  skill  in 
warding  off  the  objections  of  opponents. 

Sidney  was  a  considerable  poet,  but  he  was  not  a  great  one. 
Like  Spenser's  friend,  Gabriel  Harvey,  he  was  very  fond  of 
trying  to  introduce  new  metres,  particularly  Greek  and  Latin 
ones,  into  the  English  language ;  but  his  efforts  in  this  way  do 
not  call  for  much  praise  beyond  what  may  be  due  to  their 
ingenuity.  The  "Astrophel  and  Stella"  sonnets,  his  most 
famous  poems,  were  first  published,  perhaps  surreptitiously,  in 


62  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

1591.  Astrophel  represents  Sidney  ;  Stella,  Lady  Penelope 
Devereux,  sister  of  the  Earl  of  Essex,  whom  he  had  loved 
and  was  to  marry.  The  match,  however,  was  broken  off,  and 
"  Stella  "  married  Lord  Rich,  a  brutal  and  ignorant  man,  from 
whom  she  was  afterwards  divorced.  Sidney's  sonnets,  which 
were  addressed  to  her  after  her  marriage,  show  cultivated  taste 
and  refinement  of  expression,  and  more  impassioned  emotion 
and  deep  personal  feeling  than  is  generally  found  in  the  love 
sonnets  of  that  age,  which  were  often  written  rather  to  exhibit 
the  writer's  talent  than  to  express  his  love.  One  of  the  finest 
of  Sidney's  sonnets  is  the  following,  which  would  deserve  to  be 
called  perfect  were  it  not  for  the  awkward  transposition  in  the 
last  line  : — 

"  With  how  sad  steps,  O  Moon,  thou  climb'st  the  skies  ! 
How  silently,  and  with  how  wan  a  face  ! 
What  !  may  it  be  that  even  in  heavenly  place 
That  busy  archer  his  sharp  arrows  tries? 
Sure,  if  that  long-with-love-acquainted  eyes 
Can  judge  of  love,  thou  feel'st  a  lover's  case; 
I  read  it  in  thy  looks  ;  thy  languisht  grace 
To  me,  that  feel  the  like,  thy  state  descries. 
Then,  even  of  fellowship,  O  Moon,  tell  me 
Is  constant  love  deem'd  there  but  lack  of  wit? 
Are  beauties  there  as  proud  as  here  they  be? 
Do  they  above  love  to  be  loved,  and  yet 
Thpse  lovers  scorn  whom  that  love  doth  possess? 
Do  they  call  virtue  there — ungratefulness."  x 

Sidney's  prose  is  distinctly  superior  to  that  of  any  preceding 
writer :  it  is  clear,  copious,  and  easy,'  containing  few  obsolete 
words ;  but  it  is  frequently  languid  and  diffuse,  and  wants  the 
great  quality  of  strength.  The  full  resources  of  the  English 
language  as  an  instrument  of  prose  composition  were  first  dis- 
tinctly shown  by  Richard  Hooker,  the  "judicious  Hooker,"  as 
he  is  called.  Like  many  other  great  men,  Hooker  has  suffered 
from  the  panegyrics  of  rash  admirers.  "So  stately  and  grace- 
ful is  the  march  of  his  periods,"  said  Hallam,  "  so  various  the 
fall  of  his  musical  cadences  upon  the  ear,  so  rich  in  images,  so 
condensed  in  sentences,  so  grave  and  noble  his  diction,  so 
1  Meaning,  "Do  they  call  ungratefulness  virtue  there." 


Richard  Hooker.  63 

little  is  there  of  vulgarity  in  his  racy  idiom,  of  pedantry  in  his 
learned  phrases,  that  I  know  not  whether  any  later  writer  has 
more  admirably  displayed  the  capacities  of  our  language,  or  pro- 
duced passages  more  worthy  of  comparison  with  the  splendid 
monuments  of  antiquity."  Hallam  was  not  apt  to  sin  on  the 
side  of  over-praise,  but  here  he  undoubtedly  does  so,  and  thus, 
perhaps,  has  been  the  means  of  causing  some  writers  to  err  on 
the  opposite  side.  John  Austin,  no  mean  judge,  spoke  of  the 
first  book  of  the  "Ecclesiastical  Polity  "as  "  fustian."  The 
truth,  as  is  usual  in  such  cases,  lies  between  the  two  extremes. 
Hooker's  style  is  undoubtedly  heavy,  but  it  is  also  stately  and 
powerful ;  he  is  no  safe  model  for  a  student  of  English  com- 
position to  follow,  as  his  sentences  are  formed  too  exclusively 
upon  Latin  models,  but  the  sonorousness  and  dignity  of  many 
of  his  periods  will  always  give  him  a  high  place  in  literature. 

The  story  of  Hooker's  life  has  been  related  by  Isaac  Walton 
with  his  usual  quaint  felicity.  He  was  born  at  Heavitree,  near 
Exeter,  in  1553.  His  parents  were  poor,  but  Hooker's  in- 
dustry and  talents  early  attracted  the  attention  of  his  school- 
master, who  persuaded  them  to  use  every  effort  to  give  the 
promising  boy  a  liberal  education.  "  The  good  schoolmaster," 
as  Walton  calls  him,  also  applied  to  a  rich  uncle  of  Hooker's 
to  do  something  for  his  relative.  The  application  was  so  far 
successful.  The  uncle  spoke  about  the  lad  to  Jewel,  Bishop 
of  Salisbury,  who,  after  examining  the  youthful  prodigy,  "gave 
his  schoolmaster  a  reward,  and  took  order  for  an  annual 
pension  for  the  boy's  parents,  promising  also  to  take  him 
under  his  care  for  a  future  preferment."  This  promise  he  ful- 
filled by  sending  him  to  Oxford  in  1567,  and  specially  recom- 
mending him  to  the  care  of  Dr.  Cole,  the  President  of  Corpus 
Christi  College.  In  1571  Hooker  lost  his  patron,  but  his 
fortunes  were  not  impaired  thereby,  for  Dr.  Cole  promised  to 
see  that  he  should  not  want ;  and  nine  months  later  he  was 
appointed  tutor  to  Edwin  Sandys,  son  of  the  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don, who  had  heard  Hooker  warmly  praised  by  Jewel.  Soon 
after  George  Cranmer  (nephew's  son  to  the  Archbishop)  and 
other  pupils  came  under  his  care. 


64  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

In  1577  Hooker  became  a  Fellow  of  his  College,  and  two 
years  later  was  appointed  to  read  the  public  Hebrew  lecture 
in  the  University.  The  period  of  his  residence  at  Oxford  was 
probably  the  happiest  of  his  life.  The  quiet,  regular  life  of  a 
Fellow  was  well  adapted  to  one  of  his  retiring  disposition  ;  he 
had  ample  opportunities  of  gratifying  to  the  full  his  love  of 
study ;  and  he  could  enjoy  the  company  of  men  of  similar  tastes 
to  himself.  'But  less  happy  days  were  at  hand.  He  took  orders 
in  1581,  and  in  the  same  year  was  appointed  to  preach  one  of 
the  sermons  at  Paul's  Cross  in  London.  This  visit  of  Hooker's 
to  London  is  a  striking  instance  of  important  results  arising 
from  trivial  causes.  He  arrived  at  London  very  tired,  and 
afraid  that  he  would  not  be  able  to  preach,  but  the  careful 
attentions  of  the  woman  in  whose  house  he  lodged  restored 
him,  and  he  was  able  to  perform  his  duty.  Seeing  that  his 
constitution  was  feeble,  the  woman  persuaded  him  that  he 
ought  to  marry  a  wife  who  would  attend  to  his  comforts.  He 
assented,  and  asked  her  to  find  him  such  a  wife.  She  provided 
for  him  her  daughter  Joan,  "who  had  neither  beauty  nor  portion," 
and  who  proved  lacking  in  the  yet  more  essential  qualities  of 
good  temper  and  love  to  her  husband.  After  his  marriage, 
Hooker  settled  with  his  wife  in  the  living  of  Drayton-Beau- 
champ,  near  Aylesbury,  where  for  about  a  year  he  led  a  very 
miserable  life,  owing  to  the  shrewishness  of  his  wife,  who 
tyrannised  over  her  meek-spirited  husband  in  the  most  merciless 
manner.  While  in  this  wretched  situation  he  was  visited  by 
his  old  pupils  Sandys  and  Cranmer.  The  former,  pitying  his 
distress,  spoke  about  it  to  his  father,  then  Archbishop  of  York, 
at  whose  recommendation  Hooker  was  in  1585  appointed 
Master  of  the  Temple.  In  his  new  office  Hooker  found  another 
source  of  vexation.  The  afternoon  lecturer  at  the  Temple, 
Walter  Travers,  defended  the  Presbyterian  form  of  Church 
government,  Hooker  defended  Episcopacy ;  so  that,  as  Hooker 
preached  in  the  forenoon  and  Travers  in  the  afternoon,  "the 
pulpit  spoke  pure  Canterbury  in  the  morning  and  Geneva  in 
the  afternoon."  From  verbal  controversy  the  advocates  of  the 
opposing  systems  proceeded  to  a  paper  war,  of  which  Hooker 


Hooker  s  Appearance.  65 

soon  became  heartily  tired,  and  wrote  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  asking  to  be  removed  to  some  quiet  place  in  the 
country.  His  request  was  granted,  and  in  1591  he  obtained 
the  living  of  Buscombe,  near  Salisbury.  There  he  elaborated 
the  first  four  books  of  his  "  Ecclesiastical  Polity,"  which  were 
published  in  1594.  In  the  following  year  he  removed  to  the 
living  of  Bishopsgate,  near  Canterbury,  where  he  died  in  1600. 
The  fifth  book  of  the  "Ecclesiastical  Polity"  was  published  in 
1597,  the  three  remaining  books  being  issued  posthumously. 
The  latter  were  suspected  by  some  to  have  been  tampered  with 
by  the  Presbyterians,  but  there  is  no  certain  evidence  of  this. 

Walton  has  given  a  graphic  description  of  Hooker's  appear- 
ance and  disposition  :  "  An  obscure  harmless  man  ;  a  man  in 
poor  clothes,  his  loins  usually  girt  in  a  coarse  gown  or  canonical 
coat ;  of  a  mean  stature  and  stooping,  and  yet  more  lowly  in 
the  thoughts  of  his  soul :  his  body  worn  out,  not  with  age,  but 
study  and  holy  mortifications ;  his  face  full  of  heat  pimples, 
begot  by  his  unactivity  and  sedentary  life.  And  to  this  true 
characteristic  of  his  person  let  me  add  this  of  his  disposition 
and  behaviour :  God  and  nature  blessed  him  with  so  blessed  a 
bashfulness,  that  as  in  his  younger  days  his  pupils  might  easily 
look  him  out  of  countenance,  so  neither  then,  nor  in  his  age, 
did  he  ever  willingly  look  any  man  in  the  face :  and  was  of  so 
mild  and  humble  a  nature,  that  his  poor  parish-clerk  and  he 
did  never  talk  but  with  both  their  hats  on,  or  both  off,  at  the 
same  time :  and  to  this  may  be  added,  that  though  he  was  not 
purblind,  yet  he  was  short  or  weak-sighted  ;  and  where  he  fixed 
his  eyes  at  the  beginning  of  the  sermon,  there  they  continued 
till  it  was  ended."  The  circumstances  of  his  marriage  alone 
would  suffice  to  prove  that  Hooker  was  not  a  man  of  much 
worldly  wisdom,  and  that  he  was  ill  fitted  for  an  active  life. 
From  Walton's  account  we  gather  that  he  was  a  timorous, 
sickly  man,  finding  his  only  pleasure  in  study,  and  content  to 
be  "put  upon"  by  any  one.  It  is  seldom  that  men  of  this 
kind  are  distinguished  by  remarkable  talents  ;  Hooker's  genius 
and  eloquence  as  a  writer  contrast  strangely  with  his  feebleness 
and  incapacity  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life. 


66  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

The  object  of  the  "  Ecclesiastical  Polity  "  is  to  defend  the 
Episcopalian  form  of  Church  government.  This  is  done  with- 
out any  partisan  heat,  with  far-reaching  scholarship,  and  with 
a  studious  desire  to  do  justice  to  opponents.  The  sonorous 
roll  of  the  sentences  is  well  adapted  to  the ,  dignity  of  the 
subject,  and  makes  the  work  attractive  to  many  who  care  little 
for  the  arguments  it  contains,  but  who  read  it  for  purely  literary 
reasons.  It  is  very  seldom  that  a  work  of  controversial  theology 
(for  so  Hooker's  may  be  called)  can,  like  the  "Ecclesiastical 
Polity,"  claim  a  permanent  place  in  literature.  Such  works  may 
be  interesting  to  the  historian  of  the  history  of  opinion  or  to 
the  theological  student,  but  they  are  "caviare  to  the  general." 

Sir  Walter  Raleigh  (1552-1618),  one  of  those  dashing, 
adventurous  courtiers  who  surrounded  the  throne  of  Elizabeth, 
and  who  by  their  half- exploring,  half  -  piratical  voyages  did 
much  to  make  the  name  of  England  terrible  on  the  seas  and 
to  advance  its  prosperity,  found  time,  in  the  course  of  his 
chequered  career,  to  acquire  a  rich  store  of  book  knowledge  and 
to  cultivate  his  naturally  fine  literary  taste.  If  he  had  devoted 
a  larger  portion  of  his  time  to  literature,  and  had  chosen  themes 
of  more  enduring  interest,  he  would  probably  have  occupied  a 
place  next  to  Hooker  as  the  greatest  prose-writer  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan era.  Raleigh's  principal  work  is  his  "  History  of  the 
World,"  composed  during  his  long  imprisonment  in  the  Tower 
by  King  James.  Though  only  a  fragment,  it  is  a  gigantic 
fragment,  comprising  the  history  of  the  world  from  the  creation 
to  about  a  century  and  a  half  before  the  birth  of  Christ,  a  period 
of  nearly  four  thousand  years.  A  considerable  part  of  the  work 
is  rather  theological  and  philosophical  than  historical,  dealing 
with  such  topics  as  the  being  and  attributes  of  God,  the  origin 
of  government,  the  personages  of  Scripture  as  compared  with 
the  personages  of  heathen  mythology,  &c.  The  finest  passage 
by  far  in  the  work  is  the  conclusion  : — 

"It  is  therefore  death  alone  that  can  suddenly  make  man 
to  know  himself.  He  tells  the  proud  and  insolent  that  they 
are  but  abjects,  and  humbles  them  at  the  instant ;  makes  them 
cry,  complain,  and  repent;  yea^  even  to  hate  their  forepassed 


John  Lyly.  67 

happiness.  He  takes  the  account  of  the  rich,  and  proves  him 
a  beggar;  a  naked  beggar  that  hath  interest  in  nothing  but  in 
the  gravel  that  fills  his  mouth.  He  holds  a  glass  before  the 
eyes  of  the  most  beautiful,  and  makes  them  see  therein  their 
deformity  and  rottenness,  and  they  acknowledge  it. 

"O  eloquent,  just,  and  mighty  Death  !  whom  none  could 
advise,  thou  hast  persuaded ;  what  none  hath  dared,  thou  hast 
done ;  and  whom  all  the  world  hath  flattered,  thou  only  hast 
cast  out  of  the  world  and  despised :  thou  hast  drawn  together 
all  the  far-stretched  greatness,  all  the  pride,  cruelty,  and  ambi- 
tion of  man,  and  covered  it  all  over  with  those  two  narrow 
words,  Hie jacet" 

This  magnificent  apostrophe  to  death  has  been  universally 
admired ;  but  his  disappointment  would  be  great  who  began 
to  read  the  "  History  of  the  World  "  expecting  to  find  it 
all  of  the  same  texture  as  this  familiar  passage.  A  great 
proportion  of  it  is  bald  and  dry  enough.  Raleigh's  other  chief 
works  are  his  "  Discovery  of  the  Large,  Rich,  and  Beautiful 
Empire  of  Guiana,"  and  his  "  Advice  to  his  Son."  The  former, 
which  contains  passages  showing  considerable  descriptive 
power,  was  very  unjustly  described  by  Hume  as  "full  of  the 
grossest  and  most  palpable  lies  that  were  ever  attempted  to  be 
imposed  on  the  credulity  of  mankind."  Hume  ought  to  have 
observed  that  all  the  more  marvellous  particulars  are  related  by 
Raleigh  solely  upon  the  authority  of  Spanish  writers.  The 
character  of  Raleigh's  "Advice  to  his  Son  "  was  very  well  given 
by  Carlyle :  "Worldly  wise,  sharp,  far-seeing.  The  motto, 
'  Nothing  like  getting  on.' " 

The  last  prose-writer  of  the  Elizabethan  era  that  we  shall 
mention  deserves  notice  rather,  perhaps,  as  a  curious  literary 
phenomenon  than  on  account  of  his  instrinsic  merits.  John 
Lyly  (1554-1606),  "the  only  rare  poet  of  that  time,  the  witty, 
comical,  facetiously  quick  and  unparalleled,"  as  he  was  de- 
scribed, adopted,  by  the  publication  of  his  "Euphues,  the 
Anatomy  of  Wit"  (1579),  a  species  of  writing  which  at  once 
found  favour  among  fashionable  circles,  who  loved  elaborate 
phraseology  and  playing  upon  words.  The  first  part  was 


68  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

followed  in  1580  by  a  second,  called  "Euphues  and  his  Eng- 
land." The  work  describes  the  travels  of  Euphues,  a  young 
Athenian,  first  in  Naples  and  afterwards  in  England,  and  con- 
tains discourses  on  education,  friendship,  love,  and  such-like 
subjects.  In  many  ways  it  is  a  pleasing  book  :  "  as  brave, 
righteous,  and  pious  a  book,"  said  Charles  Kingsley,  "as  any 
man  need  desire  to  look  into."  But  it  is  also  full  of  affecta- 
tion ;  sense  is  sacrificed  to  sound,  similitudes  and  parallels  of 
all  sorts  are  lugged  in  whether  or  not  they  are  relevant  to  the 
matter  in  hand.  Alluding  to  Lyly's  use  of  comparisons  ran- 
sacked from  every  quarter,  Drayton  compliments  Sidney  as 
the  author  that 

"Did  first  reduce 

Our  tongue  from  Lyly's  writing,  then  in  use  ; 

Talking  of  stones,  stars,  plants,  of  fishes,  flies, 

Playing  with  words  and  idle  similes, 

As  the  English  apes  and  very  zanies  be 

Of  everything  that  they  do  hear  or  see." 

Like  More's  "  Utopia,"  Lyly's  "  Euphues  "  gave  a  new  word  to 
the  language.  "  Euphuism,"  by  which  is  generally  meant  an 
affected  mode  of  writing,  full  of  verbal  ingenuities,  forced  com- 
parisons, and  painful  elaboration  of  style,  was  common  among 
the  court  circles  of  Elizabeth's  time,  having,  it  is  thought,  been 
imported  from  Italy  by  travelled  scholars.1  Lyly  can  scarcely 
claim  to  have  originated  the  style  ;  he  merely  gave  it  literary 
form,  and  linked  it  to  matter  of  considerable  permanent  value. 
Euphuism  was  ridiculed  by  Shakespeare  in  "  Love's  Labour's 
Lost,"  in  which  he  good-humouredly  laughs  at  the  affected 
love-phraseology  then  current ;  and  Scott,  in  his  character  of 
Sir  Piercie  Shafton,  endeavoured  to  reproduce  the  forgotten 
dialect,  with,  however,  very  slender  success. 

Besides  his  prose  works,  Lyly  wrote  several  plays,  being, 
indeed,  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the  pre-Shakespearean 
group  of  dramatists.  As  in  Greece,  so  in  England,  the  drama 

1  According  to  Professor  F.  Landmann,  in  his  essay  "Euphuismus" 
(Giessen,  1880),  Euphuism  was  simply  an  adaptation  of  the  alto  estilo  of 
Guevara,  a  Spanish  writer,  all  of  whose  books  were  translated  in  English 
in  Queen  Elizabeth's  time;  and  Lyly  adapted  his  "  Euphues  "  from  Guevara. 


Miracle  Plays  &  Mysteries.  69 

had  its  origin  in  religion.  During  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries,  Miracle  plays  and  Mysteries  afforded  one  of  the 
favourite  entertainments  of  the  common  people.  "  Miracle 
plays,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  were  dramatic  representa- 
tions of  miracles  performed  by  saints ;  Mysteries  of  incidents 
from  the  New  Testament  and  elsewhere,  bearing  upon  the 
fundamental  principles  of  Roman  Catholicism."  The  distinc- 
tion, however,  was  not  strictly  observed.  Monks  were  the 
authors  of  these  plays,  and  they  were  acted  "in  the  churches, 
or  on  stages  erected  in  the  churchyard  or  in  the  fields,  or,  as 
at  Coventry,  on  movable  stages  wheeled  from  street  to  street." 
The  actors  were  sometimes  the  brethren  of  a  monastery, 
sometimes  the  members  of  a  trade  guild.  Though  Miracle 
plays  were  no  doubt  written  with  a  moral  purpose,  we  often 
find  that  in  their  desire  to  be  amusing  and  instructive  at 
the  same  time,  the  writers  of  them  permitted  the  amusing 
element  to  overbalance  the  instructive  one.  The  liberty  often 
taken  with  Scriptural  personages  for  the  sake  of  comic  effect, 
and  the  frequent  buffoonery  and  ribaldry  found  in  the  plays, 
strange  though  they  seem  to  modern  readers,  were  no  doubt 
eminently  attractive  to  the  rude  crowd  that  witnessed  the 
performances ;  but  they  can  scarcely  have  tended  to  its  edi- 
fication or  improvement.  "  So  far,"  writes  Professor  Minto, 
"from  helping  to  make  demons  more  terrible,  the  Mysteries 
embodied  the  hideous  ideals  of  the  popular  imagination,  and 
raised  temporary  laughter  by  making  them  ridiculous — treated 
them  for  the  time  being  as  so  much  ludicrous  capital.  If 
superstitious  fears  had  been  absolutely  bodiless  before  then 
— if 'the  Mysteries  had  been  the  means  of  clothing  the  devil 
in  popular  imagination  with  claws,  hoofs,  horns,  and  tail— it 
might  have  been  argued  that  they  did  add  to  the  dreadful 
attributes  of  his  fallen  majesty.  And  even  as  it  is,  it  may 
reasonably  be  maintained  that  the  actual  representation  of  the 
hideous  being  had  a  permanent  effect  of  terror.  I  am  inclined, 
however,  to  believe  that  the  Mysteries  left  the  fear  of  the  devil 
where  they  found  it,  and  simply  provided  the  vulgar  with  a 
good  day's  sport." 


jo  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

From  the  Miracle  play  it  was  an  easy  transition  to  the 
Morality,  in  which  the  characters  were  personified  virtues  and 
vices,  such  as  Folly,  Repentance,  Avarice,  &c.  By  degrees 
the  vices  and  virtues  came  to  be  represented  by  persons  who 
stood  for  a  type  of  these,  Brutus  representing  Patriotism, 
Aristides,  Justice,  and  so  on.  Plays  of  this  description  and 
Moralities  were  largely  taken  advantage  of  by  both  Catholics 
and  Protestants  to  enforce  their  several  views.  It  is  obvious 
that  it  is  only  a  single  step  from  Moralities  in  their  latter 
form  to  the  regular  drama ;  though  whether  the  true  modern 
drama  arose  out  of  them  or  from  the  Latin  classical  drama  may 
be  doubted.  At  any  rate,  the  first  English  comedy  was  written 
by  a  classical  scholar,  who  found  his  model  in  Terence,  and 
owed  nothing  to  the  writers  of  Moralities.  Nicholas  Udall, 
sometime  headmaster  of  Eton,  and  renowned  for  the  thorough 
manner  in  which  he  had  laid  to  heart  Solomon's  maxim  about 
sparing  the  rod  and  spoiling  the  child,  was  its  author.  It  is 
called  "Ralph  Roister  Doister,"  and  was  first  printed  in  1566, 
but  is  known  to  have  been  written  several  years  previously. 
Divided  into  acts  and  scenes,  and  furnished  with  a  regular 
plot,  it  marks  a  great  advance  upon  the  plays  which  had 
hitherto  gratified  the  thirst  of  the  people  for  dramatic  repre- 
sentation. It  is  written  in  rough  verse,  and  is  pervaded  by  a 
sort  of  schoolboy  fun,  which  would  seem  to  suggest  that  it 
was  originally  written  for  representation  by  the  author's  pupils. 
The  first  English  tragedy,  "Gorboduc,"  mainly  the  work  of 
Thomas  Sackville,  was  represented  in  1562.  It,  too,  is  framed 
upon  classical  models.  In  literary  merit  it  is  superior  to 
"Ralph  Roister  Doister;"  its  blank  verse  is  grave  and  weighty, 
and  of  considerable  poetical  merit;  but  it  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  it  could  ever  have  been  popular  as  an  acting  play;  the 
unmerciful  length  at  which  many  of  the  characters  speak  alone 
must  have  been  a  severe  trial  to  the  strength  of  the  actors  and 
the  patience  of  the  auditors. 

We  now  come  to  those  who  laid  the  foundations  of  the 
modern  stage.  Of  these,  the  ingenious  author  of  "  Euphues  " 
was  the  first.  He  was  the  author  of  no  fewer  than  nine  pieces, 


Christopher  Marlowe.  71 

all  of  which  show  his  peculiar  vein  of  talent  :  his  often  happy 
verbal  ingenuities,  his  love  of  punning  (in  which  he  found  a 
frequent  imitator  in  Shakespeare),  and  his  occasional  grace 
and  tenderness  of  fancy.  But  Lyly  was  not  a  great  writer: 
no  one  need  read  his  plays  who  does  not  wish  to  make  a 
special  study  of  the  Elizabethan  drama,  and  it  is  not,  therefore, 
requisite  that  we  should  go  into  detail  regarding  his  productions. 
The  first  of  Shakespeare's  predecessors  who  possessed  really 
great  dramatic  and  poetical  genius  was  Christopher  Marlowe. 
Like  too  many  of  his  contemporary  playwrights,  he  lived  a 
wild,  reckless,  dissolute  life,  at  one  time  indulging  in  gross 
debauchery,  at  another  time  writing  plays  which,  though  dis- 
figured sometimes  by  mere  bombast,  bear  on  them  the  im- 
perishable stamp  of  genius.  He  was  born  at  Canterbury  in 
1564.  His  father  followed  the  humble  calling  of  a  shoemaker, 
but,  perhaps  owing  to  the  liberality  of  some  wealthy  relation, 
Marlowe  received  a  liberal  education,  graduating  M.A.  at 
Cambridge  in  1587.  Some  three  years  before  this  date  he 
is  supposed  to  have  come  to  London  and  commenced  his  career 
as  a  writer  for  the  stage.  None  of  his  plays  were  printed  in  his 
lifetime,  and  their  order  of  production  can  only  be  conjectured. 
"  Tamburlaine  the  Great "  is  believed  to  have  been  the  first ; 
then  came  "Doctor  Faustus,"  "Jew  of  Malta,"  "Edward  II.,* 
and  "  Massacre  at  Paris."  In  1593  he  lost  his  life  in  a  wretched 
tavern  brawl.  Had  he  lived  longer,  it  is  very  probable  that 
he  would  have  been  the  greatest  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists, 
next  to  Shakespeare.  As  the  hot  ferments  of  youth  subsided, 
his  genius  would  have  become  more  temperate,  and  his  rich 
prodigality  of  fancy  would  have  been  turned  into  more  profit- 
able channels  than  the  piling  up  of  high-sounding  words,  too 
often  signifying  nothing. 

In  Marlowe's  plays  we  find  all  the  wantonness  of  imagina- 
tion, all  the  colossal  rant,  all  the  prodigality  of  fancy,  charac- 
teristic of  a  hot  and  fevered  youth  unrestrained  by  law,  and 
of  a  mind  ill  at  ease  yet  conscious  of  and  aspiring  after  better 
things.  "  There  is  a  lust  of  power  in  his  writings,"  writes 
^Hazlitt,  "  a  hunger  and  thirst  after  unrighteousness,  a  glow  of 


72  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

the  imagination,  unhallowed  by  anything  but  its  own  energies. 
His  thoughts  burn  within  him  like  a  furnace  with  bickering 
flames,  or  throwing  out  black  smoke  and  mists  that  hide  the 
dawn  of  genius,  or,  like  a  poisonous  mineral,  corrode  the 
heart."  In  many  respects  he  resembles  Byron :  both  lived 
wild  and  passionate  lives ;  both  possessed  an  energy  and 
strength  which  cover  a  multitude  of  literary  sins ;  both  died 
young,  just  as  they  seemed  on  the  eve  of  accomplishing  better 
things.  Marlowe's  finest  play  is  "  Doctor  Faustus,"  founded 
on  the  legend  which  also  gave  birth  to  the  greatest  work  of 
the  greatest  modern  poet,  Goethe's  "  Faust."  Nothing  could 
well  be  imagined  more  different  than  the  treatment  by  these 
two  great  dramatists  of  the  same  subject.  In  Goethe's  play 
we  find  the  genius  of  a  great  poet  united  with  the  wisdom,  the 
self-restraint,  the  knowledge  of  the  world  possessed  by  a  clear, 
cold,  elaborately  cultivated  mind  ;  in  Marlowe's  we  find  also  the 
genius  of  a  great  poet,  but  disfigured  by  the  want  of  self-restraint, 
the  extravagance  and  the  turbulence  of  a  fiery  and  ill-regulated 
mind.  But  the  general  conception  of  his  work  is  very  powerful 
and  striking,  and  passages  of  great  beauty  occur  not  unfre- 
quently.  Take,  for  example,  the  following,  which  we  make  bold 
to  say  has  been  matched  by  none  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists 
save  Shakespeare.  It  is  the  address  of  Faustus  to  the  appari- 
tion of  Helen — 

"  Faustus.  Was  this  the  face  that  launch'd  a  thousand  ships, 
And  burnt  the  topless  tow'rs  of  Ilium? 
Sweet  Helen,  make  me  immortal  with  a  kiss. 
Her  lips  suck  forth  my  soul !     See  where  it  flies. 
Come,  Helen,  come,  give  me  my  soul  again. 
Here  will  I  dwell,  for  Heav'n  is  in  these  lips, 
And  all  is  dross  that  is  not  Helena. 
I  will  be  Paris,  and  for  love  of  thee, 
Instead  of  Troy  shall  Wittenberg  be  sack'd  ; 
And  I  will  combat  with  weak  Menelaus, 
And  wear  thy  colours  on  my  plumed  crest ; 
Yea,  I  will  wound  Achilles  in  the  heel, 
And  then  return  to  Helen  for  a  kiss. 
— Oh  !  thou  art  fairer  than  ihe  evening  ah, 
Clad  in  the  beauty  of  a  thousand  siars  : 


Pecle.  73 

Brighter  art  thou  than  flaming  Jupiter 
When  he  appear'cl  to  hapless  Semele  ; 
More  lovely  than  th<"  monarch  of  the  sky 
In  wanton  Arethusa's  azure  arms  ; 
And  none  but  thou  shall  he  my  paramour." 

If  Marlowe  was  dissipated,  Greene  and  Peele,  the  two  other 
most  famous  pre-Shakespearean  dramatists,  were  yet  more  so. 
Greene,  born  at  Norwich  about  1560,  was,  like  Marlowe,  a 
Cambridge  man,  graduating  M.A.  at  Clare  Hall  in  1583.  He 
then  travelled  in  Spain,  Italy,  Germany,  and  other  countries 
of  the  Continent.  From  his  own  account  he  did  not  benefit 
by  his  tour,  for  he  tells  us  that  he  acquired  in  Italy  luxurious, 
profligate,  and  abominable  habits.  Settling  in  London,  he 
became  "  an  author  of  plays  and  a  penner  of  love  pamphlets." 
He  was  also  an  actor,  and  indeed  appears  to  have  been  ready 
to  turn  his  hand  to  anything  in  order  that  he  might  acquire 
the  wherewithal  to  gratify  his  vicious  desires.  He  died  in 
1592,  in  the  most  abject  poverty,  in  the  house  of  a  poor  shoe- 
maker, who  had  pity  on  him,  and  took  him  in  and  nursed 
him.  Before  his  death  he  seems  to  have  sincerely  repented  of 
his  sins,  and  wrote  two  pamphlets,  "  A  Groats  worth  of  Wit 
bought  with  a  Million  of  Repentance  "  and  the  "Repentance 
of  Robert  Greene,"  setting  them  forth.  The  former  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  refer  to  in  dealing  with  Shakespeare.  His 
last  letter  was  to  his  wife,  whom  he  had  deserted  for  six  years: 
"  Doll,  I  charge  thee  by  the  love  of  our  youth  and  my  soul's 
rest  that  you  will  see  this  man  paid  ;  for  if  he  and  his  wife  had 
not  succoured  me  I  had  died  in  the  streets. — ROBERT  GREENE." 
Greene's  best  productions  are  the  lyrics  interspersed  through 
his  works,  which  show  a  fine  ear  for  verse  and  a  delight  in 
beauty  and  innocence  strange  to  find  in  a  man  of  his  charac- 
ter. One  of  his  tales,  "  Dorastus  and  Fawnia,"  supplied  the 
plot  for  Shakespeare's  "  Winter's  Tale." 

George  Peele,  a  gentleman  by  birth,  was  born  in  Devonshire 
in  1558.  He  graduated  M.A.  at  Oxford  in  1579,  and  went  to 
London  in  1581.  There,  as  was  very  common  in  those  days, 
he  united  the  occupations  of  poet,  dramatist,  and  actor.  He 


74  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

seems  to  have  been  a  shifty,  unscrupulous  man,  "  without  the 
faintest  desire  to  use  honest  means  in  procuring  a  livelihood," 
always  anxious  to  get  his  purse  filled,  and  caring  little  or  nothing 
by  what  means  he  did  so.  His  best  work  is  "  The  Arraignment 
of  Paris,"  full  of  sprightly  wit.  He  died  about  1592. 

Passing  over  the  other  dramatists  who  flourished  about  the 
time  when  Shakespeare  came  to  London,  we  come  to  Shake- 
speare himself,  the  greatest  writer  the  world  has  ever  seen,  or  is 
ever  likely  to  see.  Of  his  personal  history  we  know  little  com- 
pared to  what  we  should  like  to  know ;  yet  the  laborious 
accumulation  of  small  facts,  and  the  patient  sifting  of  the 
traditions  regarding  him,  have  furnished  us  with  information 
sufficient  to  enable  us  to  judge  with  some  degree  of  accuracy. 
We  know,  or  at  least  we  have  some  degree  of  certainty,  that 
his  youth  was  wild  and  passionate ;  that  his  marriage  was  not 
a  very  happy  one;  that  when  the  ferments  of  youth  had  sub- 
sided he  became  prudent  and  industrious;  that  his  manners 
were  amiable  and  his  conversational  powers  great;  that  he 
was  rather  looked  down  upon  by  college-bred  contemporaries 
as  having  "  small  Latin  and  less  Greek ;"  that  he  frequently 
felt  bitterly  the  hardships  and  indignities  of  an  actor's  career; 
that  he  shared  to  the  full  the  ordinary  English  dislike  of  being 
cheated  of  anything  which  was  his  due;  that  he  was  careless 
of  literary  fame  ;  that  his  chief  ambition,  like  Sir  Walter  Scott's, 
was  to  be  the  founder  of  a  family ;  that  he  spent  the  closing 
years  of  his  life  in  happiness  and  prosperity ;  and  that  before 
his  death  he  had  come  to  be  generally  recognised  as  the 
greatest  living  writer.  We  know,  too,  from  his  portraits,  that 
he  was  an  eminently  handsome  man,  with  a  sweet  serene  face, 
full  of  intellect,  yet  also  full  of  gentleness  and  kindliness. 
The  bare  facts  of  his  life,  when  disinterred  from  the  mounds 
of  conjecture  and  disputation  in  which  successive  commen- 
tators have  buried  them,  are  soon  told. 

William  Shakespeare  was  born  at  Stratford-on-Avon  on  or 
about  April  23,  1564.  His  father,  John  Shakespeare,  was  a 
prosperous  burgess  there,  carrying  on  business  as  a  glover,  and 
engaged  also,  it  would  seem,  in  corn-dealing  or  farming.  His 


Shakespeare's  Youth.  75 

mother,  Mary  Arden,  whom  his  father  had  married  in  1557, 
was  the  daughter  of  a  substantial  yeoman  in  the  neighbour- 
hood, at  whose  death  she  became  heiress  to  a  small  farm 
called  Ashbies.  William,  the  third  child  and  eldest  son  of  his 
parents,  was,  in  all  probability,  educated  at  the  Free  Grammar 
School  of  Stratford,  where  he  acquired  the  "  small  Latin  and 
less  Greek"  Ben  Jonson  speaks  about,  and  where  doubtless 
he  was  a  prominent  figure  in  all  schoolboy  sports  and  amuse- 
ments. At  the  earliest  date  at  which  Shakespeare  could  have 
entered  the  school — his  seventh  year — his  father  had  attained 
the  summit  of  municipal  ambition  by  being  appointed  chief 
alderman.  For  some  six  or  seven  years  after  this  John  Shake- 
speare continued  prosperous,  but  about  1577  his  fortunes  began 
to  decline.  In  that  year  half  his  borough  taxes  were  remitted; 
in  1578  his  wife's  property  of  Ashbies  was  mortgaged;  in  1579 
he  was  returned  as  a  defaulter  for  not  paying  a  certain  tax. 
Bad  luck  steadily  pursued  him  for  many  years;  in  1592  he 
was  set  down  in  a  list  of  those  who  did  not  come  to  church 
through  fear  of  "  process  for  debt."  Owing  to  his  father's 
pecuniary  difficulties  Shakespeare  was,  it  is  likely,  withdrawn 
from  school  about  his  fourteenth  year.  What  occupation  he 
engaged  in  after  he  left  school  affords  matter  for  boundless  con- 
jecture, as  nothing  certain  is  known  about  it.  One  tradition 
says  that  he  became  a  schoolmaster ;  another  that  he  was 
bound  apprentice  to  a  butcher;  another  that  he  entered  a 
lawyer's  office.  The  last  hypothesis  was  strongly  advocated 
by  Lord  Campbell,  with  whom  Mr.  Furnivali  agrees.  "  That 
he  was  so  at  one  time  of  his  life,"  writes  Mr.  Furnivali,  "  I,  as 
a  lawyer,  have  no  doubt.  Of  the  details  of  no  profession  does 
he  show  such  an  intimate  acquaintance  as  he  does  of  law. 
The  other  books  in  imitation  of  Lord  Campbell's  prove  it  to 
any  one  who  knows  enough  law  to  be  able  to  judge.  They 
are  just  jokes ;  and  Shakespeare's  knowledge  of  insanity  was 
not  got  in  a  doctor's  shop,  though  his  law  was  (I  believe)  in  a 
lawyer's  office."  But,  as  has  often  been  said,  the  difficulties 
in  which  his  father  was  involved  must  have  early  given  Shake- 
speare an  unfortunate  experience  of  legal  documents,  and  a 


7  6  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

clever  boy  under  such  circumstances  would  not  be  long  in 
picking  up  and  knowing  the  meaning  of  many  terms  of  the  law. 
In  1582  occurred  a  very  important  event  in  Shakespeare's 
life — his  marriage.  His  marriage  bond  to  Anne  Hathaway, 
daughter  of  a  yeoman  who  lived  near  Stratford,  is  dated  No- 
vember 28,  1582,  and  their  first  child,  Susanna,  was  born  on 
May  26  of  the  following  year — significant  facts.  Anne  was 
eight  years  older  than  her  husband,  and  their  union  does  not 
seem  to  have  been  so  happy  as  to  afford  any  contradiction  to 
the  popular  opinion  that  it  is  a  foolish  thing  for  a  youth  to 
marry  a  woman  much  older  than  himself.  The  facts  of  Shake- 
speare's life,  and  incidental  allusions  scattered  through  his 
works,  alike  go  far  to  prove  that  his  married  life  was  not  one  of 
unbroken  sunshine.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  Shakespeare 
was  not  thinking  of  his  own  experience  when  he  put  in  the 
mouth  of  the  Duke  in  "  Twelfth  Night "  the  words — 

"  .     .     .     Let  still  the  woman  take 
An  elder  than  herself;  so  wears  she  to  him, 
So  sways  she  level  in  her  husband's  heart. 
For,  boy,  however  we  do  praise  ourselves, 
Our  fancies  are  more  giddy  and  unfinn, 
More  longing,  wavering,  sooner  lost  and  worn, 
Than  women's  are." 

About  1586  Shakespeare  left  his  wife  and  family,  increased 
by  the  birth  of  twins  in  1585,  and  went  up  to  London  to 
seek  his  fortune.  The  immediate  cause  of  his  leaving  Strat- 
ford is  thus  related  by  his  first  biographer,  Rowe  : — "  He  had, 
by  a  misfortune  common  enough  to  young  fellows,  fallen  into  ill 
company;  and,  amongst  them,  some  that  made  a  frequent  prac- 
tice of  deer-stealing,  engaged  him  more  than  once  in  robbing  a 
park  that  belonged  to  Sir  Thomas  Lucy,  of  Charlecote,  near 
Stratford.  For  this  he  was  prosecuted  by  that  gentleman,  as  he 
thought,  somewhat  too  severely,  and  in  order  to  avenge  the  ill- 
usage,  he  made  a  ballad  upon  him.  And  though  this,  probably 
the  first  essay  of  his  poetry,  be  lost,  yet  it  is  said  to  have  been  so 
very  bitter,  that  it  redoubled  the  prosecution  against  him  to  that 
degree,  that  he  was  obliged  to  leave  his  business  and  family  in 


The  Elizabethan  Stage.  77 

Warwickshire  for  some  time  and  shelter  himself  in  London." 
In  this  tradition  there  is  very  likely  a  basis  of  truth,  though  the 
details  are  not  to  be  depended  on.  It  is  supposed  that  Shake- 
speare went  up  to  London  with  a  company  of  players.  From 
his  sixth  year  he  had  been  familiar  enough  with  the  represen- 
tation of  plays,  for  the  Queen's  company,  Lord  Leicester's 
company,  Lord  Worcester's  company,  and  others,  had  per- 
formed at  Stratford.  Whether  he  took  to  the  stage  because  he 
had  a  strong  natural  bent  to  it,  or  because  it  afforded  him  the 
readiest  means  for  earning  a  livelihood,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 
A  London  theatre  was  then  a  very  different  place  from  what 
it  is  now.  Modern  theatrical  managers  would  save  thousands 
of  pounds  if  audiences  were  content  to  put  up  with  as 
meagre  scenery  and  as  uncomfortable  accommodation  as  satis- 
fied the  Londoners  who  listened  to  Shakespeare's  plays  or  saw 
the  great  dramatist  act.  The  first  theatre  in  London  was  not 
erected  till  1576.  Until  that  time  actors  had  been  content  to 
give  their  performances  in  inn-yards  or  any  other  suitable  place 
that  offered.  After  1576  other  theatres  sprung  up,  but  they  were 
all  very  comfortless  edifices,  judged  according  to  modern  ideas. 
The  following  description  of  an  Elizabethan  theatre  and  its 
surroundings  gives  a  sufficiently  accurate  notion  of  how  plays 
were  represented  in  the  golden  age  of  the  English  drama : — 
"  The  building  itself  was  a  large  circular  edifice  of  wood,  on 
the  top  of  which  a  flag  was  hung  out  during  the  time  of  per- 
formance. The  pit  or  yard  was  open  to  the  sky  (excepting  in 
the  private  and  winter  theatres,  which  were  enclosed),  but 
galleries,  with  boxes  beneath  them,  ran  round  the  building, 
and  these  with  the  stage  were  roofed  in.  The  wits,  critics, 
and  gallants  were  allowed  to  sit  or  recline  at  length  on  the 
rushes  with  which  the  stage  was  strewed,  while  their  pages 
nanded  them  pipes  and  tobacco ;  and  the  audience  generally, 
as  in  the  tavern-theatres  and  singing  saloons  of  our  own  day, 
enhanced  the  enjoyment  of  the  intellectual  pleasures  of  dramatic 
representation  by  the  physical  solaces  of  smoking,  drinking 
ale,  and  eating  nuts  and  apples.  The  performances  com- 
menced at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  Movable  scenery 


7  8  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

was  unknown  till  after  the  Restoration,1  when  it  was  introduced 
by  Sir  William  Davenant,  but  curtains  called  traverses  were 
drawn  across  when  required,  and  the  stage  was  hung  with  coarse 
tapestry.  To  point  out  the  place  or  scene  in  which  the  events 
of  the  play  were  supposed  to  take  place,  a  board,  painted  or 
written  in  large  letters,  was  hung  prominently  forward ;  and  a 
few  chairs  and  tables,  a  couch,  a  rude  imitation  of  a  tomb,  an 
altar,  a  tree,  or  a  tower,  constituted  the  theatrical  '  properties.' 
A  sort  of  balcony  at  the  back  of  the  stage  served  to  represent 
A  raised  terrace  or  the  platform  of  a  castle,  on  which,  in  par- 
ticular scenes,  the  characters  in  the  play  might  be  understood 
to  be  walking.  Much,  therefore,  had  necessarily  to  be  left  to 
the  imagination  of  the  spectators;  but  there  can  be  no  doubt, 
as  Mr.  Collier  remarks,  that  to  this  very  poverty  of  stage  appli- 
ances we  are  indebted  for  many  noble  passages  in  the  works  of 
our  earlier  dramatists,  who  found  themselves  called  on  to  sup- 
ply, by  glowing  and  graphic  description,  what  in  aftertimes  was 
more  commonly  left  to  the  touch  of  the  scene-painter.  In 
the  department,  however,  of  stage  costume,  the  managers  of  the 
theatres  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth  displayed  great  magnificence 
and  expended  large  sums.  The  actor  who  spoke  the  prologue, 
entering  after  the  third  sounding  of  the  trumpet,  usually  wore 
a  cloak  of  black  velvet,  and  we  hear  of  twenty  pounds,  an  im- 
mense sum  in  those  days,  being  occasionally  given  for  a  splendid 
mantle.  When  tragedies  were  performed,  the  stage  was  some- 
times hung  with  black  and  covered  with  matting.  Music, 
singing,  and  dancing  relieved  the  pauses  between  the  acts ;  the 
clown  was  allowed  great  latitude  in  the  way  of  extemporary  buf- 
foonery to  amuse  the  *  groundlings/  as  the  audience  in  the  pit 
was  termed ;  and  at  the  close  of  the  piece  he  delivered  a  rhyming 
rhapsody,  called  a//^,  composed  with  reference  to  the  popular 
topics  of  the  day,  in  which  he  accompanied  himself  with  the 
pipe  and  tabor,  and  which  he  occasionally  varied  by  a  dance." 

1  Actresses  also  appeared  first  on  the  stage  after  the  Restoration.  In  the 
ea^y  days  of  the  drama  female  parts  were  acted  by  young  lads.  In  Charles 
I.'s  time,  women  occasionally  acted  ;  but  the  practice  was  not  at  all  com- 
mon till  the  Restoration. 


Shakespeare's  First  Years  in  London.       79 

The  first  years  of  Shakespeare's  life  in  London  are  shrouded 
in  obscurity.  Doubtless  he  had  a  hard  struggle,  and  much 
bitter  experience  of  the  spurns  which  patient  merit  of  the  un- 
worthy takes.  Actors  are  a  jealous  race,  and  the  playwrights 
in  favour  at  the  time  would  look  with  no  kindly  eye  upon  the 
young  Warwickshire  man,  who,  though  deficient  in  scholastic 
learning,  knew  better  than  any  of  them  how  to  delineate  human 
life,  and  how  to  touch  the  springs  of  emotion.  The  earliest  un- 
doubted literary  allusion  to  Shakespeare  occurs  in  poor  Robert 
Greene's  "  Groatsworth  of  Wit,"  published  in  1592.  There  we 
read  of  "  An  upstart  crow  beautified  with  our  feathers,  that 
with  his  '  tiger's  heart  wrapt  in  a  player's  hide,' 1  supposes  he 
is  as  well  able  to  bombast  out  a  blank  verse  as  the  best  of 
you,  and  being  an  absolute  Johannes  Factotum,  is  in  his  own 
conceit  the  only  Shake-scene  in  a  country."  This  shows  that 
by  1592  Shakespeare's  fame  had  at  least  advanced  far  enough 
to  make  him  an  object  of  jealousy.  Greene's  pamphlet  was 
published  after  his  death  by  his  executor,  Henry  Chettle,  also 
a  playwright.  Both  Marlowe  and  Shakespeare  took  offence 
at  the  allusions  to  them  contained  in  it;  and  in  his  "Kind 
Hart's  Dream,"  published  about  three  months  after  Greene's 
pamphlet,  Chettle  made  his  apologies  to  Shakespeare.  "With 
neither  of  them  that  take  offence,"  he  says,  "  was  I  acquainted, 
and  with  one  of  them  [Marlowe],  I  care  not  if  I  never  be ; 
the  other  [Shakespeare],  whom  at  that  time  I  did  not  so  much 
spare  as  since  I  wish  I  had,  for  that  as  I  have  moderated  the 
heat  of  living  writers,  and  might  have  used  my  own  discretion, 
especially  in  such  a  case,  the  author  being  dead,  that  I  did 
not  I  am  as  sorry  as  if  the  original  fault  had  been  my  fault, 
because  myself  have  seen  his  demeanour  no  less  civil  than  he 
excellent  in  the  quality  he  professes  ;  besides,  divers  of  wor- 
ship have  reported  his  uprightness  of  dealing,  which  argues  his 
honesty,  and  his  facetious  grace  in  writing,  that  approves  his 


1  A  line  from  an  old  play,  "  The  True  Tragedy  of  Richard,  Duke  of 
York;r'  also  found  in  the  "Third  Part  of  Henry  VI.,"  a  recast  of  the 
"  True  Tragedy." 


80  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

art."  Valuable  testimony  this,  proving  that  Shakespeare  was 
beginning  to  be  appreciated  both  as  a  man  and  as  an  author. 

In  1593  Shakespeare  published  the  first  work  to  which  he 
put  his  name,  "Venus  and  Adonis,"  a  poem  full  of  youthful 
passion,  rich  in  colour,  and  showing  an  exuberant  imagination 
and  delight  in  country  sights  and  sounds.  It  was  dedicated  to 
Henry  Wriothesley,  Earl  of  Southampton,  a  gallant  and  accom- 
plished nobleman,  well  known  as  a  patron  of  men  of  letters. 
To  him  was  also  dedicated  the  "Rape  of  Lucrece,"  published  in 
the  following  year.  By  1594  he  is  also  supposed  to  have 
written  several  of  his  plays.  "  Titus  Andronicus,"  "  Henry 
VI.,"  Parts  L,  IL,  and  III.,  the  "Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona," 
the  "  Comedy  of  Errors,"  "Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  "Romeo 
and  Juliet,"  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream,"  "  Richard  II.,"  and 
"  Richard  III.,"  are  conjectured  to  belong  to  about  this  period. 
Their  dates  cannot  be  assigned  with  any  approach  to  certainty. 
Probably  Shakespeare  began  his  work  by  retouching  old  plays, 
as  he  is  supposed  to  have  done  in  the  case  of  "Titus  Andro- 
nicus "  and  the  first  part  of  "  Henry  VI."  Certainly  neither  ot 
these  dramas  are  distinguished  by  such  excellence  as  to  make 
us  desirous  to  prove  them  the  work  of  Shakespeare  alone. 

From  1595  to  1601,  during  what  is  called  the  second  period 
of  his  dramatic  activity,  the  following  plays  are  supposed  by 
Mr.  Furnivall  to  have  been  produced  by  Shakespeare  : — "  King 
John,"  the  "  Merchant  of  Venice,"  the  "  Taming  of  the  Shrew" 
(an  old  play  only  retouched  by  Shakespeare),  "  Henry  IV.," 
Parts  I.  and  IL,  the  "Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,"  "Henry 
V,"  "  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,"  "As  You  Like  It,"  "Twelfth 
Night,"  "  All's  Well  that  Ends  Well."  During  this  period  Shake- 
speare attained  entire  mastery  over  his  art :  in  none  of  these 
plays  do  we  find  the  slips  and  flaws  incident  to  the  work  of  a 
"  prentice  hand." 

To  Shakespeare's  third  period,  extending  from  1601  to  1608, 
belong  all  his  great  tragedies.  In  it  are  believed  to  have  been 
written  "  Julius  Caesar,"  "  Hamlet,"  "  Measure  for  Measure," 
"Othello,"  "Macbeth,"  "King  Lear,"  " Troilus and  Cressida," 
"  Antony  and  Cleopatra,"  "  Coriolanus,"  and  "  Timon  of 


Shakespeare's  Sonnets.  81 

Athens."  This  seems  to  have  been  a  gloomy  period  in  Shake- 
speare's life  ;  disgust  with  his  profession  and  other  troubles  led 
him  to  look  on  the  dark  side  of  things  ;  "  the  burden  and  the 
mystery"  of  this  unintelligible  world  weighed  heavily  on  him; 
and,  perplexed  by  the  enigmas  of  fate,  he  found  relief  for  his 
overburdened  soul,  as  so  many  great  artists  have  done,  by 
shadowing  forth  in  the  creatures  of  his  imagination  his  own 
doubts  and  difficulties. 

After  the  tempest  came  calm  and  sunshine.  In  the  plays 
belonging  to  what  is  called  Shakespeare's  fourth  period  we 
find  a  sweet  grave  tenderness  :  the  blessings  of  forgiveness 
and  domestic  love  are  set  forth  :  himself  escaped  from  turmoil 
and  sorrow,  the  dramatist  looks  with  lenient  eye  upon  the 
frailty  of  mankind,  regarding  with  fond  sympathy  their  errors 
and  shortcomings,  their  struggles  and  trials.  To  this  period, 
extending  from  1609  to  about  1613,  belong  "Pericles"  (only 
in  part  Shakespeare's),  the  "Tempest,"  "  Cymbeline,"  the 
"Winter's  Tale,"  and  "Henry  VIII.,"  part  of  which  is  thought 
to  have  been  written  by  Fletcher. 

We  have  left  unnoticed  the  work  which,  from  a  biographical 
point  of  view,  is  by  far  the  most  interesting  that  Shakespeare 
ever  wrote — the  Sonnets.  They  were  not  published  till  1609, 
but  were  probably  written  between  1595  and  1605.  Round 
perhaps  no  book  do  so  many  literary  problems  centre.  Almost 
every  one  who  has  written  about  Shakespeare  has  had  some 
new  theory  regarding  them.  The  first  difficulty  meets  us  before 
we  begin  their  perusal.  By  Thomas  Thorpe,  the  publisher,  they 
were  thus  dedicated  :  "  To  the  onlie  begetter  of  these  insuing 
Sonnets,  Mr.  W.  H.,  all  happiness,  and  that  Eternitie  promised 
by  our  ever-living  poet,  wisheth  the  well-wishing  adventurer  in 
setting  forth,  T.  T.  [Thomas  Thorpe]."  Now  who  was  this 
Mr.  W.  H.  ?  Many  have  been  the  conjectures  as  to  this,  and 
very  likely  none  of  them  are  correct,  but  the  most  probable  one  is 
that  "  Mr.  W.  H."  signifies  William  Herbert,  Earl  of  Pembroke. 
Many  little  facts,  not  very  striking  individually,  but  tolerably 
convincing  collectively,  point  to  this  conclusion.  When  we 
look  at  the  Sonnets  themselves,  we  find  that  they  fall  into  two 


82  77ie  Elizabethan  Era. 

divisions;  the  first,  from  i  to  126,  addressed  to  a  man;  the 
other,  127-154,  to  a  woman,  and  indicating  apparently  that 
Shakespeare  had  unwisely  loved  and  had  been  betrayed  in  his 
love  by  the  friend  to  whom  the  first  series  of  sonnets  is  addressed. 
Other  divisions  of  the  Sonnets  have  been  suggested,  but  they 
do  not  seern  to  have  any  great  claims  to  consideration.  Mr. 
Fleay,  strangely  enough,  supposes  that  the  latter  division  of  the 
Sonnets  was  addressed  by  Shakespeare  to  his  wife.  Professor 
Minto  is  inclined  to  think  that  they  are  a  four  deforce,  written 
to  show  Shakespeare's  contempt  for  the  exaggerated  tone 
adopted  by  the  sonnet-writers  of  the  period — an  interpretation 
which  many  who  admire  Shakespeare  would  gladly  accept,  but 
which  almost  certainly  is  not  correct.  Of  another  difficulty 
in  the  Sonnets  Professor  Minto  was  the  first  to  suggest  what  is 
now  generally  accepted  as  the  true  solution.  In  Sonnets  76-86 
we  find  the  poet  complaining  that  his  friend  favours  a  rival 
writer.  In  Sonnet  86  he  speaks  of — 

"  the  proud  full  sail  of  his  great  verse, 
Bound  for  the  prize  of  all  too  precious  you  ;" 

of  "  his  spirit,  by  spirits  taught  to  write  above  a  mortal 
pitch,"  of  his  "compeers  by  night"  that  gave  him  aid,  and 
of  "  that  affable  familiar  ghost  which  nightly  gulls  him  with 
intelligence."  The  rival  thus  spoken  of  was  formerly  supposed 
to  be  Marlowe,  but  there  are  good  reasons  for  believing  that 
he  cannot  have  been  meant.  All  who  have  read  any  of  George 
Chapman's  translation  of  the  "  Iliad  "  will  admit  that  "  the 
proud  full  sail  of  his  great  verse"  applies  admirably  to  its 
sonorous  Alexandrines;  and  there  are  other  indications,  such 
as  that  Chapman  "advanced  fervent  claims  to  supernatural 
inspiration"  ("by  spirits  taught  to  write"),  which  lead  to  the 
conclusion  that  he  was  the  rival  poet  indicated. 

We  know  little  of  the  tenor  of  Shakespeare's  life  while  he 
went  on  producing  his  wonderful  series  of  dramas.  He  be- 
came a  partner  in  the  profits  of  the  Globe  Theatre  in  1599,  and, 
before  and  after  that  event,  worldly  prosperity  shone  on  him, 
as,  in  spite  of  all  that  is  said  about  the  caprice  of  fate,  it  generally 


Death  of  Shakespeare.  83 

does  upon  those  who  work  diligently  and  are  ready  to  take  at  the 
flood  the  tide  that  leads  on  to  fortune.  In  1596  John  Shake- 
speare, doubtless  at  his  son's  instigation,  applied  at  the  Heralds' 
College  for  a  grant  of  arms.  In  1597  Shakespeare  bought  for 
;£6o  a  fine  house,  New  Place,  in  Stratford.  In  1602  he  pur- 
chased for  ^320  a  hundred  and  seven  acres  in  the  parish  of  Old 
Stratford.  In  the  same  year  he  bought  a  second  and  smaller 
property.  In  1605  he  bought  a  thirty-one  years'  remainder  of 
a  lease  of  tithes  in  Stratford,  Old  Stratford,  Bishopton,  and  Wil- 
combe  for  .£440.  Many  other  particulars  indicative  of  his 
increasing  wealth  have  been  exhumed  from  old  documents. 
Unlike  most  poets,  Shakespeare  seems  to  have  attended  to  the 
maxim  about  taking  care  of  the  pence.  Nodoubt  his  father's  diffi- 
culties made  him  more  careful  about  financial  matters  than  he 
might  otherwise  have  been.  It  is  evident  that  he  had  a  sharp 
eye  for  business.  In  1604  he  brought  an  action  at  Stratford  for 
£i,  155.  iod.,  and  in  1609  he  strenuously  pursued  for  a  debt 
of  ;£6  and  245.  costs  a  certain  John  Addenbrooke.  These  are 
curious  facts,  well  worth  pondering  by  those  who  think  that 
men  of  genius  are  generally  fools  as  regards  money  matters. 

About  1612  Shakespeare  returned  to  his  native  town,  "a 
prosperous  gentleman."  Rowe's  account  of  the  last  years  of 
his  life  may  be  accepted  as  substantially  correct.  "  The  latter 
part  of  his  life  was  spent,  as  all  men  of  good  sense  wish  theirs 
may  be,  in  ease,  retirement,  and  the  conversation  of  his  friends. 
He  had  the  good  fortune  to  gather  an  estate  equal  to  his 
occasions,  and  in  that  to  his  wish  ;  and  is  said  to  have  spent 
some  years  before  his  death  at  his  native  Stratford.  His 
pleasurable  wit  and  good  nature  engaged  him  in  the  acquaint- 
ance, and  entitled  him  to  the  friendship,  of  the  gentlemen  of 
the  neighbourhood."  His  hopes  of  founding  a  family,  if  he 
ever  entertained  such,  had  fallen  to  the  ground  by  the  death 
of  his  only  son,  Hamnet,  in  1596. 

Shakespeare  died  on  April  23,  1616.  Two  days  later  his 
remains  were  deposited  in  the  chancel  of  Stratford  Church, 
where  his  grave  is  marked  by  a  flat  stone,  bearing  the  famous 
inscription — 


84  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

"  Good  frend,  for  Jesus  sake  forbeare 
To  digg  the  dust  encloased  heare  : 
Blest  be  y*  man  y1  spares  thes  stones, 
And  curst  be  he  y*  moves  my  bones." 

In  spite  of  numerous  temptations  to  the  contrary,  the  adjura- 
tion of  the  epitaph  has  proved  effectual :  no  sacrilegious  hand 
has  interfered  with  Shakespeare's  "  honoured  dust." 

Though  his  life  in  London  was.  a  successful  one,  we  know 
from  the  Sonnets  that  Shakespeare  often  felt  bitterly  regarding 
his  position  as  an  actor.  In  Sonnet  no  he  says — 

"  Alas  !  'tis  true,  I  have  gone  here  and  there, 
And  made  myself  a  motley  to  the  view, 
Gored  mine  own  thoughts,  sold  cheap  what  is  most  dear, 
Made  old  affections  of  offences  new." 

Probably  his  desire  to  acquire  the  means  of  escaping  from 
what  he  regarded  as  an  irksome  servitude,  and  to  obtain 
"  independence,  that  first  of  earthly  blessings,"  gave  many  a 
fresh  spur  to  his  exertions  to  acquire  a  competence.  Those 
who  reproach  Scott  for  "selling  his  brains  for  money,"  for 
writing  hastily  in  order  to  amass  a  fortune,  often  forget  that 
Shakespeare  is  liable  to  a  precisely  similar  reproach,  if  reproach 
it  be,  which  we  do  not  think  it  is.  In  not  a  few  respects  in- 
deed a  curious  parallel  might  be  drawn  between  Scott  and 
Shakespeare.  Both  cared  little  for  fame  :  Shakespeare  allowed 
some  of  his  best  plays  to  appear  in  pirated  editions,  re- 
gardless what  might  be  their  eventual  fate.  Both  were  men 
of  genial,  kindly  disposition,  conscious  of  their  own  great 
powers,  we  cannot  doubt,  but  perhaps  because  of  that  very 
consciousness  wisely  tolerant  of  others,  and  totally  free  from 
arrogance  or  contempt.  Both  were  men  of  great  prudence, 
with  a  large  fund  of  common  sense,  which  would  have  made 
them  prosperous  and  respected  though  they  had  not  been 
men  of  genius.  Immeasurably  superior  though  Shakespeare 
is  to  Scott  in  genius  and  width  of  range,  there  are  many  points 
of  resemblance  between  them  in  their  mode  of  literary  work- 
manship. Both  possessed  the  power  of  depicting  all  classes 
of  society  with  equal  sympathy  and  equal  discernment;  both 


The  Elizabethan  Dramatists.  85 

were  equally  great  in  describing  the  tragic  and  the  comic  aspects 
of  life ;  both,  amidst  higher  qualities,  are  full  of  maxims  on 
conduct  and  character  showing  great  natural  shrewdness  deve- 
loped by  wide  experience  of  men  and  affairs. 

It  is  impossible  for  us  to  enter  upon  any  minute  account  of 
Shakespeare's  plays,  or  to  discuss  the  order  of  their  appear- 
ance, the  sources  from  which  their  plots  are  drawn,  &c.  To 
do  so  would  require  a  volume,  not  a  few  pages.  Neither  do 
we  propose  to  attempt  any  estimate  of  his  genius.  So  much 
has  been  written  on  this  topic,  that  he  would  be  a  bold  writer 
who  should  attempt  to  say  anything  new  regarding  it.  We 
therefore  content  ourselves  by  quoting  Dryden's  eulogy,  one 
of  the  finest,  and  one  of  the  most  discerning.  It  appeared  in 
his  "Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesy:" — "  To  begin,  then,  with  Shake- 
speare. He  was  the  man  who  of  all  modern,  and  perhaps 
ancient  poets,  had  the  largest  and  most  comprehensive  soul. 
All  the  images  of  nature  were  still  present  to  him,  and  he  drew 
them  not  laboriously  but  luckily :  when  he  describes  anything, 
you  more  than  see  it — you  feel  it  too.  Those  who  accuse  him 
to  have  wanted  learning  give  him  the  greater  commendation  : 
he  was  naturally  learned;  he  needed  not  the  spectacles  of 
books  to  read  nature ;  he  looked  inwards  and  found  her  there. 
I  cannot  say  he  is  everywhere  alike ;  were  he  so,  I  should  do 
him  injury  to  compare  him  with  the  greatest  of  mankind.  He 
is  many  times  flat,  insipid ;  his  comic  wit  degenerating  into 
clenches,  his  serious  degenerating  into  bombast.  But  he  is 
always  great  when  some  great  occasion  is  presented  to  him." 

Among  people  who  know  them  only  by  report,  there  is  an 
impression  that  Shakespeare's  contemporaries  were  just  in- 
ferior copies  of  the  myriad-minded  dramatist;  that  in  their 
works  we  can  trace  the  same  characteristics  as  we  find  in  his. 
Of  course  it  is  true  that  they  are  inferior ;  indeed  it  is  a  case 
of  "  Eclipse  first  and  the  rest  nowhere;"  for  great  as  many  of 
the  Elizabethan  dramatists  were,  none  of  them  approached 
Shakespeare's  surpassing  greatness.  But  the  difference  be- 
tween Shakespeare  and  the  other  dramatists  is  not  merely  one 
of  degree,  it  is  one  of  kind.  There  is  a  delicacy  and  grace, 


86  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

an  ethereal  flavour  difficult  to  describe  but  easily  felt  by  every 
student,  about  Shakespeare  which  none  of  the  others  has  any 
pretensions  to.  Indeed  one  scarcely  realises  fully  his  sovereign 
position  till  one  has  read  some  of  the  other  great  Elizabethan 
dramatists,  such  as  Marlowe,  Ben  Jonson,  and  Fletcher. 

Among  the  greater  contemporaries  or  immediate  successors 
of  Shakespeare,  George  Chapman  (1559-1634),  already  men- 
tioned as  the  rival  poet  of  the  "  Sonnets,"  occupied  in  his 
lifetime  a  prominent  place.  But  his  principal  claim  to  remem- 
brance now  is  his  translation  of  the  "  Iliad,"  full  of  genuine 
Homeric  fire,  and  still  perhaps  the  best  translation  of  that 
often-translated  poem.1  Passing  over  Marston,  whose  chief 
excellence  consisted  in  passionate  declamation,  we  come  to 
Ben  Jonson,  as  striking  and  vigorous  a  personality  as  his 
namesake  Samuel.  Ben  was  born  in  London  in  1573.  He 
was  educated  at  Westminster  School,  where  he  was  the  cele- 
brated Camden's  favourite  pupil,  and  went  from  it  to  Cam- 
bridge. Unable  to  find  means  for  his  support  there,  he  re- 
turned to  London,  and  worked  as  a  bricklayer  for  about  a 
year.  Becoming  tired  of  this  uncongenial  occupation,  he 
joined  the  army  as  a  volunteer  in  the  expedition  to  Flanders, 
and  in  a  brief  campaign  there  greatly  distinguished  himself 
by  his  bravery.  His  first  play,  "  Every  Man  in  his  Humour," 
was  acted  in  1596.  Others  speedily  followed.  His  best 
comedies,  "  Volpone,  or  the  Fox,"  and  "  The  Alchemist,"  were 
produced  in  1605  and  1610  respectively;  his  best  tragedy, 
"  Sejanus,"  in  1603.  His  plays  were  not  popular,  and  he  did 
not  realise  much  money  by  them,  but  for  many  years  he  found 
a  lucrative  source  of  income  in  the  preparation  of  masques  for 
the  Court.  Ben  died  in  1637,  after  he  had  by  his  talents  and 
his  self-assertion  fought  his  way,  amidst  much  poverty  and 
many  trials,  to  a  literary  dictatorship  ;  not  so  generally  recog- 
nised, indeed,  but  as  despotic  as  that  held  by  Samuel  Johnson 
in  the  eighteenth  century.  He  was  a  strong-minded,  vain 

1  Keats's  noble  sonnet  "On  first  looking  into  Chapman's  Homer  "  shows 
the  impression  made  by  this  translation  on  one  possessed  of  the  finest 
poetic  susceptibilities. 


John  Webster.  87 

man,  prone  to  quarrel  with  any  one  who  did  him  a  real  or  a 
fancied  injury ;  confident  in  his  own  powers,  and  not  too 
ready  to  recognise  the  powers  of  others.  Yet,  passing  over 
one  or  two  expressions  which  may  be  referred  to  a  not  un- 
natural jealousy,  he  was  warm  in  his  praise  of  Shakespeare ; 
and,  like  Samuel  Johnson,  concealed  much  genuine  kind- 
liness of  heart  beneath  a  rough  and  self-asserting  exterior. 
He  is  by  far  the  most  learned  of  the  dramatists ;  indeed  his 
plays  are  overlayed  by  the  curious  erudition  which  he  was  too 
fond  of  displaying.  The  title  of  his  first  play  indicates  his 
main  fault  as  a  dramatist.  All  his  characters  are  mastered  by 
some  special  tendency  of  the  mind  or  humour.  "  They  do 
not  represent  men  and  women,"  says  Barry  Cornwall,  "  with 
the  medley  of  vices  and  virtues  common  to  human  nature 
about  them,  but  each  is  the  personification  of  some  one  single 
humour,  and  no  more.  There  is  no  fluctuation,  no  variety  or 
relief  in  them.  His  people  speak  with  a  malice  prepense.  They 
utter  by  rote  what  is  set  down  for  them,  each  one  pursuing 
one  leading  idea  from  beginning  to  end,  and  taking  his  cue 
evidently  from  the  prompting  of  the  poet.  They^  speak  nothing 
spontaneously.  The  original  design  of  each  character  is  pur- 
sued so  rigidly  that,  let  what  will  happen,  the  one  single 
humour  is  ever  uppermost,  always  the  same  in  point  of  force, 
the  same  in  its  mode  of  demonstration,  instead  of  being  ope- 
rated on  by  circumstances,  increased  or  weakened,  hurried  or 
delayed,  or  turned  aside,  as  the  case  may  require."  Ben 
Jonson's  finest  pieces  are  the  songs,  many  of  them  exquisite, 
scattered  through  his  masques. 

Literary  partnerships  were  not  uncommon  among  the  Eliza- 
bethan dramatists.  Marston,  Chapman,  and  Ben  Jonson 
wrote  a  play,  "  Eastward  Ho,"  together ;  Shakespeare  (if  the 
surmises  of  critics  be  correct)  wrote  only  part  of  "  Timon " 
and  "Henry  VIII.;"  but  the  standing  examples  of  united 
authorship  are  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  Beaumont's  share  in 
the  plays  which  bear  the  joint  name  is  believed  to  have  been 
small.  He  died  in  1616,  at  the  age  of  thirty.  Fletcher,  born 
in  1579,  died  in  1625.  Both  were  of  gentle  birth.  Written 


88  The  Elizabethan  Era. 

in  the  reign  of  James  I.,  their  plays  form  a  transition  stage  to 
the  Restoration  drama.  They  (perhaps  we  should  rather  say 
Fletcher)  were  the  founders  of  the  comedy  of  intrigue,  after- 
wards fully  developed  by  Wycherley  and  Congreve.  In 
"  studious  indecency"  they  are  surpassed  by  none  of  the 
dramatists,  which  is  saying  a  great  deal. 

Of  John  Webster,  of  whose  life  almost  nothing  is  known, 
the  chief  works  are  "  Vittoria  Corombona,"  published  in  1612, 
and  the  "  Duchess  of  Malfi,"  published  in  1623,  two  tragedies 
deeply  tinged  with  terror  and  sorrow.  In  the  delineation  of 
characters  affected  by  crime,  misery,  and  remorse,  he  has  few 
equals.  John  Ford  (1586-1640),  too,  excelled  in  dealing  with 
the  darker  emotions  of  the  heart.  His  chief  plays  are  "  Perkin 
Warbeck,"  reckoned  the  best  historical  drama  after  Shake- 
speare, and  the  "Broken  Heart."  Philip  Massinger  (1584- 
1640)  was  also  a  man  of  sombre  genius,  but  in  his  case  it  was 
united  with  considerable  humorous  power.  His  finest  play, 
"A  New  Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts,"  has  one  very  powerfully 
drawn  character,  Sir  Giles  Overreach,  an  incarnation  of  sel- 
fishness and  self-will.  James  Shirley  (1596-1667)  was  the 
last  of  the  great  race  of  dramatists,  "  all  of  whom,"  says  Lamb, 
"  spoke  nearly  the  same  language,  and  had  a  set  of  moral 
feelings  and  notions  in  common."  He  was  not  a  great  writer, 
but  he  was  a  very  prolific  one,  having  written  nearly  forty 
plays  previous  to  1641.  In  1642  the  theatres  were  closed, 
not  to  be  reopened  again  till  about  the  time  of  the  Restoration, 
when  a  totally  new  species  of  dramatic  art  came  into  vogue. 

We  have  left  altogether  unnoticed  many  of  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists,  and  have  passed  very  lightly  over  most  of  the 
others.  This  is  not  because  they  have  less  literary  merit  than 
many  other  writers  dealt  with  more  fully  in  this  book,  but 
because  it  is  nearly  impossible  to  describe  their  characteristics 
without  lengthy  quotations.  Excellent  introductions  to  their 
study  will  be  found  in  Hazlitt's  "  Lectures  on  the  Literature  of 
the  Age  of  Elizabeth,"  an  exceedingly  brilliant,  if  occasionally 
misleading  book,  and  in  Charles  Lamb's  "  Specimens,"  which 
was  one  of  the  first  works  to  call  attention  to  their  beauties. 


III. 


THE  SUCCESSORS  OF  THE  ELIZABETHANS. 

Baton;  Fuller,  Jeremy  Taylor,  Baxter,  Bunyan  ;  Walton;  Brcnime ; 
Clarendon ;  Hubbes ;  Lovelace,  Suckling,  Herbert,  Herrick ;  Milton  ; 
Donne,  Cowley,  Dtnham,  Waller. 

JN  this  chapter  we  purpose  to  deal  with  the  period 
between  the  accession  of  James  I.  and  the  Restora- 
tion. The  ground  we  shall  have  to  traverse  is  one 
of  the  greatest  interest  to  students  of  English  history, 
full  of  momentous  events  and  great  constitutional  changes. 
In  literature,  also,  it  is  important  With  one  illustrious  excep- 
tion, no  poet  of  the  first  order  of  merit  flourished  during  this 
epoch ;  but  that  illustrious  exception  was  John  Milton,  who, 
by  common  consent,  occupies  a  place  in  the  brilliant  galaxy 
of  English  poets  second  only  to  that  of  Shakespeare.  In  prose 
writers  of  great^xcellence  the  period  was  rich.  Some  of  these 
we  can  notice  only  very  briefly ;  others  we  shall  be  obliged  to 
omit  altogether.  Even  amid  the  agitating  and  perilous  times 
of  the  Civil  War,  two  or  three  writers  on  religious  subjects 
appeared,  who,  by  the  fervour  of  their  devotional  feeling  or 
the  splendour  of  their  imperial  eloquence,  earned  for  them- 
selves an  imperishable  name.  Though  only  fifty-seven  years 
elapsed  between  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  James  I.  and  the 
Restoration,  English  prose  made  vast  progress  during  the  in- 
terval. From  a  powerful  but  unwieldy  machine,  it  grew  to  be 
a  handy,  serviceable  instrument,  still  capable,  indeed,  of  great 
improvement,  but  infinitely  more  shapely  and  methodical  than 
5 


9O          The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

before.  The  prose  of  Covvley  and  Hobbes  might,  so  far  as 
clearness  and  sentence-arrangement  are  concerned,  have  been 
written  in  our  own  day.  Many  writers,  it  is  true,  and  these 
among  the  greatest,  neglected  the  mechanical  part  of  style ; 
still  it  was  gradually  beginning  to  be  much  more  studied  than 
hitherto. 

To  this  period  belong  most  of  the  works  of  Francis  Bacon, 
who,  if  we  ranked  authors  strictly  according  to  date  of  birth, 
would  have  been  placed  among  the  Elizabethans.  He  was 
born  in  London  in  1561,  the  son  of  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon,  Lord- 
Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal.  When  a  child,  his  precocious  saga- 
city so  attracted  Elizabeth  that  she  "  delighted  much  to  confer 
with  him,  and  to  prove  him  with  questions ;  unto  which  he 
delivered  himself  with  that  gravity  and  maturity  above  his 
years,  that  her  Majesty  would  often  term  him  '  the  young  Lord- 
Keeper.'  "  At  the  age  of  twelve  he  was  sent  to  Cambridge, 
where  he  remained  for  two  years  and  a  half.  Even  at  that  early 
period  he  is  said  to  have  conceived  a  dislike  to  the  philosophy 
of  Aristotle,  as  "a  philosophy  only  strong  for  disputations  and 
contentions,  but  barren  of  the  production  of  works  for  the 
benefit  of  man."  After  leaving  the  University  he  resided  for 
more  than  two  years  in  Paris,  from  which  he  was  recalled  by 
the  sudden  death  of  his  father  in  1579.  He  was  left  poor,  and 
after  in  vain  soliciting  his  uncle  Burleigh  to  obtain  for  him 
some  sinecure  office  under  Government,  devoted  some  years 
to  the  study  of  the  law.  At  twenty-three  he  became  a  member 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  where  his  eloquence  and  ability 
soon  made  his  name  widely  known ;  but  he  was  unfortunate 
enough  to  incur  the  resentment  of  Elizabeth  by  his  opposition 
to  her  demand  for  a  subsidy,  and  though  he  endeavoured  to 
atone  for  his  error  in  policy  by  servile  apologies,  he  was  never 
forgiven,  and  high  offices  were  steadily  denied  him.  His  cause 
was  warmly  espoused  by  Lord  Essex,  whose  indiscreet  advo- 
cacy probably  did  him  more  harm  than  good.  He  befriended 
Bacon  generously,  however,  and  when,  in  1594,  he  failed  to 
procure  for  him  the  vacant  office  of  Attorney- General,  he  con- 
soled him  for  his  disappointment  by  the  present  of  an  estate  of 


Francis  Bacon.  91 

considerable  value.  Bacon  in  vain  endeavoured  to  persuade 
Essex  to  desist  from  the  course  of  policy  which  ended  in  his 
execution ;  but  there  his  gratitude  towards  his  benefactor 
ended.  When  Essex  was  brought  to  trial  for  a  conspiracy 
against  the  Queen,  Bacon,  as  Queen's  Counsel,  appeared 
against  his  old  friend,  employing  all  his  powers  of  oratory  and 
argument  to  substantiate  against  him  the  charge  of  treason  ; 
and,  after  the  Earl's  execution,  wrote,  at  the  Queen's  request, 
"A  Declaration  of  the  Practices  and  Treasons  attempted  and 
committed  by  the  Robert,  Earl  of  Essex."  It  is  easy  to  say 
that  Bacon  in  his  conduct  in  this  matter  did  not  exceed  the 
duties  appertaining  to  him  as  Queen's  Counsel,  and  that  he 
could  not  have  acted  otherwise  with  prudence  ;  but  the  fact 
remains  that  no  high-minded  or  generous  man  would  have 
done  as  he  did.  After  all  has  been  said  that  can  be  said  to 
extenuate  the  part  he  took  in  this  matter,  it  remains  the  great 
blot  on  his  memory. 

During  the  life  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  Bacon's  efforts  to 
advance  his  fortunes  were  constantly  thwarted,  but  in  the 
succeeding  reign  he  attained  the  summit  of  his  ambition.  In 
1603  he  was  knighted,  in  1607  he  became  Solicitor-General, 
in  1613  Attorney-General,  and  in  1618  Lord  Chancellor.  He 
was  also  created  Baron  Verulam,  and  at  a  late  period  Vis- 
count St.  Albans.  In  1621  he  was  charged  before  the  House 
of  Lords  with  corruption  in  the  exercise  of  his  office.  He 
pleaded  guilty,  was  deprived  of  the  Great  Seal,  disqualified 
from  holding  any  public  office  in  future,  fined  ^40,000,  and 
condemned  to  imprisonment  in  the  Tower  during  the  King's 
pleasure.  He  was  released  from  confinement  after  a  single 
night,  and  his  fine  was  commuted  by  the  King;  but  his  public 
career  was  for  ever  at  an  end.  His  guilt,  rightly  viewed,  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  great ;  if,  as  regards  receiving  gifts  from 
successful  litigants,  he  was  no  better  than  the  majority  of  his 
contemporaries,  he  was  no  worse.  He  died  in  1626  from 
the  effects  of  a  chill  he  had  caught  while  making  an  experi- 
ment as  to  the  preservative  qualities  of  snow. 

We  have  related  the  story  of  Bacon's  life  very  briefly,  partly 


92          The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

because,  in  spite  of  the  labours  of  the  late  Mr.  Spedding,  who 
devoted  a  lifetime  of  painstaking  industry  to  its  elucidation, 
portions  of  it  are  still  matter  of  dispute ;  partly  because  to 
enter  into  details  about  his  public  career  would  have  led  us 
greatly  beyond  our  limits.  He  was  a  little,  square- shouldered, 
nervous-looking  man,  with  a  finely  intellectual  head  and  small 
features.  Speaking  of  his  powers  as  an  orator,  Ben  Jonson 
says,  "  No  man  ever  spake  more  neatly,  more  pressly,  more 
weightily,  or  suffered  less  emptiness  or  less  idleness  in  what  he 
uttered.  No  member  of  his  speech  but  consisted  of  his  own 
graces.  His  hearers  could  not  cough  or  look  aside  from  him 
without  loss.  He  commanded  where  he  spoke,  and  had  his 
judges  angry  or  pleased  at  his  devotion.  No  man  .had  their 
affections  more  in  his  power.  The  fear  of  every  man  that 
heard  him  was  lest  he  should  make  an  end."  "  My  con- 
ceit of  his  person,"  writes  the  same  authority,  "  was  never 
increased  towards  him  by  his  place  or  honours ;  but  I  have 
and  do  reverence  him  for  his  greatness  that  was  only  proper 
to  himself,  in  that  he  seemed  to  me  ever  by  his  work  one  of  the 
greatest  men,  and  most  worthy  of  admiration,  that  had  been  in 
many  ages.  In  his  adversity  I  ever  prayed  that  God  would 
give  him  strength;  for  greatness  he  could  not  want."  Ben 
Jonson  is  not  an  impartial  witness ;  nevertheless  what  he  says 
is  sufficient  to  prove  that  Bacon  was  a  man  whose  intellectual 
power  impressed  strongly  those  with  whom  he  came  into  contact. 
Of  Bacon's  most  generally  read  work,  the  "  Essays,"  the  first 
edition,  containing  only  ten,  appeared  in  1597.  In  1612  the 
second  edition,  containing  thirty-eight,  appeared  ;  and  in  1625 
the  complete  edition,  containing  fifty-eight,  was  published. 
There  is  not  much  room  for  difference  of  opinion  regarding 
these  productions.  They  contain  little  or  nothing  to  gratify 
any  high  moral  ideal ;  people  who  think,  with  John  Wesley, 
that  one  of  the  first  things  a  Christian  ought  to  pray  to  be 
delivered  from  is  prudence,  will  not  find  much  in  Bacon's 
"  Essays"  to  please  them.  They  are  the  counsels  of  a  shrewd, 
politic  man  of  the  world,  who  has  looked  with  eager  and  pene- 
trating eye  upon  mankind  as  it  appears  in  the  senate-house, 


Bacons  Writings.  93 

in  courts  of  law,  in  the  commercial  world  j  of  a  man  who  is 
firmly  convinced  that  self-interest  is  the  actuating  principle 
of  humanity.  Even  when  treating  of  themes  which  might 
have  made  a  more  enthusiastic  writer  rise  to  flights  of  poetry 
and  warm  human  feeling.  Bacon  remains  cold  and  unimpas- 
sioned.  The  severe  terseness  of  the  style  of  the  "  Essays,"  in 
which  every  sentence  is  packed  with  as  much  matter  as  it 
can  possibly  hold,  makes  their  intelligent  perusal  at  first  a  task 
of  some  difficulty  ;  but  fresh  perusals  reveal  their  inexhaustible 
wealth  of  matter, — indeed,  as  Dugald  Stewart  said,  after  the 
twentieth  perusal,  one  seldom  fails  to  remark  in  them  some- 
thing overlooked  before. 

The  chief  other  English  works  of  Bacon  are  the  "  Advance- 
ment of  Learning ;"  "  History  of  Henry  VII.,"  a  very  masterly 
piece  of  work  of  its  kind,  and,  as  has  been  elaborately  demon- 
strated, wonderfully  accurate  in  all  its  leading  statements;  the 
"New  Atlantis,"  a  philosophical  romance;  and  "Sylva  Syl- 
Varum,"  a  treatise  on  natural  history,  which  was  the  last  work 
of  his  life.  His  great  philosophical  work,  the  "  Novum  Or- 
ganum,"  which  is  written  in  Latin,  appeared  in  1620.  "It 
would  be  presumptuous  to  attempt  anything  like  an  exact  valu- 
ation of  Bacon's  intellectual  power.  We  state  only  what  lies 
upon  the  surface  when  we  say  that  the  character  and  products  of 
intellect  are  very  often  as  much  over-estimated  upon  one  side 
as  they  are  under-estimated  upon  another.  He  is  frequently 
praised  as  if  he  had  originated  and  established  the  inductive 
method,  as  if  he  had  laid  down  the  canons  appealed  to  in 
modern  science  as  the  ultimate  conditions  of  sound  induction. 
This  is  going  too  far.  Bacon  was  an  orator,  not  a  worker;  a 
Tyrtgeus,  not  a  Miltiades.  He  rendered  a  great  service  by 
urging  recourse  to  observation  and  experiment  rather  than  to 
speculation ;  but  neither  by  precept  nor  by  example  did  he 
show  how  to  observe  and  experiment  well,  or  so  as  to  arrive  at 
substantial  conclusions.  Not  by  precept;  for  if  modern  in- 
ductive method  were  no  better  than  Bacon's  inductive  method, 
Macaulay's  caricature  of  the  process  would  not  be  so  very 
unlike  the  reality.  Nor  by  example;  for  the  majority  of  his 


94          The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

own  generalisations  are  loose  to  a  degree.  To  call  Bacon  the 
founder  of  scientific  method  is  to  mistake  the  character  of  his 
mind,  and. to  do  him  an  injustice  by  resting  his  fame  upon  a 
false  foundation.  Unwearied  activity,  inexhaustible  construc- 
tiveness — that,  and  not  scientific  accuracy  or  patience,  was  his 
characteristic.  He  had  what  Peter  Heylin  calls  "  a  chymical 
brain  ;"  every  group  of  facts  that  entered  his  mind  he  restlessly 
threw  into  new  combinations.  We  over-estimate  the  man  upon 
one  side  when  we  give  him  credit  for  scientific  rigour ;  his 
contemporary,  Gilbert,  who  wrote  upon  the  magnet,  probably 
had  more  scientific  caution  and  accuracy  than  he.  And  we 
under-estimate  him  upon  another  side  when  we  speak  as  if  the 
Inductive  Philosophy  had  been  the  only  outcome  of  his  ever- 
active  brain.  His  projects  of  reform  in  Law  were  almost  as 
vast  as  his  projects  of  reform  in  Philosophy.  In  Politics  he 
drew  up  opinions  on  every  question  of  importance  during  the 
forty  years  of  his  public  life,  and  was  often  employed  by  the 
Queen  and  Lord  Burleigh  to  write  papers  of  State.  All  this 
was  done  in  addition  to  his  practical  work  as  a  lawyer.  And 
yet  his  multiplex  labours  do  not  seem  to  have  used  up  his 
mental  vigour ;  his  schemes  always  outran  human  powers  of 
performance.  His  ambition  was  not  to  make  one  great 
finished  effort  and  then  rest ;  his  intellectual  appetite  seemed 
almost  insatiable."1 

Passing  over  many  authors  of  less  importance,  we  come  to  a 
writer  whose  genius  and  character  were  as  far  removed  from 
Bacon's  as  it  is  possible  to  imagine.  The  vast  intellect  of 
"  high-browed  Verulam  "  commands  our  respectful  admiration, 
but  it  is  icy  and  ungenial ;  we  cannot  bring  ourselves  to  love 
the  man,  however  much  we  may  venerate  the  writer.  Not  so 
with  witty  Thomas  Fuller  (1608-1661).  Even  now,  after  the 
lapse  of  more  than  two  centuries,  it  is  impossible  for  any 
reader  of  his  works  not  to  conceive  a  feeling  approaching  to 
affection  for  one  so  full  of  the  milk  of  human  kindness,  so  re- 

1  Professor  Minto's  "Manual  of  English  Prose  Literature,"  p.  238.  A 
very  able  and  careful  work,  showing  a  large  amount  of  original  labour  and 
thought. 


Thomas  Fuller.  95 

dolent  of  harmless  wit,  so  free  from  any  taint  of  malice  or 
biiterness.  He  lived  at  a  time  when  the  venom  of  party-spirit 
permeated  every  section  of  society,  breaking  family  ties  and 
putting  an  end  to  the  closest  friendships ;  yet,  though  a 
staunch  Royalist,  and  ready  to  suffer  for  the  cause  of  the  King, 
he  remained  moderate  in  his  sentiments,  and  was  willing  to 
acknowledge  the  virtues  of  the  Puritans*  Fuller  was  born  at 
Aldwinkle  in  Northamptonshire,  where  his  father  was  Rector. 
At  twelve  years  of  age  he  was  sent  to  Cambridge,  where  he 
took  his  degree  of  M.A.  in  1628.  In  1631  he  was  made  a  pre- 
bendary of  Salisbury  and  vicar  of  Broad  Windsor  in  Dorset- 
shire, where  his  first  prose  work,  the  "  Holy  War,"  was  written. 
It  was  published  in  1640,  and  had  been  preceded  by  a  poem, 
of  which  nothing  is  now  remembered  but  the  title,  which  shows 
the  love  of  alliteration  which  then  prevailed.  The  title  was, 
"  David's  Heinous  Sin,  Hearty  Repentance,  and  Heavy  Punish- 
ment." On  the  outbreak  of  the  great  Civil  War,  Fuller  ob- 
tained a  chaplaincy  in  the  royal  army,  and  while  following  the 
forces  from  place  to  place,  employed  himself  in  collecting 
materials  for  his  "Worthies  of  England."  During  the  pro- 
longed siege  of  Exeter,  he  resumed  his  interrupted  studies, 
and  ministered  regularly  to  the  citizens  of  the  besieged  town. 
When  Exeter  capitulated,  Fuller  removed  to  London,  where, 
in  1655,  he  received  from  Cromwell  special  permission  to 
preach.  On  the  Restoration  he  received  sundry  ecclesiastical 
honours;  and  his  death,  which  occurred  in  1661,  happened 
just  when  he  was  on  the  eve  of  being  appointed  a  bishop. 

Fuller's  chief  works  are  "The  Holy  State"  (1642),  com- 
monly bound  up  with  "The  Profane  State"  (1648);  "Good 
Thoughts  in  Bad  Times"  (1644-45);  "Good  Thoughts  in 
Worse  Times"  (1649);  "Pisgah  Sight  of  Palestine,"  a  very 
quaint  book  on  the  geography  of  the  Holy  Land,  illustrated 
with  plates  as  amusing  as  the  text  (1650) ;  "Abel  Redivivus," 
a  collection  of  lives  of  martyrs,  and  so  on  (1651);  "Church 
History  of  Britain"  (1656);  "Mixed  Contemplations  in 
Better  Times"  (1660);  and  the  "Worthies  of  England/' 
which  was  published  in  the  year  after  his  death.  There  is  no 


96  The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

occasion  to  consider  his  books  separately.  Whatever  the 
subject,  they  one  and  all  bear  the  impress  of  the  same  in- 
ventive, confident,  good-humoured,  and  pre-eminently  witty 
mind.  We  read  a  page  of  his  on  a  topic  on  which  we  look 
for  serious  treatment,  and  nothing  but  serious  treatment. 
Suddenly  we  find  in  the  middle  of  it  some  quaint  conceit, 
some  ingenious  pun,  which  at  once  raises  a  smile  if  not  a 
laugh.  His  wit  is  a  perennial  fountain,  bubbling  up  continu- 
ally in  the  most  unexpected  places.  A  few  examples  may  be 
cited:  "Anger  kept  till  the  next  morning,  with  manna,  doth 
putrify  and  corrupt ;  save  that  manna,  corrupted  not  at  all 
(and  anger  most  of  all),  kept  the  next  Sabbath.  St.  Paul  saith, 
'  Let  not  the  sun  go  down  on  your  wrath/  to  carry  news  to 
the  antipodes  in  another  world  of  thy 'revengeful  nature.  Yet 
let  us  take  the  apostle's  meaning  rather  than  his  words,  with 
all  possible  speed  to  depose  our  passion ;  not  understanding 
him  so  literally  that  we  may  take  leave  to  be  angry  till  sunset; 
then  might  our  wrath  lengthen  with  the  days,  and  men  in 
Greenland,  where  day  lasts  above  a  quarter  of  a  year,  have 
plentiful  scope  of  revenge."  Speaking  of  the  charity  of  the 
Jesuits,  he  says,  "  Such  is  the  charity  of  the  Jesuits,  that  they 
never  owe  any  man  any  ill-will,  making  present  payment 
thereof."  "  Aphek,  whose  walls  falling  down,  gave  both  death 
and  gravestones  to  27,006  of  Benhadad's  soldiers."  Of  the 
celebrated  Selden  he  remarks,  "  Mr.  Selden  had  some  coins  of 
the  Roman  emperors,  and  a  good  many  more  of  our  English 
kings."  Hundreds  of  such  instances  might  be  given.  But 
his  effervescent  wit,  as  is  perhaps  generally  the  case,  was  ac- 
companied with  shrewd  practical  wisdom  and  great  fertility  of 
intellectual  resource.  Coleridge,  with  characteristic  exaggera- 
tion, said,  "  Next  to  Shakespeare,  I  am  not  certain  whether 
Thomas  Fuller,  beyond  all  other  writers,  does  not  excite  in  me 
the  sense  and  emotion  of  the  marvellous  ;  the  degree  in  which 
any  given  faculty,  or  combination  of  faculties,  is  possessed  and 
manifested,  so  far  surpassing  what  one  would  have  thought 
possible  in  a  single  mind,  as  to  give  one's  admiration  the 
flavour  or  quality  of  wonder."  Coleridge's  judgments  upon 


Jeremy  Taylor.  97 

favourite  authors  must,  like  Charles  Lamb's,  be  accepted  with 
great  reservations ;  but  to  the  literary  epicure,  who  loves  to 
read  books  that  have  infused  into  every  page  of  them  the 
genius  of  a  singular  and  original  mind,  few  volumes  are  likely 
to  be  more  attractive  than  the  works  of  Thomas  Fuller. 

With  all  his  many  excellences,  Fuller,  it  must  be  owned, 
never  touches,  even  in  his  finest  passages,  the  highest  chords 
of  our  nature.  Witty,  ingenious,  inventive,  he  was  not  imbued 
with  a  poetic  spirit,  and  those  who  desire  rich  strains  of  de- 
votional feelings  must  seek  for  them  elsewhere.  They  will 
find  them  in  abundance  in  the  works  of  Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor, 
whose  writings,  though  marred  by  very  complicated  sentence- 
arrangement  and  unpruned  luxuriance  of  imagination,  still  rank 
among  the  best  religious  classics  in  our  language.  On  the 
whole,  he  was  the  greatest  prose  writer  of  his  time,  and,  as  was 
said  above,  the  period  was  rich  in  prose  writers  of  great  excel- 
lence. Taylor  was  born  in  1613  at  Cambridge,  at  which  Univer- 
sity he  received  his  education.  Taken  under  the  patronage 
of  Archbishop  Laud,  who  had  been  greatly  impressed  by  his 
eloquence,  he  was,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  placed  at  All  Souls' 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  obtained  a  fellowship,  and  was  ap- 
pointed one  of  the  Archbishop's  chaplains.  A  year  or  two  later, 
Juxon,  Bishop  of  London,  presented  him  to  the  rectory  of  Up- 
pingham,  in  Rutlandshire.  On  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  he 
embarked  his  fortunes  with  the  Royalists,  and  composed  a 
work  in  favour  of  Episcopacy,  which  obtained  for  him  the 
degree  of  D.D.  from  the  King — an  honour  more  than  com- 
pensated for  by  the  sequestration  of  his  rectory  of  Uppingham 
by  the  Presbyterians,  who  were  now  rapidly  gaining  strength. 
Of  Taylor's  history  during  the  Civil  War  not  much  is  certainly 
known.  In  1643  we  find  him  residing  with  his  mother-in-law 
in  Wales  ;  and  in  the  following  year,  his  fortunes  having  again 
brought  him  into  connection  with  the  royal  army,  he  was 
taken  prisoner  in  the  battle  fought  near  Cardigan  Castle.  He 
was  soon  released,  but  preferred  remaining  in  the  compara- 
tively safe  solitudes  of  Wales  to  again  risking  the  loss  of  his 
liberty.  In  conjunction  with  two  friends  he  opened  a  school, 


98          The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

and  also  busied  himself  in  the  composition  of  his  first  great 
work,  "The  Liberty  of  Prophesying,"  a  plea  for  tolerance, 
which  would  not  now  be  considered  very  liberal,  but  which 
was  far  in  advance  of  the  opinions  then  entertained  by 
most  on  that  subject.  In  the  dedication  to  that  work  he 
says,  alluding  to  his  imprisonment,  "  In  the  great  storm 
which  dashed  the  vessel  of  the  Church  all  in  pieces,  I  had 
been  cast  on  the  coast  of  Wales,  and  in  a  little  boat  thought  to 
have  enjoyed  that  rest  and  quietness  which  in  England,  in  a 
far  greater,  I  could  not  hope  for.  Here  I  cast  anchor,  and 
thinking  to  ride  safely,  the  storm  followed  me  with  so  impet- 
uous violence,  that  it  broke  a  cable,  and  I  lost  my  anchor. 
And  here  again  I  was  exposed  to  the  mercy  of  the  sea,  and 
the  gentleness  of  an  element  that  could  distinguish  neither 
tilings  nor  persons ;  and  but  that  He  that  stilleth  the  raging 
of  the  sea,  and  the  noise  of  the  waves,  and  the  madness 
of  His  people,  had  provided  a  plank  for  me,  I  had  been  lost 
to  all  opportunities  of  content  or  study;  but  I  know  not 
whether  I  have  been  more  preserved  by  the  courtesies  of  my 
friends  or  the  gentleness  and  mercies  of  a  noble  enemy."  He 
soon  found  a  patron  in  the  Earl  of  Carbery,  at  whose  seat, 
Golden  Grove,  he  wrote  his  "  Life  of  Christ "  and  his  "  Golden 
Grove,"  and  his  most  popular  work,  "Holy  Living  and 
Dying,"  besides  several  minor  performances.  Some  expres- 
sions in  the  "  Golden  Grove  "  gave  offence  to  Cromwell,  and 
in  the  years  between  1654  and  1658  Taylor  more  than  once 
suffered  imprisonment  In  1658  his  friends  obtained  for  him 
an  alternate  lecturership  at  Lisburne,  in  the  north-east  of  Ire- 
land, where  he  lived  in  tranquillity  and  happiness  till  the 
Restoration.  About  this  time  he  composed  his  most  elaborate 
work,  the  "  Ductor  Dubitantium  "  (Guide  to  the  Scrupulous). 
His  most  important  works,  besides  those  already  mentioned, 
are  his  treatise  on  "Repentance  "  and  his  sermons.  After  the 
Restoration  the  sunshine  of  Court  favour  shone  upon  him.  He 
was  appointed  Bishop  of  Down  and  Connor,  and  afterwards 
Bishop  of  Dromore,  and  had  besides  several  minor  dignities 
bestowed  upon  him.  He  died  in  1667. 


Taylor  s  Style.  99 

Taylor  has  been  called  the  Shakespeare  of  English  prose  ? 
and  although  his  position  as  a  prose  writer  is  not  at  all  com- 
parable to  that  occupied  by  Shakespeare  as  a  poet,  there  is  a 
good  deal  of  truth  in  the  designation.  Like  Shakespeare,  his 
superabundant  fancy  occasionally  gets  the  better  of  his  good 
taste,  and  he  pours  forth  the  riches  of  his  imagination  with  a 
profusion  which  is  more  to  be  wondered  at  than  admired.  Like 
Shakespeare,  too,  he  seems  to  have  "written  right  on,"  careless 
of  minute  accuracy  in  the  grammatical  construction  of  his  sen- 
tences. He  possessed  the  typical  poetic  temperament :  tender, 
full  of  love  for  all  that  is  beautiful,  impassioned,  and  impet- 
uous. Another  characteristic  of  Taylor  is  his  width  of  learn- 
ing, which  is  distributed  over  his  works  with  the  same  careless 
abundance  as  the  flowers  of  his  fancy.  Thus  in  writings  in- 
tended for  popular  perusal,  he  speaks  of  hard  students  "  being 
as  mute  as  the  Seriphian  frogs  ;"  of  "garments  made  of  the 
Calabrian  fleece,  and  stained  with  the  blood  of  the  trnircx ;" 
of  "  the  tender  lard  of  the  Apulian  swine  ;"  and  so  on.  This 
pedantry  (for  it  can  be  called  by  no  better  name)  is  no  doubt 
to  be  in  part  attributed  to  the  fashion  of  the  time;  but  Taylor 
carries  the  practice  further  than  any  of  his  contemporaries. 
His  quotations  from  classical  authors,  which  are  frequent,  are, 
as  has  been  several  times  shown,  often  inaccurate  to  an  as- 
tonishing degree.  He  was  also  a  great  coiner  of  new  words, 
using  "respersed"  for  "scattered;"  "deordination"  for  "con- 
fusion ;"  "  clancularly  "  for  "secretly;"  "  immorigerous  "  for 
"disobedient;"  "ferity "for  "fierceness;"  "intenerate"  for 
"render  soft,"  and  many  others  of  the  same  kind.  With  all 
his  faults  (many  of  which,  after  all,  are  faults  that  a  man  of 
less  copious  genius  could  not  have  committed),  Taylor  was  a 
writer  of  astonishing  power,  who  can  in  no  wise  be  passed 
over  by  any  one  aspiring  to  even  a  fair  knowledge  of  English 
literature.  "He  was,"  said  Coleridge,  "a  man  constitu- 
tionally overflowing  with  pleasurable  kindliness,  who  scarcely 
even  in  a  casual  illustration  introduces  the  image  of  a  woman, 
child,  or  bird,  but  he  embalms  the  thought  with  so  rich  a  ten- 
derness as  makes  the  very  words  seem  beauties  and  fragments 


too        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

of  poetry  from  a  Euripides  or  a  Simonides."  In  occasional  pas- 
sages he  reaches  surpassing  heights  of  eloquence.  Take  the 
following  description  of  the  "  Day  of  Judgment "  : — 

"  Then  all  the  beasts  and  creeping  things,  the  monsters,  and 
the  usual  inhabitants  of  the  sea  shall  be  gathered  together, 
and  make  fearful  noises  to  distract  mankind  :  the  birds  shall 
mourn  and  change  their  song  into  threnes  and  sad  accents ; 
rivers  of  fire  shall  rise  from  east  to  west,  and  the  stars  shall  be 
rent  into  threads  of  light,  and  scatter  like  the  beards  of  comets; 
then  shall  be  fearful  earthquakes,  and  the  rocks  shall  rend 
in  pieces,  the  trees  shall  distil  blood,  and  the  mountains  and 
fairest  structures  shall  return  into  their  primitive  dust ;  the 
wild  beasts  shall  leave  their  dens,  and  shall  come  into  the 
companies  of  men,  so  that  you  shall  hardly  tell  how  to  call 
them,  herds  of  men  or  congregations  of  beasts;  then  shall 
the  graves  open  and  give  up  their  dead,  and  those  which  are 
alive  in  nature  and  dead  in  fear  shall  be  forced  from  the 
rocks  whither  they  went  to  hide  them,  and  from  the  caverns 
of  the  earth  where  they  would  fain  have  been  concealed ;  be- 
cause their  retirements  are  dismantled  and  their  rocks  broken 
into  wild  ruptures,  and  admit  a  strange  light  into  their  secret 
bowels ;  and  the  men  being  forced  abroad  into  the  theatre 
of  mighty  horrors,  shall  run  up  and  down  distracted  and  at 
their  wits'  end  ;  and  then  some  shall  die,  and  some  shall  be 
changed ;  and.  by  this  time  the  elect  shall  be  gathered 
together  from  the  four  quarters  of  the  world,  and  Christ  shall 
come  along  with  them  to  judgment." 

But  it  is  not  alone  in  sublime  description  that  Taylor  excels. 
In  pathos  he  has  few  equals  ;  and  had  we  space,  many  passages 
from  his  writings  might  be  quoted  full  of  the  most  touching 
grace  and  tenderness. 

Two  other  theological  writers  of  the  period  may  be  briefly 
mentioned.  One  of  these  was  Richard  Baxter  (1615-91), 
who,  originally  ordained  in  the  Church  of  England,  afterwards 
joined  the  Parliamentary  party.  Of  his  many  works — he  is 
said  to  have  written  one  hundred  and  sixty-eight  in  all — two 
still  remain  popular,  the  "  Saint's  Rest "  and  the  "  Call  to  the 


John  Bunyan.  101 

Unconverted,"  and  merit  their  popularity  not  so  much  because 
of  any  great  charm  of  style  as  because  they  express  in  homely 
language  the  thoughts  of  a  most  sincere,  heavenly  minded, 
and  excellent  man.  The  other,  John  Bunyan,  is  one  of  our 
greatest  authors,  and  may  be  taken  as  the  typical  prose  writer 
of  Puritanism,  as  Milton  is  its  typical  poet.  The  story  of  his 
early  years,  as  related  by  himself  in  his  "  Grace  Abounding  to 
the  Chief  of  Sinners,"  is  a  very  touching  one.  The  son  of  a 
tinker,  he  was  born  at  Elstow,  near  Bedford,  in  1628.  More 
fortunate  than  most  children  born  in  so  low  a  rank,  he  was 
sent  to  school  and  taught  to  read  and  write.  He  must  have 
been  a  thoughtful  and  imaginative  child,  for  when  only  about 
nine  years  old  he  began  to  be  tormented  with  those  fearful 
thoughts  which  caused  him  such  agony  for  several  years.  "  I 
would,"  he  says,  "  be  greatly  troubled  with  the  thoughts  of 
the  fearful  torments  of  hell-fire ;  still  fearing  that  it  would  be 
my  lot  to  be  found  at  last  among  those  devils  and  hellish 
fiends  who  are  there  bound  down  with  the  chains  and  bonds 
of  darkness  unto  the  judgment  of  the  great  day."  As  he  grew 
older  these  terrible  impressions  wore  nearly  off;  he  became, 
according  to  his  own  account,  "a  very  ringleader  in  all  manner 
of  vice  and  ungodliness."  A  very  exaggerated  statement,  it 
would  seem,  for  the  only  sins  he  specifically  mentions  are  Sab- 
bath-breaking and  swearing:  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
his  conduct  was  worse  than  that  of  other  young  men  belonging 
to  the  same  class.  When  about  eighteen  he  married.  His  wife's 
relations  were  pious,  and  she  brought  with  her  as  her  only  por- 
tion some  religious  books.  Influenced  by  them  and  by  his 
wife's  conversation,  Bunyan  soon  became  a  Pharisee  of  the 
Pharisees.  He  went  to  church  twice  a  day,  and  did  "  there 
very  devoutly  both  say  and  sing  as  others  did,"  and  regarded 
all  connected  with  the  church  with  the  utmost  reverence. 
But  Bunyan  was  not  the  sort  of  man  to  find  peace  of  mind 
in  the  observation  of  forms  and  ceremonies.  One  by  one 
he  gave  up  the  sports  and  sins  in  which  he  had  indulged, 
— swearing,  Sabbath-breaking,  dancing,  bell-ringing,  and  so 
on.  Still,  while  his  neighbours  were  praising  him  for  his  spot- 


iO2        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

less  morality,  he  felt  that  he  was  but  a  whited  sepulchre.  In 
vain  he  tried  to  obtain  inward  peace  of  mind.  At  one  time 
he  was  overwhelmed  by  doubts  whether  he  was  one  of  the 
elect,  at  another  he  suffered  unspeakable  agonies  from  the 
thought  that  he  had  committed  the  unpardonable  sin.  At 
length  peace  dawned  upon  his  troubled  soul;  but  it  was  several 
years  before  his  shattered  nerves  recovered  their  tone. 

Five  or  six  years  after  his  conversion,  Bunyan,  who  had  joined 
a  Baptist  society  at  Bedford,  "  was  desired,  and  that  with  much 
earnestness,  that  he  would  be  willing  at  some  times  to  take  in 
hand  at  one  of  the  meetings  to  speak  a  word  of  exhortation 
unto  them."  Very  reluctantly  he  assented,  and  his  ministrations 
soon  became  so  popular  that  he  "  was  more  particularly  called 
forth,  and  appointed  to  a  more  ordinary  and  public  preaching 
of  the  word."  For  five  years  he  continued  to  preach  with  in- 
creasing popularity,  when,  in  1660,  "  I  was,"  to  use  his  own 
words,  "  indicted  for  a  maintainer  of  unlawful  assemblies  and 
conventicles,  and  for  not  conforming  to  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land ;  and  after  some  conference  there  with  the  justices,  they 
taking  my  plain  dealing  with  them  for  a  confession,  as  they 
termed  it,  of  the  indictment,  did  sentence  me  to  a  perpetual 
banishment  because  I  refused  to  conform.  So,  being  again 
delivered  up  to  the  gaoler's  hands,  I  was  had  to  prison,  and 
there  laid  a  complete  twelve  years,  waiting  to  see  what  God 
would  suffer  these  men  to  do  with  me."  In  vain  his  perse- 
cutors told  him  that  if  he  promised  to  abstain  from  preaching 
he  would  at  once  be  liberated.  "  If  you  let  me  out  to-day," 
was  his  reply,  "I  will  preach  again  to-morrow."  His  trials 
and  privations  sat  lightly  on  him  ;  no  agony  that  man  could 
inflict  was  equal  to  the  mental  tortures  he  had  come  through. 
While  in  prison  he  supported  himself  by  making  tagged 
thread  laces ;  he  gave  religious  instructions  to  his  fellow- 
captives  ;  he  studied  over  and  over  again  his  two  favourite 
books,  the  Bible  and  Foxe's  "  Book  of  Martyrs;"  and  he 
engaged  in  religious  controversy,  writing  against  the  Quakers 
and  the  Liturgy  of  the  Church  of  England.  During  the  last 
six  years  of  his  imprisonment,  when  he  was  treated  with  great 


The  "Pilgrims  Progress"  103 

leniency,  he  hit  upon  the  vein  of  writing  for  which  his  genius 
was  adapted.  Before  his  release  he  began  that  allegory  to 
which  he  owes  his  fame.  "  *  The  Pilgrim's  Progress,'  "  writes 
Macaulayin  his  admirable  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica"  sketch 
of  Bunyan,  "  stole  silently  into  the  world.  Not  a  single  copy 
of  the  first  edition  is  known  to  be  in  existence.  The  year  of 
publication  has  not  been  ascertained.  It  is  probable  that 
during  some  months  the  little  volume  circulated  only  among 
poor  and  obscure  sectaries.  But  soon  the  irresistible  charm 
of  a  book  which  gratified  the  imagination  of  the  reader  with 
all  the  action  and  scenery  of  a  fairy  tale,  which  exercised  his 
ingenuity  by  setting  him  to  discover  a  multitude  of  curious 
analogies,  which  interested  his  feeling  for  human  beings,  frail 
like  himself,  and  struggling  with  temptations  from  within  and 
from  without,  which  every  moment  drew  a  smile  from  him  by 
some  stroke  of  quaint  yet  simple  pleasantry,  and  neverthe- 
less left  on  his  mind  a  sentiment  of  reverence  for  God  and  of 
sympathy  for  man,  began  to  produce  its  effect.  In  puritani- 
cal circles,  from  which  plays  and  novels  were  strictly  excluded, 
that  effect  was  such  as  no  work  of  genius,  though  it  were 
superior  to  the  *  Iliad,'  to  '  Don  Quixote,'  or  to  '  Othello,'  can 
ever  produce  on  a  mind  accustomed  to  indulgence  in  literary 
luxury.  In  1678  came  forth  a  second  edition  with  additions, 
and  then  the  demand  became  immense." 

In  1687,  when  the  penal  laws  against  the  Dissenters  were 
relaxed,  a  chapel  was  built  for  Bunyan  at  Bedford,  where  his 
powerful  though  uncultivated  eloquence  and  his  wonderful 
acquaintance  with  the  workings  of  conscience,  won  by  much 
hard-bought  experience,  attracted  crowds  of  hearers  from  the 
districts  around.  In  the  summer  of  1688  he  caught  cold  from 
exposure  incurred  during  a  ride  through  heavy  rain  to  visit  an 
angry  father  whom  he  wished  to  reconcile  to  his  son.  A  few 
days  after  he  died.  Bunyan  is  a  man  on  whose  character 
much  might  be  written.  Of  a  morbidly  keen  conscience  and 
of  strong  imagination,  his  faults  assumed  gigantic  size  in  his 
eyes,  and  were  felt  by  him  with  proportionate  intensity. 
Totally  fice  from  hypocrisy,  he,  while  in  his  stormy  youth 


ro4         The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

almost  worshipping  good  people,  found  no  relief  by  en- 
deavouring to  imitate  their  mode  of  life,  while  feeling  that 
he  was  only  playing  a  part.  His  vehement,  impulsive  nature 
was  a  source  of  trouble  to  him  long  after  his  more  terrible 
agonies  had  disappeared.  He  often  felt  an  almost  uncon- 
trollable desire  to  utter  words  which  he  ought  not  to  utter, 
just  as  some  people  cannot  stand  on  the  brink  of  a  lofty 
precipice  without  wishing  to  throw  themselves  over.  Thus 
at  his  first  communion  after  he  had  joined  the  Baptist  society 
at  Bedford,  he  with  difficulty  refrained  from  imprecating  de- 
struction on  his  brethren  while  the  cup  was  passing  from 
hand  to  hand ;  and  sometimes  when  he  was  preaching  he  was 
"violently  assaulted  with  words  of  blasphemy,  and  strongly 
tempted  to  speak  the  words  with  his  mouth  before  the  con- 
gregation." Yet  all  these  peculiarities  did  not  prevent  him 
from  being  a  man  of  sound  common-sense,  with  a  clear  and 
half-humorous  insight  into  the  ways  and  thoughts  of  the 
different  types  of  humanity.  The  fact  that  he  was  often  em- 
ployed as  a  mediator  in  family  quarrels — the  most  difficult  and 
dangerous  diplomatic  office  any  man  can  undertake — is  a  con- 
clusive proof  of  his  tact  and  skill  in  the  management  of  men  ; 
and  many  of  the  characters  in  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress  "are 
evidently  drawn  from  the  life,  with  such  accuracy  and  spirit 
as  show  Bunyan  to  have  been  a  first-rate  observer  of  human 
nature. 

Mr.  Froude  is  probably  correct  in  thinking  that  the  "  Pil- 
grim's Progress "  has  affected  the  spiritual  opinions  of  the 
English  race  in  every  part  of  the  world  more  powerfully  than 
any  book  or  books  except  the  Bible.  The  simplicity  of  its 
style,  combined  with  the  interest  of  its  allegory,  and  its  touches 
of  genuine  eloquence  and  pathos,  admirably  adapt  it  for  all 
classes  of  readers — for  the  poor  and  uneducated  as  well  as  for 
the  rich  and  cultivated,  for  the  man  of  letters  and  for  the 
humble  peasant,  for  the  child  just  setting  out  on  life's  journey, 
and  for  those  who  are  nearing  the  gates  of  the  Celestial  City. 
Macaulay  declares  that  during  the  century  which  followed  his 
death,  Bunyan's  fame  was  entirely  confined  to  religious  families 


Isaak  Walton.  105 

of  the  middle  and  lower  classes,  and  that  very  seldom  during 
that  time  was  his  name  mentioned  with  respect  by  any  writer 
of  great  literary  eminence.  This  seems  rather  an  overcharged 
statement.  Johnson,  it  is  well  known,  praised  Bunyan  highly, 
saying  that  "his  *  Pilgrim's  Progress'  has  great  merit,  both  for  in- 
vention, imagination,  and  the  conduct  of  the  story ;  and  it  has 
had  the  best  evidence  of  its  merit,  the  general  and  continued 
approbation  of  mankind.  Few  books,  I  believe,  have  had  a 
more  extensive  sale."  If  Johnson's  opinion  of  the  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress"  had  been  different  from  that  generally  prevalent 
in  literary  society,  we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  Bos  well,  who 
records  the  above,  would  have  drawn  attention  to  the  fact. 
Bunyan's  chief  works  besides  the  "Pilgrim's  Progress"  are  the 
autobiographical  "  Grace  Abounding"  already  mentioned  and 
the  "  Holy  War,"  an  allegorical  account  of  the  fall  and  redemp- 
tion of  mankind  under  the  figure  of  a  war  carried  on  by  Satan 
("Diabolus")  for  the  possession  of  the  city  of  Mansoul. 

Izaak  Walton  (1593-1683)  is  best  known  as  the  author  of 
the  "Complete  Angler"  (1653),  a  delightful  book  even  to 
those  who  have  no  skill  in  the  art  with  which  it  deals,  full  of 
sweet  pictures  of  pastoral  scenery,  and  having,  as  it  were,  the 
fresh  air  of  the  country  blowing  over  every  page.  His  Lives 
of  Donne,  Wotton,  Hooker,  Herbert,  Sanderson,  written  at 
various  times  between  1640  and  1678,  are  among  our  first 
good  biographies,  appreciative,  affectionate,  and  truth-telling. 
In  a  fine  sonnet  Wordsworth  has  celebrated  their  excellence: — 

"  There  are  no  colours  in  the  fairest  sky 

So  fair  as  these.    The  feather  whence  the  pen 

Was  shaped  that  traced  the  lives  of  the^e  good  men 

Dropped  from  an  angel's  wing.     With  moistened  eye 

We  read  of  faith  and  purest  charity, 

In  statesman,  priest,  and  humble  citizen. 

Oh  !  could  we  copy  their  mild  virtues,  then 

What  joy  to  live,  what  blessedness  to  die  ! 

Methinks  their  very  names  shine  still  and  bright, 

Apart— like  glow-worms  on  a  summer  night  ; 

Or  lonely  tapers  when  from  far  they  fling 

A  guiding  ray;  or  seen,  like  stars  on  high, 


io6         The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

Satellites  burning  in  a  lucid  ring 

Around  meek  Walton's  heavenly  memory." 

Walton  was  a  retired  London  linendraper,  who,  having 
amassed  a  competent  fortune  in  business,  spent  his  latter  days 
in  the  pursuits  that  pleased  him  best,  reading  and  writing 
occasionally,  enjoying  the  society  of  good  men,  and  wandering 
about  the  country  in  the  pursuit  of  his  favourite  art. 

A  man  of  much  more  unique  genius  than  Walton  was  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  who  has  written  passages  of  such  fine,  organ- 
like  rhythm  as  it  would  be  difficult  to  parallel  save  in  the 
pages  of  De  Quincey.  The  son  of  a  rich  merchant,  he  was 
born  in  London  in  1605,  educated  at  Winchester,  and  after- 
wards at' Oxford,  where  he  studied  medicine.  He  then  travelled 
for  some  time  on  the  Continent,  taking  the  degree  of  doctor 
of  physic  at  Leyden  in  1633.  On  his  return  to  England  he 
practised  for  a  short  time  at  Halifax,  after  which  he  settled  at 
Norwich,  where  he  remained  till  his  death  in  1682.  He  was 
knighted,  "  with  singular  marks  of  consideration,"  by  Charles 
II.  in  1671.  Browne's  first  work,  "Religio  Medici"  (the 
Religion  of  a  Physician)  was  published  in  1643.  This  little 
work,  which  was  at  once  successful,  being  "  very  eagerly  read 
in  England,  France,  Italy,  Belgium,  and  Germany,"  is  divided 
into  two  parts,  the  first  containing  an  account  of  his  religious 
opinions  and  feelings,  and  the  second  of  his  human  feelings. 
Grave  and  musical  in  style,  the  book  besides  possesses  that 
peculiar  attractiveness  which  is  always  found  in  the  self-por- 
traiture of  a  gifted  and  original  mind.  We  may  quote  one 
passage  as  showing  the  width  of  Browne's  learning,  and  the 
odd  mixture  of  vanity  and  humility  which  characterised  him  : — 
"  I  thank  God,"  he  says,  "  amongst  these  millions  of  vices  I 
do  inherit  and  hold  from  Adam,  I  have  escaped  one,  and  that 
a  mortal  enemy  to  charity,  the  first  and  father  sin,  not  only  of 
man,  but  of  the  devil — pride ;  a  vice  whose  name  is  compre- 
hended in  a  monosyllable,  but  in  its  nature  not  circumscribed 
by  a  world.  I  have  escaped  it  in  a  condition  that  can  hardly 
avoid  it.  Those  petty  acquisitions  and  reputed  perfections  that 
advance  and  elevate  the  conceits  of  other  men  add  no  feathers 


Brownes  Writings.  icj 

unto  mine.  I  have  seen  a  grammarian  tower  and  plume  him- 
self over  a  single  line  in  Horace,  and  show  more  pride  in  the 
construction  of  one  ode  than  the  author  in  the  composure  of 
the  whole  book.  For  my  own  part,  besides  the  jargon  and 
patois  of  several  provinces,  I  understand  no  less  than  six 
languages ;  yet  I  protest  I  have  no  higher  conceit  of  myself 
than  had  our  fathers  before  the  confusion  of  Babel,  when  there 
was  but  one  language  in  the  world,  and  none  to  boast  himself 
either  linguist  or  critic.  I  have  not  only  seen  several  countries, 
beheld  the  nature  of  their  climes,  the  chorography  of  their 
provinces,  topography  of  their  cities,  but  understood  their 
several  laws,  customs,  and  policies;  yet  cannot  all  this  persuade 
the  dulness  of  my  spirit  into  such  an  opinion  of  myself  as  I 
behold  in  nimble  and  conceited  heads,  that  never  looked 
a  degree  beyond  their  nests."  In  a  similar  half- deprecating, 
half-conceited  way  he  goes  on  to  describe  his  attainments 
in  astronomy  and  botany.  Three  years  after  the  "Religio 
Medici"  appeared  the  "  Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,"  commonly 
known  as  "  Browne's  Vulgar  Errors,"  devoted  to  the  refu- 
tation of  many  beliefs  current  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
such  as  the  legends  about  the  phoenix,  that  a  man  hath  one 
rib  less  than  a  woman,  that  crystal  is  nothing  else  but  ice 
strongly  congealed,  that  a  wolf  first  seeing  a  man  begets  a  dumb- 
ness in  him.  Browne's  finest  effort  is  his"Hydriotaphia"(i658) 
(Urn  Burial),  a  discourse  founded  upon  the  discovery  of  certain 
sepulchral  urns  found  in  Norfolk.  The  concluding  chapter, 
in  which  he  speaks  of  the  shortness  of  life  and  of  posthumous 
fame,  is  one  of  the  noblest  examples  in  English  literature  of 
solemn,  impassioned  eloquence.  "  It  is,"  wrote  Carlyle  in  his 
Diary  for  Dec.  3,  1826,  "absolutely  beautiful:  a  still,  elegiac 
mood,  so  soft,  so  deep,  so  solemn  and  tender,  like  the  song  of 
some  departed  saint  flitting  faint  under  the  everlasting  canopy 
of  night ;  an  echo  of  deepest  meaning  from  the  great  and 
famous  nations  of  the  dead.  Browne  must  have  been  a  good 
man."  Browne's  greatest  fault  as  a  writer  is  his  excessive 
fondness  for  words  derived  from  the  Latin.  His  highly 
Latinised  style  no  doubt  adds  to  the  diginity  and  sonorous 


jo8          The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

swell  of  his  sentences,  but  it  detracts  from  their  general  intelli- 
gibility. He  was  also  an  extensive  coiner  of  new  words,  a  fault 
common  with  the  writers  of  his  time. 

Only  one  historian  of  any  eminence  appeared  during  the 
period  with  which  we  are  dealing.  This  was  Edward  Hyde, 
Earl  of  Clarendon,  a  prominent  actor  in  the  events  which  he 
recorded.  He  was  born  in  1608  at  Dinton,  in  Wiltshire,  the 
son  of  a  country  gentleman.  Destined  for  the  Church,  he 
turned  aside  to  the  study  of  the  law,  and  in  1640  began  his 
public  career  as  member  of  Parliament  for  Wootton  Basset. 
By  his  caution  and  prudence  he  soon  rose  to  high  favour;  in 
1643  he  was  knighted  and  made  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer. 
In  1646  he  went  with  the  Prince  of  Wales  to  Jersey,  where  he 
began  his  "  History  of  the  Rebellion."  He  afterwards  accom 
panied  the  Prince  and  the  Queen  Mother  to  France,  returning 
to  England  at  the  Restoration,  which  he  had  no  inconsiderable 
share  in  bringing  about.  He  was  made  Earl  of  Clarendon 
and  Lord  Chancellor  in  1660;  but  his  prosperity  did  not  con- 
tinue long.  In  1667  he  was  impeached  of  high  treason  by 
the  Commons  and  ordered  to  quit  the  kingdom.  He  never 
returned  to  England,  dying  at  Rouen  in  1674.  He  completed 
his  "History  of  the  Rebellion  "  during  his  second  exile,  writing 
besides  his  "Life  and  Continuation  of  the  History,"  published 
from  his  manuscripts  in  1759;  the  History  having  appeared 
previously  in  1707.  No  active  partisan  can  be  a  fair  chron- 
icler of  a  movement  in  which  he  was  himself  engaged.  It  is 
therefore  not  surprising  that  though  many  facts  are  to  be 
found  in  Clarendon's  account  of  the  Great  Civil  War  which  add 
to  our  knowledge  of  that  struggle  and  the  men  who  figured  in 
it,  it  is  often  exceedingly  incorrect  and  prejudiced.  Its  main 
excellence  consists  in  its  noble  gallery  of  portraits,  drawn  with 
great  skill  and  with  much  discernment  of  character.  The 
style  of  the  history,  looked  at  from  what  may  be  called  the 
mechanical  point  of  view,  is  exceedingly  bad,  prolix  and  tauto- 
logical, full  of  parentheses  and  endless  involutions. 

That  English  style  was,  however,  advancing  in  the  right 
Direction  is  proved  by  the  writings  of  one  of  Clarendon's 


Thomas  Hobbes.  109 

contemporaries,  Thomas  Hobbes  (1588-1679),  in  which  we 
find,  with  much  less  literary  genius,  an  infinitely  larger  por- 
tion of  that  clearness  and  accuracy  which  are  the  note  of 
modern  prose.  "A  permanent  foundation  for  his  fame," 
writes  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  "  consists  in  his  admirable  style, 
which  seems  to  be  the  very  perfection  of  didactic  language. 
Short,  clear,  precise,  pithy,  his  language  has  never  more  than 
one  meaning,  which  never  requires  a  second  thought  to 
find.  ...  He  had  so  thoroughly  studied  the  genius  of  the 
language,  and  knew  so  well  to  steer  between  pedantry  and 
vulgarity,  that  two  centuries  have  not  superannuated  probably 
more  than  a  dozen  of  his  words.  His  expressions  are  so 
luminous,  that  he  is  clear  without  the  help  of  illustration." 
This  extravagant  eulogium,  which  bears  all  the  marks  of  Sir 
James's  over-laudatory  disposition,  must  not  be  understood 
to  mean  more  than  that  Hobbes  wrote  with  a  lucidity  and 
precision  rarely  found  in  philosophers.  During  his  long  life, 
Hobbes  mingled  in  much  of  the  best  society,  intellectual  and 
social,  both  of  England  and  the  Continent.  In  his  earlier 
years  he  was  secretary  to  Bacon,  and  was,  we  are  told  by  the 
antiquary  Aubrey,  "  beloved  by  his  Lordship,  who  was  wont  to 
have  him  walk  in  his  delicate  groves,  where  he  did  meditate  ; 
and  when  a  notion  darted  into  his  mind,  Mr.  Hobbes  was 
presently  to  write  it  down.  And  his  Lordship  was  wont  to  say 
that  he  did  it  better  than  any  one  else  about  him ;  for  that  many 
times  when  he  read  their  notes  he  scarce  understood  what 
they  writ,  because  they  understood  it  not  clearly  themselves." 
Hobbes  was  also  greatly  in  favour  with  the  Cavendish  family, 
acting  as  tutor  to  two  successive  Earls  of  Devonshire,  with 
whom  he  wandered  over  a  large  part  of  the  Continent,  making 
acquaintance  with  the  more  prominent  literary  men  there. 
Hobbes's  literary  career  began  with  a  translation  of  Thucydides, 
designed  to  show  the  evils  of  popular  rule.  From  1640  to 
1660  appeared  the  works  on  which  his  fame  as  a  thinker  rests  : 
"De  Give;"  "Treatise  on  Human  Nature;"  "  De  Corpore 
Politico;"  "Leviathan,  or  the  Matter,  Power,  and  Form  of  a 
Commonwealth,  Ecclesiastical  and  Civil ;  "  and  "  De  Corpore/' 


1 1  o        77/6'  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

The  latter  years  of  his  life  were  embittered  by  a  controversy 
on  certain  mathematical  points,  in  which  he  got  decidedly  the 
worst  of  it.  At  the  age  of  eighty-six,  the  versatile  old  man 
published  translations  of  the  "  Iliad"  and  "Odyssey,"  not  re- 
markable save  as  literary  curiosities.  Hobbes's  philosophical 
theories  had  immense  influence  on  the  Restoration  period.  He 
became  the  philosopher  par  excellence  of  the  court  and  the 
society  which  surrounded  it.  His  selfish  theory  of  morals  and 
his  theory  of  government,  which,  though  setting  out  with  the 
statements  that  the  origin  of  all  power  was  in  the  people,  and 
that  the  end  of  all  power  was  for  the  common  weal,  practically 
inculcated  a  sort  of  divine  right,  were  very  acceptable  to  King 
and  courtiers.  As  frequently  happens,  Hobbes's  followers 
often  carried  his  views  to  an  extreme  length,  and  the  name 
"  Hobbism  "  was  given  to  doctrines  which  Hobbes  himself 
would  have  been  the  last  to  countenance. 

With  the  great  exception  already  mentioned,  the  poets  of  the 
era  preceding  the  Restoration  do  not  compare  favourably  with 
the  prose  writers.  It  is  a  sad  contrast  to  leave  the  magnificent 
efflorescence  of  the  Elizabethan  era  and  to  study  the  works  of 
the  many  poetasters  who  flourished  about  the  time  of  Charles 
I.  Even  those  who  tower  above  the  common  herd,  and  have 
not  long  since  been  consigned  to  obscurity,  are  now  remem- 
bered chiefly  by  a  few  happy  verses,  and  not  by  their  writings 
as  a  whole.  Such  is  the  case  with  the  unfortunate  cavalier 
Richard  Lovelace,  who  died  in  1658  at  the  age  of  forty.  Two 
or  three  of  his  lyrics  are  perfect  gems,  to  be  committed  to  heart 
and  conned  over  by  all  who  care  anything  about  poetry,  but 
his  genius  was  the  reverse  of  prolific,  and  "  rubbish  "  is  the 
only  fit  epithet  by  which  to  characterise  most  of  what  he  wrote. 
Much  the  same  may  be  said  about  Sir  John  Suckling  (1608- 
1641).  A  few  sprightly  society  verses,  of  which  the  well-known 
and  justly  celebrated  "Ballad  on  a  Wedding"  is  the  best, 
is  all  of  his  work  that  can  in  any  sense  be  said  to  live.  Of 
even  "  Holy  George  Herbert,"  whose  "  Temple,"  published  in 
1633,  has  received  warm  praise  from  some  of  the  best  judges  of 
poetry,  can  it  be  said  that  he  is  at  all  generally  known  or  appre- 


Robert  Herrick.  1 1 1 

ciated  save  in  select  extracts  ?  Beautiful  as  his  devout  earnest- 
ness is,  and  poetical  and  striking  as  are  many  of  his  thoughts,  his 
quaint  conceits  prove  an  insuperable  stumbling-block  to  many. 
"  Neither  their  intrinsic  excellence,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  "  nor  the 
authority  of  those  who  can  judge  of  it,  will  ever  make  the 
poems  of  George  Herbert  popular  in  the  sense  in  which  Scott 
and  Byron  are  popular,  because  it  is  to  the  vulgar  a  labour 
instead  of  a  pleasure  to  read  them  ;  and  there  are  parts  in  them 
which  to  such  judges  cannot  but  be  vapid  and  ridiculous."  If 
Mr.  Ruskin  had  said  that  parts  of  them  are  vapid  and  ridi- 
culous, he  would,  we  think,  have  approached  nearer  the  truth ; 
though  to  not  a  few  whose  opinion  is  worthy  of  all  respect  it 
will  appear  something  little  short  of  profanity  to  say  so.  The 
"  Hesperides "  of  Robert  Herrick,  which  was  published  in 
1648,  has  supplied  many  choice  flowers  to  our  poetical  antho- 
logies. In  a  similar  way  the  works  of  Wither,  of  Carew,  and 
others  have  been  laid  under  contribution.  To  all  these  Camp- 
bell's criticism  on  Herrick  may,  with  the  requisite  modifica- 
tions, be  applied :  "  Herrick,  if  we  were  to  fix  our  eyes  on  a 
small  portion  of  his  works,  might  be  pronounced  a  writer  of 
delightful  anacreontic  spirit.  He  has  passages  where  the 
thoughts  seem  to  dance  into  numbers  from  his  very  heart, 
and  where  he  frolics  like  a  being  made  up  of  melody  and 
pleasure,  as  when  he  sings — 

'  Gather  ye  rosebuds  while  ye  may, 

Old  Time  is  still  a-flying  ; 
And  this  same  flower  that  blooms  to-day, 
To-morrow  will  be  dying.* 

In  the  same  spirit  are  his  verses  to  Anthea,  concluding  — 

'  Thou  art  my  life,  my  love,  my  heart, 

The  very  eyes  of  me  ; 
And  hast  command  of  every  part, 
To  live  and  die  for  thee.' 

But  his  beauties  are  so  deeply  involved  in  surrounding  coarse- 
ness and  extravagance,  as  to  constitute  not  a  tenth  part  of  his 


1 1 2         The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

poetry ;  or  rather,  it  may  be  safely  affirmed  that  of  1400  pages 
of  verse  which  he  has  left,  not  a  hundred  are  worth  reading." 

Herrick,  Lovelace,  and  their  fellow-lyrists  belonged  to  the 
Cavalier  party,  but  Puritanism,  which  produced  the  greatest 
statesmen  and  soldiers  of  the  age,  produced  its  two  greatest 
imaginative  writers,  Milton  and  Bunyan ;  a  rather  curious  fact 
when  we  remember  that  the  Royalists  prided  themselves  on  hav- 
ing a  monopoly  of  the  arts,  which  the  austere  Puritans  were  apt 
to  regard  with  ill-judging  contempt.  John  Milton,  England's 
greatest  epic  poet,  in  comparison  to  whose  organ  tones  the 
voices  of  his  contemporary  singers  seem  as  penny-whistles, 
was  born  on  December  9,  1608,  at  a  house  in  Bread  Street, 
Cheapside.  His  father,  a  cultivated  man,  of  puritanical  ten- 
dencies, but  fond  of  music  and  the  arts,  was  a  well-to-do 
scrivener,  a  calling  uniting  part  of  the  work  now  done  by 
attorneys  and  law-stationers.  Milton's  early  education  was 
sedulously  attended  to :  he  was,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  exer- 
cised to  the  tongues  and  some  sciences  as  my  age  would  suffer, 
by  sundry  masters  arid  teachers  both  at  home  arid  the  schools." 
Very  early  he  applied  himself  to  study  with  that  intense  eager- 
ness which  he  retained  through  life ;  from  the  twelfth  year  of 
his  life,  he  tells  us,  he  very  rarely  went  to  bed  without  studying 
to  midnight,  thus,  as  he  believed,  laying  the  seeds  of  that  weak- 
ness in  his  eyes  which  developed  into  blindness.  To  the  period 
of  Milton's  school-days  belong  the  first  poems  of  his  which 
have  been  preserved,  Paraphrases  of  the  cxiv.  and  cxxxvi. 
Psalms,  verses  well  described  by  Johnson :  "  They  raise  no 
great  expectations ;  they  would  in  any  numerous  school  have 
obtained  praise  but  not  excited  wonder." 

From  St.  Paul's  School,  where  he  had  been  for  some  years, 
Milton,  early  in  1625,  went  to  Cambridge,  where  he  was  enrolled 
as  a  lesser  pensioner  of  Christ's.College.  Rooms  there,  venerable 
from  their  association  with  his  name,  are  still  pointed  out  to 
visitors.  After  his  enrolment  he  returned  to  London,  where 
he  remained  till  his  matriculation  in  April  of  the  same  year. 
For  seven  years,  barring  vacations,  visits  to  his  parents,  &c., 
Milton  remained  at  Cambridge,  not  leaving  it  till  he  took  his 


Milton  s  Early  Poems.  113 

M.A.  degree  in  1632,  having  previously  graduated  B.A.  in  1629. 
By  the  undergraduates  he  was  nicknamed  "  The  Lady,"  on 
account  of  his  "  fair  complexion,  feminine  and  graceful  appear- 
ance, and  a  certain  haughty  delicacy  in  his  tastes  and  morals." 
At  first  he  was  not  popular  among  his  associates  ;  nor  is  there 
any  reason  to  wonder  that  he  was  not  so.  It  is  easy  to  imagine 
with  what  scorn  the  youthful  poet,  self-restrained,  self-con- 
scious, haughty,  and  of  purity  approaching  to  asceticism,  must 
have  regarded  the  rough  fun,  the  practical  jokes,  the  noisy 
gatherings,  the  jovial  conversation  which  are  the  delight  of 
undergraduates  possessed  of  high  animal  spirits.  A  want  of 
humour,  with  its  usual  concomitant,  a  want  of  power  to  do 
justice  to  men  of  different  type  from  himself,  was  Milton's 
great  defect  through  life.  As  time  wore  on,  however,  he 
seems  to  have  made  himself  more  agreeable  to  his  asso- 
ciates; and  he  certainly  was  distinguished  for  his  learning 
and  accomplishments.  "  'Twas,"  says  Anthony  Wood,  speak- 
ing of  Milton's  Cambridge  life,  "  usual  with  him  to  sit  up  till 
midnight  at  his  book,  which  was  the  first  thing  that  brought 
his  eyes  into  the  danger  of  blindness.  By  his  indefatigable 
study  he  profited  exceedingly  —  performed  the  academical 
exercises  to  the  satisfaction  of  all,  and  was  esteemed  a  vir- 
tuous and  sober  person,  yet  not  to  be  ignorant  of  his  own 
parts."  At  the  outset  of  his  university  career,  in  1626,  he  had 
a  quarrel  with  his  tutor,  which  led  to  his  temporary  rustication  : 
he  is  even  said  on  this  occasion  to  have  suffered  the  indignity 
of  corporal  punishment.  However  this  may  be,  Milton  cer- 
tainly looked  back  to  his  university  life  with  no  great  liking 
or  respect  for  his  Alma  Mater. 

The  following  is  a  list,  with  dates,  of  the  English  poems 
composed  by  Milton  during  his  Cambridge  life.  We  omit  the 
Latin  ones,  as  not  properly  coming  within  the  scope  of  a  book 
on  English  literature  : — "  On  the  Death  of  a  Fair  Infant " 
(1626);  "At  a  Vacation  Exercise  in  the  College"  (1628); 
"On  the  Morning  of  Christ's  Nativity"  (1629);  "Upon  the 
Circumcision  ;"  "  The  Passion  ;"  "  On  Time  ;"  "At  a  Solemn 
Music  ;"  Song  on  May  Morning  ;"  "  On  Shakespeare"  (1630) ; 
6 


1 14        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

"  On  the  University  Carrier ;  "  "  Epitaph  on  the  Marchioness 
of  Winchester;"  "Sonnet  to  the  Nightingale ;"  "  Sonnet  on 
Arriving  at  the  Age  of  Twenty-three  "  (1631).  Of  these,  the 
most  interesting,  for  different  reasons,  are  the  "  Ode  on  the 
Nativity,"  which,  despite  some  fantastic  conceits  which 
Milton's  maturer  judgment  would  have  rejected,  is  an  ex- 
cellent specimen  of  a  class  of  poetry  of  which  very  few 
excellent  specimens  exist ;  the  lines  on  Shakespeare,  prefixed, 
along  with  other  verses,  to  the  second  folio  edition,  pub- 
lished in  1632,  and  thus  the  first  printed  of  Milton's  English 
poems,  which  show  that  Milton  had  not  yet  become  fully 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Puritanism,  and  could  look  on  all 
forms  of  art  with  a  more  catholic  spirit  than  he  afterwards 
showed ;  and  the  epitaph  on  Hobson,  the  University  carrier, 
which  proves  how  totally  destitute  Milton  was  of  humour.  His 
witticisms,  as  has  been  more  than  once  remarked,  resemble  the 
gambollings  of  his  own  "  unwieldy  elephant,"  who, 

"  To  make  them  mirth,  used  all  his  might,  and  wreathed 
His  lithe  proboscis." 

Lastly,  the  "  Sonnet  on  Arriving  at  the  Age  of  Twenty-three  "  is 
of  deep  personal  interest.  It  was  accompanied  by  a  letter  to 
an  unknown  friend,  explaining  why  Milton  declined  to  enter 
the  Church,  the  profession  for  which  he  had  been  destined  by 
his  friends,  and  which  he  himself  had  at  one  time  intended  to 
pursue. 

On  leaving  the  University,  Milton  went  to  reside  at  Horton, 
a  small  village  in  Buckinghamshire,  where  his  father,  having 
retired  from  business,  had  taken  a  country-house.  There  he 
remained  for  five  years,  "  wholly  intent,"  he  writes,  "  through 
a  period  of  absolute  leisure,  on  a  steady  perusal  of  the  Greek 
and  Latin  writers,  but  still  so  that  I  occasionally  exchanged 
the  country  for  the  city,  either  for  the  purpose  of  buying  books, 
or  for  that  of  learning  anything  new  in  mathematics  or  in 
music,  in  which  I  then  took  delight."  During  his  seclusion 
in  this  pretty  pastoral  spot,  surrounded  by  woods,  orchards, 
cornfields,  streams,  and  all  country  sights  and  sounds,  Milton 


Milton  s  "Lycidasr  1 1 5 

•wrote  the  finest  of  his  smaller  poems — the  "  Allegro  "  and 
"  Penseroso,"  the  "  Arcades  "  and  "  Comus."  The  dates  of 
the  three  former  poems  are  not  quite  certain  ;  "  Comus " 
was  represented  in  1634.  The  "  Allegro,"  beginning  with 
morn  and  ending  with  night,  represents  things  as  they  appear 
to  a  man  of  cheerful  mood ;  the  "  Penseroso,"  beginning  with 
night  and  ending  with  morn,  represents  things  as  they  appear 
to  a  man  of  melancholy  mood.  Both  poems  are  triumphs  of 
versification  ;  rarely  or  never  was  sense  better  linked  to  sound 
than  in  some  of  their  lines.  The  "  Arcades,"  part  of  a  masque 
presented  before  the  Countess-Dowager  of  Derby  at  Hanfield, 
does  not  call  for  special  notice.  Much  more  remarkable  is 
"  Comus,"  both  for  its  intrinsic  merits,  and  as  throwing  light 
on  Milton's  tone  of  thought.  The  dignity  of  its  blank  verse, 
weighted  with  deep  thought,  the  beauty  of  the  lyrics  inter- 
spersed, the  almost  passionate  praise  of  purity,  the  scorn 
manifested  for  those  who  indulge  in  sensual  delights,  sufficed 
to  prove  that  a  new  poet,  unique  alike  in  his  imaginative  and 
in  his  moral  power,  had  arisen  in  England.  It  was  published 
anonymously  by  Milton's  friend  Lawes,  the  musical  composer, 
in  1637.  Sir  Henry  Wotton's  opinion  of  it  was  doubtless  that 
of  most  cultivated  men  into  whose  hands  it  came  :  "  A  dainty 
piece  of  entertainment,  wherein  I  should  much  commend  the 
tragical  part,  if  the  lyrical  did  not  ravish  me  with  a  certain 
Doric  delicacy  in  your  songs  and  odes,  whereurito  I  must 
plainly  confess  to  have  seen  yet  nothing  parallel  in  our  lan- 
guage." 

"  Lycidas,"  the  last  poem  of  Milton's  Horton  period,  was 
written  in  1637.  It  commemorates  the  death  of  a  college  com- 
panion of  his,  Edward  King,  who  met  his  death  by  shipwreck 
while  crossing  the  Irish  Sea,  and  was  published  in  1638 
in  a  volume  of  memorial  verses  by  various  writers,  designed  to 
commemorate  the  sad  event.  In  form  it  is  a  pastoral ;  first 
there  is  an  introduction,  then  the  monody  of  the  shepherd 
lamenting  his  lost  friend,  then  an  epilogue.  There  are  no 
traces  in  the  poem  of  such  deep  emotion  as  we  find  in  "In 
Memoriam  ;"  the  careful  artist  is  more  visible  in  it  than  tjie 


1 1 6         The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

sorrowing  friend.  Many  writers,  especially  those  who  have 
an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  ancient  classics,  have  agreed 
with  Lord  Macaulay  in  regarding  the  appreciation  of  "  Lycidas  " 
as  a  test  of  one's  insight  into  the  most  poetical  aspects  of  poetry. 
But  this  may  reasonably  be  doubted.  It  has  been  well  re- 
marked that  minds  trained  upon  the  old  models  seem  incapable 
of  understanding  how  cold  and  artificial  sounds  the  strain  to 
uneducated  but  not  unpoetical  persons  which  treats  of  Are- 
thuse  and  Mincius  in  speaking  of  a  gentleman  drowned  in 
the  Irish  Channel,  and  which  describes  a  Fellow  of  Christ's 
College  as  tending  flocks  and  singing  for  the  edification  of 
old  Damoetas.  In  "  Lycidas  "  Milton  at  length  appears  as  a 
Puritan  full-fledged  ;  "  he  has  thrown  away  the  last  relics  of 
Church  and  State,  and  is  Presbyterian."  The  scathing  passage 
in  which  he  denounced — 

"  Such  as,  for  their  bellies'  sake, 

Creep,  and  intrude,  and  climb  into  the  fold  ! 

Of  other  care  they  little  reckoning  make 

Than  how  to  scramble  at  the  shearers'  feast, 

And  shove  away  the  worthy  bidden  guest. 

Blind  mouths  !  that  scarce  themselves  know  how  to  hold 

A  sheep-hook,  or  have  learnt  aught  else  the  least 

That  to  the  faithful  herdman's  art  belongs," 

doubtless  found  an  echo  in  many  a  stern  heart  in  England 
at  that  time,  when  Laud  and  his  policy  were  causing  wide- 
spread revolt. 

In  1638  Milton  took  that  journey  to  the  Continent  which 
he  had  long  meditated.  Taking  letters  of  introduction  with 
him,  he  passed  through  Paris  (where  he  saw  Grotius),  Nice, 
Genoa,  Leghorn,  Pisa,  and  settled  at  Florence,  where  he 
remained  for  two  months.  There  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  many  learned  men,  some  of  them  well  known  in  Italian 
literary  history,  and  "  found  and  visited  the  famous  Galileo, 
grown  old,  a  prisoner  to  the  Inquisition  for  thinking  in 
astronomy  otherwise  than  the  Franciscan  and  Dominican 
licensers  thought."  From  Florence  he  went  to  Rome,  where 
also  he  received  a  very  warm  reception  from  cultivated  society. 


Milton  s  Prose  Works.  1 1 7 

After  staying  about  two  months  there,  he  spent  a  short  time 
in  Naples.  From  Naples  it  was  his  intention  to  travel  to 
Italy  and  Greece,  but  the  sad  news  of  the  Civil  War  in 
England  called  him  back  ;  "  for  I  thought  it  base  that  I  should 
be  travelling  abroad  for  pleasure  while  my  fellow-countrymen 
at  home  were  fighting  for  liberty."  He  returned  to  England 
by  slow  stages,  arriving  there  in  August,  1639.  Soon  after 
his  father's  household  at  Horton  was  broken  up,  and  Milton 
took  lodgings  in  St.  Bride's  Churchyard,  where  he  acted  as 
tutor  to  his  two  nephews,  John  and  Edward  Phillips,  and 
busied  himself  in  literary  projects — amongst  others,  in  drafting 
schemes  for  a  poem  on  the  subject  of  "  Paradise  Lost."  But 
stirring  times  had  now  arrived,  and  Milton  was  not  the  man 
to  see  his  countrymen  struggle  for  liberty  and  quietly  remain 
buried  in  literary  meditations.  For  twenty  years,  from  1640  to 
1 660,  his  life  is  not  that  of  a  poet,  but  of  a  strenuous  combatant, 
constantly  engaged  in  controversy,  the  most  exhausting,  the 
most  hurtful,  the  most  evanescent  of  all  modes  of  composition. 
Is  this  to  be  regretted?  From  a  literary  point  of  view- 
undoubtedly  it  is.  There  are  splendid  passages  in  Milton's 
prose  works — passages  where  we  are  carried  away  by  torrents 
of  gorgeous  eloquence ;  but  in  prose,  as  he  himself  said,  "  he 
had  only  the  use  of  his  left  hand ; "  and  the  natural  acerbity 
of  his  temper,  quickened  by  the  insults  of  his  assailants,  often 
led  him  to  indulge  in  the  most  vulgar  railing.  "  For  the  mass 
of  his  prose  treatises,  miserable  discussions  is  the  final  and 
right  word,"  says  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  who  quotes  with  appro- 
bation the  remarks  on  them  by  the  distinguished  French  critic 
M.  Scherer  : — "  In  all  of  them  the  manner  is  the  same.  The 
author  brings  into  play  the  treasures  of  his  learning,  heaping 
together  testimonies  from  Scripture,  passages  from  the  Fathers, 
quotations  from  the  poets ;  laying  all  antiquity,  sacred  and 
profane,  under  contribution  ;  entering  into  subtle  discussions 
on  the  sense  of  this  or  that  Hebrew  or  Greek  word.  But  not 
only  by  his  undigested  erudition,  and  by  his  absorption  in 
religious  controversy,  does  Milton  belong  to  his  age ;  he 
belongs  to  it  too  by  the  personal  tone  of  his  polemics."  But 


1 1 8        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

there  are  other  than  literary  grounds  from  which  the  question 
ought  to  be  regarded.  If  Milton  thought  that  by  the  services 
his  pen  could  render,  the  cause  of  justice,  and  liberty,  and 
good  government  could  be  advanced,  most  assuredly  he  did 
well  to  use  it  as  he  did  during  those  twenty  eventful  years. 

Milton's  prose  writings,  and  the  circumstances  which  led  to 
their  publication,  we  can  only  very  briefly  touch  on.  He  began 
his  career  as  a  controversialist  by  five  pamphlets  against  the 
Episcopal  form  of  Church  government,  all  published  in  1641 
and  1642.  The  preface  to  the  second  book  of  the  fourth  of 
these,  "  The  Reason  of  Church  Government  urged  against 
Prelacy,"  is  one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  Milton's  prose,  besides 
being  of  high  biographical  importance.  He  there  gives  a 
sketch  of  his  life,  of  his  work,  and  of  his  aim  at  some  future 
period,  when  quieter  times  came,  to  produce  a  work  "  which 
the  world  would  not  willingly  let  die."  "Neither  do  I  think 
it  shame,"  he  says,  "  to  covenant  with  any  knowing  reader  that 
for  some  few  years  yet  I  may  go  on  trust  with  him  towards 
the  payment  of  what  I  am  now  indebted,  as  being  a  work  not 
to  be  raised  from  the  heat  of  youth  or  the  vapours  of  wine, 
like  that  which  flows  at  waste  from  the  pen  of  some  vulgar 
amourist  or  the  trencher  fury  of  a  rhyming  parasite;  not  to  be 
obtained  by  the  invocation  of  Dame  Memory  and  her  siren 
daughters,  but  by  devout  prayer  to  that  Eternal  Spirit  who  can 
enrich  with  all  utterance  and  knowledge,  and  sends  out  His 
seraphim  with  the  hallowed  fire  of  His  altar  to  touch  and 
purify  the  lips  of  whom  He  pleases :  to  this  must  be  added 
industrious  and  select  reading,  steady  observation,  insight  into 
all  seemly  and  generous  arts  and  affairs ;  till  which  in  some 
measure  be  compassed,  at  mine  own  peril  and  cost  I  refuse 
not  to  sustain  this  expectation  from  as  many  as  are  not  loth  to 
hazard  so  much  credulity  upon  the  best  pledges  which  I  can 
give  them."  From  this  proud  self-confidence  a  great  result 
might  have  been  augured,  and  a  great  result  was  achieved,  for 
that  result  was  "  Paradise  Lost." 

The  second  series  of  Milton's  pamphlets  was  written  with 
a  purely  personal  object.  About  Whitsuntide  1643,  Milton,. 


Milton  s  Divorce  Pamphlets.  1 19 

with  his  nephew  Phillips,  "took  a  journey  into  the  country, 
nobody  about  him  certainly  knowing  the  reason,  or  that  it  was 
any  more  than  a  journey  of  recreation  ;  but  home  he  returns  a 
married  man  that  went  out  a  bachelor,  his  wife  being  Mary, 
the  eldest  daughter  of  Mr.  Richard  Powell,  then  a  justice  of 
the  peace,  at  Foresthill,  near  Shotpver,  in  Oxfordshire."  The 
circumstances  connected  with  this  marriage  have  never  been 
clearly  explained.  The  Powells  were  Royalists ;  Mary  was 
only  seventeen,  whereas  her  husband  was  thirty-five ;  and 
altogether  it  seems  to  have  been  as  ill-assorted  a  union  as 
could  well  be  imagined.  After  the  newly  married  pair  had 
lived  together  for  a  month,  Mary  Powell  went  back  to  her 
friends,  promising,  however,  to  return  at  Michaelmas.  Milton, 
like  Carlyle,  was  "gey  ill  to  live  wi';"  his  studious  habits,  his 
solitary  life,  and  his  austere  disposition  were  doubtless  very 
repellant  to  a  young  girl  accustomed  to  "a  great  house  and 
much  company  and  jollity."  She  did  not  return  at  Michael- 
mas, and  for  a  very  good  reason.  Before  that  time  Milton 
had  published  the  first  of  those  strange  pamphlets  in  which  he 
advocated  freedom  of  divorce  on  very  easy  conditions.  This 
raised  a  tempest  of  opposition  against  him,  but  single-handed 
he  undauntedly  continued  to  maintain  his  thesis  in  three 
other  pamphlets,  the  last  of  which  appeared  early  in  1645. 
When,  however,  the  Powell  family,  later  on  in  that  year, 
fell  into  difficulties,  and  his  wife  returned  to  him  and  asked 
his  forgiveness,  Milton  granted  it,  and  again  received  her  into 
favour. 

Between  the  publication  of  the  first  and  the  last  pamphlet 
on  Divorce  appeared  Milton's  tract  on  Education  (1644),  and 
his  "  Areopagitica,"  published  in  the  same  year,  the  first  formal 
plea  for  the  liberty  of  the  press.  It  is  the  most  generally 
known  of  Milton's  prose  works,  and  there  is  little  need  to 
dwell  on  its  surpassing  eloquence ;  none  but  a  poet  and  a  very 
great  one  could  have  written  it.  Meanwhile  Milton's  writings 
on  Divorce  had  lost  him  the  favour  of  the  Presbyterians,  many 
of  whom  bitterly  assailed  him ;  and  he  began  to  think  that 
"new  Presbyter  is  but  old  Priest  writ  large."  From  about 


I2O        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

1646,  he  favoured  Independency  so  far  as  he  favoured  any 
form  of  church  government ;  but  in  religious  matters  he  was 
a  law  unto  himself,  going  to  no  church,  and  joining  no  com- 
munion. 

The  year  1646  is  memorable  as  having  been  that  in  which 
the  poems  written  by  Milton  up  to  that  date  were  collected 
and  published  together.  "Let  the  event  guide  itself  which 
way  it  will,"  wrote  Moseley,  the  publisher,  in  the  preface  to  the 
collected  edition ;  "  I  shall  deserve  of  the  age  by  bringing  into 
the  light  as  true  a  birth  as  the  Muses  have  brought  forth  since 
our  famous  Spenser  wrote,  whose  poems  in  these  English  ones 
are  as  rarely  imitated  as  sweetly  excelled."  Three  years  after, 
in  1649,  Milton  again  entered  into  controversy  by  publishing 
a  pamphlet  defending  the  execution  of  Charles  I.  Then  came 
his  Latin  controversy  with  the  great  Leyden  scholar  Salmasius, 
over  whom  he  obtained  a  brilliant  victory.  His  exertions  in 
this  battle  cost  him  his  eyesight:  in  1652  he  became  totally 
blind.  Some  consolation  for  his  blindness  was  to  be  derived 
from  the  fact  that  his  replies  to  Salmasius  had  caused  Europe 
to  ring  with  his  fame  from  side  to  side.  About  1654  his  wire 
died,  leaving  behind  her  three  daughters.  He  married  again 
in  1656,  but  his  second  wife  only  lived  fifteen  months,  dying 
in  childbirth  in  1658. 

On  the  death  of  Cromwell,  Milton  in  vain  endeavoured  to 
stem  the  tide  of  popular  feeling  in  favour  of  the  restoration  of 
the  monarchy,  writing  five  pamphlets  with  this  end  in  view, 
and  fighting  for  what  was  clearly  a  hopeless  cause  till  the  very 
last  moment  All  in  vain  :  on  the  8th  of  May  Charles  II.  was 
proclaimed,  and  on  the  2Qth  he  entered  London  in  triumph. 
Milton,  who  had  been  the  foremost  advocate  of  Republicanism, 
who  had  defended  the  execution  of  the  King,  who  had  acted 
as  Latin  secretary  during  the  Protectorate,  whose  name  was 
famous  throughout  Europe  as  the  champion  of  the  Common- 
wealth and  the  contemner  of  kings,  now  indeed  found  him- 
self fallen  on  evil  days  and  evil  tongues.  It  is  a  wonder 
that  he  escaped  death :  if  any  man  deserved  it,  the  Royalists 
might  plausibly  have  argued,  it  was  the  stern  old  blind  man 


Death  of  Milton.  1 2 1 

who  had  fought  strenuously  against  them  till  the  very  last. 
For  about  two  months  he  lay  in  hiding,  till,  in  August  1660, 
the  Act  of  Indemnity  passed.  He  was  then  for  some  time  in 
custody,  but  was  soon  released,  at  the  intercession,  according 
to  an  old  tradition,  of  Sir  William  Davenant,  for  whom  he  had 
performed  a  similar  good  office  during  the  Commonwealth. 

Now  "in  darkness  and  with  dangers  compassed  round," 
Milton,  after  twenty  years  spent  in  the  arid  deserts  of  con- 
troversy, again  girt  his  singing  robes  around  him.  A  few 
old  friends  remained  faithful  to  him,  but  his  daughters,  to 
whom  he  was  a  harsh  parent,  were  undutiful,  and  his  domestic 
infelicity  for  a  time  was  great.  Affairs  were,  however,  put  on 
a  more  comfortable  footing  by  his  marriage  to  Elizabeth 
Minshull,  an  excellent  woman,  who  did  her  duty  well  to  him 
and  his  daughters.  In  1667  "Paradise  Lost,"  begun  in  the 
year  before  the  close  of  the  Protectorate,  was  published.  Four 
years  later,  in  1671,  "Paradise  Regained"  and  "Samson 
Agonistes"  appeared.  Busy  to  the  last,  he  also  published 
various  minor  prose  works,  a  "  Latin  Accidence,"  a  "  History 
of  Britain,"  a  "  Tract  on  True  Religion,"  &c.  The  most  im- 
portant work  of  his  later  years,  however,  was  his  Latin  "  Treatise 
on  Christian  Doctrine,"  which  is  very  valuable  for  the  light 
which  it  throws  on  his  theological  opinions.  After  the  manu- 
script of  it  had  been  lost  for  many  years,  it  was  at  length 
found  in  an  old  brown  paper  parcel  that  had  been  lying  in  the 
State  Paper  Office  since  1675  ;  and  its  publication,  along  with 
an  English  translation,  by  Bishop  Sumner  in  1825,  gave  occa- 
sion to  Macaulay's  famous  Edinburgh  Review  essay. 

On  November  8th,  1674,  Milton  died.  Four  days  later  he 
was  buried  in  the  chancel  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  attended 
to  the  grave  by  "all  his  learned  and  great  friends  in  London, 
not  without  a  friendly  concourse  of  the  vulgar."  His  personal 
appearance  is  well  known  from  his  portraits.  In  his  youth  he 
was  eminently  beautiful,  with  something  of  feminine  delicacy 
in  his  appearance ;  and  even  in  his  old  age,  when  blind  and 
careworn  by  many  trials,  his  features  retained  a  sort  of  great- 
ness and  nobleness.  "  His  domestic  habits,  so  far  as  they  are 


£22        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

known,  were  those  of  a  severe  student.  He  drank  little  strong 
drink  of  any  kind,  and  fed  without  excess  in  quantity,  and  in 
his  earlier  years  without  delicacy  of  choice.  In  his  youth  he 
studied  late  at  night,  but  afterwards  changed  his  hours,  and 
rested  in  bed  from  nine  to  four  in  the  summer,  and  five  in  the 
winter.  The  course  of  his  day  was  best  known  after  he  was 
blind.  When  he  first  rose,  he  read  a  chapter  in  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  and  then  studied  till  twelve ;  then  took  some  exercise 
for  an  hour  •  then  dined ;  then  played  on  the  organ,  and  sang, 
or  heard  another  sing ;  then  studied  to  six;  then  entertained 
his  visitors  till  eight ;  then  supped,  and,  after  a  pipe  of  tobacco 
and  a  glass  of  water,  went  to  bed/'*  The  "Notes"  of 
Richardson  supply  a  graphic  and  touching  picture  of  Milton 
in  his  closing  years.  "An  aged  clergyman  of  Dorsetshire," 
he  says,  "found  John  Milton  in  a  small  chamber  hung  with 
rusty  green,  sitting  in  an  elbow-chair,  and  dressed  neatly  in 
black ;  pale,  but  not  cadaverous ;  his  hands  and  fingers  gouty, 
and  with  chalkstones.  He  used  also  to  sit  in  a  grey  coarse 
cloth  coat  at  the  door  of  his  house  near  Bunhill  Fields  in  warm, 
sunny  weather,  and  so,  as  well  as  in  his  house,  received  the 
visits  of  people  of  distinguished  parts  as  well  as  quality."  His 
character,  after  all  deductions  have  been  made,  was  a  very 
noble  one.  Not  amiable,  irritable,  exacting,  vindictive,  he 
was  totally  free  from  anything  deserving  the  name  of  vice; 
conscientious,  high-minded,  dignified,  courageous. 

"  Paradise  Lost,"  as  originally  published,  consisted  of  ten 
books.  For  the  manuscript  Milton  received  ^5  ;  and  it  was 
arranged  that  he  should  receive  £$  after  each  of  the  first 
four  editions,  which  were  to  consist  of  1300  copies  each.  In 
1669  Milton  gave  the  publisher,  Simmons,  a  receipt  for  ^5, 
so  that  he  received  for  the  first  edition  just  ;£io.  The  second 
edition  appeared  in  1674.  In  it  the  two  longest  books  of  the 
first  edition,  Books  VII.  and  X.,  were  each  divided  into  two, 
and  some  other  trifling  alterations  were  made.  In  1678  the  third 
edition  appeared,  for  which,  in  1680,  Simmons  paid  Milton's 

*  Johnsoa 


"Paradise  Regained''  123 

widow  ^5,  and  for  £$  more  purchased  all  interest  in  the 
copyright.  All  circumstances  considered,  the  sale  of  the 
book  was  not  bad,  and  Simmons  must  have  made  a  toler- 
ably good  thing  of  his  purchase.  It  would  be  presumption  to 
attempt  to  criticise  a  work  so  great  and  so  well  known  as 
"Paradise  Lost."  The  most  salient  objections  to  its  plan  and" 
execution  are  given  in  Johnson's  unappreciative  but  very  able 
criticism.  Such  trifling  faults  as  he  mentions  are  but  as  a 
feather  in  the  balance  when  weighed  against  the  wonderful 
majesty,  the  consummate  art,  the  strength  and  dignity,  of 
England's  greatest  epic.  The  theme  of  the  poem  is  one  so 
vast,  so  transcending  human  faculties,  so  full  of  difficulties, 
as  to  require  a  poet  of  Milton's  massive  genius  to  grapple 
with.  It  may  be  granted  at  once  that  "  Paradise  Lost "  is 
overlaid  with  learning  ;  that  it  is  occasionally  prolix ;  that  it 
is  sometimes  even  (as  in  the  case  of  the  war  in  heaven) 
grotesque ;  but  no  poem,  taken  as  a  whole,  is  so  uniformly 
grand,  or  soars  up  into  such  splendid  regions  of  eloquence. 
The  verse,  as  in  all  poems  of  first-rate  excellence,  is  an  echo 
to  the  sense.  "  Perhaps  no  man,"  writes  Dr.  Guest,  a  great 
authority  on  such  matters,  "ever  paid  the  same  attention 
to  the  quality  of  his  rhythm  as  Milton.  What  other  poets 
effect  as  it  were  by  chance,  Milton  achieved  by  the  aid  of 
science  and  art;  he  studied  the  aptness  of  his  numbers,  and 
diligently  tutored  an  ear  which  nature  had  gifted  with  the  most 
delicate  sensibility.  In  the  flow  of  his  rhythm,  in  the  quality 
of  his  letter  sounds,  in  the  disposition  of  his  pauses,  his  verse 
almost  ever^/j  the  subject,  and  so  insensibly  does  poetry  blend 
with  this — the  last  beauty  of  exquisite  versification — that  the 
reader  may  sometimes  doubt  whether  it  be  the  thought  itself, 
or  merely  the  happiness  of  its  expression,  which  is  the  source 
of  a  gratification  so  deeply  felt." 

"Paradise  Regained"  had  its  origin  in  a  suggestion  of 
Ellwood  the  Quaker.  Visiting  Milton  in  1665,  the  poet  gave 
him  the  MS.  of  "  Paradise  Lost "  to  read.  When  it  was 
returned,  Milton  asked,  "  How  I  liked  it,  and  what  I  thought 
of  it,  which  I  modestly  but  freely  told  him ;  and,  after  some 


124        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

further  discourse  about  it,  I  pleasantly  said  to  him,  *  Thou 
hast  said  much  here  of  Paradise  lost,  but  what  hast  thou  to 
say  of  Paradise  found  ?  '  He  made  me  no  answer,  but  sat  for 
some  time  in  a  muse ;  then  brake  off  that  discourse  and  fell 
.upon  another  subject.  After  the  sickness  was  over,  and  the 
city  well  cleansed,  and  become  safely  habitable  again,  he 
returned  thither.  And  when,  afterwards,  I  went  to  wait  on 
him  there,  which  I  seldom  failed  of  doing  whenever  my  occa- 
sions drew  me  to  London,  he  showed  me  his  second  poem, 
called  'Paradise  Regained,'  and  in  a  pleasant  tone  said  to 
me,  '  This  is  owing  to  you,  for  you  put  it  into  my  head  by 
the  question  you  put  to  me  at  Chalfont  [where  Milton  was 
staying  while  the  plague  raged  at  London],  which  before  I 
had  not  thought  of.' " 

Milton's  alleged  preference  of  "  Paradise  Lost  "  to  "  Para- 
dise Regained "  is  very  often  given  as  an  example  of  the 
incorrect  judgments  which  authors  are  apt  to  form  of  their 
own  works.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  there  is  no 
evidence  that  he  did  so  prefer  it ;  the  sole  foundation  for  that 
statement  being  a  remark  of  Philips's  that  "  Paradise  Re- 
gained "  was  generally  thought  to  be  much  inferior  to  "  Paradise 
Lost,"  though  Milton  could  "  not  hear  with  patience  any  such 
thing  when  related  to  him."  That  it  is  greatly  inferior  is  indis- 
putable, though  some  passages,  such  as  the  description  of 
Greece,  are  eminently  beautiful.  In  majesty  and  sublimity  it 
cannot  be  compared  to  "  Paradise  Lost." 

"  Samson  Agonistes  "  is  one  of  Milton's  most  characteristic 
poems.  The  subject  was  one  upon  which  his  thoughts  had 
long  dwelt,  but  in  his  old  age  it  came  back  to  him  with 
renewed  intensity  when  his  own  lot  seemed  to  have  so  many 
points  in  common  with  that  of  the  ancient  hero.  Like  Samson, 
he  was  blind  ;  like  Samson,  he  had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
Philistines ;  like  Samson,  he  was  a  Nazarite,  shunning  wine 
and  strong  drink ;  like  Samson,  he  had  incurred  much  misery 
by  his  marriage  to  a  Philistine  woman.  The  drama  is  formed 
upon  Greek  models,  and  imitates  them  in  the  strong  simplicity 
of  its  style.  It  would  be  difficult  to  mention  any  equally  great 


The  "Metaphysical"  Poets.  125 

poem  so  bare  of  ornament,  so  ruthlessly  stripped  of  conven- 
tional poetic  phrases  and  imagery. 

One  of  the  strangest  and  most  undiscerning  criticisms  of 
Johnson  on  Milton  is  that  on  the  Sonnets.  "  Of  the  best," 
he  writes,  "  it  can  only  be  said  that  they  are  not  bad  ;  and 
perhaps  only  the  eighth  and  twenty-first  are  truly  entitled  to 
this  slender  commendation."  The  fact  is  that  they  are  among 
the  finest  sonnets  in  the  language,  unsurpassed  in  strength  and 
dignity  save  by  some  of  Wordsworth's.  In  Milton's  hand,  as 
Wordsworth  says  in  his  Sonnet  on  the  Sonnet — 

"  The  thing  became  a  trumpet,  whence  he  blew 
Soul-animating  strains,  alas  !  too  few." 

The  rage  for  playing  upon  words  and  ideas  which  is  found 
in  many  writers  of  the  Elizabethan  era,  and  most  prominently 
in  Lyly,  culminated  in  the  poets  called  the  metaphysical  school, 
a  name  which  was  given  to  them  by  Johnson,  and  which,  though 
not  very  appropriate,  has  adhered  to  them.  Of  this  school, 
of  which  Lyly  was  the  true  progenitor,  the  characteristics  are 
pointed  out  by  Johnson  in  a  very  masterly  way.  "  The  meta- 
physical poets  were  men  of  learning,  and  to  show  their  learn- 
ing was  their  whole  endeavour;  but  unluckily  resolving  to 
show  it  in  rhyme,  instead  of  writing  poetry  they  only  wrote 
verses,  and  very  often  such  verses  as  stood  the  trial  of  the 
finger  better  than  of  the  ear;  for  the  modulation  was  so 
imperfect  that  they  were  only  found  to  be  verses  by  counting 
the  syllables. 

"  If  the  father  of  criticism  has  rightly  denominated  poetry 
Tt^r,  ^/,u»jr;x»j,  an  imitative  art,  those  writers  will,  without  great 
wrong,  lose  their  right  to  the  name  of  poets,  for  they  cannot  be 
said  to  have  imitated  anything;  they  neither  copied  nature  for 
life ;  neither  painted  the  forms  of  matter,  nor  represented  the 
operations  of  intellect." 

Of  the  "metaphysical"  school,  John  Donne  [1573-1631] 
may  be  said  to  have  been  the  founder.  He  was  the  first  to 
make  fanciful  similitudes,  remote  analogies,  and  verbal  subtle- 


1 26        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

ties  not  only  a  competent  part,  but  actually  the  main  feature 
of  his  verse.  A  very  learned  man,  of  much  original  power, 
and  endowed  wilh  a  real  though  not  a  powerful  vein  of  poeti- 
cal genius,  he  was  totally  unable,  or  at  any  rate  unwilling,  to 
curb  that  fantastic  spirit  which  appears  equally  in  his  sermons, 
which  were  very  famous  in  their  day,  and  in  his  poetry.  His 
works  are  stiff  reading,  the  windings  of  his  perverted  ingenuity 
being  often  difficult  to  trace.  Many  other  writers  followed  the 
affected  strain  adopted  by  Donne,  but  they  are  now  nearly  all 
forgotten  with  the  exception  of  Abraham  Cowley  [1618-1667]. 
He  was  born  in  London,  and  educated  at  Westminster  and  at 
Cambridge.  While  very  young  he  read  and  admired  Spenser's 
"  Faerie  Queen,"  a  poem  which  has  exercised  a  vast  influence 
over  many  juvenile  bards,  and  was  so  fascinated  with  it  that  its 
perusal  made  him,  as  he  says,  irrecoverably  a  poet.  When 
only  fifteen  years  of  age  he  published  a  volume  of  poems, 
which,  if  its  abstract  merits  are  not  great,  at  any  rate  bears 
witness  to  the  wonderfully  precocious  nature  of  his  genius. 
At  Cambridge,  where  he  pursued  his  studies  with  great  zeal, 
he  wrote  the  greater  part  of  his  "  Davideis,"  an  unreadable 
epic,  and  two  or  three  forgotten  comedies.  Ejected  from  Cam- 
bridge in  1643,  on  account  of  his  Royalist  opinions,  by  the 
Puritan  visitors,  he  went  to  Oxford,  where  he  gained  great 
favour  among  prominent  members  of  the  King's  party,  "  by 
the  warmth  of  his  loyalty  and  the  elegance  of  his  conversa- 
tion." When  Oxford  surrendered  to  the  Parliament,  "  he 
followed  the  Queen  to  Paris,  where  he  became  secretary  to 
Lord  Jermyn,  afterwards  Earl  of  St.  Albans,  and  was  em- 
ployed in  such  correspondence  as  the  royal  cause  required, 
and  particularly  in  ciphering  and  deciphering  the  letters  that 
passed  between  the  King  and  Queen,  an  employment  of  the 
highest  confidence  and  honour."  In  1647  appeared  his  "  Mis- 
tress," a  collection  of  amorous  verses,  making  no  pretence  to 
genuine  passion,  and  full  of  conceits,  often  highly  ingenious, 
but  very  unsuitable  to  anything  aspiring  to  the  name  of  poetry. 
In  1656  he  returned  to  England,  where  he  was  arrested  as 
being  in  communication  with  the  exiled  party,  but  was  soon 


Edmund  Waller.  \  2  7 

liberated  on  bail.  In  the  same  year  he  published  his  poems, 
with  a  preface  expressing  his  earnest  desire  "  to  forsake  the 
world  for  ever,  by  retiring  to  some  of  the  American  planta- 
tions." He  then  applied  himself  to  the  study  of  medicine  ; 
and  received  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Physic  in  1657,  but  never 
practised.  He  had,  however,  a  considerable  interest  in  natural 
science,  particularly  in  botany,  and  was  one  of  the  first  members 
of  the  Royal  Society.  After  the  Restoration  his  loyalty  was 
rewarded  by  the  grant  of  certain  lands  of  the  annual  value 
of  about  ^"300.  He  then  retired  to  Chertsea,  where  he 
passed  the  evening  of  his  life  in  the  solitude  he  had  so  often 
longed  for,  without,  however,  finding  that  retirement  had 
all  the  advantages  which  his  imagination  had  pictured  it  to 
possess. 

Some  of  Cowley's  shorter  poems  show  that  if  he  had  not 
been  under  "  metaphysical"  influence  he  might  have  acquired 
great  and  permanent  fame,  if  not  in  the  higher  walks  of  poetry, 
at  any  rate  as  a  writer  of  gay  songs  and  occasional  verses.  He 
had  a  highly  inventive  and  ingenious  intellect ;  his  works  con- 
vey a  strong  impression  of  great  intellectual  powers  misused 
and  wasted.  His  prose  writings,  which  go  into  a  very  small 
volume,  are  excellent,  and  have  none  of  the  faults  of  his 
poems.  "No  author,"  says  Johnson,  "ever  kept  his  verse 
and  his  prose  at  a  greater  distance  from  each  other.  His 
thoughts  are  natural,  and  his  style  has  a  smooth  and  placid 
equability,  which  has  never  yet  obtained  its  due  commenda- 
tion. Nothing  is  far  sought  or  hard  laboured,  but  all  is  easy 
without  feebleness,  and  familiar  without  grossness." 

Among  the  "  metaphysical "  poets  Denham  and  Waller  are 
included  by  Johnson.  But  they  can  scarcely  be  said  to  belong 
to  that  school ;  occasional  passages  in  their  works  may  show 
its  influence,  but  they  are  not  pervaded  by  it.  Denham  [1615- 
1668]  is  remembered  chiefly  as  the  author  of  "  Cooper's  Hill," 
one  of  the  earliest  and  one  of  the  best  of  our  descriptive  poems. 
Waller  [1605-1687]  was  one  of  the  many  men  who  shame- 
fully changed  sides  at  the  Restoration,  employing  his  pen  first 
in  commemorating  the  virtues  of  Cromwell,  and  then  in  pane- 


128        The  Successors  of  the  Elizabethans. 

gyrising  Charles  II.  "  Elegant "  is  the  term  by  which  his 
verses,  dealing  largely  with  trifling  subjects,  may  be  best 
characterised.  In  the  technical  accuracy  of  his  style,  the 
smoothness  of  his  numbers,  and  the  conventional  tone  of  his 
sentiments  he  preluded  the  school  of  Dryden  and  Pope,  which 
long  reigned  paramount  in  English  poetry. 


IV. 

THE  RESTORATION. 

Butler ;  Dryden;  Wycherley,  Congreve,  Vanbntgh,  Farqtihar,  Sheridan ; 
Otivay,  Let,  Rowe  ;  fiat  row,  Tillotson,  Stiilingfleet}  Sherlock^  South; 
Gilbert  Bur  net ;  Locke;  Newton. 

(EVER  was  a  monarch  welcomed  with  more  general 
and  heartfelt  joy  than  was  manifested  when,  in  May, 
1660,  Charles  II.  landed  at  Dover.  Not  only  those 
staunch  cavaliers  who  through  evil  report  and 
through  good  report  had  remained  steadfast  in  their  allegiance 
to  the  "  good  old  cause,"  but  the  nation  at  large  felt  as  glad 
to  be  relieved  from  the  iron  sway  of  Puritanism  as  a  school- 
boy, wearied  of  tasks  and  punishments,  is  when  the  long- 
wished-for  holiday-time  comes  at  last.  All  the  numerous  class 
of  men  who  make  a  point  of  adhering  to  the  winning  side, 
whatever  it  may  happen  to  be,  hastened  to  abjure  Puritanism, 
and  added  their  voices  to  the  general  shout  of  delight  which 
hailed  the  arrival  of  King  Charles.  "  It  is  my  own  fault," 
said  the  King,  "  that  I  had  not  come  back  sooner ;  for  I  find 
nobody  who  does  not  tell  me  that  he  has  always  longed 
for  my  return."  Immediately  the  fierce  reaction  against  the 
enforced  moralities  and  decencies  of  the  Commonwealth  set  in. 
The  stern  moroseness  of  the  Puritans  had  made  their  very 
virtues  so  odious,  that  it  was  considered  that  a  loyal  gentleman 
could  not  better  show  his  detestation  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  his  joy  at  the  Restoration  than  by  indulging  in  vice  openly 
and  unashamed.  The  king  himself,  dissolute,  cool,  clever, 
ready  to  sacrifice  anything  to  the  pursuit  of  pleasure,  and 


1 30  The  Restoration. 

never  making  even  the  faintest  attempt  to  cover  his  excesses 
with  a  cloak  of  outward  decency,  was  a  fair  specimen  of  the 
courtiers  who  surrounded  him ;  not  so  heartless  and  brutal  as 
some,  but  as  sensual,  and  as  destitute  of  honour  and  con- 
science as  the  worst  of  them  could  be.  The  new  literature 
was  a  fair  reflex  of  the  prevalent  social  morality.  The  shame- 
less indecency  of  some  of  the  noble  versifiers  of  the  period 
was  more  than  surpassed  by  the  deliberate  obscenity,  the  gross 
pandering  to  vicious  tastes,  the  heartless  immorality  of  the 
comic  drama,  which  aspired  to  be,  and  no  doubt  was,  a  faith- 
ful representation  of  the  fashionable  society  of  the  time.  In  a 
moral  atmosphere  so  fetid  and  unhealthy,  literature  of  the 
highest  kind  could  not  be  expected  to  flourish,  yet  even  during 
this  age  we  find  not  a  few  writers  whose  works  the  world  would 
not  willingly  let  die. 

About  the  close  of  1662  appeared  a  poem  which  in  striking 
and  witty  fashion  gave  forcible  expression  to  the  long-accumu- 
lated hatred  of  the  Puritans  which  thousands  had  nourished 
in  their  breasts  during  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth.  The 
work  was  admirably  adapted  to  suit  the  prevailing  taste,  and 
its  success  was  instantaneous.  The  King  read  it  and  was  much 
amused  by  it ;  in  all  the  coffee-houses  its  merits  were  discussed 
by  the  wits ;  everywhere  it  was  applauded  as  the  most  success- 
ful of  the  many  assaults  made  on  the  fallen  party.  This  poem 
was  the  first  part  of  the  "  Hudibras  "  of  Samuel  Butler,  who, 
though  a  man  of  fifty,  had  not,  till  the  time  of  its  publication, 
given  any  evidence  of  his  talents  as  a  writer.  Of  the  story  of 
his  life  not  very  much  is  known.  He  was  born  in  1612,  the 
son  of  a  farmer  in  Worcestershire,  and  received  a  good  educa- 
tion at  the  cathedral  school  of  that  town.  It  is  not  known  for 
certain  whether  he  was  ever  sent  to  either  of  the  universities. 
In  his  youth  he  acted  as  secretary  to  Thomas  JefTeries,  a 
justice  of  peace  in  Worcestershire,  and  he  afterwards  held  a 
similar  office  in  the  household  of  the  Countess  of  Kent  in 
Bedfordshire.  In  the  latter  situation  he  had  the  advantage  of 
an  excellent  library,  when,  doubtless,  he  amassed  a  large  store 
of  that  curious  erudition  which  we  find  in  "  Hudibras."  There 


Samuel  Butler.  \  3 1 

also  he  enjoyed  the  conversation  of  the  learned  Selden,  then 
steward  of  the  Countess's  estates.  About  1651  (the  precise 
date  is  uncertain)  he  became  secretary  to  Sir  Samuel  Luke  of 
Cople  Hoo,  also  in  Bedfordshire,  which  seems  a  strange  situa- 
tion for  a  man  of  Butler's  Royalist  opinions  to  have  occupied, 
as  Sir  Samuel  was  one  of  the  leading  Presbyterians  in  the 
county,  and  had  been  a  colonel  in  the  Parliamentary  army 
during  the  Civil  Wars.  After  the  Restoration  Butler  was,  pet- 
haps  on  account  of  his  known  loyalty,  promoted  to  the  office 
of  secretary  to  the  Earl  of  Carbery,  Lord  President  of  the  prin- 
cipality of  Wales.  This  situation  he  held  for  about  a  year, 
quitting  it  some  months  before  the  publication  of  the  first  part 
of  "  Hudibras,"  which,  though  bearing  on  its  title-page  the 
date  1663,  was  really  issued  in  November  1662.  A  good 
indication  of  the  avidity  with  which  the  satire  was  received  is 
afforded  by  an  entry  in  the  amusing  diary  of  Samuel  Pepys, 
that  delightful  book  of  gossip,  which  constitutes  our  most 
valuable  memorial  of  the  social  life  of  the  period  over  which 
it  extends  (1660-69).  "To  the  wardrobe,"  we  find  Samuel 
writing  on  the  26th  of  December  1662,  "  and  hither  came  Mr. 
Battersby;  and  we  falling  into  discourse  of  a  new  book  of 
drollery  in  use  called  *  Hudibras,'  I  would  needs  go  find  it 
out,  and  met  with  it  at  the  Temple:  cost  me  25.  6d.  But 
when  I  come  to  read  it,  it  is  so  silly  an  abuse  of  the  presbyter 
knight  going  to  the  wars,  that  I  am  ashamed  of  it ;  and  by 
and  by  meeting  at  Mr.  Townsend's  at  dinner,  I  sold  it  to  him 
for  i8d."  Finding  that  as  time  went  on  "Hudibras-"  was  as 
much  talked  of  as  ever,  Pepys  soon  repented  that  he  had  dis- 
posed of  the  book  so  hastily.  "  To  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,"  he 
writes  on  February  6,  1663,  "and  it  being  too  soon  to  go 
home  to  dinner,  I  walked  up  and  down,  and  looked  upon  the 
outside  of  the  new  theatre  building  in  Coven t  Garden,  which 
will  be  very  fine ;  and  so  to  a  bookseller's  in  the  Strand,  and 
there  bought  'Hudibras'  again,  it  being  certainly  some  ill- 
humour  to  be  so  against  that  which  all  the  world  cries  up  to 
be  an  example  of  wit ;  for  which  I  am  resolved  once  more  to 
read  him,  to  see  whether  I  can  find  it  or  no."  The  great  sue- 


132  The  Restoration. 

cess  of  the  first  part  of  "  Hudibras "  evoked  a  crowd  of 
imitations  and  spurious  continuations,  but  these  were  all  put 
in  the  shade  when,  late  in  1663,  the  genuine  "Second  Part" 
appeared.  The  desire  to  see  the  Puritans  satirised  was  still  as 
strong  as  ever,  and  since,  in  point  of  wit  and  drollery,  the  new 
part  was  in  no  way  inferior  to  its  predecessor,  it  was  received 
with  equal  enthusiasm.  Fourteen  years  after,  in  1678,  the 
poem  was  completed.  By  this  time  the  nation  was  beginning 
to  realise  that  the  rigour  and  gloom  of  Puritanism  were,  after 
all,  preferable  to  debauchery  and  prodigality,  and  probably 
the  conclusion  of  "  Hudibras  "  was  not  so  universally  applauded 
as  the  two  preceding  parts.  Butler  died  in  1680,  a  poverty- 
stricken,  neglected,  disappointed  man. 

"  On  Butler  who  can  think  without  just  rage, 
The  glory  and  the  scandal  of  the  age? 
Fair  were  his  hopes  when  first  he  came  to  town, 
Met  everywhere  with  welcome  of  renown. 


But  what  reward  had  he  for  all  at  last, 
After  a  life  in  dull  expectance  past? 
The  wretch,  at  summing  up  his  misspent  days, 
Found  nothing  left  but  poverty  and  praise  : 
Of  all  his  gains  by  verse  he  could  not  save 
Enough  to  purchase  flannel  and  a  grave. 
Reduced  to  want,  he  in  due  time  fell  sick, 
Was  fain  to  die,  and  be  interred  on  tick ; 
And  well  might  bless  the  fever  that  was  sent 
To  rid  him  hence,  and  his  worse  fate  prevent." 

These  vigorous  lines  are  by  John  Oldham  (1653-83),  a 
contemporary  satirist.  They  do  not  exaggerate  the  facts  of 
the  case.  Charles  and  his  courtiers  praised  Butler  and  left 
him  in  indigence.  Perhaps  this  was  partly  owing  to  Butler's 
peculiar  temperament :  he  was  a  shy,  eccentric,  unpliable  man, 
not  likely  to  put  himself  about  to  gain  the  favour  of  any  one. 
But  none  the  less  was  it  disgraceful  of  the  victorious  party  to 
leave  unrewarded  the  author  of  the  most  telling  and  pungent 
satire  on  their  opponents.  The  inexhaustible  wit  of  "  Hudi- 
bras," its  exuberant  wealth  of  fancy,  its  frequent  happy  expres- 
sions and  flashes  of  sound  sense  amid  all  its  comic  extrava- 


Butlers  "  Hudibrasr  1 33 

gances,  have  saved  it  from  the  common  fate  of  political  satires. 
The  idea  of  the  poem  is  borrowed  from  "  Don  Quixote,"  but 
otherwise  the  work  is  entirely  original ;  there  is  nothing  in 
English  literature  which  has  any  close  resemblance  to  it.  Of 
course  it  is  exceedingly  unjust  to  the  Puritan  party,  violating 
facts  so  grossly  as  to  represent  them  as  cowards ;  but  in  such 
productions  we  do  not  look  for  impartiality.  The  jolting 
octo-syllabic  verse  in  which  it  is  written  lends  itself  admirably 
to  the  odd  turns  and  queer  rhymes  in  which  Butler  delights. 
Like  Mr.  Browning  in  our  own  day,  Butler  had  a  sort  of  genius 
for  finding  out  rhymes  the  most  unexpected  and  out  of  the 
way.  The  great  fault  of  "  Hudibras  "  is  that  it  is  too  long ; 
there  are  few  even  of  those  who  enter  most  thoroughly  into 
the  spirit  of  the  poem  whose  attention  does  not  begin  to  flag 
before  they  reach  the  end.  In  1659,  many  years  after  his 
death,  Butler's  "  Genuine  Prose  Remains "  were  published. 
They  possess  much  of  the  coarse  vigour  of  his  poetry.  We 
append  a  few  specimens,  which  have  a  decidedly  Hudibrastic 
flavour.  "  Hudibras  "  itself,  it  may  be  mentioned,  was  to  some 
extent  composed  from  prose  hints  which  the  author  had  jotted 
down  as  they  occurred  to  him. 

"  One  that  is  proud  of  his  birth  is  like  a  turnip — there  is 
nothing  good  of  him  but  that  which  is  underground." 

"  His  (the  courtly  fop's)  tailor  is  his  creator,  and  makes  him 
of  nothing ;  and  though  he  lives  by  faith  in  him,  he  is  per- 
petually committing  iniquities  against  him." 

"  A  proud  man  is  a  fool  in  fermentation." 

"  When  he  (a  versifier)  writes,  he  commonly  steers  the  sense 
of  his  lines  by  the  rhyme  that  is  at  the  end  of  them,  as  butchers 
do  calves  by  the  tail." 

"  He  (the  amateur  of  science)  is  like  an  elephant,  that  though 
he  cannot  swim,  yet  of  all  creatures  most  delights  to  walk  by 
the  riverside." 

"  Hudibras"  could  not  be  adequately  described  or  criticised 
unless  large  extracts  from  it  were  given.  Except  his  hatred 
of  the  Puritans  and  the  clearness  of  his  style,  Butler  had  not 
many  features  in  common  with  his  contemporaries  ;  in  his 


1 34  The  Restoration. 

mode  of  literary  treatment  he  neither  influenced  nor  was  in- 
fluenced by  them  to  any  great  extent.  The  representative 
man  of  the  Restoration  era  is  John  Dryden,  who  in  all  respects 
was  pre-eminently  the  child  of  his  age.  It  has  been  truly  said 
that  the  literary  history  of  England  for  nearly  a  century  and  a 
half  centres  round  three  personalities,  each  in  his  day  the  focus 
of  all  that  was  said  or  written  that  was  either  wise  or  witty. 
"  He  who  knows  minutely  the  lives  of  Dryden,  of  Pope,  and 
of  Dr.  Johnson,  with  their  sayings  and  doings,  their  friendships 
and  their  enmities,  knows  intimately  the  course  of  English 
letters  and  poetry  from  the  Restoration  to  the  French  Revolu- 
tion." Of  Dryden  especially  it  is  true  that  by  tracing  the 
course  of  his  literary  activity  we  may  form  a  very  fair  notion 
of  all  the  characteristics  and  tendencies  of  the  literature  of  his 
epoch.  Dryden  was  born  in  1631  at  the  Vicarage  of  Aid- 
winkle  All  Saints,  in  Northamptonshire.  He  was  of  good 
descent,  his  father  being  the  son  of  Sir  Erasmus  Dryden,  a 
baronet  whose  family  originally  came  from  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  Border.  Of  Dryden's  youth  very  little  is  known  :  indeed 
the  information  we  possess  respecting  him  at  all  periods  of  his 
life  is  not  nearly  so  copious  or  so  trustworthy  as  could  be 
wished.  About  1642  he  entered  Westminster  School,  of  which 
the  then  head-master  was  Busby,  whose  flogging  propensities 
have  been  widely  celebrated.  With  all  his  severity,  Busby  was 
a  most  successful  teacher,  and  Dryden,  who  seems  to  have 
been  a  favourite  with  him,  always  regarded  him  with  affectionate 
respect.  From  Westminster,  Dryden,  in  1650,  went  to  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  remained  about  seven  years.  During  the 
earlier  part  of  his  residence  there  he  got  into  trouble  with  the 
university  authorities,  and  he  does  not  appear  to  have  after- 
wards cherished  very  kindly  feelings  towards  his  alma  mater. 
In  one  of  his  prologues  to  the  University  of  Oxford,  he,  in  an 
indirect  manner,  shows  his  dislike  to  the  sister  university  :— 

"  Oxford  to  him  a  dearer  name  shall  be 
Than  his  own  mother  university  ; 
Thebes  did  his  green  unknowing  youth  engage, 
He  chooses  Athens  in  his  riper  age." 


John  Dry  den.  135 

Leaving  Cambridge  in  1657,  Dryden  settled  in  London,  and 
attached  himself  to  his  cousin,  Sir  Gilbert  Pickering,  who  was 
high  in  the  favour  of  the  Protector.  Though  over  twenty- 
seven  years  of  age,  he  had  as  yet  given  very  slender  evidences 
of  his  literary  power.  A  few  occasional  verses,  in  which  it  is 
hard  to  discern  any  indications  of  genius,  were  all  that  he  had 
written.  The  earliest  of  these,  a  poem  lamenting  Lord  Henry 
Hastings,  who  died  of  small-pox  in  the  last  year  of  Dryden's 
residence  at  Westminster,  shows,  in  an  amusing  way,  how 
Dryden's  receptive  mind  had  been  impressed  by  the  conceits 
of  Cowley  and  the  other  poets  of  the  metaphysical  school. 
Describing  the  manner  of  his  Lordship's  death,  the  youthful 
poet  says — 

"  Each  little  pimple  had  a  tear  in  it, 
To  wail  the  fault  its  rising  did  commit, 
Which,  rebel-like,  with  its  own  lord  at  strife, 
Thus  made  an  insurrection  'gainst  his  life. 
Or  were  these  gems  sent  to  adorn  his  skin, 
The  cabinet  of  a  richer  soul  within  ? 
No  comet  need  foretell  his  change  drew  on 
Whose  corpse  might  seem  a  constellation." 

This  was  out-heroding  Herod  ;  the  metaphysical  poets,  with 
all  their  curious  fancies,  never  reached  a  greater  height  of 
absurdity  than  this  ;  and  Dryden,  though  it  was  many  years 
later  before  he  altogether  abandoned  such  conceits,  never 
again  indulged  in  them  so  extravagantly.  In  1658  he  published 
his  first  poem  of  merit,  the  heroic  stanzas  on  the  death  of 
Cromwell.  The  metre  of  the  poem,  dignified  but  rather 
cumbrous  and  difficult  to  handle,  is  imitated  from  the  "  Gondi- 
bert "  of  Sir  William  Davenant,  a  poet  and  playwright  of  con- 
siderable merit,  who  became  Laureate  after  the  Restoration. 
When  Charles  became  king,  Dryden  employed  the  pen  which 
had  panegyrised  the  Protector  in  panegyrising  the  new  monarch. 
For  this  sudden  change  of  opinion  the  best  excuse  that  can  be 
given  is  that  stated  by  Johnson  :  "  The  reproach  of  inconstancy 
was,  on  this  occasion,  shared  with  such  numbers  that  it  produced 
neither  hatred  or  disgrace  ;  if  he  changed,  he  changed  with 


136  The  Restoration. 

the  nation."  "  Astraea  Redux,"  a  poem  celebrating  the  return 
of  Charles,  appeared  in  1660,  the  "Panegyric  on  the  Corona- 
tion" in  1 66 1,  and  the  "Epistle  to  the  Lord  Chancellor" 
(Clarendon)  in  1662.  All  these  poems  are  in  the  heroic 
couplet,  the  form  of  verse  over  which  Dryden  was  afterwards 
to  gain  such  a  mastery.  In  1663  appeared  the  "  Epistle  to  Dr. 
Charleton,"  which  Hallam  very  unjustly  thought  was  the  first 
of  Dryden's  works  that  possessed  any  considerable  merit. 

At  the  close  of  1663,  Dryden  married  Lady  Elizabeth 
Howard,  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Berkshire.  This 
union  is  thought,  though  on  no  very  certain  evidence,  to  have 
been  an  unhappy  one.  Some  months  before  his  marriage, 
Dryden's  first  play,  the  "  Wild  Gallant,"  was  acted.  During  the 
Commonwealth  the  drama  had  lived  in  a  stealthy  and  pre- 
carious kind  of  way,  forbidden  by  the  law  and  frowned  upon 
by  all  who  wished  to  stand  well  with  the  Puritans.  At  the 
Restoration  it  revived,  and  became,  in  fact,  the  best  market 
which  a  man  of  literary  talents  could  carry  his  wares  to.  It 
may  be  safely  asserted  that  a  writer,  possessed  like  Dryden  of 
a  versatile  genius,  will,  in  almost  every  case,  employ  himself 
mainly  in  the  kind  of  work  which  he  finds  most  remunerative, 
even  though  it  may  not  be  the  kind  of  work  for  which  he  is 
best  adapted.  It  is  idle,  therefore,  to  lament  that  so  much  of 
Dryden's  time  should  have  been  occupied  in  the  composition 
of  plays,  none  of  which  is  of  such  value  that  it  would  be  any 
serious  loss  to  literature  to  be  deprived  of  it,  and  which  several 
writers  of  his  time  could  have  written  almost,  if  not  quite, 
as  well.  But  we  have  good  cause  to  lament  that  he  should 
have  prostituted  his  genius  by,  in  his  comic  dramas,  pander- 
ing shamelessly  and  recklessly  to  the  licentious  tastes  of  his 
audience.  Altogether  he  wrote  twenty-eight  plays,  the  first 
appearing,  as  above  stated,  in  1663,  the  last,  "  Love  Trium- 
phant," in  1694.  In  his  comedies,  indecency  frequently  takes 
the  place  of  wit,  and  their  merit  in  other  respects  is  small. 
"  I  know,"  wrote  Dryden  himself,  "  I  am  not  so  fitted  by 
nature  to  write  comedy.  My  conversation  is  slow  and  dull, 
ray  humour  saturnine  and  reserved.  So  that  those  who  decry 


Dry  dens  Plays.  137 

my  comedies  do  me  no  injury  except  it  be  in  point  of  profit ; 
reputation  in  them  is  the  last  thing  to  which  I  shall  pretend." 
Dryden's  serious  dramas  fall  into  two  well-marked  divisions. 
The  earlier  of  them  are  written  in  the  pompous  heroic  style 
which  had  been  made  fashionable  in  England  by  Sir  William 
Davenant,  and  the  tragic  portions  are,  like  the  similar  parts 
of  Davenant's  plays,  written  in  rhyming  couplets.  A  good 
specimen  of  Dryden's  dramas  of  rhymed  declamation,  as  they 
may  be  called,  is  afforded  by  the  "  Conquest  of  Granada" 
(1670).  The  sublime  rants  of  its  hero,  Almanzor,  are  difficult 
to  regard  in  other  than  a  humorous  light,  though,  .singularly 
enough,  they  seem  to  have  inspired  Dr.  Johnson  with  a  sort 
of  admiration.  "  All  the  rays  of  romantic  heat,"  he  says, 
"  whether  amorous  or  warlike,  glow  in  Almanzor  by  a  kind 
of  concentration.  He  is  above  all  laws ;  he  is  exempt  from 
all  restraints ;  he  ranges  the  world  at  will,  and  governs  wher- 
ever he  appears.  He  fights  without  inquiring  the  cause,  and 
loves  in  spite  of  the  obligations  of  justice,  of  rejection  by  his 
mistress,  and  of  prohibition  from  the  dead.  Yet  the  scenes 
are,  for  the  most  part,  delightful ;  they  exhibit  a  kind  of  illus- 
trious depravity  and  majestic  madness,  such  as,  if  it  is  some- 
times despised,  is  often  reverenced,  and  in  which  the  majestic 
mingles  with  the  astonishing."  In  1668  Dryden  had  defended 
rhymed  tragedies  in  an  "  Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy,"  which  first 
showed  his  skill  in  prose  composition  and  his  power  of  acute 
and  discerning  criticism.  He  did  not,  however,  remain  stead- 
fast to  the  practice  he  then  advocated.  In  1671  appeared  the 
famous  burlesque  called  the  "Rehearsal,"  which  inflicted  a 
severe  blow  on  the  popularity  of  rhymed  tragedies.  This  very 
amusing  play,  which  will  bear  reading  even  by  those  whose 
knowledge  of  the  literature  of  the  age  is  not  sufficient  to  enable 
them  to  appreciate  all  its  allusions,  was  the  work  of  the  Duke  of 
Buckingham,  assisted  by  Samuel  Butler,  Thomas  Sprat,  after- 
wards made  a  bishop,  and  Martin  Clifford,  the  head-master  of 
the  Charterhouse.  Though  it  contained  allusions  to  several 
other  dramatists  of  the  time,  the  main  object  of  the  "  Rehearsal" 
was  to  caricature  Dryden,  who  is  represented  under  the  name 
7 


138  The  Restoration. 

of  Bayes,  a  nickname  which  stuck  to  him  throughout  life. 
Not  only  his  literary  but  his  personal  peculiarities,  his  dress, 
his  voice,  his  gesture,  his  habit  of  taking  snuff,  his  favourite 
expletives  are  mercilessly  ridiculed.  This  attack  Dryden  bore 
very  stoically,  making  no  reply,  and  continuing  to  write  rhymed 
tragedies  as  before.  At  length  his  own  good  sense  showed 
him  that  it  would  be  better  to  abandon  the  practice,  and 
return  to  the  form  of  verse  which  had  been  employed  with 
such  eminent  success  by  the  Elizabethan  dramatists.  About 
1678  appeared  "  All  for  Love,"  his  first  drama  in  blank  verse, 
and  one  of  his  best  plays  from  every  point  of  view.  There  was 
something  of  audacity  in  writing  a  play  on  a  subject  which  had 
already  been  handled  by  the  greatest  dramatist  the  world  has 
ever  seen  in  "  Anthony  and  Cleopatra."  Yet  with  such  vigour 
and  force  is  "  All  for  Love  "  written,  that  it  can  sustain  compari- 
son with  the  work  of  Shakespeare,  and  still  be  admired.  Dryden's 
other  most  famous  play  in  blank  verse  is  "  Don  Sebastian  * 
(1689),  one  scene  in  which,  the  altercation  between  Sebastian 
and  Dorax,  used  to  be  very  often  given  in  books  of  extracts. 

Having  thus  briefly  dealt  with  Dryden  as  a  dramatist,  we 
now  return  to  trace  the  course  of  his  life.  "  Annus  Mirabilis  " 
appeared  in  1667,  which,  from  a  literary  point  of  view,  is  one 
of  the  most  important  years  of  the  seventeenth  century.  It 
witnessed  the  publication  of  "Paradise  Lost,"  the  death  of 
Denham,  Cowley,  and  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  the  birth  of  Swift 
and  Arbuthnot.  "  Annus  Mirabilis,"  which  is  written  in  the 
same  metre  as  "  Astraea  Redux,"  commemorates  the  events 
of  the  "wonderful  year"  1666,  the  great  fire  of  London,  and 
the  Dutch  war.  Though  frequently  disfigured  by  "  meta- 
physical "  conceits,  it  is  a  powerful  piece  of  writing,  and  at 
once  made  Dryden  the  most  illustrious  poet  of  the  day,  Milton 
of  course  excepted.  His  "  Discourse  on  Dramatic  Poesy " 
raised  him  to  similar  rank  as  a  prose  writer;  and  in  1670 
his  merits  in  both  capacities  were  recognised  by  his  being 
appointed  historiographer-royal  and  poet  laureate.  In  the 
latter  capacity  he  succeeded  Sir  William  Davenant,  who 
died  in  1668.  The  two  offices  brought  him  a  salary  of 


Dry  dens  Satires.  \  39 

^£200  a  year,  .to  which  was  afterwards  added  a  pension  of 
;£ioo  bestowed  on  him  by  Charles.  The  income  thus  derived 
was,  however,  to  a  considerable  extent  a  nominal  one ;  for 
Charles  was  a  very  bad  paymaster,  and  Dry  den's  salary  was 
frequently  in  arrear.  Nevertheless  his  financial  position 
about  this  time  was  tolerably  prosperous.  He  had  a  small 
estate  worth  about  ;£8o  a  year,  which  he  had  inherited  from 
his  father ;  and  from  his  dramas,  and  a  lucrative  contract  he 
entered  into  with  the  players,  he  obtained  a  considerable 
revenue.  For  fourteen  years  after  the  publication  of  "  Annus 
Mirabilis  "  Dryden  employed  himself  in  dramatic  work,  adding 
little  to  his  permanent  fame,  but  acquiring,  by  prolonged  and 
laborious  practice,  a  consummate  mastery  of  the  heroic  couplet 
In  1681,  when  party  spirit  ran  very  high  about  the  Exclusion 
Bill,  he  gave  the  first  specimen  of  his  wonderful  power  of 
reasoning  in  verse  and  his  extraordinary  talent  for  satire  by 
the  publication  of  "  Absalom  and  Achitophel."  The  plan  of 
the  poem  is  not  original,  but  the  mode  of  treatment  is  emin- 
ently so.  In  vigorous  couplets  he  gives  us  a  matchless  series 
of  political  portraits,  strong,  mordant,  incisive,  and  always 
having  the  crowning  merit  of  keeping  sufficiently  close  to 
actual  fact  to  save  them  from  having  the  semblance  of  carica- 
ture. Interspersed  with  these  are  occasional  speeches  relat- 
ing the  sentiments  of  the  different  characters  from  Dryden's 
point  of  view.  Dryden  never  surpassed  this  his  first  essay  in 
the  field  of  satire  :  the  energy  of  genius,  it  has  been  well  said, 
has  transformed  a  party  pamphlet  in  verse  into  a  work  which 
men  of  all  ages  and  of  all  opinions  have  agreed  to  recognise 
as  a  masterpiece.  When,  on  the  acquittal  of  Shaftesbury, 
who  had  been  tried  on  a  charge  of  high  treason,  a  medal  was 
struck  by  the  joyful  Whigs  to  commemorate  the  event,  Dryden 
followed  up  "  Absalom  and  Achitophel "  by  another  satire, 
"The  Medal,"  in  which  "he  hurled  at  Shaftesbury  and  his 
party  a  philippic  which,  for  rancorous  abuse,  for  lofty  and  un- 
compromising scorn,  for  coarse,  scathing,  ruthless  denuncia- 
tion, couched  in  diction  which  now  swells  to  the  declamatory 
grandeur  of  Juvenal,  and  now  sinks  to  the  homely  vulgarity 


I4.O  The  Restoration. 

of  Swift,  has  no  parallel  in  literature."1  Of  the  innumerable 
replies  and  attacks  on  the  author  which  "Absalom  and 
Achitophel  "  and  "  The  Medal  "  called  forth,  Dryden  took  no 
notice,  till  Thomas  Shadvvell,  a  dramatist  of  no  inconsiderable 
talents  but  of  infamous  life,  assailed  his  private  character  in 
terms  so  gross  and  libellous  as  to  imperatively  demand  a 
rejoinder.  Of  him  Dryden  determined  to  make  a  terrible 
example.  This  he  did  in  "  MacFlecknoe,"  which  was  pub- 
lished late  in  1682.  Richard  Flecknoe,  an  Irish  priest,  who 
died  in  1678,  and  who  had  been  the  favourite  butt  of  many 
satirists,  is  represented  as  having  chosen  Shadwell  for  his 
successor  as  King  of  the  Realms  of  Nonsense  in  a  mock-heroic 
strain  which  must  have  been  infinitely  galling  to  the  subject 
of  ridicule.  Shadwell's  coronation  is  then  described,  and  the 
poem  concludes  with  a  ferocious  assault  which  bears  too 
many  traces  of  personal  bitterness.  About  a  month  after 
"  Mac-Flecknoe "  appeared  the  second  part  of  "  Absalom 
and  Achitophel."  Most  of  it  was  written  by  Nahum  Tate,  a 
worthy  though  dull  man,  but  two  hundred  and  fifty  lines  are 
entirely  from  Dryden's  pen,  and  traces  of  his  hand  may  be 
perceived  in  other  parts  of  the  poem.  In  the  portion  which 
is  wholly  his  he  returned  to  the  attack  on  Shadwell,  and  also 
took  the  opportunity  of  gibbeting  Elkanah  Settle,  a  worthless 
versifier  and  playwright,  who  had  occupied  a  rather  pro- 
minent place  among  his  numerous  assailants. 

In  the  same  year,  1682,  the  " annns  miralilis"  of  his 
genius,  Dryden  took  a  new  departure.  In  that  year  he  pub- 
lished "  Religio  Laici,"  which  Scott  has  described  as  one  of 
the  most  admirable  poems  of  the  language.  "  It  is,"  says  Mr. 
George  Saintsbury,  in  his  excellent  little  book  on  Dryden, 
"  also  one  of  the  most  singular.  That  a  man  who  had  never 
previously  displayed  any  particular  interest  in  theological 
questions,  and  who  had  reached  the  age  of  fifty-one  with  a 

i  Quarterly  Revieiv,  October  1878,  art.  "  Dryden,"  one  of  the  ablest 
and  most  vigorous  Review  articles  of  the  kind  which  has  appeared  for 
many  a  year.  Bating  its  opinions,  it  might  very  well  have  been  written  by 
Macau  lay.  It  is,  we  believe,  by  Mr.  J.  Churton  Collins. 


Dry  dens  Change  of  Religion.  1 4 1 

reputation  derived,  until  quite  recently,  in  the  main  from  the 
composition  of  love-plays,  should  appear  before  his  public  of 
pleasure-seekers  with  a  serious  argument  in  verse  on  the  credi- 
bility of  the  Christian  religion  and  the  merits  of  the  Anglican 
form  of  doctrine  and  church  government,  would  nowadays  be 
something  more  than  a  nine  days'  wonder.  In  Dryden's  time 
it  was  somewhat  less  surprising.  The  spirit  of  theological 
controversy  was  bred  in  the  bone  of  the  seventeenth  century." 
"  Religio  Laici"  is  a  fine  specimen  of  Dryden's  talent  for 
reasoning  in  verse ;  but  he  was  soon  to  show  that  the  argu- 
ments in  it  as  to  the  superiority  of  the  Church  of  England 
over  other  ecclesiastical  institutions  had  not  convinced  himself. 
In  1685  Charles  II.  died,  and  James  II.  ascended  the  throne. 
Every  one  knows  how  sincere  a  Catholic  the  new  sovereign 
was,  and  how  assiduously  he  strove  that  all  around  him  should 
conform  to  his  own  faith.  In  1686  Dryden  joined  the  Church 
of  Rome. 

It  was  so  obviously  Dryden's  interest,  both  from  pecuniary 
and  from  other  points  of  view,  to  become  a  Catholic  at  this 
time,  that  the  sincerity  of  his  conversion  has  naturally  been 
much  discussed.  Some  critics  have  thought  they  discovered 
in  the  "  Religio  Laici,"  where  he  says — 

"Such  an  omniscient  Church  we  wish  indeed, 
'Tvvere  worth  both  Testaments  cast  in  the  Creed," 

an  indication  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  Church  of  England; 
but  this  is  very  doubtful.  The  true  explanation  of  Dryden's 
sudden  change  of  religion  seems  to  be  that,  prompted  at  first 
by  self-interest  to  favour  the  Church  of  Rome,  he  at  length 
became  really  attached  to  it.  With  characteristic  readiness  he 
now  set  himself  to  defend  Catholicism.  The  "  Hind  and  the 
Panther,"  in  which  he  defends  his  newly  adopted  faith  so  well 
that  Hallam  declares  that  no  candid  mind  could  doubt  the 
sincerity  of  one  who  could  argue  so  powerfully  and  subtly  in 
its  favour,  appeared  in  1687.  It  is  an  allegory;  "the  milk- 
white  hind,  unspotted  and  unchanged,"  representing  the 
Church  of  Rome  ;  "  the  panther,  sure  the  noblest,  next  the 


142  7 'lie  Restoration. 

hind,  and  fairest  creature  of  the  spotted  kind,"  the  Church  of 
England  ;  a  bear,  the  Independents ;  a  boar,  the  Baptists,  and 
so  on.  When  the  Revolution  came,  in  1688,  Dryden  had  an 
opportunity  of  proving  the  sincerity  of  his  convictions.  Had 
he  apostatised,  there  is  little  doubt  that  he  might  have  retained 
his  offices  of  historiographer-royal  and  poet  laureate ;  but,  to 
the  credit  of  his  fair  fame,  he  remained  constant  to  the  faith 
he  had  adopted.  His  prospects  were  now  gloomy  enough, 
and  he  was  obliged  to  labour  hard  to  earn  a  living  by  his  pen. 
In  1697  he  published  his  translation  of  Virgil,  the  result  of 
three  years'  toil.  Previous  to  its  publication  he  had  trans- 
lated Persius  and  part  of  Juvenal,  as  well  as  other  scattered 
pieces,  but  these  efforts  were  thrown  into  the  shade  by  his 
Virgil,  which,  though  freely  translated  and  very  little  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  the  original,  is  nevertheless  a  noble  achieve- 
ment. The  chief  works  of  the  remaining  years  of  Dryden's 
life  are  the  well-known  ode  commonly  called  "Alexander's 
Feast "  and  his  "  Fables,"  stories  paraphrased  from  Chaucer 
and  Boccaccio,  interesting  not  only  on  account  of  their  intrinsic 
merits,  which  are  in  many  respects  great,  but  also  as  showing 
the  extraordinary  versatility  of  Dryden's  genius,  which  enabled 
him,  when  an  old  man  of  sixty-eight,  to  win  laurels  in  a  new 
field  of  literature.  They  were  published  in  1699,  a  few  months 
before  his  death,  which  occurred  in  April  1700.  The  splendid 
literary  services  which  he  had  rendered  to  his  country  were 
recognised  by  his  being  buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  where 
he  was  laid  in  Poet's  Corner,  beside  Chaucer  and  Cowley. 

"We  are  enabled,  from  the  various  paintings  and  engravings 
of  Dryden,  as  well  as  from  the  less  flattering  delineations  of 
the  satirists  of  his  time,  to  form  a  tolerable  idea  of  his  face 
and  person.  In  youth  he  appears  to  have  been  handsome 
and  of  a  pleasing  countenance ;  when  his  age  was  more 
advanced,  he  was  corpulent  and  florid,  which  procured  him 
the  nickname  attached  to  him  by  Rochester  ['  Poet  Squab  ']. 
In  his  latter  days,  distress  and  disappointment  probably  chilled 
the  fire  of  his  eye,  and  the  advance  of  age  destroyed  the 
animation  of  his  countenance.  Still,  however,  his  portraits 


Dryderis  Characteristics.  143 

bespeak  the  look  and  features  of  genius ;  especially  that  in 
which  he  is  drawn  with  his  waving  grey  hairs."1  During  his 
lifetime  and  afterwards,  Dryden's  moral  character  was  fiercely 
assailed  by  a  crowd  of  opponents,  including  Bishop  Burnet, 
who  went  so  far  as  to  describe  him  as  "  a  monster  of  impurity 
of  all  sorts."  Very  little  credence,  however,  is  to  be  placed  in 
such  statements;  and  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
Dryden's  life  compared  very  favourably  with  that  of  most  of 
his  literary  contemporaries.  Of  his  habits  not  much  has  been 
related.  He  was  fond  of  snuff,  in  which  he  indulged  largely. 
Fishing  was  the  only  sport  which  he  practised,  and  in  it  he 
attained  considerable  proficiency.  After  spending  the  morning 
in  study,  he  would  adjourn  to  Will's  Coffee-house,  where  he 
occupied  the  same  undisputed  pre-eminence  which  Addison 
afterwards  held  at  Button's,  and  where  his  dicta  as  to  the 
literary  matters  of  the  day  were  eagerly  listened  to  and  care- 
fully treasured  up.  In  his  disposition  he  was  kind  and 
generous,  "  ready  and  gentle,"  says  Congreve,  "  in  his  correc- 
tion of  the  errors  of  any  writer  who  thought  fit  to  consult 
him,  and  full  as  ready  and  patient  to  admit  of  the  reprehen- 
sion of  others  in  respect  of  his  own  oversights  and  mistakes." 
Dryden  was  the  first  poet  and  the  first  prose  writer  of  his 
time.  There  is  no  other  English  author  of  whom  this  could 
be  said,  but  it  is  strictly  and  literally  true  of  him.  As  a  poet, 
indeed,  he  stood  so  far  above  his  contemporaries  that  there  is 
none  fit  to  be  mentioned  in  the  same  breath  with  him.  Satire 
was  his  peculiar  province,  but  he  also  won  distinction  in  other 
fields.  His  didactic  poems  are  among  the  best  of  their  kind, 
and  his  odes,  especially  the  one  "To  the  Memory  of  Miss 
Anne  Killegrew"  (1686),  which  Johnson  called  the  noblest 
in  the  language,  as  perhaps  it  was  in  his  time,  and  "  Alex- 
ander's Feast,"  are  fine  pieces  of  concerted  music.  There 
was  in  Dryden's  nature  a  certain  coarseness  of  moral  fibre, 
very  disagreeably  apparent  in  his  plays,  which  occasionally 
detracts  from  the  value  of  his  poems;  but  this  is  atoned 

1  Scott 


144  The  Restoration. 

for  by  his  masculine  strength,  his  width  of  range,  and  his  rich 
command  of  expression.  As  a  prose  writer,  his  works  of  most 
abiding  value  are  the  "Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesy,"  already 
mentioned,  and  the  prefaces  which  he  almost  invariably  added 
to  his  publications. 

"  Read  all  the  prefaces  of  Dryden, 
For  these  the  critics  much  confide  in, 
Though  only  writ  at  first  for  filling, 
To  raise  the  volume's  price  a  shilling." 

These  doggerel  lines  of  Swift  show  the  esteem  in  which  the 
critical  remarks  on  his  art  with  which  Dryden  was  wont  to 
enrich  his  poems  were  held  by  his  contemporaries.  Occa- 
sionally they  are  found  embedded  in  the  very  fulsome  dedica- 
tions with  which,  after  the  fashion  of  his  age,  he  addressed  his 
patrons,  occasionally  in  explanatory  or  apologetic  prefaces. 
Dryden's  criticisms  are  often  inconsistent;  he  wrote  hastily, 
and  was  apt  to  put  down  whatever  occurred  to  him  at  the 
moment,  without  reflecting  that  he  had  elsewhere  expressed 
different  opinions ;  but  they  are  generally  excellent,  and  his 
admiration  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  at  a  time  when  their 
praise  was  not,  as  now,  in  every  one's  mouth,  shows  his  good 
taste  and  discernment.  His  style  is  clear,  easy,  and  flexible ; 
rather  unmethodical,  but  quite  free  from  the  involutions  and 
long-windedness  which  had  almost  invariably  marked  the  prose 
of  the  preceding  generations.  "  At  no  time  that  I  can  think 
of,"  says  Mr.  Saintsbury,  "  was  there  any  Englishman  who,  for 
a  considerable  period,  was  so  far  in  advance  of  his  contem- 
poraries in  almost  every  branch  of  literary  work  as  Dryden  was 
during  the  last  twenty  years  of  the  seventeenth  century.  .  .  . 
But  his  representative  character  in  relation  to  the  men  of  his 
time  was  almost  more  remarkable  than  his  intellectual  and 
artistic  superiority  to  them.  Other  great  men  of  letters,  with 
perhaps  the  single  exception  of  Voltaire,  have  usually,  when 
they  represented  their  time  at  all,  represented  but  a  small  part 
of  it.  With  Dryden  this  was  not  the  case.  Not  only  did  the 
immense  majority  of  men  of  letters  in  his  later  days  directly 


The  Dramatists  of  the  Restoration.         145 

imitate  him,  but  both  then  and  earlier  most  literary  English- 
men, even  when  they  did  not  imitate  him,  worked  on  the  same 
lines  and  pursued  the  same  objects.  The  eighteen  volumes  of 
his  works  contain  a  faithful  representation  of  the  whole  literary 
movement  in  England  for  the  best  part  of  half  a  century ;  and 
what  is  more,  they  contain  the  germs  and  indicate  the  direction 
of  almost  the  whole  literary  movement  for  nearly  a  century  to 
come." 

Bearing  in  mind  these  remarks  as  to  Dryden's  represen- 
tative character,  the  reader  will  readily  infer,  from  what  has 
been  said  as  to  Dryden's  comedies,  the  leading  features  of  the 
"  dramatists  of  the  Restoration,"  as  they  are  somewhat  loosely 
styled.  Of  these,  Wycherley,  Congreve,  Farquhar,  and  Van- 
brugh  were  the  chief,  and  Congreve  the  greatest.  Charles 
Lamb,  in  his  amusing  and  paradoxical  essay  "  On  the  Arti- 
ficial Comedy  of  the  Last  Century,"  mentions  a  characteristic 
of  Congreve's  plays  which  applies  also  to  the  plays  of  all  the 
other  members  of  the  group.  "  Judged  morally,  every  charac- 
ter in  these  plays  [he  is  speaking  of  the  Restoration  comedy 
generally] — the  few  exceptions  are  only  mistakes — is  alike 
essentially  vain  and  worthless.  The  great  art  of  Congreve  is 
especially  shown  in  this,  that  he  has  entirely  excluded  from 
his  scenes — some  little  generosities  on  the  part  of  Angelica 
perhaps  excepted — not  only  anything  like  a  faultless  character, 
but  any  pretensions  to  goodness  or  good  feelings  whatsoever. 
Whether  he  did  this  designedly  or  instinctively,  the  effect  is 
as  happy  as  the  design  (if  design)  was  bold.  I  used  to  wonder 
at  the  strange  power  which  his  '  Way  of  the  World,'  in  par- 
ticular, possesses  of  interesting  you  all  along  in  the  pursuit 
of  characters  for  whom  you  absolutely  care  nothing — for  you 
neither  hate  nor  love  his  personages — and  I  think  it  is  owing 
to  this  very  indifference  for  any  that  you  endure  the  whole. 
He  has  spread  a  privation  of  moral  light,  I  will  call  it,  rather 
than  by  the  ugly  name  of  palpable  darkness,  over  his  creations  j 
and  his  shadows  flit  before  you  without  distinction  or  prefer- 
ence. Had  he  introduced  a  good  character,  a  single  gush  of 
moral  feeling,  a  revulsion  of  the  judgment  to  actual  life  and 


146  The  Restoration. 

actual  duties,  the  impertinent  Goshen  would  have  only  lighted 
to  the  discovery  of  deformities,  which  now  are  none  because 
we  think  them  none."  This  is  not  intended  for  censure,  yet 
what  a  censure  it  is !  It  is  this  moral  darkness,  this  heart- 
lessness,  this  cynical  contempt  for  virtue,  or  rather  unbelief 
in  its  existence,  which,  more  than  their  frequent  license  of 
language,  make  the  Restoration  dramatists  a  synonym  for 
unhealthy  literature.  That  they  had  great  talents,  that  their 
wit  was  often  brilliant,  is  undeniable ;  but  though  no  literary 
history  can  altogether  pass  them  over,  a  full  account  of  them 
would  be  out  of  place  here,  and  we  shall  accordingly  make 
haste  to  escape  from  their  polluted  atmosphere. 

William  Wycherley,  the  coarsest,  but  not  the  least  gifted,  of 
the  dramatists  of  the  Restoration,  was  born  in  1640,  the  son 
of  a  Shropshire  gentleman  of  good  family.  Sent  to  France  at 
the  age  of  fifteen  to  receive  his  education,  he  there  acquired 
the  manners  of  a  fine  gentleman,  and  became  a  convert  to 
Roman  Catholicism.  When  the  Restoration  came,  he  once 
more  turned  Protestant,  and  became  a  member  of  Queen's 
College,  Oxford.  Leaving  Oxford  without  taking  a  degree, 
he  entered  the  Temple,  where  he  soon  distinguished  himself 
among  the  gay  young  men  about  town  by  the  elegance  of  his 
manners  and  by  his  strikingly  handsome  appearance.  In  1672 
his  first  play,  "  Love  in  a  Wood,"  was  acted.  His  two  most 
famous  plays,  the  " Country  Wife"  and  the  "Plain  Dealer," 
appeared  in  1675  and  1677.  Wycherley 's  life  was  a  sad  one 
enough.  After  basking  for  some  years  in  the  sunshine  of  royal 
favour,  he  fell  into  disgrace,  and,  imprisoned  for  debt,  languished 
for  seven  years  in  the  Fleet,  "utterly  forgotten,  as  it  should 
seem,  by  the  gay  and  lively  circle  of  which  he  had  been  a 
distinguished  ornament."  At  length  he  owed  his  release  to 
the  favour  of  James  II.,  who  paid  his  debts  and  granted  him  a 
pension  of  ^200  a  year.  Macaulay  suspects  that  this  muni- 
ficence was  the  price  of  Wycherley 's  apostasy:  it  is  certain,  at 
any  rate,  that  before  his  death  Wycherley  a  second  time  joined 
the  Church  of  Rome.  In  1704  he  published  a  folio  volume 
of  miscellaneous  verses,  very  immoral  and  very  worthless.  He 


William  Congreve.  147 

died  in  1715  a  wretched,  worn-out  rake,  who  had  outlived  his 
talents  and  accomplishments.  The  desire  of  literary  fame  was 
strong  in  him  to  the  last,  and  he  called  in  the  aid  of  young  Mr. 
Pope,  the  most  rising  genius  of  the  time,  to  amend  his  dog- 
gerel verses.  This  Pope  did  with  such  unfailing  rigour  of 
criticism,  such  cruel  minuteness,  that  poor  Wycherley  at  length 
found  his  advice  so  unpalatable  that  he  withdrew  his  papers  from 
him.  Coarse  vigour  and  no  small  show  of  humour  as  well  as 
wit  are  the  great  characteristics  of  Wycherley  as  a  dramatist. 

The  names  of  Wycherley  and  Congreve  are  generally  placed 
together,  but  there  are  wide  differences  between  them,  both  as 
regards  their  natural  capabilities  and  their  mode  of  literary 
treatment.  Wycherley  was  a  child  of  the  Restoration  with 
its  roistering  coarseness ;  Congreve  was  rather  a  child  of  the 
Queen  Anne  period  with  its  low  moral  ideals  united  to  outward 
polish  and  refinement.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that 
the  comedies  of  Congreve,  if  perhaps  equally  immoral,  are  not 
nearly  so  much  disfigured  by  grossness  as  Wycherley 's.  Con- 
greve was  born  in  1670  at  Bardsey,  near  Leeds.  His  father,  a 
scion  of  an  ancient  Staffordshire  family,  settled  in  Ireland  soon 
after  the  Restoration,  and  there  Congreve  received  his  educa- 
tion. He  afterwards  came  to  London  to  study  law;  but  he 
was  more  ambitious  to  cut  a  brilliant  figure  in  fashionable 
society  than  to  accumulate  a  store  of  forensic  knowledge.  His 
first  work  was  a  novel — one  of  those  insipid  and  affected 
romances  with  which  our  ancestors  were  compelled  to  beguile 
their  leisure  in  the  absence  of  anything  better.  In  1693  his 
first  comedy,  "The  Old  Bachelor,"  was  acted  with  great  suc- 
cess. The  merits  of  the  gifted  young  author  were  at  once 
recognised  by  the  generous  Montagu,  then  one  of  the  Lords  of 
the  Treasury,  who  bestowed  on  him  offices  of  which  the  salary 
was  more  important  than  the  duties.  In  1694  Congreve's 
second  play,  the  "Double  Dealer,"  was  produced;  in  1695 
came  "Love  for  Love,"  and  in  1697  the  "Mourning  Bride,"  a 
tragedy  containing  one  famous  passage,  which  Johnson  wns 
accustomed  to  praise  extravagantly  in  conversation,  and  which, 
in  his  "  Lives  of  the  Poets,"  he  declares  that  he  considered  the 


148  The  Restoration. 

most  poetical  paragraph  in  the  whole  mass  of  English  poetry. 
Here  it  is : — 

"Aim.  It  was  a  fancied  noise  ;  for  all  is  hushed. 

Leo.  It  bore  the  accent  of  a  human  voice. 

Aim.  It  was  thy  fear,  or  else  some  transient  wind 
Whistling  through  hollows  of  this  vaulted  isle  ; 
We'll  listen. 

Leo.    Hark! 

Aim.  No,  all  is  hushed  and  still  as  death. — Tis  dreadful  I 
How  reverend  is  the  face  of  this  tall  pile, 
Whose  ancient  pillars  rear  their  marble  heads, 
To  bear  aloft  its  arched  and  ponderous  roof, 
By  its  own  weight  made  steadfast  and  immoveable, 
Looking  tranquillity  !     It  strikes  an  awe 
And  terror  on  my  aching  sight ;  the  tombs 
And  monumental  caves  of  death  look  cold, 
And  shoot  a  dullness  to  my  trembling  heart. 
Give  me  thy  hand,  and  let  me  hear  thy  voice  ; 
Nay,  quickly  speak  to  me,  and  let  me  hear 
Thy  voice — my  own  affrights  me  with  its  echoes." 

In  1700  Congreve  produced  what  is  perhaps  his  best  play,  the 
"  Way  of  the  World ;"  it  failed,  for  some  reason  or  other,  and 
the  indignant  author  took  his  leave  of  the  stage.  He  died  in 
1728.  Congreve  was  a  man  both  of  wit  and  learning,  but  he 
was  anxious  to  be  distinguished  rather  as  an  accomplished 
gentleman  than  as  a  talented  writer.  When  Voltaire  called 
on  him,  he  disclaimed  the  character  of  a  poet,  and  declared 
that  his  plays  were  trifles  produced  in  an  idle  hour.  "  If," 
said  the  great  Frenchman,  disgusted  by  what  Johnson  truly 
calls  this  despicable  foppery,  "  you  had  been  only  a  gentle- 
man, I  should  not  have  come  to  visit  you."  By  his  contem- 
poraries Congreve  was  much  looked  up  to.  Dryden  gave 
him  in  large  profusion  the  weighty  tribute  of  his  praise  and 
respect ;  Pope  dedicated  to  him  his  translation  of  the  "  Iliad ;" 
everywhere  among  young  authors  his  esteem  was  courted  and 
his  advice  sought.  It  is  only  as  a  dramatist  that  Congreve 
has  any  title  to  fame  :  his  miscellaneous  poems  are  singularly 
poor  productions.  "  Congreve,"  says  Hazlitt,  a  very  acute 
if  somewhat  too  partial  critic,  "  is  the  most  distinct  from  the 


Jeremy  Collier.  149 

others,  and  the  most  easily  defined,  both  from  what  he 
possessed  and  from  what  he  wanted.  He  had  by  far  the 
most  wit  and  elegance,  with  less  of  other  things,  of  humour, 
character,  incident,  &c.  His  style  is  inimitable,  nay,  perfect. 
It  is  the  highest  model  of  comic  dialogue.  Every  sentence  is 
replete  with  sense  and  satire,  conveyed  in  the  most  polished 
and  pointed  terms.  Every  page  presents  a  shower  of  brilliant 
conceits,  is  a  tissue  of  epigrams  in  prose,  is  a  new  triumph  of 
wit,  a  new  conquest  over  dulness.  The  fire  of  artful  raillery 
is  nowhere  else  so  well  kept  up.  ...  It  bears  every  mark 
of  being  what  he  himself  in  the  dedication  to  one  of  his  plays 
tells  us  that  it  was,  a  spirited  copy  taken  off  and  carefully 
revised  from  the  most  select  society  of  his  time,  exhibiting  all 
the  sprightliness,  ease,  and  animation  of  familiar  conversation 
with  the  correctness  and  delicacy  of  the  most  finished  com- 
position." 

Two  years  before  the  publication  of  Congreve's  last  play, 
the  Restoration  comedy  received  what  proved  to  be  its  death- 
blow. In  1^98,  Jeremy  Collier,  a  nonjuring  clergyman  of  High 
Church  and  High  Tory  proclivities,  published  his  "  Short  View 
of  the  Profaneness  and  Immorality  of  the  English  Stage." 
Collier  was  a  keen  controversialist,  harsh,  firm,  and  unbending; 
a  man  of  considerable  learning  (his  "  Ecclesiastical  History  " 
is  still  in  some  sort  a  standard  work),  and  possessed  of  a 
vigorous  and  telling  style.  Though  disfigured  by  much  irrele- 
vant, and  indeed  absurd  matter,  the  "Short  View"  was  on 
the  whole  so  just  an  indictment  of  the  license  which  the  dra- 
matists had  allowed  themselves,  that  its  effect  was  very  great. 
"  His  onset  was  violent,"  says  Johnson  ;  "  those  passages  which, 
while  they  stood  single,  had  passed  with  little  notice,  when 
they  were  accumulated  and  exposed  together  excited  horror  ; 
the  wise  and  the  pious  caught  the  alarm,  and  the  nation 
wondered  why  it  had  so  long  suffered  irreligion  and  licentious- 
ness to  be  taught  at  the  public  charge."  Dryden,  who  was  the 
most  prominent  object  of  attack,  had  the  good  sense  to  kiss 
the  rod.  "  I  shall  say  the  less  of  Mr.  Collier,"  he  wrote  in  the 
preface  to  his  "Fables,"  "  because  in  many  things  he  has  taxed 


1 50  The  Restoration. 

me  justly,  and  I  have  pleaded  guilty  to  all  thoughts  and 
expressions  of  mine  which  can  be  truly  argued  of  obscenity, 
profaneness,  or  immorality,  and  retract  them.  If  he  be  my 
enemy,  let  him  triumph  ;  if  he  be  my  friend,  as  I  have  given 
him  no  personal  occasion  to  be  otherwise,  he  will  be  glad  of 
my  repentance.  It  becomes  me  not  to  draw  my  pen  in  the 
defence  of  a  bad  cause,  when  I  have  so  often  drawn  it  for  a 
good  one."  Many  of  Dryden's  fellow-offenders  were  not  so 
prudent.  Congreve  entered  the  lists  in  defence  of  the  dra- 
matists, and,  with  the  usual  ill-fortune  which  attends  contro- 
versialists in  behalf  of  a  bad  cause,  instead  of  assailing  the 
parts  of  Collier's  production  which  were  really  open  to  attack, 
argued  with  so  little  ability  as  to  expose  himself  to  a  crush- 
ing rejoinder.  It  would  be  foolish  to  attribute  the  influence 
exerted  by  the  "Short  View"  to  Collier's  ability  alone.  It 
owed  its  success  in  great  measure  to  the  fact  that  it  chimed  in 
with  a  wide-spread  public  sentiment 

Among  the  authors  of  replies  to  Collier  was  Sir  John  Van- 
brugh  (1666?— 1726),  the  most  distinguished  architect  of  his 
day,  and  one  of  the  wittiest  dramatists.  As  an  architect,  his 
principal  achievements  were  the  noble  erections  of  Blenheim 
and  Castle  Howard  ;  as  a  dramatist,  the  "  Relapse  "  and  the 
"Provoked  Wife,"  which  were  produced  about  1697.  His 
plays  are  full  of  fun,  and  its  ordinary  accompaniment  in  those 
days — indecency.  He  has  little  or  nothing  of  the  refined  art 
of  Congreve.  "  Van,"  Pope  truly  said,  "  wants  grace  who 
never  wanted  wit ;"  but  there  is  about  him  a  flavour  of  jovial 
high  spirits  and  comic  power,  which  makes  his  plays  (apart 
from  the  defect  mentioned)  very  pleasant  reading. 

A  writer  in  many  ways  resembling  Vanbrugh  was  George 
Farquhar,  a  gay  Irishman  of  lively  fancy  and  much  vivacity. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  clergyman,  and  was  born  at  Londonderry 
in  1678.  He  quitted  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  where  he  had 
fallen  into  some  scrape,  and,  while  still  a  mere  boy,  became  an 
actor.  At  the  age  of  eighteen  he  bade  farewell  to  the  boards, 
having  obtained  a  commission  in  the  army  from  the  Earl  of 
Orrery.  When  only  twenty  years  old  he  won  credit  by  his 


R.  B.  Sheridan.  151 

first  play,  "  Love  and  a  Bottle,"  and  steadily  improved  in  his 
art  till  the  close  of  his  brief  life  in  his  thirtieth  year.  His 
best  plays  are  his  two  last,  the  "Recruiting  Officer"  (1706) 
and  the  "Beaux  Stratagem"  (1707).  In  the  first,  scenes  of 
low  life,  evidently  drawn  from  actual  observation,  are  described 
with  great  humour  and  fidelity  to  nature.  The  second,  which 
was  written  in  the  short  space  of  six  weeks,  contains  the 
admirable  portrait  of  Boniface,  the  landlord,  which  has  become 
as  classical  in  its  way  as  that  of  Mr.  Pickwick  or  any  other 
hero  of  fiction. 

This  is  the  proper  place  in  which  to  mention  the  last  great 
writer  of  the  prose  comedy  of  manners.  Though  many  years 
separate  Richard  Brinsley  Sheridan  from  Wycherley,  Congreve, 
Vanbrugh,  and  Farquhar,  he  is  animated  by  their  spirit,  though 
happily  he  has  none  of  their  license  of  language.  Sheridan 
was  born  in  Dublin  in  1751.  His  father,  a  man  of  some  note 
in  his  day,  is  now  chiefly  remembered  as  the  theme  of  certain 
of  Johnson's  most  pungent  sarcasms.  "Why,  sir,"  said  the 
Doctor  on  one  occasion,  '*  Sherry  is  dull,  naturally  dull ;  but 
it  must  have  taken  him  a  great  deal  of  pains  to  become  what 
we  now  see  him.  Such  an  excess  of  stupidity  is  not  in  nature." 
Sheridan  was  educated  at  Harrow,  and  his  first  production  was 
a  translation  of  a  worthless  Greek  writer,  done  in  conjunction 
with  a  friend  whose  acquaintance  he  had  formed  there.  While 
still  a  very  young  man,  without  fortune  and  without  any  high 
position  in  society,  he  married  the  beautiful  Miss  Linley,  who 
had  been  courted  by  many  wealthy  and  titled  admirers.  In 
1775  ne  produced  his  first  comedy,  "  The  Rivals,"  an  admirable 
piece  of  writing,  carefully  elaborated,  and  one  blaze  of  wit 
from  beginning  to  end.  In  1777  appeared  his  masterpiece, 
the  "  School  for  Scandal,"  which  is  still,  after  so  many  years, 
always  welcomed  on  the  stage.  In  1779  was  produced  the 
farce  of  "  The  Critic,"  the  idea  of  which  is  borrowed  from  the 
"  Rehearsal,"  but  which  is  nevertheless  a  most  admirable  and 
mirth-provoking  performance.  Besides  these,  he  wrote,  in  1775, 
a  slight  farce  called  "  St.  Patrick's  Day,"  and  "  The  Duenna," 
containing  some  songs  which  are  excellent  of  their  kind.  "  His 


152  The  Restoration. 

lable-songs,"  says  Leigh  Hunt,  "are  always  admirable.  When 
he  was  drinking  wine  he  was  thoroughly  in  earnest."  He  also 
wrote  two  serious  dramas,  but  they  are  of  no  value.  In  1780 
Sheridan  became  a  member  of  Parliament,  and  though  the 
faults  of  his  private  life  told  greatly  against  him,  he  soon 
became  noted  as  one  of  the  most  eloquent  speakers  in  an 
assembly  which  contained  Burke,  and  Fox,  and  Pitt.  "  What- 
ever Sheridan  has  done  or  chosen  to  do,"  said  Byron,  "has 
been,  par  excellence,  the  best  of  its  kind.  He  has  written  the 
best  comedy  (' School  for  Scandal'),  the  best  drama  ('The 
Duenna,'  to  my  mind  far  beyond  that  St.  Giles  lampoon,  the 
'Beggar's  Opera'),  the  best  farce  ('The  Critic,'  it  is  only  too 
good  for  a  farce),  and  the  best  address  (Monologue  on  Garrick) ; 
and,  to  crown  all,  delivered  the  very  best  oration  (the  famous 
Begum  speech)  ever  conceived  or  heard  of  in  this  country." 
This  is  absurdly  over-laudatory ;  but  Sheridan  was  certainly  a 
man  of  brilliant  abilities,  and,  with  all  his  love  of  dissipation, 
could  labour  strenuously  when  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
achieve  any  design.  His  comedies  are  a  continual  running 
fire  of  wit;  not  true  to  nature  and  utterly  destitute  of  that 
highest  kind  of  humour  which  approaches  pathos,  but  full  of 
happy  turns  of  expression  and  admirably  constructed  with  a 
view  to  stage  representation.  He  is  the  last  of  our  playwriters 
who  have  produced  works  both  excellent  as  literature  and  also 
good  acting  dramas.  Sheridan  lived  a  shifty  and  vagabond 
existence,  constantly  in  debt  and  constantly  harassed  by  duns, 
whose  demands  he,  by  long  experience,  acquired  unrivalled 
dexterity  in  evading.  In  the  closing  years  of  his  life  his 
wealthy  and  titled  friends  forsook  him,  and  he  was  reduced  to 
sore  straits.  He  died  in  1816. 

Only  three  good  writers  of  tragedy  appeared  in  the  period 
with  which  we  are  dealing.  Thomas  Otway  (1651-1685)  pos- 
sessed more  of  the  fire  and  passion  of  the  great  Elizabethans 
than  any  of  his  contemporaries.  His  chief  plays,  "The  Orphan" 
and  "Venice  Preserved,"  show  great  powers  of  pathos,  and, 
although  too  inflated  in  style,  are  more  impressive  and  of 
deeper  interest  than  the  dramas  of  any  other  tragedian  of  the 


Isaac  Barrow.  \  5  3 

time.  The  unfortunate  poet  died  in  a  state  of  wretched 
poverty.  In  the  plays  of  Nathaniel  Lee,  who  was  subject  to 
attacks  of  insanity,  we  find  considerable  genius  for  tragedy 
united  with  a  propensity  to  indulge  freely  in  bombast  and 
fustian.  The  "  Rival  Queens  "  and  "  Lucius  Junius  Brutus  " 
are  his  best  plays.  He  died  in  1692.  Nicholas  Rowe  (1673- 
1718),  who  also  deserves  remembrance  as  having  been  the 
first  editor  and  biographer  of  Shakespeare,  was  the  author 
of  two  tragedies  which  were  at  one  time  much  admired,  the 
"Fair  Penitent "  and  "Jane  Shore."  In  the  former  appears 
the  "gallant,  gay  Lothario,"  the  prototype  of  Richardson's 
Lovelace  and  of  innumerable  romance-heroes  of  a  similar 
description.  Rowe,  who  was  a  very  estimable  man,  had  his 
death  commemorated  by  the  following  epitaph  of  Pope,  which 
shows  the  extent  of  his  popularity  among  his  contemporaries : — 

"Thy  relics,  Rowe,  to  this  sad  shrine  we  trust, 

And  near  thy  Shakespeare  place  thy  honoured  bust ; 
Oh  !  next  him,  skilled  to  draw  the  tender  tear, 
For  never  heart-felt  passion  more  sincere  ; 
To  nobler  sentiment  to  fire  the  brave, 
For  never  Briton  more  disdained  a  slave. 
Peace  to  thy  gentle  shade  and  endless  rest ! 
Blest  in  thy  genius,  in  thy  love,  too,  blest  I 
And  blest  that  timely  from  our  scene  removed, 
Thy  soul  enjoys  the  liberty  it  loved." 

As  already  stated,  Dryden  in  force  and  elegance  of  style 
stands  at  the  head  of  the  prose  writers  of  this  period,  which 
does  not  contain  many  authors  whose  fame  has  outlived  their 
own  time.  Nevertheless  there  are  a  few  great  names,  notably 
some  divines  of  the  Church  of  England,  whose  works  are  still 
reckoned  classics.  Of  these,  Dr.  Isaac  Barrow  is  especially 
memorable,  not  only  for  his  literary  gifts,  but  for  his  varied 
learning.  Born  in  1630,  the  son  of  a  linendraper  in  London, 
he  entered  the  University  of  Cambridge  when  very  young. 
There  at  first  his  attention  was  turned  to  the  study  of  physical 
science,  and  after  he  had  obtained  the  degree  of  Bachelor 
of  Arts  he  applied  himself  to  the  study  of  medicine.  Dis- 


154  The  Restoration. 

appointed  in  the  hopes  he  had  formed  of  obtaining  the  Greek 
professorship,  he  determined  to  go  abroad,  and  spent  some 
years  in  travelling  in  France,  Italy,  Germany,  Turkey,  and 
Holland.  On  his  return  to  England  he  took  orders,  and  in 
1660  was  elected  professor  of  Greek  in  the  University  of 
Cambridge.  Two  years  after  he  was  appointed  professor  of 
geometry  in  Gresham  College.  In  1663  he  became  Lucasian 
professor  of  mathematics  in  Cambridge,  and  resigned  both  his 
other  offices.  In  1669,  having  resolved  to  devote  himself  to 
the  study  of  theology,  he  resigned  his  chair  in  favour  of  Isaac 
Newton.  In  1670  he  was  made  D.D.  by  royal  mandate;  two 
years  after  he  was  appointed  master  of  Trinity  College,  and 
in  1675  he  was  chosen  vice-chancellor  of  the  University.  He 
died  in  1677.  Barrow  is  the  author  of  numerous  mathematical 
publications  in  Latin,  and  of  three  folio  volumes  of  English 
works,  published  posthumously  in  1685.  They  consist  for  the 
most  part  of  sermons.  Barrow  was  in  his  day  a  very  popular 
preacher,  though  his  sermons  were  of  unusual  length  even  for 
that  age.  He  seldom  employed  less  than  an  hour  and  a  half 
in  delivering  a  discourse,  and  on  one  occasion,  when  preaching 
before  the  Lord  Mayor  and  Aldermen  of  London,  spoke  for 
three  hours  and  a  half.  Being  asked  on  coming  down  from 
the  pulpit  whether  he  was  not  tired,  he  replied,  "  Yes,  indeed, 
I  began  to  be  weary  with  standing  so  long."  Barrow's  mathe- 
matical keenness  and  ingenuity  of  intellect  is  well  shown  by 
his  famous  definition  of  wit,  which  has  been  so  often  quoted. 
It  also  shows  his  fertility  of  illustration  and  his  habit  of  dealing 
fully  with  all  sides  of  a  subject.  Occasionally  in  his  writings 
we  meet  with  happy  phrases,  such  as  "A  straight  line  is  the 
shortest  in  morals  as  well  as  in  geometry;"  but  such  epigram- 
matic turns  are  rare.  In  one  place  he  describes  with  consider- 
able felicity  the  general  literary  character  of  his  period:  "All 
reputation  appears  now  to  vail  and  stoop  to  that  of  being  a 
wit.  To  be  learned,  to  be  wise,  to  be  good,  are  nothing  in 
comparison  thereto;  even  to  be  noble  and  rich  are  inferior 
things,  and  afford  no  such  glory.  Many  at  least,  to  purchase 
this  glory,  to  be  deemed  considerable  in  this  faculty,  and 


Archbishop  Tillotson.  155 

enrolled  among  the  wits,  do  not  only  make  shipwreck  of  con- 
science, abandon  virtue,  and  forfeit  all  pretences  to  wisdom, 
but  neglect  their  estates  and  prostitute  their  honour  ;  so,  to  the 
private  damage  of  many  particular  persons,  and  with  no  small 
prejudice  to  the  public,  are  our  times  possessed  and  transported 
with  this  humour." 

John  Tillotson,  also  born  in  1630,  became  after  the  Revolu- 
tion the  most  admired  preacher  in  London,  and  was  a  special 
favourite  of  Queen  Mary.  He  was  born  in  Yorkshire  of 
Puritan  parents,  but  in  1662  submitted  to  the  Act  of  Uni- 
formity. After  holding  various  ecclesiastical  appointments, 
he  removed  to  London,  where  his  sermons  soon  attracted 
attention.  After  the  Revolution  he  obtained  from  King 
William  the  deanery  of  St.  Paul's,  and  in  1691  was  appointed 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  He  died  in  1694.  Tillotson  was 
a  tolerant,  open-minded  man,  without  a  trace  of  ecclesiastical 
bigotry,  always  more  willing  to  conciliate  than  to  crush 
opponents,  and  fondly  cherishing  schemes  to  draw  the  Non- 
conformists within  the  pale  of  the  Church  of  England.  His 
popularity  is  shown  by  the  high  price  obtained  for  his  sermons, 
which  were  published  posthumously  in  three  folio  volumes. 
They  were,  says  Macaulay,  "bought  by  the  booksellers  for  the 
almost  incredible  sum  of  two  thousand  five  hundred  guineas, 
equivalent,  in  the  wretched  state  in  which  the  silver  coin  then 
was,  to  at  least  three  thousand  six  hundred  pounds.  Such  a 
price  had  never  before  been  given  in  England  for  any  literary 
copyright.  About  the  same  time  Dryden,  whose  reputation 
was  then  in  its  zenith,  received  thirteen  hundred  pounds  for 
his  translation  of  all  the  works  of  Virgil,  and  was  thought  to 
have  been  splendidly  remunerated."  Dryden,  it  may  be  men- 
tioned, is  said  "  to  have  owned  with  pleasure  that  if  he  had 
any  talent  for  English  prose,  it  was  owing  to  his  having  often 
read  the  writings  of  Archbishop  Tillotson."  But  Dryden  had 
written  excellent  prose  before  Tillotson  appeared  as  an  author, 
and  long  before  he  became  famous ;  nor  indeed  is  there  any 
noticeable  resemblance  between  their  styles.  The  merits  of 
Tillotson's  style  are  its  ease  and  simplicity ;  but  he  is  tauto- 


156  The  Restoration. 

logical  and  diffuse  in  no  ordinary  degree.  Not  only  does  he 
ring  the  changes  on  ideas — a  very  common  fault  in  sermons 
— but  he  is  apt  to  heap  together  synonymous  words  in  a 
rather  irritating  way.  The  following  extract,  which  is  a  fair 
sample  of  his  style,  shows  this  peculiarity  : — "  Truth  is  always 
consistent  with  itself,  and  needs  nothing  to  help  it  out;  it  is 
always  near  at  hand,  and  sits  upon  our  lips,  and  is  ready  to 
drop  out  before  we  are  aware ;  whereas  a  lie  is  troublesome, 
and  sets  a  man's  invention  upon  the  rack,  and  one  trick 
needs  a  great  many  more  to  make  it  good.  It  is  like  building 
upon  a  false  foundation,  which  continually  stands  in  need  of 
props  to  shore  it  up,  and  proves  at  last  more  chargeable  than 
to  have  raised  a  substantial  building  at  first  upon  a  true  and 
solid  foundation ;  for  sincerity  is  firm  and  substantial,  and 
there  is  nothing  hollow  or  unsound  in  it,  and  because  it  is 
plain  and  open,  fears  no  discovery ;  of  which  the  crafty  man  is 
always  in  danger;  and  when  he  thinks  he  walks  in  the  dark, 
all  his  pretences  are  so  transparent  that  he  that  runs  may 
read  them.'"'  Tillotson  probably  presents  more  examples  than 
any  author  of  passages  wherewith  to  exercise  the  skill  of  the 
student  of  English  composition  in  weeding  out  their  superfluous 
words  and  phrases. 

Three  other  notable  divines,  all  ardent  controversialists, 
were  Stillingfleet,  Sherlock,  and  South.  Edward  Stilling- 
fleet  (1635-1699)  defended  with  considerable  vigour  and 
acrimony  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  pf  England,  attacking 
all  her  opponents,  Atheists,  Unitarians,  Papists,  and  Dis- 
senters. In  1686  he  had  a  controversy  with  Dryden,  who 
had  been  employed  to  defend  the  reasons  of  conversion  to 
the  Catholic  faith  by  Anne  Hyde,  which  were  said  to  have 
been  found  in  Charles  II.'s  strong-box.  In  this  controversy 
he  had  decidedly  the  best  of  it,  but  he  was  signally  worsted  in 
a  dispute  with  Locke  on  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  and  the 
mortification  he  then  sustained  is  said  to  have  hastened  his 
death.  William  Sherlock  (1641-1707)  "entered  warmly  into 
dispute  with  the  most  busy  sectaries  of  the  time,  the  Solifi- 
dians  and  Antinominans,  who  appeared  in  the  reign  of 


Bishop  Burnet.  1 5  7 

Elizabeth;  with  the  Catholics  and  Nonconformists,  the  latter 
of  whom  he  was  very  anxious  to  bring  back  to  the  Established 
Church."  Sherlock  is  now  chiefly  remembered  by  his  "Dis- 
course Concerning  Death,"  published  in  1690.  His  "Vindica- 
tion of  the  Doctrine  of  the  Trinity  "  was  fiercely  attacked  by 
Robert  South  (1633-1716),  who  has  been  very  unjustly  called 
"the  wittiest  of  English  divines."  No  doubt  he  displays  a 
great  command  of  satirical  wit,  but  his  wit  was  neither  so 
spontaneous  nor  so  affluent  as  Fuller's.  South,  who  had  a 
brilliant  university  career,  was  an  extreme  Anglican,  adhering 
firmly  to  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience  and  the  divine 
right  of  kings.  At  the  Revolution,  though,  after  some  delay, 
he  took  the  oaths  to  the  new  Government,  he  steadily  declined 
preferment,  declaring,  "  that  notwithstanding  he,  for  his  part, 
saw  nothing  that  was  contrary  to  the  laws  of  God  and  the 
common  practice  of  all  nations  to  submit  to  princes  in  posses- 
sion of  the  throne,  yet  others  might  have  their  reasons  for  a 
contrary  opinion ;  and  he  blessed  God  that  he  was  neither  so 
ambitious  nor  in  want  of  preferment  as  for  the  sake  of  it  to 
build  his  rise  upon  the  ruin  of  any  one  father  of  the  Church, 
who  for  piety,  good  morals,  and  strictness  of  life,  which  every 
one  of  the  deprived  bishops  were  famous  for,  might  be  said 
not  to  have  left  their  equal."  His  solid  erudition,  united  to 
his  command  of  language  and  his  frequent  flashes  of  wit,  give 
his  sermons  high  literary  value ;  but  the  intolerant  spirit  which 
animates  all  his  works  contrasts  very  unfavourably  with  the 
conciliatory  tone  and  forbearance  of  Tillotson. 

Another  divine,  of  great  popularity  as  a  preacher,  but  whose 
fame  is  grounded  upon  his  historical  works,  was  Gilbert 
Burnet,  a  prominent  figure  in  the  history  of  the  Revolution  of 
1688.  He  was  born  at  Edinburgh  in  1643,  and  educated  at 
Marischal  College,  Aberdeen,  which,  in  accordance  with  the 
ridiculous  fashion  of  the  time,  he  entered  when  he  was  ten 
years  old,  graduating  when  he  was  fourteen.  He  then  applied 
himself  to  the  study  of  civil  law,  but  soon  turned  aside  from 
this  pursuit  to  devote  himself  to  theology.  In  1669  he  was 
made  professor  of  divinity  at  Glasgow,  which  office  he  held 


1 5  8  The  Restoration. 

about  four  years,  resigning  in  1673,  when  he  went  to  London. 
There  he  soon  attracted  attention  as  a  preacher  and  as  a  man 
of  liberal  opinions.  During  the  troubled  reign  of  James  II. 
he  went  abroad,  and  after  a  tour  through  various  parts  of 
the  Continent,  was  invited  to  the  Hague  by  the  Prince  and 
Princess  of  Holland.  He  afterwards  accompanied  the  Prince 
in  his  expedition  to  England  as  his  chaplain,  and  took  a 
leading  part  in  the  politics  of  the  Revolution.  In  1689  he 
was  appointed  Bishop  of  Salisbury.  So  attractive  were  his 
pulpit  ministrations,  that  he  was  often,  says  Macaulay,  "inter- 
rupted by  the  deep  hum  of  his  audience,  and  when,  after 
preaching  out  the  hour-glass,  he  held  it  up  in  his  hand,  the 
congregation  clamorously  encouraged  him  to  go  on  till  the 
sand  had  run  off  once  more."  We  doubt  very  much. if  there 
is  any  preacher  now  living  whose  congregation  would  listen  to 
him  with  attention  and  sympathy  for  two  hours ;  but  sermons 
were  more  popular  in  those  days,  when  reading  was  not  a 
universal  accomplishment.  Burnet  died  in  1715,  having  spent 
a  very  industrious,  active,  and  useful  life.  He  was  an  honest, 
courageous  man,  rather  disposed  to  be  fussy  and  interfering, 
but  a  faithful  and  steady  friend  to  those  whose  cause  he  had 
adopted,  and  not  disposed  to  keep  up  malice  against  his 
enemies.  He  was  the  author  of  many  writings,  of  which  the 
most  noteworthy  are  "An  Account  of  the  Life  and  Death  of 
the  Earl  of  Rochester"  (1680),  a  book  which  Dr.  Johnson 
declared  "the  critic  ought  to  read  for  its  elegance,  the 
philosopher  for  its  arguments,  and  the  saint  for  its  piety," 
though,  as  he  once  said  in  conversation,  the  "death"  is  better 
than  the  "  life ; "  a  "  History  of  the  Reformation  of  the  Church 
of  England,"  in  three  volumes,  of  which  the  first  appeared  in 
1679,  gaining  for  him  the  thanks  of  Parliament ;  and  the  "  His- 
tory of  my  Own  Times,"  which  was  published  posthumously. 
The  last  is  his  most  valuable  work,  though  his  "  History  of  the 
Reformation  "  contains  a  great  store  of  information.  "Burnet's 
'  History  of  His  Own  Times,' "  Johnson  is  recorded  to  have 
said,  "is  very  entertaining;  the  style,  indeed,  is  mere  chit-chat 
I  do  not  believe  that  Burnet  intentionally  lied ;  but  he  was  so 


John  Locke.  159 

much  prejudiced  that  he  took  no  pains  to  find  out  the  truth. 
He  was  like  a  man  who  resolves  to  regulate  his  time  by  a 
certain  watch,  but  will  not  inquire  whether  the  watch  is  right 
or  not."  This  is  somewhat  unjust  as  regards  both  Burnet's 
accuracy  and  his  style.  All  things  considered,  the  History  is 
wonderfully  accurate;  and  the  many  character-portraits  it 
contains  are  masterpieces  of  shrewd  description. 

The  greatest  philosopher  of  the  period  was  John  Locke, 
who  besides  did  good  work  in  helping  forward  the  cause  of 
toleration.  He  was  born  in  1632  in  Somersetshire,  where  his 
father,  who  had  been  a  captain  in  the  Parliamentary  army 
during  the  Civil  Wars,  had  a  small  estate.  He  was  educated  at 
Westminster,  and  afterwards  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  where 
he  took  the  degree  of  B.A.  in  1655.  About  this  time  his 
inclinations  led  him  to  study  medicine,  and  he  acquired  suffi- 
cient knowledge  of  physic  to  earn  the  praise  of  the  great 
Sydenham.  He  remained  at  Oxford  till  1664,  when  he  accom- 
panied, as  secretary,  Sir  Walter  Vane,  the  envoy  sent  by 
Charles  II.  to  the  Elector  of  Brandenburg  during  the  Dutch 
war.  Two  years  afterwards  he  became  acquainted  with  Lord 
Ashley,  afterwards  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  who  was  so  captivated 
by  his  society  that  Locke  became  an  inmate  of  his  house, 
where  he  mingled  freely  with  the  best  society  of  the  time.  By 
Shaftesbury,  in  1692,  he  was  made  secretary  of  prosecutions, 
but  ill-health  prevented  him  from  holding  this  office  long,  and 
induced  him  to  visit  France,  where  he  resided  for  several  years. 
On  Shaftesbury's  fall  from  power  Locke  came  to  be  looked  on 
with  suspicion  by  the  Government,  and  had  to  take  refuge 
in  Holland.  There  he  wrote,  in  Latin,  his  first  "  Letter  on 
Toleration,"  which  appeared  in  1689.  In  1690-1692,  he 
published  two  other  letters  on  the  same  subject,  replying  to 
objections  which  had  been  urged  against  his  doctrines.  After 
the  Revolution  Locke's  defence  of  liberal  principles  was  re- 
warded by  his  being  made  Commissioner  of  Stamps,  and  after- 
wards one  of  the  Commissioners  of  Trade.  In  1689  and  1690 
he  published  "  Two  Treatises  of  Government,"  the  first  con- 
taining a  reply  to  the  ridiculous  theories  of  Sir  Robert  Filmer, 


160  The  Restoration. 

who,  in  his  "  Patriarch ia  "  (1680),  upheld  the  divine  right  of 
kings  in  its  extremest  form,  the  other  treating  of  the  true 
original,  extent,  and  end  of  civil  government.  In  1690  also 
appeared  his  famous  "Essay  on  the  Human  Understanding" 
and  his  interesting  tractate  on  Education.  He  died  in  1704. 
His  "Essay  on  the  Conduct  of  the  Understanding"  was  pub- 
lished posthumously.  It  is  very  highly  praised  by  Hallam, 
who  declares  that  he  cannot  think  any  parent  or  instructor 
justified  in  neglecting  to  put  this  little  treatise  in  the  hands  of 
a  boy  about  the  time  his  reasoning  faculties  become  developed. 
"  It  will  give  him  a  sober  and  serious,  not  flippant  or  self- 
conceited,  independency  of  thinking;  and  while  it  teaches 
how  to  distrust  ourselves  and  watch  those  prejudices  which 
necessarily  grow  up  from  one  cause  or  another,  will  inspire  a 
reasonable  confidence  in  what  he  has  well  considered,  by 
taking  off  a  little  of  that  deference  to  authority,  which  is  the 
more  to  be  regretted  in  its  excess,  that,  like  its  cousin-gennan, 
party-spirit,  it  is  frequently  found  united  to  loyalty  of  heart 
and  the  generous  enthusiasm  of  youth."  Locke's  style  is 
simple  and  graceful;  he  was  called  by  Landor  the  most 
elegant  of  prose  writers.  He  is  a  great  name  in  the  history 
of  philosophical  thought,  and  his  writings  on  Toleration  and 
Government  had  considerable  political  influence. 

The  establishment  of  the  Royal  Society  dates  from  about 
the  time  of  the  Restoration.  It  was  incorporated  by  royal 
charter  in  1662.  Its  germ  was  a  society  which,  in  1645, 
during  the  turmoil  and  agitation  of  the  Civil  Wars,  had  been 
formed  in  London  by  some  quiet,  studious  men,  of  whom  the 
most  notable  were  Dr.  Ward,  Dr.  Wallis,  and  Dr.  Wilkins. 
"  Our  business,"  says  Wallis,  "  was  (precluding  matters  of 
theology  and  state  affairs)  to  discourse  and  consider  of  philo- 
sophical inquiries,  and  such  as  related  thereto,  as  Physick, 
Anatomy,  Geometry,  Astronomy,  Navigation,  Staticks,  Mag- 
neticks,  Chymicks,  Mechanicks,  and  Natural  Experiments, 
with  the  state  of  these  studies  and  their  cultivation  at  home  and 
abroad.  We  then  discoursed  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood, 
the  valves  in  the  veins,  the  venae  lacteae,  the  lymphatic  vessels, 


Sir  Isaac  Newt.>n. 

the  Copernican  hypothesis,  the  nature  of  comets  and  new  stars, 
the  satellites  of  Jupiter,  the  oval  shape  or  Saturn,  the  spots  on 
the  sun  and  the  turning  on  its  o\vn  axis,  the  inequalities  and 
selenography  of  the  moon,  the  several  phases  of  Venus  and 
Mercury,  the  improvement  of  telescopes  and  grinding  of 
glasses  for  that  purpose,  the  weight  of  air,  the  possibility 
or  impossibility  of  vacuities  and  Nature's  abhorrence  thereof, 
the  Torricellian  experiment  in  quicksilver,  the  descent  of  heavy- 
bodies  and  the  degrees  of  acceleration  therein,  with  divers 
other  things  of  like  nature,  some  of  which  were  then  but  new 
discoveries,  and  others  not  so  generally  known  and  embraced 
as  now  [1696]  they  are;  with  other  things  appertaining  to 
what  has  been  called  the  New  Philosophy,  which,  from  the 
times  of  Galileo  at  Florence,  and  Sir  Francis  Bacon  (Lord 
Verulam)  in  England,  hath  been  much  cultivated  in  Italy, 
France,  Germany,  and  other  parts  abroad,  as  well  as  with  us 
in  England."  This  comprehensive  survey  well  shows  the 
growing  interest  taken  in  science.  Charles  II.  was  lond  of 
dabbling  in  chemistry,  and  his  courtiers  followed  suit,  till  it 
became  considered  gentlemanly  to  have  a  tincture  of  scientific 
knowledge.  The  increased  orderliness  and  method  of  English 
style  which  now  began  to  prevail  may  in  some  measure  be 
attributed  to  the  scientific  spirit  abroad,  which  was  intolerant 
of  confusion  and  carelessness  of  arrangement.  To  this  period 
belongs  the  greatest  name  in  the  history  of  science,  Sir  Isaac 
Newton  (1642-1727),  who  cannot  be  altogether  omitted  even 
in  a  purely  literary  history.  He  succeeded  Barrow,  whose 
pupil  he  had  been,  as  Lucasian  professor  of  mathematics  at 
Cambridge,  and  published  his  great  work,  the  "  Principia,"  in 
1687.  It  was  written  in  Latin.  Besides  his  scientific  works, 
he  found  time  to  write  on  ancient  chronology,  on  the  Scripture 
prophecies,  and  "  An  Historical  Account  of  Two  Notable  Cor- 
ruptions of  Scripture."  These  were  published  posthumously, 
and  are  interesting  for  the  light  they  throw  on  his  religious 
opinions.  Their  style  is  not  specially  remarkable  in  any  way. 
8 


V. 

THE  WITS  OF  QUEEN  ANNE'S  TIME. 

Strife,  Addison,  Steele,  Arbuthnot,  Bol!n°broke,  Berkeley,  Butler;   Pope, 
Prior,  Gay,  Young,  Churchill,  Gray,  Collins,  and  Akenside. 

URING  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  and  the  two  first 
Georges,  the  government  of  England  was  in  a  very 
unsettled  condition.  Jacobitism,  till  finally  crushed 
in  1745-46,  flourished  among  men  who  held  high 
places  of  trust,  and  was  so  prevalent  among  the  community 
at  large  that  the  restoration  of  the  Stuart  line  was  looked  upon 
by  all  sagacious  observers  as  no  unlikely  event.  It  was  a  time 
of  the  grossest  political  immorality,  when  men  shifted  sides  un- 
hesitatingly for  the  most  selfish  motives,  and  when  both  the 
great  political  parties  lived  in  constant  fearof  having  their  secrets 
betrayed  by  traitors.  Party  spirit  ran  high,  and  Whigs  and 
Tories  alike  strained  every  nerve  to  win  the  voice  of  the  public 
to  their  side.  Both  employed  armies  of  hack  writers  to  advo- 
cate their  cause,  and  both  were  ready  to  shower  gifts  and 
offices  upon  any  writer  of  mark  and  talent  who  should  employ 
himself  in  their  defence.  The  pen  was  then  a  much  more 
powerful  political  agent  than  it  is  now.  Parliamentary  report* 
ing  was  forbidden,  and  thus  the  speech  delivered  in  Parlia^ 
ment,  which  in  our  day,  by  the  reports  of  it  in  the  newspapers, 
affects  the  minds  of  millions,  could  at  the  best  only  influence 
the  three  or  four  hundred  members  who  might  happen  to  hear 
it.  Recess  oratory  and  great  political  manifestoes  at  party 
gatherings  were  little  practised,  nor  would  they  have  been 


Dean  Swift.  163 

attended  by  any  widespread  results  though  they  had  been 
practised,  for  there  was  not  yet  such  a  thing  as  copious  news- 
i>aper  reports  of  speeches.  A  well-written  pamphlet,  or  a 
series  of  vigorous  articles  in  one  of  the  political  periodicals 
which  came  into  fashion  in  Queen  Anne's  time,  was  as  power- 
ful an  auxiliary  in  either  averting  the  ruin  of  a  ministry  or  in 
hastening  it  to  its  fall  as  a  great  oration  defending  his  policy  by 
a  Prime  Minister  or  a  scathing  denunciation  of  the  plans  of 
the  Government  by  an  Opposition  leader  is  in  the  present  day. 
Under  these  circumstances,  and  considering  the  munificent 
rewards  popular  and  telling  party  writers  often  had  bestowed 
upon  them,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  literature  of  the  time 
with  which  we  are  now  dealing  should  have  been  pre-eminently 
a  party  literature.  Almost  every  eminent  prose  writer  of  the 
period — Defoe,  Swift,  Addison,  Steele,  and  others — ranged 
himself  on  the  side  of  the  Whig  or  the  Tory  party,  and  em- 
ployed his  pen  in  its  defence.  The  effect  of  this  on  prose 
style  was  on  the  whole  favourable,  giving  it  greater  energy, 
precision,  and  lucidity  than  it  had  yet  possessed.  But  it  had 
also  its  evil  results.  Something  of  the  want  of  moral  eleva- 
tion and  breadth  of  view  which  distinguished  the  politics  of 
the  age  communicated  itself  to  the  literature  :  with  all  its 
many  good  qualities,  the  so-called  Augustan  period  of  English 
literature  has  about  it  a  worldly  air  and  an  absence  of  any 
spiritual  insight. 

Among  the  men  of  letters  who  entered  the  bustling  arena  of 
political  controversy  was  the  greatest  and  most  original  writer 
of  his  time,  Jonathan  Swift,  one  of  the  most  powerful,  most 
imperious,  and  most  puzzling  figures  our  literary  history  pre- 
sents. He  was  born  in  Dublin  in  1667.  It  was  only  by  the 
accident  of  birth  that  he  was  an  Irishman.  He  was  descended 
from  an  old  Yorkshire  family,  and  had  no  Irish  blood  in  his 
veins.  Even  he,  though  wiser  and  more  far-sighted  in  regard 
to  Ireland  than  almost  any  of  his  contemporaries,  always  spoke 
of  the  native  Irish  with  that  indiscriminating  contempt  which 
has  since  born  such  bitter  fruit.  Swift  was  a  posthumous 
child,  ard  his  mother  having  been  left  very  slenderly  provided 


164          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time. 

for.  the  expenses  of  his  education  were  defrayed  in  what  appears 
to  have  been  a  sufficiently  grudging  fashion  by  his  uncle  God- 
win. He  was  educated  at  the  school  of  Kilkenny,  and  then 
at  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  where  he  obtained  his  degree 
Spcciali gratia  in  1685.  In  1689  he  became  private  secretary 
to  Sir  William  Temple,  whose  wife  was  a  relative  of  his 
mother's.  All  things  considered,  Swift  entered  the  world  under 
very  promising  auspices.  Temple  (1628-1699)  was  a  veteran 
diplomatist  and  statesman,  who  had  taken  a  leading  part  in 
negotiating  the  Triple  Alliance,  and  he  was  universally  looked 
up  to  and  consulted  in  his  old  age  as  one  of  the  most  wary, 
sagacious,  and  politic  of  men.  As  an  author  he  ranks  high, 
not  so  much  because  his  works  show  great  power  or  genius, 
as  because  he  was  one  of  the  first  to  obtain  a  mastery  over 
the  great  and  difficult  art  of  English  prose  composition.  "Sir 
William  Temple,"  Johnson  is  reported  to  have  said,  "was  the 
first  writer  who  gave  cadence  to  English  prose.  Before  his 
time  they  were  careless  of  arrangement,  and  did  not  mind 
whether  a  sentence  ended  with  an  important  word  or  an  in- 
significant word,  or  with  what  part  of  speech  it  was  concluded." 
In  the  household  of  Temple  at  Moor  Park,  Swift  had  ample 
opportunity  for  increasing  his  store  of  knowledge,  and,  besides, 
he  was  admitted  behind  the  scenes  of  political  life,  and  even 
had  the  honour  on  one  occasion  of  acting  as  Temple's  mouth- 
piece in  advising  King  William  regarding  the  policy  he  should 
pursue  as  to  the  Triennial  Bill.  Yet  he  felt  his  position  very 
galling.  He  was  a  dependant,  his  proud,  imperious,  self-con- 
fident nature  chafed  bitterly  against  the  chains  of  servitude, 
however  richly  gilded  they  might  be ;  and  Temple,  a  man  of 
cold,  selfish,  precise  disposition,  was  a  master  whose  behests 
it  was  not  always  easy  to  obey  with  cheerfulness.  With  but  a 
brief  interval,  during  which,  apparently  in  despair  of  ever  ob- 
taining any  lay  promotion  from  his  patron,  he  committed  the 
great  mistake  of  his  life  by  taking  orders,  Swift  remained  with 
Temple  till  his  death  in  1699.  It  was  during  his  residence  at 
Moor  Park  that  he  first  became  acquainted  with  the  woman, 
then  a  little  girl,  whose  name  is  indissolubly  connected  with 


Swifts  "  Tale  of  a  Tub"  165 

his.  Esther  Johnson,  better  known  as  Stella,  was  only  about 
six  years  old  when  S\vi:t  saw  her  fust.  He  constituted  him- 
self her  tutor,  " directing,"  he  says,  "what  books  she  should 
read,  and  perpetually  instructing  her  in  the  principles  of 
honour  and  virtue,  from  which  she  never  swerved  in  any  one 
action  or  moment  of  her  life." 

In  1699  Swift  went  to  Ireland  with  Lord  Berkeley  as  private 
chaplain.  From  him  he  expected  high  ecclesiastical  promo- 
tion, but  his  hopes  were,  as  usual,  doomed  to  disappointment. 
To  his  bitter  grief  and  mortification,  he  had  to  be  content  with 
the  livings  of  Laracor  and  Rathbeggin  in  the  county  of  Meath, 
to  which  he  was  appointed  in  1700.  He  pei  formed  nis  duties  as 
a  clergyman  in  a  manner  which,  if  it  would  now  be  considered 
perfunctory,  was  probably  more  exemplary  than  was  then  usual, 
though  he  often  left  his  "  pari>h,  with  an  audience  of  half  a 
score,"  to  go  to  England,  there  to  advance  his  fortunes  by  be- 
coming acquainted  with  wits  and  statesmen.  His  first  publi- 
cation, "A  Discourse  on  the  Contests  and  Dissensions  be- 
tween the  Nobles  and  Commons  at  Athens  and  Rome,"  which 
appeared  in  1701,  had  a  political  intent,  being  meant  to  check 
the  impeachment  of  Soiners,  Halifax,  Oxford,  and  Portland 
for  their  share  in  the  Parti' ion  Treaty.  When  he  visited  Eng- 
land in  1702,  he  avowed  the  authorship  of  this  tract,  and  thus 
won  the  regard  of  the  leading  Whig  statesmen  and  their 
political  allies.  In  1704  he  published  anonymously  the  "  Tale 
of  a  Tub,"  which  appears  to  have  lain  for  about  seven  or  eight 
years  in  MS.  His  authorship  of  it  was  never  acknowledged, 
but  it  was  generally  known  that  he  was  the  writer,  and  the 
work  proved  the  one  insurmountable  obstacle  to  his  profes- 
sional preferment.  In  vigour  and  poignancy  of  satire,  in 
g-ave  irony,  in  masculine  force  and  intensity,  the  "Tale  of  a 
Tub"  has  never  been  surpassed.  On  one  occasion,  when  in 
his  old  age  he  happened  to  come  across  a  copy  of  the  work, 
Swift  exclaimed,  4i  Good  God  !  what  a  genius  I  had  when  I 
wrote  that  book  !"  But  it  was  thought  to  have  an  irreligious 
tendency,  and  Swift's  natural  love  of  obscenity  appears  strongly 
in  many  parts  of  it,  so  that  while  it  made  him  known  as  a 


1 66          The  Wits  of  Queen  Annes  Time. 

man  of  genius,  it  also  caused  him  to  be  regarded  with  sus- 
picion as  an  ecclesiastic.  The  three  sons,  Peter,  Jack,  and 
Martin,  who  figure  in  the  allegory,  are  intended  to  represent 
Popery,  Presbyterianism,  and  Episcopalianism,  and  the  story 
of  their  adventures  is  so  related  as  to  favour  Episcopalianism, 
for  Swift  was  always  strongly  attached  to  the  Anglican  Church. 
Along  with  the  "  Tale  of  a  Tub  "  was  printed  the  "  Battle  of 
the  Books,"  which  had  been  written  at  Moor  Park  in  behalf 
of  Temple,  who  had  taken  a  prominent  part  in  a  very  foolish 
controversy  as  to  the  relative  merits  of  ancient  and  modern 
literature.  It  does  not  show  the  same  condensation  and 
elaboration  as  distinguish  Swift's  later  satires.  During  the 
years  1708-9  he  published  several  tracts,  of  which  the  most 
noticeable  is  his  famous  "  Argument  against  the  Abolishing  of 
Christianity,"  an  admirable  specimen  of  his  gravely  ironical 
style,  and  his  "  Predictions  of  Isaac  Bickerstaff,"  a  squib 
upon  the  astrological  almanac-makers  of  the  time,  in  which, 
among  other  things,  he  predicted  that  John  Partridge,  one  of 
the  chief  members  of  the  body,  would  die  on  a  certain  speci- 
fied date.  In  his  almanac  for  1709,  Partridge  proclaimed 
that  he  "  was  still  living,  and  in  health,  and  all  were  knaves 
who  reported  otherwise."  Swift  replied  in  a  very  amusing 
pamphlet,  "  The  Vindication  of  Isaac  Bickerstaff,"  in  which  he 
argued  that  Partridge  was  quite  mistaken,  and  that  he  really 
was  dead.  "  The  jest,"  says  Mr.  Forster,  "  had  by  this  time 
diffused  itself  into  so  wide  a  popularity  that  all  the  wits  be- 
came eager  to  take  part  in  it ;  Rowe,  Steele,  Addison,  and 
Prior  contributed  to  it  in  divers  amusing  ways,  and  Congreve 
described,  under  Partridge's  name,  the  distresses  and  re- 
proaches Squire  Bickerstaff  had  exposed  him  to,  insomuch 
that  he  could  not  leave  his  door  without  somebody  twitting 
him  for  sneaking  about  without  paying  his  funeral  expenses. 
The  poor  astrologer  himself  meanwhile  was  continually  adver- 
tising that  he  was  not  dead." 

We  now  come  to  the  most  active  and  exciting  period  of 
Swift's  career.  Till  1710  he  had  supported  the  Whigs—not  so 
strenuously,  it  is  true,  as  he  afterwards  supported  the  rival 


Swiff s  "Examiner'1  167 

party,  but  still  with  considerable  zeal.  His  services  had  not 
been  rewarded,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  personal 
neglect  with  which  he  was  treated  was  the  main  reason  why 
he,  in  1710,  transferred  his  talents  to  the  Tory  ministry  of 
Harley  and  St.  John.  By  his  new  associates  he  was  received 
with  open  arms.  "  We  were  determined  to  have  you,"  said 
St.  John ;  "  you  were  the  only  one  we  were  afraid  of."  Till 
the  fall  of  the  Tory  ministry  in  1714.  Swift  occupied  a  position 
which  for  real  power  and  influence  was  probably  unsurpassed. 
"  He  held  probably,"  writes  Mr.  Hannay,1  "  the  most  potent 
position  that  a  writer  ever  held  in  this  country,  but  all  the 
while  held  it  in  a  dubious  unrecognised  way.  He  was  the 
patron  of  men  of  letters  ;  got  them  places  and  got  them  money. 
He  'crammed'  the  ministers;  and  his  pen  was  not  employed 
in  quizzing  hoops  or  patches,  or  sneering  at  City  people — it 
was  an  engine  of  power  over  all  England.  He  used  it  as  an 
orator  does  his  tongue, — to  do  something  with.  In  a  word,  he 
was  a  power  in  the  State  ;  and,  indeed,  it  is  one  of  the  few 
pleasant  things  to  read  about  in  the  records  of  these  days,  how 
those  who,  in  their  hearts,  tried  to  despise  him  as  an  *  Irish 
parson,' — how,  I  say,  they  dreaded  him  •  how  they  flattered 
and  courted  him  ;  and  how  they  felt  that  he  was  their  master." 
During  this  period  Swift  wrote  his  most  telling  political  pam- 
phlets, the  "Conduct  of  the  Allies,"  the  "  Letter  to  the  October 
Club  ;"  and  the  Examiner,  a  weekly  periodical  which  had 
been  started  in  support  of  the  new  ministry,  and  which  he 
conducted  for  seven  months,  assailing  the  enemies  of  his  party 
with  the  intensest  virulence  and  the  most  trenchant  ridicule. 
Of  more  permanent  value  than  his  political  writings  is  his  ever- 
charming  "Journal  to  Stella,"  which  he  wrote  during  the  years 
of  his  residence  in  London:  "that  wonderful  journal,"  says 
Mr.  Forster,  "  that  unrivalled  picture  of  the  lime,  in  which  he 
set  down  day  by  day  the  incidents  of  these  momentous  years  ; 
which  received  every  hope,  fear,  or  fancy  in  its  undress  as  it 
rose  to  him  ;  which  was  written  for  one  person's  private  pleasure, 
and  has  had  indestructible  attractiveness  for  every  one  since." 
1  "  Satire  and  Satirists,"  p.  160. 


1 68          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time. 

"  Stella  "  had  removed  to  Ireland  shortly  after  Swift  received 
the  living  of  Laracor,  and  now  lived  there,  along  with  Mrs. 
Dingley,  a  relation  of  the  Temple  family. 

The  fond  expectations  cherished  by  Swift  that  his  Tory 
friends  would  reward  his  great  exertions  in  their  favour  by  a 
bishopric  fell  to  the  ground  as  completely  as  his  former  hopes 
of  preferment.  Queen  Anne  would  not  make  a  bishop  of  the 
author  of  the  "  Tale  of  a  Tub;"  all  the  advancement  he  received 
was  being  made  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's  in  1713.  On  the  death 
of  the  Queen  the  Whigs  again  returned  to  power;  and  Swift, 
a  soured  and  disappointed  man,  went  back  to  Ireland  to  pass 
the  remainder  of  his  days  with  dire  scorn  and  indignation 
gna\\ing  at  his  heart.  By  the  publication  in  1720  of  the  tract 
proposing  the  *•  Universal  Use  of  Irish  Manufactures,"  and  still 
more  by  his  tamous  "  Drapier's  Letters"  (1723)  wriiten  against 
Ward's  patent  for  a  copper  coinage,  he  raised  himself  to  un- 
exampled popularity  in  Ireland  ;  his  name  was  in  every  mouth 
as  the  saviour  of  his  country,  and  so  great  was  the  commotion 
excited  that  the  patent  had  ultimately  to  be  withdrawn.  His 
success  did  nothing  to  cheer  him  :  he  still  remained  the  same 
gloomy  and  misanthropic  man.  In  1726-27  he  published 
"  Gulliver's  Travels,"  his  most  generally  read  work,  the  last 
part  of  which  shows  to  how  terrible  an  extent  he  carried  what 
he  believed  to  be  his  virtuous  indignation  against  the  "  villanies 
and  corruptions  of  mankind."  In  his  latter  years  a  settled 
melancholy  spread  over  him.  When  parting  with  a  friend  he 
would  say  with  a  sigh,  <{  I  hope  I  shall  never  see  you  again." 
The  melancholy  gradually  darkened  into  madness.  During  the 
last  three  years  of  his  life  he  is  known  to  have  spoken  only 
once  or  twice.  At  length,  in  October  1745,  death  came  to 
his  release.  He  bequeathed  the  bulk  of  his  fortune  to  found 
and  endow  an  asylum  in  Dublin  for  lunatics  and  idiots. 

Stella  had  died  before  him  in  1727.  How  truly  ana  tenderly 
he  loved  her,  the  thousand  endearing  expressions  in  the 
"Journal"  amply  show.  But  the  dark  cloud  which  over- 
shadowed all  Swift's  life,  overshadowed  his  relations  with  her 
also.  Mr.  Forster,  whose  unfinished  Life  of  Swift  is,  with  all 


Swift's  Character.  169 

its  wordiness  and  tediousness,  a  splendid  tribute  to  this  great 
sat  rist's  memory,  could  see  no  sufficient  evidence  for  the  story 
that  Swi't  became  united  to  her  by  a  private  marriage.  However 
tiiis  may  be.  they  certainly  alwavs  lived  apart.  Of  his  relations 
with  Vanessa  (Hester  Vanhomrigh)  \ve  need  not  say  much. 
He  became  acquainted  with  her  in  London,  where  she  made 
him  an  offer  of  marriage,  which  he  declined,  without,  however, 
breaking  off  his  intercourse  with  her  ;  followed  him  to  Ireland  ; 
and  died  of  a  broken  heart  on  becoming  acquainted  with  his 
intimacy  with  Stella. 

Had  Swift  been  born  in  such  a  position  as  to  give  him  an 
independent  fortune,  his  life  might  have  been  a  happy  one. 
Nay,  it  he  had  not  entered  the  Church,  but  had  risen  (an  event 
quite  within  the  range  of  possibility)  like  Addison  to  high 
office  in  the  State,  it  is  very  probable  that  we  should  never 
have  heard  so  much  of  his  misanthropy  and  cynicism.  Im- 
patient of  control,  proud,  contemptuous  of  inferiority,  and 
intolerant  of  stupidity,  he  never  found  a  proper  field  wherein 
to  exercise  his  vast  and  daring  genius.  For  literary  fame, 
except  as  a  stepping-stone  to  what  he  considered  higher  ends, 
he  cared  little  or  nothing :  the  finest  fruits  of  his  mind, 
"  Gulliver"  and  the  "Tale  of  a  Tub,"  were  flung  carelessly, 
unacknowledged,  upon  the  world.  That  there  were  noble  and 
generous  tendencies  in  Swift's  nature  can  scarcely  be  doubted 
by  any  one  who  has  studied  him  with  impartiality.  Strictly 
economical  in  his  personal  expenses,  he  could,  when  occasion 
required,  give  largely  :  like  many  who  take  care  of  the  pence, 
he  sometimes  dispensed  the  pounds  with  a  bounteousness 
which  put  to  shame  the  charity  of  his  apparently  more  free- 
handed contemporaries.  That  he  was  often  sullen,  rude,  in- 
solent, and  disdainful  cannot  be  denied.  But  some  of  his 
fugitive  pieces,  and  especially  the  "  Journal  to  Stella,"  show 
that  beneath  his  outward  misanthropy  and  harshness  lay  a 
vein  of  playfulness,  tenderness,  and  affection.  The  fact  that 
he  was  a  general  favourite  with  women  is  a  further  proof  in  the 
same  direction.  In  spite  of  the  large  literature  which  has 
accumulated  round  Swift's  name,  the  key  which  shall  enable 


1 70         The  Wtis  of  Queen  Amies  Time. 

us  to  solve  the  many  enigmas  about  his  life  and  character, 
which  have  baffled  so  many  inquirers,  still  remains  to  be  found. 
He  stands  alone,  a  unique  and  portentous  figure,  to  whom  the 
eyes  of  men  will  long  be  directed,  some  with  pity  and  even 
affection,  some  with  aversion  and  distrust,  all  with  wonder  and 
great  admiration.  Swift's  outward  appearance  corresponded 
to  the  character  of  him  which  we  gather  from  his  writings 
and  from  other  sources.  He  was,  says  Scott,  "in  person 
tall,  strong,  and  well  made,  of  a  dark  complexion,  but  with 
blue  eyes,  black  and  bushy  eyebrows,  nose  somewhat  aquiline, 
and  features  which  remarkably  expressed  the  stern,  haughty, 
and  dauntless  turn  of  his  mind." 

As  an  author,  Swift  was  prominent  within  his  own  range, 
but  his  range  was  not  very  wide.  For  the  sublime  and  pathetic 
in  composition  he  had  no  turn.  His  verses,  of  which  he  wrote 
many,  are  clever,  lively,  and  spirited,  but  they  are  not  poetry 
in  any  high  sense  of  the  word.  His  intellect  was  not  at  all 
of  an  ethereal  order  :  it  was  solid,  massive,  and  intense,  but 
of  the  earth,  earthy.  Satire  was  his  peculiar  province  ;  there 
his  genius  got  full  scope  in  expressing  the  fierce  indignation 
which  lacerated  his  heart.  Hating  insincere  sentiment,  he  was 
too  apt  to  believe  that  all  sentiments  to  which  his  nature  did 
not  respond  were  insincere  ;  the  baser  qualities  of  men  stood 
out  much  more  prominently  before  his  eyes  than  their  virtues ; 
and  he  often  fell  into  the  common  error  of  satirists  of  supposing 
that  the  anger  which  arose  simply  from  his  own  jaundiced 
imagination  was  the  wrath  of  a  good  man  disgusted  with  the 
wickedness  he  saw  around  him.  His  style  is  simple,  nervous, 
terse,  disdainful  of  gaudy  ornament,  yet  often  surprising  us 
by  happy  turns  of  expression  and  felicitous  illustrations.  As 
his  "  Drapier's  Letters  "  and  other  political  writings  show,  he 
could  adapt  himself  admirably  to  any  class  to  which  he  appealed, 
never  hesitating  to  use  homely  expressions,  and  picking  out 
with  great  skill  the  facts  which  best  suited  his  purpose.  His 
love  of  gross  allusions  and  filthy  images  is  the  great  stain  on 
his  literary  fame.  It  no  doubt  arose,  in  part  at  least,  from  the 
degraded  notions  he  .entertained  of  humanity. 


Joseph  Actdison.  171 

1  To  turn  from  the  contemplation  of  Swift's  dark  and  tem- 
pestuous life  to  the  calm,  prosperous,  happy  career  of  Addison 
is  like  viewing  some  sweet,  tranquil' spot  in  the  sunny  South, 
with  its  delicately  perfumed  flowers  and  its  luxuriance  of  fruits 
and  foliage,  after  looking  on  a  wild  mountain-pass,  with  its 
rocks  and  gloomy  recesses,  its  grand  desolation,  and  its  fierce 
and  gurgling  streams  rushing  on  unseen.  True,  Addison  had 
for  a  time  to  bear  the  burdens  and  trials  of  poverty,  but  it  was 
only  for  a  short  period,  and  poverty,  where  it  does  not  last  so 
long  as  to  sour  one's  temper  and  embitter  one's  views  of  life, 
is  an  excellent  schoolmaster  if  its  lessons  be  viewed  in  a  proper 
spirit.  It  teaches  forethought,  self-reliance,  sympathy  with  the 
mass  of  humanity,  industry  and  patience  under  difficulties. 
None  of  these  qualities  was  wanting  in  Addison  :  he  is  the 
"  model  boy  "  of  the  school ;  the  most  blameless,  irreproach- 
able of  the  wits  of  Queen  Anne's  time.  The  correct  and 
virtuous  lad  who  receives  the  prize  for  good  conduct,  though 
commended  by  his  tutors  and  regarded  with  admiring  hope 
by  his  parents,  is  not,  it  is  to  be  feared,  always  a  popular 
character ;  he  is  often  destitute  of  those  generous  excesses, 
those  fine  spontaneous  impulses  of  a  free  and  liberal  nature, 
which  make  us  forgive  not  a  few  departures  from  the  path 
of  strict  decorum.  Something  of  this  is  true  about  Addison. 
Though  no  serious  fault  can  be  laid  to  his  charge,  he  was  a 
little  selfish,  a  little  cold-hearted,  had  somewhat  too  keen  an 
"eye  to  the  main  chance,"  and  sometimes  carried  prudence  to 
the  verge  of  meanness. 

Joseph  Addison  was  born  in  1672,  the  son  of  the  Rev. 
Lancelot  Addison,  Rector  of  Milston  in  Wiltshire,  who  after- 
wards rose  to  be  Dean  of  Lich field.  He  was  educated  at  the 
Charterhouse,  and  afterwards  at  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  distinguished  himself  in  the  studies  then  most  valued  there, 
acquiring  a  competent  knowledge  of  the  Latin  poets,  and 
writing  Latin  verse  with  fluency  and  elegance.  In  his  twenty- 
second  year  he  addressed  some  English  verses  to  Dryden, 
and  soon  after  published  a  translation  of  the  greater  part  of 
Virgil's  fourth  Georgic.  Addison's  early  poetical  performances 


172          The  Wits  of  Queen  AnnJs  Time. 

in  Latin  and  in  English  do  not  merit  much  notice.  After  the 
fashion  of  the  time,  he  made  them  the  vehicle  of  conveying 
compliments  to  a  good  many  persons  whose  patronage  might 
be  of  value  to  him  :  he  praised  Charles  Montagu,  he  praised 
Somers,  and  he  praised  King  William.  His  encomiums  were 
not  bestowed  in  vain.  Montagu  dissuaded  him  from  the 
design  he  had  entertained  of  entering  the  Church,  declaring 
that  the  State  could  not  at  that  time  afford  to  spare  to  the 
Church  such  a  man  as  he  was.  A  Government  pension  of 
^300  a  year  was  obtained  for  him  in  order  that  he  might 
travel,  and  in  the  summer  of  1699  Addison  set  out  for  the 
Continent.  The  design  of  his  journey  probably  was  to  enable 
him  to  acquire  such  a  knowledge  of  French  as  to  qualify  him 
for  acting  as  a  diplomatist. 

After  travelling  in  France  and  Italy  for  about  three  years,  Ad- 
dison returned  to  England  on  the  death  of  King  William,  which, 
by  depriving  his  political  friends  of  power,  had  stopped  his  pen- 
sion. Soon  after,  in  1 704,  he  published  an  account  of  his  travels 
in  Italy,  with  a  dedication  to  Lord  Somers.  The  character 
which  Johnson  gives  of  this  work  may  be  accepted  as  sub- 
stantially correct :  "As  his  stay  in  foreign  countries  was  short, 
his  observations  are  such  as  might  be  supplied  by  a  hasty 
view,  and  consist  chiefly  in  comparisons  of  the  present  face 
of  the  country  with  the  descriptions  left  us  by  the  Roman 
poets,  from  whom  he  made  preparatory  collections,  though 
he  might  have  spared  the  trouble  had  he  known  that  such 
collections  had  been  made  twice  before  by  the  Italian 
authors."  About  this  time  he  wrote  his  "  Dialogues  on 
Mrdals,"  which  was  not  published  till  after  his  death.  Like 
the  "  Travels  in  Italy,"  it  shows  that  Addison  was  what  was 
then  called  an  "elegant  scholar:"  to  anything  like  profound 
erudition  he  could  lay  no  claim,  but  he  knew  well  those  de- 
partments of  classical  literature  which  were  most  esteemed  in 
polite  society.  After  his  return  from  the  Continent  he  had  to 
endure  for  a  short  period  the  hardships  of  poverty,  when,  in 
1704,  a  fortunate  accident  opened  up  to  him  the  path  to 
power  and  riches.  The  great  victory  at  Blenheim  had  roused 


Addtsoris  Poems.  1 73 

the  nation  to  the  utmost  enthusiasm,  but  none  of  the  versifiers 
who  had  attempted  to  celebrate  it  had  talents  sufficient  to  do 
justice  to  the  occasion.  By  the  advice  of  Montagu  (now  Lord 
Halifax)  Addison  was  applied  to,  and  readily  undertook  the 
proposed  task.  When  the  poem  was  about  half  finished,  it  was 
carried  to  Lord  Treasurer  Godolphin,  who  was  so  pleased  with 
the  famous  simile  of  the  angel,  that  Add-on  was  immediately 
appointed  to  a  Commissionership  worth  ^200  a  year.  This 
"famous  simile  of  the  angel,"  which  proved  such  a  fortunate 
stroke  to  Addison,  is  now,  we  imagine,  little  known.  It  runs 
as  follows : — 

"But,  O  my  muse  !  what  numbers  wilt  them  find 
To  sing  the  furious  troops  in  battle  joined  ? 
Meihinks  I  hear  the  drum's  tumultuous  sound, 
The  victors'  shouts  and  dying  groans  confound  ; 
The  dreadful  burst  of  cannon  rend  the  skies, 
And  all  the  thunders  of  the  battle  rise. 
'Twas  then  great  Marlborough's  mighty  soul  was  proved, 
That  in  the  shock  of  charging  hosts  unmoved, 
Amidst  confusion,  horror,  and  despair, 
Examined  all  the  dreadful  scenes  of  war  : 
In  peaceful  thought  the  field  of  death  surveyed, 
To  fainting  squadrons  lent  the  timely  aid, 
Inspired  repulsed  battalions  to  engage, 
And  taught  the  doubtful  battle  where  to  rage. 
So  when  an  angel  by  divine  command, 
With  ri.-ing  tempests  shakes  a  guilty  land 
(Such  as  of  late  o'er  pale  Britannia  passed), 
Calm  and  serene  he  drives  the  furious  blast ; 
And,  pleased  the  Almighty's  order  to  perform, 
Rides  on  the  whirlwind  and  directs  the  storm." 

Certainly  these  lines  do  not  show  any  high  poetical  genius : 
they  are,  in  truth,  commonplace  enough  ;  nevertheless  they  are 
as  good  as  anything  Addison  ever  wrote  in  verse,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  few  hymns,  to  which  their  fine  religious  fervour  lends 
a  perennial  attractiveness.  Shortly  after  "The  Campaign," 
Addison  wrote  the  opera  of  "Rosamond,"  which,  after  it  had 
failed  on  the  stage,  he  published,  with  a  dedication  to  the 
Duchess  of  Marlborough ;  "a  woman,"  says  Johnson,  '*  with- 
out skill,  or  pretensions  to  skill,  in  poetry  or  literature.  His 


174          The  Wits  of 'Queen  Anne's  Time. 

dedication  was  therefore  an  instance  of  servile  absurdity.** 
We  need  not  criticise  severely  Addison's  conduct  in  sometimes 
dedicating  his  writings  in  very  adulatory  fashion  to  persons 
whom  he  must  have  known  to  be  unworthy  of  his  praises. 
His  exploits  in  this  direction  turn  pale  before  those  of  Dry- 
den,  a  greater  man.  It  was  the  fashion  of  the  time — a  fashion 
productive  of  much  lying  and  sycophancy,  but  which  was 
undoubtedly  often  efficacious  in  filling  the  pockets  of  a  needy 
author  with  gold.  It  was  to  single  individuals,  not  to  the 
general  public,  that  literary  men  looked  for  support,  and 
what  wonder  though  they  sometimes  strained  a  point  in  their 
endeavour  to  please  their  patrons?  In  our  own  time,  do  we 
not  too  frequently  see  writers  of  great  power  becoming  untrue 
to  their  genius,  and  writing  works  unworthy  of  them,  to  please 
the  capricious  taste  of  their  patrons,  the  public? 

Addison's  promotion  from  a  comparatively  humble  position 
to  the.  highest  offices  of  State  was  very  rapid.  In  1706  he 
was  made  Under  Secretary  of  State.  In  1708  he  became  a 
member  of  Parliament,  and  in  the  same  year  was  appointed 
to  go  to  Ireland,  of  which  Wharton  had  become  Lord-Lieu- 
tenant, as  Chief  Secretary.  Along  with  his  secretaryship, 
he  obtained  a  patent  appointing  him  keeper  of  the  Irish 
records  for  life-,  with  a  salary  of  over  ^300  a  year.  This 
wonderful  success  in  life  was  no  doubt  largely  owing  to 
Addison's  Aact  and  discretion,  as  well  as  to  his  abilities.  He 
was  a  conciliatory  man,  not  ready  either  to  give  or  to  take 
offence ;  his  political  creed  was  of  the  most  orthodox  descrip- 
tion— where  his  party  went  he  was  ready  to  go  too ;  and  his 
shrewd  powers  of  observation  and  insight  into  the  character 
©f  men  must  have  made  him  an  adept  in  the  difficult  art,  so 
useful  to  Government  officials,  of  managing  people  without 
letting  them  know  that  you  are  managing  them. 

It  was  during  his  residence  in  Ireland  that  Addison  first 
attempted  that  species  of  composition  in  which  he  reigns 
supreme.  But  here  our  story  requires  us  to  go  back  a  little, 
and  to  bring  a  new  character  on  the  scene. 

Among  the  little  senate  of  admirers  to  whom  Addison  gave 


Richard  Steele.  175 

laws,  and  who  reverenced  him  as  the  greatest  and  wisest 
man  of  the  day,  he  had  no  more  devoted  henchman  than 
Dick  Steele,  a  stout,  jovial,  kind-hearted  man,  of  good 
principles  and  bad  practices,  who  had  passed  a  haphazard, 
reckless,  and  not  unhappy  life,  sinning  one  day  and  repenting 
the  next,  working  strenuously  when  he  did  work,  but  ever  ready, 
on  the  slightest  temptation,  to  fling  aside  his  pen,  and  sally 
forth  to  engage  in  the  pursuit  of  pleasure.  Steele  was  a  year 
older  than  Addison,  having  been  born  in  Dublin  in  1671.  His 
mother  was  Irish ;  whether  his  father  was  so  or  not  is  un- 
certain. At  the  age  of  twelve  he  was  sent  from  Dublin  to 
the  Charterhouse,  wjiere  hr  first  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Addison.  Thackeray,  whose  lecture  on  Steele  x  is  full  of  that 
peculiar  sympathy  which  he  always  felt  for  men  of  his  type  of 
character,  says,  doubtless  with  much  truth,  "  I  am  afraid  no 
good  report  could  be  given  by  his  masters  and  ushers  of  that 
thick-set,  square-faced,  black-eyed,  soft-hearted,  little  Irish 
boy.  He  was  whipped  deservedly  a  great  number  of  times. 
Though  he  had  very  good  parts  of  his  own,  he  got  other  boys 
to  do  his  lessons  for  him,  and  only  took  just  as  much  trouble 
as  should  enable  him  to  scuffle  through  his  exercises,  and  by 
good  fortune  escape  the  flogging-block."  From  the  Charter- 
house Steele  went  to  Oxford,  where  he  seems  to  have  been 
very  idle.  He  left  it  without  taking  a  degree,  though  not 
without  having  given  some  evidence  of  his  literary  capacity, 
for  while  there  he  wrote  a  comedy  and  a  poem.  At  this 
period  of  his  life,  however,  his  taste  ran  in  the  direction  not 
of  a  literary  but  of  a  military  life,  and  his  friends  refusing  to 
buy  him  a  commission,  he  enlisted  as  a  private  in  the  Horse 
Guards.  He  obtained  from  Lord  Cutts,  whose  private  secre- 
tary he  became,  an  ensign's  commission  ;  not,  we  may  suppose, 
granted  him  on  account  of  his  attention  to  his  duties,  but 
because  he  was  a  likeable  man,  whose  wit  and  generous 

1  In  his  "English  Humourists  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  the  notes  to 
which — not  the  least  interesting  or  valuable  part  of  the  amusing  volume — 
are,  it  may  be  worth  mentioning,  by  James  Hannay,  author  of  "Singleton 
Fontenoy,"  £c. 


176          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne  s  Time. 

disposition  made  him  a  general  favourite.  At  this,  as  at  all 
other  periods  of  his  life,  Steele  sowed  wild  oats  profusely,  and 
reaped  their  customary  harvest  of  remorse  and  repentance 
frequently,  and  with  great  intensity.  Unfortunately,  however, 
he  always  soon  grew  tired  of  the  latter  occupation,  and  broke 
off  in  the  middle  of  it  to  sow  wild  oats  again  with  as  great 
industry  as  ever.  It  was  during  his  temporary  fits  of  repent- 
ance that  he  wrote  his  first  book,  "The  Christian  Hero,"  which 
appeared  in  1701.  Though  its  intent  was  good,  the  difference 
between  the  preaching  and  the  practice  of  the  writer  was 
productive  of  a  good  deal  of  irreverent  laughter  among  his 
comrades.  In  the  following  year  he  wrote  a  comedy,  "  The 
Funeral,"  which  met  with  a  fair  share  of  success.  In  1703 
and  1704  he  wrote  two  other  plays,  "The  Tender  Husband" 
and  "The  Dying  Lover,"  of  which  the  first  succeeded,  while 
the  other  failed — on  account  of  its  piety,  Steele  boasted  ;  on 
account  of  its  dulness,  said  others.  About  this  time  he  quitted 
the  army,  having  received  through  the  influence  of  his  friends 
the  appointment  of  Gazetteer,  with  a  salary  of  ^300  a  year. 
He  now  became  a  politician  and  a  man  of  letters  by  profes- 
sion, and  entered  freely  into  the  literary  society  of  the  period. 
In  1709  the  happiest  notion  of  his  life  occurred  to  him. 
Under  the  name  of  Isaac  Bickerstaff,  which  Swift  had  made 
popular,  he  resolved  to  edit  a  periodical  of  somewhat  the 
same  kind  as  the  Review  begun  by  Defoe  in  1704,  but,  unlike 
it,  excluding  party  politics.  This  was  the  Tatler,  of  which 
the  first  number  was  published  on  April  12,  1709.  It  was 
published  three  times  a  week,  and  "  was  intended,  in  some 
respects,  to  serve  the  purpose  of  a  newspaper,  as  well  as  to 
supply  a  series  of  brief  essays  on  life  and  literature,  or  any 
topic,  in  short,  that  the  quick-witted  author  could,  in  the 
language  of  the  day,  entertain  the  town  with."  Addison  soon 
discovered,  by  a  passage  in  the  sixth  number  containing  a 
remark  on  Virgil  which  he  had  made  in  the  course  of  con- 
versation, that  "  Isaac  Bickerstaff,"  the  editor  of  the  Tatler, 
was  none  other  than  his  old  companion  Dick  Steele,  and  he 
lent  him  the  invaluable  assistance  of  his  pen,  not  very 


The  "  Spectator  "  177 

frequently  at  first,  but  more  often  when  the  work  was  pretty 
far  advanced.  "This  good  office,"  said  Steele,  with  his  usual 
generosity  and  freedom  from  jealousy,  "  he  performed  with 
such  force  of  genius,  humour,  wit,  and  learning,  that  I  fared 
like  a  distressed  prince  who  calls  in  a  powerful  neighbour  to 
his  aid.  I  was  undone  by  my  auxiliary ;  when  I  had  once 
called  him  in,  I  could  not  subsist  without  dependence  on 
him."  In  so  saying  he  perhaps  overstated  the  case.  If 
Addison  had  the  more  subtle,  delicate,  and  cultured  mind, 
Steele  had  more  originality,  and  in  the  Tatler^  as  elsewhere, 
he  showed  that  fine  chivalrous  instinct  which  runs  like  a 
thread  of  gold  through  all  his  writings. 

The  Taf/fr\\a.s,  after  a  prosperous  career,  brought  to  a  close 
on  January  2,  1711.  On  the  ist  of  March  in  the  same  year 
appeared  the  first  number  of  another  periodical,  also  conducted 
by  Steele,  of  somewhat  the  same  character.  J^N^tface  of  the 
newspaper  or  gazetteer  was  to  be  admitted  ;  it  was  to  be  alto- 
gether literary  in  its  character ;  it  was  to  fulfil  the  functions  of 
the  modern- magazine ;  it  was,  in  fact,  the  complete  inauguration 
of  periodical  literature.  Brief  essays,  tales,  imaginary  corre- 
spondence, imaginary  conversations,  strictures  on  the  manners 
and  the  morals  of  the  day — there  was  nothing  new  in  any  of 
these;  but  a  publication  which  should  present  some  one  of 
these  every  morning  on  the  breakfast-table  was  a  novel  and 
bold  undertaking."  The  Spectator — for  such  was  the  name  of 
this  new  periodical — appeared  daily,  and  was  carried  on  with- 
out intermission  for  about  a  year  and  nine  months,  ceasing  on 
December  6,  1712.  In  1714  it  was  revived  for  a  brief  period, 
the  papers  then  published  constituting  the  eighth  volume  in 
the  old  editions.  To  the  Tatkr  Steele  was  the  most  promi- 
nent contributor;  it  is  the  name  of  Addison,  on  the  other 
hand,  which  is  inseparably  connected  with  the  Spectator. 
Many  good  papers  were  contributed  by  Steele,  and  occa- 
sional essays  by  other  writers,  some  of  whose  names  would 
now  be  buried  in  oblivion  had  they  not  gained  a  sort 
of  immortality  through  their  association  with  men  of  genius ; 
but  it  is  to  Addison  that  the  Spectator  owes  the  major  part  of 


178         The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne  s  Time. 

its  fame.  His  best  and  most  generally  read  papers  in  it 
are,  of  course,  those  descriptive  of  men  and  manners.  "  He 
walks  about  the  world,"  writes  Thackeray,  "  watching  their 
petty  humours,  fashions,  follies,  flirtations,  rivalries,  and  noting 
them  with  the  most  charming  archness.  He  sees  them  in 
public,  in  the  theatre,  or  the  assembly,  or  the  puppet-show  ; 
or  at  the  toyshop  higgling  for  gloves  and  lace  ;  or  at  the 
auction,  battling  together  over  a  blue  porcelain  dragon  or  a 
darling  monster  in  Japan  ;  or  at  church  eying  the  width  of  the 
ladies'  hoops;  or  the  breadth  of  their  laces  as  they  sweep  down 
the  aisles  ;  or  he  looks  out  of  the  window  at  the  Garter  in  St. 
James's  Street  at  Ardelia's  coach,  as  she  blazes  to  the  drawing- 
room  with  her  coronet  and  six  footmen  ;  and  remembering 
that  her  father  was  a  Turkey  merchant  in  the  City,  calculates 
how  many  sponges  went  to  purchase  her  earrings,  and  how 
many  drums  of  figs  to  build  her  coachbox ;  or  he  demurely 
watches  behind  a  tree  in  Spring  Gardens  as  Saccharissa  (whom 
he  knows  under  her  mask)  trips  out  of  her  chair  to  the  alley 
where  Sir  Fopling  is  waiting."  His  delicate  satire  and  "gay 
malevolence,"  as  Johnson  cal;s  it,  give  his  sketches  a  precision, 
a  neatness,  an  epigrammatic  point  which  are  wanting  in  Steele's 
more  clumsy  and  more  good-humoured  delineations.  The 
delightful  papers  relating  to  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  of  which 
Steele  wrote  eight,  well  show  the  distinctive  differences  between 
the  two  friends.  Addison's  papers  are  better  written,  they 
contain  more  fine  touches  and  subtle  strokes  of  humour  than 
Steele's  ;  but  to  Steele  belongs  the  merit  of  having  introduced 
most  of  the  features  in  the  good  knight's  character  which 
make  him  so  lovable.  In  one  point,  his  just  appreciation  of 
women,  Steele  was  far  in  advance  not  only  of  Addison,  whose 
general  tone  towards  the  sex  is  that  of  quiet  contempt,  but  of  his 
age  generally.  On  Addison's  critical  papers,  those  on  the  "Plea- 
sures of  the  Imagination,"  Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  &c.,  little 
remark  is  necessary.  They  strike  us  now  as  barren  and  in- 
sipid ;  they  show  no  depth  or  power  of  analysis  ;  his  descrip- 
tions of  the  fine  passages  in  Milton  are  such  as,  apart  from  the 
elegance  of  their  style,  might  be  written  by  any  clever  school- 


Addisons  "  Cato"  179 

boy.  But  considering  the  time  when  they  were  written,  they 
possess  considerable  merit,  and  even  boldness.  At  a  period 
when  the  artificial  school  of  poetry  was  in  vogue,  it  was  a  daring 
thing  to  praise  the  fine  old  ballad  of  "  Chevy  Chase,"  as  Addi- 
son  did.  How  such  pieces  of  poetry  were  generally  regarded 
then  and  for  many  years  afterwards  is  well  shown  by  Johnson's 
comment  on  Addison's  disquisition.  "  In  *  Chevy  Chase/  "  he 
says  with  commendable  candour,  "  there  is  not  much  of  either 
bombast  or  affectation  ;  but  there  is  chill  and  lifeless  imbe- 
cility. The  story  cannot  possibly  be  told  in  a  manner  which 
shall  leave  less  impression  on  the  rnind." 

It  is  now  time  to  resume  our  account  of  Addison's  life.  In 
1713  he  secured  one  of  the  greatest  triumphs  of  his  career. 
While  travelling  in  Italy  he  had  projected  a  tragedy  on  the 
subject  of  Cato's  death,  and,  it  would  seem,  had  written  part 
of  it.  For  several  years  he  had  had  the  first  four  acts  of  it 
finished,  and  such  of  his  friends  as  saw  the  manuscript  were 
unanimous  in  urging  him  to  complete  it  Some  of  them 
thought  it  would  be  best  for  him  to  print  it ;  others  thought  that 
it  should  be  brought  out  on  the  stage.  After  much  demurring 
and  hesitation,  he  finally  agreed  to  adopt  the  latter  plan. 
Pope  furnished  a  prologue,  Garth  an  epilogue,  and  in  1713 
"  Cato  "  was  acted  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre.  Officious,  enthu- 
siastic Dick  Steele  had  taken  care  that  the  fame  of  his  friend 
Mr.  Addison  should  not  be  endangered  by  its  reception.  The 
house  was  carefully  packed  with  an  audience  willing  to  applaud 
it  to  the  echo,  and  it  obtained  an  almost  unequalled  success. 
"The  Whigs,"  says  Johnson,  "applauded  every  line  in  which 
liberty  was  mentioned,  as  a  satire  on  the  Tories ;  and  the 
Tories  echoed  every  clap  to  show  that  the  satire  was  unfelt." 
During  a  whole  month  "  Cato "  was  performed  to  crowded 
houses ;  and  when  it  was  printed,  it  was  received  with  well- 
nigh  universal  approval.  Its  pompous  monotony  was  taken 
for  dignity,  and  its  strict  adherence  to  the  critical  rules  then 
accepted  was  preferred  by  Addison's  contemporaries  to  the 
tiuth  and  nature  of  Shakespeare.  In  it  the  dramatic  unities — 
unity  of  place,  unity  of  time,  and  unity  of  action — are  observed 


i8o          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time, 

with  a  completeness  which  leads  to  some  rather  ridiculous 
results ;  all  the  characters  go  through  their  actions  and  their 
speeches  with  the  utmost  conventional  correctness  ;  but  it  does 
not  contain  a  passage  which  shows  genuine  poetic  feeling,  or 
indeed  high  artistic  skill  of  any  kind.  It  lives  now,  if  it  lives  at 
all,  by  a  few  happy  lines  which  have  become  stock  quotations. 

Amidst  the  general  chorus  of  praise  which  hailed  the  produc- 
tion of  "Cato,"  one  dissentient  voice  made  itself  heard  with  con- 
siderable vehemence.  Old  John  Dennis,  a  bitter  and  vindic- 
tive critic,  who  railed  at  any  successful  production  with  intense 
malignity  and  some  acuteness,  attacked  it  in  a  pamphlet,  con- 
siderable specimens  of  which  are  preserved  by  Johnson  in  his 
Life  of  Addison.  The  fact  that  many  of  his  strictures  were  just 
did  not  make  them  any  more  palatable,  but  Addison  made  no 
rejoinder.  Pope,  however,  partly  by  way  of  courting  Addison's 
favour,  partly  because  he  saw,  as  lie  thought,  a  good  opportu- 
nity of  wiping  off  sundry  old  scores  of  his  own,  published  his 
"Narrative  of  the  Frenzy  of  John  Dennis,"  a  rather  coarse  and 
unskilful  performance.  No  doubt  he  thought  he  \\as  doing 
Addison  a  service,  but  Addison,  whose  conduct  in  the  matter 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  generous,  thought  otherwise,  and 
caused  Dennis  to  be  informed  that  he  was  sorry  for  the  insult. 
This  was  the  beginning  of  a  long  literary  feud  between  Pope 
and  Addison.  Both  appear  to  have  hated  each  other  cordially  j 
and  Addiscn  has  never  been  wholly  acquitted  of  the  charge 
of  having,  by  various  sly  intrigues,  endeavoured  to  injure  Pope's 
reputation.  Pope  took  revenge  in  the  finest  piece  of  satire  he 
ever  wrote,  the  stinging  lines  on  Atticus,  with  which  every- 
body is,  or  ought  to  be,  acquainted. 

On  the  death  of  Queen  Anne,  Addison  was  appointed 
Secretary  to  the  Regency.  In  1715  he  obtained  a  seat  at  the. 
Board  of  Trade.  In  the  following  year  he  married  the  Countess 
Dowager  of  Warwick,  whom  he  had  long  courted,  and  whom 
he  at  length  obtained,  "on  terms  much  like  those  on  which  a 
Turkish  princess  is  espoused,  to  whom  the  Sultan  is  reported 
to  pronounce,  '  Daughter,  I  give  thee  this  man  for  thy  slave."' 
This  union  added  nothing  to  his  happiness.  He  would  often 


Addisoris  Conversation.  181 

escape  from  the  uncomfortable  grandeur  of  Holland  House, 
where  he  had  resided  since  his  marriage,  to  the  ease  and  free- 
dom of  his  favourite  coffee  house,  Button's,  there  to  enjoy 
himself  in  tranquil  conversation  with  old  friends,  and  would 
afterwards  adjourn  to  a  tavern,  where  he  indulged  somewhat 
freely  in  wine.  In  1717  he  was  made  one  of  the  chief 
Secretaries  of  State  ;  but  as  his  constitutional  timidity  pre- 
vented him  from  being  a  ready  or  effective  speaker,  the  office 
was  not  well  suited  to  him,  and  he  was  soon  glad  to  retire  on 
a  pension  of  ^1500  a  year.  He  died  in  June  1719. 

In  the  company  of  one  or  two  intimate  friends,  with  whom 
he  could  be  at  freedom,  Addison  talked  long  and  excellently. 
"  He  was,"  says  Steele,  "  above  all  men  in  that  talent  called 
humour,  and  enjoyed  it  in  such  perfection,  that  I  have  often 
reflected,  after  a  night  spent  with  him  apart  from  all  the  world, 
that  I  had  the  pleasure  of  conversing  with  an  intimate  acquaint- 
ance of  Terence  and  Catullus,  who  had  all  their  wit  and  nature, 
heightened  with  humour  more  exquisite  and  delightful  than 
any  other  man  ever  possessed."  Pope,  no  partial  witness, 
confessed  that  Addison's  conversation  had  something  in  it 
more  charming  than  was  to  be  found  in  that  of  any  other  man. 
But  it  was  only  when  with  one  or  two  old  associates  that 
Addison  displayed  his  conversational  talents :  in  a  large 
company  he  sat  silent,  partly  from  natural  bashftilness,  partly 
from  fear  lest  he  should  compromise  his  dignity.  Alluding  to 
his  fluency  of  composition  compared  with  his  deficiencies  as  a 
ready  talker,  he  used  to  say  that  he  could  draw  bills  for  a 
thousand  pounds,  though  he  had  not  a  guinea  in  his  pocket. 

Addison's  principal  political  writings  were  a  pamphlet  pub- 
lished in  1707  on  the  "Present  State  of  the  War,"  the  Whig 
Examiner,  a  periodical  written  in  opposition  to  Swift's  Exa- 
tiiiner,  of  which  only  five  numbers  appeared,  and  which  Johnson 
praises  very  highly,  and  the  Freeholder^  which  appeared  twice  a 
week  during  part  of  1715-16.  The  last  contains  the  famous 
sketch  of  the  Tory  Fox-Hunter,  one  of  his  best  compositions. 
It  is  sad  to  have  to  relate  that  before  Addison's  death  political 
differences  led  to  an  estrangement  between  him  and  Steele. 


1 82          Tke  Wits  of  Queen  Annas'  Time. 

Addison  was  one  of  the  sort  of  politicians  dear  to  party-leaders, 
who  follow  their  chiefs  submissively  wherever  they  may  lead 
them,  and  who  have  no  hobbies  of  their  own,  no  strong  opinions 
which  they  are  determined  to  act  up  to  whether  their  colleagues 
are  opposed  to  them  or  not.  The  reverse  is  true  of  Steele. 
He  was  ardent  and  impetuous  in  politics  as  in  everything  else  ; 
and  when  a  measure  was  introduced  of  which  he  did  not 
approve,  he  opposed  it  strenuously,  even  though  it  was  a 
measure  introduced  by  the  ministry  to  which  he  owed  his 
appointments.  When,  in  1719,  the  Whigs  brought  forward 
their  Peerage  Bill,  by  which  they  proposed  to  limit  the  number 
of  the  Peers,  Addison  supported  the  Ministers,  while  in  a 
paper  called  the  Plebeian  Steele  vehemently  attacked  them. 
This  opposition  led  to  mutual  recriminations  ;  and  the  death 
of  Addison  soon  after  prevented  a  reconciliation. 

The  leading  events  of  Steele's  life,  from  the  foundation  of 
the  Spectator  till  his  death,  may  be  briefly  summed  up.  In  1713 
he  began  the  publication  of  a  daily  periodical  called  the 
Guardian,  which  continued  to  be  published  during  about 
eight  months,  and  to  which  Addison  contributed  largely.  In 

1714  the  publication  of  two  violent  political  pamphlets,  the 
"  Englishman  "  and  the  "  Crisis,"  led  to  his  being  expelled  from 
the  House  of  Commons.     His  numerous  productions  on  the 
topics  of  the  day  it  would   be  useless   to  enumerate.     The 
"  Conscious  Lovers,"  his  best  comedy,  appeared  in  1722.     In 

1715  he   was   appointed    surveyor   of    the   royal   stables   at 
Hampton    Court ;   and  about   the    same    time   received    the 
honour  of  knighthood.     He  afterwards   held  other  appoint- 
ments, and  during  the  latter  years  of  his  life  was  patentee  of 
Drury  Lane  Theatre,  which  brought  him  a  considerable  income. 
He  died  in  1729  at  Langunnor,  near  Carmarthen,  where  he 
had  retired  some  time  before  his  death.     "  I  was  told,"  a  friend 
of  his  related,  "  that   he  retained   his  cheerful  sweetness  of 
temper  to  the  last,  and  would  often  be  carried  out  of  a  summer's 
evening  when  the  country  lads  and  lasses  were  assembled  at 
their  rural  sports,  and  with  his  pencil  he  gave  an  order  on  Lis 
igent,  the  mercer,  for  a  new  gown  for  the  best  dancer."     It 


Steeles  Character.  183 

is  pleasing  to  learn  that  the  close  of  his  life  was  so  tranquil 
and  pleasant. 

Steele  was  described  by  the  merciless  Dennis  as  being  "  of 
a  middle  stature,  broad  shoulders,  thick  legs,  a  shape  like  the 
picture  of  somebody  over  a  farmer's  chimney — a  short  chin,  a 
short  nose,  a  short  forehead,  a  broad  flat  face,  and  a  dusky 
countenance."  The  many  letters  which  he  wrote  to  his  wife,. 
"  dearest  Prue,"  all  of  which  that  worthy  and  much-tried 
woman  carefully  preserved,  give  one  an  excellent  idea  of  his' 
genial,  impulsive,  hasty,  affectionate,  and  reckless  tempera- 
ment. Johnson,  with  whom  Macaulay  agrees,1  praises  Addison 
because  he  employed  wit  on  the  side  of  virtue  and  religion. 
"  He  not  only  made  the  proper  use  of  wit  himself,  but  taught 
it  to  others ;  and  from  this  time  it  has  been  generally  subser- 
vient to  the  cause  of  reason  and  of  truth.  He  has  dissipated 
the  prejudice  that  had  long  connected  gaiety  with  vice,  and 
easiness  of  manners  with  laxity  of  principles.  He  has  restored 
virtue  to  its  dignity,  and  taught  innocence  not  to  be  ashamed." 
If  this  praise  be  due  to  Addison,  as  it  certainly  is,  it  is  also 
due  to  Steele.  However  wild  his  conduct  may  have  occasionally 
been,  in  his  writings  he  never  swerved  from  upholding  the 
cause  of  purity  and  goodness  ;  and  in  many  respects  his 
moral  precepts  were  of  a  less  conventional  kind,  and  reached 
a  higher  spiritual  level  than  Addison's. 

It  was  during  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  that  the  writing  of 
correct  and  polished  English  prose  first  became  a  general 
accomplishment.  Many  writers  who  flourished  about  this 
period,  though  of  infinitely  less  original  power  than  their  pre- 
decessors of  fifty  or  a  hundred  years  ago,  are  much  more 
pleasant  to  read,  simply  because  they  had  acquired  the  knack 
of  expressing  themselves  in  clear,  well-ordered  sentences, 
free  from  the  cumbrousness  and  involution  which,  till  the 
time  of  Dry  den,  are  usual  characteristics  of  our  prose  writers. 
Three  of  these  may  be  mentioned.  Dr.  John  Arbuthnot 

1  It  is  very  well  worth  while  to  read  Johnson's  'Life  of  Addison'  and 
Macaulay's  '  Essay  on  Addison '  together.  There  is  scarcely  a  critical  idea 
in  Macaulay's  essay  of  which  the  germ  is  not  to  be  found  in  Johnson'*. 


184          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time. 

(1667-1735)  was  a  Scotchman,  who,  coming  up  to  London, 
attained  great  reputation  as  a  medical  man,  and  was  the 
intimate  associate  of  many  of  the  foremost  writers  of  his  time. 
His  "  History  of  John  Bull,"  a  political  satire,  and  other 
writings,  mostly  of  a  controversial  or  satirical  nature,  have 
much  the  same  characteristics  as  Swift's — clearness,  force,  and 
incisiveness.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  most  excellent  man. 
"  He  has  more  wit  than  we  all  have,"  said  Swift,  "  and  his 
humanity  is  equal  to  his  wit ; "  and  again,  "  If  the  world  had 
a  dozen  Arbuthnots  in  it,  I  would  burn  my  'Travels.'" 
Arbuthnot  wrote  little,  and  there  is  no  collected  edition  of  his 
works ;  but  the  little  that  he  did  write  shows  that  if  he  had 
used  his  pen  more  freely  he  could  have  won  for  himself  a 
very  high  position  in  literature.  Henry  St.  John,  Viscount 
Bolingbroke  (1678-1751),  whose  meteoric  career  still  sheds  a 
sort  of  lustre  round  his  name,  wrote,  when  his  political  life 
was  brought  to  an  end  by  the  discovery  of  his  intrigue  with 
the  Pretender,  a  number  of  works,  "  Letters  on  the  Study  of 
History,"  "  Letter  on  the  Spirit  of  Patriotism,"  the  "  Idea  of  a 
Patriot  King,"  &c.,  in  a  style  artificial  and  somewhat  stilted, 
but  emphatic,  striking,  and  often  epigrammatic.  On  the 
whole,  it  may  be  said  that  the  reader  who,  finding  how  much 
Bolingbroke  was  admired  by  his  contemporaries,  is  led  to 
study  his  works,  will  not  find  much  to  reward  him,  except  a 
few  happy  sentences,  such  as  "  Don  Quixote  believed,  but 
even  Sancho  doubted."  George  Berkeley  (1684-1753),  Bishop 
of  Cloyne,  whose  work  belongs  to  the  history  of  philosophy, 
deserves  mention  here  as  having  possessed  a  style,  simple, 
sweet,  and  melodious  in  an  eminent  degree.  He  could  write 
with  equal  elegance  on  the  most  subtle  philosophical  theories 
and  on  the  virtues  of  tar-water.  Pope's  well-known  line,  which 
attributes  "  to  Berkeley  every  virtue  under  heaven,"  shows  how 
he  was  regarded  by  his  contemporaries. 

During  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  waged 
the  somewhat  barren  "  Deistical  Controversy,'""  in  which  a 
great  number  of  writers,  including  nearly  all  the  leading  theo- 
logians of  the  day,  took  part.  It  produced  one  book  of 


A  lexander  Pope.  1 8  5 

permanent  value,  the  "  Analogy  of  Religion  "  of  Bishop  Butler 
(1692-1752),  a  work  full  of  weighty  thought,  though  its  style 
is  very  awkward  and  complex.  "It  came  (1736)  towards  the 
end  of  the  Deistical  period.  It  is  the  result  of  twenty  years' 
study — the  very  twenty  years  during  which  the  Deistical  notions 
formed  the  atmosphere  which  educated  people  breathed.  The 
objections  it  meets  are  not  new  and  unseasoned  objections, 
but  such  as  had  worn  well,  and  had  borne  the  rub  of  contro- 
versy, because  they  were  genuine.  And  it  would  be  equally  hard 
to  find  in  the  *  Analogy '  any  topic  in  reply  which  had  not  been 
suggested  in  the  pamphlets  and  sermons  of  the  preceding  half 
century.  Like  Aristotle's  physical  and  political  treatises,  it  is 
a  resume  of  the  discussions  of  more  than  one  generation."1 

We  now  turn  to  the  poetical  literature  of  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  This  finds  its  highest  representative  in 
Alexander  Pope.  The  correctness  and  finish  which  all  the  poets 
of  his  age  were  endeavouring  to  attain,  he  attained  more  com- 
pletely ihan  any  ;  and  though  before  his  death  new  influences 
were  beginning  to  be  at  work  which  ended  in  the  overthrow  of 
the  school  of  which  he  was  the  accepted  leader,  he  influenced 
very  strongly  the  poets  of  the  two  generations  which  succeeded 
him.  Pope  was  born  in  London  in  1688.  After  he  had  risen 
to  eminence  and  was  taunted  with  the  lowness  of  his  birth, 
he  circulated  some  rather  fabulous  stories  about  the  exalted 
pedigree  of  his  father,  an  honest  and  successful  merchant,  who 
acquired  by  his  industry  a  fortune  which  in  those  days  was 
reckoned  a  large  one.  Both  his  parents  were  Catholics,  and 
Pope,  in  spite  of  considerable  temptations  to  tfte  contrary, 
always  remained  constant  to  the  faith  of  his  fathers.  He  was 
deformed  and  weakly  from  his  birth,  a  dwarfish  and  pre- 
cocious child,  with  a  sweet  voice  and  a  quick  intellect.  He 
was  taught  to  read  at  home,  and  early  learned  to  write  by 
imitating  printed  books.  When  about  eight  years  old  his 

1  Mr.  Mark  Pattison's  "Tendencies  of  Religious  Thought  in  England, 
1688-1750,"  in  "Essays  and  Reviews,"  an  essay  containing  an  admhahle 
account  of  the  current  of  theological  thought  during  the  time  with  which 
it  deals. 


1 86          The  Wits  of  Queen  Annes  Time. 

education  was  intrusted  to  a  Catholic  priest,  through  whom  he 
acquired  the  elements  of  Latin  and  Greek.  He  afterwards 
had  other  instructors,  but  the  most  valuable  part  of  his 
education  was  that  which  he  obtained  without  the  aid  of  any 
master.  He  was  a  voracious  reader,  and  if  his  knowledge, 
like  that  of  most  self-educated  men,  was  destitute  of  minute 
accuracy,  it  was,  at  any  rate,  much  wider  than  is  at  all  common. 
He  had  a  good  knowledge  of  Latin,  a  fair  share  of  Greek,  knew 
French  well,  and  at  one  time  studied  Italian  to  some  extent. 

His  crooked  frame  and  weak  health  debarred  Pope  from  the 
usual  sports  of  childhood;  and  when,  in  his  early  years,  his 
father  retired  to  Binneld  in  Windsor  Forest,  where  he  had  pur- 
chased a  small  estate,  the  ambitious  boy  began  earnestly  the 
practice  of  that  art  which  was  to  be  the  toil  and  the  pleasure 
of  his  life.  When  little  more  than  twelve  he  commenced  an 
epic  poem,  of  which  he  wrote  about  four  thousand  verses. 
Other  compositions  preceded  and  followed  this  large  under- 
taking, all  of  which  were  submitted  to  his  father,  who,  when  he 
found  them  defective,  would  request  him  to  "  new-turn  them," 
saying,  "  These  be  not  good  rhymes."  When  very  young  he 
managed  to  become  acquainted  with  some  of  the  leading  men 
of  letters  in  London,  to  whom  he  wrote  carefully  composed 
letters  in  the  artificial  style  then  prevalent,  and  by  whom  he 
seems,  in  spite  of  his  youth,  to  have  been  regarded  as  an  equal. 
Among  these  was  Wycherley,  who  submitted  some  verses  to 
the  revision  of  the  youthful  critic,  who  pointed  out  their  faults 
with  such  unsparing  rigour  that  Wycherley  was  not  unnaturally 
offended.  Another  was  Walsh,  «'  Knowing  Walsh,"  as  Pope 
calls  him,  a  poetaster  of  the  day,  who  was  much  esteemed  as 
a  critic.  Having  read  some  of  Pope's  verses,  he  advised  him 
to  aim  especially  at  correctness,  for,  said  he,  "  We  have  had 
several  great  poets,  but  we  never  had  one  great  poet  who  was 
correct."  This  well-meant  advice  was  never  forgotten  by  Pope. 
In  1709  Pope  published  his  first  poems,  the  "Pastorals," 
which  had  been  for  some  time  handed  about  among  poets 
and  critics.  They  were  well  received  at  the  time,  Walsh  de- 
claring "that  'tis  no  flattery  at  all  to  say  that  Virgil  had 


Popes  "Essay  on  Criticism?  187 

written  nothing  so  good  at  his  age;"  but  they  are  now  gene- 
rally regarded  as  Pope's  poorest  compositions,  being  artificial, 
absurd,  and  wearisome.  Two  years  after  came  the  "  Essay  on 
Criticism,"  which  shows  a  great  advance  in  more  ways  than 
one.  The  versification  is  exact  and  polished,  the  style  clear 
and  epigrammatic,  the  illustrations  various  and  well  selected. 
As  regarvis  the  value  of  the  subject-matter  of  this  poem,  critics 
have  differed  widely.  "If  he  had  written  nothing  else,"  says 
Johnson,  "  this  would  have  placed  him  among  the  first  critics 
and  the  first  poets,  as  it  exhibits  every  mode  of  excellence  that 
can  embellish  or  justify  didactic  composition — selection  of 
matter,  novelty  of  arrangement,  justness  of  precept,  splendour 
of  illustration,  and  propriety  of  digression."  De  Quincey,  on 
the  other  hand,  thought  it  "  the  feeblest  and  least  interesting 
of  Pope's  writings,  being  substantially  a  mere  versification,  like 
a  metrical  multiplication  table,  of  commonplaces  the  most 
mouldy  with  which  criticism  has  baited  her  rat-traps."  The 
truth  is,  that  our  judgment  of  the  poem  will  depend  upon  the 
point  of  view  from  which  we  regard  it.  Pope's  precepts  are 
not  original,  though  they  are  generally  sound  enough  ;  but  they 
are  so  well  and  strikingly  put  that  they  come  home  to  us  with 
a  new  force.  A  wanton  attack  on  Dennis,  under  the  name  of 
"  Appius,"  in  the  "  Essay  on  Criticism,"  brought  on  the  first  of 
the  long  series  of  literary  squabbles  in  which  Pope  was  impli- 
cated. Dennis  rejoined  in  a  furious  pamphlet,  in  which, 
alluding  to  Pope's  deformed  figure,  he  declared  that  "he 
may  extol  the  ancients,  but  he  has  reason  to  thank  the  gods 
that  he  was  born  a  modern ;  for  had  he  been  born  of  Grecian 
parents,  and  his  father  consequently  had  by  law  had  the  abso- 
lute disposal  of  him,  his  life  had  been  no  longer  than  that  of 
one  of  his  poems,  the  life  of  half  a  day."  If  opinions  have 
differed  as  to  the  merits  of  the  "  Essay  on  Criticism,"  there  has 
been  but  one  judgment  on  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock.'1  It  was 
published  in  lyia,1  and,  as  is  well  known,  was  founded  on  a 
frolic  of  Lord  Petre's,  who  had  cut  off  a  lock  of  Miss  Arabel;a 

1  The  version  published  in  1^12  is  only  a  fir  t  sketch.     It  appeared  in 
a  volume  of  miscellaneous  poems. 


1 88         The  Wits  of  Queen  Annes  Time. 

Farmer's  hair.  His  gallantry  offending  the  lady  and  breaking 
off  the  intercourse  of  the  two  families,  Pope  was  asked  by  a 
common  friend  to  do  something  to  effect  a  reconciliation. 
The  result  of  this  request  was  the  best  mock-heroic  poem 
in  the  language.  The  first  edition  wanted  the  supernatural 
machinery,  one  of  the  greatest  attractions  of  the  work,  and 
some  excellent  passages  which  were  added  in  the  second 
edition  (1714).  iLl^E^lk^psJPope'sjrripst  universally  pleasing 
performance- — liffht.  easy,  graceful^  full  of  delicate  satirical 
touches,  jiever  flagging  in  interest, .and  having  the  additional 
merit  of  giving  us  an  accurate  picture  of  the  fashionable 
society  of  Queen  Anne's  time.^  "Pope's  adaptation  of  his 
airy  refulgent  sylphs  to  the  ephemeral  trivialities  of  fashion- 
able life,  the  admirable  art  with  which  he  fitted  his  fairy 
machinery  to  the  follies  and  commonplaces  of  a  giddy  London 
day,  the  poetic  grace  which  he  threw  around  his  sarcastic 
.narrative,  and  which  unites  with  it  as  naturally  as  does  the 
rose  with  its  thorny  stem,  are  all  unborrowed  beauties,  and 
consummate  in  their  kind."  Not  long  after  the  "Rape  of 
the  Lock,"  Pope  wrote  a  poem  in  a  very  different  style,  the 
"Epistle  of  Eloisa  to  Abelard,"  which  is  also  one  of  the 
brightest  jewels  in  his  poetic  crown.  We  do  not  look  to  Pope 
for  the  successful  expression  of  deep,  passionate  feeling ;  he  is 
pre-eminently  a  poet  of  amficial^society,  of  nature  as^  seen  in 
clubs  and_coffee-houses  and  in  fashionable  town  assemblages. 
Yet  it  cannot  be  denied  that  in  the  "Epistle  of  Eloisa"  he 
shows  himself  possessed  of  a  vein  of  genuine  pathos  and  tender- 
ness. The  hand  of  the  artist  is,  indeed,  a  little  too  apparent 
in  its  smooth  couplets  and  neatly  turned  phrases,  but  it  is,  at 
any  rate,  always  the  hand  of  a  master  of  his  art. 
:  In.  i7J3  Pope,  whose  fame  was  how  widespread,  entered 
upon  the  most  fortunate  undertaking  of  his  life,  his  translation 
of  the  "  Iliad."  It  was  with  many  doubts  and  fears  that  he 
began  his  task.  u  In  the  beginning  of  my  translating  Homer," 
he  told  his  faithful  chronicler,  Spence,  "I  wished  anybody 
would  hang  me  a  hundred  times.  It  sat  so  very  heavily  on 
"my  mir.d  at  first  that  I  often  used  to. dream  of  it,  arid  even  do 


Popes  Translation  of  Homer.  189 

so  sometimes  still  to  this  day.  My  dream  Usually  was  that  I 
had  set  out  on  a  very  long  journey,  puzzled  which  way  to  take, 
and  full  of  fears  that  I  should  never  get  to  the  end  of  it."  De 
Quincey  thinks  that  Pope's  trepidation  when  he  commenced 
translating  the  "  Iliad  "  was  owing  to  his  defective  knowledge 
of  the  Greek  language,  and  this  opinion  is  very  probably  cor- 
rect. As  the  work  advanced,  practice  brought  facility,  until 
at  length  he  was  able  to  translate  fifty  lines  a  day.  It  had 
been  decided  that  the  translation  should  be  published  by  sub- 
scription, and  Pope's  friends  exerted  themselves  to  the  utmost 
to  procure  subscribers.  There  is  an  amusing  anecdote  of 
how,  in  a  coffee-house  in  1713,  Swift  was  seen  informing  "a 
young  nobleman  that  the  best  poet  in  England  was  Mr.  Pope 
(a  Papist),  who  had  begun  a  translation  of  Homer  into  English 
verse,  for  which  he  must  have  them  all  subscribe ;  *  for,'  says 
he,  '  the  author  shall  not  begin  to  print  till  I  have  a  thousand 
guineas  for  him."'  In  1720,  when  Pope  had  reached  his  thirty- 
second  year,  the  translation  was  completed.  Its  success  sur- 
passed all  the  high  hopes  that  had  been  formed  of  it.  Alto- 
gether the  work  produced  ^5320.  which  would  nowrepresent 
a  purchasing  power  of  at  least  double  that  amount.  Of  the 
worth  of  the  translation,  a  sufficiently  correct  judgment  was 
expressed  by  Richard  Bentley,  the  greatest  classical  scholar 
England  has  ever  seen.  "  It  is  a  pretty  poem,  Mr.  Pope,"  he 
is  recorded  to  have  said,  "but  you  must  not  call  it  Homer." 
Pope's  genius  was,  in  truth,  singularly  un-Homeric ;  nothing 
can  be  imagined  more  different  from  his  polished  artificiality 
than  the  grand  simplicity  of  the  Greek  bard.  Yet,  full  as 
Pope's  "  Iliad  "  is  of  faults  which  jar  against  a  pure  literary 
taste,  it  may  fairly  claim  to  have  done  good  service.  To 
thousands  unacquainted  with  Greek  it  has  afforded  at  least  a 
glimpse  of  the  old  heroic  world  painted  by  Homer,  and  even 
yet,  though  now  surrounded  by  so  many  competitors,  it  is 
perhaps  to  the  average  reader  the  most  attractive  translation. 
Elated  with  his  success,  Pope  determined  to  translate  the 
"Odyssey"  also.  To  aid  him  in  his  task  he  engaged  two 
assistants,  Broome  and  Fenton,  by  whom  twelve  books  out  of 


190         The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne  s  Time. 

the  twenty-four  were  translated.  The  work  was  finished  in 
1725,  and  was  very  profitable,  though  it  did  not  realise  nearly 
sp  much  as  the  "  Iliad."  It  is  a  striking  proof  of  how  usual 
an  accomplishment  the  art  of  writing  the  heroic  couplet  had 
now  become  to  find  that  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  dis- 
tinguish by  internal  evidence  passages  of  the  "  Odyssey  "  trans- 
lated by  Broome  and  Fenton,  from  passages  translated  by  Pope. 
With  the  money  acquired  by  his  translation  of  the  "  Iliad," 
Pope  bought  the  cottage  at  Twickenham,  where  he  resided  for 
the  remainder  of  his  days,  and  where  he  was  often  visited  by 
the  most  notable  men  of  the  day,  Swift,  Bolingbroke,  Arbuth- 
not,  Lord  Peterborough,  and  many  others.  In  1728  he  pub- 
lished the  "  Dunciad,"  in  which  he  lashed  mercilessly  the 
minor  scribblers  of  his  day,  and  discharged  venomous  shafts 
of  ridicule  against  all  who  had  at  any  time  assaulted  him. 
Between  1733  and  1738  he  published  the  various  pieces  which, 
when  his  works  were  first  collected,  constituted  the  volume 
entitled  "Satires  and  Epistles  of  Horace  Imitated."  These 
so-called  "imitations"  contain  some  of  his  most  vigorous 
writing — the  matchless  portrait  of  Addison  under  the  name  of 
Atticus  ;  the  stinging  and  vindictive  lines  in  which  Lord  Hervey 
is  pilloried  under  the  name  of  Sporus ;  and  the  touching  passage 
which  commemorates  his  filial  piety.  In  his  satires,  Pope 
pretended  to  be  inspired  by  a  genuine  indignation  against 
vice.  3jut :  Jt_>vas_n p t  so  in  reality ;  he  used  satire  as  a  means 
of  gratifying  private  revenge,  not  because  the  villanies  of  man- 
kind stirred  him  up  to  write.  "  Pope  was  contented  enough," 
says  De  Quincey,  "  with  society  as  he  found  it ;  bad  it  might 
be,  but  it  was  good  enough  for  him.  It  was  the  merest  self- 
delusion  if,  at  any  moment,  the  instinct  of  glorying  in  his 
satiric  mission  persuaded  him  that  in  his  case  it  might  be  said, 
Farit  indignatio  versum.  Pope  having  no  internal  principle  of 
wrath  boiling  in  his  breast,  being  really  in  the  most  pacific  and 
charitable  frame  of  mind  to  all  scoundrels  whatsoever,  was  a 
hypocrite  when  he  conceited  himself  to  be  in  a  dreadful  passion 
with  offenders  as  a  body."  One  of  the  most  common  topics 
of  his  ridicule  is  poverty,  which  is  certainly  no  fit  theme  for 


Popes  " Essay  ou  Man"  191 

the  exercise  of  the  satirist's  art.  "  He  seems,"  says  Johnson 
with  melancholy  scorn,  "  to  be  of  an  opinion  not  very  uncom- 
mon in  the  world,  that  to  want  money  is  to  want  everything." 
How  far  mere  personal  indignation  could  lead  him  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  when,  in  1741,  he  published  a  revised  edition 
of  the  "  Dunciad,"  to  which  the  fourth  book  was  added,  he 
degraded  Theobald  from  his  former  position  as  hero,  and 
placed  Colley  Gibber,  who  had  offended  him  in  the  interval 
between  1728  and  1741,  in  his  stead.  The  change  altered  the 
"  Dunciad  "  greatly  for  the  worse.  Theobald  was  really  a  very 
dull  man  ;  Colley  Gibber,  on  the  other  hand,  was  decidedly 
lively  and  clever,  so  that  the  ridicule  which  was  applicable 
enough  to  Theobald  loses  all  its  pungency  when  applied  to 
him.  Like  many  writers  who  are  careless  how  much  pain  they 
may  give  to  others,  Pope  felt  any  attack  on  himself  with  the 
intensest  keenness.  On  one  occasion,  when  a  pamphlet  of 
Gibber's  against  him  came  into  his  hands  while  Richardson 
the  painter  was  with  him,  Pope  turned  to  Richardson  and  said, 
"These  things  are  my  diversion."  Richardson  watched  him 
as  he  perused  it,  and  saw  his  features  writhing  with  anguish ! 

In  the  "  Essay  on  Man,"  published  in  1732,  Pope  attempted 
to  deal  in  verse  with  a  philosophical  topic  which  was  then 
exciting  much  attention.  The  "Essay  on  Man,"  says  Mr. 
Mark  Pattison  in  the  Introduction  to  his  admirable  edition  of 
it,  "  was  composed  at  a  time  when  the  reading  public  in  this 
country  were  occupied  with  an  intense  and  eager  curiosity  by 
speculation  on  the  first  principles  of  natural  religion.  Every- 
where, in  the  pulpit,  in  the  coffee-houses,  in  every  pamphlet, 
argument  on  the  origin  of  evil,  on  the  goodness  of  God,  and 
the  constitution  of  the  world  was  rife.  Into  the  prevailing 
topic  of  polite  conversation,  Bolingbroke,  who  returned  from 
exile  in  1723,  was  drawn  by  the  bent  of  his  native  genius. 
Tope  followed  the  example  and  impulse  of  his. friend's  more 
powerful  mind.  Thus  much  there  was  of  special  suggestion ; 
but  the  arguments  or  topics  of  the  poem  are  to  be  traced  to 
books  in  much  vogue  at  the  time."  There  is  now  a  pretty 
general  consensus  of  critical  opinion  as  to  the  "Essay  on  Man." 


192          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time. 

Its  philosophy  is  poor,  borrowed,  and  inadequate.  Pope  did 
not  understand  what  he  was  writing  about,  and  mixed  up  in- 
congruous statements ;  but  it  has  kept  and  will  keep  its  place 
in  literature  owing  to  its  masterly  execution,  its  many  felicitous 
phrases,  and  the  great  beauty  of  occasional  passages.  When 
the  "  Essay >J  first  appeared,  many  assailed  it  on  account  of  its 
alleged  heterodoxy.  Pope  was  annoyed  at  the  charge,  and 
was  therefore  delighted  when  an  unexpected  auxiliary  rushed 
to  his  aid  in  the  person  of  William  Warburton  (1698-1779), 
who  afterwards  rose  to  be  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  and  whose 
very  paradoxical  work,  "  The  Divine  Legation  of  Moses,"  is 
still  remembered.  By  helping  Pope  in  his  difficulty,  Warburton 
thought  he  saw  an  opportunity  for  advancing  his  own  fame  and 
fortune,  and  he  therefore  vindicated  the  orthodoxy  of  the 
"Essay  on  Man"  in  a  series  of  articles  which  appeared  in  a 
monthly  publication  called  The  Works  of  the  Learned.  The 
substance  of  these  articles  was  afterwards,  at  Pope's  request, 
formed  into  a  commentary — a  very  tedious  and  worthless 
production,  it  may  be  said  in  passing — and  printed  in  the  next 
edition  of  the  "  Essay."  Pope  never  ceased  to  be  grateful  to 
Warburton  for  the  service  he  had  done  him,  and  on  the  death 
of  the  poet,  which  occurred  in  1744,  Warburton  found  he  had 
been  appointed,  his  literary  executor.  He  discharged  the 
duties  of  his  office  arrogantly,  carelessly,  and  dishonourably. 

The  careful  research  of  Pope's  latest  editors,  and  particu- 
larly of  Mr.  Whitwell  Elwin,  if  it  has  not  materially  altered  the 
estimate  of  Pope's  private  character  which  may  be  derived 
from  the  perusal  of  Johnson's  Life  of  him,  with  its  curious 
undertone  of  latent  scorn,  has  proved  beyond  all  possibility 
of  doubt  that  he  was  frequently  guilty  of  treachery,  falsehood, 
and  hypocrisy.  Anxious  to  have  his  letters  printed  in  his  life- 
time, and  desirous  of  an  excuse  for  so  unusual  an  act,  he  con- 
trived that  an  allege,!  surreptitious  edition  of  these  should  be 
published,  so  as  to  give  him  a  colourable  pretext  for  printing 
an  authentic  edition.  Great  allowances  are  to  be  made  for  a 
man  like  Pope,  with  his  deformed  figure  and  his  weak  health, 
which  debarred  him  from  many  of  the  common  pleasures  <•{ 


London  Society  in  Pope  s  Time.  193 

mankind.  It  is  only  natural  that  such"  a  man'  should  be 
peevish,  irritable,  and,  if  possessed  of  talents,  insatiate  of  praise 
and  impatient  of  censure;  but  Pope's  habitual  duplicity  cannot 
be  condoned  even  by  his  most  lenient  judges.  The  most  pleasing  I 
feature  of  his  character  is  his  unwearying  tenderness  to  his 
parents,  and  the  sincere  affection  and  esteem  which  he  appears 
to  have  felt  for  a  large  and  brilliant  circle  of  friends.  "  I  never 
in  my  life,"  said  Bolingbroke  by  his  deathbed,  "  knew  a  man 
who  had  so  tender  a  heart  for  his  particular  friends,  or  a  more 
general  friendship  for  mankind."  This  "  general  friendship  for 
mankind  "  did  not  prevent  him  from  traducing  cruelly  all  who 
happened  to  offend  him  ;  but  the  statement  of  his  love  for  his 
particular  friends  may  be  accepted  without  reservation. 

Like  the  other  writers  of  the  time  when  his  fame  reached  p 
its  zenith,  Pope  in  all  his  works  had  "  the  town  "  in  view  1 
when  he  wrote.  All  the  chief  authors  of  that  period  appealed 
in  their  style,  their  mode  of  treatment,  their  sentiments,  their 
descriptions,  their  satires  to  an  audience  of  Londoners.  It  is 
this  which  gives  the  poetry  of  the  age  its  polish,  neatness,  and 
clearness ;  it  is  this  also  which  gives  it  its  artificiality,  and 
which  accounts  for  the  absence  from  it  of  any  deep  emotional 
feeling,  and  for  its  poverty  as  regards  natural  description. 
Pope's  poetry  is  the  mirror  of  his  age,  as  it  presented_Jtself 
before  one  who  saw  it  with  the  eyes  of  a  man  to  whom  rqetiQ- 
politan  society  cj^stituted^tKe^world.  "~He""sTiows  us  the  rise 
of  woman  as  a  controlling  poweFTn  ^society  and  politics  ;  the 
extension  among  the  nobility  of  an  Italian  taste  in  painting 
and  architecture ;  the  hatred  felt  by  the  Catholics  for  the 
moneyed  middle-class,  which  was  the  backbone  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, the  mainstay  of  Whiggery,  and  the  bulwark  of  Protes- 
tantism. Tn  his^satireSiJtQO,  we  see  a  mirror  of  the  feelings 
of  the  Parliamentary  Opposition  directed  by  Bolingbroke  and 
Pulteney;  of  their  rancour  against  Walpole's  foreign  and 
domestic  policy ;  of  the  relations  between  the  court  and  the 
party  of  the  Prince  of  Wales ;  of  the  popular  dislike  of  the 
Hanoverian  dynasty  and  of  Low  Church  principles.  Besides, 
we  have  suggestive  glimpses  of  the  interior  of  society  at  a  time 


i 94          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time. 

when  St.  James's  was  in  the  extreme  west-end  of  London,  and 
old  Burlington  House  was  but  just  built.  The  'British  youth' 
appear  at  their  diversions  at  White's  Chocolate  House,  Hockly- 
in-the-Hole,  or  Fig's  Academy.  Complaints  are  heard  from 
polite  society  of  the  degradation  of  the  stage  in  consequence 
of  the  public  passion  for  spectacles.  The  penniless  'man  of 
rhyme  walks  forth '  from  the  Mint,  and  the  dealings  of  the 
ill-lodged  bard  of  Drury  Lane  with  his  aristocratic  or  com- 
mercial patrons  are  exposed  in  the  full  light  of  pitiless  ridicule. 
As  we  read,  the  society  of  the  past  rises  before  us  in  its  dra- 
matic reality.  The  age  in  many  respects  may  have  had  the 
defects  of  the  poet,  but,  like  him,  it  was  not  without  its  generous 
qualities;  it  is,  at  least,  full  of  human  and  historical  interest, 
whether  it  be  regarded  as  the  period  when  the  British  Empire 
first  began  to  rise,  or  as  the  aristocratic  stage  of  English 
society,  in  which  the  realities  of  character  displayed  them- 
selves with  a  frankness  wanting  in  our  democratic  times,  when 
the  individual  is  apt  to  disguise  his  natural  impulses  in  defer- 
ence to  public  opinion." 

Among  the  poets  who  were  contemporary  with  Pope,  a  few 
deserve  notice.  Matthew  Prior  (1664-1 72 1)  affords  one  of  the 
most  striking  instances  on  record  of  the  extraordinary  rewards 
sometimes  bestowed  on  literary  merit  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne.  He  received  a  good  education  at  Westminster  School, 
and  was  then  employed  by  his  uncle,  who  kept  a  tavern  near 
Charing  Cross,  as  his  assistant.  In  this  uncongenial  situation 
his  love  of  literature  did  not  forsake  him,  and  one  day  the 
Earl  of  Dorset  by  chance  found  the  vintner's  boy  reading 
Horace.  This  was  the  turning-point  of  Prior's  fortunes.  The 
Earl,  who  was  celebrated  for  his  patronage  of  genius,  was 
so  well  pleased  with  Prior's  proficiency,  that  he  undertook  the 
care  and  cost  of  his  education.  Prior  passed  through  his 
academical  career  with  credit,  and  soon  after  obtained  great 
popularity  by  his  authorship,  in  conjunction  with  Montague,  of 
the  ''City  Mouse  and  the  Country  Mouse,"  in  ridicule  of 
Drydcn's  "Hind  and  Panther."  Upon  the  merits  of  this 
parody,  which  attained  great  celebrity  at  the  time,  opinions 


Matthew  Prior.  195 

differ  considerably.  Mr.  Saintsbury,  a  very  acute  critic,  thinks 
that  it  has  had  the  honour  of  being  more  overpraised  than 
perhaps  anything  of  its  kind  in  English  literature.1  Soon 
after  its  publication  Prior  was  taken  into  the  service  of  the 
State,  and  rose  to  various  high  diplomatic  appointments,  jus- 
tifying the  choice  of  his  patrons  by  his  industry  and  dexterity. 
A  happy  retort  of  his,  uttered  when  he  was  secretary  to  the 
English  embassy  at  Paris,  has  been  often  quoted.  When  he 
was  being  shown  the  pictures  of  the  victories  of  Louis  XIV. 
painted  on  the  walls  of  the  apartments  of  Versailles,  he  was 
asked  whether  the  King  of  England's  palace  had  any  such 
decorations.  "The  monuments  of  my  master's  actions," 
replied  Prior,  "are  to  be  seen  everywhere  but  in  his  own 
house."  On  the  death  of  Queen  Anne,  Prior's  diplomatic 
career  came  to  an  end,  and  for  a  time  he  laboured  under  con- 
siderable difficulties,  from  which,  however,  he  was  at  length 
relieved  by  the  success  of  a  subscription  edition  of  his  poems, 
and  by  the  generous  assistance  of  the  Earl  of  Oxford.  Prior's 
serious  poems  are  worthless  and  unreadable,  but  his  songs 
and  humorous  pieces,  though  not  over-delicate,  are  lively  and 
spirited  enough  of  their  kind.  "  Johnson  speaks  slightingly 
of  his  lyrics,"  says  Thackeray,  "  but  with  due  deference  to  the 
great  Samuel,  Prior's  seems  to  me  among  the  easiest,  the 
richest,  the  most  charmingly  humorous  of  English  lyrical 
poems.  Horace  is  always  in  his  mind,  and  his  song,  and 
his  philosophy,  his  good  sense,  his  happy  easy  turns  and 
melody,  his  loves  and  Epicureanism,  bear  a  great  resemblance 
to  that  most  delightful  and  accomplished  master.  In  reading 
his  works,  one  is  struck  by  their  modern  air,  as  well  as  by 
their  happy  similarity  to  the  songs  of  the  charming  owner  of 
the  Sabine  farm."  This  is  too  high  commendation ;  but  the 
fact  that  Prior's  lyrical  pieces  obtained  such  praise  from  a  man 
like  Thackeray  shows  that,  slight  and  somewhat  artificial  as  they 
are,  they  possess  a  considerable  degree  of  genuine  excellence. 
John  Gay,  who  was  born  in  the  same  year  as  Pope,  was  one 
of  those  ineffectual,  helpless,  likeable  men,  who  pass  through 
1  Monograph  on  Dryden,  p.  97. 


1 96          The  Wits  of  Queen  Annes  Time. 

life  as  easily  as  possible,  always  looking  to  others  for  help  and 
protection.  Originally  a  silk-mercer's  apprentice  in  London, 
he  was  in  1712  appointed  secretary  to  the  Duchess  of  Mon- 
niouth.  "  By  quitting  a  shop  for  such  service,"  says  Johnson, 
"he  might  gain  leisure,  but  he  certainly  advanced  little  in  the 
boast  of  independence."  Next  year  Gay  published  a  poem 
on  "Rural  Sports,"  which,  being  dedicated  to  Pope,  was  the 
means  of  introducing  him  to  the  society  of  the  wits,  among 
whom  he  became  a  great  favourite.  Gay's  chief  works  are  his 
"Fables,"  which  are  ingenious  and  amusing;  his  "Trivia,  or 
the  Art  of  Walking  the  Streets  of  London,"  which  gives  a 
curious  picture  of  scenes  and  customs  which  have  now  passed 
away ;  and  the  "  Beggar's  Opera,"  his  best  and  most  famous 
work.  It  was  brought  out  in  1728,  and  was  such  a  success 
that  for  some  weeks  the  town  talked  of  nothing  else.  Under 
the  guise  of  a  mock-heroic  drama  about  pickpockets  and 
informers,  it  contains  a  scathing  and  incisive  satire  on  the 
politics  and  politicians  of  the  day.  When  Gay  produced  the 
second  part  of  the  "  Beggar's  Opera,"  under  the  name  of 
"  Polly,"  the  Lord  Chamberlain  refused  to  license  it,  no  doubt 
because  of  its  political  intent.  It  has  not  nearly  the  merit  of 
the  first  part ;  nevertheless,  when  it  was  published  by  subscrip- 
tion, it  proved  very  successful,  and  brought  the  fortunate 
author  a  large  sum  of  money.  The  songs  interspersed  through 
the  "  Beggar's  Opera"  are  of  great  merit,  melodious,  sprightly, 
witty,  and  always  (the  highest  excellence  of  such  compositions) 
reading. as  if  they  had  been  made  to  sing.  Gay  died  in  1732. 
For.  some,  years  before  his  death,  he  lived  in  the  household  of 
the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  Queensberry,  who  were  very  kind  to 
him,  taking  charge  of  his  money  .for  him,  and  otherwise  assidu- 
ously attending  to  his  comforts. 

.  One  of  the  best  examples  of  .the  pretty  numerous  class  of 
works  which  are  often  referred  to  and  almost  never  read  is  the 
"Night  Thoughts"  of  Edward  Young.  Young  (1681-1765) 
was  one  of  the  greatest  sycophants  of  a  very  adulatory  age ; 
a  self-seeking,  greedy,  worldly  man.  He  entered  into  holy 
orders  in  1728,  and  was  appointed  Rector  of  Welwyn  in  Hert- 


James  Thomson.  197 

fordshire,  where,  in  1742-44,  he  wrote  his  "  Night  Thoughts." 
Abounding  in  epigrams  and  quotable  passages,  and  having 
about  them  a  sort  of  gloomy  grandeur,  the  "Night  Thoughts" 
are  often  extravagant  and  tedious.  Young  wrote  a  great  many 
other  poetical  works,  satires,  tragedies,  odes,  and  epistles, 
"The  Last  Day,"  a  paraphrase  of  part  of  the  Book  of  Job,  and 
a  poem  called  "  Resignation."  Of  these,  the  best  is  a  rather 
vigorous  satire  entitled  "  The  Love  of  Fame,  or  the  Universal 
Passion."  Another  satirist  of  the  school  of  Dryden  and  Pope 
was  the  unfortunate  and  dissipated  Charles  Churchill  (1731- 
1764),  who  "blazed,"  as  Byron  says,  "the  comet  of  a  season," 
between  1761  and  1764.  His  satires  are  coarse  and  vigorous, 
destitute  of  refinement  and  elaboration,  but  strong  and  manly. 
Among  the  writers  of  Pope's  time,  with  their  preference  for 
town  life  and  their  indifference  to  natural  scenery,  a  voice 
made  itself  heard  speaking  of  the  aspects  of  country  life,  of 
the  green  fields,  of  the  changes  of  the  seasons,  of  the  gloom 
of  winter,  the  freshness  of  spring,  the  rich  profusion  of  summer, 
and  the  russet-clad  tints  of  autumn.  This  was  James  Thom- 
son, a  Scotchman,  who,  born  in  1700,  came  up  to  London  to 
seek  his  fortune  in  1725.  His  poem  of  the  "Seasons"  ap- 
peared in  four  instalments  in  1726-1730.  Thomson  is  often 
careless  and  dull ;  his  verse  is  disfigured  by  that  pseudo- 
classicalism  which  delighted  to  speak  of  Ceres,  Pomona, 
Boreas,  &c.,.but  he  had  .a  genuine  love  for  nature,  and  his 
descriptions^  despite  their  artificial  .dress,  bear  the  stamp  of 
reality.  The  fact  that  the  "  Seasons"  was  at  once  successful, 
shows  that  the  taste  for  the  poetry  of  town  life  was  already 
beginning  to  decay.  Thomson  was  a  fat,  lazy,  good-natured, 
benevolent  man,  fond  of  lying  in  bed  in  the  mornings,  and  of 
indulging  in  long  drawn  reveries  or  in  building  luxurious 
castles  in  the. air  when  he  ought  to  have  been  actively  exert- 
ing himself.  He  died  in  1748,  having  had  his  latter  years 
made  very  comfortable  by  a  pension  bestowed  on  him  by  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  and  a  sinecure  situation  which  he  obtained 
through  the  influence  of  his  patron  Lyttleton.  Besides  his 
"  Seasons,"  Thomson  wrote  some  tragedies,  which  proved 


198          7 'he  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time. 

failures,  along  and  unreadable  poem  called  "Liberty,"  several 
smaller  pieces,  and  what  is  in  the  opinion  of  some  of  his 
critics  his  best  work,  "  The  Castle  of  Indolence,"  which  ap- 
peared in  the  year  of  his  death.  In  it  "he  has  poured  out 
the  whole  soul  of  indolence,  diffuse,  relaxed,  supine,  dissolved 
into  a  voluptuous  dream,  and  surrounded  himself  with  a  set 
of  objects  and  companions  in  entire  unison  with  the  listless- 
ness  of  his  own  temper."  To  appreciate  Thomson  properly  one 
must  be  prepared  to  read  him  in  the  same  easy-going  frame 
of  mind  as  that  in  which  he  himself  wrote ;  in  a  calm  leisurely 
way,  not  constantly  on  the  outlook  for  fine  passages  nor  im- 
patient of  tediousness.  Hazlitt,  who  thought  very  highly  of 
him,  is  constrained  to  say  that  "  the  same  suavity  of  temper 
and  sanguine  warmth  of  feeling  which  threw  such  a  natural 
grace  and  genial  spirit  of  enthusiasm  over  his  poetry  was  also 
the  causes  of  his  inherent  vices  and  defects.  He  is  affected 
through  carelessness,  pompous  from  unsuspecting  simplicity 
of  character.  He  is  frequently  pedantic  and  ostentatious  in 
his  style  because  he  had  no  consciousness  of  these  vices  in 
himself.  He  mounts  upon  stilts,  not  out  of  vanity  but  indo- 
lence. He  seldom  writes  a  good  line  but  he  makes  up  for  it 
by  a  bad  one.  He  takes  advantage  of  all  the  most  trite  and 
mechanical  commonplaces  of  imagery  and  diction  as  a  kindly 
relief  to  his  muse,  and  as  if  he  thought  them  quite  as  good 
and  likely  to  be  quite  as  acceptable  to  the  reader  as  his  own 
poetry.  He  did  not  think  the  difference  worth  putting  him- 
self to  the  trouble  of  accomplishing." 

Shortly  after  the  death  of  Pope,  the  poems  of  Gray  and 
Collins,  in  quite  a  different  style  from  his,  began  to  appear. 
They  were  formed  on  classical  models,  and  we  find  in 
them  nothing  of  that  constant  reference  to  contemporary  life 
which  is  one  of  the  notes  of  Pope's  poetry.  Thomas  Gray, 
born  in  1716,  was,  like  Milton,  the  son  of  a  London  scrivener. 
He  was  educated  at  Eton  and  at  Cambridge,  where  he  became 
acquainted  with  Horace  Walpole,  whom,  in  1739,  ne  accom- 
panied on  a  tour  to  France  and  Italy.  Both  were  fastidious, 
<; touchy"  men,  and  jt  is  not  surprising  to  learn  that  they 


Thomas  Gray.  199 

quarrelled  during  the  journey  and  parted,  each  to  pursue  his 
own  separate  route.  Soon  after  his  return  from  the  Continent 
in  1741,  Gray  settled  down  at  Cambridge,  where  most  of  his 
subsequent  life  was  spent.  In  1768  he  was  appointed 
Professor  of  History  there,  an  office  for  which  he  was  well 
qualified,  but  he  never  discharged  the  duties  of  his  situation, 
being  too  lazy  to  prepare  a  course  of  lectures.  Gray  was  a 
literary  voluptuary,  refined,  finical,  indisposed  to  active  exer- 
tions, and  so  terrified  lest  a  faulty  piece  of  work  should  go  out 
of  his  hands  that  he  wrote  very  little.  He  was  an  extensive 
and  curious  reader  in  all  departments  of  literature,  and  pre- 
vented time  from  lying  heavy  on  his  hands  by  engaging  in  all 
those  trifling  occupations  by  which  so  many  worthy  indolent 
people  try  to  persuade  themselves  that  they  are  busy.  He 
made  annotations  in  the  books  which  he  read  ;  he  drew  up  (for 
his  own  edification)  tables  of  chronology  \  during  the  chief 
part  of  his  life  he  kept  a  daily  record  of  the  blowing  of 
flowers,  the  leafing  of  trees,  the  state  of  the  thermometer,  the 
quarter  from  which  the  wind  blew,  the  falling  of  rain,  and 
other  matters  of  the  kind ;  and  he  delighted  his  friends  by 
writing  long  and  excellent  letters,  many  of  which  have  been 
published,  and  constitute  his  not  least-enduring  title  to  remem- 
brance. They  are  unconstrained,  natural,  amusing  effusions, 
and  give  us  a  pleasing  picture  of  a  man  who  was  content  "  to 
let  the  world  go  by,"  so  long  as  he  was  free  to  engage  in  the 
innocent  intellectual  pursuits  which  he  loved.  "  Don't  you 

remember,"  he  says  in  one  place,  "  Lord and ,  who 

are  now  great  statesmen,  little  dirty  boys  playing  at  cricket  ? 
For  my  part,  I  do  not  feel  a  bit  wiser,  or  bigger,  or  older  than 
I  did  then."  His  wish  to  lie  on  a  sofa  and  read  eternal  new 
romances  of  Marivaux  and  Crebillon  has  inspired  many  invete- 
rate novel-readers  with  sympathy  and  regard  for  the  placid  poet 
who  found  such  pleasure  in  their  favourite  class  of  literature. 

Gray  died  in  1771.  As  already  indicated,  his  poems  were 
few  and  short — so  few  and  short  that,  despite  their  excellence, 
he  can  scarcely  be  called  a  great  poet.  His  most  famous 
piece  is,  of  course,  the  "  Elegy  in  a  Country  Churchyard,". 


2ob"         The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne's  Time. 

which  was  written  in  1749.  There  is  no  need  to  eulogisef 
a  poem  which  has  excited  universal  pleasure.  The  patient 
industry  of  commentators  has  shown  that  there  is  scarcely  an 
idea  in  it  which  can  be  regarded  as  original;  but  that  in  nb: 
way  detracts  from  the  merit  of  Gray,  for  consummate  "artistic 
skill,  such  as  is  shown  in  the  "  Elegy,"  is  at  least  as  rare  a' 
quality  as  original  genius.  Gray's  "  Odes,"  which  were  pub- 
lished at  various  times,  never  have  been  and  never  will  be  so- 
popular  as  the  "  Elegy  : "  they  contain  many  far-fetched  allu- 
sions ;  their  language  is  rather  artificial,  and  they  do  not  in 
general  appeal  to  feelings  which  are  the  common  property  oi 
humanity  as  the  "  Elegy"  does.  Gray's  "  classical  coldness" 
and  want  of  spontaneity  has  exposed  him  to  the  censure  of- 
many,  including  Johnson  and  Carlyle.  Johnson  declared  that; 
he  was  a  "  mechanical  poet ; "  while  Carlyle  (in  his  essay  on 
Goethe)  says  that 'his  poetry  is  "a  laborious  mosaic,  through 
the  hard  stiff  lineaments  of  which  little  life  or  true  grace  could 
be  expected  to  look ;  real  feeling,  and  all  freedom  in  express- 
ing it,  are  sacrificed  to  pomp,  cold  splendour;  for  vigour  we 
have  a  certain  mouthing  vehemence,  too  elegant  indeed  to  be 
tumid,  yet  essentially  foreign  to  the  heart,  and  seen  to  extend 
no  deeper  than  the  mere  voice  and  gestures.  Were  it  not  for 
his  '  Letters,'  which  are  full  of  warm  exuberant  power,  we 
might  almost  doubt  whether  Gray  was  a  man  of  genius,  nay, 
was  a  living  man  at  all,  and  not  rather  some  thousand  times^ 
more  cunningly  devised  poetical  turning-loom  than  that  of 
S wift's—philosophers  in  Laputa."  This  -  is  extravagantly  un- 
just ;  none  >but  a  man  of  true  genius  could  h a v£  written  the^ 
"Elegy  "or  the  "  Ode  on  a  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College;'* 
but  it  does  hit  a  defect  in  Gray's  poetry  by  indicating  that  its- 
pomp  and  ceremony  are  sometimes  felt  oppressive,  and  its  art- 
is  not  of  that  perfect  order  which  conceals  itself. 

The  story  of  the  life  of  William  Collins,  a  poet  who  bears  zfr 
strong  resemblance  to  Gray,  is  a  very  sad-  one.  He  was  born 
in  1720  at  Chichester,  where  his  father  had  a  good  business' 
as  a  hatter.  In  1733  he  entered  Winchester  College,  Oxford, 
and  afterwards  becaine  a  demi. of  Magdalen  College,  where  he. 


William  Collins.  201 

remained  till  he  took  his  degree.  While  in  residence  there 
he  published  his  "  Oriental  Eclogues  "  (1742),  of  which  he  used 
afterwards  to  speak  contemptuously,  as  destitute  of  Oriental- 
ism, calling  them  his  "Irish  Eclogues."  About  1744  he  came 
to  London,  "  with  many  projects  in  his  head,  and  very  little 
money  in  his  pocket."  Though  depending  for  his  means  of 
support  on  the  liberality  of  a  relative,  he  was  dissipated  and 
profuse  in  his  expenditure,  and  soon,  like  many  another  author 
of  the  day,  knew  what  it  was  to  be  in  the  hands  of  a  bailiff, 
Collins  was  a  learned  man,  with  a  taste  for  reading  and  study, 
and  could,  no  doubt,  if  he  had  exerted  himself,  have  earned 
at  least  a  fair  competency  by  his  pen.  But  he  was  one  of  the 
class  of  men  who,  like  Coleridge,  love  much  better  to  draw  up 
magnificent  projects  which  they  intend  to  accomplish  at  some 
future  time  than  to  put  their  shoulder  to  the  wheel  and  do  the 
duty  which  lies  nearest  them.  Among  his  plans  was  a  "  History 
of  the  Revival  of  Learning,"  of  which  he  published  proposals, 
but  none  of  the  work  ever  appeared,  and  very  little  of  it  was 
ever  \vritten.  He  also  planned  several  tragedies,  and  on  one 
occasion,  when  confined  to  his  house  lest  he  should  be  cap- 
tured by  a  bailiff  who  was  prowling  in  the  street,  entered  into 
an  engagement  with  the  booksellers  to  execute  a  translation 
of  Aristotle's  "Poetics,"  for  which  he  received  as  much  money 
as  enabled  him  to  escape  into  the  country.  Soon  afterwards 
he  received  a  legacy  of  two  thousand  pounds,  whereupon  he 
repaid  the  booksellers  the  sum  they  had  advanced  him  and 
abandoned  the  translation.  His  only  publication  besides  the 
"Eclogues"  was  his  "Odes,"  which  appeared  in  1746,  and 
proved  such  a  failure  in  point  of  sale,  that  the  sensitive  author 
purchased  the  remainder  of  the  edition  from  the  publisher  and 
burned  it.  About  1751  he  began  to  decay  in  body  and  in 
mind.  "  His  disorder,"  says  Johnson,  who  knew  and  liked  him, 
"  was  no  alienation  of  mind,  but  general  laxity  and  feebleness, 
a  deficiency  rather  of  his  vital  than  his  intellectual  powers. 
What  he  spoke  wanted  neither  judgment  nor  spirit;  but  a  few 
minutes  exhausted  him,  so  that  he  was  forced  to  rest  upon  the 
couch,  till  a  short  cessation  restored  his  powers,  and  he  was 


2O2          The  Wits  of  Queen  Anne  s  Time. 

again  able  to  talk  with  his  former  vigour."  He  lingered  on  in 
this  deplorable  state  for  some  years,  till,  in  1759,  death  re- 
lieved him  from  it.  Once  when,  during  his  malady,  Johnson 
called  on  him,  he  found  the  unfortunate  poet  reading  the  New 
Testament,  which  he  always  carried  about  with  him.  "  I  have 
but  one  book,"  said  Collins,  "  but  it  is  the  best." 

After  Collins's  death  there  was  found  among  his  papers  a 
long  ode  on  the  "  Superstitions  of  the  Highlands,"  which  has 
since  been  printed.  His  entire  works  form  a  very  slender 
volume,  but  it  is  a  volume  which  will  always  be  dear  to  those 
who  can  appreciate  real  poetical  genius.  His  brilliant  per- 
sonification of  the  Passions  and  his  fine  "Ode  to  Evening" 
show  pure  taste,  deep  poetic  feeling,  and  a  wide  command  of 
poetical  diction.  His  contemporaries,  including  Johnson, 
were  blind  to  his  merits,  but  their  neglect  of  him  has  been 
amply  avenged  by  the  honour  paid  to  him  by  posterity. 

We  have  only  mentioned  a  few  of  the  poets  who  flourished 
during  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  and  the  first  Georges.  The 
list  might  be  indefinitely  extended ;  but  it  is  idle  to  try  to 
keep  alive  the  memory  of  a  crowd  of  versifiers,  most  of  whose 
compositions  are  inferior  to  those  which  every  day  appear  in 
the  pages  of  our  periodicals.  Of  all  kinds  of  reading,  that  of 
bad  or  middling  poetry  is  the  most  profitless.  One  or  two  of 
the  poets  who  belong  to  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
will  be  mentioned  in  a  subsequent  chapter,  but  we  may  here 
mention,  as  belonging  to  the  school  of  Pope,  Mark  Akenside, 
whose  "  Pleasures  of  the  Imagination  "  (1744)  was  inspired  by 
Addison's  papers  in  the  Spectator  on  the  same  subject  This 
poem  is  in  blank  verse,  and  though  frequently  commonplace 
and  wearisome,  is  not  without  dignity  and  force.  But  poems 
which  aspire  to  treat  such  a  theme  in  a  poetical  way  are  apt 
to  prove  failures  unless  in  the  hands  of  a  great  master  of  his 
art,  and  Akenside  did  not  possess  genius  enough  to  grapple 
successfully  with  the  many  difficulties  of  his  subject.  Accord- 
ingly, although  it  deserves  and  will  reward  the  attention  of 
the  student  of  English  poetry,  the  "  Pleasures  of  the  Imagi- 
nation "  is  now  generally  neglected. 


VL 


OUR  FIRST  GREAT  NOVELISTS. 
Defoe;  Richardson;  Folding;  Smollett ;  Sterne. 

IR  WALTER  SCOTT,  in  the  beginning  of  his 
"  Essay  on  Romance,"  referring  to  the  division  of  no 
titious  prose  narratives  into  two  classes,  defines  the 
romance  as  that  in  which  the  interest  turns  chiefly  on 
marvellous  and  uncommon  incidents,  and  the  novel  as  that  in 
which  the  events  are  accommodated  to  the  ordinary  train  of 
human  events  and  the  modern  state  of  society.  The  defini- 
tions are  not,  perhaps,  altogether  unexceptionable,  but  they 
indicate  the  distinction  in  a  way  sufficiently  clear  and  broad 
for  practical  purposes.  Romances  of  one  kind  or  another^ 
pastoral  and  heroic,  were  known  in  England  from  an  early 
period — Sir  Thomas  Malory's  "  Morte  d'Arthur,"  which  Scott 
calls  "  indisputably  the  best  prose  romance  the  language  can 
boast  of,"  was  written  during  the  reign  of  Edward  IV.  ;  but  as 
a  rule  they  were  very  extravagant  and  of  small  literary  merit. 
The  novel,  on  the  other  hand,  is  of  comparatively  recent  intro- 
duction into  English  literature.  It  seems  strange  to  us,  who 
live  in  a  time  when  novels  constitute  by  far  the  most  generally 
attractive  species  of  composition,  when  they  are  produced  by 
thousands  and  read  by  tens  of  thousands,  when  more  deft  and 
gifted  penmen  employ  themselves  in  this  branch  of  literature 
than  in  any  other,  to  think  that  we  have  not  to  go  farther  back 
for  the  beginnings  of  this  fascinating  species  of  composition  than 


2O4  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Its  rise  coincides 
pretty  much  with  the  decline  of  the  drama.  Education  was 
beginning  to  be  more  widely  diffused,  and  people  were  not 
only  able  to  follow  a  story  with  interest  as  represented  on  the 
stage,  but  also  to  read  it  with  pleasure. 

Daniel  Defoe,  the  first  of  our  great  writers  of  fiction,  was 
scarcely  a  novelist  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word.  His 
tales  may  be  described  as  fictitious  biographies,  intended  to 
be  accepted  as  authentic  ;  they  have  no  carefully  wrought  out 
plot,  so  contrived  as  to  keep  the  reader's  attention  enchained 
to  the  last  He  wrote  enormously — about  250  distinct  pro- 
ductions it  is  said,  and  in  all  departments  of  literature — verse, 
history,  fiction,  politics,  &c. — but  his  memory  is  now  mainly 
kept  alive  by  his  incomparable  ''  Robinson  Crusoe,"  which  has 
charmed  the  schoolboys  of  many  generations,  and  bids  fair 
to  continue  to  charm  them  as  long  as  the  English  tongue  is 
spoken.  Defoe,  who  had  almost  as  stirring  and  chequered  a 
career  as  any  of  the  heroes  he  loved  to  celebrate,  was  born 
in  1661,  the  son  of  a  wealthy  butcher  in  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate.: 
According  to  his  own  account,  he  was  educated  with  a  view  to 
becoming  a  dissenting  clergyman,  and  studied  with  this  intent 
for  about  five  years.  However  this  may  be,  he  seems  by  some 
means  or  other  to  have  picked  up  a  very  unusual  Amount  of 
learning,  for  he  tells  us  in  one  of  his  Reviews  that  he  had  been 
master  of  five  languages,  and  that  he  had  studied  mathematics, 
natural  philosophy,  logic,  geography,  and  history.  His  educa* 
tion  over,  he  entered  into  business,  becoming  a  hosier,  his 
enemies  said;  a  trader,  he  himself  said.  While  still  a  very 
young  man  he  visited  Portugal,  and  perhaps  other  parts  of  the 
Continent,  and  in  1683  he  began  his  long  and  industrious 
career  of  political  pamphleteering  by  writing  on  ,the  war  .be- 
tween the  Turks  and  the  Austrians.  Defoe's  life  was  so  shifty 
and  intricate,  his  own  statements  about  it,  despite  their  air  of 
plausibility,  have  been  proved  to  be  so  little  trustworthy,  so 
many  parts  of  it  are  still  in  some  degree  matter  of  controversy, 
that  here  we  cannot  attempt  to  do  more  than,  indicate  briefly 
seme  of  its  great  outstanding  features.  He  appear?-  to  have 


Daniel  Defoe.  205 

joined  the  Duke  of  Monmouth's  party  in  1685  ;  he  started 
many  ingenious  projects,  and  entered  into  some  business 
speculations  which  proved  unsuccessful ;  and  in  1695  he  was 
.appointed  accountant  to  the  commissioners  for  managing  the 
duties  on  glass,  an  office  which  he  held  till  1699,  when  he  lost 
his  situation  owing  to  the  suppression  of  the  tax.  In  1701  he 
won  his  way  to  royal  favour  by  his  satire  "  The  True-Born 
Englishman,"  an  enthusiastic  eulogium  on  King  William  and 
the  Revolution.  His  "  Shortest  Method  with  the  Dissenters," 
an  ironical  pamphlet  published  in  1703,  gave  such  offence 
.that  the  unfortunate  author  was  fined,  pilloried,  and  impri- 
soned. In  February  1704  he  began  the  publication  of  The 
Review,  a  periodical  publication  which  deserves  remembrance 
.in  literature  as  the  forerunner  of  the  Tatter  and  the  Spectator; 
and  in  the  same  year  he  began  his  profitable  if  somewhat  dis- 
honourable career  of  hack  political  writer  in  the  pay  of  the 
Government,  in  which  capacity  he  wrote  dozens  of  pamphlets. 
In  1706-7  he  was  sent  to  Scotland  to  assist  in  promoting  the 
Union.  He  died  in  1731,  writing  steadily  to  the  last  De- 
foe's personal  appearance  is  thus  described  in  a  proclamation 
offering  a  reward  for  his  capture  after  the  publication  of  his 
"  Shortest  Way  with  the  Dissenters  :"— "  He  is  a  middle-sized, 
spare  man,  about  forty  years  old,  of  a  brown  complexion,  and 
dark  brown  coloured  hair,  but  wears  a  wig,  a  hooked  nose,  a 
sharp  chin,  grey  eyes,  and  a  large  mole  near  his  mouth."  His 
character  presents  few  features,  save  his  indomitable  industry, 
calculated  to  win  respect  or  regard.  He  appears  to  have  been 
an  habitual  and  shameless  liar,  and  in  the  latter  years  of  his 
occupation  as  a  hired  political  writer  he  acted  a  treacherous 
part,  insinuating  himself  into  the  staff  of  a  Jacobite  journal  in 
order  to  mitigate  the  fierceness  of  its  attacks  on  the  Whig 
statesman  by  whom,  of  course,  he  was  paid  for  his  services. 

As  a  writer  of  these  political  pamphlets,  which  were  then 
nearly  as  powerful  agents  in  the  dissemination  of  political 
opinions  as  newspapers  are  now,  Defoe  has  been  ranked  along 
with  Swift.  Both  of  them,  by  the  studied  simplicity  of  their 
style,  the  homeliness  of  their  illustrations,  the  clearness  and 


266  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

precision  of  their  arguments,  were  admirably  adapted  for  such 
work.  In  point  of  elegance  Swift  carries  off  the  palm; 
but  Defoe's  frequent  colloquialisms  and  rough  and  ready 
modes  of  expression  were  very  well  suited  for  the  audience 
which  he  addressed.  The  fame  of  political  writings,  however, 
is  generally  shortlived,  and  it  is  not  what  he  did  in  this  way 
that  gives  him  a  title  to  be  mentioned  here.  It  was  not  till  he 
was  past  the  prime  of  life  that  Defoe  began  the  series  of  works 
to  which  he  owes  his  fame.  "  Robinson  Crusoe  "  appeared 
in  1719,  "  Captain  Singleton  "  in  1720,  "Colonel  Jack"  in 
1721,  and  the  "Journal  of  the  Plague"  in  1722.  These  are 
only  a  few  of  the  many  long  works  which  issued  from  his 
prolific  pen  ;  he  wrote  besides  on  religion,  on  success  in  busi- 
ness, on  his  own  adventures,  and  several  works  of  fiction,  the 
latter  for  the  most  part  dealing  with  characters  from  the  lowest 
strata  of  society:  In  all  his  books  we  find  the  same  character- 
istics :  a  style  often  incorrect  and  never  rising  into  dignity  or 
eloquence,  but  always  clear,  flowing,  and  graphic  ;  a  matter-of- 
fact  imagination,  which  gives  his  productions  a  wonderful  air  of 
veracity ;  and  a  knowledge  of  different  types  of  society,  espe- 
cially among  the  lower  classes,  such  as  has  perhaps  never  been 
attained  by  any  writer.  His  "  Journal  of  the  Plague  "  is  so 
minute,  so  circumstantial,  so  exactly  like  reality,  that  it  was 
believed  by  Dr.  Mead  to  be  the  work  of  a  medical  man  ;  and 
his  "  Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier  "  (the  precise  date  of  the  publica- 
tion of  which  is  unknown)  was  taken  by  Lord  Chatham  and 
many  others  for  a  real  history.  Of  Defoe's  minor  novels  we 
need  not  say  much.  The  subjects  with  which  they  deal,  and 
the  elaborate  minuteness  with  which  scenes  of  vice  are  de- 
scribed in  them,  do  not  tend  to  edification.  It  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  Defoe  was  not  led  to  the  choice  of  his  peculiar 
themes  by  a  secret  sympathy  with  roguery.  He  certainly  had 
an  extraordinary  fondness  for  exploring  in  their  minutest 
recesses  the  shady  corners  of  life.  In  his  novels,  it  has  been 
said  with  much  truth,  "  we  rarely  meet  with  anything  more 
exalted  or  respectable  than  masters  of  trading  vessels,  dealers 
•in  small  wares;  supercargoes,  or  it  maybe  pickpockets,  pirates, 


"Robinson  Crusoe?  207 

candidates  for  the  plantations,  or  emeriti  who  have  already 
obtained  that  distinction.  In  the  foreground  we  have  the 
cabin,  the  night-cellar,  the  haunts  of  fraud,  or  the  roundhouse  ; 
in  the  distance,  Newgate  or  Execution  Dock." 

Infinitely  healthier  in  tone,  and  superior  also  in  literary 
skill,  is  Defoe's  masterpiece,  "Robinson  Crusoe."  Perhaps 
the  universal  fame  of  this  work  as  a  book  for  the  young  makes 
it  more  neglected  than  it  should  be  by  readers  in  general. 
The  subject  was  one  admirably  adapted  for  Defoe's  genius. 
The  patient  ingenuity  with  which  he  piles  detail  on  detail,  his 
thorough  identification  of  himself  with  his  hero,  even  the 
wearisome  and  commonplace  religious  meditations  interspersed 
through  the  book,  combine  to  give  it  such  an  appearance  of 
reality  that  in  reading  it  the  insight  and  genius  necessary  to 
produce  such  a  result  fall  out  of  view,  and  we  imagine  our- 
selves attending  to  the  wonderful  adventures  of  a  veritable 
English  sailor,  rather  prone  to  loquacity  and  moralising,  but 
fertile  in  resources,  and  possessing  more  than  an  average  pro- 
portion of  the  ordinary  English  faculty  of  adapting  oneself 
with  as  good  grace  as  possible  to  any  situation.  Robinson 
Crusoe  is  no  hero  of  romance,  destitute  of  the  fears  and 
weaknesses  belonging  to  men  in  general,  but  simply  a  stout- 
hearted mariner,  determined  not  to  be  vanquished  by  obstacles 
which  there  is  any  possibility  of  overcoming.  "  Is  there  any 
modern  novelist,  who,  wishing  to  represent  a  very  brave, 
adventurous  young  man,  would  have  sufficient  confidence  in 
himself  to  make  him  beat  his  breast  and  sob  and  cry  like  a 
madman,  trusting  to  his  resources  to  prove  that  such  conduct 
was  a  part  of  the  bravest,  hardiest,  and  most  indomitable 
character  that  genius  ever  conceived  ?  Defoe  knew  that 
courage  is  not  a  positive  quality  which  some  men  have  and 
others  want ;  that  it  is  that  willingness  to  do  disagreeable 
tilings  which  we  have  all  acquired  in  some  measure,  but  that 
there  are  acts  of  courage  which  the  very  bravest  are  only 
just  able  to  do,  and  in  which  even  they  falter  and  tremble. 
How  nobly  is  this  brought  out  in  Crusoe's  behaviour  on  the 
island  !  At  first  he  is  in  a  passion  of  grief  almost  amounting 


208  Our-  First  Great  Novelists. 

to  madness  ;  '  but  I  thought  that  would  do  little  good,  so  I 
began  to  make  a  raft,'  &c.  Little  by  little  he  calms  down, 
often  fairly  giving  way  to  the  horrors  of  his  situation,  but 
always,  after  a  time,  setting  to  work  manfully  on  whatever 
comes  next  to  hand,  until  at  last  his  mind  grows  into  a  state 
of  settled  content  and  cheerfulness,  to  which  none  but  a  man 
ribbed  with  tripled  steel  could  have  attained.  There  is  a 
fearless  humility  about  the  whole  conception  of  Crusoe  of 
which  we  have  almost  lost  the  tradition." x  One  of  the  great 
attractions  of  "  Robinson  Crusoe "  is  the  boundless  scope 
which  it  gives  to  the  imagination  of  the  reader  in  conjecturing 
what  he  would  have  done  had  he  occupied  Crusoe's  position. 
This  helps  to  give  an  interest  to  the  smallest  details,  making 
us  follow  such  passages  as  those  in  which  he  gives  an  account 
of  his  difficulties  in  getting  a  boat  out  to  sea,  the  methods 
which  he  took  to  raise  and  preserve  his  crops,  &c.,  with 
something  of  a  personal  interest.  The  fine  and  sublime  con- 
ception of  a  shipwrecked  mariner  cast  on  a  desert  island  is 
one  which,  to  a  writer  with  a  genius  less  happily  constituted 
for  his  subject  than  Defoe's,  would  have  offered  almost  irre- 
sistible temptations  to  indulge  in  high-flown  and  philosophical 
meditations  above  the  reach  of  the  hero,  and  above  the  reach 
of  humanity  in  general,  thus,  in  great  measure,  taking  away 
from  the  reader  the  power  of,  as  it  were,  substituting  himself 
for  Crusoe,  besides  greatly  diminishing  the  fascination  of  the 
story.  The  superiority  of  the  first  part  of  "  Robinson  Crusoe  " 
is  no  doubt  to  be  largely  attributed  to  the  excellence  of  the 
subject :  the  second  part,  where  the  solitude  is  broken  in 
upon  by  a  crowd  of  planters  and  ship-captains,  is  little  if  at 
all  superior  to  Defoe's  other  novels. 

A  man  of  very  different  character  from  Defoe  was  our  next 
great  novelist,  Samuel  Richardson,  the  equable  current  of 
whose  career  is  in  striking  contrast  to  Defoe's  active  and  bustling 
life.  In  intellect,  also,  and  in  choice  of  subjects,  the  two  men 
differ  greatly,  but  there  is  some  resemblance  between  their 

1  Fitzjames  Stephen  on  "  The  Relation  of  Novels  to  Life,"  in  "  Cam- 
bridge  Essays  tl  for  1855.  p.  188. 


Samuel  Richardson.  209 

styles.  Both  loved  great  minuteness  of  detail,  both  were  apt 
to  deal  too  much  in  what  may  be  called  the  "inventory" 
style  of  writing,  omitting  no  fact  or  incident,  even  the  least 
important,  and  both  in  consequence  sometimes  become  in- 
tolerably long-winded,  though  there  is  a  certain  dramatic 
propriety  about  Defoe's  tediousness  which  is  wanting  in 
Richardson's.  An  industrious,  frugal,  punctual  man,  attend- 
ing carefully  to  business,  and  avoiding  every  kind  of  dissipa- 
tion, Richardson  passed  a  happy  and  blameless  life,  surrounded 
by  a  host  of  female  admirers  who  were  never  tired  of  praising 
him.  He  drank  in  all  their  flattery  with  greedy  ears ;  for  he 
was  a  vain  man,  and,  like  most  vain  men,  preferred  the  society 
of  women  to  that  of  men.  The  story  of  his  life  presents  no 
unusual  or  striking  incidents,  and  need  not  detain  us  long. 
He  was  born  in  1689,  apprenticed  to  a  printer  in  1706, 
served  his  apprenticeship,  worked  for  some  years  as  a  com- 
positor, and  then  set  up  in  business  on  his  own  account  in 
Fleet  Street.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he  continued  to  keep 
his  shop,  and  was  thus  able  to  avoid  the  many  hardships 
and  privations  which  in  his  day  were  the  common  lot  of  men 
of  letters.  Perhaps  in  all  London  it  would  not  have  been 
possible  to  find  a  man  who  to  the  casual  observer  bore  a  more 
thoroughly  commonplace  appearance. 

Yet  in  this  man  there  was  a  spark  of  the  divine  fire  of 
genius,  and  although  he  was  well  advanced  in  life  before  he 
thought  of  appearing  as  an  author,  it  so  happened  that  he  had 
unintentionally  from  a  very  early  period  been  training  himself 
for  the  work  which  he  was  to  accomplish.  "As  a  bashful 
and  not  forward  boy,"  he  writes,  "  I  was  an  early  favourite  witli 
all  the  young  women  of  taste  and  reading  in  the  neighbour- 
hood. Half-a-dozen  of  them,  when  met  to  work  with  their 
needles,  used,  when  they  got  a  book  they  liked,  and  thought  I 
should,  to  borrow  me  to  read  to  them,  their  mothers  some- 
times with  them,  and  both  mothers  and  daughters  used  to  be 
pleased  with  the  observations  they  put  me  upon  making. 

"I  was  not  more  than  thirteen  when  three  of  these  young 
women,  unknown  to  each  other,  having  a  high  opinion  of  my 
JO 


2io  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

taciturnity,  revealed  to  me  their  love  secrets,  in  order  to  induce 
me  to  give  them  copies  to  write  after,  or  correct,  for  answers 
to  their  lovers'  letters ;  nor  did  any  of  them  ever  know  that  I 
was  the  secretary  to  the  other.  I  have  been  directed  to  chide, 
and  even  repulse,  at  the  very  time  that  the  heart  of  the  chider 
or  repulser  was  open  before  rne,  overflowing  with  esteem 
and  affection,  and  the  fair  repulser,  dreading  to  be  taken 
at  her  word,  directing  this  word  or  that  expression  to  be 
softened  or  changed.  One,  highly  gratified  with  her  lover's 
fervour  and  vows  of  everlasting  love,  has  said,  when  I  have 
asked  her  direction,  '  I  cannot  tell  you  what  to  write ;  but '  (her 
heart  on  her  lips)  'you  cannot  write  too  kindly;'  all  her  fear 
was  only  that  she  should  incur  slight  for  her  kindness." 

Thus  it  was  that  Richardson  began  to  acquire  that  know- 
ledge of  the  depths  and  windings  of  the  human  heart  which 
constitute  his  strength  as  a  novelist.  The  occupation  above 
described  does  not  appear  to  be  a  very  suitable  one  for  a  boy 
of  thirteen,  and  it  must  be  confessed  that  Richardson  had  in 
his  character  a  good  deal  of  the  prig  and  not  a  little  of  the 
milksop.  Yet  it  is  to  his  engaging  in  this  curious  employment 
that  we  owe  "  Pamela "  and  "  Clarissa."  Having  found  out 
that  he  had  a  talent  for  letter-writing,  Richardson  continued 
to  practise  the  art  as  much  as  his  opportunities  allowed,  and 
thus  acquired  considerable  facility  in  composition.  About 
1739  two  booksellers  asked  him  to  write  for  them  "a  little 
book  of  familiar  letters  on  the  useful  concerns  of  common 
life."  He  consented;  the  design  gradually  expanded  under 
his  hands;  and  "Pamela"  was  the  result.  The  first  two 
volumes  appeared  in  1741,  and  were  received  with  a  chorus 
of  public  approbation  comparable  to  that  which  welcomed 
"  Waverley  "  or  the  "  Pickwick  Papers."  Dr.  Sherlock  recom- 
mended the  work  from  the  pulpit.  Pope  declared  that  it 
would  do  more  good  than  twenty  volumes  of  sermons.  One 
enthusiastic  gentleman  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  if  all  other 
books  were  to  be  burned,  the  Bible  and  "Pamela"  should  be 
pieserved.  Nor  was  the  enthusiasm  about  the  book  confined 
to  England.  It  was  translated  into  French,  and  excited  as 


Richardson's  "  Clarissa''  2 1 1 

great  &  furore  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel  as  here.  This 
extraordinary  blaze  of  popularity  seems  very  strange  to  us. 
Besides  the  coarseness  of  many  of  the  details,  which  may  be 
excused,  as  the  fashion  of  the  age  allowed  an  amount  of  plain 
speaking  which  we  should  now  think  quite  intolerable,  there 
is  in  the  book  a  mawkish  tediousness  and  a  sort  of  canting 
virtue  which  tend  to  repel  the  reader.  One  great  reason  for 
its  success  no  doubt  was  that  it  was  a  novel  of  quite  a  diffe- 
rent character  from  any  that  had  hitherto  been  published. 
"It  requires,"  says  Scott,  "a  reader  to  be  in  some  degree 
acquainted  with  the  huge  folios  of  inanity,  over  which  our 
ancestors  yawned  themselves  to  sleep,  ere  he  can  estimate 
the  delight  they  must  have  experienced  from  the  unexpected 
return  to  truth  and  nature." 

A  spurious  continuation  of  "Pamela"  led  Richardson  to 
add  to  it  two  additional  volumes,  but  they  shared  the  com- 
mon fate  of  continuations  in  turning  out  a  failure,  and  are  now 
seldom  if  ever  read  even  by  Richardson's  most  enthusiastic 
admirers.  For  some  years  after  this  Richardson  kept-  silence, 
revolving  in  his  mind  the  plot  of  the  work  on  which  rests  his 
most  enduring  claim  to  remembrance.  This  was  the  noble 
and  tragic  story  of  "  Clarissa,"  which  was  published  eight  years 
after  the  appearance  of  "  Pamela."  Though,  like  all  his 
works,  too  long-winded,  there  is  in  it  a  power  and  a  depth  of 
pathos  which  keep  the  reader  who  has  once  fairly  entered  on 
its  perusal  enchained  to  the  end.  Nowhere  in  either  English 
fiction  or  poetry  is  there  drawn  a  figure  more  beautiful,  intense, 
and  splendid  than  that  of  Clarissa.  Mrs.  Oliphant  does  not 
exaggerate  when  she  says  that  in  this  figure  Richardson 
added  at  least  one  character  to  the  inheritance  of  the  world, 
of  which  Shakespeare  need  not  have  been  ashamed — the  most 
celestial  thing,  the  highest  imaginative  effort  of  his  generation. 
When  the  first  four  volumes  of  "Clarissa"  appeared,  and 
apprehensions  began  to  be  entertained  that  the  catastrophe 
was  to  be  unfortunate,  requests  crowded  upon  the  author  to 
spare  the  high-souled  creature  whom  he  had  called  into  being, 
and  wind  up  his  story  with  the  stereotyped  happy  ending.  -To 


2 1 2  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

his  credit  be  it  said,  Richardson  steadfastly  withstood  all 
such  importunities.  He  saw  that  if  he  were  to  save  his 
heroine,  he  should  inevitably  degrade  her,  and  thus  ruin  what 
is  probably,  with  all  its  many  defects,  the  grandest  prose 
tragedy  ever  penned. 

In  Richardson's  last  great  work,  "Sir  Charles  Grandison," 
which  was  published  in  1753,  he  sank  below  the  level  not 
only  of  "Clarissa,"  but  even  of  <{  Pamela."  At  the  instigation 
of  some  of  his  female  admirers  he  set  himself  to  portray  the 
beau  ideal  of  a  "fine  gentleman,"  who  should  unite  in  one 
person  all  excellences,  mental,  moral,  and  physical.  The 
result  is  such  as  might  have  been  apprehended.  Sir  Charles 
is  "that  faultless  monster  whom  the  world  ne'er  saw;  a 
polite,  moralising,  irreproachable  coxcomb,"  content  to  dwell 
in  decencies  for  ever.  "  It  is  impossible  for  the  reader  to  feel 
any  sympathy  with  a  hero  whose  worst  trial  is  the  doubt 
which  of  two  beautiful  and  accomplished  women,  excellent  in 
disposiiion  and  high  in  rank,  sister  excellences,  as  it  were,  both 
being  devotedly  attached  to  him,  he  shall  be  pleased  to  select 
for  his  bride,  and  this  with  so  small  a  share  of  partiality 
,  towards  either,  that  we  cannot  conceive  his  happiness  to  be 
endangered  wherever  his  lot  may  fall,  except  by  a  generous 
-compassion  for  her  whom  he  must  necessarily  relinquish.'* 
"  Sir  Charles  Grandison  "  now  takes  rank  with  the  continua- 
tion of  "  Pamela,"  as  utterly  unreadable  save  by  such  omni- 
vorous students  as  Macaulay,  to  whom  every  kind  of  literary 
food  is  palatable. 

Richardson  died  in  1761,  a  much-respected,  prosperous, 
and  in  the  main  worthy  man.  Vanity,  the  common  vice  of 
those  who  like  him  are  contented  to  receive  as  infallible  the 
opinions  'of  their  own  petty  circle  of  acquaintances,  was  his 
predominant  failing.  He  could  not,  as  Johnson  expressed  it 
in  one  of  the  many  fine  remarks  which  flashed  from  .him  in 
the  heat  of  conversation,  be  contented  to  sail  quietly  down 
the  stream  of  reputation  without  longing  to  taste  the  froth 
from  every  stroke  of  the  oar.  In  company  he  had  little  to  say 
except  when  the  conversation  turned  upon  his  own  works, 


Richardson  s  Works.  213 

about  which  he  was  always  willing  to  talk.  If  he  could  re- 
visit the  earth,  Richardson's  vanity  would  receive  a  sad  shock. 
His  works,  read  and  praised  by  thousands  in  this  country, 
and  applauded  abroad  by  such  men  as  Rousseau  and  Diderot, 
are  now  unknown,  not  only  to  the  general  public,  but  even  to 
many  whose  knowledge  of  English  literature  is  far  from  con- 
temptible. Indeed,  we  are  very  much  inclined  to  doubt  if 
there  are  ten  persons  now  living  who  could  conscientiously 
affirm  that  they  had  read  his  three  novels  from  beginning  to 
end.  This  general  neglect  is  not  difficult  to  account  for.  His 
works  are  so  enormously  long,  that  the  very  appearance  of  the 
massive  volumes  in  which  they  are  contained  is  apt  to- frighten 
away  a  reader  of  these  degenerate  days.  But  their  length  is 
not  the  only  obstacle  to  their  perusal.  All  are  written  in  the 
form  of  letters  to  and  from  the  various  characters  who  figure 
in  them,  a  mode  of  storytelling  which  greatly  aggravated 
Richardson's  natural  tendency  to  diffuseness.  A  not  incon- 
siderable part  of  the  letters  is  occupied  with  the  commonplace 
forms  of  epistolary  politeness,  which  we  could  very  well  have 
dispensed  with,  and,  moreover,  the  same  incident  is  sometimes 
related  by  different  correspondents  at  unmerciful  length.  Add 
to  this  that  the  story  moves  so  slowly  that  an  old  lady  is  said 
to  have  chosen  "Sir  Charles  Grandison"  to  be  read  to  her  in 
preference  to  any  other  work,  because  she  could  sleep  for 
half  an  hour  at  any  time  while  it  was  being  read,  and  still  find 
the  personages  just  where  she  left  them,  conversing  in  the 
cedar  parlour,  and  we  have  said  enough  to  account  for  the 
decline  of  Richardson's  popularity.  Even  Johnson,  who, 
probably  from  personal  regard  to  the  author,  had  an  extrava- 
gantly high  opinion  of  Richardson's  novels,  was  compelled  to 
own  that  '*  Were  you  to  read  Richardson  for  the  story,  your 
impatience  would  be  so  much  fretted  that  you  would  hang 
yourself."  "You  must  read  him  for  the  sentiment,"  he  went 
on  to  say,  "and  consider  the  story  only  as  giving. occasion  to 
the  sentiment."  But  Richardson's  sentiment  and  moral  re- 
flections have  now  a  thoroughly  antiquated  flavour :  he  is  no 
longer  found  capable  of  teaching  "the  passions  to  move  at 


214  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

the  command  of  virtue."  Yet,  acting  on  the  sound  critical 
principle  that  a  writer  ought  always  to  be  judged  by  his  best 
performance,  we  are  constrained  to  admit  that  the  writer  of 
"Clarissa,"  full  of  improbabilities  and  wearisome  minutiae  as 
it  is,  deserves  the  conspicuous  position  which  he  still  holds 
in  the  history  of  English  literature,  not  only  because  he 
originated  a  new  species  of  composition,  but  because  he  was 
a  man  of  strikingly  original  genius.  '"Clarissa"  belongs  to 
the  small  class  of  works  which,  once  read,  never  fail  to  leave 
a  powerful  and  indelible  impression  on  the  memory. 

"  How  charming,  how  wholesome  Fielding  always  is  !  To 
take  him  up  after  Richardson  is  like  emerging  from  a  sick- 
room heated  by  stoves  into  an  open  lawn  on  a  breezy  day  of 
May."  Thus  Coleridge  spoke  of  Richardson's  great  contem- 
porary and  rival,  Henry  Fielding,  who,  after  the  lapse  of  more 
than  a  century  and  a  half,  still  disputes  with  Scott  and  one  or 
two  others  the  proud  position  of  the  greatest  of  English  writers 
of  fiction.  Richardson's  novels  are  novels  of  sentiment:  he 
draws  men  from  the  inside,  as  it  were,  portraying  their  passions, 
feelings,  imaginations,  and  so  forth.  It  was  reserved  to  Fielding 
to  inaugurate  a  new  era  in  fiction  by  writing  novels  of  real 
life,  painting  with  graphic  pencil  the  manners,  fashions,  and 
characters  prevalent  in  English  society  at  the  time  when  he  lived. 
Fielding  was  born  in  1707  at  Sharpham  Park,  Somersetshire, 
the  son  of  a  general  who  served  under  the  Duke  of  Marl- 
borough.  He  was  descended  from  a  lofty  ancestry,  being  a 
great-grandson  of  the  Desmond  who  was  a  son  of  the  Earl  of 
Denbigh,  a  circumstance  which  gave  rise  to  Gibbon's  stately 
sentence,  which  Thackeray  was  so  fond  of  quoting  :  "  Our  im- 
mortal Fielding  was  of  the  younger  branch  of  the  Earls  of 
Denbigh,  who  drew  their  origin  from  the  Counts  of  Hapsburgh. 
The  successors  of  Charles  V.  may  disdain  their  brethren  of 
England;  but  the  romance  of  'Tom  Jones,'  that  exquisite 
picture  of  human  manners,  will  outlive  the  palace  of  the 
Escurial  and  the  imperial  eagle  of  the  House  of  Austria." 
Like  many  another  scion  of  a  noble  family,  Fielding  found 
that  his  long-drawn  pedigree  was  not  attended  by  any  very 


Henry  Fielding.  215 

solid  material  advantages.  Leaving  Eton,  where  he  amassed 
that  stock  of  classical  learning  which  he  was  rather  too  fond 
of  displaying  in  his  works,  he  went  to  Leyden  to  study  civil 
law.  There  he  remained  for  two  years,  when,  at  the  age  of 
twenty,  he  was  compelled  to  return  to  England,  owing  to  the 
inability  of  his  father  to  supply  him  with  funds.  Settling  in 
London,  he  found  that  he  had  no  resource  but,  to  use  his  own 
expression,  to  become  a  hackney-writer  or  a  hackney-coach- 
man. His  father,  it  is  true,  granted  him  a  nominal  allowance 
of  £200  a  year,  but,  as  his  son  used  to  say,  "anybody  might 
pay  it  who  would."  Of  handsome  exterior,  great  conversational 
powers,  and  free,  reckless,  jovial  disposition,  Fielding  entered 
with  zest  into  the  many  dissipations  of  the  great  city,  earning 
a  precarious  income  by  dashing  off  rapidly  play  after  play.  We 
need  not  enter  into  details  regarding  Fielding's  dramatic  per- 
formances. Though  they  are  not  without  merit,  his  name 
would  now  have  been  quite  forgotten  if  he  had  written  nothing 
else.  Fielding  himself  seems  to  have  viewed  them  with  philo- 
sophic indifference.  Garrick  once  asked  him  to  erase  a  passage 
from  one  of  his  comedies,  as  he  felt  certain  it  would  provoke 
opposition.  "  No,"  replied  Fielding,  "  if  the  scene  is  not  a 
good  one,  let  them  find  that  out."  The  play  was  accordingly 
brought  out  without  alteration,  and,  as  had  been  foreseen,  was 
ill  received.  Garrick,  alarmed  at  the  hisses  he  met  with, 
retired  into  the  green-room,  where  the  author  sat  drinking 
champagne.  " What's  the  matter,  Garrick?"  said  Fielding; 
"what  are  they  hissing  now?"  "Why,  the  scene  that  I 
begged  you  to  retrench,  and  they  have  so  frightened  me  that 
I  shall  not  be  able  to  collect  myself  again  the  whole  night." 
"Oh,  they  have  found  it  out,  have  they?"  was  the.  cool  reply. 
About  1735  Fielding  married  Miss  Cradock  of  Salisbury,  a 
beautiful  and  amiable  lady,  with  a  fortune  of  ^1500.  About 
the  same  time  he  fell  heir  to  a  property  of  £200  a  year.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  these  sums  then  represented  a 
much  larger  purchasing  power  than  they  would  do  now. 
If  managed  with  economy,  they  would  have  placed  Field- 
ing above  the  reach  of  sordid  want  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 


2 1 6  Our  Fir  si  Great  Novelists. 

But  unfortunately  he  was  one  of  the  pretty  numerous  class 
of  men  who,  whatever  their  income  be,  always  live  beyond 
it.  Setting  up  as  a  country  squire,  he  kept  a  vast  retinue  of 
servants  clad  in  costly  yellow  liveries;  he  exercised  an  un- 
bounded hospitality,  throwing  open  his  doors  to  all  comers, 
and  indulged  in  profuse  expenditure  on  horses  and  hounds. 
Py  these  and  such-like  means  he  soon  devoured  his  little 
patrimony,  and  was  obliged  to  return  to  his  old  literary  drudgery. 
The  time  he  spent  in  the  character  of  a  country  squire  was  not, 
however,  altogether  wasted.  While  apparently  exceeding  all 
his  brother  squires  in  folly,  he  was  in  reality  noting  with  keen 
and  vigilant  eye  all  their  peculiarities  and  little  trails  of  manner, 
and  thus  storing  up  a  vast  variety  of  materials  wherewith  to 
enrich  some  of  the  most  imperishable  pages  of  English  fiction. 
On  his  return  to  London,  Fielding,  in  order  to  escape  from 
the  miseries  which  surrounded  a  poor  author,  formed  the 
valorous  resolution  of  studying  the  law.  He  was  called  to  the 
bar  in  1740,  and  appears  to  have  made  considerable  efforts  to 
obtain  success  in  his  profession.  Clients,  however,  came  in 
slowly,  and  literature  was,  as  formerly,  his  principal  means  of 
subsistence.  Up  to  this  time  Fielding  had  been  groping  blindly 
about,  without,  it  appears,  the  slightest  knowledge  of  what 
province  of  literature  his  genius  was  peculiarly  fitted  to  share 
in.  Had  Richardson  never  written  "  Pamela,"  Fielding,  if 
known  at  all  to  our  age,  would  have  been  known  only  as  the 
author  of  some  indifferent  essays  and  plays.  "Pamela  "  showed 
him  the  true  path  into  which  his  powers  should  be  directed. 
"  He  couldn't,"  to  quote  Thackeray,  "  do  otherwise  than  laugh 
at  the  puny  Cockney  bookseller  pouring  out  endless  volumes 
of  sentimental  twaddle,  and  hold  him  up  to  scorn  as  a  molly- 
coddle and  a  milksop."  The  result  was  "Joseph  Andrews" 
(1742),  the  first  English  novel  in  which  the  author  set  himself 
to  delineate  the  broad  panorama  of  English  life  as  it  was 
moving  before  his  eyes.  Originally  intended  to  be  little  else 
than  a  caricature  of  "  Pamela,"  it  soon  passed  into  something 
much  better  than  that.  The  character  of  Parson  Adams, 
guileless,  benevolent,  child-like,  with  a  touch  of  pedantry,  and 


Fiel'dings  "Miscellanies.1^  217 

a  touch  of  vanity  (charmingly  shown  by  his  offering  to  walk 
ten  miles  to  fetch  his  sermon  on  Vanity,  merely  to  convince 
the  friend  with  whom  he  was  talking  of  his  thorough  contempt 
for  that  vice),  is  one  of  the  finest  portraits  in  that  noble  gallery 
where  hang  Dr.  Primrose,  My  Uncle  Toby,  Mr.  Pickwick, 
Colonel  Newcome,  The  Antiquary,  and  other  faithful  and 
long-tried  friends.  Richardson  never  forgave  Fielding  for  the 
slight  put  upon  him  by  the  publication  of  "Joseph  Andrews," 
and  to  the  end  of  his  life  continued  to  speak  of  him  with  a 
degree  of  contempt  altogether  unjustifiable.  He  declared  that 
"he  has  little  or  no  invention;"  that  "nothing  but  a  shorter 
life  than  I  can  wish  him  can  hinder  him  from  writing  himself 
out  of  date;"  and  that  his  knowledge  of  the  human  heart 
was  "  but  as  the  knowledge  of  the  outside  of  a  clockwork 
machine  !" 

The  interval  between  the  publication  of  "  Joseph  Andrews  " 
and  Fielding's  next  great  work  may  be  briefly  passed  over.  In 
1743  he  published  by  subscription  three  volumes  of  "Miscel- 
lanies," the  more  notable  contents  of  which  are  the  "Journey 
from  this  World  to  the  Next,"  a  cleveryV//  cTesprit,  the  interest 
of  which  falls  off  considerably  towards  the  end,  and  "Jonathan 
Wild."  The  latter  work,  which  well  illustrates  Thackeray's 
remark,  that  Fielding's  wit  flashes  upon  a  rogue  and  lightens 
up  a  rascal  like  a  policeman's  lantern,  may  be  compared  to 
the  "  Barry  Lyndon  "  of  the  former  novelist  Roguery,  and  not 
a  rogue,  is,  as  the  author  himself  said,  the  subject;  and  the 
fine  satire,  the  contempt  for  and  abhorrence  of  villany,  which 
"permeate  the  book,  go  far  to  compensate  for  the  unpleasantness 
of  the  subject  Fielding  at  all  times  resembled  Thackeray  in 
having  a  thorough  and  healthy  aversion  for  anything  approach- 
ing to  making  a  hero  out  of  a  blackguard,  a  practice  more 
common  in  our  day  than  in  his.  About  the  time  when  the 
"  Miscellanies"  was  published,  he  sustained  the  great  affliction 
of  his  life  in  the  loss  first  of  his  daughter,  and  soon  after  of 
his  wife,  his  affection  for  whom  constitutes  one  of  the  finest 
traits  of  his  manly  and  generous,  if  somewhat  reckless  and  dis- 
sipated, character. .  Her  death,  we  are  told  by  one  of  his  bio 


2 1 8  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

grapbers,  brought  on  such  a  vehemence  of  grief  that  his  friends 
began  to  think  him  in  danger  of  losing  his  reason.  Mrs. 
Fielding  left  behind  her  a  maid,  whose  expressions  of  grief  at 
the  loss  of  her  beloved  mistress  so  touched  Fielding's  heart, 
that  he  made  her  his  second  wife.  He  never  had  any  reason 
to  repent  of  having  done  so.  In  the  last  production  of  his 
pen,  he  commemorated  her  as  a  woman  "who  discharged  all 
the  offices  becoming  the  female  character — a  faithful  friend,  an 
amiable  companion,  and  a  tender  nurse." 

In  the. end  of  1748  Fielding  accepted  what  was  then  con- 
sidered the  rather  degrading  office  of  a  Bow  Street  Magistrate. 
These  officials  were  termed  Trading  Justices,  being  repaid  by 
fees  for  their  services  to  the  public.  It  deserves  to  be  recorded 
to  Fielding's  honour  that,  in  contrast  to  many  of  his  brethren, 
he  discharged  his  duties  with  strict  honesty,  thus,  as  he  said, 
"reducing  an  income  of  about  ^"500  a  year  of  the  dirtiest 
money  upon  earth  to  little  more  than  ,£300 ;  a  considerable 
proportion  of  which  remained  with  my  clerk."  In  1749 
appeared  his  greatest  work,  "Tom  Jones,"  the  labour,  he  tells 
us,  of  some  years  of  his  life — a  fact  sufficiently  well  attested 
by  its  careful  and  masterly  execution.  It  was  so  well  received 
that  within  a  month  after  its  publication  a  notice  appeared 
stating,  that  it  being  impossible  to  bind  sets  fast  enough  to 
answer  the  demand,  those  who  pleased  might  have  them  in 
blue  paper  or  boards ;  and-  the  publisher,  in  consequence  of 
the  enormous  sale,  added  ^100  to  the  ;£6oo  agreed  to  be  paid 
to  the  author.  The  skilful  elaboration  of  the  plot,  the  admir- 
able drawing  of  the  characters,  and  the  shrewd  and  sensible 
remarks  interspersed  thickly  throughout  the  work,  combine  to 
give  "  Tom  Jones "  a  proud  pre-eminence  over  all  the  other 
novels  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Exception  may,  indeed,  be 
taken  to  parts  of  it ;  one  is  sometimes  tempted  to  think-that 
Tom,  who  is  evidently  such  a  favourite  with  the  author,  was  in 
reality  not  much  better  than  an  "  accomplished  blackguard," 
as  Byron  calls  him,  and  that  the  beautiful  Sophia  was,  to  use 
Hazlitt's  expression,  merely  a  pretty  simpleton ;  but  there  can 
be  no  question  as  to  the  general  power,  spirit,  and  fidelity  to 


Fie  I  dings  "Amelia"  219 

nature  of  the  book.  The  character  of  Squire  Western,  the  Tory 
fox-hunter,  with  his  animalism,  his  coarseness,  his  prejudices, 
his  instinctive  love  of  his  daughter,  balanced  by  his  equally 
strong  love  of  the  pleasures  of  the  chase,  is  immortal  and  un- 
surpassed. Thackeray's  Sir  Pitt  Crawley,  who  was  evidently 
modelled  on  this  unapproachable  portrait,  is  only  a  feeble 
echo  of  it.  The  coarseness  and  indelicacy  which  too  often 
pollute  the  pages  of  "Tom  Jones"  are  what  must  be  allowed 
for  in  all  the  novels  of  the  time.  Neither  Richardson,  nor 
Fielding,  nor  Smollett,  nor  Sterne  is  reading  adapted  virgini- 
bus puerisque.  Nevertheless,  we  are  decidedly  of  Mr.  Ruskin's 
opinion,  that,  rightly  viewed,  Fielding  is  a  thoroughly  moral 
novelist.  The  absence  from  his  works  of  all  cant  and  in- 
sincerity, his  love  of  truth,  courage,  and  uprightness,  his  hatred 
and  detestation  of  falsehood,  malice,  and  depravity,  give  his 
novels  a  perennial  air  of  freshness  and  health. 

About  three  years  after  "Tom  Jones,"  in  December  1751, 
Fielding's  last  important  work,  "Amelia,"  was  completed.  It 
is  on  the  whole  the  least  excellent  of  the  trio.  Its  construc- 
tion is  far  inferior  to  the  consummate  art  with  which  the  plot 
of  "Tom  Jones"  is  worked  out;  and  though  in  some  ways 
considerably  superior  to  "  Joseph  Andrews,"  it  contains  no 
shining  character  like  Parson  Adams,  on  whose  memory  one 
loves  to  linger.  Nevertheless,  the  book  had  one  great  triumph. 
Dr.  Johnson,  who  was  always  so  scandalously  unjust  to  Field- 
ing, that  one  is  tempted  to  suppose  that  he  must  have  had 
some  personal  animosity  towards  him,  read  it  through  without 
stopping,  and  declared  that  Amelia  was  the  most  pleasing 
heroine  in  romance.  Amelia,  whose  portrait  Fielding  drew 
from  that  of  his  second  wife,  has,  indeed,  been  always  a 
favourite  character  with  readers ;  but  the  same  cannot  be  said 
about  her  husband,  Booth,  who,  we  may  suppose,  was  intended 
to  represent  Fielding  himself.  If  so,  the  likeness  which  he 
drew  is  certainly  not  a  flattering  one.  Thackeray  preferred 
Captain  Booth  to  Tom  Jones,  because  he  thought  much  more 
humbly  of  himself  than  Jones  did,  and  went  down  on  his  knees 
and  owned  his  weaknesses ;  but  most  will  be  inclined  to  agree 


2  20  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

with  Scott,  who  declares  that  we  have  not  the  same  sympathy 
for  the  ungrateful  and  dissolute  conduct  of  Booth  which  we 
yield  to  the  youthful  follies  of  Jones.  However,  after  all 
necessary  deductions  have  been  made,  "Amelia"  must  be 
pronounced  a  wonderful  work,  full  of  that  rich  flow  of  humour 
and  deep  knowledge  of  human  nature  which  charm  us  in 
"  Tom  Jones"  and  "  Joseph  Andrews." 

Besides  his  plays  and  his  novels,  Fielding  wrote  a  variety  of 
other  works.  He  was  the  conductor  and  principal  writer  of 
i\vo  or  three  periodical  publications,  in  which  he  strenu- 
ously upheld  his  political  opinions,  which  were  strongly  Pro- 
testant and  anti-Jacobite,  and  assailed  vigorously  some  of  the 
more  noted  quacks  of  the  day.  He  also,  in  connection  with 
his  duties  as  magistrate,  wrote  on  such  subjects  as  the  best 
means  for  diminishing  the  number  of  robberies,  making  effec- 
tual provision  for  the  poor,  &c.  His  irregular  life  early  under- 
mined his  naturally  vigorous  constitution,  and  in  1753  he  was 
advised  to  endeavour  to  recruit  his  shattered  frame  by  a  voyage 
to  a  warmer  climate.  He  sailed  for  Lisbon,  but  his  health  was 
too  seriously  impaired  to  be  benefited  by  the  change,  and  he 
expired  on  the  8th  October  1754.  He  is  buried  in  the  Eng- 
lish Cemetery  at  Lisbon,  where  a  tomb  erected  to  him  in  1830 
bears  the  following  inscription  : — 

"  HENRICUS  FIELDING, 

LUGET  BRITTANIA  GREMIO  NON  DATUM 

FOVERE  NATUM." 

:  "  I  am  sorry  for  Henry  Fielding's  death,"  wrote  Lady  Mary' 
Wortley  Montagu,  "not  only  as  I  shall  read  no  more  of  his 
writings,  but  because  I  believe  he  lost  more  than  others,  as  no 
man  enjoyed  life  more  than  he  did.  .  .  .  His  happy  constitu- 
tion, even  when  he  had,  with  great  pains,  half  demolished  itr 
made  him  forget  every  evil  when  he  was  before  a  venison: 
pasty  or  over  a  flask  of  champagne ;  and  I  am  persuaded  he: 
has  known  more  happy  moments  than  any  prince  upon  earth. 
His  natural  spirits  gave  him  rapture  with  his  cook-maid,  and 
cheerfulness  when  he  was  starving  in  a  garret.  There  was  a 


Fielding's  Characteristics.  221 

great  similarity  between  his  character  and  that  of  Sir  Richard 
Steele.  He  had  the  advantage,  both  in  learning  and,  in  my 
opinion,  genius ;  they  both  agreed  in  wanting  money,  in  spite 
of  all  their  friends,  and  would  have  wanted  it  if  their  heredi- 
tary lands  had  been  as  extensive  as  their  imagination ;  yet  each 
of  them  was  so  formed  for  happiness,  it  is  a  pity  he  was  not 
immortal"  Her  Ladyship's  picture  is  a  very  graphic,  and,  as 
we  know  from  other  sources,  a  very  correct  one.  Fielding 
was  no  hero.  Ginger  was  hot  in  the  mouth  with  him,  and  he 
was  always  apt  to  prefer  the  call  of  pleasure  to  the  call  of  duty. 
But  with  all  his  vices  and  weaknesses,  which  it  is  not  desir- 
able either  to  palliate  or  excuse,  he  was  so  good-hearted,  so 
courageous,  so  affectionate,  so  manly,  that  we  cannot  contem- 
plate his  character  without  a  certain  admiration  as  well  as 
liking.  The  leading  features  of  his  novels  have  been  already 
sufficiently  indicated.  There  are  greater  depths  in  human 
nature  than  he  ever  sounded  ;  he  had  less  of  the  spirit  of  a 
poet  than  any  other  novelist  of  equal  merit ;  and  he  had  no 
skill  in  that  subtle  psychological  analysis  which — whether  for 
good  or  for  evil,  we  need  not  discuss — is  such  a  prominent 
characteristic  of  some  of  our  great  recent  writers  of  fiction. 
Moral  problems  never  troubled  him  ;  he  was  content  to  take 
the  world  as  he  found  it,  with  its  mixture  of  good  and  evil, 
riches  and  poverty,  laughter  and  tears.  Perhaps  it  is  the 
want  of  the  subjective  or  retrospective  element  in  Fielding's 
novels  which  has  caused  him  to  be  unduly  depreciated  by 
some  who  ought  to  have  known  better.  Harriet  Martineau, 
for  example,  could  see  scarcely  any  merit  in  his  works,  and 
was  quite  at  a  loss  how  to  account  for  his  popularity. 

Comparing  his  works  with  those  of  professed  historians, 
Fielding  said  that  in  their  productions  nothing  was  true  but 
the  names  and  dates,  whereas  in  his  everything  was  true  but 
the  names  and  dates.  There  is  more  truth  in  this  statement 
than  may  at  first  sight  appear.  "As  a  record  of  past  manners 
and  opinions,  too,"  says  Hazlitt,  speaking  of  the  English 
novelists,  "  such  writings  afford  the  best  and  fullest  informa- 
tion. For  example,  I  should  be  at  a  loss  where  to  find  in  any 


222  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

authentic  documents  of  the  same  period  so  satisfactory  an 
account  of  the  general  state  of  society,  and  of  moral,  political, 
and  religious  feeling  in  the  reign  of  George  II.,  as  we  meet 
with  in  the  adventures  of  Joseph  Andrews  and  his  friend  Mr. 
Abraham  Adams.  This  work,  indeed,  I  take  to  be  a  perfect 
piece  of  statistics  in  its  kind.  In  looking  into  any  regular 
history  of  that  period,  into  a  learned  and  eloquent  charge  to  a 
grand  jury  or  the  clergy  of  a  diocese,  or  into  a  tract  on  con- 
troversial divinity,  we  should  hear  only  of  the  ascendancy  oi 
the  Protestant  succession,  the  horrors  of  Popery,  the  triumph 
of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  the  wisdom  and  moderation  of 
the  sovereign,  the  happiness  of  the  subject,  and  the  flourish- 
ing state  of  manufactures  and  commerce.  But  if  we  really 
wish  to  know  what  all  these  fine-sounding  names  come  to,  we 
cannot  do  better  than  turn  to  the  works  of  those  who,  having 
no  other  object  than  to  imitate  nature,  could  only  hope  for 
success  from  the  fidelity  of  their  picture." 

The  works  of  our  next  great  novelist,  Tobias  Smollett,  are  like 
Fielding's  in  being  of  great  vajue  from  an  historical  point  of 
view,  as  depicting  faithfully  the  social  life  of  our  ancestors. 
Although  they  differ  in  many  respects,  Fielding  and  Smollett 
resemble  each  other  in  this — they  were  both  novelists  who 
drew  from  real  life,  and  filled  their  pages  with  such  characters, 
incidents,  and  situations  as  were  found  in  the  England  of  their 
time.  Smollett  was  born  in  Dumbartonshire  in  1721.  He 
came  of  a  good  family,  being  a  grandson  of  Sir  James  Smollett 
of  Bonhill.  At  an  early  age  he  was  bound  apprentice  to  John 
Gordon,  an  eminent  surgeon  of  Glasgow,  who  seems  to  have 
appreciated  the  talents  of  his  youthful  pupil.  Smollett  was  a 
tricky  urchin,  which  caused  some  one  to  boast  of  the  superior 
decorum  and  propriety  of  his  youthful  acquaintances.  "It 
may  be  all  very  true,"  manfully  replied  Gordon,  "  but  give  me, 
before  them  all,  my  own  bubbly-nosed  callant  with  the  stane 
in  his  pouch."  To  the  end  of  his  life,  Smollett,  in  spite  of  his 
irritability  and  fretfulness,  had  something  of  a  schoolboy's 
love  of  fun  and  frolic.  It  shines  forth  conspicuously  in  his 
novels,  while  it  is  almost  totally  absent  from  Fielding's, 


Tobias  Smollett.  223 

When,  after  he  had  undergone  the  trials  and  privations  of  many 
years,  he  went  to  see  his  mother,  he  endeavoured  to  conceal 
his  identity,  but  he  could  not  so  compose  his  countenance  as 
altogether  to  refrain  from  smiling.  His  smile  enabled  his 
mother  at  once  to  recognise  him.  She  afterwards  told  him 
that  if  he  had  kept  his  austere  looks  and  continued  to  gloom, 
he  might  have  escaped  detection  for  some  time  longer,  "but 
your  old  roguish  smile  betrayed  you  at  once." 

The  death  of  his  grandfather  left  Smollett,  whose  father  had 
died  early,  totally  unprovided  for  at  the  age  of  eighteen.  He 
afterwards  revenged  his  grandfather's  neglect  in  making  no 
provision  for  him,  by  consigning  him  to  immortal  disgrace  as 
the  old  judge  who  figures  in  the  early  chapters  of  "  Roderick 
Random."  Armed  with  the  "  Regicide,"  a  tragedy,  Smollett 
in  his  nineteenth  year  set  out  for  London  to  win  fame  and 
fortune  by  those  talents  of  which  he  was  always  fully  conscious. 
The  tragedy,  though  at  first  patronised  by  Lord  Lyttleton, 
whom  Smollett  afterwards  described  with  perfect  truth  as 
"  one  of  those  little  fellows  who  are  sometimes  called  great 
men,"  was  not  appreciated  by  theatrical  managers.  Disap- 
pointed in  his  hopes  of  fame  as  a  dramatist,  Smollett  embarked 
as  surgeon's  mate  on  board  of  a  ship  of  the  line,  and  served 
in  the  disastrous  Carthagena  expedition  of  1741.  Of  his  ex- 
perience while  thus  employed  he  has  left  a  faithful  record  in 
some  of  the  most  stirring  and  vigorous  pages  of  "  Roderick 
Random."  It  was  at  this  period  of  his  life  that  he  acquired 
that  accurate  and  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  habits  of 
sailors  to  which  we  owe  some  of  the  most  vivid  and  lifelike 
portraits  in  his  novels.  Smollett  quitted  the  naval  service  in  dis- 
gust in  the  West  Indies,  and  after  residing  some  time  in  Jamaica, 
returned  to  England  in  1746.  He  then  set  up  in  London  as 
a  physician,  but  his  success  was  very  small,  owing  partly,  it  is 
said,  to  his  haughty  manners  and  irascible  temper,  which  made 
him  show  very  manifest  signs  of  impatience  when  listening  to 
prosy  accounts  of  petty  indispositions.  In  1746-1747  he  pub- 
lished two  poetical  satires,  "Advice"  and  "  Reproof,"  of  no 
very  great  merit,  but  so  bitter  and  unsparing  as  to  greatly  in- 


224  Our  First  Great  'Novelists. 

crease-the  number  of  his  enemies.  Jn  1747  he  married  Miss 
Lascelles,  described  as  "  beautiful  and  accomplished.'1 

Such  is  a  brief  outline  of  the  leading  events  of  Smollett's 
life  up  to  the  publication,  in  1748,  of  his  first  great  work) 
"  Roderick  Random."  In  great  part  it  is  a  record  of  his  own 
personal  experiences,  and  of  the  queer  acquaintances  whom 
he  had  fallen  in  with  during  his  rather  stormy  life.  In  this 
respect  it  resembles  all  his  other  works  of  fiction.  Thackeray 
is  doubtless  right  in  thinking  that  Smollett's  novels  are  recollec- 
tions of  his  own  adventures,  and  that  his  characters  are  drawn 
from  personages  with  whom  he  became  acquainted  in  his  own 
career  of  life.  "  He  did  not  invent  much,  as  I  fancy,  but  had 
the  keenest  perceptive  faculty,  and  described  what  he  saw 
with  wonderful  relish  and  delightful  broad  humour."  "  Rode- 
rick Random  "  has  very  little  plot :  it  is  merely  a  collection  of 
incidents  and  adventures  very  loosely  strung  together  by  a 
thread  of  autobiography,  after  the  fashion  of  "  Gil  Bias." 
The  hero  is  intended  to  stand  for  Smollett  himself,  just  as  Tom 
Jones  stood  for  Fielding.  In  neither  case  is  the  portrait  thus 
presented  a  pleasing  one  ;  but  Tom  Jones  is  as  -far  superior 
to  the  selfish  and  low-minded  Roderick  Random, as  the  devoted 
and  generous  Strap,  the  follower  of  the  latter,  is  superior  to  the 
lying  and  self-seeking  Partridge,  Jones's  attendant  The  finest 
character  in  "  Roderick  Random,"  and  the  one  to  which  the 
reader  turns  with  most  affection,  is  undoubtedly  Lieutenant 
Bowling,  whose  bluff  kind-heartedness,  honesty,  and  impulsive- 
ness, are  sketched  with  a  masterly  pencil.  The  fidelity  to  nature 
of  all  Smollett's  accounts  of  life  at  sea  is  very  marked.  He 
never  surrounds  the  hardships,  toils,  and  dangers  of  a  seaman's 
existence  with  that  rose-coloured  atmosphere  which  leads  the 
unsuspecting  reader  of  such  books  as  Captain  Marryat's  novels 
to  suppose  that  a  sailor's  life  is  largely  one  of  joking  and  sport, 
diversified  by  hairbreadth  escapes  and  romantic  dangers. 

"Roderick  Random  "  was  at  once  received  with  favour  by 
the  public,  and  Smollett's  position  as  an  author  was  now  finally 
established.  In  1750  he  made  a  tour  to  Paris,  where  he 
gathered  materials  for  future  work?,  and  where  "Peregrine 


Smollett  as  Editor.  22$ 

Pickle  "  was  chiefly  written.  It  was  published  in  the  following 
year.  It  is  a  laughter-provoking  book,  with  abundance  of 
incident  and  "  go,"  but  it  is  occasionally  indefensibly  coarse, 
and  not  unfrequently  shows  that  want  of  gentlemanly  feeling 
which  Smollett's  admirers  have  too  often  to  regret.  Shortly 
after  the  publication  of  "  Peregrine  Pickle,"  Smollett  endea- 
voured to  establish  himself  at  Bath  as  a  physician,  and,  with 
a  view  to  make  his  name  known  in  this  capacity,  published 
in  1752  an  "Essay  on  the  External  Use  of  Water."  This 
second  attempt  to  win  success  as  a  medical  man  failed  as 
completely  as  the  first.  Campbell,  in  his  "Specimen  of  the 
British  Poets,"  remarks  with  much  truth  that  the  celebrity  for 
aggravating  and  exposing  personal  follies  which  Smollett  had 
acquired  by  his  novels  was  rather  too  formidable  to  recom- 
mend him  as  a  confidential  visitant  to  the  sick  chambers  of 
fashion.  "  To  a  sensitive  valetudinarian,"  he  goes  on  to  say, 
"many  diseases  would  be  less  alarming  than  a  doctor  who 
might  slay  the  character  by  his  ridicule,  and  might  not  save  the 
body  by  his  prescriptions."  Having  returned  disappointed 
from  Bath,  Smollett  fixed  his  residence  at  Chelsea,  and  never 
again  seems  to  have  thought  of  abandoning  the  career  of  an 
author.  In  1753  he  published  the  "  Adventures  of  Ferdinand 
Count  Fathom,"  a  novel  descriptive  of  the  deepest  depravity, 
unpleasing  generally,  and  sometimes  tedious,  but  containing 
one  scene — the  adventure  in  the  hut  of  the  robbers — equal 
if  not  superior  in  tragic  intensity  to  anything  he  ever  wrote. 
Two  years  later  he  gave  to  the  world  his  translation  of  "  Don 
Quixote,"  which,  if  in  many  ways  not  a  faithful  representation 
of  Cervantes'  immortal  novel,  is  a  lively  and  spirited  produc- 
tion, showing  Smollett's  great  command  over  language  and 
power  of  fluent  and  vivacious  narrative. 

In  1756  Smollett  became  editor  of  the  Critical  Review^  a 
Tory  and  High  Church  periodical.  It  was  an  evil  day  for  his 
happiness  and  peace  of  mind  when  he  undertook  this  office. 
Impatient  of  folly  and  stupidity,  of  a  satirical  and  cynical 
temperament,  he  soon  showed  that  he  was  determined  not  to 
spoil  the  author  by  a  sparing  use  of  the  critical  rod.  Many. 


226  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

excellent  specimens  of  the  "  slashing  "  style  of  criticism,  now 
happily  gone  altogether  out  of  fashion,  might  be  culled  from 
Smollett's  contributions  to  the  Review.  The  result,  of  course, 
was  that  he  speedily  raised  against  himself  a  host  of  enemies, 
thus  embittering  his  life  with  a  long  series  of  petty  squabbles 
and  disputations.  One  controversy  in  which  he  engaged  car- 
ried with  it  very  serious  consequences.  Reviewing  a  pamphlet 
in  which  Admiral  Knowles  vindicated  his  conduct  in  the  secret 
expedition  against  Rochfort  in  1757,  Smollett  declared  that 
Knowles  was  "an  admiral  without  conduct,  an  engineer  with- 
out knowledge,  an  officer  without  resolution,  and  a  man  without 
veracity."  This  was  strong  language,  though  it  seems  to  have 
been  justified  by  the  facts  of  the  case ;  and  Smollett  being 
prosecuted  for  libel,  was  sentenced  to  pay  a  fine  of  ;£ioo, 
and  to  suffer  three  months'  imprisonment.  While  confined 
in  prison  he  occupied  himself  in  writing  the  "  Adventures  ot 
Sir  Launcelot  Greaves,"  which  in  1760-1  appeared  by  instal- 
ments in  the  British  Magazine,  being  one  of  the  first  of  those 
serial  tales  which  no\v  form  the  staple  of  so  many  of  our 
periodicals.  It  was  republished  in  1762.  Sir  Launcelot  is  a 
modern  Don  Quixote,  and  the  story  of  his  exploits  is  one  of 
the  least  successful  of  Smollett's  productions. 

Besides  the  works  by  which  his  name  is  principally  known, 
Smollett  compiled  or  lent  his  name  to  a  number  of  pieces  of 
literary  hackwork.  Among  these  may  be  mentioned  a  col 
lection  of  voyages  (1757),  and  a  History  of  England  from  the 
earliest  period  to  1748.  This  was  published  in  1758,  in  four 
quarto  volumes,  and  is  said  to  have  been  written  in  fourteen 
months — a  feat  of  literary  activity  which,  we  should  imagine, 
has  never  been  surpassed.  The  narrative  was  afterwards 
brought  down  to  1765.  Smollett  does  not  rank  high  as  an 
historian  ;  the  speed  with  which  he  wrote  carried  with  it  its  in- 
evitable fruits  of  carelessness  and  inaccuracy.  "  I  spent  much 
of  the  day  over  Smollett's  History,"  writes  Macaulay  in  his  Diary 
(December  8,  1838).  "  It  is  exceedingly  bad  :  detestably  so. 
I  cannot  think  what  had  happened  to  him.  His  carelessness, 
partiality,  passion,  idle  invective,  gross  ignorance  of  facts,  and 


Death  of  Smollett.  227 

crude  general  theories,  do  not  surprise  me  much.  But  the 
style,  wherever  he  tries  to  be  elevated,  and  wherever  he 
attempts  to  draw  a  character,  is  perfectly  nauseous  ;  which 
I  cannot  understand.  He  says  of  old  Horace  Walpole  that 
he  was  an  ambassador  without  dignity  and  a  plenipotentiary 
without  address.  I  declare  that  I  would  rather  have  my 
hand  cut  off  than  publish  such  a  precious  antithesis."  This 
is  too  harsh  a  judgment ;  it  errs  as  much  on  the  side  of 
severity  as  Scott's  does  on  the  side  of  lenity  when  he  says 
that  Smollett's  History  is  written  with  uncommon  spirit  and 
correctness  of  language.  Smollett  could  scarcely  fail  to  render 
any  subject  he  treated  of  readable  at  least ;  and  though  his 
facts  are  gathered  with  little  care,  his  style  is  frequently 
attractive  and  vigorous.  The  latter  part  of  his  History  is  (or. 
rather  used  to  be)  often  printed  as  a  continuation  of  Hume's. 

In  1763,  Smollett,  broken  down  in  health  and  much  depressed 
in  spirits  by  domestic  affliction,  undertook  a  journey  to  France 
and  Italy,  in  which  countries  he  resided  for  between  two  and 
three  years.  On  his  return  to  England  in  1766  he  published 
an  account  of  his  travels,  which  bears  painful  traces  of  how 
his  bodily  weakness  and  mental  trials  had  affected  his  dispo- 
sition. The  "  learned  Smelfungus,"  says  Sterne,  alluding  to 
Smollett,  "  travelled  from  Boulogne  to  Paris — from  Paris  to 
Rome, — and  so  on;  but  he  set  out  wiih  the  spleen  and  jaundice; 
and  every  object  he  passed  by  was  discoloured  and  distorted. 
He  wrote  an  account  of  them,  but 'twas  nothing  but  an  account 
of  his  own  miserable  feelings.  I  met  Smelfungus  in  the  grand 
portico  of  the  Pantheon — he  was  just  coming  out  of  it  *  Tis 
nothing  but  a  huge  cockpit,'  said  he."  The  closing  years 
of  Smollett's  life  were  spent  in  a  very  pitiful  condition  of  weak 
health  and  often  of  severe  pain.  Like  his  great  rival,  Henry 
Fielding,  he  sought  to  regain  his  strength  in  a  foreign  climate, 
only  to  find  there  his  grave.  He  set  out  for  Italy  in  1770,  and 
drew  his  last  breath  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Leghorn  in  1771. 
There  is  something  peculiarly  sad  about  the  death  of  Smollett 
at  the  early  age  of  fifty-one.  In  spite  of  his  multifarious  in- 
dustry he  left  his  family  almost  totally  unprovided  for.  Had 


228  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

he  lived  a  few  years  longer  he  would  have  inherited  the  estate 
of  Bonhill,  of  the  value  of  about  ^"1000  a  year,  and  thus  have 
been  enabled  to  end  his  days  in  comfort  and  affluence. 

Shortly  before  his  death,  Smollett  completed  his  last  and 
best  work,  the  "  Expedition  of  Humphrey  Clinker,"  "  the  most 
laughable  story,"  says  Thackeray,  "  that  ever  was  written  since 
the  goodly  art  of  novel-writing  began."  Humphrey  Clinker 
himself,  Winifred  Jenkins,  Matthew  Bramble,  Mrs.  Tabitha 
Bramble,  and  above  all  Lismahago,  are  characters  that  none 
but  a  writer  of  first-rate  humorous  genius  could  have  created. 
There  is,  too,  a  fine  mellow  flavour  about  "  Humphrey  Clinker," 
which  makes  it  a  fitting  close  to  Smollett's  literary  life.  There 
is  in  it,  too,  a  vein  of  pathos,  not  uncommon  in  Smollett's 
novels,  but  never  found  in  Fielding's.  "  I  remember,"  said 
Carlyle  to  Mr.  Moncure  Conway,  speaking  about  his  early 
years,  "few  happier  days  than  those  in  which  I  ran  off  into  the 
woods  to  read  'Roderick  Random,' and  how  inconsolable  I 
was  that  I  could  not  get  the  second  volume.  To  this  day  I 
know  of  few  writers  equal  to  Smollett.  *  Humphrey  Clinker ' 
is  precious  to  me  now  as  he  was  in  those  years.  Nothing  by 
Dante  or  any  one  else  surpasses  in  pathos  the  scene  where 
Humphrey  goes  into  the  smithy  made  for  him  in  the  old  house, 
and  whilst  he  is  heating  the  iron,  the  poor  woman  who  has 
lost  her  husband  and  is  deranged  comes  and  talks  to  him  as  to 
her  husband,  'John,  they  told  me  you  were  dead.  How  glad 
I  am  you  are  come.'  And  Humphrey's  tears  fall  down  and 
bubble  on  the  hot  iron/'  Comparing  Fielding's  novels  with 
Smollett's,  Hazlitt  said  that  the  one  was  an  observer  of  the 
characters  of  human  life,  the  other  a  describer  of  its  various 
eccentricities.  The  distinction  is  just.  Smollett  could  not 
draw  his  characters  without,  like  Dickens,  adding  to  them  a 
considerable  touch  of  caricature,  while  Fielding  painted  men 
as  they  really  were.  There  is,  too,  an  air  of  culture  and  re- 
finement about  Fielding's  novels  which  is  absent  from  Smollett's. 
To  relish  Fielding  properly  one  must  have  some  literary  taste 
and  knowledge,  while  Smollett's  riotous  fun  can  be  appreciated 
by  any  one  who  is  able  to  read.  On  the  other  hand,  in  variety 


Laurence  Sterne.  229 

and  originality  of  incident  and  character  Smollett  decidedly 
surpassed  Fielding,  and  he  was  besides  no  contemptible  poet, 
as  his  "  Tears  of  Caledonia,"  written  after  the  massacre  of 
Culloden,  and  his  "Ode  to  Independence,"  sufficiently  show. 
As  a  man  Smollett  in  many  ways  deserves  to  be  held  in  kindly 
remembrance.  Proud,  frank,  imprudent,  he  was  a  hard  hitter, 
always  ready  to  give  a  blow,  and  always  ready  to  take  one 
manfully.  Good-hearted  and  generous,  but  petulant  and 
sometimes  revengeful,  he  made  many  enemies ;  but  when 
he  saw  that  he  had  done  any  one  an  injustice,  he  was  always 
ready  to  make  noble  reparation.  To  his  poor  brethren  of 
the  quill,  the  ragged  denizens  of  Grub  Street,  he,  poor  himself, 
gave  bountiful  aid,  though  he  could  not  refrain  from  making 
fun  of  their  eccentricities.  In  person  he  is  said  to  have  been 
remarkably  handsome,  "with  a  certain  air  of  dignity  that  seemed 
to  show  that  he  was  not  unconscious  of  his  own  powers." 

A  writer  of  equal  genius  to  Fielding  or  Smollett,  but  differing 
from  them  in  almost  every  respect,  was  the  last  great  novelist 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  Laurence  Sterne.  As  a  novelist  he 
stands  unique ;  for  though  many,  inspired  by  his  success, 
endeavoured  to  imitate  him,  they  succeeded  only  in  catching 
a  portion  of  his  peculiar  mannerism  :  his  subtle  humour  and 
his  singular  vein  of  sentiment  were  beyond  their  reach. 
Sterne's  one  work  of  fiction  is  not  a  novel  of  real  life,  neither 
has  it  any  elaborately  constructed  plot :  he  seems,  indeed,  to 
have  thought,  with  Bayes  in  the  "  Rehearsal,''  "  what  is  a  plot 
good  for  except  to  bring  in  good  things?"  He  rambles  on  in 
the  most  incoherent  and  eccentric  way,  constantly  indulging 
.in  digressions  and  meditations,  so  that  through  the  whole 
long  work  the  plot  scarcely  makes  any  material  progress.  It 
is  by  his  finely  conceived  sketches  of  character  and  by  the 
depth  and  tenderness  of  his  humour  that  Sterne  has  won  lor 
himself  an  immortal  name  in  literature.  Sterne  is  one  of  the 
happily  few  men  of  genius  whose  character  was  such  as  to 
cause  one  to  approach  the  study  of  their  writings  with  a  feeling 
of  prejudice.  He  was  born  at  Clonmel,  Ireland,  of  English 
parents,  in  1713.  His  father  was  a  lieutenant,  who  was 


230  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

engaged  in  the  wars  in  Flanders  during  the  reign  of  Queen 
Anne ;  and  Sterne  thus  spent  rather  a  wandering  childhood, 
following  the  sound  of  the  drum  as  his  father's  regiment  was 
ordered  irom  place  to  place.  When  about  ten  years  old  he 
was  sent  to  England,  and  put  to  school  near  Halifax,  "with 
an  able  master,"  he  says  in  the  fragment  of  autobiography 
which  he  left  behind  him,  "with  whom  I  stayed  some  time, 
till,  by  God's  care  of  me,  my  Cousin  Sterne  of  Elvington 
became  a  father  to  me,  and  sent  me  to  the  University."  One 
anecdote  which  he  relates  of  his  school-days  would  seem  to 
show  that  his  genius  had  been  rather  precocious.  Upon  the 
newly  whitewashed  ceiling  of  the  schoolroom  he  wrote  with 
a  brush  in  large  capital  letters  LAU.  STERNE.  For  so  doing  he 
was  severely  whipped  by  the  usher,  but  the  head-master  took 
Sterne's  part  strongly,  and  declared  that  his  name  should  never 
be  effaced,  for  he  was  a  boy  of  genius,  and  sure  to  come  to 
preferment.  Sterne  left  school  shortly  arter  the  death  of  his 
father,  which  occurred  in  a  duel,  and  in  1733  entered  Jesus 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  took  his  degree  of  M.A.  in 
1740.  On  leaving  the  University  he  took  orders,  and  through 
the  interest  of  his  uncle,  a  well-beneficed  clergyman,  obtained 
the  living  of  Sutton  and  the  Prebendary  of  York.  In  York 
he  met  with  the  lady  whom  he  afterwards  married.  The 
account  of  his  courtship  shall  be  given  in  his  own  words : 
"  I  courted  her  for  two  years.  She  owned  she  liked  me,  but 
thought  herself  not  rich  enough  or  me  too  poor  to  be  joined 

together.     She  went  to  her  sister's  in  S ,  and  I  wrote  to 

her  often.  I  believe  then  she  was  partly  determined  to  have 
me,  but  would  not  say  so.  At  her  return  she  fell  into  a  con- 
sumption ;  and  one  evening  that  I  was  sitting  by  her,  with 
an  almost  broken  heart  to  see  her  so  ill,  she  said,  *  My  dear 
Laurey,  I  never  can  be  yours,  for  I  verily  believe  I  have  not 
long  to  live  ;  but  I  have  left  you  every  shilling  of  my  fortune. 
Upon  this  she  showed  me  her  will.  This  generosity  over- 
powered me.  It"  pleased  God  that  she  recovered,  and  1 
married  her  in  the  year  1741."  It  is  a  pity  to  have  to  relate, 
after  this  sentimental  narrative,  that  within  a  few  years  after 


Sterne's  "  Tristram  Shandy.1'  231 

his  marriage  Sterne  grew  very  tired  of  his  wife,  and  neglected 
her  shamefully.  She  brought  him  a  small  fortune,  and  soon 
after  his  marriage  a  friend  of  hers  presented  him  with  the 
living  of  Stillington,  in  Yorkshire.  At  this  period  of  his  life, 
Sterne  relates  that  he  had  very  good  health,  and  amused 
himself  by  books,  painting,  fiddling,  and  shooting.  At  Skelton 
Castle,  the  library  of  his  friend  John  Hall  Stevenson,  author 
of  some  tales  the  indecency  of  which  is  much  more  apparent 
than  the  wit,  he  found  a  large  library,  containing  many  old 
and  curious  books,  in  turning  over  which  he  amassed  that 
store  of  out-of-the-way,  if  superficial  and  often  secondhand, 
erudition  which  he  was  fond  of  parading.  He  was  in  no 
hurry  to  appear  as  an  author.  Two  sermons  preached  at 
York  were  his  only  publications,  till,  in  1759,  he  astonished  the 
whole  reading  public  by  the  first  two  volumes  of  "  Tristram 
Shandy."  They  were  originally  published  at  York,  and  were 
reprinted  in  London  early  in  1760. 

By  "  Tristram  Shandy  "  Sterne  was  elevated  from  the  posi- 
tion of  an  obscure  Yorkshire  parson  to  that  of  a  metropolitan 
lion  of  the  first  magnitude.  When  he  went  up  to  London, 
invitations  to  dinner  showered  thickly  upon  him,  and  he  was 
welcomed  in  all  societies  of  rank  and  fashion  as  the  humo- 
rous, eccentric,  sentimental  "  Mr.  Yorick,"  who  had  bestowed 
on  them  that  inestimable  boon— a  new  sensation.  Gray  says 
in  one  of  his  delightful  letters,  that  at  dinners  which  were 
honoured  by  Sterne's  presence,  the  company  were  invited  a 
fortnight  before.  "Any  man  who  has  a  name,"  said  Johnson 
in  a  conversation  recorded  by  Boswell,  "or  who  has  the  power 
of  pleasing,  will  be  very  generally  invited  in  London.  The 
man  Sterne,  I  have  been  told,  has  had  engagements  for  three 
months."  "  And  a  very  dull  fellow,  too,"  replied  Goldsmith, 
with  perhaps  a  touch  of  jealousy.  "Why,  no,  sir,"  said  John- 
son. Sterne  wisely  took  advantage  of  his  popularity  to  pub- 
lish two  volumes  of  sermons,  which,  as  the  production  of  the 
author  of  "  Tristram  Shandy,"  attracted  an  amount  of  at- 
tention which  would  certainly  never  have  been  vouchsafed 
to  them  on  account  of  their  intrinsic  merits.  <;  They  are  in 


232  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

the  style,"  says  Gray,  "  I  think  most  proper  for  the  pulpit,  and 
show  a  strong  imagination  and  a  sensible  heart ;  but  you  see 
him  often  tottering  on  the  verge  of  laughter,  and  ready  to  throw 
his  periwig  in  the  face  of  his  audience."  Any  one  who  from 
the  latter  part  of  this  account  may  be  induced  to  look  over 
Sterne's  sermons  with  the  view  of  finding  in  them  passages 
which  recall  "Tristram  Shandy,"  will  assuredly  be  disappointed. 
For  the  most  part,  they  are  barren  and  commonplace  enough. 
To  the  two  volumes  of  sermons  published  in  1760  Sterne 
afterwards  added  other  four.  The  remaining  seven  volumes  of 
"Tristram  Shandy"  appeared  at  intervals  between  1761  and 
1767.  The  latter  volumes  did  not  create  the  same  sensation 
as  the  former  ones  :  the  novelty  of  the  thing  had  worn  off, 
and  the  numerous  affectations  and  eccentricities  of  style  began 
to  repel  rather  than  to  attract.  In  1764  Sterne  went  to  Italy 
to  recover  his  health,  which  had  become  greatly  impaired. 
He  returned  in  1767,  and  in  the  following  year  published  his 
"  Sentimental  Journey,"  giving  an  account,  in  his  peculiar 
fashion,  of  his  recent  travels  and  of  a  former  visit  to  France. 
The  "Sentimental  Journey"  was  received  with  the  same 
rapturous  avidity  as  the  first  volumes  of  "Tristram  Shandy;" 
but  Sterne  was  not  destined  to  enjoy  any  longer  the  applause 
which  was  so  sweet  to  him.  He  died  in  London  on  the  i8th 
of  March  1768,  much  in  the  manner  in  which  he  had  wished 
to  die — in  hired  lodgings  and  attended  by  strangers. 

Sterne's  figure  was  tall  and  slight,  his  face  pale  and 
haggard,  his  general  expression  penetrating,  scrutinising,  and 
satirical.  His  moral  nature,  which  had,  it  is  to  be  feared, 
always  something  rotten  about  it,  was  too  weak  to  endure 
uninjured  the  continuous  course,  trying  to  all  but  very  strong 
minds,  of  flattery  and  dissipation  which  his  success  as  an 
author  brought  upon  him.  "  He  degenerated  in  London," 
said  David  Garrick,  "  like  an  ill-transplanted  shrub ;  the  in- 
cense of  the  great  spoiled  his  head  and  their  ragouts  his 
stomach.  He  grew  sickly  and  proud,  an  invalid  in  body 
and  mind."  In  his  writings  the  most  tender-hearted  and 
sentimental  of  men,  he  was  in  his  conduct  heartless,  hypo 


Sterne  s  Characteristics.  233 

critical,  and  unprincipled.  "  He  preferred,"  as  Byron  said. 
"  whining  over  a  dead  ass  to  relieving  a  living  mother."  His 
tainted  character  communicated  itself  in  part,  as  it  could 
not  but  do,  to  his  books.  Fielding  and  Smollett  are  coarse, 
but  they  are  never  indecent  purely  for  the  sake  of  indecency, 
as  Sterne  is.  He  mars  his  finest  passages  by  an  obscene  in- 
sinuation or  a  ribald  jest.  Like  Swift,  he  had  in  his  nature  an 
inherent  love  for  allusions  to  subjects  which  most  people  are 
glad  to  banish  from  their  thoughts.  His  affectation  and  his 
alleged  plagiarisms  from  other  writers  are  of  little  or  no  con- 
sequence in  comparison  with  the  dark  stream  of  pollution 
which  runs  through  his  books.  It  was  this  grievous  defect 
which  caused  Thackeray  to  exclaim,  "The  man  is  a  great 
jester,  not  a  great  humourist."  Never  was  a  more  thoroughly 
wrong-headed  judgment  uttered.  Sterne  is  not  only  a  great 
humourist,  he  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  humourists.  "  Sterne 
comes  next,"  writes  Carlyle  in  his  Essay  on  Richter,  after 
mentioning  Shakespeare,  Swift,  and  Ben  Jonson,  "  our  last 
specimen  of  humour,  and,  with  all  his  faults,  our  best ;  our 
finest,  if  not  our  strongest ;  for  Yorick,  and  Corporal  Trim, 
and  Uncle  Toby  have  yet  no  brother  but  in  Don  Quixote, 
far  as  he  lies  above  them."  In  a  style  full  of  tenderness  and 
sweetness  he  brings  before  us  a  series  of  family  portraits,  all 
original,  all  well  marked,  and  all  so  delineated  that  one  cannot 
but  love  them.  The  elder  Shandy,  with  his  irritability,  his 
pedantry,  and  his  theory  about  Christian  names  ;  Uncle  Toby, 
full  of  loving-kindness  and  gentleness  to  all  created  beings, 
harmless  and  credulous  as  a  child  ;  Corporal  Trim,  devoted, 
faithful,  and  vigilant,  are  characters  so  full  of  graciousness 
and  humanity  that  for  their  sake  we  can  readily  afford  to 
forgive  Sterne  much.  When  we  read  about  Uncle  Toby  and 
his  bowling-green,  with  its  fortifications,  its  ammunition,  and 
its  counterscarps,  we  feel  inclined  to  mount  behind  him  and 
ride  his  hobby  along  with  him.  Many  of  the  best  parts  of 
"  Tristram  Shandy"  devoted  to  Uncle  Toby  and  Corporal 
Trim  are  reminiscences  of  Sterne's  youth,  when,  following  his 
father's  regiment,  he  must  have  heard  thousands  of  stories 
11 


234  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

connected  with  the  time  when  "  our  troops  swore  terribly  in 
Flanders,"  and  thus  amassed  a  store  of  curious  anecdotes, 
which  remained  in  a  memory  tenacious  of  such  things,  and 
bore  good  literary  fruit  after  many  years. 

The  leading  names  in  English  fiction  from  the  death  of 
Sterne  till  the  time  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  may  be  very  briefly 
dealt  with.  Of  Goldsmith,  the  greatest  of  them  all,  some 
account  is  given  in  the  following  chapter.  Sterne's  pathos 
found  a  not  very  successful  imitator  in  Henry  Mackenzie, 
whose  "Man  of  Feeling,"  published  in  1771,  is  a  very  lacka- 
daisical novel,  though  it  had  many  readers  at  one  time.  Horace 
Walpole  in  his  "Castle  of  Otranto"  (1764),  and  Mrs.  Rad 
cliffe  (1764-1823),  wrote  wild  romantic  tales,  somewhat  after 
the  fashion  of  the  old  school  of  romance.  Mrs.  Radcliffe's 
works  belong  to  a  class  of  fiction  that  would  now  find  favour 
only  with  children.  After  having  led  us  to  suppose  that  the 
wonderful  effects  which  occur  in  her  novels  have  been  pro- 
duced by  supernatural  agency,  she  systematically  unravels 
her  own  spells,  and  shows  how  in  reality  they  were  the  result 
of  natural  causes.  William  Beckford,  whom  Byron  celebrates 
as  "England's  wealthiest  son,"  published  in  1784  his  little 
Oriental  romance  called  "  Vathek,"  which  is  still  read,  owing 
to  its  originality  and  its  fine  description  of  the  terrible  Hall 
of  Eblis.  William  Godwin's  best  novel,  "  Caleb  Williams," 
which  appeared  in  1794, was  intended  to  be  "a  general  review 
of  the  modes  of  domestic  and  unrecorded  despotism  by  which 
man  becomes  the  destroyer  of  man."  It  was  thus  a  "  novel 
with  a  purpose,"  one  of  the  first  of  that  bad  class ;  but  the 
moral  is  not  obtrusively  thrust  forward ;  indeed,  had  the 
author  not  told  us,  we  should  be  rather  puzzled  to  say  what 
the  moral  really  is.  "Caleb  Williams,"  inartistic  though  it 
often  be,  is  a  singularly  powerful  and  fascinating  novel,  which, 
as  Hazlitt  says,  can  never  be  begun  without  being  finished, 
or  finished  without  stamping  itself  upon  the  memory  of  the 
reader.  The  work  of  recent  times  to  which  it  bears  the 
closest  resemblance  is  the  "Scarlet  Letter"  of  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne.  Hawthorne  was  master  of  an  infinitely  more 


Miss  Burney,  Miss  Edgeworth,  &c.      235 

polished  and  flexible  style  than  Godwin,  but  the  character- 
istics which  give  both  books  such  a  firm  hold  on  the  reader 
are  the  same.  In  both,  the  plot  is  so  slight  that  it  might 
easily  be  told  in  half  a  page  ;  in  both,  the  marvellous  picture 
of  the  workings  of  the  human  mind,  sombre  and  melancholy 
though  it  be,  which  they  present,  enchains  the  imagination  of 
the  reader. 

Three  lady  writers,  among  the  earliest  of  the   numerous 
sisterhood  who  have  obtained  distinction  as  novelists,  remain 
to  be  mentioned.     Fanny  Burney  (Madame  D'Arblay)  intro- 
duced the  fashion  of  writing  studies  of  society,  such  as  the 
majority  of  modern  English  novels  are,  by  "  Evelina,"  which 
appeared  in  1778.     She  had,  like  most  women,  a  keen  percep- 
tion of  little  traits  of  character  and  peculiarities  of  manner,  and 
described  them  with  sprightliness  and  a  good  deal  of  broad 
humour.     Nor  was  she  destitute  of  a  real  though  slender  vein 
of  pathos.     "Evelina"  charmed  Burke  and  Johnson,  and  if 
it  is  generally  neglected  now,  that  is  not  owing  to  its  want  of 
merit,  but  because  it  has  been  shelved  aside  by  more  modern 
works,  which,  though  much  talked  of  at  present,  will  probably 
share  its  fate  when  they  are  a  century  old.     "  Cecilia,"  Miss 
Burney's  second  novel,  which  was  published  in  1782,  is  on 
the  whole  inferior  to  "  Evelina  ; "   it  has  not  the  same  sub- 
current  of  tender  simplicity.     The  fame  of  Miss  Edgeworth 
(1767-1849),  an  Irish  lady,  is  now  mainly  grounded  on  her 
moral  tales  for  juvenile  readers,  but  her  sketches  of  Irish  life, 
such  as  "  The  Absentee,"  &c.,  show  a  shrewd  and  observant 
mind.     Her  chief  characteristics  are  cool  good  sense,  com- 
bined with  a  total  absence  of  anything  approaching  enthu- 
siasm.    In  society  she  was  a  general  favourite,  owing  to  her 
unassuming  manners  and  freedom  from  pretension  or  affec- 
tation.    A  greater  novelist  than  either  Miss  Burney  or  Miss 
Edgeworth  was  Miss  Austen  (1775-1817),  among  whose  ad- 
mirers may  be  reckoned  such  men  as  Macaulay,  Archbishop 
Whately,  Scott,  and   many  others  of  equal  celebrity.      Her 
works  are  "  Sense  and  Sensibility,"  "  Pride  and  Prejudice," 
"  Emma,"  "Mansfield  Park,"  "Northanger  Abbey,"  and  "Per- 


236  Our  First  Great  Novelists. 

suasion."  Macaulay  praised  them  to  excess,  declaring  that 
there  were  in  the  world  no  compositions  which  approached 
nearer  to  perfection,  and  that  "  Northanger  Abbey"  was  worth 
"all  Dickens  and  Pliny  put  together."  These  judgments,  to 
be  sure,  are  found  in  his  Diary,  where,  of  course,  he  did  not 
weigh  his  words  very  carefully ;  but  praise  almost  equally 
high  is  bestowed  upon  them  in  his  published  works,  and  he 
for  some  time  intended  writing  an  essay  on  Miss  Austen  to 
show  how  highly  he  esteemed  her  genius.  Miss  Austen's 
finished  humour  and  clear-cut  sketches  of  everyday  life  were 
as  likely  to  attract  Macaulay  as  her  conventionality  and 
absence  of  passion  were  likely  to  repel  Charlotte  Bronte. 
"  Why  do  you  like  Miss  Austen  so  very  much  ?  "  wrote  the 
latter  to  G.  H.  Lewes.  "  I  am  puzzled  on  that  point.  .  .  . 
I  had  not  seen  'Pride  and  Prejudice'  till  I  read  that  sentence 
of  yours,  and  then  I  got  the  book;  and  what  did  I  find?  An 
accurate  daguerreotyped  portrait  of  a  commonplace  face ;  a 
carefully  fenced,  highly  cultivated  garden,  with  neat  borders 
and  delicate  flowers ;  but  no  glance  of  a  bright  vivid  physi- 
ognomy, no  open  country,  no  fresh  air,  no  blue  hill,  no  bonny 
beck.  I  should  hardly  like  to  live  with  her  ladies  and  gentle- 
men in  their  elegant  but  confined  houses."  In  her  chosen 
walk  of  fiction,  truthful  pictures  of  the  ordinary  middle-class 
society  we  see  around  us,  Miss  Austen  has  no  equal;  and  the 
extent  to  which  she  succeeds  in  interesting  us  in  her  annals 
of  humdrum,  commonplace  English  life  is  the  highest  tribute 
to  her  genius. 


VII. 
DR.  JOHNSON  AND  HIS  CONTEMPORARIES. 

Johnson;  Goldsmith;  Burke;  Boswell ;  Jimius ; 
Hume;  Robertson;  Gibbon. 


HE  accession  of  George  III.  to  the  throne  in  1760 
marks  an  important  era  in  English  political  life. 
The  young  King,  a  man  of  good  moral  character, 
mediocre  abilities,  and  inflexible  obstinacy,  deter- 
mined to  be  the  real,  and  not  merely  the  titular  sovereign  of 
the  country,  to  break  in  pieces  the  oligarchy  which  had  borne 
sway  in  the  name  of  his  two  predecessors,  and  to  assert  what 
he  considered  his  just  rights.  How  he  succeeded  in  carrying 
out  his  purpose;  how  administration  after  administration  was 
broken  up,  either  because  they  would  not  obey  his  dictates,  or 
because  their  policy  was  marred  by  the  intrigues  of  the  so-called 
"  King's  friends  ; "  how  his  strenuous  persistence  in  an  illegal 
course  elevated  Wilkes  into  a  popular  hero  of  the  first  magnitude, 
and  brought  about  demonstrations  of  public  feeling  that  almost 
shook  the  throne ;  how  his  adherence  to  a  foolish  and  wicked 
policy  caused  the  American  colonies  to  throw  off  their  alle- 
giance to  Great  Britain  and  exhausted  the  resoutces  of  the 
country,  are  facts  familiar  to  all.  In  curious  contrast  to  the 
troubled  state  of  politics  is  the  placid  and  anti-revolutionary 
spirit  which  animated  literature  during  the  earlier  part  of  the 
reign  of  George  III.  Through  all  the  many  political  changes 
and  political  crises  of  the  first  twenty-five  years  of  his  reign, 
the  stream  of  English  literature  flowed  quietly  on  in  its  accus- 


238     Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

torned  channel ;  the  influence  of  the  school  of  Addison  and 
Pope  still  remained  paramount;  poetry  and  criticism  were  still 
fettered  by  artificial  restrictions  and  conventionality.  Here 
and  there,  it  is  true,  a  voice  might  be  heard  that  seemed  to 
prophesy  the  advent  of  a  new  literary  era ;  but  such  voices 
were  few  and  far  between,  and  were  little  attended  to  or 
rudely  condemned  in  an  age  that  was  not  yet  prepared  for 
them.  It  was  not  till  the  time  of  the  greatest  event  in  modern 
history — the  French  Revolution — that  the  adherents  of  the 
so-called  romantic  school,  appealing  to  feelings  that  then  more 
or  less  influenced  the  minds  of  all  classes,  began  to  establish 
themselves  as  a  new  and  great  power  in  literature. 

The  most  prominent  figure  in  the  literature  of  the  period 
with  which  we  are  now  dealing  is  that  of  Samuel  Johnson,  and 
round  him  its  history  centres.  Several  of  his  contemporaries 
were  greater  writers  than  he,  but  none  was  so  looked  up  to ; 
none  possessed  his  strong  and  intensely  marked  character; 
and  none  was  so  exactly  typical  of  his  age  alike  in  his  good  and 
in  his  bad  qualities.  Born  in  1709,  the  son  of  a  bookseller  in 
Lichfield,  he  early  imbibed  from  his  father  those  Tory  and 
High  Church  prejudices  which  clung  to  him  throughout  life. 
Very  early,  too,  were  noticeable  his  other  distinguishing  charac- 
teristics—a bodily  frame  massive  and  powerful  but  diseased ;  a 
strong  propensity  to  indolence  united  with  an  extraordinary 
capacity  for  strenuous  exertion  when  compelled  to  work;  a 
memory  capacious,  retentive,  and  exact;  a  spirit  proud  yet 
humble,  irascible  but  forgiving,  and  combining  outward  harsh- 
ness with  a  deep  and  genuine  tenderness  of  heart.  When  at 
school,  though  his  shortness  of  sight  deprived  him  of  the 
power  of  distinguishing  himself  in  field-sports,  his  strength  of 
intellect  and  character  made  him  occupy  among  his  class- 
fellows  somewhat  the  same  position  as  he  afterwards  held  in 
London  literary  society.  Certain  of  his  companions  used  to 
attend  him  in  the  morning  and  carry  him  to  school  in  a  species 
of  triumphal  procession.  "  Sir,"  he  once  said  to  Boswell, 
speaking  of  his  school-days,  "  they  never  thought  to  raise  me  by 
comparing  me  to  any  one ;  they  never  said  *  Johnson  is  as  good 


Sam  net  Joh  nson.  239 

&  scholar  as  such  a  one/  but  *  Such  a  one  is  as  good  a  scholar  as 
Johnson ; '  and  this  was  said  but  of  one,  but  of  Lowe :  and  I 
do  not  think  he  was  as  good  a  scholar."  In  his  sixteenth 
year  his  school  education  came  to  an  end.  He  then  loitered 
at  home  for  two  years,  "  in  a  state,"  says  Boswell,  "  very  un- 
worthy of  his  uncommon  abilities."  His  time  was  not,  how- 
ever, altogether  wasted.  In  his  desultory  way  he  read  largely, 
"  not  voyages  and  travels,  but  all  literature,  sir,"  he  told  Bos- 
well,  "  all  ancient  writers,  all  manly ; "  and  tried  his  hand  at 
poetical  translations  and  original  verses,  not  without  success. 
In  his  nineteenth  year  he  was  entered  at  Pembroke  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  was  very  proud,  very  poor,  and  very  miserable. 
His  father  was  not  wealthy  enough  to  bear  the  expenses  of  his 
education  at  the  University,  so  he  must  have  received  assistance 
elsewhere — from  whom  is  not  quite  certain.  Conscious  of 
great  abilities  but  crushed  by  poverty,  Johnson  during  his 
University  career,  which  lasted  about  three  years,  was  far  from 
happy.  He  left  Oxford  in  1731,  without  taking  a  degree. 
Almost  the  only  distinction  won  by  him  was  the  praise  he 
received  for  a  Latin  version  of  Pope's  "  Messiah,"  of  which 
Pope  himself  declared,  "  The  writer  of  this  poem  will  leave  it 
doubtful  in  after-times  which  was  the  original,  his  verses  or 
mine." 

In  the  same  year  in  which  Johnson  left  the  University  his 
father  died,  leaving  his  affairs  in  a  state  approaching  to  insol- 
vency. Johnson  was  now  compelled  to  do  something  to  earn 
a  living.  At  first  he  tried  teaching — that  rough  apprenticeship 
through  which  so  many  men  of  letters  have  had  to  pass,  with 
pain,  but  not,  perhaps,  altogether  without  profit  The  few 
months  during  which  he  was  thus  engaged  he  always  after- 
wards looked  back  to  with  a  kind  of  shuddering  horror.  Then 
he  turned  his  thoughts  towards  literature,  "  that  general  refuge 
for  the  destitute,"  as  Carlylc  once  called  it.  Settling'in  Bir- 
mingham in  1733,  he  contributed  essays  to  a  local  newspaper, 
and  translated  from  the  Latin  Lobo's  "  Voyage  to  Abyssinia." 
It  lies  before  us  as  we  write,  a  volume  of  about  four  hundred 
pages  of  some  two  hundred  and  eighty  words  each.  For 


240      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

this  work,  which  was  published  in  1735,  Johnson  received  the 
munificent  sum  of  five  guineas.  It  is  remarkable  that  during 
his  whole  career,  whether  working  as  a  Grub  Street  hack  or 
whether  writing  in  a  blaze  of  popularity,  the  most  distinguished 
author  of  his  time,  Johnson  seems  to  have  received  less  for  his 
Droductions  than  almost  any  of  his  fellow  literary  craftsmen. 

In  1736  Johnson  married.  The  object  of  his  choice  was  a 
widow  named  Porter,  forty-eight  years  of  age,  and  described  as 
a  coarse,  vulgar,  ugly  woman,  who  painted  herself,  and  who 
was  fantastic  both  in  dress  and  in  manners.  It  is  said  (with 
what  degree  of  truth  is  not  known  for  certain)  that  she  possessed 
a  fortune  of  some  ;£8oo.  Johnson's  shortness  of  sight  con- 
cealed from  him  her  bodily  defects,  and  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe  that  he  was  speaking  nothing  but  the  truth  when  he 
declared,  "  Sir,  it  was  a  love  match  on  both  sides."  His  wife, 
whatever  may  have  been  her  faults,  appears  to  have  had  a 
genuine  admiration  of  Johnson's  intellectual  powers ;  and  we 
can  easily  imagine  how  sweet  praise  must  then  have  been  to 
the  "  uncourtly  scholar,"  whose  appearance  was  far  from  pre- 
possessing, and  who  had  at  that  time  done  nothing  to  show 
the  vast  powers  that  lay  concealed  beneath  his  rough  and 
uncouth  exterior.  On  her  death,  which  happened  in  1752, 
Johnson's  grief  was  terrible  ;  and  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  never 
ceased  to  cherish  with  fond  regret  the  remembrance  of  his 
"  dear  Tetty." 

As  literature  did  not  appear  likely  to  be  sufficiently  remu- 
nerative to  afford  sustenance  to  himself  and  his  wife,  Johnson, 
in  1736,  determined  to  again  try  schoolmastering.  He  opened 
a  boarding-school  at  Edial,  in  Staffordshire,  and  announced 
his  intention  of  instructing  young  gentlemen  in  the  Greek 
and  Latin  languages.  The  enterprise  was  an  unfortunate  one. 
Johnson  was  ill-gifted  to  be  a  preceptor;  and  neither  his  man- 
ners n*or  his  appearance  were  such  as  to  conciliate  parents. 
Few  pupils  came,  and  the  school  was  abandoned.  Along 
with  David  Garrick,  Johnson,  with  little  or  no  money,  but  with 
the  manuscript  of  his  tragedy  "Irene"  in  his  pocket,  in  1737 
set  out  for  London. 


Johnsons  Early  Literary  Struggles.       241 

From  this  point  the  real  commencement  of  his  literary  career 
may  be  dated.  It  was  begun  at  a  bad  time.  If,  indeed,  he 
had  become  what  he  afterwards  described  as  one  of  the  lowest 
of  all  human  beings,  a  scribbler  for  a  party,  he  might  possibly 
have  obtained  remunerative  occupation ;  but  Johnson  was  too 
high-spirited  to  turn  his  pen  to  such  vile  uses.  The  age  of 
patronage,  when  a  well-written  dedication  was  often  muni- 
ficently rewarded,  was  passing  away;  the  reading  public  was 
small ;  and  journalism,  which  now  gives  employment  to  thou- 
sands of  writers,  was  then,  comparatively  speaking,  in  its 
infancy.  Moreover,  we  must  remember  (what  appears  to 
have  been  forgotten  by  many  writers  about  Johnson)  that 
even  in  our  own  day,  when  the  avenues  to  a  literary  career  are 
so  much  better  and  more  numerous  than  in  Johnson's  time,  a 
writer  who  came  to  London  circumstanced  as  he  was  would 
have  a  very  hard  battle  to  fight.  The  fact  that  he  had  trans- 
lated a  book  from  the  Latin,  or  that  he  had  contributed  articles 
to  a  provincial  newspaper,  was  not  likely  to  tell  much  in  his 
favour  with  publishers  ;  he  had  left  the  University  without 
obtaining  any  distinction  ;  and  he  was  destitute  of  money, 
which  might  have  enabled  him  to  subsist  while  he  wrote  some 
work  which  might  attract  the  attention  of  the  public.  He 
was  obliged  to  live  "  from  hand  to  mouth,"  as  the  saying  is, 
and  work  done  under  such  circumstances  is  rarely  of  much 
value.  Into  the  details  of  Johnson's  literary  hack-work  we 
need  not  enter.  He  wrote  extensively  in  the  Gentlemaris 
Magazine;  he  executed  various  translations;  he  assisted 
Osborne  in  compiling  the  catalogue  of  the  Harleian  Library  ; 
and,  from  November  1740  to  February  1742,  he  wrote  in  the 
Gentleinaris  Magazine  an  account  of  the  debates  in  parliament, 
under  the  title  of  "The  Senate  of  Lilliput."  Parliamentary 
reporting  was  then  not  allowed,  but  persons  were  employed 
to  attend  the  two  Houses  and  take  such  notes  as  they  could. 
These  notes  Johnson  put  into  shape,  often  writing  entirely 
imaginary  speeches,  and  always  "  taking  care  that  the  Whig 
dogs  should  not  have  the  best  of  it."  He  gave  up  the  occu- 
pation when  he  found  that  many  received  the  speeches  as 


242      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

actual  reports,  declaring  that  he  "  would  not  be  accessory  to 
the  propagation  of  falsehood." 

In  May  1738  appeared  anonymously  Johnson's  first  work 
of  importance,  "  London,"  an  imitation  of  the  Third  Satire  of 
Juvenal.  It  was  a  considerable  success,  a  second  edition 
being  called  for  within  a  week,  and  Pope,  the  reigning  king 
of  poetry,  declaring  that  whoever  the  author  was,  he  would 
soon  be  deterrL  "  London  "  was  followed  ten  years  later  by  a 
similar  but  more  powerful  poem,  the  "Vanity  of  Human 
Wishes,"  an  imitation  of  the  Tenth  Satire  of  Juvenal,  contain- 
ing in  dignified  and  impressive  verse  a  declaration  of  John- 
son's profound  and  lifelong  conviction,  that,  upon  the  whole, 
the  amount  of  misery  in  the  world  is  greatly  in  excess  of  the 
amount  of  happiness.  Johnson,  as  some  of  his  shorter  poems 
(for  example,  the  noble  and  touching  verses  on  Levett)  show, 
possessed  a  real  though  a  slender  vein  of  poetical  genius  ;  but 
"  London  "and  the  "Vanity  of  Human  Wishes"  are  mainly 
valuable,  not  on  account  of  their  intrinsically  poetical  qualities, 
but  as  expressing  in  verse  which  has  the  merits  of  dignity, 
honesty,  and  originality,  the  opinions  on  life  which  had  been 
formed  by  a  man  of  strong  mind,  who  had  read  much  and 
thought  much.  This  remark  applies  especially  to  the  "Vanity 
of  Human  Washes."  "  'Tis  a  grand  poem,"  wrote  Byron  in 
his  Diary,  "and  so  true."  Sir  Walter  Scott  found  in  Johnson's 
poetry  something  peculiarly  attractive  to  his  manly  good  sense. 
He  once  told  Ballantyne  that  he  derived  more  pleasure  from 
Johnson's  poetry  than  from  that  of  any  writer  he  could  mention. 

Among  the  many  questionable  acquaintances  whom  John- 
son fell  in  with  during  his  sojourn  in  Bohemia,  or,  as  it  was 
then  called,  Grub  Street,  was  Richard  Savage,  a  dissipated  pro- 
fligate, of  whom  it  was  generally  believed  (falsely,  it  would 
appear)  that  he  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  the  Countess  of 
Macclesfield,  who  refused  to  acknowledge  him.  During  his 
chequered  career  Savage  had  seen  a  good  deal  of  literary 
society,  and  although  his  principal  poem,  "  The  Wanderer," 
which  Scott  pronounced  "  beautiful,"  is  by  most  found  quite 
unreadable,  he  was  a  man  of  considerable  abilities :  in  particular, 


Johnsons  "Dictionary"  243 

he  possessed  that  talent  which  Johnson  was  always  disposed  to 
admire — he  was  a  ready  and  entertaining  talker.  For  Savage, 
in  spite  of  his  many  vices,  which  he  both  saw  and  disapproved 
of,  Johnson  formed  what  seems  to  have  been  the  strongest 
friendship  of  his  life.  He  delighted  in  his  company,  he  ad- 
mired his  abilities,  he  sincerely  pitied  his  misfortunes,  and  on 
his  death,  in  1743,  he  celebrated  his  memory  in  a  memoir, 
which,  though  its  rhetoric  is  somewhat  ponderous,  is  one  of 
the  most  forcible  and  interesting  of  Johnson's  productions. 
Nowhere  will  there  be  found  a  better  account  of  the  misery 
and  degradation  to  which  many  poor  authors  of  that  period 
were  subjected.  It  was  published  in  1744,  and  attained  con- 
siderable popularity. 

We  have  already  mentioned  that  when  Johnson  set  out  for 
London  he  carried  with  him  the  manuscript  of  his  tragedy 
"  Irene  "  in  his  pocket.  For  several  years  he  in  vain  attempted 
to  get  it  put  upon  the  stage.  At  length  in  1749  it  was  pro- 
duced by  his  friend  Garrick,  who  had  become  manager  of 
Drury  Lane.  With  difficulty  it  was  kept  alive  for  nine  nights, 
when  it  was  withdrawn,  and  was  never  again  produced. 
"  Irene"  deserved  to  fail.  It  may  be  described  as  a  kind  of 
worse  "Cato,"  rhetorical  and  unnatural  to  a  degree,  and  in- 
teresting only  as  one  of  the  many  examples  of  the  unfitness  of 
a  man  of  genius  to  judge  of  the  particular  line  into  which  his 
talents  should  be  directed. 

In  1747  Johnson  commenced  the  preparation  of  a  work  for 
which  in  many  ways  he  was  admirably  adapted— a  dictionary 
of  the  English  language.  He  calculated  that  it  would  occupy 
him  three  years,  but  he  greatly  over-estimated  his  powers,  for 
though  he  employed  several  assistants  to  do  the  mechanical 
part  of  the  work,  it  did  not  appear  till  1755.  Etymology  had 
not  then  attained  the  dignity  of  a  science,  ami  the  derivations 
given  in  the  "Dictionary"  are  consequently  very  defective; 
but  the  definitions  are  generally  excellent — clear,  concise,  and 
logical,  and  the  examples  are  selected  with  much  care  and 
good  taste.  The  publication  of  the  "  Dictionary  "  led  to  John- 
son's famous  quarrel  with  Lord  Chesterfield.  The  plan  for 


244      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

writing  it  had  been  dedicated  to  that  nobleman,  who  aspired 
to  act  the  part  of  a  literary  Maecenas,  but  he  soon  grew  tired 
of  Johnson,  and  treated  him  with  marked  neglect.  When, 
however,  the  "Dictionary"  was  on  the  eve  of  publication, 
Chesterfield  thought  it  would  be  a  feather  in  his  cap  if  he 
patronised  a  man  capable  of  writing  such  a  work,  and  accord- 
ingly inserted  in  a  periodical  called  the  World  two  papers  re- 
commending the  "Dictionary"  to  the  notice  of  the  public. 
In  that  singularly  masterly  and  dignified  letter  with  which  all 
are  acquainted  Johnson  repelled  his  Lordship's  patronage, 
"proclaiming,"  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Carlyle,  "into  the  ear  of 
Lord  Chesterfield,  and  through  him  of  the  listening  world,  that 
patronage  should  be  no  more." 

While  writing  the  "  Dictionary,"  Johnson  engaged  in  a  work 
which  elevated  his  literary  position  considerably.  This  was 
the  Rambler,  a  periodical  of  somewhat  the  same  nature  as 
the  Spectator,  which  was  commenced  in  1750  and  carried  on 
twice  a  week  for  two  years.  From  175810  1760  he  wrote 
under  the  general  title  of  the  Idler  a  series  of  essays  which 
appeared  in  a  newspaper  called  the  Universal  Chronicle.  Both 
the  Rambler  and  the  Idler  are  now  found  very  heavy  read- 
ing, and  it  would  be  idle  to  deny  that  a  considerable  pro- 
portion of  them  is  little  better  than  sonorous  commonplace. 
Johnson  had  not  the  lightness  of  hand  and  dexterity  of  touch 
which  enabled  Addison  to  treat  trivial  topics  gracefully  and 
appropriately,  and  where  he  aspires  to  do  so  he  generally 
fails  lamentably.  He  appears  to  greater  advantage  in  his  tale 
"Rasselas,"  which  appeared  in  1759.  It  is  a  discourse  on  his 
old  theme,  the  "Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,"  eloquently  and 
powerfully  written,  and  bearing  everywhere  the  marks  of  that 
gloom  approaching  to  despair  with  which  he  habitually  con- 
templated life. 

"  Rasselas "  was  the  last  work  of  importance  written  by 
Johnson  purely  for  the  sake  of  making  money.  In  1762  the 
great  services  to  literature  he  had  conferred  by  the  "  Dic- 
tionary" and  his  other  works  were  recognised  by  Government 
granting  him  a  pension  of  ^300  per  annum.  He  hesitated 


The  Literary  Club.  245 

very  much  about  taking  it,  as  in  his  "  Dictionary "  he  had 
defined  "pension"  as  generally  understood  to  mean  "pay 
given  to  a  state  hireling  for  treason  to  his  country;"  but  on 
being  distinctly  informed  that  it  was  granted  without  the 
slightest  reference  to  political  considerations,  he  consented  to 
accept  it.  Henceforth  he  was  able  to  gratify  to  the  fullest 
extent  his  love  of  indolence  and  of  society,  excusing  himself, 
in  public,  for  writing  little  by  saying  he  could  do  as  much 
good  by  conversation  as  by  composition,  but  in  his  private 
memoranda  bitterly  reproaching  his  self-indulgence.  Always 
fond  of  clubs — to  use  his  own  expression,  he  was  a  very 
clubbable  man — he  in  1764  founded  the  Literary  Club,  where 
he  talked  long  and  excellently  in  the  company  of  such  men 
as  Burke,  Goldsmith,  Gibbon,  Beauclerk,  Reynolds,  Langton, 
and  his  admirable  biographer,  Boswell,  who  had,  not  without 
difficulty,  obtained  an  introduction  to  him  in  1763.  It  is  a 
pleasing  feature  in  Johnson's  character  that,  in  spite  of  his 
occasional  sharp  retorts  and  surliness  of  temper,  he  managed 
to  maintain  a  firm  friendship  with  a  large  circle  of  acquaint- 
ances, including  some  of  the  most  celebrated  of  his  contenv 
poraries.  In  1765  he  became  acquainted  with  Mr.  Thrale,  a 
wealthy  brewer,  a  connection  which  proved  one  of  the  hap- 
piest events  of  his  life.  Thrale  was  a  sensible,  though  by  no 
means  a  brilliant  man ;  his  wife  possessed  more  brilliancy  but 
less  sense ;  and  both  together  did  their  best  to  make  Johnson 
happy  at  their  country-house  in  Streatham,  where  for  several 
years  he  was  considered  almost  as  a  member  of  their  family. 
At  his  own  house  in  Bolt  Court  he  kept  a  number  of  poor 
dependants — Mrs.  Williams,  Mrs.  Desmoulins,  Robert  Levett, 
Miss  Carmichael,  Blank  Frank — who,  but  for  his  generous 
aid,  would  have  been  in  abject  poverty.  Johnson,  partly 
from  natural  impulse,  partly,  no  doubt,  because  he  remem- 
bered how  severe  had  been  his  own  struggle  with  poverty, 
was  one  of  the  most  generous  men  that  ever  lived.  "  He 
loved  the  poor,"  said  Mrs.  Thrale,  "  as  I  never  saw  man  love 
them." 

While  obliged  to  labour  for  his  bread,  Johnson  had  pro- 


246      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

jected  an  edition  of  Shakespeare,  a  task  for  which  he  was 
very  slenderly  equipped,  as  he  had  read  none  of  the  con- 
temporary dramatists.  For  many  years  he  loitered  over  his 
task,  constantly  reproaching  himself  for  his  negligence,  but 
at  last,  in  1765,  it  was  completed.  The  main  value  of  his 
edition  consists  in  the  Preface,  a  very  able  piece  of  work, 
which  still  ranks  among  the  best  of  all  the  countless  treatises 
that  have  been  written  on  the  subject.  In  1772  his  wor- 
shipper Boswell  managed  to  induce  the  sage  to  accompany 
him  in  a  tour  to  the  Hebrides,  of  which,  in  1775,  Johnson 
published  an  account  under  the  title  of  a  "  Journey  to  the 
Western  Islands  of  Scotland."  It  is  interesting  to  compare 
Johnson's  ponderous  but  not  uninteresting  work  with  the 
volume  in  which  Boswell,  soon  after  the  "great  lexicographer's" 
death,  gave  such  a  naive  and  amusing  account  of  the  adven- 
tures and  conversations  of  himself  and  his  great  companion. 
During  the  latter  part  of  his  life  Johnson  entered  the  troubled 
arena  of  political  controversy  by  publishing  four  pamphlets 
on  questions  that  were  then  agitating  the  minds  of  men. 
These  were  "The  False  Alarm"  (1770),  "Thoughts  on  the 
Late  Transactions  Respecting  Falkland's  Islands"  (1771),  "The 
Patriot"  (1774),  and  "Taxation  no  Tyranny,  an  Answer  to 
the  Resolutions  and  Address  of  the  American  Congress  (1775)." 
All  these  pamphlets  show  Johnson's  usual  vigour  of  style,  his 
unbending  Toryism,  and  his  utter  incapacity  to  take  a  can- 
did and  impartial  view  of  a  political  controversy.  "Taxation 
no  Tyranny,"  in  particular,  is  a  very  characteristic  production. 
Even  George  III.  could  have  desired  no  more  strenuous  and 
unreasoning  supporter  of  the  right  of  Great  Britain  to  tax  the 
American  colonies. 

The  last  and  by  far  the  best  of  Johnson's  works  has  yet  to 
be  mentioned.  In  1777  the  -booksellers  formed  the  design 
of  publishing  an  edition  of  the  English  poets,  to  which  they 
asked  Johnson  to  prefix  introductions  containing  a  Life  of 
each  poet  and  a  criticism  of  his  works.  He  readily  con- 
sented, for  literary  history  was  a  subject  which  always  speci- 
ally interested  him;  and,  on  being  asked  to  name  a  price, 


Johnsons  ' '  L  ives  of  the  Poets. "  247 

mentioned  200  guineas.  This  modest  sum  the  booksellers  after- 
wards  raised  to  300  guineas,  a  rate  of  remuneration  excessively 
low  when  we  consider  the  degree  of  fame  to  which  Johnson 
had  attained  and  the  high  prices  some  of  his  contemporaries 
obtained  for  their  works.  English  poetry  was  then  considered 
to  begin  with  Cowley,  so  that  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  other 
great  names  were  omitted.  In  all,  fifty-two  poets  were  dealt 
with,  of  whom  about  a  third  are  deservedly  forgotten,  being 
known  only  to  curious  students  of  literary  history.  As  a 
critic  and  biographer,  Johnson  united  great  faults  and  great 
merits.  Few  have  surpassed  him  in  the  power  of  giving  a 
rapid  and  vivid  sketch  of  the  main  features  in  a  man's  life 
and  character ;  but  he  was  careless  of  minute  accuracy,  and 
often  omitted  to  correct  errors  even  after  they  had  been 
pointed  out  to  him.  As  a  critic  he  had  no  sense  for  the 
higher  kinds  of  poetry ;  anything  that  did  not  square  with  the 
dictates  of  common  sense  he  condemned  as  absurd ;  but  he 
possessed  the  rare  and  signal  merit  of  always  saying  what  he 
really  thought,  and  not  what  he  fancied  would  be  agreeable 
to  the  taste  of  the  majority  of  readers.  Of  thousands  who 
have  yawned  over  "  Paradise  Lost,"  very  few  have  had  the 
courage  to  say,  "  None  ever  wished  it  longer.  Its  perusal  is 
a  duty  rather  than  a  pleasure."  And  of  thousands  to  whom 
Nature  has  denied  the  faculty  of  appreciating  the  classic  purity 
and  grace  of  "  Lycidas,"  very  few  have  been  daring  enough 
to  run  the  risk  of  general  opprobrium  by  saying,  "  In  this 
poem  there  is  no  nature,  for  there  is  no  truth ;  there  is  no 
art,  for  there  is  nothing  new.  Its  form  is  that  of  a  pastoral ; 
easy,  vulgar,  and  therefore  disgusting;  whatever  images  it  can 
supply  are  long  ago  exhausted,  and  its  inherent  improbability 
always  forces  dissatisfaction  on  the  mind." 

In  1784  Johnson  died  at  his  house  in  Bolt  Court,  full  of 
years  and  full  of  honours.  Looking  over  his  life,  he  could 
truly  declare  that  "no  man  had  ever  lived  more  independently 
by  literature  than  he  had  done."  His  brave  and  manly  career 
did  much  to  relieve  authors  by  profession  from  the  stigma 
thrown  on  them  by  the  "  Dunciad."  Purely  by  the  force  of 


248      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

his  intellect  and  character,  without  flattering  the  great  or  seek* 
ing  their  patronage,  he  fought  his  way  up  till  by  well-nigh 
universal  consent  he  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  leading  man 
of  letters  of  his  time. 

Before  leaving  Johnson,  it  is  fit  that  something  should  be 
said  about  James  Boswell  (1740-1795),  to  whom  he  now 
mainly  owes  his  fame.  In  the  case  of  most  authors,  we  read 
their  biographies  because  we  have  read  their  works ;  in  the 
case  of  Johnson,  we  read  his  works  because  we  have  read 
Boswell's  Lire  of  him.  Boswell's  character  was  such  an  odd 
combination,  that  it  puzzled  the  majority  of  his  contemporaries 
— it  partly  puzzles  us  still.  "  His  cleverness,  his  tact,  his 
skill  in  drawing  forth  those  he  was  studying,"  writes  Lord 
Brougham,  "his  admirable  good-humour,  his  strict  love  of 
truth,  his  high  and  generous  principle,  his  kindness  towards 
his  friends,  his  unvarying  but  generally  rational  piety,  have 
scarcely  been  sufficiently  praised  by  those  who  nevertheless 
have  always  been  ready,  as  needs  they  must  be,  to  acknow- 
ledge the  debt  of  gratitude  due  for  perhaps  the  book,  of  all  that 
were  ever  written,  the  most  difficult  to  lay  down  once  it  has 
been  taken  up."  Macaulay  describes  him  as  "servile  and 
impertinent,  shallow  and  pedantic,  a  bigot  and  a  sot,  bloated 
with  family  pride,  and  eternally  blustering  about  the  dignity 
of  a  born  gentleman,  yet  stooping  to  be  a  tale-bearer,  an  eaves- 
dropper, a  common  butt  in  the  taverns  of  London,"  and 
declares  that  "if  he  had  not  been  a  great  fool,  he  would  never 
have  been  a  great  writer."  Something  may,  no  doubt,  be 
said  on  behalf  of  both  these  estimates ;  but  Brougham  comes 
much  nearer  the  truth  than  Macaulay,  to  whose  essay  on 
Johnson  Carlyle's  article  on  the  same  subject  forms  practi- 
cally a  crushing  refutation.  That  Boswell  possessed  a  peculiar 
talent,  almost  amounting  to  genius,  his  Life  of  Johnson  suffi- 
ciently proves ;  that,  in  spite  of  all  his  oddities  and  follies,  he 
was  good-humoured,  a  pleasant  social  companion,  and  had  a 
genuine  liking  for  and  admiration  of  literature,  the  fact  that  he 
lived  on  familiar  terms  with  many  of  his  most  celebrated  con- 
temporaries makes  equally  evident.  He  had  a  keen  eye  for 


Oliver  Goldsmith.  249 

character,  was  a  matchless  raconteur,  possessed  no  contemptible 
share  of  wit  and  literature  ;  and,  in  spite  of  the  pride  with 
which  he  contemplated  his  long-drawn  pedigree,  seems  always 
to  have  preferred  the  society  of  men  of  genius  and  learning  to 
that  of  those  who  had  only  their  titles  to  boast  of.  The  pub- 
lication of  the  "Life  of  Johnson"  in  1791  forms  an  era  in  the 
history  of  English  literature.  Until  then,  biographies  (with 
the  exception  of  Mason's  far  inferior  "  Life  of  Gray")  had  been 
mostly  either  rapid  sketches  of  the  kind  of  which  Johnson  was 
a  master,  or  dreary  dissertations  on  books  and  characters,  with 
very  little  personal  interest.  Boswell,  by  copiously  detailing 
Johnson's  conversations,  and  by  uniting  his  correspondence  with 
the  narrative  of  his  life,  showed  how  biography  might  be  made 
one  of  the  most  amusing  and  instructive  departments  of  litera- 
ture, and  paved  the  way  for  such  excellent  books  as  Moore's 
"  Life  of  Byron,"  Lock  hart's  "  Life  of  Scott,"  and  Mr.  Trevel- 
yan's  "  Life  of  Macaulay." 

Among  the  original  members  of  the  Literary  Club  which 
Johnson  founded,  was  an  Irishman,  who  delighted  to  deck  out  his 
odd  little  figure  in  gaudy  attire,  and  whom  all  his  friends  liked, 
but  whom  none  of  them  respected.  Every  one  admitted  his 
abilities,  but  his  oddities  and  the  poverty  of  hi*  conversational 
powers  made  him  generally  laughed  at.  He  had  led  a  strange 
and  vagabond  existence.  The  son  of  a  poor  and  warm-hearted 
clergyman  in  Ireland,  he  possessed  in  ample  measure  that  care- 
less and  happy-go-lucky  disposition  characteristic  of  his  country- 
men. Some  of  his  friends  having  thought  they  detected  in 
him  signs  of  genius,  it  was  resolved  to  give  him  a  liberal  educa- 
tion, and  in  1745  he  entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  There 
his  career  was  not  a  brilliant  one.  He  acquired  a  fair  know- 
ledge of  the  classics,  but  he  neglected  mathematics,  and  got 
into  various  scrapes,  for  one  of  which  he  was  thrashed  by  his 
tutor,  who  rejoiced  in  the  name  of  the  Rev.  Theaker  Wilder. 
Having  obtained  his  degree,  he  left  college  with  no  fixed  aim. 
At  length  he  determined  to  follow  his  father's  footsteps  ;  but 
the  bishop  to  whom  he  applied  for  ordination  rejected  him, 
mainly,  it  appear?,  because  he  chose  to  appear  before  his  lordship 


250      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

attired  in  a  pair  of  gorgeous  red  breeches.  He  next  thought 
of  studying  the  law,  but  he  spent  all  the  money  with  which  it 
was  intended  he  should  pursue  his  studies  at  London  among 
some  jolly  companions  he  fell  in  with  at  Dublin;  so  that  scheme, 
too,  was  given  up.  As  a  last  resource,  he  went  to  Edinburgh 
to  study  medicine,  which  he  seems  to  have  done  in  a  sufficiently 
desultory  fashion  for  two  years,  when  it  occurred  to  him  that 
it  was  well  he  should  perfect  himself  under  the  great  physi- 
cians of  the  Continent.  There  he  accordingly  set  out,  and 
wandered  through  Switzerland,  Italy,  and  France,  supporting 
himself  by  playing  on  the  flute  and  by  various  other  contri- 
vances ;  for  the  patience  of  his  relatives  was  exhausted,  and 
from  them  he  could  obtain  no  remittances.  At  length,  having, 
according  to  his  own  account,  procured  the  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Medicine  from  the  University  of  Louvain,  he  arrived  in 
London  in  1756,  destitute  of  money,  of  friends,  and  of  the 
means  of  earning  a  livelihood.  Such  were  the  early  adventures 
of  Oliver  Goldsmith  (1728-1774),  one  of  the  most  graceful, 
gentle-minded,  and  pure  writers  our  literature  can  boast  of. 
Johnson  did  not  in  the  least  exaggerate  when,  in  his  Life  of 
Parnell,  he  described  Goldsmith  as  "a  man  of  such  variety  of 
powers  and  such  felicity  of  performance,  that  he  always  seemed 
to  do  best  that  which  he  was  doing, — a  man  who  had  the  art 
of  being  minute  without  tediousness,  and  general  without  con- 
fusion ;  whose  language  was  copious  without  exuberance,  exact 
without  constraint,  and  easy  without  weakness." 

After  his  arrival  in  London,  Goldsmith  tried  various  shifts 
before  subsiding  into  his  natural  avocation,  that  of  an  author. 
He  was  assistant  to  an  apothecary ;  he  practised  physic  with 
very  little  success ;  and  he  was  for  some  time  an  usher  at  a 
school  kept  by  Dr.  Milner  at  Peckham.  Like  Johnson,  he 
always  regarded  the  portion  of  his  life  spent  in  tuition  with 
abhorrence.  He  is  constantly  alluding  in  his  writings  to  the 
hardships  of  an  usher's  life.  "  He  is  generally,"  he  says,  "  the 
laughing-stock  of  the  school.  Every  trick  is  played  upon  him  ; 
the  oddity  of  his  manner,  his  dress,  or  his  language  is  a  source 
of  eternal  ridicule  :  the  master  himself  now  and  then  cannot 


Goldsmith 's  Early  Struggles.  251 

avoid  joining  in  the  laugh ;  and  the  poor  wretch,  eternally 
resenting  this  ill-usage,  lives  in  a  state  of  war  with  all  the 
family."  But  dreary  and  bitter  as  may  have  been  the  months 
spent  by  Goldsmith  as  an  usher,  they  can  scarcely  have  been 
more  barren  of  comfort  and  peace  of  mind  than  those  he  spent 
as  a  hack-writer  for  the  booksellers.  Through  Dr.  Milner  he 
became  acquainted  with  one  Griffiths,  the  proprietor  of  the 
Monthly  Review^  a  man  of  coarse  mind  and  of  bullying  dis- 
position. In  1757,  Goldsmith,  at  a  small  fixed  salary,  with 
board  and  lodging,  became  a  contributor  to  the  Review^  and 
enriched  its  pages  with  many  pieces  of  criticism  full  of  delicate 
insight  and  just  appreciation  of  merit.  But  Griffiths  was  not 
aware  that  he  had  in  his  employ  perhaps  the  best  all-round 
literary  craftsman  that  ever  lived ;  he  and  his  wife  mangled 
poor  Goldsmith's  articles,  to  the  author's  intense  disgust,  and 
reproached  him  for  idleness,  and  for  assuming  a  tone  and 
manner  above  his  situation.  Mutual  recriminations  ensued, 
which  ended  in  the  engagement  being  broken  off  at  the  end  of 
five  months.  Goldsmith  then  began  writing  for  other  periodi- 
cals, and  doing  such  literary  jobs  as  came  in  his  way,  endeavour- 
ing at  the  same  time  to  eke  out  his  scanty  pittance  by  practising 
medicine.  In  1758  he  made  his  final  attempt  to  escape  from 
the  poverty,  the  vexation,  and  the  contempt  which  he  found  to 
attend  a  literary  career,  by  presenting  himself  for  examination 
as  a  hospital  mate.  He  was  rejected,  and  thus  again  driven 
back  on  literature  as  a  profession. 

"  Goldsmith,"  Johnson  truly  said,  "  was  a  plant  that  flowered 
late."  Such  of  his  juvenile  letters  as  have  been  preserved 
show  that  he  possessed  at  an  early  age  that  charm  of  style  and 
felicity  of  humorous  description  that  afterwards  delighted  the 
world  ;  but  it  was  necessity,  not  choice,  that  led  him  to  adopt 
a  literary  life  ;  and  if  he  had  been  moderately  successful  as  a 
physician,  it  is  probable  that  the  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield  "  and 
the  "  Deserted  Village  "  would  never  have  been  written.  He 
was  in  his  thirty-first  year  ere  he  published  his  first  independent 
work,/*  An  Inquiry  into  the  State  of  Polite  Learning  in  Europe." 
It  was  published  anonymously,  but  was  generally  known  to  be 


252      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

by  Goldsmith.  The  main  object  of  the  work  was  to  show  that 
as  critics  increase,  men  of  original  power  decrease.  It  is  an 
interesting  and  ingenious  essay,  written  with  very  imperfect 
knowledge,  but  with  Goldsmith's  usual  grace  of  composition, 
and  containing,  amidst  many  absurdities,  not  a  few  observa- 
tions that  are  still  worthy  of  attention.  In  1759,  also,  he 
began  a  weekly  series  of  essays  under  the  title  of  the  "  Bee." 
It  was  not  a  success,  reaching  only  eight  numbers.  In  the 
following  year  he  contributed  to  Newbery's  Public  Ledger 
the  "  Chinese  Letters,"  afterwards  republished  under  the  title 
of  "  The  Citizen  of  the  World,"  a  series  of  essays  of  great 
though  unequal  merit.  They  purport  to  be  letters  written  by 
a  Chinese  newly  arrived  in  England  to  his  friends,  but  the 
mask  is  not  well  kept  up,  nor,  indeed,  does  Goldsmith  seem 
to  have  intended  that  it  should  be  kept  up.  The  weakest 
parts  of  the  work  are  those  which  treat  of  moral  subjects  after 
the  fashion  of  the  Rambler.  Goldsmith  had  no  great  powers 
of  reasoning  ;  and  he  seems,  judging  from  the  air  of  constraint 
and  artificiality  which  pervades  them,  to  have  known  that  he 
was  going  beyond  his  true  sphere  when  writing  essays  on  such 
subjects  as  the  "Difference  between  Love  and  Gratitude," 
&c.  But  nothing  can  be  finer  than  his  sketches  of  character 
and  pictures  of  life,  or  than  his  criticisms  on  the  reigning 
modes  of  the  time,  which  show  wonderful  powers  of  humour 
and  gentle  satire.  The  account  of  Beau  Tibbs,  for  example, 
is  equal  to  anything  in  Addison,  and  would  alone  be  sufficient 
to  stamp  Goldsmith  as  a  writer  of  a  very  high  order  of  genius. 
From  the  time  of  the  publication  of  the  "  Inquiry  into  the 
State  of  Polite  Learning,"  Goldsmith  was  a  singularly  prolific 
author.  Whenever  any  literary  job  came  in  his  way  by  which 
he  might  earn  some  money,  he  was  ready  to  execute  it,  whether 
he  had  any  previous  acquaintance  with  the  subject  or  not. 
Much  of  what  he  wrote  has  doubtless  passed  into  oblivion, 
but  enough  remains  to  show  the  truth  of  Johnson's  assertion 
in  his  epitaph,  that  "  he  left  almost  no  kind  of  writing  untouched, 
and  touched  nothing  that  he  did  not  adorn."  For  John  New- 
bery,  the  famous  publisher  of  children's  books,  he  did  a  great 


GoldsmitJis  "  Traveller" 


253 


deal  of  work,  including  (if  an  old  tradition,  which  Mr.  Charles 
Welsh  has  supported  by  many  strong  arguments,  may  be 
credited)  the  tale  of  "  Little  Goody  Twoshoes,"  which  has 
earned  the  heartfelt  approbation  of  so  many  juvenile  readers. 
Among  his  pieces  of  honest  journey-work,  executed  not  for 
fame,  but  to  meet  his  incessant  calls  on  his  purse,  may  be 
mentioned  the  "  History  of  England,  in  a  Series  of  Letters 
from  a  Nobleman  to  his  Son,"  which  was  published  anony- 
mously, and  by  many  attributed  to  Lord  Lyttleton  (1762); 
"History  of  Rome"  (1769);  "History  of  England,"  in  four 
volumes  (1771);  "History  of  Animated  Nature"  (1774). 
Neither  in  his  historical  nor  in  his  scientific  productions  did 
Goldsmith  make  any  profession  of  original  research ;  what  he 
aimed  to  do,  and  what  he  succeeded  in  doing,  was  to  give  a 
clear,  concise,  and  readable  account  of  his  subject.  Johnson 
excited  the  astonishment  of  Boswell  by  preferring  Goldsmith 
as  an  historian  to  Robertson  ;  but  there  is  more  to  be  said  for 
Johnson's  opinion  than  may  at  first  sight  appear  possible. 

We  turn  to  the  writings  to  which  Goldsmith  owes  his  im- 
mortality. In  1764  appeared  the  "Traveller,"  the  first  work 
to  which  he  prefixed  his  name.  He  lived,  as  he  himself  often 
pointed  out,  both  in  writing  and  in  conversation,  in  an  age 
singularly  deficient  in  poetry  of  any  high  order  of  merit. 
Versifiers  there  were  in  abundance,  men  destitute  alike  of 
imagination,  spirit,  and  sensibility,  but  Goldsmith  himself  was 
the  only  writer  who  deserved  to  be  called  a  poet  in  any  high 
sense  of  the  word.  It  may  be  granted  at  once  that  he  does 
not  reach  to  very  lofty  heights,  and  that  his  range  was  some- 
what limited  ;  but  our  literature  does  not  afford  an  instance 
of  a  poet  to  whose  writings  we  constantly  return  with  greater 
pleasure,  or  who  (with  the  possible  exception  of  Mr.  Tennyson) 
has  written  fewer  imperfect  lines.  The  powers  displayed  in 
the  "  Traveller"  astonished  all  Goldsmith's  friends,  and  raised 
him  at  once  from  the  position  of  a  scribbler  to  the  booksellers 
into  that  of  a  literary  lion  of  some  magnitude.  Its  success 
led  to  the  publication  in  1766  of  the  "Vicar  of  Wakefield," 
which  had  been  written  two  years  previously.  One  day  Johnson 


254     Dr>  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

received  a  message  from  Goldsmith  that  he  was  in  great  dis- 
tress, and  begging  him  to  come  to  him  as  soon  as  possible. 
Johnson  sent  him  a  guinea,  and  promised  to  call  on  him 
directly.  When  he  arrived,  he  found  the  unfortunate  author 
in  a  violent  passion,  because  he  had  been  arrested  by  his 
landlady  for  his  rent.  "  I  perceived,"  relates  Johnson,  "  that 
he  had  already  changed  my  guinea,  and  had  a  bottle  01 
madeira  and  a  glass  before  him.  I  put  the  cork  into  the 
bottle,  desired  he  would  be  calm,  and  began  to  talk  to  him  ot 
the  means  by  which  he  might  be  extricated.  He  then  told 
me  he  had  a  novel  ready  for  the  press,  which  he  produced  to 
me.  I  looked  into  it,  and  saw  its  merit ;  told  the  landlady  I 
should  soon  return ;  and  having  gone  to  a  bookseller,  sold  it 
for  sixty  guineas.  I  brought  Goldsmith  the  money,  and  he 
discharged  his  rent,  not  without  rating  his  landlady  in  a  high 
tone  for  having  used  him  so  ill."  This  novel  was  the  "Vicar 
of  Wakefield,"  which  the  purchaser  did  not  venture  to  publish 
till  after  the  assured  success  of  the  "  Traveller."  Its  reception 
soon  made  him  ashamed  of  his  over-cautiousness.  Within  a 
year  it  went  through  three  editions,  and  has  always  since 
remained  popular.  Samuel  Rogers,  the  length  of  whose  lite- 
rary experience  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  he  contrived 
to  pay  a  call  on  Samuel  Johnson,  and  lived  to  prophesy  the 
future  greatness  of  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne,  declared  that 
of  all  the  books  which,  during  the  fitful  changes  of  three 
generations,  he  had  seen  rise  and  fall,  the  charm  of  the  "  Vicar 
of  Wakefield  "  had  alone  continued  as  at  first ;  and  that  could 
he  revisit  the  world  after  an  interval  of  many  more  generations, 
he  should  as  surely  look  to  find  it  undiminished.  The  plot 
contains  many  incongruities  and  absurdities,  but  these  are  for- 
gotten or  unnoticed  amidst  the  delight  afforded  by  its  sly 
humour,  its  inimitable  sketches  of  character,  its  geniality,  and 
its  perfect  purity  of  tone,  affording  so  pleasing  a  contrast  to 
most  of  the  works  of  fiction  that  had  preceded  it.  It  is  a 
book  which  has  charmed  young  and  old,  rich  and  poor,  the 
learned  and  the  ignorant.  A  child  of  twelve  years  old  may 
read  it  with  pleasure ;  such  a  man  as  Goethe  did  not  scruple 


11  Vicar  of  Wakefield"  "Deserted  Villager    255 

to  declare  how  much  he  owed  to  it.  The  characteristics  that 
distinguish  the  "Vicar  of  Wakefield  "  are  conspicuous  also  in 
Goldsmith's  two  comedies,  the  "  Good-Natured  Man"  (1768), 
and  "She  Stoops  to  Conquer"  (1773).  The  second  is  con- 
siderably the  superior,  both  in  the  construction  of  the  plot 
and  in  humorous  effect ;  but  they  alike  display  a  great  power 
of  good-humoured  satire,  a  healthy  and  genial  tone  of  mind, 
and  (as  indeed  is  the  case  with  all  Goldsmith's  writings)  a 
disposition  to  make  literary  capital  out  of  his  own  early  scrapes 
and  peccadilloes.  The  mistaking  of  a  private  house  for  an 
inn,  the  incident  upon  which  the  plot  of  "She  Stoops  to  Con- 
quer" turns,  was  suggested  by  Goldsmith's  having  actually 
made  the  same  mistake  himself  when  a  raw  youth  of  sixteen. 

In  1770  appeared  Goldsmith's  finest  poem,  the  "  Deserted 
Village,"  full  of  tender  recollections  of  his  beloved  native 
country,  which  he  was  never  again  to  behold.  In  1774  he 
wrote  that  admirable  series  of  poetical  characters  called  "  Re- 
taliation," of  which  posterity  has  endorsed  almost  every  word. 
The  poem  was,  alas  !  never  finished.  That  hand,  which  had 
never  lost  its  cunning,  was  not  destined  to  write  more.  On 
4th  April  1774  poor  Goldsmith  expired.  "He  died  of  a 
fever,"  wrote  Johnson  to  Boswell,  "  made,  I  am  afraid,  more 
violent  by  uneasiness  of  mind.  His  debts  began  to  be  heavy, 
and  all  his  resources  were  exhausted.  Sir  Joshua  [Reynolds] 
is  of  opinion  that  he  owed  no  less  than  two  thousand  pounds. 
Was  ever  poet  so  trusted  before  ?"  Though,  during  the  latter 
part  of  his  life,  Goldsmith  was  making  an  income  sufficient  to 
maintain  him  in  comfort  if  not  in  affluence,  his  affairs  were 
greatly  embarrassed,  owing  to  his  boundless  charity  and 
never-failing  goodness  of  heart,  which  made  him  treat  his 
friends  to  sumptuous  banquets,  and,  from  his  incapacity  to  turn 
a  deaf  ear  to  a  touching  tale,  rendered  him  the  dupe  of  many 
designing  rogues. 

Though  undoubtedly  the  greatest  poet,  and,  with  only  one 
or  two  exceptions,  the  greatest  prose  writer  of  his  time,  Gold- 
smith was  generally  spoken  of  by  his  contemporaries  with  a 
kind  of  supercilious  condescension,  which,  though  in  the  highest 


2 $6     Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

degree  unjust,  is  not  difficult  to  account  for.  Impulsive,  reck- 
less, and  generous,  his  character  was  of  the  kind  which  com- 
mands affection  rather  than  respect;  he  lacked  that  worldly 
wisdom  which  is  often  so  much  more  serviceable  to  its  pos- 
sessor than  higher  and  better  qualities;  and  though  his  bio- 
graphers have  gallantly  attempted  to  prove  that  his  contempor- 
aries were  mistaken  in  supposing  him  to  be  a  poor  talker,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  credit  the  practically  unanimous  testimony  of 
the  latter,  summed  up  by  Johnson's  remark,  "  Sir,  no  man  was 
ever  so  foolish  when  he  had  not  a  pen  in  his  hand,  or  so  wise 
when  he  had  one."  The  homeliness  of  his  appearance  no 
doubt  contributed  not  a  little  to  diminish  the  esteem  felt  for 
his  conversation.  "  In  person,"  writes  Judge  Day,  "  he  was 
short,  about  five  feet  five  or  six  inches ;  strong  but  not  heavy 
in  make  ;  rather  fair  in  complexion,  with  brown  hair — such  at 
least  as  could  be  distinguished  from  his  wig.  His  features  were 
plain  but  not  repulsive — certainly  not  so  when  lighted  up  by 
conversation.  His  manners  were  simple,  natural,  and  perhaps 
on  the  whole  we  may  say  not  polished,  at  least  without  the 
refinement  and  good-breeding  which  the  exquisite  polish  of 
his  language  would  lead  us  to  expect." 

A  very  different  man  from  Goldsmith  was  another  distin- 
guished member  of  the  Literary  Club,  his  countryman  Edmund 
Burke,  the  greatest  writer  on  political  philosophy  in  our 
language,  and,  if  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold's  judgment  be  accepted, 
the  greatest  master  of  English  prose  style  that  ever  lived. 
Unlike  Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  he  had  not  to  pass  his  youth 
in  a  bitter  apprenticeship  to  want  and  "  the  spurns  which 
patient  merit  of  the  unworthy  takes,"  for  his  parents  were, 
if  not  wealthy,  at  least  well-to-do  people.  He  was  born  in 
Dublin  in  1729,  received  most  of  his  elementary  education  at 
a  school  in  Kildare  kept  by  Abraham  Shackleton,  a  Quaker, 
and  in  1743  entered  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  where  he 
remained  for  five  years.  His  University  career,  if  not  brilliant, 
was  far  from  an  idle  one ;  though  he  did  not  apply  himself 
very  closely  to  the  studies  of  the  place,  he  read  largely  and 
acquired  a  fund  of  miscellaneous  knowledge.  In  1750  he 


Edmund  Burke.  257 

came  to  London  to  study  law  at  the  Middle  Temple  ;  but  he 
soon  found  that  legal  studies  were  irksome  to  one  of  his 
discursive  temper,  and  began  to  cast  longing  eyes  upon  the 
more  pleasant  field  of  general  literature.  He  used  to  boast 
that  "he  had  none  of  that  master-vice  sloth  in  his  composi- 
tion," and  with  perfect  justice,  for,  while  neglecting  the  study 
of  the  law,  his  time,  instead  of  being  spent  in  idleness  or 
dissipation,  was  employed  in  amassing  those  vast  stores  of 
knowledge  which  called  forth  the  admiration  of  his  contem- 
poraries, and  fitted  him  for  the  great  career  on  which  he  was 
soon  to  embark.  During  this  period  no  doubt  he  scribbled 
much,  but  he  did  not  formally  appear  before  the  public  as  an 
author  till  1756,  when  he  published  two  works,  "A  Vindica- 
tion of  Natural  Society,"  and  "  A  Philosophical  Inquiry  into 
the  Origin  of  our  Ideas  on  the  Sublime  and  Beautiful."  The 
first  of  these  productions  is  a  short  tract,  designed  as  a  parody 
on  the  style  and  mode  of  thinking  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  whose 
works  were  then  considerably  in  vogue.  Bolingbroke  in  his 
writings  had  attempted  to  render  religion  ridiculous  by  an 
exaggerated  view  of  its  abuses.  Adopting  the  same  course  of 
argument,  Burke  endeavours  to  show  that  as  civil  society 
carried  in  its  train  a  number  of  evils,  it  would  be  well  to 
return  to  a  state  of  savage  nature.  The  pamphlet  received 
the  highest  praise  it  could  possibly  have  gained  in  being  taken 
by  many  for  a  genuine  production  of  Lord  Bolingbroke.  The 
essay  on  the  sublime  and  beautiful  is  an  interesting  contribu- 
tion to  a  subject  on  which  many  able  and  subtle  writers  have 
discoursed  ;  but  though  it  contains  several  striking  passages, 
it  cannot  be  said  to  show  much  philosophic  depth  or  preci- 
sion. Burke  himself  is  said  to  have  thought  little  of  it  in  his 
latter  years.  In  1758  he  was  engaged  by  Dodsley  to  edit  the 
"  Annual  Register."  He  is  said  to  have  written  the  whole  of 
the  volumes  for  1758  and  1759  ;  he  contributed  largely  to  it  for 
a  good  many  years  afterwards. 

These  occupations  soon  introduced  him  into  literary  society, 
where  his   width   of  knowledge  and   powers  of  conversation 
eminently  qualified   him  to  excel.     In  that  year  he  became 
12 


258      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

acquainted  with  Johnson,  an  intimacy  to  which  we  owe  some 
of  the  best  of  the  conversations  recorded  by  Boswell.  Though 
very  unlike  in  many  respects,  there  were  several  points  of 
resemblance  between  Burke  and  Johnson.  Both  were  high- 
minded,  honourable  men,  both  were  prone  to  place  rather 
too  much  confidence  in  the  rectitude  of  their  own  opinions, 
both  were  exceedingly  benevolent ;  and,  above  all,  both  were 
copious  and  excellent  talkers.  "That  fellow  calls  forth  all 
my  powers,"  exclaimed  Johnson,  who  was  never  tired  of  prais- 
ing the  extraordinary  readiness  and  affluence  of  Burke's 
conversation. 

The  leading  incidents  in  Burke's  life  belong  rather  to  poli- 
tical than  to  literary  history,  but  they  may  be  briefly  men- 
tioned here.  In  1759  he  became  private  secretary  to  "Single- 
speech"  Hamilton,  with  whom  he  went  to  Ireland  in  1761. 
Their  intimacy,  owing  to  no  fault  on  Burke's  part,  ended  in  an 
open  rupture  in  1765.  In  the  same  year  he  was  appointed 
private  secretary  to  the  Marquis  of  Rockingham,  then  Prime 
Minister  and  the  leader  of  the  Whig  party.  In  the  following 
year  he  was  returned  member  for  the  pocket  borough  of  Wen- 
dover.  From  this  time  he  took  an  active  part  both  by  tongue 
and  pen  in  all  the  leading  political  struggles  of  the  era.  He 
supported  a  conciliatory  policy  towards  the  American  colonies, 
advocated  the  abolition  of  certain  restrictions  which  hampered 
the  trade  of  Ireland,  brought  forward  (in  1780)  a  great  scheme 
of  political  reform,  and  was  the  leading  spirit  in  the  impeach- 
ment of  Warren  Hastings.  Though  his  abilities  were  univer- 
sally known  and  acknowledged,  he  never  obtained  very  high 
parliamentary  office.  For  this  various  reasons  may  be  given. 
In. the  first  place,  he  was  not  high  bora,  and  the  great  offices 
of  state  were  then,  so  far  as  possible,  parcelled  out  among 
patricians.  In  the  second  place,  although  his  orations  when 
read  appear  far  superior  to  those  of  any  other  speaker  of  his 
time,  and  may  indeed  be  placed  in  the  same  rank  as  those  ot 
Cicero  and  Demosthenes,  he  was,  partly  from  his  tendency  to 
lengthiness,  partly  from  his  faults  of  manner,  so  unpopular 
a  speaker,  that  his  rising  was  looked  on  as  a  signal  for  members 


Burkes  Character.  259 

to  leave  the  House.  In  the  third  place,  and  this  perhaps  was 
the  most  powerful  reason,  his  temperament  was  excitable, 
and  when  carried  away  by  passion  he  was  apt  to  speak  out 
what  he  felt,  regardless  of  prudential  considerations.  To  what 
heights  of  vehemence  and  invective  his  impassioned  genius 
could  carry  him  was  not  fully  known  till  the  time  of  the 
French  Revolution,  when  he  broke  from  his  party,  quarrelled 
with  his  oldest  friends  because  he  could  not  bring  them  to 
think  on  the  subject  as  he  did,  and  became  the  principal  advo- 
cate of  a  crusade  against  France.  Alike  in  the  House  of 
Commons  and  in  private  society,  he  never  ceased  dwelling  on 
the  abhorrence  he  felt  for  the  terrible  Revolution,  and  the 
hatred  with  which  he  regarded  its  leaders.  It  would  have 
done  his  old  friend,  Samuel  Johnson,  good  could  he  have 
lived  to  see  Burke,  whose  Whiggish  opinions  were,  of  course, 
disliked  by  him,  adopt  language  regarding  the  French  Re- 
volution which  would  have  satisfied  even  his  strongest  pre- 
judices. 

In  1794  Burke  retired  from  Parliament,  his  son  being  re- 
turned member  in  his  stead.  Shortly  afterwards  his  son  (who, 
in  spite  of  his  father's  fondness  for  him,  appears  to  have  been  a 
silly  and  priggish  young  man)  died,  leaving  Burke,  as  he  wrote 
to  William  Elliot,  "  desolate  at  home,  stripped  of  my  boast, 
my  hope,  my  consolation,  my  counsellor,  and  my  guide."  In 
1794  he  received  a  pension  from  Government,  which  was 
assailed  by  the  Duke  of  Bedford  as  in  contradiction  to  the 
whole  scheme  of  economic  reform.  To  this  attack  Burke 
replied  in  his  famous  "  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord"  (1795),  which 
is  a  fine  example  of  spirited  invective.  He  died  at  Beacons- 
field  on  July  8,  1797. 

In  private  life  Burke  was  a  man  of  unbounded  benevo- 
lence, great  affability  of  manners,  and  spotless  morality.  In 
public  life  he  sometimes  allowed  the  passion  of  the  moment 
to  get  the  better  of  him,  and  said  things  which  would  have 
been  better  left  unsaid.  But  no  one  ever  doubted  his  thorough 
honesty  and  integrity  of  purpose ;  he  was,  indeed,  as  Gold- 
smith said,  "  too  fond  of  the  right  to  pursue  the  expedient ;" 


260      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

and  if  he  had  been  less  scrupulous  might  have  attained  greater 
success  as  a  practical  politician. 

Btirke's  principal  works,  besides  those  already  mentioned, 
are  ;<  Thoughts  on  Present  Discontents"  (1770),  one  of  the  most 
wise,  sober,  and  weighty  of  his  productions;  "Reflections  on 
the  French  Revolution,"  probably  his  most  generally  known 
work  (1790);  "An  Appeal  from  the  New  to  the  Old  Whigs" 
(1791),  and  his  four  "Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace,"  two  of 
which  were  published  posthumously.  His  leading  speeches 
are  those  on  conciliation  with  America  (1755),  on  economical 
reform  (1780),  on  Fox's  East  India  Bill  (1783),  on  the  Nabob 
of  Arcot's  debts  (1785),  and  on  the  impeachment  of  Warren 
Hastings  (1786).  His  speeches  and  writings  display  the  same 
qualities  —  a  contempt  for  merely  theoretical  politicians,  a 
boundless  wealth  of  imagination,  which  enabled  him  to  set 
forth  the  driest  facts  surrounded  by  a  panoply  of  splendid 
eloquence,  a  style  frequently  filled  with  similes  and  metaphors, 
and  (especially  in  his  speeches)  an  occasional  absence  of 
good  taste  and  self-restraint.  Every  production  of  his  is,  as 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  says,  "saturated  with  ideas;"  hence  his 
speeches,  which,  owing  to  his  amplifications  and  deviations 
from  the  subject  in  hand,  were  often  found  tedious  by  his 
hearers,  attract  and  reward  the  attention  of  the  reader,  while 
those  of  such  men  as  Fox  and  Sheridan  are  of  interest  only 
to  the  historian,  and  have  little  merit  considered  merely  as 
literature.  "  He  can  seldom,"  writes  Mr.  Henry  Rogers, 
speaking  of  Burke  as  an  orator,  "confine  himself  to  a  simple, 
business-like  view  of  the  subject  under  discussion,  or  to  close, 
rapid,  compressed  argumentation  on  it.  On  the  contrary,  he 
makes  boundless  excursions  into  all  the  regions  of  moral  and 
political  philosophy ;  is  perpetually  tracing  up  particular  in- 
stances and  subordinate  principles  to  profound  and  compre- 
hensive maxims;  amplifying  and  expanding  the  most  meagre 
materials  into  brief  but  comprehensive  dissertations  on  poli- 
tical science,  and  encrusting  (so  to  speak)  the  nucleus  of  the 
most  insignificant  fact  with  the  most  exquisite  crystallisations 
of  truth,  while  the  whole  composition  glitters  and  sparkles 


"  Junius"  261 

again  with  a  rich  profusion  of  moral  reflections  equally  beauti- 
ful and  just.'* 

Now  that  the  heat  of  the  political  controversies  of  his  time 
has  died  away,  Burke's  writings,  so  far  from  having  become 
obsolete,  as  referring  to  questions  which  do  not  at  this  period 
engage  our  attention,  have  become  more  valuable.  In  particular 
points  he  was,  no  doubt,  wrong  and  misleading,  as  every  party 
writer  must  necessarily  be ;  but  his  mastery  of  general  prin- 
ciples, his  large  views,  and  his  constant  flow  of  original  and 
striking  ideas,  lift  him  far  above  the  level  of  the  political  writer 
who  adtlresses  himself  merely  to  the  question  at  issue,  and 
whose  work  consequently  loses  its  interest  when  that  question 
has  been  settled.  "  Burke  had  the  style  of  his  subjects,  the 
amplitude,  the  weigh tiness,  the  laboriousness,  the  sense,  the 
high  flight,  the  grandeur,  proper  to  a  man  dealing  with  impe- 
rial themes,  the  freedom  of  nations,  the  justice  of  rulers,  the 
fortunes  of  great  societies,  the  weightiness'  of  law.  Burke 
will  always  be  read  with  delight  and  edification,  because  in 
the  midst  of  discussions  on  the  local  and  the  accidental  he 
scatters  apophthegms  that  take  us  into  the  regions  of  lasting 
wisdom.  In  the  midst  of  the  torrent  of  his  most  strenuous 
and  passionate  deliverances,  he  suddenly  rises  aloof  from  his 
immediate  subject,  and  in  all  tranquillity  reminds  us  of  some 
permanent  relation  of  things,  some  enduring  truth  of  human 
life  or  society.  We  do  not  hear  the  organ  tones  of  Milton,  for 
faith  and  freedom  had  other  notes  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
There  is  none  of  the  complacent  and  wise-browed  sagacity  of 
Bacon,  for  Burke's  were  days  of  eager  personal  strife  and  party 
fire  and  civil  division.  We  are  not  exhilarated  by  the  cheer- 
fulness, the  polish,  the  fine  manners  of  Bolingbroke,  for  Burke 
had  an  anxious  conscience,  and  was  earnest  and  intent  that 
the  good  should  triumph.  And  yet  Burke  is  among  the  greatest 
of  those  who  have  wrought  marvels  in  the  prose  of  our  English 
tongue."1 

During  Burke's  lifetime  he  was  frequently  credited  with  the 
authorship  of  the  famous  letters  of  "  Junius,"  which  created  an 
1  "  Burke,"  by  John  Morley  (English  Men  of  Letters),  p.  213. 


262      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

excitement  such  as  perhaps  has  never  been  called  forth  by  any 
other  political  writings,  and  which  still,  owing  to  their  great  con- 
temporary fame,  and  to  the  mastery  they  display  over  keen, 
vigorous  invective,  retain  a  place  in  literature.  The  main  reason 
for  attributing  their  authorship  to  Burke  was  because  of  certain 
real  or  fancied  resemblances  between  their  style  and  that  or 
Burke's  acknowledged  works  ;  but  Burke  positively  declared  to 
Dr.  Johnson  that  he  was  not  the  writer  of  them,  and  his  claim  is 
now,  we  believe,  abandoned  by  all  competent  authorities.  The 
letters,  of  which  the  first  appeared  in  January  1769,  were  pub- 
lished in  Woodfall's  Public  Advertiser^  one  of  the  leading  news- 
papers of  the  time,  and  attracted  great  and  universal  attention, 
not  only  on  account  of  their  fierce  invectives  against  the  lead- 
ing contemporary  politicians,  but  because  they  showed  a  minute 
acquaintance  with  the  inner  life  of  politics,  and  a  knowledge 
of  state  secrets  which  could  not  have  been  possessed  by 
an  outsider.  Among  the  many  claimants  who  have  been 
put  forward  as  their  probable  author  are  Colonel  Barre*, 
Thomas  Lord  Lyttleton,  Lord  Temple,  and  Lauchlin  Mttc- 
Leane ;  but  there  is  an  overwhelming  consensus  of  authori- 
ties that  their  real  writer  was  Sir  Philip  Francis,  who  was  a 
clerk  in  the  War  Office  at  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  the 
letters.  His  claims  have  been  warmly  supported  by  such  great 
names  as  Macaulay,  Earl  Stanhope,  Brougham,  Lord  Camp- 
bell, and  De  Quincey,  who  declares  that  the  proofs  of 
Francis's  authorship  rush  in  upon  us  more  plentiful  than 
blackberries,  and  that  the  case  ultimately  becomes  fatiguing 
from  the  very  plethora  and  riotous  excess  of  evidence.  It  is 
not  unlikely  that  the  controversy  as  to  their  authorship  has  done 
more  than  their  intrinsic  merits  to  keep  the  "Letters"  alive; 
for  it  must  be  confessed  that  they  now  present  little  attraction 
save  to  students  of  political  history.  Many  will  sympathise  in 
this  matter  with  Mr.  Carlyle,  who  once  bitterly  complained  of 
having  been  wofuily  bored  about  the  matter  at  a  dinner-party 
— "  as  if  it  could  matter  the  value  of  a  brass  farthing  to  any 
human  being  who  was  the  author  of  '  Junius.'" 

A  greater  contrast  can   scarcely   be   imagined    than  that 


David  Hume.  263 

afforded  by  the  impetuous,  brilliant,  imaginative  Burke  and  the 
"douce,"  tranquil,  sober-minded  Scotchman  of  whom  we  are 
now  to  speak.  Both  were  great  writers  and  original  thinkers,  but 
Burke  was  fitted  for  a  life  of  action  and  ambition,  and  was  in 
his  element  while  engaged  in  the  bustle  of  political  contro- 
versy, and  in  taking  part  in  the  great  conflicts  waged  in  Par- 
liament, while  Hume,  had  the  Fates  so  willed  it,  would  have 
been  quite  content  to  pass  the  life  of  the  ideal  philosopher, 
devoting  himself  to  the  society  of  his  books  and  his  friends, 
and  letting  the  turmoil  of  the  outside  world  pass  unheeded. 
He  was  born,  the  younger  son  of  a  good  Scotch  family,  at 
Edinburgh  in  April  1711.  According  to  his  own  account, 
which  is  corroborated  by  what  we  know  otherwise,  he  passed 
through  the  ordinary  course  of  education  with  success,  and  was 
seized  very  early  with  a  passion  for  literature,  "  which  has  been 
the  ruling  passion  of  my  life,  and  the  great  source  of  my  enjoy- 
ment." With  all  his  love  of  study  and  desire  for  literary  dis- 
tinction, Hume  was  by  no  means  what  would  be  called  a  brilliant 
youth  :  he  seemed  more  likely  to  pass  his  time  in  reading  and 
in  vague  day-dreaming  than  to  rise  in  the  world.  *'Oor 
Davie's  a  fine  good-humoured  crater,"  his  mother  is  reported  to 
have  said  of  him,  "  butuncommon  wake-minded."  As, however, 
his  fortune  was  very  small,  it  was  necessary  that  he  should  exert 
himself  in  some  way  or  other  to  provide  for  his  support.  Accord- 
ingly, to  use  his  own  words,  "  My  studious  disposition,  my 
sobriety,  and  my  industry  gave  my  family  a  notion  that  the 
law  was  a  proper  profession  for  me ;  but  I  found  an  unsur- 
mountable  aversion  to  everything  but  the  pursuits  of  philo- 
sophy and  general  learning;  and  while  they  fancied  I  was 
poring  upon  Voet  and  Vinnius,  Cicero  and  Virgil  were  the 
authors  which  I  was  secretly  devouring."  Law  having  failed, 
commerce  was  next  tried,  but  it  proved  a  still  more  unsuitable 
occupation  for  the  young  philosopher,  who  in  1734,  "letting 
fortune  and  the  world  go  by,"  retired  to  France,  there  to  pro- 
secute his  studies,  resolving  to  make  a  very  rigid  frugality 
supply  his  deficiency  of  fortune.  In  France  he  resided  for 
three  years,  first  at  Rheims.  and  afterwards  at  La  Fleche,  in 


264      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

Anjou,  and  there  he  composed  his  first  work,  his  "  Treatise  of 
Human  Nature."  It  was  published  in  1738,  and,  greatly  to 
the  authors  vexation,  fell  "  still-born  from  the.  press."  This 
work  was  iollowed  in  1742  by  a  volume  of  essays  which  had 
more  success;  then  came  in  1748  the  "Inquiry  Concerning 
Human  Understanding,"  a  revised  and  much  altered  edition  of 
the  "Treatise  of  Human  Nature;"  then,  in  1752,  his  "Political 
Discourses,"  and  his  "  Inquiry  Concerning  the  Principles  of 
Morals,"  which  he  himself  considered  incomparably  the  best 
of  all  his  works.  Lastly,  to  conclude  the  list  of  his  philoso- 
phical writings,  there  appeared  in  1779,  three  years  after  his 
death,  his  "  Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion."  We  have  here 
to  do  with  Hume  as  a  man  of  letters,  not  as  a  philosopher, 
and  may  therefore  pass  over  his  philosophical  writings,  the 
sceptical  views  of  which  are  so  well  known,  with  the  remark 
that  they  are  written  in  a  style  always  perspicuous,  and  often 
rising  into  elegance. 

\\Thile  engaged  on  the  above  philosophical  works,  Hume 
improved  his  slender  fortune  by  engaging  in  more  remunera- 
tive pursuits.  He  passed  a  most  wretched  but  not  unprofit- 
able year  as  guardian  to  the  Marquis  of  Annandale,  a  partially 
idiotic,  partially  insane  young  nobleman,  and  he  was  for  two 
years  secretary  to  General  St.  Clair,  whom  he  accompanied  on 
an  expedition,  "  which  was  at  first  meant  for  Canada,  but  ended 
in  an  incursion  on  the  coast  of  France,"  and  with  whom,  in 
1747,  he  went  on  an  embassy  to  the  courts  of  Venice  and 
Turin.  "  These  two  years,"  he  writes,  "  were  almost  the  only 
interruptions  which  my  studies  have  received  during  the  course 
of  my  life.  I  passed  them  agreeably  and  in  good  company; 
and  my  appointments,  with  my  frugality,  had  made  me  reach  a 
fortune  which  I  called  independent,  though  most  of  my  friends 
were  inclined  to  smile  when  I  said  so ;  in  short,  I  was  now 
master  of  near  a  thousand  pounds." 

In  1752  Hume  was  appointed  to  succeed  Ruddiman,  the 
illustrious  Latin  scholar,  as  librarian  of  the  Advocates'  Library, 
Edinburgh.  The  salary  attached  to  the  post  was.  small,  but 
his  duties  were  not  onerous,  and  he  had  full  command  of  a 


Humes  "History  of  England''  265 

large  and  excellent  collection  of  books.  The  opportunities 
for  literary  research  thus  afforded  him  caused  him  again  to 
think  of  a  scheme  he  had  formerly  projected  of  writing  a 
History  of  England.  Till  this  time  England  had  been  sin- 
gularly destitute  of  historians  of  any  high  order  of  merit. 
Clarendon's  "  History  of  the  Rebellion,"  indeed,  is,  from  its 
grave  and  weighty  style,  a  work  of  great  literary  value ;  but  it 
scarcely  even  pretends  to  impartiality,  and  may  be  more  fitly 
designated  "Political  Memoirs"  than  a  history;  while  the 
Rymers,  the  Echards,  and  the  Cartes,  who  had  aspired  to  re- 
late the  history  of  their  country,  were  destitute  alike  of  genius, 
of  discrimination,  and  of  accurate  research.  Frightened  at  the 
notion  of  continuing  a  narrative  through  a  period  of  seventeen 
hundred  years,  Hume  commenced  with  the  accession  of  the 
House  of  Stuart,  an  epoch  when  he  thought  the  misrepresenta- 
tions of  faction  began  chiefly  to  take  place.  "I  was,"  he  goes 
on  to  say,  "I  own,  sanguine  in  my  expectations  of  the  success 
of  this  work.  I  thought  that  I  was  the  only  historian  who 
had  at  once  neglected  present  power,  interest,  and  authority, 
and  the  cry  of  popular  prejudices;  and  as  the  subject  was 
suited  to  every  capacity,  I  expected  proportional  applause. 
But  miserable  was  my  disappointment :  I  was  assailed  by  one 
cry  of  reproach,  disapprobation,  and  even  detestation  ;  English, 
Scotch,  and  Irish,  Whig  and  Tory,  churchman  ami  sectary, 
freethinker  and  religionist,  patriot  and  courtier,  united  in  their 
rage  against  the  man  who  had  presumed  to  shed  a  generous 
tear  for  the  fate  of  Charles  I.  and  the  Earl  of  Strafford."  Dr. 
Johnson  used  sometimes  to  regret  that  his  works  were  not 
enough  attacked,  as  controversy  about  them  attracted  public 
attention  and  promoted  their  sale ;  but  Hume  had  not  even 
this  consolation  to  compensate  for  the  storm  of  detraction 
with  which  his  work  was  assailed,  for  within  a  year  after  its 
publication  only  forty-five  copies  of  it  were  sold.  With  his 
usual  calm  stoicism,  he  was  not  daunted  by  the  want  of 
popular  appreciation,  but  quietly  went  on  with  his  task.  In 
1756  appeared  the  second  volume;  three  years  after  the 
"  History  of  the  Tudors"  followed  ;  and  in  1761  the  work  was 


266      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

completed  by  "he  publication  of  two  volumes  containing  an 
inadequate,  and,  even  for  the  time,  an  unscholarly  account 
of  the  early  ptriod  of  English  history.  The  work  gradually 
stole  into  popularity,  and  several  years  before  the  author's 
death  had  coine  to  be  reckoned  the  standard  History  of  Eng- 
land, a  position  which  it  maintained  till  within  comparatively 
late  years.  Nor  was  its  proud  position  undeserved.  As  an 
historian,  Hume  possessed  some  highly  estimable  qualities. 
His  style  is  lucid  and  excellent,  his  narrative  flows  on  in  a 
calm,  equable  course,  his  reflections  are  generally  judicious 
and  sometimes  profound,  and  his  sense  of  proportion  is  ad- 
mirable. Few  writers  have  excelled  him  in  the  art  of  giving 
to  each  event  its  fit  place  and  its  proper  degree  of  length. 
But  these  excellences  are  counterbalanced  by  grave  faults. 
In  common  with  all  the  historians  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
with  the  exception  of  Gibbon,  he  forgot  that  truth  was  the 
first  requisite  in  an  historian,  and  aimed  rather  to  lay  before 
his  readers  a  polished  and  philosophic  narrative  than  the 
results  of  patient  accuracy  and  original  research, — in  this 
respect  affording  a  notable  contrast  to  the  latest  school  of 
historians,  who  sometimes  in  their  anxious  care  to  avoid  the 
Charybdis  of  inaccuracy  appear  to  make  shipwreck  on  the 
Scylla  of  pedantry.  Moreover,  his  spirit  of  political  partisan- 
ship was  unworthy  of  so  great  a  philosopher.  Like  Dr.  John- 
son, he  always  took  care  "  that  the  Whig  dogs  should  not 
have  the  best  of  it."  Still,  with  all  its  defects,  his  History  is 
a  great  work;  and  if  later  writers  have  superseded  it  as  an 
historical  authority,  it  is  yet  worth  reading  as  in  many  respects 
a  model  of  style.  We  should  not  omit  to  mention  that  Hume 
was  the  first  to  mix  with  his  account  of  public  affairs  chapters 
on  the  condition  of  the  people  and  on  the  state  of  literature. 

From  his  tranquil,  studious  life  in  Edinburgh,  Hume  was, 
in  1763,  drawn  by  an  invitation  from  Lord  Hertford  to  attend 
him  on  his  embassy  to  Paris.  He  was  soon  appointed  secre- 
tary to  the  embassy,  and  passed  three  years  very  pleasantly 
in  the  glitteiing  capital,  where  his  fame  had  preceded  him. 
"Le  bon  David,"  as  he  was  fondly  called,  found  himself 


Humes  Character.  267 

surrounded  by  an  admiring  crowd  of  male  and  female  adorers, 
who  were  never  tired  of  admiring  the  stout  old  philosopher. 
On  his  return  from  Paris,  he  was  appointed,  in  1767,  Under 
Secretary  of  State  for  the  Northern  department,  a  position 
which  he  retained  for  two  years.  In  1769  he  returned  to 
Edinburgh,  having  amassed  a  fortune  sufficient  to  yield  him 
an  annual  revenue  of  over  ^1000.  There  he  passed  the  re- 
maining six  years  of  his  life,  engaged  in  his  favourite  studies, 
and  exercising  a  bounteous  hospitality  to  his  large  circle  of 
friends.  On  August  25,  1776,  he  died  as  he  had  lived,  with 
tranquillity  and  cheerfulness. 

Hume's  personal  appearance  was  not  prepossessing.  Lord 
Charlemont,  describing  him  during  his  residence  at  Turin, 
says :  "  The  powers  of  physiognomy  were  baffled  by  his 
countenance ;  neither  could  the  most  skilful  pretend  to  dis- 
cover the  smallest  traces  of  the  faculties  of  his  mind  in  the 
unmeaning  features  of  his  visage.  His  face  was  broad  and 
fat,  his  mouth  wide,  and  without  any  other  expression  than 
that  of  imbecility,  his  eyes  vacant  and  spiritless,  and  the 
corpulence  of  his  whole  person  was  far  better  fitted  to  com- 
municate the  idea  of  a  turtle-eating  alderman  than  of  a  refined 
philosopher."  Of  his  character  he  has  himself,  in  the  brief 
narrative  which  he  calls  "  My  Own  Life,"  given  a  sufficiently 
correct  description.  He  was,  he  says,  "a  man  of  mild  dis- 
position, of  command  of  temper,  of  an  open,  social,  and 
cheerful  humour,  capable  of  attachment,  but  little  susceptible 
of  enmity,  and  of  great  moderation  in  all  my  passions.  Even 
my  love  of  fame,  my  ruling  passion,  never  soured  my  temper, 
notwithstanding  my  frequent  disappointments." 

There  can  be  no  better  evidence  of  Hume's  amiability  of 
disposition  and  freedom  from  petty  jealousy  than  the  friendly 
terms  on  which  he  lived  with  a  large  circle  of  literary  acquaint- 
ances, and  the  heartfelt  applause  which  he  bestowed  upon 
Robertson  and  Gibbon,  his  rivals  in  the  field  of  historical 
composition.  When  Robertson's  "History  of  Scotland" 
appeared,  he  was  one  of  the  loudest  in  its  commendation, 
declaring  to  Robertson  (with,  as  his  whole  conduct  showed. 


268      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

perfect  truth)  that  he  had  not  for  a  long  time  had  a  more 
sensible  pleasure  than  the  good  reception  of  Robertson's 
History  had  given  him.  Robertson  is  one  of  the  few  instances 
of  an  author's  being  raised  from  obscurity  to  great  and  wide- 
spread lame  by  the  publication  of  his  first  work.  He  was 
born  in  1721,  the  son  of  an  Edinburgh  clergyman,  and  after 
passing  through  the  usual  course  in  Arts  and  Divinity,  was 
appointed  in  1743  minister  of  Gladsmuir,  a  small  parish  in 
East  Lothian.  There  his  duties  were  light  and  his  natural 
love  of  study  found  full  scope,  but,  unlike  most  of  those 
who  are  fond  of  reading,  he  was  in  no  hurry  to  appear  as 
an  author.  His  "  History  of  Scotland  "  which  was  begun  in 
1752,  did  not  appear  till  1759,  and  previous  to  that  time  his 
only  publications  were  a  sermon,  and  one  or  two  insignificant 
articles  which  appeared  in  the  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  a  short- 
lived periodical  supported  by  the  leading  Northern  literati 
of  the  time,  such  as  Adam  Smith,  Blair,  Jardine,  Wedder- 
burn,  &c.  His  History,  unlike  Hume's,  was  received  imme- 
diately on  its  publication  with  loud  and  general  applause,  and 
the  whole  edition  was  exhausted  in  less  than  a  month.  One 
reason  why  it  was  so  much  more  successful  than  Hume's 
doubtless  was  because  it  did  not  to  such  a  degree  run  counter 
to  popular  prejudices.  Robertson  is  compelled  to  admit 
Mary's  guilt,  but  he  does  it  with  reluctance,  and  endeavours 
to  excite  in  the  breast  of  the  reader  so  strong  a  feeling  of  pity 
for  her  that  none  but  the  most  fanatical  Jacobite  could  take 
great  offence  at  anything  he  says. 

A  few  months  before  the  publication  of  his  "  History," 
Robenson  removed  to  Edinburgh,  having  been  appointed 
minister  of  Old  Greyfriars'.  Honours  were  soon  thickly 
bestowed  on  him.  In  1759  he  was  appointed  one  of  the 
chaplains-royal,  and  in  1762  he  was  elevated  to  the  dignity 
or  Principal  of  the  University.  Despite  the  studious  solitude 
in  which  the  early  part  of  his  life  had  been  spent,  Robertson 
was  a  man  eminently  adapted  for  public  life;  an  excellent 
speaker,  and  a  cool  and  cautious  debater.  He  soon  became 
one  of  the  leaders  of  the  General  Assembly,  advocating  the 


William  Robertson.  269 

claims  of  the  "  moderate  "  or  anti-evangelical  party,  and  made 
his  tact  and  ability  so  widely  felt,  that  it  was  a  common  saying 
that  he  would  have  been  better  employed  in  acting  history  than 
in  writing  it.  Although  his  first  work  had  been  so  success- 
ful, he  was  in  no  hurry  to  appear  again  as  an  author.  It  was 
rot  till  1769,  ten  years  after  his  '•  History  of  Scotland,"  that 
his  "  History  of  Charles  V.,"  which  is  generally  regarded  as 
his  finest  work,  was  published.  How  much  his  fame  had 
advanced  within  these  ten  years  is  clearly  shown  by  the  fact 
that  while  for  his  "  History  of  Scotland,"  by  which  the  book- 
sellers made  about  ^"6000,  he  received  only  ;£6oo,  he  sold 
the  copyright  of  "  Charles  V."  for  ^"4500. *  In  1777  appeared 
his  "  History  of  America."  Robertson's  last  work  was  a  "  Dis- 
quisition on  Ancient  India,"  which  was  published  in  1791,  about 
two  years  before  his  death,  which  occurred  in  1793.  On  the 
whole,  it  can  scarcely  be  said  that  the  great  contemporary  fame 
of  Robertson  has  been  justified  by  the  verdict  of  posterity. 
His  writings,  it  is  true,  belong  to  the  category  of  standard 
works,  but  they  are  now  pretty  generally  consigned  to  the  dreary 
limbo  of  "books  which  no  gentleman's  library  can  be  complete 
without" — books  of  which  everybody  is  supposed  to  know 
something,  but  which,  in  reality,  very  few  ever  read.  Robertson 
was  one  of  the  writers  who  steadfastly  kept  up  the  so-called 
dignity  of  history,  thinking  it  beneath  him  ever  to  descend 
from  his  stilts,  and  edify  the  reader  with  any  of  those  little 
anecdotes  of  fashion  and  character,  or  details  of  domestic  life, 
which  are  so  often  much  more  instructive  than  pages  of  pompous 
dissertation.  Of  his  style,  which  was  elaborated  with  scrupulous 
care,  Johnson  once  truly  observed  that  it  had  the  same  fault 
as  his  own,  "  too  big  words  and  too  many  of  them."  It  is, 
however,  always  sonorous  and  dignified,  and  sometimes,  as 
in  the  account  of  Mary's  execution,  rises  into  very  impressive 
eloquence. 

We  now  come  to  the  last  and  by  far  the  greatest  of  the 

1  Hume  appears  to  have  received  ^700  a  volume  for  his  History  — that 
is, £4200  for  the  entire  work.  Gibbon  got  /8ooo  for  the  "Decline  and 
Fall*1 


2  /o      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

famous  trio  of  historians  who  adorned  the  eighteenth  century, 
Edward  Gibbon,  whose  "  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire "  towers  above  all  the  other  historical  compositions  of  the 
period,  like  a  great  cathedral  dominating  a  city.  Alone  of  the 
histories  of  that  time,  it  has  sustained  uninjured  the  fierce  light 
of  modern  research,  and  it  is  very  unlikely  that  it  will  ever 
now  be  dislodged  from  the  lofty  pedestal  which  it  occupies  by 
any  later  production.  In  his  "Autobiography" — to  any  one 
with  a  taste  for  literature  one  of  the  most  fascinating  and  stimu- 
lating compositions  in  the  language — Gibbon  has  recorded  the 
principal  events  of  his  life  with  something  of  the  same  pomp 
and  swell  of  style  as  he  employed  in  describing  the  decline 
and  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  He  was  born  at  Putney  in  1 737, 
the  son  of  a  wealthy  gentleman,  who  had  estates  in  Surrey 
and  Hampshire.  His  mother,  who  died  while  he  was  young, 
was,  from  various  causes,  incapacitated  from  paying  much 
attention  to  him,  but  the  maternal  office  was  discharged  with 
the  most  tender  assiduity  by  his  aunt,  Mrs.  Catherine  Porten, 
to  whom  he  felt  a  lifelong  gratitude.  So  frail  and  sickly  was 
he  in  his  early  years,  that  it  was  scarcely  anticipated  that  he 
would  ever  reach  maturity,  and  he  may  be  described  as  almost 
entirely  self-educated,  for  his  ill-health  incapacitated  him  from 
learning  much  at  the  various  schools  to  which  he  was  sent ; 
and  if  his  desire  for  knowledge  had  not  been  unusually  strong, 
it  is  probable  that  he  would  have  become  one  of  those  igno- 
rant, illiterate  squires  then  so  common.  To  the  kind  lessons 
of  his  aunt  he  ascribed  his  early  and  invincible  love  of 
reading,  "which  I  would  not  exchange  for  the  treasures  of 
India."  He  read  variously  and  widely,  studying  all  the  his- 
torical books  that  fell  in  his  way,  and  acquiring  a  knowledge, 
wonderful  for  one  so  young,  of  ancient  geography  and  chro- 
nology. "  In  my  childish  balance,"  he  says,  "  I  presumed  to 
weigh  the  systems  of  Scaliger  and  Petavius,  of  Marsham  and 
Newton,  which  I  could  seldom  study  in  the  originals;  and 
my  sleep  has  been  disturbed  by  the  difficulty  of  reconciling 
the  Septuagint  with  the  Hebrew  computation."  When,  ere  he 
had  reached  the  fifteenth  year  of  his  age,  he  was  entered  at 


Edward  Gibbon.  2  7 1 

Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  he  possessed  "  a  stock  of  erudition 
which  might  have  puzzled  a  doctor,  and  a  degree  of  ignorance 
of  which  a  schoolboy  would  have  been  ashamed."  In  other 
words,  his  miscellaneous  and  historical  knowledge  was  great : 
his  acquaintance  with  Latin  more  extensive  than  accurate  ; 
while  of  Greek  he  scarcely  knew  even  the  elements. 

In  one  of  the  most  eloquent  and  vindictive  passages  in  the 
"  Autobiography,"  he  has  told  us  how  small  was  his  debt  to 
Oxford,  the  presiding  spirits  of  which,  "  steeped  in  port  and  pre- 
judices," seem  then  to  have  very  slenderly  recognised  their  duty 
to  the  young  men  committed  to  their  charge.  "  To  the  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford,"  he  says,  "/  acknowledge  no  obligation,  and 
she  will  as  cheerfully  renounce  me  for  a  son  as  I  am  willing 
to  disclaim  her  for  a  mother.  I  spent  fourteen  months  at 
Magdalen  College  :  they  proved  the  fourteen  months  the  most 
idle  and  unprofitable  of  my  whole  life,  the  reader  will  pro- 
nounce between  the  school  and  the  scholar ;  but  I  cannot 
affect  to  believe  that  nature  had  disqualified  me  for  all 
literary  pursuits."  The  cause  of  his  quitting  Oxford  so  soon 
forms  one  of  the  few  romantic  episodes  of  Gibbon's  life.  In 
the  course  of  his  omnivorous  reading  he  came  across  two 
treatises  of  Bossuet,  and  was  by  them  converted  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  faith.  The  young  heretic,  who  for  a  time 
clung  to  the  opinions  he  had  embraced  with  the  tenacity  of  a 
martyr,  was  compelled  to  withdraw  from  Oxford,  and  soon 
after  was  placed  by  his  indignant  father  under  the  care  of  M. 
Pavilliard,  a  worthy  and  learned  Protestant  clergyman,  who 
lived  at  Lausanne,  in  Switzerland.  There  he  remained  for 
nearly  five  years,  and  was  induced,  after  many  arguments  with 
his  tutor,  to  renounce  the  Catholic  faith.  These  five  years 
were  for  the  most  part  spent  in  a  course  of  study  so  wide  and 
so  severe  as  to  be  almost  without  parallel.  In  them  Gibbon 
read  all  the  Latin  authors  of  importance,  not  slightly  and 
hastily,  but  critically  and  with  elaborate  commentaries ;  he 
acquired  such  a  knowledge  of  French,  that  it  became  more 
familiar  to  him  than  his  mother  tongue ;  and  he  laid  a  solid 
foundation  wherewith  to  prosecute  the  study  of  Greek  literature. 


272      Dr.  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

In  1758,  Gibbon,  long  since  reconciled  to  his  father, 
returned  to  England,  where  he  resided  principally  at  his 
father's  house  at  Buriton,  Hampshire,  carrying  on,  though  not 
perhaps  in  so  thoroughgoing  a  fashion,  the  studies  he  had 
begun  in  Switzerland.  In  1761  he  published  his  first  work, 
an  essay  on  "  The  Study  of  Literature,"  written  in  French. 
It  is  a  series  of  very  loosely  connected  observations,  often 
true  and  ingenious  enough  ;  and  it  attracted  considerable  atten- 
tion abroad,  although  it  was  almost  entirely  neglected  at  home. 
Shortly  before  its  publication,  Gibbon  joined  the  Hampshire 
Militia,  where  he  served  for  two  years  and  a  half,  thus  acquir- 
ing, at  the  cost  of  much  inconvenience  and  interruption  to  his 
studies,  a  knowledge  of  military  tactics  which  stood  him  in 
good  stead  when  he  came  to  write  his  History.  In  1764,  having 
qualified  himself  for  his  tour  by  a  most  laborious  course  of 
study  of  Roman  antiquities  and  ancient  geography,  he  visited 
Italy,  perhaps,  it  has  been  justly  remarked,  better  furnished 
for  his  expedition  than  any  traveller  ever  was.  It  was  during 
this  visit  that  he  formed  the  project  of  writing  the  history  01 
the  decline  and  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Previous  to  this 
time  he  had  meditated  various  historical  compositions,  but  for 
one  reason  or  another  they  were  all  abandoned.  "  It  was 
at  Rome,"  he  tells  us,  "on  the  i5th  of  October  1764,  as  I 
sat  musing  amidst  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol,  while  the  bare- 
footed friars  were  singing  vespers  in  the  Temple  of  Jupiter, 
that  the  idea  of  writing  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  city  first 
started  to  my  mind."  The  actual  composition  of  the  work, 
however,  was  not  begun  till  1772,  two  years  after  his  father's 
death,  which  left  him  in  possession  of  a  moderate  fortune — 
about  ;£Soo  a  year,  it  would  seem.  When  he  began  to  write 
the  History,  he  found  it  very  difficult  to  "hit  the  middle  tone 
between  a  dull  chronicle  and  a  rhetorical  declamation,"  but 
with  practice  facility  soon  came,  and  the  vast  proportion  of 
the  work  was  printed  from  the  first  draft.  The  first  volume 
appeared  in  1776,  a  year  memorable  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture. In  it  Hume  died  ;  and  Campbell's  "  Philosophy  of 
Rhetoric,"  still  one  of  the  best  treatises  on  the  subject,  and 


Gibbons  Characteristics.  273 

Adam  Smith's  "  Wealth  of  Nations,"  which  first  placed  the 
study  of  political  economy  on  a  firm  basis,  were  published. 
However  high  Gibbon's  hopes  may  have  been,  the  success 
of  the  first  volume  must  have  surpassed  them.  It  created  a 
furore  comparable  to  that  which  attended  the  publication 
of  Macaulay's  "  History  of  England  ; "  three  editions  were 
speedily  exhausted,  and  the  book  was  to  be  found  not  only 
on  the  table  of  students,  but  in  the  hands  of  ladies  and  of  men 
of  fashion.  It  was  warmly  welcomed  by  Hume  and  Robert- 
son, and  met  with  the  common  penalty  of  success  by  being 
vigorously  attacked  by  a  host  of  adversaries.  In  1781  the 
second  and  third  volumes  were  published,  and  in  1787  the 
work  was  completed.  "  I  have  presumed,"  he  writes  in  his 
"Autobiography,"  "to  mark  the  moment  of  conception  :  I 
shall  now  commemorate  the  hour  of  my  final  deliverance.  It 
was  on  the  day,  or  rather  night  of  the  27th  of  June  1787, 
between  the  hours  of  eleven  and  twelve,  that  I  wrote  the  last 
lines  of  the  last  page,  in  a  summer-house  at  my  garden  [at 
Lausanne].  After  laying  down  my  pen,  I  took  several  turns 
in  a  berceau,  or  covered  walk  of  acacias,  which  commands  a 
prospect  of  the  country,  the  lake,  and  the  mountains.  The 
air  was  temperate,  the  sky  was  serene,  and  the  silver  orb  of 
the  moon  was  reflected  from  the  waters,  and  all  nature  was 
silent.  I  will  not  dissemble  the  first  emotions  of  joy  on  the 
recovery  of  my  freedom,  and,  perhaps,  the  establishment  of 
my  fame.  But  my  pride  was  soon  humbled,  and  a  sober 
melancholy  spread  over  my  mind,  by  the  idea  that  I  had  taken 
an  everlasting  leave  of  an  old  and  agreeable  companion,  and 
that  whatsoever  might  be  the  future  fate  of  my  History,  the  life 
of  the  historian  must  be  short  and  precarious."  The  publica- 
tion of  the  last  three  volumes  of  the  "  History  "  was  deferred 
till  April  27,  1788,  so  as  to  coincide  with  his  fifty-first  birthday. 
Like  Macaulay,  to  whose  character  Gibbon's  in  several  re- 
spects bore  a  considerable  resemblance,  Gibbon  found  the 
composition  of  his  "  History  "  less  of  a  toil  than  of  a  pleasure. 
He  was  a  thorough  scholar,  finding  in  study  its  own  exceeding 
great  reward,  and  never  happier  than  when  at  his  desk  or  en- 


274      ^r-  Johnson  and  his  Contemporaries. 

gaged  in  laborious  researches.  In  1774  he  was,  by  the  in- 
terest of  Lord  Eliot,  returned  to  Parliament,  where  he  sat  for 
eight  sessions,  steadily  supporting  the  ministry  of  Lord  North; 
for,  like  many  who  have  held  advanced  opinions  upon  other 
subjects,  Gibbon  was  strongly  conservative  in  politics.  When 
the  French  Revolution  broke  out  he  was  panic-stricken  by 
it  to  an  extent  altogether  unworthy  of  his  philosophical  mind. 
Gibbon  never  made  any  attempt  to  win  oratorical  laurels.  The 
great  speakers,  he  said,  filled  him  with  despair ;  the  bad  ones 
with  terror;  and  he  therefore  preferred  the  safe  though  in- 
glorious position  of  a  silent  member  to  risking  the  con- 
sequences of  a  failure. 

His  early  residence  abroad  gave  Gibbon  a  fondness  for 
Continental  life;  and  after  1783  most  of  his  time  was  passed 
at  Lausanne,  where  the  "  Hotel  Gibbon "  still  keeps  his 
memory  alive.  There  he  had  many  friends  ;  and  as  his  fortune 
was  superior  to  that  of  most  of  those  around  him,  he  occupied 
a  higher  relative  social  position  than  he  could  have  done  in 
England.  In  1793  he  was  recalled  to  his  native  country  by 
the  death  of  the  wife  of  his  dear  friend,  Lord  Sheffield.  His  own 
death  followed  on  i6th  January  1794.  Gibbon  was  a  man  of 
small  stature,  very  corpulent  in  his  latter  years,  and  always  very 
neatly  dressed.  He  had  a  disproportionately  large  head,  and 
"his  mouth,"  writes  Colman,  "melifluous  as  Plato's,  was  a 
round  hole  nearly  in  the  centre  of  his  visage."  His  moral 
character  seems  to  have  been  stainless.  He  was  a  dutiful  son, 
and  a  tender  and  generous  friend.  "  His  honourable  and 
amiable  disposition,"  writes  Brougham,  "his  kind  and  even 
temper,  was  praised  by  all." 

Carlyle,  in  a  conversation  with  Emerson,  once  described  the 
"  Decline  and  Fall "  as  "  the  splendid  bridge  from  the  old 
world  to  the  ne\v."  It  comprises  the  history  of  the  world  for 
nearly  thirteen  centuries,  from  the  reign  of  the  Antonines  to 
the  taking  of  Constantinople  by  the  Turks.  When  we  con- 
sider the  vastness  and  complexity  of  the  subject,  Gibbon's 
learning  and  power  of  arrangement  alike  inspire  us  with  wonder. 
Mistakes  there  are,  doubtless,  but  they  are  wonderfully  few 


Gibbons  Attitude  to  Christianity.         275 

and  insignificant.  The  general  accuracy  is  such,  that  Niebuhr, 
the  great  German  historian,  declared  that  the  more  a  man 
knew,  the  more  he  would  hesitate  to  contradict  Gibbon.  The 
style  is  ornate  and  sarcastic ;  often  too  allusive  and  artificial, 
yet  always  having  a  certain  harmony  with  the  lofty  theme. 
The  great  fault  of  the  work  arises  from  Gibbon's  bias  against 
Christianity.  It  appears  clear  that  when  he  renounced 
Catholicism,  he  at  the  same  time  abandoned  all  religious 
belief;  and  when  he  refers  to  Christianity,  it  is  generally  with 
a  covert  sneer.  The  I5th  and  i6th  chapters  of  his  "  History," 
giving  an  account  of  the  early  progress  and  extension  of 
Christianity,  have  been  particularly  objected  to,  and  called 
forth  a  crowd  of  antagonists,  who  were,  however,  quite  incap- 
able of  coping  with  so  great  an  adversary.  Gibbon  maintained 
a  disdainful  silence  till  his  veracity  was  attacked  by  the  charge 
of  false  quotations,  when  he  published  his  "  Vindication  "  of  the 
i5th  and  i6th  chapters  of  his  "History."  "This  single  dis- 
charge," writes  Dean  Milman,  "from  the  ponderous  artillery 
of  learning  and  sarcasm,  laid  prostrate  the  whole  disorderly 
squadrons  of  rash  and  feeble  volunteers  who  filled  the  ranks  of 
his  enemie?,  while  the  more  distinguished  theological  writers 
of  the  country  stood  aloof."  It  is  not  specific  statements,  but 
the  general  character  and  temper  of  the  references  to  Christi- 
anity that  are  liable  to  attack.* 

*  "I  picked  up  \Yhitaker's  criticism  on  Gibbon,"  writes  Macaulay  in  his 
Diary  (gth  October  1858).  "Pointless  spite,  with  here  and  there  a  just 
remark.  It  would  be  strange  if  in  so  large  a  work  as  Gibbon's  there  were 
nothing  open  to  just  remark.  How  utterly  all  the  attacks  on  his  '  History ' 
are  forgotten  !  this  of  Whitaker,  Randolph's,  Chelsum's,  Dnvies's,  that 
stupid  beast  Joseph  Milner's,  even  Watson's.  And  still  the  book,  with  all 
its  great  faults  of  substance  and  style,  retains,  and  will  retain,  its  place  in 
our  literature  ;  and  this  though  it  is  offensive  to  the  religious  feeling  of  the 
country,  and  really  most  unfair  where  religion  is  concerned." 


VIII. 


THE  NEW  ERA  IN  POETRY. 

Percy's  "  Reliqnes  ;  "  IVar'oiis  "  History  of  English  Poetry;"1  Ossian, 
Chattcrlon,  Shenstone,  B  eat  tie  ;  Blake;  Coivper  ;  Burns;  Crabbe  ; 
Wordsworth,  CoLviage,  Soutkey  ;  Byron,  Skclley,  Keats  ;  Kogers, 
)  Campbdl,  Moore. 


[HE  influence  of  Pope  over  the  poets  of  his  own  age 
and  those  who  came  after  him  was  far-reaching  and 
prolonged,  but  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  it  was 
universal.  Even  during  his  lifetime  poets  arose 
who  were  not  animated  by  the  same  spirit,  to  whom  "the 
town"  and  its  intellectual  and  moral  atmosphere  presented 
few  attractions,  and  whose  verse,  even  while  hampered  by 
artificial  shackles  and  disfigured  by  poetic  commonplaces  and 
pseudo-classicalism,  deals  with  an  altogether  different  range  of 
subjects  from  his,  and  has  an  altogether  different  inner  mean- 
ing and  substance.  This  is  true  of  the  poetry  of  Thomson, 
of  Collins,  of  Gray,  who  have  been  mentioned  in  a  previous 
chapter,  and  it  is  also  true  of  the  poetry  of  Allan  Ramsay,  not 
so  great  as  any  of  these  three,  but  still  a  very  remarkable 
poetic  phenomenon,  considering  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  A 
Scotchman,  like  Thomson,  he  stood  alone,  or  almost  alone, 
among  the  poets  who  flourished  from  1680  to  1730,  in  having 
a  genuine  love  for  and  pleasure  in  natural  scenery.  His  pas- 
toral drama,  "The  Gentle  Shepherd,"  published  in  1725,  is, 
with  its  freshness  and  simplicity  of  style,  and  its  picturesque 
and  charming  delineations  of  country  life,  an  almost  startling 


The  Poetical  Renascence.  277 

contrast  to  the  frigid  and  unnatural  pastoral  poetry  of  Pope 
and  his  followers.  But  what  perhaps  tended  as  much  as  any 
single  cause  to  overthrow  Pope's  influence,  and  to  bring  the 
couplet  metre  of  which  he  was  such  a  master  into  disgrace  and 
almost  total  desuetude,  was  the  crowd  of  imitators  who  arose 
during  his  lifetime  and  after  his  death.  As  Cowper  says  in  his 
"  Table  Talk,"  Pope  had— 

"  Made  poetry  a  mere  mechanic  art, 
And  every  warbler  had  his  tune  by  heart.'* 

When  smoothly  turned  and  deftly  rhymed  couplets  were  used 
by  every  poetaster  to  give  utterance  to  empty  nothings,  people 
began  to  get  tired  of  that  form  of  verse.  But  it  lingered  long 
and  died  hard.  It  was  employed  by  Johnson,  by  Goldsmith, 
by  Cowper,  by  Campbell,  not  to  mention  others ;  and  its  vital- 
ity clearly  shows  how  popular  it  was  at  one  time,  and  how  well 
adapted  it  is  for  dealing  with  a  certain  class  of  subjects. 

The  decay  of  Pope's  favourite  metre,  however,  is  but  a 
secondary  matter :  much  more  important  is  the  reaction  which, 
during  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, set  in  against  the  whole  tone  and  character  of  the  artificial 
school  of  poetry.  Men  began  to  turn  with  eager  eyes  to  our 
older  poets,  too  long  neglected ;  ballads,  which  in  Queen' 
Anne's  time  would  have  incurred  almost  universal  ridicule, 
were  sought  out  and  fondly  pondered  over ;  the  great  book  of 
nature  was  studied  with  impassioned  zeal ;  and  poets,  tired 
of  conventionality,  begun  to  aspire  to  portray  the  deeper 
emotions  and  feelings  of  men.  As  time  went  on,  the  move- 
ment became  more  and  more  powerful ;  one  great  poet  after 
another  arose,  different  in  many  ways,  it  may  be,  from  his 
brother  bards,  but  alike  them  in  singing  from  a  natural  im- 
pulse, and  alike  them  in  having  little  or  nothing  in  common 
with  the  preceding  generation  of  poets.  Never,  save  in  the 
Elizabethan  era,  was  there  such  a  gorgeous  outburst  of  song  as 
during  the  first  thirty  years  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The 
causes  of  the  new  movement  were  various;  but  in  great  mea- 
sure it  must  be  attributed  to  the  vast  upheaval  of  men's  minds, 


278  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

which  took  place  not  in  this  country  only,  but  in  France  and 
Germany,  about  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution.  During 
that  stirring  epoch,  when  old  creeds  and  old  modes  of  govern- 
ment were  worn  loosely  for  want  of  a  better  covering,  a  revo- 
lutionary spirit  was  abroad,  not  in  poetry  only,  but  in  politics, 
in  philosophy,  in  science,  and  in  all  forms  of  literary  art.  No 
doubt  Mr.  Palgrave  is  right  in  thinking  that  the  French  Re- 
volution was  only  one  result,  and  in  itself  by  no  means  the 
most  important,  of  that  far  wider  and  far  greater  spirit  which, 
through  inquiry  and  doubt,  through  pain  and  triumph,  sweeps 
mankind  round  the  circles  of  its  greater  development.1  But 
the  French  Revolution  itself,  attracting  the  profound  attention, 
and,  in  its  earlier  stages,  the  fond  sympathy,  of  all  those  aspir- 
ing young  souls  who,  tired  of  effete  and  outworn  formulas, 
were  looking  eagerly  forward  to  the  dawn  of  a  better  day,  was 
unquestionably  an  important  factor  in  the  new  literary  renas- 
cence which  produced  such  great  results. 

Of  the  general  characteristics  of  the  brilliant  band  of  poets 
whom  we  shall  have  to  deal  with  in  this  chapter,  no  better 
summary  could  be  furnished  than  that  given  by  Mr.  Palgrave. 
They  "  carried  to  further  perfection  the  later  tendencies  of  the 
century  preceding  in  simplicity  of  narrative,  reverence  for 
human  passion  and  character  in  every  sphere,  and  impassioned 
love  of  nature  :  whilst  maintaining,  on  the  whole,  the  advances 
in  art  made  since  the  Restoration,  they  renewed  the  half-for- 
gotten melody  and  depth  of  tone  which  marked  the  best 
Elizabethan  writers ;  lastly,  to  what  was  thus  inherited  they 
added  a  richness  in  language  and  a  variety  in  metre,  a  force 
and  fire  in  narrative,  a  tenderness  and  bloom  in  feeling,  an 
insight  into  the  finer  passages  of  the  soul,  and  the  inner  mean- 
ings of  the  landscape,  a  larger  and  wiser  humanity,  hitherto 
hardly  attained,  and  perhaps  unattainable  even  by  predeces- 
sors of  not  inferior  individual  genius."  But  before  proceeding 
to  the  discussion  of  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  their  com- 
peers, we  must  go  back  to  the  more  prominent  sources  of  the 
magnificent  stream  of  poetry  whose  course  it  is  so  pleasant 
1  "Golden  Treasury,"  p.  320. 


"  Ossian?  279 

and  inspiring  to  trace.  Only  a  few  of  the  more  significant 
can  be  mentioned  here.  Bishop  Percy,  by  the  publication 
in  1765  of  his  "  Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry,"  revealed 
to  many,  to  whom  they  had  hitherto  been  unknown,  the  wealth 
of  true  poetry,  of  free,  wild,  natural  feeling,  which  lay  in  our 
old  ballads.  The  semi-apologetic  tone  of  his  preface  shows 
how  such  things  were  generally  regarded  by  the  cultured 
society  of  his  day.  "  In  a  polished  age  like  the  present,"  he 
says,  "  I  am  sensible  that  many  of  these  reliques  of  antiquity 
will  require  great  allowances  to  be  made  for  them.  .  .  .  The 
editor  hopes  he  need  not  be  ashamed  of  having  bestowed  some 
of  his  idle  hours  on  the  ancient  literature  of  our  own  country, 
or  in  regaining  from  oblivion  some  pieces  (though  but  the 
amusements  of  our  ancestors)  which  tend  to  place  in  a  strik- 
ing light  their  taste,  genius,  sentiments,  or  manners."  Thomas 
Warton's  "  History  of  English  Poetry"  (1774-1778),  which  is 
still,  despite  its  many  inaccuracies,  a  useful  and  entertaining 
work,  did  good  service  by  attracting  the  attention  of  cultured 
people  to  our  old  poets,  which  then,  in  most  cases,  if  known 
at  all,  were  only  known  at  second  hand.  The  same  author's 
elaborate  essay  on  the  "Faerie  Queen  "  answered  a  similar  pur- 
pose. More  important,  however,  than  prose  works,  though 
these  were  largely  efficacious  in  educating  the  public  taste, 
were  the  poems  which  heralded  the  coming  era.  Of  these, 
"Ossian,"  published  in  1762,  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable. 
Whether  the  work  of  James  Macpherson,  or  whether  translated 
from  ancient  Gaelic  manuscripts— a  question  which  has  led 
to  discussions  as  eager,  as  interminable,  and  nearly  as  profit- 
less, as  those  about  the  authorship  of  the  letters  of  "  Junius," 
"  Ossian  "  may  almost  be  called  an  epoch-making  poem.  It 
attracted  profound  attention  both  in  this  country  and  abroad, 
and  the  work,  which  has  been  admired  by  critics  so  keen- 
sighted  and  able  as  Goethe  and  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  deserved 
better  treatment  at  the  hands  of  Macaulay  than  to  be  spoken 
of  with  ill-judging  and  unintelligent  contempt.  Descriptions 
of  Nature  in  her  wildest  and  stormiest  aspects,  as  seen  beneath 
a  lowering  and  tempest-tossed  sky,  in  the  most  barren  and 


280  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

desolate  mountain  solitudes,  afforded  quite  a  new  sensation  to 
readers  of  the  Georgian  era.  Goethe,  in  the  thirteenth  book 
of  his  "  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit,"  while  recording  the  state  of 
mind  which  led  him  to  the  composition  of  "  Werther,"  and 
which,  being  generally  prevalent,  brought  about  the  great 
enthusiasm  with  which  that  book  was  received,  says,  speaking 
of  the  fondness  for  gloomy  literature  and  the  feeling  of 
melancholy  dissatisfaction  which  then  pervaded  many  youthful 
minds  :  "  And  that  to  all  this  melancholy  a  perfectly  suitable 
locality  might  not  be  wanting,  Ossian  had  charmed  us  even  to 
the  Ultima  Thule,  where  on  a  grey,  boundless  heath,  wander- 
ing among  prominent  moss-covered  gravestones,  we  saw  the 
grass  around  us  moved  by  an  awful  wind,  and  a  heavily 
clouded  sky  above  us.  It  was  not  till  moonlight  that  the  Cale- 
donian night  became  day;  departed  heroes,  faded  maidens, 
floated  around  us,  until  at  last  we  really  thought  we  saw  the 
spirit  of  Lodo  in  his  fearful  form."  Something  of  the  spirit  of 
"Ossian"  animates  the  pseudo-antique  "Mediaeval  Romances" 
(1768)  of  Thomas  Chatterton — 

"The  marvellous  boy, 
The  sleepless  soul  that  perished  in  his  pride," — 

the  story  of  whose  stormy  and  ill-regulated  life  and  tragic 
death  by  suicide,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  is  one  of  the  most 
touching  and  melancholy  pages  of  literary  history.  How 
powerfully  the  tide  was  turning  in  the  direction  of  our  older 
literature  is  clearly  proved  by  the  fact  that  in  no  age  has  the 
imitation  of  Spenser  been  more  common  than  during  the 
eighteenth  century.1  The  "Schoolmistress"  (1742),  incom- 
parably the  finest  poem  of  William  Shenstone,  and  the  "  Min- 
strel "  (1774)  of  James  Beattie,  at  one  time  Professor  of  Moral 
Philosophy  at  Aberdeen,  are  both  written  in  the  Spenserian 
stanza.  Beattie  was  a  genuine  poet,  though  not  a  very  great 
one,  and  his  descriptions  of  natural  scenery  and  of  the  more 
delicate  human  emotions  are  drawn  with  loving  sympathy  and 

1  This  fact  is  pointed  out  in  an  able  and  instructive  article  on  "  English 
Poetry  from  Dryden  to  Cowper  "  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  July  1862. 


William  Blake.  281 

insight.  In  his  own  time  he  was  more  celebrated  as  the 
author  of  the  "Essay  on  Truth"  (a  reply  to  the  philosophical 
speculations  of  Hume  regarding  miracles)  than  as  the  writer 
of  the  "  Minstrel " — a  curious  instance  of  how  incorrect  con- 
temporary judgments  may  be.  The  "  Essay  on  Truth,"  though 
extravagantly  praised  by  Dr.  Johnson  and  many  other  cele- 
brated men  of  the  time,  and  read  with  great  admiration  by  that 
worthy  monarch,  George  III.,  who  bestowed  a  pension  on  its 
orthodox  author,  has  long  since  taken  its  due  place  as  a  weak 
and  insufficient  handling  of  an  important  and  difficult  theme ; 
while  the  "Minstrel"  still  retains  its  far  from  unimportant 
plact  in  the  history  of  English  poetry. 

Another  poet,  of  a  much  more  unique  genius  than  Beattie, 
was  William  Blake  (1757-1828),  who  occupies  a  place  by  him- 
self among  the  forerunners  of  the  new  era.  Charles  Lamb 
rightly  regarded  him  as  "  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  per- 
sonages of  the  age,"  for  both  as  poet  and  painter  his  work 
was  altogether  original.  His  "  Poetical  Sketches,"  published  in 
1777,  bear  trace  of  the  reviving  influence  of  the  Elizabethan 
poets;  and  the  union  of  simplicity  of  language  with  truly 
poetical  thoughts  upon  ordinary  subjects  in  them  and  in  his 
"  Songs  of  Innocence  and  of  Experience,  Shewing  the  Two 
Contrary  States  of  the  Human  Soul,"  anticipate  Wordsworth. 
Blake's  reputation  stands  much  higher  now  than  it  did  during 
his  life,  or  for  some  time  after  his  death.  Of  late  years,  the 
enthusiasm  of  many  writers  of  high  culture,  who  have  found 
in  him  a  vein  of  power  marking  him  off  from  his  contem- 
poraries, have  done  much  to  bring  into  vogue  the  drawings 
and  the  poetry  of  this  strange  child  of  genius.1 

1  The  "Poetical  Sketches"  are  all  the  more  remarkable  when  we  re- 
member that  they  were  written  between  the  twelfth  and  the  twentieth  year 
of  his  nge.  "Blake,  in  truth,  when  in  his  teens,"  says  Mr.  W.  M.  Ros- 
setti  (Prefatory  Memoir  to  the  Aldine  Edition  of  Blake,  p.  cxv.),  "  was  a 
wholly  unique  poet ;  far  ahead  of  his  contemporaries,  and  of  his  predeces- 
sors of  three  or  four  generations,  equally  in  what  he  himself  could  do,  and 
in  his  sympathy  for  oiden  sources  of  inspiration.  In  his  fragmentary  drama 
of  'Edward  the  Third'  we  recognise  one  who  has  loved  and  studied 
Shakespeare  to  good  purpose ;  and  several  of  the  shorter  lyrics  in  the 


282  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

Such  is  a  brief  outline  of  the  more  prominent  minor  poets 
of  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century.  We  now  come  to 
William  Cowper,  whose  character,  alike  as  a  man  and  a  poet, 
is  a  singularly  interesting  and  attractive  one.  A  man  of  genius, 
but  not  of  very  powerful  or  original  genius  ;  full  of  good  taste, 
and  grace,  and  tenderness,  but  almost  altogether  destitute  of 
fire  and  passion ;  fond  of  the  country  and  of  country  things, 
yet  far  from  being  imbued  with  Wordsworth's  passionate  love 
of  Nature,  he  was  not  at  all  the  sort  of  writer  whom  we  should 
expect  to  be  one  of  the  leaders  in  a  literary  revolution.  Yet 
this  position  Cowper  unconsciously  occupied,  partly  by  natural 
genius,  partly  by  the  accidents  of  his  career.  The  story  of  his 
life,  darkened  as  it  was  by  frequent  thunderclouds  of  insanity, 
through  which  the  blue  sky  of  hope  was  unable  to  pierce,  is  a 
very  touching  one.  Born  in  1731,  a  descendant  of  an  ancient 
family,  which  ranked  not  a  few  distinguished  names  among  its 
members,  the  shrinking,  sensitive  boy  had  early  experience  of 
those  hardships  of  life  which  he  was  so  ill  fitted  to  struggle 
against.  At  an  elementary  school  to  which  he  was  sent,  he 
was  brutally  tormented  by  one  of  the  boys,  whom  he  held  in 
such  dread  that  he  did  not  dare  to  lift  his  eyes  to  his  face,  and 
knew  him  best  by  his  shoe-buckle.  Removed  from  this  school, 
Cowper's  spirits  recovered  their  tone,  and  at  the  age  of  ten  he 
was  sent  to  Westminster,  where  he  seems  to  have  led  a  happy 
life  enough,  not  studying  very  hard,  but  acquiring  a  competent 
knowledge  of  Greek  and  Latin,  and  distinguishing  himself  as  a 
cricketer  and  football-player.  After  leaving  Westminster,  he 
was  entered  of  the  Inner  Temple,  and  passed  three  very  plea- 
sant and  very  idle  years  as  a  law-clerk,  making  love  to  his 
cousin  Theodora,  and  associating  much  with  Edward  Thurlovv, 

'Poetical  Sketches'  have  the  same- sort  of  pungent  perfume — undefinable 
but  not  evanescent— that  belongs  to  the  choicest  Elizabethan  songs;  the 
like  play  of  emotion, — or  play  of  colour,  as  it  might  be  termed  ;  the  like 
ripeness  and  roundnes?,  poetic,  and  intolerant  of  translation  into  prose. 
At  the  time  when  Blake  wrote  these  songs,  and  for  a  long  while  before,  no 
one  was  doing  anything  at  all  of  the  same  kind.  Not  but  that,  even  in 
Blake,  lines  and  words  occur  here  and  there  betraying  the  fadenr  of  the 
eighteenth  century." 


William  Cowper.  283 

who,  though  insubordinate  and  fond  of  amusement  and  dissi- 
pation, already  gave  signs  of  that  strength  of  character  and 
power  of  strenuous  exertion  which  afterwards  made  him  Lord 
Chancellor.  When,  in  1752,  Cowper,  his  clerkship  over,  went 
into  residence  at  the  Temple,  the  seclusion  of  his  abode  so 
weighed  on  him  as  to  bring  on  the  first  of  those  fits  of  deep 
melancholy  which  afterwards  darkened  into  madness.  A 
prolonged  residence  in  the  country  cured  him  ;  and  on  his 
return  to  London  in  1754,  he  was  called  t6  the  Bar.  But  his 
illness  put  an  end  to  his  hopes  of  marrying  Theodora  Cowper. 
Her  father  refused  to  sanction  the  engagement,  and  Theodora 
and  Cowper  never  saw  each  other  again.  But  in  both  of  them 
the  old  love  remained  deeply  rooted  till  the  close  of  their 
lives  :  Theodora,  who  never  married,  fondly  treasured  up  the 
letters  and  poems  she  had  received  from  Cowper,  and  always 
took  the  warmest  interest  in  his  welfare. 

During  the  years  he  spent  in  the  character  of  a  briefless 
barrister,  Cowper  made  his  first  attempts  at  literature  by  con- 
tributing a  few  papers  to  the  Connoisseur  and  the  St.  fawes's 
Chronicle^  then  under  the  management  of  certain  of  his  friends. 
But  his  contributions  put  no  money  into  his  pocket,  and  as  his 
father's  death  in  1756  had  left  him  poor,  he  was  obliged  to  look 
to  the  more  influential  members  of  his  family  for  aid.  In  1763 
the  offices  of  Clerk  of  the  Journals^  Reading  Clerk,  and  Clerk 
of  Committees  of  the  House  of  Lords  became  vacant ;  and 
Major  Cowper,  in  whose  disposal  they  were,  offered  the  two 
latter  to  his  cousin.  The  offer  was  accepted — unfortunately, 
as  it  proved.  Their  duties  required  that  Cowper  should  fre- 
quently appear  before  the  House  of  Lords,  and  the  thought 
of  doing  so  was  so  abhorrent  to  his  retiring,  nervous  nature, 
that  he  almost  immediately  resigned  them,  accepting  instead 
the  office  of  Clerk  of  Journals.  But  in  this  case  the  Major's 
right  to  nominate  was  questioned,  and  Cowper  was  called 
upon  to  submit  to  the  ordeal  of  an  examination  at  the  bar  of 
the  House  before  being  allowed  to  take  office.  "  To  require 
from  me,"  he  says  in  his  Autobiography,  "  my  attendance  at 
the  bar  of  the  House,  that  I  might  there  publicly  entitle  myself 


284  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

to  the  office,  was  in  effect  to  exclude  me  from  it.  In  the 
meantime,  the  interest  of  my  friend,  the  honour  of  his  choice, 
my  own  reputation  and  circumstances,  all  pressed  me  to  under- 
take that  which  I  saw  was  impracticable."  A  fearful  mental 
struggle,  during  which  he  several  times  attempted  suicide,  en- 
sued, and  ended  in  his  becoming  quite  insane.  He  was  placed 
in  an  asylum,  where,  under  kindly  and  judicious  treatment,  he 
gradually  recovered,  after  a  residence  of  about  a  year  and  a  half. 

It  was  now,  of  course,  painfully  obvious  to  all  Cowper's 
friends  that  he  was  totally  unfit  for  an  active  life.  They  accord- 
ingly subscribed  together  to  make  him  an  annual  allowance,  and 
a  quiet  lodging  was  procured  for  him  in  the  town  of  Hunt- 
ingdon, where  he  went  to  reside  in  1765.  After  a  few  months' 
experience  of  housekeeping,  he  found  that  he  would  live  much 
more  economically  and  comfortably  if  he  became  a  boarder  in 
some  suitable  family  ;  and  towards  the  end  of  the  year  became 
a  lodger  in  the  family  of  the  Rev  John  Unwin,  the  clergyman 
of  the  place.  He  soon  became  very  much  attached  to  the 
Unwins,  who  were  excellent  and  cultivated  people,  and  his 
attachment  was  reciprocated.  In  1767  Mr.  Unwin  was  killed 
by  a  fall  from  his  horse,  and  the  household  was  broken  up. 
Mrs.  Unwin  had  to  remove,  and  Cowper,  to  whom  her  be- 
haviour had  "  always  been  that  of  a  mother  to  a  son,"  deter- 
mined to  accompany  her.  Shortly  after  Unwin's  death,  the 
Rev.  John  Newton,  Rector  of  Olney,  in  Buckinghamshire,  had 
called  on  Mrs.  Unwin,  and  promised  to  look  out  a  house  for 
her  at  Olney.  To  Olney,  accordingly,  in  September  1767, 
she  and  Cowper  removed. 

Now  began  Cowper's  connection  with  Newton,  which 
exercised  a  powerful,  and,  upon  the  whole,  an  unfortunate 
influence  on  his  life.  No  two  men  could  well  be  imagined 
more  different  than  the  shrinking,  nervous,  desponding  poet, 
and  the  strong-minded,  strong-willed,  energetic  Rector  of 
Olney.  Newton  had  in  his  youth  been  a  sailor,  of  wild  and 
dissipated  habits,  but  a  narrow  escape  from  death  changed 
his  character,  and  he  became  a  highly  religious  man,  of  strong 
Calvinistic  opinions.  For  some  time  he  was  master  of  a 


Cowper  s  "  Task:'  285 

vessel  engaged  in  the  slave-trade,  but  ill-health  brought  his 
life  as  a  sailor  to  an  end  ;  and,  afttr  many  difficulties,  lie  \vas 
in  1764  ordained  to  the  curacy  of  Oiney.  Cowper  and  he 
soon  became  fast  friends,  and  in  1771  Newton  proposed  that 
they  should  write  together  a  volume  of  hymns.  But  ere  it  was 
completed,  Cowper,  harassed  by  religious  doubts  and  diffi- 
culties, again  became  insane.  For  four  years  his  mental 
derangement  continued,  but  at  length,  largely  owing  to  the 
assiduous  attention  of  Mrs  Unwin,  light  dawned  upon  his 
troubled  faculties.  The  "  Oiney  Hymns"  were  published  in 
1779,  Cowper's  poems  being  distinguished  by  the  letter  C. 
Many  of  them  are  beautiful,  and  have  passed  into  universal 
use.  but  the  despairing  tone  of  some  shows  the  mental  anguish 
which  Cowper  went  through  at  the  time  of  their  compo>ition. 
In  1779,  also,  Newton  left  Oiney,  an  event  which  probably 
may  be  regarded  as  conducive  to  Cowper's  happiness  ;  as 
Newton's  austere  Calvinism  was  ill  adapted  to  deal  with  the 
terrible  religious  doubts  which  often  beset  the  clouded  mind 
of  the  poet. 

In  1780  Mrs.  Unwin  suggested  to  Cowper  that  he  should 
employ  his  mind  by  engaging  in  the  composition  of  some  work 
of  greater  importance  than  he  had  yet  attempted.  He  con- 
sented, and  in  a  few  months  the  "  Progress  of  Error,"  "  Truth," 
"  Table-Talk,"  and  "  Expostulation,"  were  completed.  These, 
together  with  some  shorter  poems,  of  which  "  Hope  "  and 
"  Charity  "  are  the  most  important,  were  published  in  1782. 
They  attracted  little  attention  among  readers  in  general,  but 
had  the  good  fortune  to  win  the  favourable  opinion  of 
Benjamin  Franklin,  one  of  the  most  sagacious  men  of  his  time. 
Soon  after,  at  the  suggestion  of  Lady  Austen,  a  widow,  who 
had  come  to  reside  near  Oiney,  and  who  soon  became  a  great 
friend  of  the  poet,  Cowper  began  his  greatest  work,  "The 
Task."  It  was  published  in  1785,  along  with  some  other 
poems,  including  the  famous  "John  Gilpin,"  which  also  owed 
its  origin  to  a  suggestion  of  Lady  Austen.  It  met  with  a 
most  enthusiastic  reception,  putting  Cowper  at  once  at  the 
head  of  the  poets  of  the  age. 


286  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

About  a  year  before  the  publication  of  "The  Task,"  Cowper 
began  the  last  great  work  of  his  life,  his  translation  of  Homer. 
It  was  interrupted  in  1787  by  an  attack  of  insanity,  during 
which  he  attempted  to  commit  suicide ;  but  at  length,  in 
1791,  it  was  completed  and  published.  Much  truer  to 
the  original  than  Pope's  version,  it  wants  the  interest  and 
animation  which  characterise  the  latter  translation ;  and  while 
it  always  has  been  and  always  will  be  a  favourite  with  scholars 
who  can  appreciate  its  fidelity,  it  will  never  be  popular  among 
the  large  class  of  unlearned  readers,  for  whose  sake  mainly 
translations  are  issued.  In  1796  Cowper's  best  friend,  Mrs. 
Unwin,  died.  He  had  attended  her  with  loving  devotion 
during  a  long  illness,  and  when  the  end  came,  his  grief  was 
terrible.  He  sank  into  a  state  of  hopeless  despondency, 
which  continued  till  the  end  of  his  life.  His  last  poem,  "The 
Castaway,"  in  which  we  hear  "  no  throb  of  sorrow,  only  the 
cry  of  despair,"  was  written  on  March  20,  1800.  On  the  25th 
April  of  the  same  year  his  troubled  spirit  found  peace  in  death. 

A  man  of  gentle,  loving  nature,  endowed  in  his  better 
moments  with  much  sound  sense  and  genial  humour,  surrounded 
by  friends  who  liked  and  respected  him,  fond  of  simple  plea- 
sures and  of  cheerful  company,  Cowper,  had  it  not  been  for 
the  mysterious  malady  which  wasted  his  life,  might  have  lived 
very  happily.  His  spotless  moral  character  and  deep  religious 
feelings,  his  childlike  playfulness,  his  simplicity  and  natural- 
ness, hare  combined  to  make  him  one  of  the  most  lovable 
figures  in  the  history  of  English  poetry.  It  is  rather  a  puzzling 
question  to  decide  how  far  his  attractive  personality  and  his 
attitude  towards  Christianity  have  influenced  his  literary  posi- 
tion. "Any  one,"  says  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  in  his  monograph 
on  Cowper,  "  whose  lot  it  is  to  write  upon  the  life  and  works 
of  Cowper  must  feel  that  there  is  an  immense  difference  be- 
tween the  interest  which  attaches  to  him  and  that  which 
attaches  to  any  one  among  the  far  greater  poets  of  the  suc- 
ceeding age.  Still  there  is  something  about  him  so  attractive, 
his  voice  has  such  a  silver  tone,  he  retains,  even  in  his  ashes, 
such  a  faculty  of  winning  friends,  that  his  biographer  and  critic 


Cowper  s  Characteristics.  287 

may  be  easily  beguiled  into  giving  him  too  high  a  place.  He 
belongs  to  a  particular  religious  movement,  with  the  vitality  of 
which  the  interest  of  a  great  part  of  his  works  has  departed, 
or  is  departing.  Still  more  emphatically,  and  in  a  still  more 
important  sense,  does  he  belong  to  Christianity.  In  no  natural 
struggle  for  existence  would  he  have  been  the  survivor;  by 
no  natural  process  of  selection  would  he  ever  have  been 
picked  out  as  a  vessel  of  honour.  If  the  shield  which  for 
eighteen  centuries  Christ  by  His  teaching  and  His  death  has 
spread  over  the  weak  things  of  this  world  should  fail,  and 
might  should  again  become  the  title  to  existence  and  the 
measure  of  worth,  Cowper  will  be  cast  aside  as  a  specimen  of 
despicable  inferiority,  and  all  who  have  said  anything  in  his 
praise  will  be  treated  with  the  same  scorn."  In  this  there  is 
a  good  deal  of  truth  mixed  up  with  a  large  amount  of  exaggera- 
tion. No  doubt  some  portion  of  Cowper's  popularity  has  been 
brought  about  by  the  fact  that  he  is  a  distinctively  Christian 
poet.  Until  comparatively  late  years  he  was  almost  the  only 
poet  who  found  any  considerable  favour  among  Evangelical 
circles ;  and  even  yet  many  people  read  his  poetry,  and  recom- 
mend it  to  others,  not  owing  to  its  excellence  as  poetry,  but  be- 
cause of  its  religious  and  moral  tone.  No  doubt,  also,  it  is  true 
that  Cowper  not  unfrequently  wrote  verses  which  would  have 
come  with  better  grace  from  the  pen  of  his  friend  Hayley,  that 
type  of  poetical  mediocrity.  But,  nevertheless,  Cowper  owes 
his  high  position  in  literature  not  to  any  adventitious  cause, 
but  on  account  of  his  intrinsic  merits.  In  an  age  steeped 
in  conventionality,  he  was  natural  and  unconventional.  His 
pojygjs  of  simple  pathos,  as  exemplified  in  his  "  Lines  to  Mary 
Unwin  "  and  to  his""" Mother's  Picture,"  are  almost  unsur- 
passed ;  and  in  his  humorous  and  didactic  poems  he  shows  a 
shrewdness,  a  knowledge  of  human  nature,  a  command  of 
genial  sarcasm,  which  prove  that,  secluded  as  his  life  for  the 
most  part  was,  he  was  a  keen  and  accurate  observer  of  men 
and  things.  He,  first  of  the  English  poets,  brought  men  back 
from  the  town  to  the  country.  "  His  landscape,  no  doubt, 
was  the  tame  one  of  the  English  Midland  Counties;  there  was 


288  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

in  it  nothing  of  the  stern  wild  joy  of  the  mountains.  His 
sentiments  moved  among  the  household  sympathies,  not  the 
stormy  passions.  But  in  Cowper's  power  of  simple  narrative 
and  truthful  descriptions,  in  his  natural  pathos  and  religious 
feeling,  more  truly  than  elsewhere  may  be  discovered  the 
dawn  of  that  new  poetic  era  with  which  this  century  began." 
Nor,  in  appraising  Cowper's  literary  merits,  should  we  forget 
his  exquisite  letters,  the  finest  specimens  of  epistolary  com- 
po^ition  the  English  language  affords.  Their  beauty  and 
vivacity,  their  ease  and  humour,  their  purity  and  tenderness, 
combine  to  render  them  inapproachable  in  their  own  sphere. 

Even  Cowper's  warmest  admirers  are  obliged  to  confess  that 
he  was  deficient  in  force  and  passion.  His  vein  of  poetical 
genius  was  a  real  one,  but  it  was  rather  a  tranquil  stream,  un- 
ruffled save  when  a  cry  of  emotion  broke  from  his  overburdened 
heart,  than  an  overflowing  and  irresistible  current.  He  rarely 
or  never  seems  to  have  felt  that  divine  and  unrestrainable 
impulse  to  sing  which  has  possessed  many  poets.  Very  dif- 
ferent was  the  case  with  Robert  Burns,  undoubtedly  the  most 
richly  dowered  by  nature  of  all  the  poets  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Born  in  1759,  in  Alloway,  Ayrshire,  the  son  of  a 
small  farmer,  his  youth  was  spent  in  toil  and  poverty.  Such 
slender  educational  facilities,  however,  as  were  afforded  him 
he  availed  himself  of  to  the  fullest  extent ;  and  he  fostered  his 
genius  by  the  perusal  of  such  poems  as  fell  in  his  way — old 
ballads,  the  works  of  Allan  Ramsay,  of  Robert  Fergusson, 
another  Scotch  poet,  &c.  Another  equally  important  part  of 
his  poetical  education  must  not  be  passed  over.  "  In  my 
infant  and  boyish  days,"  he  says,  "  I  owed  much  to  an  old 
woman  who  resided  in  the  family,  remarkable  for  her  igno- 
rance, credulity,  and  superstition.  She  had,  I  suppose,  the 
largest  collection  in  the  country  of  tales  and  songs  concerning 
devils,  ghosts,  fairies,  brownies,  witches,  warlocks,  spunkies, 
kelpies,  elf-candles,  dead-lights,  wraiths,  apparitions,  cantrips, 
giants,  enchanted  towers,  dragons,  and  other  trumpery.  This 
cultivated  the  latent  seeds  of  poetry ;  but  had  so  strong  an 
effect  upon  my  imagination,  that  to  this  hour,  in  my  nocturnal 


Robert  Burns.  289 

rambles,  I  sometimes  keep  a  sharp  look-out  in  suspicious 
places ;  and  though  nobody  can  be  more  sceptical  than  I  am 
in  such  matters,  yet  it  often  takes  an  effort  of  philosophy  to 
shake  off  these  idle  terrors."  Strong  evidence  this  of  both  the 
precocity  and  the  strength  of  Burns's  imaginative  genius. 

As  from  his  poetic  temperament  may  easily  be  supposed, 
Burns  early  began  to  write  verses.  His  first  composition  was 
the  lines  commencing,  "  Oh,  once  I  loved  a  bonnie  lassie," 
written  in  his  fifteenth  year,  and  addressed  to  a  girl  whom  he 
had  worked  alongside  of  in  the  harvest-field.  Few  and  fleet- 
ing were  the  pleasures  that  visited  him  while  as  a  youth  he 
toiled  on  his  father's  farm,  leading  a  life  combining,  as  he 
afterwards  bitterly  said,  "  the  cheerless  gloom  of  a  hermit 
with  the  unceasing  moil  of  a  galley-slave."  As  he  grew  up,  he 
felt  the  degradations  and  hardships  incident  to  his  lot  more 
and  more  galling.  Conscious,  no  doubt,  as  he  could  not  but 
be  conscious,  of  his  great  natural  endowments,  finding  no  fit 
scope  for  their  exercise,  with  no  bright  prospect  before  him  to 
encourage  him  to  bear  cheerfully  the  ills  which  at  last  he 
would  triumphantly  vanquish,  it  is  no  wonder  though  Burns, 
with  his  effervescing  passions,  his  naturally  high  animal  spirits, 
and  his  love  of  society,  should,  as  he  approached  manhood, 
have  sought  to  drown  the  sense  of  his  troubles  by  indulging 
pretty  freely  in  conviviality  in  jovial  social  gatherings.  The 
life  and  soul  of  every  company  into  which  he  went,  his  society 
was  much  sought  after,  and  by  degrees  he  began  to  acquire 
that  fatal  love  of  dissipation  from  which  he  never  got  free. 

Meanwhile  all  attempts  he  made  to  belter  his  condition 
proved  unfortunate.  Thinking  to  commence  business  as  a 
flax-dresser,  he  took  a  share  of  a  shop  in  Irvine,  but  the  enter- 
prise did  not  succeed,  and  was  soon  put  a  final  end  to,  the 
shop  catching  fire  and  being  burned  to  the  ground.  After  the 
father's  death  in  1784,  the  Burns  family  removed  to  Mossgiel, 
and  stocked  a  farm  with  their  individual  savings;  but  bad  seed 
and  bad  harvests  played  havoc  with  their  hopes,  and  Robert, 
who  had  worked  very  assiduously  for  a  time  at  the  new  farm, 
e  more  discontented  with  his  lot  than  ever.  His  unfor- 


290  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

tunate  connection  with  Jean  Armour,  and  her  father's  refusal 
to  allow  her  to  marry  him,  was  the  crowning  ingredient  in  his 
cup  of  sorrows.  Carlyle  in  his  fine  essay  has  well  described 
the  condition  of  Burns  at  this  time.  "  He  loses  his  feeling  of 
innocence;  his  mind  is  at  variance  with  itself;  the  old  divinity 
no  longer  presides  there;  but  wild  desires  and  repentance 
alternately  oppress  him.  Ere  long,  too,  he  has  committed 
himself  before  the  world;  his  character  for  sobriety,  dear  to  a 
Scottish  peasant  as  few  corrupted  worldlings  can  even  conceive, 
is  destroyed  in  the  eyes  of  men,  and  his  only  refuge  consists 
in  trying  to  disbelieve  his  guiltiness,  and  is  but  a  refuge  of 
lies.  The  blackest  desperation  now  gathers  over  him,  broken 
only  by  red  lightnings  of  remorse."  He  determined  to  go 
abroad,  and  in  order  to  defray  the  expenses  of  his  passage  to 
the  West  Indies,  where  he  had  accepted  a  situation  as  book- 
keeper, was  advised  to  publish  his  poems.  He  agreed  to  do 
so,  and  in  1786  an  impression  of  six  hundred  copies  was  struck 
off  at  Kilmarnock. 

The  sensation  produced  by  the  volume  was  immense. 
Among  the  class  to  which  Burns  himself  belonged  it  was 
received  with  rapturous  enthusiasm.  They  recognised  in  the 
author  a  poet,  one  of  themselves  in  his  feelings  and  sympathies 
and  aspirations,  but  lifted  far  above  them  by  his  genius,  and 
able  to  give  fit  utterance  to  sentiments  and  opinions  which 
lay  concealed  in  their  own  breasts,  but  to  which  they  were 
powerless  to  give  expression.  The  demand  for  copies  was 
eager;  many  peasants  denied  themselves  other  luxuries  in 
order  to  procure  the  cherished  volume;  and  Burns  had  the 
satisfaction  of  clearing  about  twenty  pounds  by  his  venture. 
But  the  admiration  excited  by  the  poems  was  not  confined 
to  his  own  circle.  Copies  found  their  way  to  the  u  Modern 
Athens,"  as  Edinburgh  proudly  called  itself,  with  perhaps  a 
better  title  to  the  name  then  than  it  has  now ;  and  just  as 
Burns  was  on  the  eve  of  setting  out  to  a  distant  land,  his 
plans  were  suddenly  altered  by  a  letter  a  friend  of  his  received 
from  Dr.  Blacklock  (a  blind  poet,  of  poweis  slightly  superior 
to  mediocrity),  giving  it  as  his  opinion  that  Burns  should  go 


Burns  in  Edinburgh.  291 

to  Edinburgh  and  issue  a  second  edition  of  his  poems.  To 
Edinburgh  accordingly  he  went,  and  the  admiration  of  his 
powers,  which  had  been  excited  in  the  breasts  of  many  there 
by  the  perusal  of  his  poems,  suffered  no  abatement  when  their 
author  appeared  on  the  scene.  He  comported  himself  like  a 
man  conscious  of  his  own  talents  ;  in  no  way  overawed  by 
the  crowd  of  scholars  and  professors  with  whom  he  was  brought 
into  contact.  "  He  manifested,"  as  Lockhart  says,  "  in  the 
whole  strain  of  his  bearing  and  conversation  a  most  thorough 
conviction  that  in  the  society  of  the  most  eminent  men  of  his 
nation  he  was  exactly  where  he  was  entitled  to  be ;  hardly 
deigned  to  flatter  them  by  exhibiting  even  an  occasional 
symptom  of  being  flattered  by  their  notice;  by  turns  calmly 
measured  himself  against  the  most  cultivated  understandings 
of  his  time  in  discussion,  overpowered  the  bon-mots  of  the 
most  celebrated  convivialists  by  broad  floods  of  merriment, 
impregnated  with  all  the  burning  life  of  genius ;  astounded 
bosoms  habitually  enveloped  in  the  thiice-piled  folds  of  social 
reserve  by  compelling  them  to  tremble— nay,  to  tremble  visibly 
— beneath  the  fearless  touch  of  natural  pathos."  Subscriptions 
to  the  second  edition  of  the  poems  poured  in  liberally,  and  by 
its  publication  in  1787  the  poet  realised  a  sum  which  to  him 
must  have  appeared  an  almost  inexhaustible  treasury  of  wealth. 
Out  of  the  money  thus  earned,  Burns  generously  advanced 
^200  to  help  his  brother  Gilbert,  then  struggling  to  maintain 
himself  and  other  members  of  the  family  at  Mossgiel.  With 
the  remainder  he  stocked  a  farm  for  himself  at  Ellisland, 
about  six  miles  from  Dumfries;  and  being  now  in  a  more 
prosperous  worldly  condition,  was  able,  in  1788,  to  marry  his 
old  sweetheart,  Jean  Armour.  Soon  after  he  obtained,  through 
the  kindness  of  a  friend,  a  position  in  the  Excise,  with  a  salary 
of  ^50  a  year  at  first,  but  afterwards  increased  to  ^70.  The 
duties  of  his  office  led  him  into  many  temptations  to  indulge 
in  those  convivial  pleasures  to  which  by  nature  he  was  only 
too  prone  to  yield.  He  neglected  his  farm,  and  in  1792 
was  obliged  to  give  it  up  altogether  and  remove  to  Dumfries. 
His  hopes  of  promotion  in  the  Excise  were  blasted  by  his 


2g2  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

habit  of  freely  speaking  his  mind  regarding  dignities,  and  by 
his  ardent  sympathy  with  the  French  Revolution  and  advanced 
liberal  opinions  generally;  for,  like  most  of  his  class  then  and 
no\v,  Burns  was  a  thorough  Radical  in  politics.  His  last 
important  work  in  literature  was  a  hundred  song?,  which  he 
contributed  gratuitously  to  his  friend  Thompson's  "  Melodies 
of  Scotland,"  published  in  1792.  The  closing  years  of  Burns's 
life  were  clouded  with  sorrow  and  suffering,  partly  the  results 
of  his  own  misconduct,  partly  of  causes  over  which  he  had 
no  control.  His  brief  and  troubled  career  came  to  a  close 
in  1796. 

Burns  may  be  best  contemplated  under  two  aspects.  First, 
there  is  Robert  Burns  the  Scotch  ploughman,  with  the  faults 
and  the  virtues  belonging  to  his  class ;  honest,  manly,  vigorous, 
but  lacking  in  self-restraint;  an  easy  prey  to  his  passions;  not 
altogether  superior  to  that  sort  of  cant  which  consists  in 
endeavouring  to  compensate  for  one's  most  serious  and  often- 
repeated  errors  by  loud  declarations  of  the  goodness  of  one's 
heart  ho\vever  faulty  one's  life  may  be ;  and  fond  to  excess  of 
every  kind  of  rough  fun,  practical  jokes,  and  conviviality. 
Next,  there  is  Robert  Burns  the  poet,  with  a  heart  full  of  love 
and  reverence  for  all  created  beings;  tender  towards  the 
"  ourie  cattle"  and  the  "silly  sheep;"  so  full  of  charity  that 
he  can  breathe  an  expression  of  hope  even  for  "  Auld  Nickie 
Ben  "  himself;  so  full  of  sympathy  with  all  sides  of  human 
nature,  that  he  is  equally  at  home  in  depicting  the  decent 
"Cottar's  Saturday  Night"  and  the  wild  revelry  of  the  vaga- 
bond "Jolly  Beggars;"  skilled  alike  to  cause  his  readers  to 
laugh  and  to  weep — now  producing  merriment,  not  unmingled 
with  a  sort  of  astonishment  and  awe,  by  the  strange  adventure 
of  "  Tarn  o'  Shanter,"  now  irresistibly  touching  our  more 
tender  feelings  by  the  simple  and  affecting  pathos  of  such 
verses  as  those  "  To  Mary  in  Heaven."  Not  that  Burns  kept 
his  poems  altogether  pure  from  the  defilements  with  which, 
from  his  character  as  a  man  and  from  his  position  in  society, 
we  should  expect  to  find  them  occasionally  stained  ;  with 
sorrow  it  must  be  said  he  did  not  always  refrain  from  touching 


George  Crabbe.  293 

with  the  orient  gold  of  his  genius  the  bestial  side  of  man. 
But  when  all  the  circumstances  of  his  birth  and  career  are 
considered,  he  would  be  a  foolish  and  purblind  critic  who 
should  condemn  Burns  too  severely  for  his  occasional  trans- 
gressions against  decorum  and  good  taste.  His  work  is  frag- 
mentary— as  a  rule,  mere  snatches  of  song  thrown  off  at  idle 
moments  when  the  impulse  seized  him  ;  but  how  full  of  variety 
it  is,  how  rich  is  the  evidence  it  affords  of  great  intellectual 
resource  and  versatility  !  Many  other  poets  have  excelled  Burns 
in  depicting  particular  emotions,  but  how  few  there  are  who 
like  him  have  attained  equal  mastery  in  the  expression  of  various 
states  of  feeling  !  Whether  writing  songs  of  love  or  lyrics  of 
war,  whether  serious  or  humorous,  he  is  equally  at  home,  and 
uniformly  displays  that  almost  infallible  mark  of  a  good  poet, 
the  power  of  so  choosing  the  rhythm  and  words  of  his  verse 
as  to  be  an  echo  to  the  sense.  He  never  attempted  a  large 
continuous  work,  and  we  can  form  but  little  conception  how 
he  would  have  succeeded  in  the  enterprise  if  he  had  attempted 
it.  The  probability  is  that  he  did  wisely  in  confining  himself 
to  lyrics  and  occasional  pieces.  Taking  quantity  and  quality 
both  into  account,  he  may  be  unhesitatingly  pronounced  the 
greatest  song-writer  in  the  language. 

A  less  important  figure  in  the  history  of  poetry  than  Cowper 
or  Burns,  yet  neither  an  unimportant  nor  an  insignificant  one, 
is  George  Crabbe,  '•  Nature's  sternest  painter,  yet  the  best," 
as  Byron  with  considerable  truth  described  him.  During  his 
long  life,  extending  from  1754  to  1832,  he  witnessed  many  fluc- 
tuations of  literary  taste,  and  was  acquainted  with  great  writers 
belonging  to  two  widely  different  eras.  Befriended  in  his 
youth  by  Burke  and  Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow,  he  lived  to 
win  the  applause  of  Jeffrey,  and  Christopher  North,  and  Sir 
Walter  Scott ;  and  he  whose  early  works  had  the  honour  of 
being  read,  and  admired,  and  corrected  by  Johnson  and  Fox, 
found  his  fame  so  far  undimmed,  even  amidst  the  bright 
constellation  of  poetic  stars  which  shone  in  the  beginning  of 
the  present  century,  as  to  receive  in  1819  the  sum  of  ^"3000 
for  his  "Tales  of  the  Hall"  and  the  copyright  of  his  other 


294  The  New  Era  in.  Poetry. 

poems.  Crabbe's  chief  works  besides  the  "  Tales  of  the 
Hall"  are  the  "Village"  (1783),  the  "Parish  Register" 
(1807),  the  "  Borough"  (1810),  and  "Tales  in  Verse"  (1812). 
Of  a  matter-of-fact  imagination,  with  a  passion  for  details, 
closely  adhering  to  facts,  and  never  throwing  any  poetical 
glamour  over  his  tales  and  descriptions  of  vice,  and  poverty, 
and  misery,  Crabbe  in  his  main  features  is  thoroughly  original. 
He  "  handles  life  so  as  to  take  the  bloom  off  it,"  describing 
"  with  a  hard,  resolute  pen,  idealising  nothing ;  but,  on  the 
contrary,  often  omitting  all  that  casts  a  veil  over  meanness 
and  deformity."  It  is  this  firm  adherence  to  relentless  truth 
that  constitutes  at  once  his  weakness  and  his  strength.  He 
never  shuts  his  eyes  to  plain  facts ;  and  although  in  his  youth 
he  had  had  bitter  experience  of  poverty,  and  might  therefore 
have  been  more  disposed  to  sympathise  with  poor  people  than 
with  the  wealthier  classes,  he  perceived  quite  clearly  that  vice, 
and  meanness,  and  evil  passions  might  have  their  abode  as 
well  in  the  breast  of  Hodge  the  labourer,  toiling  hard  to  earn 
a  scanty  pittance,  as  in  the  breast  of  Squire  Hazeldean,  brought 
up  in  the  lap  of  wealth  and  luxury.  But  his  range  of  vision 
was  narrow ;  he  had  little  sympathy  with  the  idyllic  aspects 
of  life  ;  he  lacked  humour  and  genial  sympathy ;  and  in  his 
pathos  often  by  too  forcible  expression  overstepped  the  limits 
of  literary  art.  The  main  characteristics  of  his  writings  are 
well  indicated  by  Mr.  W.  C.  Roscoe.1  "The  common  feature 
throughout  all  his  works  which  gives  this  author  his  hold  upon 
his  readers  is  his  singular  insight  into  the  minute  working  of 
character,  his  wondrous  familiarity  with  so  vast  a  number  of 
various  dispositions,  and  the  unerring  fidelity  with  which  he 
traces  their  operations  and  discerns  their  attitudes  under  every 
sort  of  circumstance.  It  would  be  difficult  in  the  whole  range 
of  literature  to  point  to  more  than  two  or  three  who  have  rivalled 
him  in  this  respect.  Chaucer  is  one  ;  and  a  curious  and  not 
uninteresting  comparison  might  be  instituted  between  the  two, 
though  the  old  poet  far  surpasses  the  modern  one  in  love  of 
beauty,  liveliness  of  fancy,  and  breadth  of  genius.  .  .  .  One 
*  "  Poems  and  Essays,"  vol.  ii.  p.  220. 


William  Wordsworth.  295 

gr^at  source  of  his  strength  is,  that  he  dared  ta  be  true  to 
himself,  and  to  work  with  unhesitating  confidence  in  his  own 
peculiar  vein.  This  originality  is  not  only  great,  but  always 
genuine.  A  never-failing  charm  lies  in  the  clear  simplicity 
and  truthfulness  of  nature  which  shines  through  all  his  writ- 
ings. Nothing  false  or  meretricious  ever  came  from  his  pen  ; 
and  if  his  works  want  order  and  beauty,  neither  they  nor  his 
life  are  destitute  of  the  higher  harmony  which  springs  from  a 
character  naturally  single  and  undeteriorated  by  false  aims 
and  broken  purposes." 

Modern  as  Cowper,  Burns,  and  Crabbe  are  in  their  poetic 
tendencies,  they  do  not  affect  us  in  the  same  way  as  the  poets 
who  occupy  the  rest  of  this  chapter.  It  cannot  be  said  of 
them,  as  of  Wordsworth,  Keats,  Byron,  and  the  others,  that 
they  are  still  active  factors  in  our  literature,  influencing  pro- 
foundly the  poets  of  the  age  we  live  in.  We  may  begin  our 
survey  with  the  group  called  the  Lake  School,  of  which  the 
most  prominent  members  were  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and 
Southey.  The  nickname  "  Lake  School,"  given  them  because 
Wordsworth  and  Southey  most  of  their  lives,  and  Coleridge 
for  a  time,  lived  in  the  Lake  district,  is  not  an  appropriate  one, 
for  Wordsworth's  best  poems  are  different  in  character  from 
Coleridge's,  and  Southey,  either  as  regards  genius  or  in  mode 
of  literary  treatment,  cannot  be  ranked  with  the  two  others. 
But  they  were  intimate  friends,  endeared  by  family  relation- 
ships and  by  mutual  sympathy  and  admiration,  and  it  is  there- 
fore convenient  in  many  respects  to  treat  of  them  together. 
Of  this  group,  the  first,  both  in  point  of  time  and  in  point  of 
genius,  was  William  Wordsworth.  He  was  born  at  Cocker- 
mouth  in  1770,  the  son  of  an  attorney  who  superintended  part 
of  the  Lowther  estate  in  Cumberland.  Exposed  from  his 
youth  to  the  influence  of  sublime  and  ennobling  scenery, 
Wordsworth  spent  a  happy  childhood,  not  manifesting  any 
extraordinary  precocity  of  genius,  but  even  from  his  earliest 
years  imbued  with  that  deep  love  of  Nature  which  was 
afterwards  to  bear  such  magnificent  fruit.  In  1783  his 
father  died,  leaving  ^5000  in  the  hands  of  Sir  James 


296  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

Lowtber,  afterwards  Earl  of  Londsdale,  from  whom  it  was 
found  impossible  to  obtain  it.  By  his  successor  it  was  in  1801 
repaid  with  interest ;  but  in  the  meantime  the  Wordsworth 
family  was  left  poor,  and  William  owed  his  university  educa- 
tion to  the  liberality  of  his  uncles.  He  entered  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  in  his  eighteenth  year.  To  the  ordinary 
studies  of  the  place  he  paid  little  more  attention  than  enabled 
him,  in  1791,  to  take  his  degree  of  B.A.  ;  but  he  studied 
Italian  and  the  works  of  the  greatest  English  poets,  and 
acquired  a  rich  store  of  new  ideas  by  a  pedestrian  tour  with  a 
friend  Jones,  in  1790,  through  France,  Switzerland,  and  the 
North  of  Italy.  After  leaving  the  University,  he  spent  some 
time  in  London,  living  on  an  allowance  from  his  friends,  and 
without  any  definite  aim.  He  then,  in  1791,  went  over  to 
Paris,  at  that  time  in  the  heat  of  the  Revolution  frenzy.  Like 
Southey  and  Coleridge,  Wordsworth  in  his  youth  shared  the 
golden  hopes  of  universal  emancipation  then  current  among 
many  men,  and  at  one  time  even  had  serious  intentions  of 
becoming  naturalised  as  a  Frenchman  in  order  to  take  part  in 
the  great  struggle.  His  friends,  it  appears,  had  more  sense  of 
the  dangers  to  which  he  was  thinking  of  exposing  himself 
than  he  had,  and  in  1792  prudently  recalled  him  to  England 
by  stopping  the  supplies.  Of  the  many  enthusiasts  whose 
hearts  were  chilled  and  whose  hopes  of  a  new  era  for  humanity 
were  rudely  shattered  by  the  bloody  massacres  and  cruelty  of 
the  French  Revolution  in  its  latter  stages,  none  was  more 
deeply  affected  than  Wordsworth,  and  it  took  a  considerable 
time  to  heal  the  wound  thus  caused. 

In  1792  Wordsworth  began  his  literary  career  by  the  publi- 
cation of  two  poems,  "  The  Evening  Walk  "  and  "  Descriptive 
Sketches."  They  did  not  attract  much  attention,  but  Cole- 
ridge had  the  sagacity  to  see  in  them  the  promise  of  better 
things,  and  that  they  announced  "the  emergence  of  an  original 
poetic  genius  above  the  literary  horizon."  But  the  poet  had 
as  yet  earned  nothing,  and  was  now  obliged  to  bestir  himself 
to  obtain  some  field  of  labour.  He  thought  of  joining  the 
newspaper  press,  and  had  actually  written  to  a  friend  asking 


Publication  of "  Lyrical  Ballads"         297 

iiim  to  find  him  a  situation  of  this  nature,  when  he  was  ren- 
dered comparatively  easy  as  to  money  matters  by  a  legacy  of 
^900  left  him  in  1795  by  his  friend  and  adviser,  Raisley 
Calvert.  Upon  this  sum  Wordsworth  and  his  gifted  and 
devoted  sister,  Dorothy,  set  up  housekeeping.  They  first 
settled  at  Racedown  in  Dorsetshire,  where  Wordsworth  wrote 
some  of  his  early  poems,  and  where  he  became  acquainted  with 
Coleridge.  Soon  after,  in  the  autumn  of  1797,  the  Words- 
worths  removed  to  Alfoxden,  near  the  village  of  Nether 
Stowey  in  Somersetshire,  where  Coleridge  was  then  staying. 
Here  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth  saw  much  of  each  other, 
and  spent  many  pleasant  and  profitable  hours  in  discussing  the 
principles  of  poetry  and  in  planning  the  pieces  composing 
the  volume  of  "Lyrical  Ballads,"  published  in  1798.  Most 
of  the  little  book  was  Wordsworth's  ;  but  Coleridge  contri- 
buted to  it  that  priceless  gem,  the  "  Ancient  Mariner." 
Wordsworth's  share  comprised  some  poems  which  were 
justly  liable  to  ridicule,  such  as  "Goody  Blake"  and  the 
"  Idiot  Boy,"  but  it  also  comprised  such  fine  pieces  as  "  Ex- 
postulation and  Reply,"  and  the  immortal  "  Lines  Written 
above  Tintern  Abbey,"  dear  to  the  hearts  of  all  who  reverence 
his  memory.  After  the  publication  of  the  "Ballads,"  Words- 
worth and  his  sister  spent  a  winter  in  Germany,  where  he 
began  the  "  Prelude,"  and  wrote  some  of  the  best  of  his 
shorter  poems.  Soon  after  his  return  to  England,  the  poet 
took  a  cottage  at  Grasmere,  and  there  entered  upon  his  life  in 
the  Lake  country,  almost  every  notable  spot  of  which  he  has 
celebrated  in  his  poems.  In  the  beginning  of  the  century  he 
received  his  share  of  his  father's  money,  which  had  been  honour- 
ably paid  by  the  new  Marquis  of  Lonsdale,  and  was  thus,  in 
1802,  enabled  to  marry,  the  object  of  his  choice  being  Mary 
Hutchison,  whom  he  describes  in  the  often-quoted  lines — 

"  A  creature  not  too  bright  or  good 
For  human  nature's  daily  food  ; 
A  perfect  woman,  robly  planned, 
To  warn,  to  comfort,  and  command ; 
And  yet  a  spirit  still,  and  bright 
With  someth-'ng  of  an  angel  light" 


298  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

Such  is  a  hurried  outline  of  the  principal  events  in  Words- 
worth's early  life.  The  main  features  of  the  rest  of  his  career 
can  be  only  briefly  alluded  to.  Of  external  events  of  general 
interest  his  life  does  not  afford  many.  His  is  pre-eminently 
the  history  of  a  mind.  No  poet  ever  lived  who  cherished  a 
\nore  intense  and  thoroughgoing  devotion  to  his  art ;  under  all 
circumstances  of  his  life  it  was  the  uppermost  thing  in  his 
thoughts,  and  to  it  everything  else  was  made  subservient.  In 
1802  he  published  another  volume  of  "  Lyrical  Ballads,"  con- 
taining, with  two  volumes  of  "Poems"  published  in  1807,  the 
cream  of  his  poetry  •  for,  as  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  has  pointed 
out,  almost  all  Wordsworth's  really  first-rate  work  was  produced 
between  1798  and  1808.  Jeffrey,  a  shrewd  enough  critic  within 
a  certain  range,  but  apt  to  make  terrible  blunders  when  dealing 
with  high-class  works  of  the  imagination,  attacked  the  "  Bal- 
lads" in  the  Edinburgh  Review ;  and  so  powerful  were  then  the 
critical  dicta  of  that  organ,  that  his  criticism  almost  entirely 
stopped  the  sale.  But  Wordsworth's  serene  self-confidence 
enabled  him  to  bear  up  manfully  against  criticism  from  what- 
ever quarter,  however  unjust  or  injurious.  He  knew  well  that 
all  writers  of  commanding  originality  have  to  labour  on  till  they 
educate  the  public  sufficiently  to  appreciate  their  work,  and 
was  quite  content  to  write  what  he  was  fully  assured  would  be 
both  unpopular  and  immortal. 

In  1813  Wordsworth  removed  to  Rydal  Mount,  his  resi- 
dence for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  About  the  same  time  he 
was,  through  the  influence  of  Lord  Lonsdale,  appointed  to  the 
almost  sinecure  office  of  Distributor  of  Stamps  for  the  county 
of  Westmoreland,  with  a  yearly  salary  of  ^500.  In  1814  he 
published  his  largest,  but  by  no  means  his  greatest  work,  the 
"  Excursion.'*  Long  though  the  "  Excursion  "  is,  it  is  only 
part  of  a  greater  design  thus  described  in  its  preface :  "  Several 
years  ago,  when  the  author  retired  to  his  native  mountains 
with  the  hope  of  being  enabled  to  construct  a  literary  work 
that  might  live,  it  was  a  reasonable  thing  that  he  should  take 
a  review  of  his  own  mind,  and  examine  how  far  nature  and 
education  had  qualified  him  for  such  an  employment.  As 


Wordsworth's  Poetry.  299 

subsidiary  to  this  preparation,  he  undertook  to  record  in  verse 
the  origin  and  progress  of  his  own  powers,  so  far  as  he  was 
acquainted  with  them.  That  work,  addressed  to  a  dear  friend 
most  distinguished  for  his  knowledge  and  genius,  and  to 
whom  the  author's  intellect  is  deeply  indebted  [Coleridge],  lias 
been  long  finished,  and  the  result  of  the  investigation  which 
gave  rise  to  it  was  a  determination  to  compose  a  philosophical 
poem,  containing  views  of  man,  nature,  and  society,  and  to 
be  entitled  the  'Recluse.'  "  Of  the  "  Recluse,"  which  was  to 
consist  of  three  books,  the  "  Excursion  "  was  to  form  the 
second,  but  the  design  was  never  completed.  The  biogra- 
phical poem  referred  to  above,  which  '*  conducts  the  history 
of  the  author's  mind  to  the  point  where  he  was  emboldened 
to  hope  that  his  faculties  were  sufficiently  matured  for  enter- 
ing upon  the  arduous  labour  which  he  proposed  to  himself," 
was  completed  in  1806,  but  not  published  till  1850,  when  it 
appeared  under  the  title  of  the  "  Recluse." 

Many  other  poems,  among  which  "  The  White  Doe  of 
Rylstone"  (1815),  and  the  "Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,"  are 
not  of  great  poetical  value,  but  interesting  as  showing  how 
thorough  a  Churchman  and  Conservative  the  quondam  ar- 
dent sympathiser  with  the  French  Revolution  had  become, 
may  be  specially  mentioned,  were  published  by  Wordsworth 
during  the  remaining  years  of  his  life.  Gradually  the  taste 
for  his  poetry  began  to  spread ;  he  lived  to  witness  the  rise 
and  fall  of  the  overwhelming  popularity  of  Scott  and  Byron  ; 
and  the  storm  of  applause  which  greeted  him  when,  in  1839, 
he  appeared  in  the  Sheldonian  Theatre  at  Oxford  to  receive 
the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Laws,  showed  he  was  the  favourite 
poet  of,  at  all  events,  the  rising  generation.  In  1842  he  re- 
ceived a  pension  of  ^300  a  year,  and  in  the  following  year 
succeeded  Southey  as  Poet- Laureate — rewards  righteously 
earned,  and  bestowed  with  well-nigh  universal  approval.  He 
died  in  1850. 

Wordsworth  did  not  consider  poetry  a  mere  instrument  of 
pleasure,  a  thing  to  be  read  or  written  in  hours  of  relaxation. 
To  him  it  was  an  art — the  highest  of  all  arts— to  which  life 


300  The' New  Era  in  Poetry. 

might  be  profitably  devoted,  and  in  the  exercise  of  which  no 
pains  were  to  be  grudged  by  the  singer  gifted  with  the  divine 
faculty  of  imagination.  To  his  principles  regarding  this 
matter  his  practice  fully  corresponded.  He  was  constantly 
meditating  on  his  art,  and  gathering  together  materials  for  its 
exercise.  For  books  he  cared  little,  and  most  of  his  literary 
judgments  were  narrow  and  prejudiced.  Of  contemporary 
poets,  the  only  one  whom  he  at  all  cordially  appreciated  was 
Coleridge;  Scott  and  Southey  he  did  not  think  highly  of ; 
Shelley  and  Byron  he  knew  only  slightly ;  Keats  not  at  all. 
His  study  was  in  the  open  air;  his  sources  of  inspiration 
caught  from  wandering  to  and  fro  amid  the  beautiful  scenery 
of  the  Lake  district.  "  Nine-tenths  of  my  verses,"  said  the 
poet  in  1843,  "have  been  murmured  out  in  the  open  air. 
One  day  a  stranger,  having  walked  round  the  garden  and 
grounds  of  Rydal  Mount,  asked  of  one  of  the  female  servants 
who  happened  to  be  at  the  door  permission  to  see  her 
master's  study.  'This,'  said  she,  leading  him  forward,  Ms 
my  master's  library,  where  he  keeps  his  books,  but  his  study 
is  out  of  doors.'  After  a  long  absence  from  home,  it  has 
more  than  once  happened  that  some  one  of  my  coitage  neigh- 
bours has  said,  '  Well,  there  he  is  !  We  are  glad  to  hear  him 
booing  about  again.'"  It  was  a  natural  result  of  his  self-con- 
tained and  independent  mode  of  life  acting  upon  a  mind 
constitutionally  self-confident  that  Wordsworth  should  have 
a  very  high  opinion  of  his  own  works.  No  false  delicacy 
restrained  him  from  praising  them  himself  when  occasion 
offered.  For  example,  when  Harriet  Martineau  told  him  that 
his  "  Happy  Warrior"  was  a  favourite  poem  of  Dr.  Chan- 
ning's  :  "Ay,"  replied  Wordsworth,  "that  was  not  on  account 
of the  poetical  conditions  being  best  fulfilled  in  that  poem,  but 
because  it  is"  (solemnly)  "  a  chain  of  extremely  vaiooable 
thoughts  ;  you  see  it  does  not  best  fulfil  the  conditions  of 
poetry,  but  it  is"  (solemnly)  "a  chain  of  extremely  vaiooable 
thoughts."  Considering  the  high  estimate  Wordsworth  had 
of  his  own  powers  and  the  fixity  with  which  he  clung  to 
his  own  opinions,  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  should 


Wordsworth  and  Nature.  301 

have  had  a  strong  tendency  to  think  everything  he  wrote 
equally  good.  Unlike  many  great  poets,  he  was  quite  un- 
conscious when  his  flow  of  inspiration  ceased ;  and  hence  it  is 
that,  especially  in  his  longer  poems,  there  are  so  many  tedious 
passages.  It  is  this  probably  more  than  any  other  single 
cause  that  has  tended  to  retard  Wordsworth's  popularity.  He 
is  an  unequal  poet — capable  of  rising  to  great  heights,  capable, 
also,  it  must  be  said,  of  sinking  to  great  depths  of  prosiness 
and  dulness.  No  one  can  read  the  "Excursion"  without  being 
painfully  impressed  by  the  contrast  between  the  sublimity 
and  beauty  of  certain  passages  and  the  flatness  and  insipidity 
of  others. 

None  the  less  is  Wordsworth  indisputably  a  poet  of  the 
first  rank.  With  him  originated  an  altogether  new  way  of 
looking  at  Nature.  To  him  Nature  was  not  a  dead  machine  ; 
it  was  alive.  He  felt  that  behind  the  colours  and  forms  and 
sounds  of  the  material  universe  there  was  something  more 
than  meets  the  external  senses,  "  something  which  defies 
analysis,  undefined  and  ineffable,  which  must  be  felt  and  per- 
ceived by  the  soul."  <;  I  have  learned,"  he  says  in  the  "  Lines 
on  Tintern  Abbey" — 

"  To  look  on  Nature,  not  as  in  the  hour 
Of  thoughtless  youth  ;  but  hearing  oftentimes 
The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity, 
Nor  harsh,  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 
To  chasten  and  subdue.     And  I  have  felt 
A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts  ;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  ; 
A  motion,  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  objects,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

There  is  nothing  like  this  in  the  poetry  of  Cowper,  or  Burns, 
or  Crabbe  ;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that  this  doctrine,  deeply  as 
it  has  influenced  literature  and  thought  since,  should  have 


302  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

proved  a  stumbling-block  to  many  critics  when  it  was  first 
promulgated.  Regarding  Nature  as  no  mere  collection  of 
isolated  phenomena,  but  as  a  living  and  mysterious  whole, 
constantly  acting  on  humanity,  Wordsworth  found  the  con- 
templation even  of  the  "common  things  that  round  us  lie" 
full  of  lessons  of  instruction  and  wisdom.  To  him  no  natural 
object  was  common  or  unclean ;  from  all  spiritual  truth  was 
to  be  extracted.  With  such  a  high  reverence  for  Nature, 
Wordsworth  united  an  equally  high  reverence  for  man  ;  the 
visible  universe  and  its  inhabitants  were  to  him  alike  full  of 
wonder  and  awe  and  mystery. 

Disgusted  at  the  outset  of  his  life  as  a  poet  by  the  stilted 
poetical  commonplaces  which  the  feeble  herd  of  Pope's 
imitators  had  made  so  nauseous,  Wordsworth  adopted  a 
theory,  fully  expounded  in  various  of  his  prefaces  to  his 
poems,  that  there  neither  is,  nor  can  be,  any  essential  diffe- 
rence between  the  language  of  prose  and  metrical  composi- 
tion. "  I  have  proposed  to  myself,"  he  said,  "  to  imitate  and, 
as  far  as  is  possible,  to  adopt  the  very  language  of  men. 
...  I  have  taken  as  much  pains  to  avoid  what  is  usually 
called  poetic  diction  as  others  ordinarily  take  to  produce  it." 
Except  in  a  few  poems  which  are  failures,  Wordsworth,  how- 
ever, never  acted  up  to  his  theory  of  poetical  diction,  which, 
indeed,  though  correct  in  so  far  as  it  was  a  protest  against  the 
practice,  common  in  his  youth,  and  by  no  means  yet  gone 
into  desuetude,  of  prostituting  the  name  of  poetry  by  bestowing 
it  upon  phrases  and  metaphors  hackneyed  by  a  thousand 
versifiers,  was  one  that  could  not,  and  ought  not,  to  have  been 
acted  up  to.1  How  little  he  himself,  at  his  best,  was  affected 
by  it  is  conclusively  shown  by  his  Sonnets,  of  which,  in  point 
of  thought  and  dignity  and  power,  he  has  written  a  larger 
number  that  are  excellent  than  any  other  English  author.  Of 
the  whole  collection  very  few,  and  these  the  least  excellent, 
are  written  in  the  language  of  prose. 

From  Wordsworth,  with  his  blameless  life,  his  sustained 

J  The  whole  subject  is  excellently  discussed  by  Coleridge  in  hb  "Bio- 
graplua  Littraria." 


Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge.  303 

devotion  to  poetry,  his  single  aims,  his  resolute  self-confidence, 
it  is  in  many  ways  a  strange  contrast  to  pass  to  his  friend 
Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  weak  and  erring,  many-sided  and 
fond  of  trying  various  fields  of  literature,  changeable  and 
hesitating,  fonder  of  beginning  new  projects  than  of  finishing 
oM  ones.  Born  in  1772,  the  son  of  a  clergyman  more  eccen- 
tric even  than  he  himself  afterwards  proved  to  be,  and  educated 
at  Christ's  Hospital,  where  he  was  the  companion  of  Charles 
Lamb,  and  where  he  showed  his  life-long  addiction  to  deep  medi- 
tation and  the  reading  of  all  sorts  of  books,  Coleridge  entered 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  in  1791,  a  little  after  Wordsworth 
quitted  the  university.  Like  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  while  at 
Cambridge,  neglected  the  studies  of  the  place  for  those  to 
which  he  felt  himself  attracted  ;  he  read  poetry  and  philo- 
sophy, and  ardently  perused  and  discussed  all  the  many  pam- 
phlets which  came  out  about  the  French  Revolution,  with 
which,  it  need  scarcely  be  said,  he  sympathised  greatly.  The 
calm  tenor  of  his  college  life  was  interrupted  by  an  extra- 
ordinary incident.  Depressed  by  the  thought  of  a  debt  of 
;£ico,  which  he  was  unable  to  pay,  he  went  to  London,  and 
enlisted  under  the  name — a  very 'appropriate  one — of  Private 
Comberbach.  After  four  months  spent  in  the  disagreeable 
situation  of  a  private  soldier,  he  was  recognised  by  an 
acquaintance,  who  informed  his  friends  of  his  whereabouts. 
He  was  then  bought  off,  and  returned  to  Cambridge,  which 
he  left  in  1794,  without  taking  a  degree. 

Coleridge's  life  was  a  shifty  and  rather  eventful  one.  We 
are  not  going  to  enter  into  detail  regarding  his  adventures  as 
Unitarian  preacher;  his  domestic  infelicity — mainly  caused 
by  himself,  it  may  be  said  ;  his  slavery  for  many  of  the  best 
years  of  his  life  to  opium  ;  his  innumerable  magnificent  pro- 
jects, which,  alas  !  generally  remained  projects.  Like  that  of 
])Q  Quincey — like,  probably,  that  of  most  opium-eaters — his 
true  moral  character  is  somewhat  of  a  puzzle.  No  doubt  he 
did  many  things  which  would  be  considered  mean  and  dishonest 
if  done  by  ordinary  people  ;  but  at  heart  he  seems  to  have 
been  a  good  man,  always  ready  to  acknowledge  and  repent 


304  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

of  his  errors,  constantly  striving  after  better  things,  and  having 
his  good  aims  constantly  thwarted  by  his  fatal  weakness  of 
will.  Throughout  life  he  was  fortunate  in  finding  friends  who 
loved  and  aided  him,  and  who  were  one  and  all  impressed  by 
a  deep  sense  of  his  wonderful  powers.  Few  men,  indeed, 
have  ever  lived  who  have  been  so  much  admired  by  their 
greatest  contemporaries  as  Coleridge  was.  "  He  is  the  only 
person  I  ever  knew,"  said  Hazlitt,  "who  answered  to  the  idea 
of  a  man  of  genius."  "I  have  known  many  men  who  have 
done  wonderful  things,"  said  Wordsworth,  "but  the  most 
wonderful  man  I  ever  knew  was  Coleridge."  De  Quincey 
called  him  "the  largest  and  most  spacious  intellect,  the 
subtlest  and  most  comprehensive,  that  has  yet  existed  among 
men."  "  I  am  grieved  that  you  never  met  Coleridge,"  wrote 
Southey  to  Taylor  of  Norwich  ;  "  all  other  men  whom  I  have 
ever  known  are  mere  children  compared  to  him."  Charles 
Lamb's  admiration  of  his  school  companion  is  well  known ; 
and  Shelley's  fine  lines — 

"  He  was  a  mighty  poet  and 

A  subtle-souled  psychologist ; 
All  things  he  seemed  to  understand 
Of  old  or  new,  of  sea  or  land, 

But  his  own  mind,  which  was  a  mist," — 

are  a  strong  and  true  testimony  to  his  astonishing  powers, 
which  were  admired  even  by  those  who  on  many  matters 
of  opinion  had  little  sympathy  with  him.  During  the  last 
eighteen  years  of  his  troubled  life-journey  he  found  a  safe 
and  comfortable  harbour  of  refuge  in  the  house  of  Mr.  Oilman, 
a  surgeon  at  Highgate.  There  he  was  visited  by  many  ad- 
mirers, chiefly  young  men,  who  listened  with  wonder  and 
admiration  to  the  oracles  which  the  sage  poured  forth  in  an 
unceasing  flow.  Among  others  came  Carlyle  ;  but  to  him  the 
utterances  which  to  not  a  few  seemed  almost  inspired  appeared 
little  better  than  "transcendental  moonshine."  Perhaps  he, 
impatient  of  words  which  led  to  nothing  clear  and  definite, 
judged  the  old  man  too  harshly  ;  but  his  incomparably  graphic 
and  vivid  account  of  Coleridge's  appearance  and  talk  in  the 


Coleridge's  Writings.  305 

"Life  of  Sterling"  remains  by  far  the  most  lifelike  descrip- 
tion we  have  of  tiie  philosopher  in  his  old  age.1 

Coleridge  died  in  1834,  leaving  nearly  all  his  most  brilliant 
projects  unexecuted,  but  not  without  having  left  conclusive 
evidence  that  he  was  possessed  of  a  genius  so  profound,  so 
subtle,  and  so  versatile,  that  if  only  strength  of  will  had  been 
added  to  it,  he  might  have  been  ranked  among  our  very- 
greatest  writers.  As  a  poet  his  total  work  is  not  large,  and 
what  of  it  is  really  excellent  might  be  comprised  in  a  very 
tiny  volume.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  nearly  all  his  best 
poems,  "Genevieve,"  "Kubla  Khan,"  the  "Ancient  Mariner," 
and  the  first  part  of  "  Christabel,"  were  written  in  a  single 
year,  1797.  On  the  peculiar  and  universal  charm  of  works  so 
familiar  as  these  it  is  unnecessary  to  dwell.  Most  of  his  prose 
works  were  written  after  he,  in  1816,  took  up  his  abode  with 
Mr.  Gilman.  Among  these  are  two  "  Lay  Sermons,"  published 
in  1816  and  1817;  the  "Biographia  Literaria"  (1817),  per- 
haps the  most  generally  interesting  of  his  prose  works,  con- 
taining as  it  does,  amidst  much  irrelevant  matter,  a  great  store 
of  valuable  criticism  and  many  original  and  profound  obser- 
vations ;  a  revised  and  greatly  enlarged  edition  of  "  The 
Friend"  (1818),  "a  periodical  of  weekly  essays,  intended  to 
help  to  the  formation  of  opinions  on  moral,  political,  and 
artistic  subjects,  grounded  upon  true  and  permanent  prin- 
ciples," carried  on  by  Coleridge,  at  considerable  pecuniary 
loss,  between  June  1809  and  March  1810;  and  "Aids  to 
Reflection"  (1825).  After  his  death  appeared  four  volumes 
of  "Literary  Remains,"  of  which  the  most  valuable  portions 
are  the  criticisms,  often  singularly  just  and  subtle,  on 
Shakespeare.  By  J.  S.  Mill,  Coleridge  was  ranked  with 
Jeremy  Bentham,  the  Utilitarian  thinker,  as  the  great  seminal 

J  It  is  a  wonder  that  in  these  days  of  innumerable  biographies  no  cne 
has  written  a  j;ood  Life  of  Coleridge.  None  such  exists  ;  and  many  parti- 
culars regarding  his  life  and  character  are  still  shrouded  in  partial  dark 
ness.  So  many  reminiscences,  &c.,  of  Coleridge  are  to  be  found,  that, 
with  the  necessary  research,  a  very  instructive  and  entertaining  book 
might  be  written  on  the  subject. 


306  The  New  Era  in  Pcetry. 

mind  of  his  generation.  No  man,  Mill  declared  some  forty 
years  ago,  did  so  much  to  shape  the  opinions  among  younger 
men,  who  could  be  said  to  have  any  opinions  at  all.  Coleridge 
may  be  said  to  have  been  the  founder  of  the  "Broad  Church" 
School,  many  of  whose  earlier  representatives  could  scarcely 
find  words  to  express  their  admiration  of  him  as  a  thinker. 
'•  Arnold  .  .  .  called  him  the  greatest  intellect  that  England 
had  produced  within  his  memory.  .  .  .  Julius  Hare  spoke  of 
him  as  'the  great  religious  philosopher,  to  whom  the  mind  of 
our  generation  in  England  owes  more  than  to  any  other  man.* 
.  .  .  Mr.  Maurice  has  everywhere  spoken  with  deeper  rever- 
ence of  him  than  of  any  other  teacher  of  these  latter  times."1 
To  Coleridge  belonged  one  of  those  rare  intellects  whose  pro- 
ducts are  valuable  not  so  much,  it  may  be,  for  what  they 
actually  express,  as  because  they  open  up  new  vistas  of  thought 
and  speculation  which  the  student  may  pursue  for  himself. 
To  this  a  great  part  of  the  extraordinary  influence  which  he 
at  one  time  exerted  is  due.  His  vogue  as  a  thinker  has  now 
in  great  measure  gone  by ;  what  he  did  in  that  way  was  more 
adapted  to  the  wants  of  his  own  age  than  to  all  time  ;  and 
his  style  is,  like  his  conversation,  apt  -to  be  dreamy  and 
long-winded. 

Coleridge's  eldest  son,  Hartley  (so  called  after  the  celebrated 
philosopher),  (1796-1849),  deserves  a  word  of  mention  here, 
as  having  inherited  a  considerable  portion  of  his  father's  literary 
genius.  Unfortunately,  also,  he  inherited  a  more  than  conside- 
rable share  of  his  weakness  of  will.  While  at  the  University 
he  became  a  slave  to  intemperate  habits,  and  never  was  able 
to  free  himself  from  the  bondage.  Of  amiable,  childlike 
nature,  considerable  scholarship,  and  fine  poetic  taste,  he  won 
the  regard  and  pity  of  many  friends,  notably  of  Wordsworth. 
Many  of  his  sonnets,  especially  those  relating  to  himself,  are 
singularly  beautiful.  His  most  important  prose  work  is  his 
"Worthies  of  Yorkshire  and  Lancashire,"  containing  some 
excellent  biographies.  Coleridge's  daughter  Sara  (1802-1852) 

1  Principal  Shairp's  "Essay  on  Coleridge,"  originally  published  in 
Korth  British  K.vif-u  foi  December  1865. 


Robert  Southey.  307 

had  no  small  share  of  her  father's  poetical   and  philosophical 
genius,  added  to  scholarship  almost  unique  in  a  woman. 

Robert  Southey,  the  last  of  the  Lake  trio,  did  not  approach 
either  of  the  other  two  in  poetical  genius.  Indeed,  we  do  not 
risk  much  by  saying  that  his  poems,  with  the  exception  of  a 
few  short  pieces,  which  hold  their  ground  in  books  of  extracts, 
are  now  almost  forgotten.  But  he  has  many  other  claims  to 
remembrance.  Master  of  a  prose  style  clear,  simple,  and 
elegant,  he  takes  much  higher  rank  as  a  prose  writer  than  as  a 
poet,  while  his  pure  and  blameless  life,  his  large-hearted  charity, 
his  unswerving  industry,  and  his  intense  devotion  to  literature 
should  keep  his  memory  alive  in  the  hearts  of  all  who  can 
appreciate,  a  true,  honest,  and  courageous  life,  Southey  was 
born  at  Bristol  in  1774,  educated  at  Westminster  and  Cam- 
bridge, and,  like  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge,  was  in  his  youth 
an  ardent  partisan  of  the  French  Revolution  and  of  Radical 
opinions  generally.  As  he  grew  older,  however,  he  resembled 
his  friends  in  veering  to  the  other  extreme  of  the  scale ;  indeed, 
no  more  unbending  Tory,  no  more  strenuous  advocate  of  <;  the 
established  constitution  in  Church  and  State,"  could  have 
been  found  than  was  in  his  later  years  the  man  who  had 
begun  his  literary  career  by  the  writing  in  1794  of  a  revolu- 
tionary poem,  "  Wat  Tyler,"  published  many  years  later  by  an 
unscrupulous  bookseller,  who  wished  to  annoy  the  author  by 
taunting  him  with  the  opinions  he  had  advocated  in  his  hot 
youth.  While  at  college  Southey  also  wrote  an  epic  poem, 
"  Joan  of  Arc,"  published  in  1 796.  Previous  to  this  date  he 
had  become  acquainted  with  Coleridge,  and  the  young  men, 
along  with  one  or  two  others,  had  spent  much  time  unprofit- 
ably,  but  no  doubt  pleasantly,  in  discussing  socialistic  schemes, 
including  a  "  Pantisocracy  "  on  the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna, 
where  they  could  live  a  pure  and  innocent  life  according  to 
Nature,  untrammelled  by  the  iron  tyranny  and  conventionalism 
of  the  Old  World.  Want  of  money  put  an  end  to  the  enterprise, 
and  its  only  important  result  was  that  in  1795  Southey,  un- 
known to  his  relatives,  married  Edith  Fricker,  sister  of  the 
wife  of  one  of  the  "  Pantisocrats."  Her  sister  Sarah  married 


308  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

Coleridge.  Immediately  after  the  marriage  ceremony  was 
over,  Soutbey  reluctantly  bade  his  wife  farewell,  being  obliged 
by  dire  pecuniary  necessity  to  start  for  the  Continent  with 
his  uncle,  Mr.  Hill.  He  spent  six  months  in  Portugal,  thus 
acquiring  that  knowledge  of  the  language  and  literature  of 
Spain  and  Portugal  which  was  afterwards  so  serviceable  to 
him.  On  his  return  to  England,  Southey,  aided  by  the  gene- 
rous assistance  of  a  friend,  commenced  the  study  of  the  law. 
But  he  soon  found  that  it  was  utterly  uncongenial  to  him,  and 
gave  it  up  after  a  year's  trial.  In  1801  he  became  private 
secretary  to  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  for  Ireland. 
This  office  too  he  abandoned  after  six  months'  trial.  Literature 
was  the  avocation  for  which  nature  had  designed  him,  and  to 
literature  he  was  attracted  by  an  irresistible  impulse.  In  1803 
he  fixed  his  residence  at  Greta  Hall,  Keswick,  and  fairly 
began  his  earnest  career  of  literary  labour,  almost  unparalleled 
in  its  constant  assiduity.  There,  too,  he  gave  shelter  to  the 
family  of  Coleridge,  and  to  Mrs.  Lovell,  a  widowed  sister  of 
his  wife's,  never  complaining  of  the  burden,  though  his  means 
were  far  from  abundant,  but  accepting  it  cheerfully  and 
bravely. 

To  enumerate  all  Southey's  writings  would  be  tedious 
and  unnecessary.  His  most  ambitious  poetical  works  were 
"Thalaba"  (1801),  "  Madoc"  (1805),  "The  Curse  of  Ke- 
hama"  (1810),  "Roderick,  the  Last  of  the  Goths"  (1814). 
None  of  them  was  very  successful  in  point  of  sale  or  other- 
wise ;  but  the  always  sanguine  author  consoled  himself  by 
thinking  that  their  copyright  would  eventually  prove  a  mine  of 
wealth — a  hope  never  fulfilled.  In  1807  he  obtained  from 
Government  a  pension  of  about  ^160  net.  In  1813  he 
accepted  the  laureateship,  which  had  been  declined  by  Scott ; 
and  in  1835  Sir  Robert  Peel  conferred  on  him  a  pension  of 
^"300  a  year.  Until  he  received  the  last-named  amount 
Southey  had  to  live  from  hand  to  mouth.  With  so  many 
claims  upon  him  as  he  had,  duty  and  inclination  alike  called 
upon  him  to  exert  himself  to  the  utmost.  His  most  profitable 
literary  connection  was  that  with  the  Quarterly  Rwieiv,  to 


Southey's  Writings.  309 

which  he  contributed  largely,  receiving  sometimes  as  much  as 
^100  fcr  an  article.  But  his  writings  in  it  were  only  a  small 
portion  of  his  labours.  He  wrote  a  "  History  of  Brazil,"  a 
"  History  of  the  Peninsular  War,"  "  Colloquies  on  Society" 
(the  theme  of  Macaulay's  famous  article  on  Southey),  "  Lives 
of  the  British  Admirals,"  Lives  of  Wesley,  of  Kirke  White, 
of  Chatterton,  of  Cowper,  of  Nelson,  of  Bunyan,  &c.,  &c. 
His  most  popular  prose  work  is  his  admirable  sketch  of  Nelson 
(1813).  The  secret  of  how  Southey  managed  to  get  through 
such  an  immense  amount  of  work,  and  the  secret  also,  it  must 
be  added,  of  the  inferiority  of  a  great  deal  of  ir,  was  that  he 
laboured  continually,  day  by  day,  hour  by  hour,  not  waiting 
for  moments  of  inspiration,  but  performing  each  day  his 
allotted  task.  No  wonder  that  he  broke  down  under  the 
burden,  and  that  the  three  years  previous  to  his  death  in  1843 
were  passed  in  a  state  of  mental  decay.  "  This  ["  work,  con- 
tinually work  "],  for  thirty  or  forty  years,  he  had  punctually 
and  impetuously  clone.  No  man  so  habitual,  we  were  told ; 
gave  up  his  poetry  at  a  given  hour,  on  stroke  of  the  clock, 
and  took  to  prose,  &c.,  &c.  ;  and  as  to  diligence  and  velocity, 
employed  his  very  walking  hours — walked  with  a  book  in  his 
hand ;  and  by  these  methods  of  his  had  got  through  perhaps 
a  greater  amount  of  work,  counting  quantity  and  quality,  than 
any  other  man  whatever  in  those  years  of  his,  till  all  suddenly 
ended.  I  likened  him  to  one  of  those  huge  sandstone  grind- 
ing cylinders  which  I  had  seen  at  Manchester,  turning  with 
inconceivable  velocity  (in  the  condemned  room  of  the  iron 
factory,  where  '  men  die  of  lung  disease  at  forty,'  but  are  per- 
mitted to  smoke  in  their  damp  cellar,  and  think  that  a  rich 
recompense  !) — screaming  harshly,  and  shooting  out  each  of 
them  its  sheet  of  fire  (yellow,  starlight,  &c.,  according  as  it  is 
brass  or  any  other  kind  of  metal  that  you  grind  or  polish  there) 
— beautiful  sheets  of  fire,  pouring  out  each  as  if  from  the  paper 
cap  of  its  low-stooping-backed  grinder,  when  you  look  from 
rearward.  For  many  years  these  stones  grind  so,  at  such  a 
rate,  till  at  last  (in  some  cases)  comes  a  moment  when  the 
stone's  cohesion  is  quite  worn  out,  overcome  by  the  stupen- 


310  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

dous  velocity  long  continued  ;  and  while  grinding  its  fastest  it 
flies  off  altogether,  and  settles  some  yards  from  you,  a  grind- 
ing-stone  no  longer,  but  a  heap  of  quiet  sand." l 

Surrounded  by  women  who  looked  up  to  him — as  well  they 
might — as  the  greatest  and  best  of  men,  Southey  formed  the 
most  extravagant  estimate  of  the  importance  and  value  of  his 
own  writings.  He  was  indeed,  as  Macaulay  remarks  in  his 
Diary,  arrogant  beyond  any  man  in  literary  history  [Carlyle, 
it  may  be  said  in  passing,  was  at  least  equally  arrogant,  though 
with  better  grounds  for  so  being],  for  his  self-conceit  was  proof 
against  even  the  severest  admonitions ;  and  the  utter  failure 
of  one  of  his  books  only  confirmed  him  in  his  opinion  of  its 
excellence.  But  we  should  not  bear  too  hardly  on  Southey 
for  the  self-complacency  with  which  he  regarded  his  produc- 
tions. If  he  had  not  thought  highly  of  them  he  could  never 
have  had  courage  to  labour  as  he  did,  and  his  lofty  opinions 
regarding  them  did  no  injury  to  any  one,  and  probably  did 
himself  more  good  than  harm. 

While  the  genius  of  Wordsworth  was  unknown  to  readers 
in  general,  or  known  only  to  be  ridiculed,  a  much  younger 
man  had  attained  a  vogue  as' a  poet  probably  unexampled 
in  England,  and  was  also  regarded  on  the  Continent  as  the 
brightest  of  Britain's  intellectual  stars.  Not  only  his  writings, 
but  the  rumours — often  absurd  and  false  enough — regarding 
his  life  and  character,  which  circulated  plentifully,  were  re- 
ceived with  the  keenest  interest.  If  we  placed  authors 
according  to  the  time  when  their  popularity  was  at  its  height, 
Lord  Byron  would  have  been  noticed  before  Wordsworth,  for 
he  undoubtedly  was  by  far  the  best  known  and  most  admired 
poet  of  the  early  part  of  this  century.  Not  only  the  fact  that 
he  was  a  great  genius,  but  the  fact  that  he  was  a  lord  who  led 
a  wild  life  and  defied  social  conventions  contributed  to  this 
result.  George  Noel  Gordon  Byron  was  born  in  London  in 
1788.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Scotch  heiress,  who  had  married  an 
extravagant  and  worthless  Captain  Byron,  who  consumed  her 
fortune,  and  from  whom  she  separated,  to  live  upon  .£150  a 
1  Carlylc's  "  Reminiscences,"  vol.  ii.  p.  329. 


Lord  Byron.  3 1 1 

year,  all  that  remained  of  her  wealth.  Byron's  early  years 
were  spent  in  Aberdeen,  where  the  house  in  which  his  mother 
lived  is  still  pointed  out  to  visitors.  He  was  unfortunate  in 
both  his  parents.  His  father  was  a  reckless  blackguard ;  his 
mother  a  foolish,  proud,  violent-tempered  woman,  who  at  one 
time  spoiled  her  son  by  over-indulgence,  at  another  time  pro- 
voked his  sensitive  and  irritable  nature  almost  to  madness  by 
her  taunts  about  his  lameness  (a  sore  point  with  him  through- 
out life).  These  facts  should  be  taken  into  account  in  esti- 
mating Byron's  character.  A  man  of  such  antecedents  who 
had  turned  out  blameless  and  beneficent  would  have  been  a 
singular  phenomenon. 

While  studying  at  the  Aberdeen  Grammar  School,  Byron 
was  recalled  to  England,  having,  when  little  more  than  ten, 
succeeded  to  his  grand-uncle's  estate  and  title.  After  study- 
ing for  some  time  at  Nottingham  and  Dulwich,  he  was  sent  to 
Harrow,  where  he  remained  for  two  years.  While  there,  his 
character  was  that  of  a  clever,  idle,  impetuous,  generous  boy ; 
one  whom,  as  the  head-master  declared,  it  was  easier  to  lead 
by  a  silken  string  than  by  a  cable.  In  1805  he  entered 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  led  the  frivolous,  unpro- 
fitable, half-dissipated,  half-foolish  sort  of  life  common  to 
many  young  patricians  during  their  university  career.  But 
already  his  poetical  genius  was  beginning  to  dawn,  and  in 
1807  he  published  his  first  volume,  "Hours  of  Idleness,"  a 
collection  of  verses  from  which  it  would  have  required  a  very 
shrewd  critic  indeed  to  infer  that  a  new  star  had  arisen  on  the 
poetic  horizon.  A  severe  and  contemptuous  critique,  by,  it  is 
said,  Lord  Brougham,  of  "  Hours  of  Idleness  "  in  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  had  the  effect  of  putting  the  young  poet  on  his  mettle, 
and  of  showing  that  he  possessed  powers  which  none  of  the 
readers  of  his  first  volume  could  have  supposed  to  belong  to 
him.  He  replied  to  his  critic  in  the  slinging  and  vindictive 
satire^ "  English  Bards  and  Scotch  Reviewers  "  (1809),  in  which, 
in  his  blind  indignation,  he  ran  amuck  not  only  of  those  who 
had  given  him  real  cause  for  offence,  but  of  all  the  writers 
who  happened  to  be  popular  favourites.  Spirited  and  well 


3 1 2  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

adapted  for  its  purpose  though  "  English  Bards"  be,  it  is  not 
a  poem  of  a  high  order.  The  depths  of  passion  and  feeling 
which  lay  in  Byron's  nature  were  first  shown  by  the  publica- 
tion, in  1812,  of  the  two  first  cargoes  of  "Childe  Harold," 
written  during  a  two  years'  tour  through  Portugal,  Spain, 
Greece,  and  Turkey.  The  poem  was  received  with  intense 
enthusiasm.  In  the  author's  own  words,  "he  awoke  one 
morning  and  found  himself  famous."  "  At  twenty-four," 
writes  Macaulay,  "  he  found  himself  on  the  highest  pinnacle 
of  literary  fame,  with  Scott,  Wordsworth,  Southey,  and  a 
crowd  of  other  distinguished  writers  beneath  his  feet.  There 
is  scarcely  an  instance  in  literary  history  of  so  sudden  a  rise 
to  so  dizzy  an  eminence.  Everything  that  could  stimulate 
^and  everything  that  could  gratify  the  strongest  propensities  of 
our  nature,  the  gaze  of  a  hundred  drawing-rooms,  the  accla- 
mations of  the  whole  nation,  the  applause  of  applauded  men, 
the  love  of  lovely  women,  all  this  world  and  all  the  glory  of  it 
were  at  once  offered  to  a  youth  to  whom  Nature  had  given 
violent  passions,  and  whom  education  had  never  taught  to 
control  them.  He  lived  as  many  men  live  who  have  no  similar 
excuse  to  plead  for  their  faults.  But  his  countrymen  and  his 
countrywomen  would  love  him  and  admire  him.  They  were 
resolved  to  see  in  his  excesses  only  the  flash  and  outbreak  of 
that  same  fiery  mind  which  glowed  in  his  poetry.  He  attacked 
religion,  yet  in  religious  circles  his  name  was  mentioned  with 
fondness,  and  in  many  religious  publications  his  works  were 
censured  with  singular  tenderness.  He  lampooned  the  Prince 
Regent,  yet  he  could  not  alienate  the  Tories.  Everything  it 
seemed  was  to  be  forgiven  to  youth,  rank,  and  genius." 

/While  still  a  London  literary  lion,  admired  and  sought  after 
by  all,  Byron  maintained  his  fame  by  producing  in  1813  the 
''Giaour"  and  the  "Bride  of  Abydos;"  and  in  1814  the 
"Corsair"  and  "Lara."  In  1814  occurred  his  unfortunate 
union  to  Miss  Millbanke.  The  ill-assorted  pair  lived  together 
only  twelve  months;  in  1815  Lady  Byron  left  him  for  ever, 
for  what  exact  causes  has  never  been  clearly  explained.  About 
this  time  a  loud  cry  of  indignation  against  Byron  began  to 


Byron  and  the  Greek  War.  313 

arise ;  he  was  lampooned  in  newspapers ;  fabulous  stories 
of  bis  debauchery  were  whispered  from  ear  to  ear;  society 
frowned  on  him ;  with  a  genius  almost  divine,  it  was  said 
and  thought,  he  united  a  character  diabolic  in  its  wickedness. 
Burdened  by  debt,  full  of  that  ennui  which  a  long  course  of 
dissipation  never  fails  to  bring  at  last,  feeling  that  his  li  e 
was  sick  and  an  error,  indignant  at  the  world  and  at  himself, 
Byron  determined  to  bid  farewell  to  England.  The  "  Siege 
of  Corinth"  and  "Parisina,"  written  about  this  time,  bear  testi- 
mony to  the  bitter  feelings  which  were  gnawing  at  his  heart. 
In  1816  he  left  England,  never  to  return  alive. 

After  visiting  Paris  and  Brussels,  Byron  went  to  Geneva, 
where  the  third  canto  of  '•  Childe  Harold"  and  the  " Prisoner 
of  Chillon  "  were  written  in  six  months.  Visiting  Italy,  he 
wrote  "Manfred"  and  the  •'  Lament  of  Tasso"  in  1817.  At 
Venice,  and  afterwards  at  Ravenna,  he  resided  till  1821,  writ- 
ing many  of  his  most  important  works — the  first  five  cantos  of 
"  Don  Juan,"  "  Mazeppa,"  and  the  dramas  <; Marino  Faliero," 
"Sardanapalus,"  the  "Two  Foscari,"  "Werner,"  "Cain,"  &c. 
The  last  mentioned  is,  from  a  psychological  point  of  view,  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  of  Byron's  works,  showing  his  attitude 
towards  theological  dogmas.  In  it  "  we  see,"  said  Goethe 
to  Eckermann  in  1824,  <;  how  the  inadequate  dogmas  of  the 
Church  work  upon  a  free  mind  like  Byron's,  and  how  he 
struggled  to  get  rid  of  a  doctrine  which  has  been  forced  upon 
him.  The  English  clergy  will  not  thank  him  ;  but  I  shall  be 
surprised  if  he  does  not  go  on  treating  biblical  subjects  of 
similar  import,  and  if  he  lets  slip  a  subject  like  Sodom  and 
Gomorrah."  "  Don  Juan,"  which,  cynical  and  unpleasant  in 
tone  as  much  of  it  is,  most  judicious  critics  will  agree  in 
thinking  Byron's  most  genuine  poem,  ultimately  extended  to 
sixteen  cantos.  It  was  preceded  by  "  Beppo,"  written  in  1817, 
a  poem  conceived  in  a  similar  bantering  vein. 

When,  in  1822,  the  Greeks  began  their  struggle  for  liberty, 
Byron  threw  his  whole  heart  into  their  cause,  and  made  a 
noble  effort  to  redeem  by  his  energy  in  its  behalf  the  errors  of 
his  wild  and  wasted  life.  In  June  1823  he  set  sail  for  Greece, 


314  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

and,  on  his  arrival  at  Missolonghi  in  December,  did  much  by 
his  vigour  and  good  sense  to  organise  and  discipline  the  army, 
and  to  check  the  abuses  which  everywhere  prevailed.  Had 
lite  been  granted  him,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  he 
might  have  risen  to  eminence  as  a  soldier  and  politician.  But 
the  end  was  near.  A  fever,  brought  on  by  exertion  and  ex- 
posure, proved  fatal  in  April  1824,  and  thus,  "at  thirty-six,  the 
most  celebrated  Englishman  of  the  nineteenth  century  closed 
his  brilliant  and  miserable  career." 

"In  my  mind,"  wrote  Carlyle  to  Macvey  Napier  in  1832, 
"Byron  has  been  sinking  at  an  accelerated  rate  for  the  last 
ten  years,  and  has  now  reached  a  very  low  level ;  I  should  say 
too  low,  were  there  not  an  Hibcrnidsm  involved  in  the  expres- 
sion. His  fame  has  been  very  great,  but  I  see  not  how  it  is  to 
endure,  neither  does  that  make  him  great.  No  genuine  pro- 
ductive thought  was  ever  revealed  by  him  to  mankind  ;  indeed, 
no  clear  undistorted  vision  into  anything,  or  picture  of  any- 
thing, but  all  had  a  certain  falsehood,  a  brawling  theatrical 
insincere  character.  The  man's  moral  nature,  too,  was  bad ; 
his  demeanour  as  a  man  was  bad.  What  was  he,  in  short,  but 
a  large  sulky  dandy  ;  of  giant  dimensions,  to  be  sure,  yet  still 
a  dandy,  who  sulked,  as  poor  Mrs.  Hunt  expressed  it,  Mike  a 
schoolboy  that  had  got  a  plain  bun  given  him  instead  of  a 
plum  one'?  His  bun  was  nevertheless  God's  universe,  with 
what  tasks  are  there,  and  it  had  served  better  men  than  he. 
I  love  him  not ;  I  owe  him  nothing ;  only  pity  and  forgive- 
ness; he  taught  me  nothing  that  I  had  not  again  to  forget." 
So  far  as  Byron's  personal  character  is  concerned,  this  seems 
to  us  thoroughly  sound  and  good.  What  he  might  have 
become,  had  he  lived,  it  is  vain  to  conjecture ;  possibly  time 
and  strenuous  action  might  have  ameliorated  his  character ; 
but  it  is  only  too  plain  that  he  was  sensual,  cynical,  vindictive, 
unamiable,  and  disposed  to  disbelieve  in  the  existence  of 
virtue  because  he  himself  was  not  virtuous.  The  best  proof 
of  the  radically  bad  character  of  his  temperament  is  that  he 
inspired  none  of  his  friends  with  a  sincere  love  for  him  ;  many 
admired  him  and  liked  his  company  in  his  agreeable  rnoods, 


Byron  s  Writings.  315 

but  we  doubt  very  much  if  any  regarded  him  with  deep 
affection.  Byron  was  a  man  of  great  genius,  but  his  many 
serious  faults  and  vices  ought  not  on  that  account  to  be 
glossed  over — 

"Tis  too  absurd,  'tis  weakness  shame, 
This  low  prostration  before  fame, 
This  casting  down  beneath  the  car 
Of  idols,  whatsoe'er  they  are, 
Life's  purest,  holiest  decencies, 
To  be  careered  o'er  as  they  please."  l 

Byron's  work  as  a  poet  is  intensely  personal ;  he  loved  to 
portray  his  own  dark  and  stormy  feelings  in  those  of  his 
j  characters.  Hence  it  is  not  singular  that  many  of  his  writings 
/  should  belong  to  what  Goethe  called  the  "  literature  of  de- 
spair;" -echoes  of  the  old  lament,  "Vanity  of  vanities,  all  is 
vanity ! "  Much  of  the  gloom  and  bitterness  of  heart,  and 
wearied  satiety  of  life  and  its  pleasures,  which  we  find  in 
"  Childe  Harold,"  was  mere  affectation.  Byron  liked  to  pose 
before  the  world  as  a  defiant,  cynical,  melancholy  man,  who 
had  tasted  all  the  world's  joys  and  found  them  to  bring  nothing 
but  vexation  of  spirit,  and  whom  the  world's  censure  or  ap- 
plause was  powerless  to  affect.  All  the  while,  however,  he 
was  childishly  sensitive  to  opinion,  and  writhed  as  much 
beneath  the  lash  of  some  petty  critic  as  the  smallest  poetaster 
could  have  done.  As  he  grew  older,  he  became  more  sincere  ; 
if  there  is  something  of  affectation  even  in  the  mocking 
laughter  of  "Don  Juan,"  it  is  at  all  events  a  welcome  contrast 
to  the  gloomy  misanthropy  of  "  Childe  Harold."  But  Byron's 
faults  as  a  writer  and  a  man  should  not  blind  us  to  his  tran- 
scendent merits.  The  fire  and  passion,  the  lofty  imagination, 
the  power  and  strength,  the  impetuous  rush  and  glow  which 
characterise  his  verse,  give  him  quite  a  distinctive  position 
among  the  poets  of  his  age.  Adhering  in  theory  to  the  school 
of  Pope,  he  was  in  reality  thoroughly  under  the  influence  of  the 
new  era,  and  all  his  best  work  breathes  its  spirit.  During  his 
lifetime  the  vast  majority  of  people  considered  him  the  greatest 

1  Moore. 


\tr 


316  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

poet  of  the  day,  and  even  now  not  a  few  critics  hold  the  same 
opinion.  But  poets  cannot  be  ranked  in  definite  order  like 
schoolboys  in  a  class ;  and  no  good  result  comes  of  the 
discussion  of  such  subjects  as  whether  Byron  was  a  greater 
poet  than  the  profound  and  lofty-minded  Wordsworth  or  the 
ethereal  Shelley.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  in  his  own  line  of 
poetical  expression  he  was  superior  to  them ;  whether  that 
line  was  higher  or  lower  than  theirs  is  a  subject  on  which 
opinions  will  differ  to  the  end  of  time.  It  should  not  be  for- 
gotten that,  with  the  exception  of  Scott,  Byron  was  the  only 
author  of  his  time  who  attained  Continental  celebrity — a  good 
omen  for  the  permanence  of  his  fame,  if  it  be  true  (which 
may  be  doubted)  that  the  judgment  of  foreigners  generally 
anticipates  the  judgment  of  posterity.  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold 
has  done  his  best  to  minimise  Goethe's  praises  of  Byron ;  but 
it  nevertheless  remains  clear  that  Goethe  thought  Byron  the 
greatest  poet  of  the  day.  "  When  he  will  create,"  he  said  to 
Eckermann,  "he  always  succeeds;  and  we  may  truly  say  that 
with  him  inspiration  supplies  the  place  of  reflection.  He  was 
j  always  obliged  to  go  on  poetising,  and  then  everything  that 
came  from  the  man,  especially  from  his  heart,  was  excellent 
IMe  produced  his  best  things,  as  women  do  pretty  children, 
Without  thinking  about  it  or  knowing  how  it  was  done.  He  is 
a  great  talent,  a  born  talent,  and  I  never  saw  the  true  poetical 
power  greater  in  any  man  than  in  him."1 

Resembling  Byron  in  his  defiance  of  control  and  his  con- 
tempt for  social  restrictions,  like  him  also  in  that  during  his 
lifetime  the  wildest  and  falsest  stories  of  his  private  life  were 
circulated  and  credited,  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  differed  from 
his  noble  friend  in  having  a  sweet,  lovable  disposition  ;  a 
heart  full  of  charity,  full  of  hope  and  eager  aspiration,  con- 
stantly longing  for  the  dawn  of  a  better  day  to  humanity. 
'•  He  was,"  said  Byron,  "  without  exception,  the  best  and  least 
selfish  man  I  ever  knew."  His  friend  Trelawny  pronounced 
him  "a  man  absolutely  without  selfishness."  Leigh  Hunt, 

1  Eckermann's  "Conversations  of  Goethe"  (Oxenford's  translation), 
p.  116. 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley.  3 1 7 

who  knew  him  well,  declared  that  "he  was  pious  towards 
nature,  towards  his  friends,  towards  the  whole  human  race, 
towards  the  meanest  insect  of  the  forest."  Bearing  these 
testimonies  in  mrnd,  it  is  strange  to  reflect  that  by  many  of  his 
contemporaries  Shelley  should  have  been  spoken  of  as  if  he 
had  been  a  monster  of  iniquity,  a  poisonous  reptile,  whom 
every  good  man  should  do  his  best  to  crush  underfoot.  But 
there  were  circumstances  in  his  life  and  character  which  tend 
to  explain  such  utterances,  extravagantly  erroneous  though 
they  were.  Shelley  was  the  eldest  son  of  Sir  Timothy  Shelley, 
Bart,  and  was  born  at  Field  Place,  near  Horsham,  Sussex,  in 
1792.  Sent  to  Eton  about  the  age  of  thirteen,  he  early  showed 
his  habitual  abhorrence  of  tyranny  by  his  refusal  to  fag. 
Leaving  Eton  in  1808,  he  passed  some  months  at  home,  em- 
ploying himself  in  the  composition  of  worthless  tales.  He  then 
in  1810  entered  University  College,  Oxford,  where  he  studied 
hard  by  fits  and  starts,  and  spent  much  time  in  chemical 
experiments,  for  which  he  had  always  a  fondness.  The  circu- 
lation of  a  two-page  pamphlet,  "A  Defence  of  Atheism,"  led 
to  the  expulsion  of  the  youthful  freethinker  from  Oxford  in 
March  1811 ;  and  his  father's  natural  irritation  on  this  account 
was  deepened  by  Shelley's  rash  marriage,  in  August  of  the 
same  year,  to  Harriet  Westbrook,  the  daughter  of  a  retired 
innkeeper.  Henceforth  Sir  Timothy  refused  to  have  any 
intercourse  with  his  son,  to  whom,  however,  he  granted  a 
liberal  annual  allowance.  Shelley's  hasty  marriage  was 
tragical  in  its  issue :  he  soon  became  tired  of  his  young 
wife,  who  could  have  no  intellectual  sympathy  with  him.  In 
1814  they  were  separated,  and  about  two  years  later  Mrs. 
Shelley  committed  suicide  by  drowning  herself  in  the  Ser- 
pentine. With  sorrow  it  must  be  said  that  in  his  relations 
with  her  Shelley  behaved  badly;  after  making  all  allowances 
for  his  strange  and  erratic  disposition,  his  conduct  in  this 
matter  must  be  condemned  as  selfish  and  cruel.  Before  his 
separation  from  her  he  became  acquainted  with  a  woman  of 
much  more  congenial  disposition,  Mary  Godwin,  daughter  of 
William  Godwin,  the  author  of  "Caleb  Williams."  With  her, 


3 1 8  The  New  Era  in  Poetry* 

in  1814,  he  travelled  through  France,  Switzerland,  and  Ger- 
many, and  in  1816,  on  the  death  of  Harriet  Westbrook,  she 
became  his  second  wife.  In  1813  Shelley  printed  (for  private 
circulation  only)  his  first  important  poem,  "  Queen  Mab,"  ex- 
pressing his  aspirations  after  a  future  golden  age  for  huma- 
nity, and  giving  violent  expression  to  his  atheistic  opinions. 
When,  in  1816,  after  the  death  of  his  first  wife,  he  laid  claim  to 
the  custody  of  his  children,  the  claim  was  successfully  resisted 
at  law  by  their  grandfather,  on  the  ground  of  his  atheism,  as 
exhibited  in  "  Queen  Mab,"  despite  the  fact  that  the  poem  had 
not  been  published,  only  privately  printed.  In  1816  appeared 
"Alastor,"  one  of  his  most  finished  productions,  describing 
the  life  of  a  solitary  poet.  Then  came,  in  1817,  the  "  Revolt 
of  Islam,"  composed  during  his  residence  at  Marlow.  In 
1818  he  left  England — never  to  return,  as  it  proved — and  went 
to  Italy,  where  in  the  following  year  he  produced  his  magnifi 
cent  lyrical  drama  "Prometheus  Unbound"  and  the  tragedy 
of  "  The  Cenci,"  undoubtedly  the  most  powerful  drama  written 
since  the  Elizabethan  era.  His  other  chief  works  are  "Julian 
and  Maddalo"  (1818),  the  "Witch  of  Atlas"  (1820),  "  Epi- 
psychidion"  (1821),  "  Adonais"  (1821) — a  lament  for  the  death 
of  Keats,  fit  to  be  ranked  with  the  Lycidas  of  Milton,  and 
"Hellas*'  (1821),  in  which  he  celebrated  the  outbreak  of  the 
Greek  war  of  liberty.  On  July  8,  1822,  while  he  was  out 
boating  (a  sport  which  he  always  loved)  in  the  Bay  of  Spezzia 
with  a  friend,  a  sudden  squall  arose ;  the  boat  was  upset,  and 
all  on  board  perished.  Some  days  later  Shelley's  body  was 
cast  ashore.  It  was  burnt,  as  the  quarantine  law  of  the  coun- 
try required,  and  the  ashes  were  deposited  in  the  Protestant 
burial-ground  at  Rome,  near  the  grave  of  Keats. 

Shelley  never  has  been,  and  never  will  be,  a  popular  poet. 
A  few  of  his  shorter  pieces,  such  as  "  The  Cloud  "  and  "To 
the  Skylark"  (both  written  in  1820),  are,  it  is  true,  universally 
known ;  but  to  the  multitude  most  of  his  poems  are  a  sealed 
book.  For  this  several  reasons  might  be  given.  For  one 
thing,  he  is  a  difficult  poet ;  to  follow  his  meaning  with  ease 
and  security  requires  a  nimble  and  poetic  intelligence,  which 


John  Keats.  3 1 9 

comparatively  few  readers  are  possessed  of.  But  the  main 
reason  why  his  poems  are  not  popular  is  because  they  want 
human  interest :  when  we  look  for  something  real  and  tangible 
which  may  awaken  our  sympathies,  we  are  often  put  off  with 
cloudy  metaphysics,  clothed,  indeed,  in  magnificent  words,  but 
vague  and  impalpable.  A  good  deal  of  Shelley's  poetry  might 
almost  have  been  written  by  a  denizen  of  another  world,  so 
remote  it  seems  from  all  earthly  interests.  To  many,  as  to 
Carlyle,  "  poor  Shelley  always  was,  and  is,  a  kind  of  ghastly 
object,  colourless,  pallid,  without  health,  or  warmth,  or  vigour ; 
the  sound  of  him  shrieky,  frosty,  as  if  a  ghost  were  trying  to 
'sing  to  us.'"  It  must  not  be  supposed  from  this  that  Shelley 
is  always  deficient  in  human  interest  or  feeling.  Frequently 
he  is  not  so :  he  was  filled  with  the  enthusiasm  of  humanity, 
and  often  employed  his  verse  to  give  utterance  to  his  hopes  of 
that  golden  age  which  always  lies  in  the  future.  But  even 
where  he  does  so,  his  conceptions  are  not,  to  quote  the  words 
of  an  admirer,  "  embodied  in  personages  derived  from  history 
or  his  own  observation  of  life,"  and  hence,  to  readers  in 
general,  have  a  misty  and  far-away  aspect  It  ought  to  be 
mentioned  that  Shelley  wrote  excellent  prose :  indeed,  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold  considers  that  his  letters  and  essays  bid  fair 
to  have  a  more  enduring  life  than  his  poems.  Few  will  agree 
with  this  judgment ;  but  all  who  care  to  read  the  thoughts  of 
a  great  poet  upon  many  points  of  high  literary  and  philo- 
sophical interest  will  find  a  rich  treat  in  the  alas !  too  scanty 
prose  remains  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley. 

Near  the  grave  of  Shelley  in  the  Protestant  cemetery  at 
Rome  lies  another  great  poet,  cut  off  in  the  pride  of  his 
youth  and  genius,  but  not  before,  in  spite  of  the  deplorable 
brevity  of  his  career,  he  had  done  such  work  as  to  place 
him  in  the  first  rank  of  English  poets,  far  above  other  "  in- 
heritors of  unfulfilled  renown,"  who  have  died  at  an  early 
age.  The  few  events  in  the  life  of  John  Keats  may  be  very 
briefly  related.  He  was  born  in  London  in  1795,  and  leaving 
school  in  1810,  was  apprenticed  for  five  years  to  a  surgeon 
at  Edmonston.  The  reading  of  Spenser  in  1812  fired  hi.s 


320  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

poetical  genius,  and  he  began  to  write  verses.  After  his 
apprenticeship  was  over,  he  came  to  London  to  walk  the 
hospitals  ;  but  he  soon  found  that  surgery  was  unsuited  to 
one  of  his  sensitive  nature,  and  gave  up  the  study.  In  1817 
was  published  his  first  volume  of  poems,  miscellaneous  pro- 
ducts of  his  youth,  not  sufficiently  noticeable  to  excite  either 
much  praise  or  much  censure.  In  1818  appeared  "  Endy- 
mion." Nothing  could  better  show  how  worthless  contempo- 
rary criticism  often  is  than  the  fact  that  this  poem  was  received 
with  a  well-nigh  universal  shout  of 'derision.  Gifford,  the 
editor  of  the  Quarterly  Review,  in  a  coarse  and  virulent  article 
denounced  Keats  as  the  "  copyist  of  Leigh  Hunt,"  "more 
unintelligible,  almost  as  rugged,  twice  as  diffuse,  and  ten 
times  as  tiresome."  Blackwood  followed  suit;  and  even  more 
lenient  critics  showed  their  want  of  discernment  by  "  damning 
with  faint  praise."  Yet  it  would  be  difficult  to  give  an  ex- 
ample of  a  poem  written  at  so  early  an  age  as  "  Endymion  " 
so  rich  in  the  loftier  attributes  of  poetry ;  its  faults  are  those 
of  an  undisciplined  but  luxurious  imagination,  from  which 
great  things  might  have  been  looked  for  in  the  future.  The 
extraordinary  rapidity  of  Keats's  poetical  growth  is  shown  by 
the  finish  and  maturity  of  the  poems  composed  within  the  two 
years  after  "  Endymion  "  was  written — the  noble  fragment 
of  "Hyperion,"  "Lamia,"  the  "Eve  of  St.  Agnes,"  and  the 
immortal  odes,  one  or  two  of  which  are  of  almost  peerless 
beauty.  Meanwhile  it  was  becoming  only  too  evident  to  all 
his  friends  that  the  poet's  life  was  to  be  a  brief  one.  Con- 
sumption had  laid  its  fatal  hand  upon  him,  and  he  was 
gradually  wasting  away.  In  1820  he  embarked  for  Naples, 
accompanied  by  his  artist  friend  Severn.  From  Naples  they 
proceeded  to  Rome,  and  in  the  Eternal  City,  in  February 
1821,  Keats  breathed  his  last.  To  him,  indeed,  as  his  bio- 
grapher, Lord  Houghton,  himself  a  poet  of  no  mean  talent, 
remarks,  the  gods  were  kind,  and  granted  great  genius  and 
early  death.  Whether  the  verse  he  left  behind  him  was  but 
as  a  prelude  to  the  music  never  played  ;  whether  he  would 
have  gone  on  increasing  in  poetic  stature  as  the  years  went 


James  Hogg.  3  2 1 

on,  cannot  be  said  with  certainty.  When  we  remember  within 
how  short  a  period  the  best  poetry  of  Wordsworth  and  Southey 
was  written,  it  would  be  unwise  to  determine  too  confidently 
that,  had  life  been  spared,  his  growth  in  the  poetic  art  would 
have  been  continuous.  Brief  though  his  career  was,  it  sufficed 
him  to  write  poems  which  can  only  perish  with  the  language. 
His  passionate  love  of  beauty,  his  strong  and  swift  imagina- 
tion, his  luxurious  flow  of  language,  and  his  felicity  of  phrase, 
rank  him  among  the  great  masters  of  English  song.  How 
powerful  and  wide-spread  has  been  his  influence  is  clearly 
proved  by  the  many  echoes  of  his  verse  which  are  found  in 
succeeding  writers. 

We  have  now  gone  over  the  greatest  names  in  the  poetical 
literature  of  the  nineteenth  century.  But  a  few  writers  have  yet 
to  be  mentioned,  one  or  two  of  whom  were  in  their  lifetime 
far  more  widely  read  than  Wordsworth  or  Keats.  Samuel 
Rogers  (1763-1855)  is  remarkable  as  having,  alone  among 
the  poets  of  his  time,  remained  altogether  untouched  by 
the  influence  of  the  new  era.  He  was  a  disciple  of  Pope, 
born  out  of  due  time,  and  sedulously  followed  the  footsteps 
of  his  master.  His  poems,  of  which  the  principal  are  the 
"Pleasures  of  Memory"  (1792),  "Human  Life"  (1819),  and 
"Italy"  (1822),  are  now  almost  forgotten;  they  have  not 
sufficient  fire  or  strength  to  stand  the  ordeal  of  time.  Their 
contemporary  fame,  which  was  considerable,  owed  a  good 
deal  to  the  social  repute  of  their  author,  a  rich  banker,  who 
was  for  many  years  a  prominent  figure  in  London  society. 
Many  amusing  stories  of  his  cynicism  and  biting  and  sarcastic 
remarks  are  on  record,  and  tend  to  keep  his  memory  alive. 
James  Hogg  (1770-1835),  the  "  Ettrick  Shepherd,"  was  a 
genuine  poet,  with  great  but  very  ill-cultivated  and  undisci- 
plined abilities.  Much  of  his  prose  and  a  good  deal  of  his 
poetry  are  worthless,  but  some  of  his  songs,  and  the  exquisite 
44  Kilmeny,"  in  the  "  Queen's  Wake  "  (1813),  reach  a  very  high 
level  of  excellence.  His  rough  and  boisterous  manners,  and 
his  unique  and  colossal  self-conceit,  rendered  the  "  Shepherd  n 
a  favourite  butt  among  the  Edinburgh  wits.  Another  Scots- 


322  The  New  Era  in  Poetry. 

man,  Thomas  Campbell  (1777-1844),  like  Rogers,  began  his 
poetic  career  with  the  publication  of  a  didactic  poem,  the  "Plea- 
sures of  Hope"  (1799),  which  in  a  short  time  went  through 
many  editions.  His  next  long  poem,  "  Gertrude  of  Wyoming  " 
(1809),  breathed  more  of  the  modern  spirit.  Campbell's 
longer  poems  have  now  ceased  to  be  much  read  or  quoted, 
except  in  single  lines ;  but  his  ringing  war-ballads,  such  as  the 
"  Battle  of  the  Baltic "  and  the  "  Mariners  of  England,"  are 
about  the  best  things  of  the  kind  in  the  language,  full  of  spirit 
and  fire,  and  written  in  metre  admirably  adapted  to  the  sub- 
ject. Besides  his  poetry,  Campbell  wrote  a  good  deal  of 
prose,  mostly  done  as  hack-work,  and  of  little  permanent  value. 
His  "Specimens  of  the  British  Poets"  is,  however,  a  very 
good  book  \  and  if  he  had  husbanded  his  energies  better,  he 
might  have  done  excellent  work  as  a  prose  writer,  for  his 
style  is  correct  and  elegant,  and  his  literary  judgments  are  in 
general  accurate  and  judicious.  Thomas  Moore  (1779-1852), 
whose  "Life  of  Byron"  (1830)  is,  considering  all  the  many 
difficulties  of  the  task,  a  very  creditable  performance,  was  one 
of  the  most  popular  poets  of  his  time.  An  amiable,  good- 
hearted,  cheerful  Irishman,  possessed  of  many  excellent  qua- 
lities, he  was  content  to  fritter  away  his  life  dangling  on  the 
skirts  of  the  great,  and  was  never  so  happy  as  when  in  titled 
company.  His  "  Irish  Melodies  "  are  thin  and  artificial  when 
compared  with  the  songs  of  Burns,  but  they  are  light  and 
graceful  enough  in  their  way,  and  well  adapted  to  be  linked 
to  music.  His  most  elaborate  performance,  "  Lalla  Rookh" 
(1817),  an  Eastern  tale,  is  overloaded  with  gaudy  ornament; 
but  while  containing  little  to  satisfy  the  earnest  student  of 
poetry,  is  spirited  and  interesting.  Some  of  his  other  writ- 
ings show  a  marked  talent  for  lively  satire,  which  he  was  not 
slow  to  exercise  against  his  political  opponents. 


IX 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  AND  THE  PROSE  LITERATURE 
OF  THE  EARLY  PART  OF  THE  NINETEENTH 
CENTURY. 

Sir  Walter  Scott ;  Mackintosh,  Hallam,  Alison  ;  Jeffrey,  Sydney  Smith  ; 
Wilson,  Lockhart,  De  Quincey  ;  Lamb,  Hazlitt,  Hunt;  Landor  ; 
Chalmers. 

|N  our  survey  of  the  poets  of  the  new  era  in  the  last 
chapter,  one  great  name  was  omitted, — the  name 
of  one  who,  till  his  less  intense  and  dazzling  light 
paled  before  the  brilliant  and  captivating  radiance 
of  Byron,  was  far  and  away  the  most  popular  poet  of  his  time. 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  we  refer  to  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  But  Scott's  poetry,  excellent  though  in  some  respects 
it  be,  is  by  no  means  his  most  enduring  title  to  remembrance. 
If  he  had  written  nothing  else,  he  would  not  now  have  ranked 
among  the  first  writers  of  his  time,  far  less  would  he  have 
occupied  among  British  authors  a  place  in  the  opinion  of 
many  second  only  to  that  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  as  the  writer 
of  a  long  series  of  fictions  which,  when  we  consider  their 
excellence,  their  interest,  their  variety,  their  width  of  range,: 
their  accurate  delineations  of  nature,  of  life,  and  of  character, 
may  be  safely  pronounced  matchless,  that  Scott's  name  is,  and 
in  all  probability  will  continue  to  be,  cherished  with  fond  and 
admiring  reverence  by  millions  of  readers.  But  not  only  did  , 
Scott  reign  supreme  as  a  novelist,  and  occupy  an  elevated 
position  in  the  kindred  realm  of  poetry  ;  it  may  be  said  of  him, 


324     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

as  of  Goldsmith,  that  there  was  almost  no  kind  of  writing  that 
he  did  not  touch,  and  none  which  he  touched  that  he  did  not 
adorn.  The  fertility,  the  affluence,  the  readiness  of  Scott's  j 
intellectual  resources  were  indeed  such  that  to  contem- 
plate them  almost  strikes  one  dumb  with  amazement.  lie 
was  a  manly  and  judicious  critic,  an  accomplished  antiquary, 
no  contemptible  historian,  and  a  careful  and  painstaking 
editor.  The  amount  of  literary  work  of  various  kinds  he 
managed  to  get  through,  while  living,  not  the  life  of  a  re- 
cluse, but  that  of  an  active  and  bustling  man  of  the  world, 
attending  carefully  to  his  ordinary  business,  and  always  ob- 
servant of  the  rites  of  hospitality,  is  something  portentous 
and  unexampled.  To  record  with  any  fulness  the  life  of  a 
man  of  such  various  occupations  and  talents,  of  such  bound- 
less energy,  would  require  a  volume,  not  a  few  pages.  Only 
the  leading  features,  therefore,  can  be  noted  here. 

Walter  Scott  was  born  at  Edinburgh  on  August  15,  1771. 
His  father  was  a  "douce,"  careful,  precise  Writer  to  the 
Signet,  whose  chief  features  have  been  portrayed  in  indelible 
characters  by  his  son  in  the  portrait  of  Mr.  Saunders  Fairford 
in  "  Redgauntlet."  Like  many  able  men, — like,  for  example, 
his  great  contemporary,  Goethe, — Scott  owed  the  more  rare 
and  distinguished  features  of  his  intellectual  character  to  his 
mother,  a  woman  of  taste  and  imagination.  A  lameness — 
never  cured — in  his  infancy,  and  weak  health,  caused  Scott  in 
his  third  year  to  be  sent  to  the  house  of  his  grandfather  at 
Sandyknowe,  near  Kelso,  in  order  to  try  the  efficacy  of  country 
air  and  diet.  The  period  of  his  residence  there  was  a  very 
happy  one.  He  passed  his  days  in  the  open  fields,  "  with  no 
other  fellowship  than  that  of  the  sheep  and  lambs;"  and  in  the 
long  winter  evenings  his  early  passion  for  the  romantic  past 
was  nurtured  by  the  traditionary  legends  of  Border  heroism 
and  adventure  repeated  by  an  aged  female  relative.  In  his 
eiiihth  year  he  was  sent  to  the  High  School  of  Edinburgh,  of 
which  the  then  headmaster  was  Dr.  Adam,  almost  as  cele- 
brated a  figure  in  Scottish  educational  history  as  Dr.  Arnold 
o;"  Rugby  is  in  that  of  England.  During  his  school  career 


Scoffs  Early  Years.  325 

lie  did  not  attend  very  sedulously  to  the  ordinary  studies  there 
followed,  but  he  read  omnivorously,  and  delighted  his  com- 
panions with  frequent  examples  of  his  talent  as  a  narrator  of 
fictions,  plentifully  seasoned  with  the  marvellous,  and  often 
relating  to  knight-errantry.  "  Slink  over  beside  me,  Jamie," 
he  would  whisper  to  his  schoolfellow  Ballantyne,  afterwards, 
alas  !  inseparably  connected  with  the  darkest  pages  of  his 
history,  "and  I'll  tell  you  a  story."  When  about  thirteen, 
he  first,  during  six  months  he  passed  with  his  aunt  at  Kelso, 
became  acquainted  with  Percy's  "Reliques."  "I  remember 
well,"  he  says,  "  the  spot  where  I  read  these  volumes  for  the 
first  time.  It  was  beneath  a  huge  plantanus  tree,  in  the  ruins 
of  what  had  been  intended  for  an  old-fashioned  arbour  in  the 
garden  I  have  mentioned.  The  summer  day  sped  onward  so 
fast  that,  notwithstanding  the  sharp  appetite  of  thirteen,  I  for- 
got the  hour  of  dinner,  was  sought  for  with  anxiety,  and  was 
still  found  entranced  in  my  intellectual  banquet."  Truly  the 
child  is  father  of  the  man.  From  his  earliest  years  Scott  showed 
that  love  of  old-world  stories,  of  the  days  of  chivalry  and 
romance,  and  of  all  "auld  nick-nackets  "  tending  to  make  the 
past  more  real  to  him,  which  he  afterwards  displayed  to  its 
full  extent  in  the  gathering  of  ancient  armour  and  miscellane- 
ous articles  of  antiquity  which  he  collected  around  him  at 
Abbotsford,  and  which,  more  than  anything  else,  was  the 
source  of  his  originality  as  a  novelist  and  poet. 

After  leaving  the  High  School,  Scott  entered  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  where  he  studied  in  the  same  irregular  and 
miscellaneous  fashion  as  before  and  afterwards.  Every  great 
man  is  for  the  most  part  self-educated ;  what  he  acquires 
from  schoolmasters  and  professors  is  trifling  both  in  quantity 
and  in  value  compared  to  what,  following  the  bent  of  his 
genius,  he  acquires  for  himself.  Scott  was  not  a  scholar ; 
he  was  too  careless  of  minute  accuracy  ever  to  trouble  him- 
self about  those  trifling  facts  and  verbal  subtleties  a  thorough 
acquaintance  with  which  is  the  glory  of  University  magnates. 
But  he  acquired  in  rough-and-ready  fashion  such  a  knowledge 
of  various  languages  as  to  enable  him  to  assimilate  the  litera- 


326     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century, 

ture  best  suited  to  his  needs  contained  in  them.  The  small 
store  of  Greek,  it  is  true,  which  he  was  taught  at  the  University, 
he,  in  the  lapse  of  years,  managed  to  forget  so  utterly  that  he 
did  not  even  know  the  letters  ;  but  he  read  Latin  with  fluency, 
and  could  peruse  without  difficulty  any  book  written  in  French, 
German,  Italian,  or  Spanish.  Entering  his  father's  office  as 
apprentice  in  his  fifteenth  year,  he  managed  so  far  to  curb  his 
restless  energies  as  to  go  through  with  credit  a  fair  amount 
of  legal  drudgery,  acquiring,  besides  some  knowledge  of  the 
technicalities  of  the  law,  those  habits  of  method,  punctuality, 
and  laborious  industry  which  afterwards  were  such  a  powerful 
auxiliary  to  him.  His  somewhat  dry  and  mechanical  duties 
as  legal  apprentice  and  budding  advocate  he  diversified  not 
only  by  reading,  but  by  frequent  excursions  into  the  Highland 
and  Lowland  districts,  acquiring  there  a  rich  store  of  traditions, 
and  becoming  acquainted  with  all  those  types  of  Scottish 
character  which  he  was  afterwards  to  delineate  in  imperishable 
colours.  "  He  was  makin'  himsel  a'  the  time,"  says  one  of 
his  companions,  speaking  about  those  raids,  "  but  he  didna 
ken,  maybe,  what  he  was  about  till  years  had  passed.  At 
first  he  thought  o'  little,  I  daresay,  but  the  queerness  and 
fun." 

In  1792  Scott  was  admitted  to  the  Scottish  bar.  Through 
the  influence  of  his  father  he  received  enough  employment  to 
keep  him  from  being  entirely  idle,  but  not  nearly  enough  to 
occupy  all  the  hours  of  so  quick  and  energetic  a  worker.  It 
is  a  wonder  that  Scott,  with  his  great  fondness  for  reading  and 
his  wonderful  abilities,  did  not  sooner  make  an  entry  into  the 
fair  realm  of  literature,  which  has  afforded  kindly  aid  to  so 
many  young  subjects  of  Themis.  It  was  not,  however,  till 
1796  that  he  first  appeared  before  the  public  as  translator 
of  Burger's  ballads  "  Lenore "  and  the  "  Wild  Huntsman." 
These  attracted  considerable  attention,  and  led  to  his  contri- 
buting a  few  pieces  to  "Monk"  Lewis's  "Tales  of  Wonder," 
and  to  his  translating  in  1799  Goethe's  "Gotz  von  Berlich- 
ingen."  Previous  to  the  publication  of  the  last-mentioned 
productions,  Scott  had  married  Miss  Carpenter,  the  daughter 


Scoffs  "  Border  Minstrelsy:'  327 

of  a  French  refugee,  who  brought  with  her  a  small  fortune. 
She  was  not  his  first  love  :  before  he  met  with  her  he  had 
been  deeply  in  love  with  a  lady  who  afterwards  became  wife 
of  Sir  William  Forbes  of  Pitsiigo.  His  attachment  was  re- 
turned, but  circumstances  opposed  their  union,  and  their 
intercourse  was  broken  off,  leaving  a  wound  in  Scott's  heart 
which  the  lapse  of  time  was  powerless  altogether  to  heal. 
Whenever  in  any  of  his  works  he  has  occasion  to  mention  an 
early  and  unfortunate  "first  love,"  he  does  so  with  peculiar 
tenderness  and  feeling. 

In  1802  Scott  published  the  first  two  volumes  of  the 
"  Border  Minstrelsy,"  printed  by  his  old  schoolfellow  Ballan- 
tyne,  who  had  set  up  in  business  in  the  pretty  little  town  of 
Kelso,  and  the  first  important  specimen  of  an  afterwards 
famous  press.  There  was  no  work  of  Scott's  after-life  which 
showed  the  result  of  so  much  preliminary  labour.  Before  he 
was  ten  years  old  he  had  collected  several  volumes  of  ballads 
and  traditions,  and  we  have  seen  how  diligently  lie  pursued  the 
same  task  in  later  years.  The  collection  was  admitted  to  be 
far  more  faithful,  as  well  as  more  skilfully  edited,  than  its 
prototype,  the  "Reliques"  of  Bishop  Percy,  while  the  notes 
contained  a  mass  of  information  relative  to  Border  life,  con- 
veyed in  a  style  of  beauty  unprecedented  in  matters  of  this 
kind,  and  enlivened  with  a  higher  interest  than  that  of  fiction. 
Percy's  "  Reliques  "  had  prepared  the  way  for  the  kind  recep- 
tion of  the  '•  Minstrelsy  "  by  the  general  relish  which — notwith- 
standing Dr.  Johnson's  protest — it  had  created  for  the  simple 
pictures  of  a  pastoral  and  heroic  time.  Burns  had  since 
familiarised  the  English  ear  with  the  Doric  melodies  of  his 
native  land ;  and  now  a  greater  than  Burns  appeared,  whose 
first  production,  by  a  singular  chance,  had  come  into  the  world 
in  the  very  year  in  which  the  Ayrshire  minstrel  was  withdrawn 
from  it;  as  if  nature  had  intended  that  the  chain  of  poetic 
inspiration  should  not  be  broken.  The  delight  of  the  public 
was  further  augmented  by  the  appearance  of  the  third  volume 
of  the  "  Minstrelsy "  (1803),  containing  various  imitations 
of  the  old  ballads,  which  contained  "all  the  rich  fashion  of 


328     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

the  antique,  purified  from  the  mould  and  rust  by  which  the 
beauties  of  such  weather-beaten  trophies  are  defaced."  The 
first  edition  was  disposed  of  in  less  than  a  year ;  and  on  the 
publication  of  a  second,  the  copyright  was  sold  to  Longman 
for  ^500 — a  very  fortunate  bargain  for  the  publisher,  as  it 
proved. 

Passing  over  minor  writings,  we  come  to  the  next  important 
event  in  Scott's  literary  life, — the  publication  of  the  "  Lay  of 
the  Last  Minstrel"  in  1805.  It  met  with  a  colossal  and  un- 
precedented success;  edition  after  edition  was  called  for; 
with  a  single  bound  Scott  leaped  to  the  position  of  the  most 
popular  poet  of  the  day.  There  are  several  causes  which 
combine  to  account  for  this  extraordinary  popularity.  In  the 
first  place,  the  poem  was  original  in  subject  and  mode  of 
"treatment;  the  description  of  the  old  romantic  past,  in  free 
and  flowing  verse,  was  felt  as  refreshing  to  those  tired  of 
poetical  commonplace  and  conventionality  as  is  the  fresh  air 
of  the  mountains  to  those  long  detained  in  stifling  London 
drawing-rooms.  Again,  Scott's  poems  have  what  many  greater 
poems  want  —  an  interesting  story,  which,  apart  from  their 
poetical  beauties,  keeps  the  reader's  attention  fixed.  In  the 
third  place,  they  do  not  require  any  thought  or  elaborate 
culture  to  understand  them;  their  beauties  are  easily  per- 
ceptible by  all,  as  their  popularity  among  schoolboys  suffi- 
ciently attests.  General  intelligibility  is  one  of  the  prime 
requisites  of  immediate  popularity  as  a  poet,  though  not  of 
permanent  fame ;  a  fact  of  which  the  immense  sale  of  Long- 
fellow's writings  in  our  day  is  a  convincing  illustration.  The 
"  Lay  "  was  followed  in  1808  by  "  Marmion,"  and  in  1810  by 
the  "Lady  of  the  Lake,"  to  which  poem,  with  its  fine  de- 
scriptions of  scenery,  is  mainly  due  the  great  influx  of  tourists 
every  season  to  the  Trossachs.  With  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake  " 
Scott's  popularity  as  a  poet  reached  its  zenith.  His  subse- 
quent poems,  the  "  Vision  of  Don  Roderick,"  "  Rokeby,"  the 
"  Lord  of  the  Isles,"  &c.,  were  not  so  well  received.  "  Well, 
James,"  said  Scott  to  Ballantyne  a  few  days  after  the  publi- 
cation of  the  "  Lord  of  the  Isles  "  in  1815,  "  I  have  given  you 


Scott  and  Abbotsford.  329 

a  week ;  what  are  people  saying  about  the  '  Lord  of  the 
Isles'?"  Ballantyne  hesitated  a  little,  but  Scott  speedily 
brought  the  matter  to  a  point.  "  Come,"  he  said,  "  speak  out, 
my  good  fellow ;  what  has  put  it  into  your  head  to  be  on  so 
much  ceremony  •with  me  all  of  a  sudden  ?  But  I  see  how  it  is ; 
the  result  is  given  in  one  word, — disappointment."  Ballantyne's 
silence  admitted  the  inference  to  its  fullest  extent.  As  Scott 
had  been  wholly  unprepared  for  the  event,  his  countenance 
looked  rather  blank  for  a  few  seconds.  At  length  he  said, 
with  perfect  cheerfulness,  "  Well,  well,  James,  so  be  it ;  but 
you  know  we  must  not  droop,  for  we  can't  afford  to  give  over. 
Since  one  line  has  failed,  we  must  stick  to  something  else." 
Thus,  almost  by  chance,  was  Scott's  genius  driven  into  the 
line  in  which  its  highest  triumphs  were  achieved.  He  had 
already,  with  characteristic,  caution,  made  his  first  essay  in  it. 
But  before  beginning  the  history  of  the  wonderful  Waverley 
series,  we  may  glance  a  little  at  Scott's  occupations  and  cir- 
cumstances at  this  time.  In  many  ways  he  had  much  cause 
to  felicitate  himself  on  his  lot.  In  1799  he  was  appointed 
Sheriff  of  Selkirkshire,  with  an  annual  salary  of  .£300.  Some 
years  later  he  procured  an  appointment  as  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal clerks  of  the  Court  of  Session,  worth  about  ^"1500  a 
year.  Altogether,  counting  the  interest  of  his  small  fortune, 
he  had  an  income  of  about  ^2000,  independent  of  his  literary 
exertions,  which  brought  him  in  large  sums.  Yet  Scott  was 
not  a  rich  man ;  and  though  his  income  had  been  tenfold 
what  it  was,  would  not  have  been  a  rich  man.  His  ambiuon 
was  not  to  write  great  works  (he  always  regarded  his  literary 
faculty  merely  as  a  convenient  means  of  filling  his  purse),  not 
to  acquire  great  fame  as  an  author,  but  to  be  a  large  landed 
proprietor,  the  founder  of  a  race  of  Scottish  lairds.  With  this 
end  in  view  he  toiled  late  and  early ;  he  went  through  labours 
which  in  a  short  time  would  have  brought  a  man  of  less 
vigorous  constitution  to  the  grave ;  he  plunged  himself  in 
debt,  and  engaged  in  commercial  transactions  which  finally 
proved  his  ruin.  In  1812  he  removed  to  Abbotsford,  where 
he  built  and  fitted  up  the  fine  mansion  so  closely  associated 
15 


330     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

with  his  name,  and  drained  and  planted  the  bleak  moorland 
around  at  the  cost  of  many  thousands.  Cautious  and  judi- 
cious in  everything  else,  he  had  a  sort  of  craze  for  the  purchase 
of  land,  and  could  no  more  resist  the  purchase  of  any  plot  or 
ground  in  tempting  proximity  to  his  estate  of  Abbotsford  that 
was  offered  to  him,  than  an  opium-eater  can  withstand  the 
fascinations  of  his  favourite  drug.  The  burning  ambition  to 
be  a  territorial  magnate  was  a  sad  and  pitiful  one  for  a  man 
of  Scott's  powers,  but  it  carried  with  it  a  terrible  revenge. 

On  a  certain  day  in  June  1814,  while  a  party  of  young  la\v 
students  were  chatting  gaily  in  the  library  of  a  house  in 
George  Street,  Edinburgh,  a  shade  was  observed  to  come 
over  the  countenance  of  their  host.  One  of  them  having  in- 
timated a  fear  of  his  being  unwell :  "  No,"  said  he ;  "  I  shall 
be  well  enough  presently,  if  you  will  only  let  me  sit  where  you 
are  and  take  my  chair,  for  there  is  a  confounded  hand  in 
sight  of  me  here  which  has  often  bothered  me  before,  and  now 
it  won't  let  me  fill  my  glass  with  good-will."  His  companion 
rose  to  change  places  with  him,  and  had  pointed  out  to  him 
this  hand,  which,  like  the  writing  on  Belshazzar's  wall,  dis- 
turbed his  host's  hour  of  hilarity.  "Since  we  sat  down,"  he 
said,  "  I  have  been  watching  it ;  it  fascinates  my  eye  ;  it 
never  stops  ;  page  after  page  is  finished  and  thrown  on  that 
heap  of  manuscript,  and  still  it  goes  on  unwearied,  and  so  it 
will  be  till  can  dies  are  brought  in,  and  God  knows  how  long 
after  that.  It  is  the  same  every  night ;  I  can't  stand  a  sight 
of  it  when  I  am  not  at  my  books."  "Some  stupid,  dogged, 
engrossing  clerk  probably,"  exclaimed  one  of  the  youths.  "  No, 
boys,"  replied  the  host,  "I  know  well  what  hand  it  is — 'tis 
Walter  Scott's."  It  was  the  hand  of  Walter  Scott,  busily  engaged 
in  his  Castle  Street  lodging  in  writing  the  last  two  volumes  of 
u  Waverley  " — a  task  which  occupied  him  only  three  weeks. 
"Waverley  "  had  been  begun  nine  years  before,  in  1805  (hence 
the  second  title,  "  Tis  Sixty  Years  Since  "),  but  the  friend  to 
whom  Scott  submitted  what  of  it  was  then  written  did  not  speak 
of  it  in  sufficiently  high  terms  to  encourage  him  to  run  the 
riak  of  somewhat  dimming  his  poetic  laurels  by  its  publication. 


The  Waver  ley  Novels.  331 

When,  however,  his  popularity  as  a  poet  began  to  decrease, 
and  he  was  desirous  of  hitting  upon  a  new  vein  wherewith  to 
satisfy  the  capricious  taste  of  the  public,  his  thoughts  reverted 
to  the  almost  forgotten  manuscript  of  "  Waverley,"  and  he 
determined  to  complete  it.  It  was  published  anonymously 
in  July  1814,  the  authorship  being  kept  a  strict  secret  lest  the 
novel  should  prove  a  failure.  Any  such  apprehension,  however, 
was  soon  dispelled.  With  extraordinary  rapidity  it  rose  into 
an  unprecedented  degree  of  favour  ;  everywhere  it  was  talked 
about,  and  everywhere  eager  discussions  were  carried  on  as 
to  who  the  unknown  author  could  be.  Scott,  however,  jeal- 
ously preserved  his  incognito,  and  the  rapidly  succeeding 
series  of  great  fictions  by  him — "  Guy  Mannering,"  "  The 
Antiquary,"  "  Old  Mortality,"  "  Rob  Roy,"  &c.,  &c. — bore  on 
their  title-pages  simply  "By  the  Author  of  '  Waverley.' "  Many 
supposed,  on  the  appearance  of  the  early  volumes  of  the  series, 
that  Scott  was  the  writer,  and  as  time  went  on  supposition 
gradually  deepened  into  certainty ;  but  he  never  publicly 
acknowledged  his  authorship  till  the  state  of  his  affairs  com- 
pelled him  to  do  it  in  1827.  It  would  be  impossible  to 
exaggerate  the  enthusiasm  with  which  "Waverley"  and  its 
successors  were  welcomed.  Carlyle,  who  lived  through  all 
the  furore  which  they  excited,  shall  describe  it :  "  In  the 
spring1  of  1814,"  he  says,  "appeared  'Waverley,'  an  event 
memorable  in  the  annals  of  British  literature  }  in  the  annals 
of  British  bookselling  thrice  and  four  times  memorable. 
Byron  sang,  but  Scott  narrated  ;  and  when  the  song  had  sung 
itself  out  through  all  variations  onwards  to  the  '  Don  Juan  ' 
one,  Scott  was  still  found  narrating  and  carrying  the  whole 
world  along  with  him.  All  bygone  popularity  of  chivalry  lays 
was  swallowed  up  in  a  far  greater.  What  *  series '  followed 
out  of  *  Waverley,'  and  how  and  with  what  result,  is  known  to 
all  men — was  witnessed  and  watched  with  a  kind  of  rapt 
astonishment  by  all.  Hardly  any  literary  reputation  ever  rose 
so  high  in  our  island ;  no  reputation  at  all  ever  spread  so 
wide.  Walter  Scott  became  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Baronet,  of 
1  Incorrect.  See  above. 


33 2     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

Abbotsford,  on  whom  fortune  seemed  to  pour  her  whoie 
cornucopia  of  wealth,  honour,  and  worldly  good,  the  favourite 
of  princes  and  of  peasants  and  all  intermediate  men.  His 
'  Waverley '  series,  swift  following  one  on  the  other  apparently 
without  end,  was  the  universal  reading;  looked  for  like  an 
annual  harvest,  by  all  ranks,  in  all  European  countries." 

The  vast  sums  Scott  received  for  the  novels  which  he  pro- 
duced with  such  extraordinary  rapidity  and  with  so  little 
apparent  exertion,  naturally  led  him  to  regard  his  literary 
powers  as  a  boundless  mine  of  wealth,  which  it  was  scarcely 
possible  for  him  to  exhaust.  Hence  he  went  on  "  adding  field 
to  field,"  buying,  often  at  extravagant  prices,  any  tempting 
piece  of  land  which  he  found  in  the  market,  and  fitting  up 
Abbotsford  in  a  style  of  the  most  luxurious  splendour.  To 
the  money  thus  spent  must  be  added  that  expended  in  the 
exercise  of  a  boundless  hospitality.  Scott  and  Abbotsford 
became  sights  which  no  Scottish  tourist  of  any  pretensions  to 
rank  or  fame  could  omit ;  it  was  not  unusual,  we  are  told, 
for  a  dozen  or  more  coach-loads  to  find  their  way  into  the 
grounds  of  the  "  Great  Unknown  "  in  the  course  of  the  day, 
most  of  whom  found  or  forced  an  entrance  into  his  mansion. 
There  could  be  no  better  proof  of  Scott's  thorough  healthiness 
of  character  and  freedom  from  all  those  petty  vices  which  are 
commonly  supposed  to  belong  to  the  literary  profession,  than 
the  manner  in  which  he  conducted  himself  while  "  lionised ;> 
above  any  one  before  or  since.  He  took  the  praises  copiously 
bestowed  on  him  for  what  they  were  worth,  pleased  with 
them,  no  doubt,  but  nowise  unduly  elated  ;  was  gratified  when 
among  the  crowd  of  his  visitors  he  found  any  of  talent  and 
good  sense  with  whom  it  was  a  pleasure  to  converse ;  and 
regarded  the  numerous  specimens  of  folly  and  presumption 
whom  he  was  compelled  to  put  up  with,  not  with  indignation 
or  bitterness,  but  with  a  humorous  appreciation  of  their  charac- 
ter which  left  little  room  for  anger  or  contempt.  For  many  of 
the  honours  bestowed  on  literature  Scott  cared  little.  He  o'i 
several  occasions  declined  the  degree  of  D.C.L.,  offered  him 
by  the  Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge ;  and  the  higher 


Scott  at  Work.  333 

distinction  of  a  baronetcy,  conferred  on  him  in  1820,  was  chiefly 
gratifying  to  him,  not  because  he  cared  for  the  title  himself, 
but  because  it  pleased  his  family  pride  to  think  that  Abbots- 
fjrd  would  henceforth  be  occupied  by  a  race  of  baronets. 

One  of  the  most  striking  features  of  Scott's  character  was 
the  indomitable  tenacity  with  which  he  went  on  with  what- 
ever literary  task  he  had  in  hand.  Few  and  far  between  were 
the  occasions  when,  however  busily  engaged  otherwise,  his 
daily  literary  task  was  left  uncompleted.  As  a  rule,  he  rose 
betimes  in  the  morning,  and  had  his  little  parcel  of  "copy" 
ready  before  the  other  members  of  the  house  were  astir.  But 
as  to  time  and  place  of  composition  he  was  nearly  indifferent; 
and  though,  like  many  great  authors,  he  preferred  to  write  in 
the  morning  hours,  it  cost  hirn  no  great  effort  to  carry  on  the 
work  in  which  he  was  engaged  at  almost  any  time  or  under 
almost  any  circumstances.  "When  once  I  set  my  pen  to  the 
paper,"  he  wrote  to  his  friend  Morritt,  "it  w.ll  walk  fast 
enough.  I  am  sometimes  tempted  to  leave  it  alone  and  see 
whether  it  will  not  write  as  well  without  the  assistance  of  my 
hand  as  with  it.  A  hopeful  prospect  for  the  reader."  When 
a  friend  asked  him  how,  amidst  such  a  constant  whirl  of 
various  occupations  as  occupied  him,  he  managed  to  write  so 
much,  he  replied,  "  Oh,  I  lie  simmering  over  things  for  an 
hour  or  so  before  I  get  up,  and  there's  the  time  I  am  dressing 
to  overhaul  my  half-sleeping,  half-waking  projet  de  chapitre, 
and  when  I  get  the  paper  before  me,  it  commonly  runs  oft 
pretty  easily.  Besides,  I  often  take  a  doze  in  the  plantations, 
and,  while  Tom  [Purdie,  his  faithful  attendant]  marks  out  a 
dyke  or  drain,  one's  fancy  may  be  running  its  ain  rigs  in  some 
other  world."  Well  was  it  for  Scott  that  in  the  days  of  his 
prosperity  he  accustomed  himself  to  perform  his  daily  task 
.cheerfully  under  difficulties  which  would  have  utterly  discom- 
fited a  less  strenuous  worker.  The  time  came  too  soon  when 
his  fair  prospects  of  wealth  and  prosperity  were  to  prove  to  be 
mere  castles  of  cards,  destined  to  tumble  into  the  dust  at 
the  first  stroke  of  adversity.  The  commercial  whirlwind  of 
1825-26,  which  shook  down  so  many  apparently  prosperous 


334     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

commercial  fabrics,  proved  fatal  to  Scott's  prosperity  as  to 
that  of  many  thousands  of  lesser  men.  Unknown  to  his 
friends,  he  had  become  a  partner  in  the  printing  firm  estab- 
lished in  Edinburgh  by  his  old  friends  the  Ballantynes.  The 
great  Scottish  publisher  Constable,  who,  both  by  the  magnitude 
and  boldness  of  his  plans  and  the  brilliance  of  his  publishing 
exploits,  deserved  the  title  Scott  laughingly  applied  to  him  of 
"  the  great  Napoleon  of  the  realms  of  print,"  was  compelled,  after 
a  brief  but  brave  struggle,  to  succumb  to  the  tide  of  ruin  which 
could  not  but  overwhelm  him.  He  became  bankrupt,  and  the 
Ballantyne  firm  soon  followed  suit.  In  February  1826  he  found 
himself  bankrupt — a  debtor  to  the  extent  of  over  ;£i  20,000.* 
The  catastrophe  was  heavy  ;  to  most  men  it  would  have 
been  a  crushing  one.  Nothing  in  his  life  better  shows  his 
courage  and  his  honesty  than  his  behaviour  under  this  great 
calamity.  He  determined  that  if  his  creditors  would  but 
grant  him  time  they  should  be  paid  to  the  very  uttermost 
farthing.  ''I  am  always  ready,"  he  said,  "to  make  any  sacri- 
fice to  do  justice  to  my  engagements,  and  would  rather  sell 
anything  or  everything  than  be  less  than  a  true  man  of  my 
word."  The  estate  of  Abbotsford  had,  shortly  before  the 
crash,  been  secured  to  his  son  on  the  occasion  of  his  mar- 
riage, so  it  was  beyond  the  creditors'  reach  ;  but  Scott's  house 
and  furniture  in  Edinburgh  were  sold  by  auction,  and  his  per- 
sonal effects  at  Abbotsford, — books,  pictures,  &c., — were 
delivered  over  to  be  held  in  trust  for  his  creditors.  Having 
bound  himself  to  limit  the  cost  of  his  living  to  his  official 
income,  and  to  employ  what  he  earned  by  his  pen  in  liquida- 
ting his  debts,  Scott  took  second-rate  lodgings  in  Edinburgh 
and  began  his  Herculean  task.  <;  For  many  years,"  he  said  to 
a  friend,  "I  have  been  accustomed  to  hard  work,  because  I 
found  it  a  pleasure ;  now,  with  all  due  respect  for  Falstaffs 

1  For  a  statement  of  the  business  relations  between  Sir  Walter  Scott  and 
the  Ballantynes,  see  a  "Refutation  of  the  Misstatements  and  Calumnies 
contained  in  Mr.  Lockhart's  Life  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Bart.,  respecting  the 
Messrs.  Ballantyne.  By  the  Trustees  and  Son  of  the  late  Mr.  James 
Balhivyne."  London  :  Longman  &  Co.,  1838. 


Scoffs  "  Lift  of  Napoleon."  335 

principle,  '  nothing  on  compulsion/  I  certainly  will  not  shrink 
from  work  because  it  has  become  necessary."  Misfortunes, 
it  is  said,  never  come  singly,  and  the  death  of  his  wife,  which 
followed  soon  after  the  ruin  of  his  fortunes,  intensified  Scott's 
woes.  Stiil  he  did  not  yield  to  despair.  Day  after  day, 
despite  his  mental  and  bodily  troubles,  he  diligently  toiled  on. 
The  following  entry  in  his  diary  for  June  8,  1826,  may  be 
taken  as  typical  of  the  rest : 

"  Bilious  and  headache  this  morning.  A  dog  howled  all 
night,  and  left  me  little  sleep.  Poor  cur  !  I  daresay  he  had 
his  distresses,  as  I  have  mine.  I  was  obliged  to  make 
Dalgleish  shut  the  windows  when  he  appeared  at  half-past 
six  as  usual,  and  did  not  rise  till  nine.  I  have  often  de- 
served a  headache  in  my  younger  days  without  having  one, 
and  nature  is,  I  suppose,  paying  off  old  scores.  Ay  !  but 
then  the  want  of  the  affectionate  care  that  used  to  be 
ready,  with  lowered  voice  and  stealthy  pace,  to  smooth  the 
pillow  and  offer  assistance, — gone — gone — for  ever— ever — 
ever.  Well,  there  is  another  world,  and  we'll  meet  free  from 
the  mortal  sorrows  and  frail  ties  which  beset  us  here.  Amen  ! 
so  be  it.  Let  me  change  this  topic  with  hand  and  head,  and 
the  heart  must  follow.  I  finished  four  pages  to-day,  headache, 
laziness,  and  all." 

Scott's  first  published  work  after  the  catastrophe  which  over- 
whelmed his  fortunes  was  "  Woodstock"  (1826),  which  realised 
for  his  creditors  over  ^8000.  Then  in  the  following  year  came 
his  long  "Life  of  Napoleon,"  written  with  almost  incredible 
speed,  of  which  the  first  and  second  editions  brought  ;£  18,000. 
It  is  inaccurate  and  one-sided,  interesting  as  having  been 
written  by  Scott,  but  not  of  great  value  otherwise  :— 

"  When  the  harness  galls  sore  and  the  spurs  his  side  goaa, 
The  high-mettled  racer's  a  hack  on  the  road." 

In  two  years,  by  incessant  industry,  Scott  paid  off  ^40,000 
of  his  debts,  and  in  the  course  of  four  years  nearly  .£70,000. 
No  wonder  though  under  the  strain  of  constant  exertion 
added  to  sorrow  and  anxiety  his  health  gave  way.  His  last 


336     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

novels,  "Count  Robert  of  Paris"  and  "Castle  Dangerous," 
gave  painful  evidence  that  the  wand  of  the  Great  Magician, 
which  had  charmed  so  long,  had  at  length  lost  its  power. 
The  last  important  work  of  his  closing  years  was  the  excellent 
notes  and  introductions  which  he  furnished  for  a  new  edition 
of  the  Waverley  novels.  His  "Tales  of  a  Grandfather," 
*'  History  of  Scotland,"  &c.,  &c.,  are  not  of  a  quality  to  add 
anything  to  the  lustre  of  his  fame. 

In  1831  he  was  induced  to  abandon  literary  labour  for  a 
time,  and  to  undertake  a  voyage  to  the  Continent.  After  a 
residence  of  five  months  in  Italy,  he  returned  to  London  in 
June  1832.  It  was  now  painfully  evident  that  his  health  was 
irretrievably  ruined,  and  after  a  few  weeks  he  was  conveyed 
to  Abbotsford,  where,  writes  his  biographer,  "  about  half-past 
one  P.M.  on  the  2ist  of  September,  Sir  Walter  breathed  his 
last,  in  the  presence  of  all  his  children.  It  was  a  beautiful  day, 
so  warm  that  every  window  was  wide  open,  and  so  perfectly 
still  that  the  sound  of  all  others  most  delicious  to  his  ears — the 
gentle  ripple  of  the  Tweed  over  its  pebbles — was  distinctly 
audible  as  we  knelt  around  the  bed,  and  his  eldest  son  kissed 
and  closed  his  eyes."  He  was  buried  by  the  side  of  his  wife 
in  Dryburgh  Abbey.  It  is  pleasing  to  be  able  to  relate  that 
the  collected  editions  of  his  works  were  after  his  death  found 
sufficient  to  remove  the  mountain  of  debt  which  he  struggled 
so  manfully  to  discharge.  His  hopes  of  founding  a  family 
proved  as  fallacious  as  many  of  his  other  ambitions.  All  his 
children  died  within  fifteen  years  of  his  own  death,  and  only 
one  or  two  very  remote  descendants  of  the  Great  Enchanter 
now  survive.  "  It  is  written,"  he  said,  with  melancholy  truth,  a 
year  or  two  before  his  death,  "that  nothing  shall  flourish  under 
my  shadow  ;  the  Ballantynes,  Terry,  Nelson,  Weber,  all  came 
to  distress.  Nature  has  written  on  my  brow,  'Your  shade  shall 
be  broad,  but  there  shall  be  no  protection  from  it  to  aught 
you  favour.'" 

Scott's  personal  character  is  a  wide  subject,  on  which  much 
might  be  said.  It  is  rather  remarkable  that  it  seems  to  have 
affected  two  great  writers  of  our  time,  of  very  different  tenden- 


Macaulity  on  Scott.  337 

cies,  in  much  the  same  way.  Carlyle  and  Macaulay,  to  whom 
one  scarcely  looks  for  agreement  on  such  points,  alike  take  a 
severe  view  of  it.  Carlyle's  famous  estimate  of  Scott  as  author 
and  man,  in  which  he  figured  so  conspicuously  in  the  character 
of  a  "hanging  judge,"  is  well  known,  and  should  be  carefully 
read  by  all  who  wish  to  form  an  intelligent  estimate  of  the  Wizard 
of  the  North.  Macaulay,  writing  in  June  1838  to  Macvey 
Napier,  who  had  asked  an  article  for  the  Edinburgh  Review 
on  Scott's  life,  says,  "  I  have  not,  from  the  little  that  I  do 
know  of  him,  formed  so  high  an  opinion  of  his  character  as 
most  people  seem  to  entertain,  and  as  it  would  be  expedient 
for  the  Edinburgh  Review  to  express.  He  seems  to  me  to 
have  been  most  carefully  and  successfully  on  his  guard  against 
the  sins  which  most  easily  beset  literary  men.  On  that  side 
he  multiplied  his  precautions  and  set  double  watch.  Hardly 
any  writer  of  note  has  been  so  free  from  the  petty  jealousies 
and  morbid  irritabilities  of  our  caste.  But  I  do  not  think 
that  he  kept  himself  equally  pure  from  faults  of  a  very  different 
kind — from  the  faults  of  a  man  of  the  world.  In  politics  a 
bitter  and  unscrupulous  partisan  ;  profuse  and  ostentatious 
in  expense  ;  agitated  by  the  hopes  and  fears  of  a  gambler ; 
perpetually  sacrificing  the  perfection  of  his  compositions  and 
the  durability  of  his  fame  to  his  eagerness  for  making  money; 
writing  with  the  slovenly  haste  of  Dryden,  in  order  to  satisfy 
wants  which  were  not,  like  those  of  Dryden,  caused  by  circum- 
stances beyond  his  control,  but  which  were  produced  by  his 
extravagant  waste  or  rapacious  speculation.  This  is  the  way 
in  which  he  appears  to  me.  I  am  sorry  for  it,  for  I  sincerely 
admire  the  greater  part  of  his  works,  but  I  cannot  think  him 
a  high-minded  man  or  a  man  of  very  strict  principle."  There 
is  considerable  truth  in  this  estimate.  Scott  was  not  a  man  of 
high,  heroic  spirit.  He  looked  upon  life  precisely  as  we  may 
imagine  some  industrious  merchant  doing,  anxious  to  get  the 
best  price  he  could  for  his  wares,  and  caring  more  for  their 
saleable  qualities  than  for  any  other  features  in  them.  His 
letters  afford  fine  examples  of  the  worldly  wisdom  of  his  dis- 
position. It  is  amusing  and  curious  to  notice  how  carefully 


338     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

he  adapted  their  tone  to  suit  the  particular  temperament  of 
whatever  correspondent  he  happened  to  be  addressing.  Those 
to  his  son  Walter  may  be  described  as  resembling  Lord  Ches- 
terfield's letters  to  his  son  minus  the  immorality.  There 
is  no  trace  in  them  of  any  high  or  ennobling  principle. 
"  Don't  do  rash  and  foolish  things  ;  take  care  of  yourself;  be 
sure  to  get  on  in  the  world,"  is  the  gospel  they  proclaim. 
But  if  Scott's  character  lacked  somewhat  of  the  loftier  virtues, 
it  was  full  of  those  endearing  qualities  which  men  of  higher 
aspirations  have,  alas  !  too  often  been  without.  He  was  totally 
free  from  any  taint  of  vanity,  envy,  or  malice.  Like  his  great 
contemporary  Goethe,  he  liked  much  better  to  praise  the 
good  than  to  condemn  the  evil.  No  critic  was  ever  more 
lenient  in  his  judgments  ;  indeed  he  carried  literary  tolerance 
so  far  that  praise  from  him  became  almost  a  brevet  of  medio- 
crity. In  his  relations  with  his  family  and  his  dependants  he 
acquitted  himself  in  a  manner  deserving  of  the  highest  praise. 
Never  was  there  a  better  master  than  he,  never  a  more  loving 
and  devoted  parent. 

To  do  full  justice  to  Scott's  writings  would  require  large 
space ;  it  is  so  various  in  kind  and  so  large  in  quantity. 
He  cannot  be  ranked  amongst  our  greatest  poets,  neverthe- 
less his  stirring  lays  have  great  merit  of  their  kind.  The  ten- 
dency nowadays  is  to  underrate  them  as  much  as  they  were 
overrated  at  the  time  of  their  appearance.  Their  generous, 
healthy,  open-air  tone,  their  ringing  vivacity,  their  rush  and 
vigour,  have  very  rarely  been  successfully  imitated.  Scott's 
miscellaneous  prose  works,  if  not  brilliant,  furnish  extraordi- 
nary proofs  of  the  soundness  of  his  judgment  and  the  width 
of  his  knowledge.  His  "  Lives  of  the  Novelists  "  are  models 
of  sensible  and  manly  criticism;  and  the  lives  and  notes  added 
to  his  editions  of  Dryden  (1808)  and  of  Swift  (1814)  show  an 
extraordinary  knowledge  of  the  byways  of  English  literary 
history,  and  evince  a  capacity  for  patient  research  with  which 
one  would  scarcely  be  prepared  to  credit  a  man  of  Scott's 
rapid-working  habits.  Of  the  great  Waverley  series  the  worst 
that  criticism  can  sny  was  said  long  ago  by  Carlyle.  All  culti- 


Criticisms  of  Scott's  Novels.  339 

vatecl  readers  of  Scott  are,  we  suppose,  prepared  to  admit  that 
his  psychological  insight  wrs  not  very  deep;  that  his  style 
lacks  force  and  concentraticn  ;  that  his  representations  of  the 
life  of  the  past  in  such  novels  as  "  Ivanhoe  "  and  "  Kenil- 
worth  "  are  often  "  stagey  "  and  unreal ;  that  in  his  novels  no 
new  view  of  life,  no  fresh  inspiring  idea,  was  given  to  mankind. 
But  Scott  had  in  almost  unequalled  abundance  qualities  pos- 
sessed by  few  writers,  but  without  which  a  great  novelist  is 
impossible — breadth  and  healthiness  of  mind.  In  tolerance 
and  catholicity  of  feeling  he  resembled  Shakespeare.  Bating 
a  slight  infusion  of  Tory  and  cavalier  prejudice,  which 
appears  to  some  extent  in  two  or  three  of  his  novels,  his  repre- 
sentations are  scrupulously  just.  As  he  always  felt  himself 
at  his  ease,  and  could  talk  unceasingly  to  any  companion 
he  happened  to  meet  with,  however  lowly  his  rank,  so  he 
could  portray  the  feelings  and  talk  of  all  classes  of  men 
with  equal  accuracy  and  sympathy.  Contemporary  verdicts 
on  his  novels  have  been  a  good  deal  reversed  by  subse- 
quent criticism.  Few,  for  example,  would  now  consider 
"Ivanhoe  "  his  best  novel,  as  was  pretty  generally  the  opinion 
at  the  time  of  its  publication  (1819).  Undoubtedly  his  best 
novels  are  those  dealing  with  the  subjects  which  he  knew 
and  loved  best — Scottish  life  and  Scottish  scenery.  In  his 
historical  novels  dealing  with  foreign  countries  and  remote 
times,  the  colours  are  sometimes  coarsely  laid  on,  and  the, 
whole  treatment  strikes  one  as  artificial  and  wanting  in  vrai-/ 
semblance.  But  when  his  foot  touches  his  native  heath, 
Scott  is  always  himself  again — always  clear,  vivid,  and  accu- 
rately pictorial.  Carlyle's  estimate  of  Scott  (which,  just  as 
in  some  ways  it  is,  does  not  give  anything  like  full  praise  to 
the  great  qualities  of  his  novels)  has  so  powerfully  influ- 
enced succeeding  criticisms  on  them,  that  it  may  be  well 
to  quote,  as  weighing  heavily  in  the  opposite  scale,  the  esti- 
mate formed  of  them  by  his  illustrious  contemporary,  Goethe, 
whose  opinion  Carlyle  himself  would  have  been  the  first  to 
pronounce  to  be  of  the  greatest  value.  "I  have  just  begun 
'Rob  Roy,'"  said  Goethe  on  one  occasion  to  Eckermann,  "ami 


34O     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

will  read  his  best  novels  in  succession.  All  is  great — material, 
import,  characters,  execution  ;  and  then  what  infinite  diligence 
in  the  preparatory  studies  !  what  truth  of  detail  in  the  exe- 
cution ! "  Again,  speaking  of  the  "  Fair  Maid  of  Perth," 
certainly  not  one  of  the  best  of  Scott's  novels,  he  said,  "  You 
find  everywhere  in  Walter  Scott  a  remarkable  security  and 
thoroughness  in  his  delineation,  which  proceed  from  his  com- 
prehensive knowledge  of  the  real  world,  obtained  by  lifelong 
studies  and  observations  and  a  daily  discussion  of  the  most 
important  relations.  Then  come  his  great  talent  and  his 
comprehensive  nature.  You  remember  the  English  critic 
who  compares  the  poets  to  the  voices  of  male  singers,  of 
which  some  can  command  only  a  few  fine  tones,  while  others 
have  the  whole  compass,  from  the  highest  to  the  lowest,  com- 
pletely in  their  power.  Walter  Scott  is  one  of  this  last  sort. 
In  the  *  Fair  Maid  of  Perth '  you  will  not  find  a  single  weak 
passage  to  make  you  feel  as  if  his  knowledge  and  talent  were 
insufficient.  He  is  equal  to  his  subject  in  every  direction  in 
which  it  takes  him  ;  the  king,  the  royal  brother,  the  prince, 
the  head  of  the  clergy,  the  nobles,  the  magistracy,  the  citizens 
and  mechanic^,  the  Highlanders,  are  all  drawn  with  the  same 
sure  hand  and  hit  off  with  equal  truth."  Such  utterances  of 
the  first  poet  and  critic  of  modern  times  deserve  to  be  deeply 
pondered. 

With  the  exception  of  Scott,  few  prose  writers  who  flour- 
ished in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  pos- 
sessed of  so  striking  and  commanding  a  genius  as  belonged 
to  some  of  their  poetical  contemporaries.  But  there  were 
many  prose  writers  of  gifts  considerably  superior  to  the 
average — so  many,  indeed,  that  our  limits  compel  us  to  adopt 
a  pretty  severe  principle  of  selection,  and  to  exclude  not  a  few 
who  won  literary  laurels  not  yet  altogether  effaced  by  the 
lapse  of  time.  The  leading  prose  writers  of  this  period  fall 
easily  into  well-marked  groups,  and  it  will  be  convenient  thus 
to  consider  them  instead  of  adopting  strict  chronological 
order.  Historians  may  come  first.  Sir  James  Mackintosh 
(i  765-1832)  is  now  remembered  more  for  his  contemporary 


Sir  James  Mackintosh.  341 

reputation  as  a  talker  and  for  the  frequent  allusions  to 
him  in  memoirs  of  celebrities  of  his  time,  than  for  what  he 
actually  accomplished.  His  life  was  one  of  much  promise 
but  of  little  performance.  He  himself  relates  that  a  French 
lady  once  said  to  him,  "What  have  you  done  that  people 
should  think  you  so  superior?"  In  reply,  he  says,  "I  was 
obliged  as  usual  to  refer  to  my  projects."  Mackintosh  was 
born  in  Inverness-shire,  and  educated  at  King's  College,  Aber- 
deen, and  at  Edinburgh,  where  he  studied  medicine.  Coming 
to  London  in  1788,  he  attracted  great  attention  by  his  "Vin- 
diciae  Gallicae,"  a  pungent  and  vigorous  reply  to  Burke's 
"Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution,"  which  brought  him 
at  once  into  notice  in  literary  society,  and  had  the  honour  of 
being  praised  by  Fox  in  Parliament.  Abandoning  medicine 
for  the  study  of  law,  he  was  called  to  the  bar;  and  his  fine 
speech  in  defence  of  Peltier  in  1803  brought  him  a  great 
deal  of  practice  and  the  prospect  of  earning  a  large  income 
by  his  forensic  ability.  However,  in  the  words  of  Lord  Dalling, 
"  three  months  had  not  elapsed  when,  with  the  plaudits  of  the 
public  and  the  praise  of  Erskine  still  ringing  in  his  ear,  he 
accepted  the  Recordership  of  Bombay  from  Mr.  Addington, 
and  retired  with  satisfaction  to  the  well-paid  and  knighted 
indolence  of  India.  His  objects  in  doing  so  were,  he  said,  of 
two  kinds  :  to  make  a  fortune  and  to  write  a  work.  The 
whole  man  is  before  us  when  we  discover  how  far  either  of 
these  objects  was  attained  by  him.  He  did  not  make  a  for- 
tune ;  he  did  not  write  a  work."  After  a  residence  of  seven 
years  in  India,  he  returned  to  England  and  entered  Parlia- 
ment, where,  although  he  distinguished  himself  in  carrying  on 
the  Criminal  Code  reform  begun  by  Romilly,  his  reputation 
scarcely  answered  to  the  high  hopes  of  him  formed  by  his 
friends.  He  also  wrote  a  good  deal,  contributing  miscel- 
laneous articles  to  the  Edinburgh  Review ;  an  interesting  and 
able,  if  occasionally  inaccurate,  "  Dissertation  on  the  Progress 
of  Ethical  Philosophy"  to  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica;" 
and  a  short  "  History  of  England,"  carried  down  to  the  Refor- 
mation, and  a  "Lire  of  Sir  Thomas  More"  to  "  Lardner's 


342     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

Encyclopaedia."  His  magnum  opus  was  meant  to  be  a  history 
of  England,  for  which  he  collected  copious  and  valuable  mate- 
rials, but  only  a  fragment  on  the  "  Causes  of  the  Revolution 
of  1688"  was  ever  completed.  Mackintosh  did  not  possess 
a  creative  mind,  but  he  was  unwearied  in  the  acquisition  of 
knowledge,  and  if  he  had  had  more  tenacity  of  purpose  might 
have  left  a  permanent  mark  on  literary  history.  His  style  is 
elegant  and  carefully  wrought,  but  somewhat  languid  and 
wanting  in  pith  and  power.  His  conversational  powers  by  all 
accounts  must  have  been  extraordinary.  "  Till  subdued  by 
age  and  illness,"  said  Sydney  Smith,  who  knew  well  all  the 
celebrated  talkers  of  the  day,  "  his  conversation  was  more 
brilliant  and  instructive  than  that  of  any  human  being  I  ever 
had  the  good  fortune  to  be  acquainted  with." 

Henry  Hallam  (1777-1859)  was  an  historian  of  powers, 
perhaps,  not  originally  superior  to  those  of  Mackintosh,  but 
put  to  infinitely  better  account.  He  was  educated  at  Oxford, 
and  studied  for  the  bar,  but  never  depended  on  his  proression 
for  a  livelihood,  as,  in  addition  to  possessing  a  private  fortune 
of  a  considerable  amount,  he  was  the  lucky  holder  of  a 
Government  sinecure.  His  works  are  on  subjects  requiring 
such  research  and  labour  that  they  scarcely  could  have  been 
written  by  any  one  less  happily  circumstanced.  A  staunch 
Whig,  he  began  his  literary  career  by  writing  articles  in  the 
early  volumes  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  of  which  one  on 
Dryden,  apropos  of  Scott's  edition,  is  the  most  notable.  In 
1818  he  took  his  place  as  the  first  historian  of  his  time  by  the 
publication  of  his  "  View  of  the  State  of  Europe  during  the 
Middle  Ages,"  a  work  rather  pompous  and  Latinised  in  style, 
but  showing  extremely  wide  knowledge  and  great  judicial 
acumen.  His  second  great  work,  the  "  Constitutional  History 
of  England,"  appeared  in  1827.  The  labours  of  Dr.  Srubbs 
have  superseded  Hallam's  "Constitutional  History"  in  its 
early  portions ;  but  for  the  rest  it  is  still  the  standard 
authority,  not  likely  to  be  soon  superseded.  Its  carefulness 
and  accuracy,  its  impartial  summing  up  of  facts  and  candid 
estimate  of  men  and  opinions,  can  scarcely  be  too  highly  com- 


Henry  Hallam.  343 

mended.  In  1838-39  his  last  important  publication,  "An 
Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  Europe  during  the  Fifteenth, 
Sixteenth,  and  Seventeenth  Centuries,"  was  issued.  From  the 
nature  of  the  subject,  as  well  as  for  other  reasons,  this  work  is 
not  of  equal  value  to  the  "  Constitutional  History."  No  man, 
however  wide  his  learning  and  accomplishments  (and  Hallam's 
were  very  wide),  could  discuss  with  equal  certainty  and  firm- 
ness of  touch  the  literature  of  all  the  European  countries 
during  three  centuries.  To  enable  any  one  to  do  that  in  a 
perfectly  satisfactory  manner,  he  would  require  to  have  his 
life  prolonged  to  patriarchal  limits.  Hence  Hallam's  treatise 
is  in  parts  a  compilation,  and  compilations,  however  well  done, 
are  always  inferior  to  first-hand  works.  As  a  critic  he  is  gene- 
rally sound  and  judicious;  never,  however,  showing  much 
depth  of  penetration  or  delicacy  of  touch.  The  following 
remarks  in  a  letter  of  John  Sterling's,  written  after  reading 
the  three  concluding  volumes  of  the  "  Literature  of  Europe," 
may  be  accepted  as  a  substantially  correct  criticism  of  the 
work.  "  It  is  one  of  the  few  classical  books  which  have 
appeared  in  English  in  our  day.  Sense,  acuteness,  thought- 
fulness,  care,  elegance,  information,  mark  it  throughout. 
There  is  more  of  cold  candour  than  of  enthusiastic  warmth, 
with  a  decided  tendency  to  moderation  and  caution,  verging 
sometimes  towards  indifference.  The  criticism  on  works  of 
imagination  is  always  excellent,  though  one  may  sometimes 
see  grounds  to  differ  from  him.  The  comments  on  the  physi- 
cal sciences  are  more  a  compilation,  but,  I  suppose,  very  well 
done.  It  is  on  philosophy  and  the  higher  theology  that  I  see 
most  room  to  dissent,  though  even  here  there  are  a  multitude 
of  good  remarks,  and  some  extremely  neat  and  concise  ac- 
counts of  the  systems  of  great  men.  I  cannot  feel  that  he  is 
at  home  in  this  highest  region  of  thought,  or  is  always  just  to 
those  who  are."1  All  Hallam's  works  are  dignified — perhaps 
too  dignified — in  style.  He  never  conde.-cends  to  descend 
from  his  stilts  and  adopt  a  conversational  manner,  as  the 
custom  of  some  recent  writers  is.  He  took  great  pains  with 
1  Hare's  "Life  of  Sterling,"  p.  181. 


344     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

his  writings,  never  being  in  a  hurry  to  complete  them,  and 
revising  and  re-revising  them  with  the  utmost  care.  In  pri- 
vate life  he  was  an  unceasing  and  eager  talker,  very  prone 
to  argumentation  and  discussion.  To  his  inferiors  he  is  said 
to  have  adopted  a  rather  haughty  manner.  Charles  Knight, 
who,  as  publisher  for  thevSociety  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful 
Knowledge,  in  which  Hallam  took  a  warm  interest,  came  a 
good  deal  into  contact  with  him,  gives  no  very  favourable 
account  of  the  learned  historian  in  his  entertaining  volumes, 
"  Passages  of  a  Working  Life." 

The  works  of  Sir  Archibald  Alison  (1792-1867)  have  not 
stood  the  test  of  time  so  well  as  Hallam's.  Though  he  wrote 
many  other  works,  his  fame,  such  as  it  is,  rests  almost 
wholly  upon  his  "History  of  Europe  from  1789  to  the 
Restoration  of  the  Bourbons  in  1815,"  which  appeared 
between  1833-42.  It  was  afterwards,  between  1852-56, 
continued  to  the  accession  of  Louis  Napoleon  in  1852.  The 
contemporary  success  of  Alison's  History  was  prodigious  :  it 
went  through  edition  after  edition  and  was  translated  into 
all  European  languages.  Nevertheless  it  has  many  great 
faults.  The  author  was  a  rigid  and  uncompromising  Tory, 
regarding  the  Reform  Bill  and  Free  Trade  with  absolute 
abhorrence;  indeed,  as  has  been  said,  going  so  far  as  to  date 
the  fall  of  the  British  constitution  from  the  fatal  year  1832. 
Holding  his  political  principles  so  firmly  as  he  did,  he  did  not 
even  attempt  to  exclude  their  influence  from  his  History,  but 
wrote,  as  Disraeli  wittily  said,  "  to  prove  that  Providence  was 
always  on  the  side  of  the  Tories."  His  style  is  very  tauto- 
logical and  diffuse ;  it  may  be  said,  without  much  exaggeration, 
that  by  striking  out  superfluous  words  and  phrases  the  His- 
tory could  be  abridged  almost  a  third  without  any  loss.  But 
its  great  popularity  shows  that  it  possesses  the  prime  merit  of 
being  interesting,  and  perhaps  a  certain  amount  of  verbosity 
is  not  an  error  in  a  work  intended  for  popular  perusal.  All 
critics  of  Alison  agree  in  praising  his  industry  and  research. 

The  establishment  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  in  1802  brought 
to  the  front  two  writers  who  have  left  a  deep  impress  on  the 


Francis  Jeffrey.  345 

ILoiary  history  of  the  nineteenth  century.  One  of  these  was 
Francis  Jeffrey  (1773-1850),  to  whose  energy  and  talents  the 
great  success  of  the  Review  is  chiefly  to  be  attributed.  Jeffrey 
was  the  son  of  a  depute-clerk  of  the  Court  of  Session,  and  re- 
ceived his  early  education  at  the  High  School  of  Edinburgh. 
He  was  then  sent  to  the  University  of  Glasgow,  where  he  at- 
tended various  classes  with  some  distinction.  In  1 791  he  went 
to  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  but  his  stay  there  only  lasted  nine 
months.  He  never  entered  at  all  into  the  spirit  of  Eng- 
lish university  life  ;  the  studies  pursued  were  uncongenial  to 
him  ;  he  was  full  of  home-sickness  ;  and  altogether  the  period 
of  his  residence  at  Oxford  seems  to  have  been  about  the 
most  miserable  of  his  very  happy  and  bustling  life.  One 
thing  he  did  acquire  at  Oxford — an  affected,  mincing,  Anglo- 
Scotch  accent,  which  never  left  him.  It  is  said  that  when 
Judge  Braxfield  (the  subject  of  many  amusing  anecdotes)  heard 
him  speak  after  his  Oxford  sojourn,  he  exclaimed,  "The 
laddie  has  clean  tint  (lost)  his  Scotch  and  found  nae  English." 
His  mode  of  speaking,  combined  with  his  airy  levity,  proved 
at  first  a  considerable  obstacle  to  Jeffrey's  progress  at  the 
Scotch  bar,  to  which  he  was  called  in  1794,  but  success  in 
his  profession  soon  followed  his  irresistible  energy  and  viva- 
city, and  he  came  to  have  a  large  practice.  From  his  youth 
Jeffrey  trained  himself  for  his  literary  career  by  constantly 
writing  essays,  poems,  £c.,  on  all  sorts  of  subjects — admirable 
preparation  for  his  future  work  in  the  Edinburgh  Review,  of  his 
connection  with  which  he  gives  the  following  account  in  the 
preface  to  his  "Collected  Contributions:" — "I  wrote  the  first 
article  in  the  first  number  of  the  Review  in  October  1802,  and 
sent  my  last  contribution  to  it  in  October  1840.  It  is  a  long 
period  to  have  persevered  in  well  or  in  ill  doing ;  but  I  was 
by  no  means  equally  alert  in  the  service  during  all  the  inter- 
mediate time.  I  was  sole  editor  from  1803  till  late  in  1829, 
and  during  that  period  was  no  doubt  a  large  and  regular 
contributor.  In  that  last  year,  however,  I  received  the  great 
honour  of  being  elected  by  my  brethren  of  the  bar  to  the  office 
of  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Advocates,  when  it  immediately 


346     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

occurred  to  me  that  it  was  not  quite  fitting  that  the  official  head 
of  a  great  law  corporation  should  continue  to  be  the  conductor 
of  what  might  be  fairly  enough  represented  as  in  many  respects 
a  party  journal,  and  I  consequently  withdrew  at  once  and 
altogether  from  the  management,  which  has  ever  since  been 
in  such  hands  as  can  have  left  those  who  take  an  interest  in 
its  success  no  cause  to  regret  my  retirement.  But  I  should 
not  have  acted  up  to  the  spirit  of  this  resignation,  nor  felt  that 
I  had  redeemed  the  pledge  of  neutrality  I  meant  to  give  by  it, 
if  I  had  not  at  the  same  time  ceased  to  contribute  to,  or  to 
concern  myself  in  any  way  with  the  conduct  or  future  fortunes 
of  the  Review.  I  wrote  nothing  for  it,  accordingly,  for  a  con- 
siderable time  subsequent  to  1829,  and  during  the  fourteen 
years  that  have  since  elapsed  have  sent  in  all  but  four  papers 
to  that  work,  none  of  them  on  political  subjects.  I  ceased, 
in  reality,  to  be  a  contributor  in  1829."  Jeffrey's  rise  to  the 
highest  honours  of  his  profession  was  rapid.  In  1829  he  was 
appointed,  as  mentioned  above,  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Advo- 
cates ;  in  1831  he  received  from  the  Whig  Ministry  the  office 
of  Lord  Advocate;  and  in  1834  he  was  made  one  of  the 
Judges  of  the  Court  of  Session.  His  parliamentary  career  as 
Lord  Advocate  scarcely  corresponded  to  the  high  expecta- 
tions of  him  that  had  been  cherished ;  but  he  is  allowed  on 
all  sides  to  have  been  an  admirable  Judge. 

Few  men  who  have  taken  such  an  active  part  in  political 
and  literary  controversies  as  Jeffrey  did  have  less  exposed 
themselves  to  hatred  or  attack.  His  private  character  was  in 
all  respects  admirable.  He  was  beloved  by  his  relations  and  by 
a  very  wide  circle  of  friends — with  reason,  for  no  more  gene- 
rous and  kind-hearted  man  ever  lived.  He  was  not  one  of 
the  numerous  class  of  men  who  allow  their  goodness  of  heart 
to  evaporate  in  empty  words,  and  who  endeavour  to  succour 
the  distressed  by  a  copious  supply  of  that  cheap  commodity — 
advice.  When  Moore  was  involved  in  pecuniary  difficulties, 
Jeffrey  at  once  placed  his  purse  at  his  disposal ;  when  Haz- 
litt,  from  his  deathbed,  wrote  asking  him  for  a  loan  of^io, 
Jeffrey  at  once  sent  him  £$o ;  and  all  readers  have  of  late  been 


Jeffreys  Characteristics.  347 

made  familiar  with  his  unwearied  kindness  to  Carlyle.  Such 
published  instances,  however,  are  only  a  small  part  of  what 
Jeffrey  did  in  this  way;  all  his  kind  acts  were  done  by  stealth, 
and  most  of  them  therefore  are  unrecorded.  Even  Harriet 
Martineau,  who,  in  her  splenetic  "  Autobiography,"  has  rarely 
a  good  word  to  say  for  any  one,  speaks  in  warm  terms  of 
Jeffrey's  boundless  generosity.  Acuteness,  vivacity,  and  bril- 
liance are  his  most  prominent  intellectual  qualities.  He  had 
little  depth,  and  as  a  critic  could  never  bring  himself  to  do 
justice  to  men  of  intellectual  type  opposed  to  his  own.  Few 
better  examples  of  "Philistine"  criticism  could  be  pointed  out 
than  his  review  of  Carlyle's  translation  of  "Wilhelm  Meister;" 
and  his  articles  on  Wordsworth's  poetry  prove  conclusively 
how  narrow  was  his  range  and  how  imperfect  was  his  discern- 
ment Within  his  own  limited  range,  however,  he  was  often 
exceedingly  acute  and  brilliant ;  nothing  could  excel  the  skill 
and  severity  with  which  he  broke  literary  butterflies  on  the 
wheel.  Unfortunately  for  his  fame,  his  most  incisive  satirical 
articles  are  not  reprinted  in  his  "Collected  Contributions;" 
hence  only  a  very  imperfect  idea  of  his  powers  can  be  formed 
by  one  who  does  not  put  himself  to  the  trouble  of  looking  up, 
in  the  old  volumes  of  the  Edinburgh  Review,  his  unreprinted 
articles.  Jeffrey's  writings  are  now  little  read ;  and  had  it  not 
been  for  his  connection  with  the  Review,  his  chance  of  obtain- 
ing permanent  record  in  literary  histories  would  have  been 
small.  Very  likely  it  would  have  been  otherwise  had  he  ever 
concentrated  his  talents  and  accomplishments  on  the  com- 
position of  some  independent  work,  instead  of  constantly 
frittering  them  away  in  the  composition  of  periodical  articles, 
the  fame  of  which  is  apt  to  be  shortlived  But  his  other  occu- 
pations prevented  this  ;  and  perhaps,  after  all,  he  judged  rightly 
in  employing  his  powers  as  he  did.  As  an  editor,  Jeffrey 
magnified  his  office.  He  conceived  it  to  be  an  editor's  duty 
not  only  to  select  articles  for  publication,  but  to  go  over  them 
carefully,  adding  a  little  here  and  erasing  a  little  there — a  pro- 
cess by  no  means  agreeable  to  some  contributors,  and  of 
which  Carlyle  complained  bitterly.  Something  may  be  said 


348     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

both  for  and  against  this  practice.  By  adopting  it  a  judicious 
editor  may  no  doubt  greatly  improve  the  articles  offered  to 
him,  pruning  away  their  extravagances,  and  freeing  them  from 
those  little  eccentricities  of  style  and  diction  from  which  few 
writers  are  exempt.  It  also  tends  to  give  the  various  articles 
a  certain  unity  of  tone  desirable  in  a  periodical  work  conducted 
on  fixed  principles.  But  there  is  always  a  danger  of  carrying 
the  practice  too  far,  and  infusing  too  much  of  the  editor's 
own  personality  into  articles  "touched  up"  by  him.  Charles 
D'.ckens,  who  took  even  greater  liberties  than  Jeffrey  with  the 
contributions  to  his  periodical,  by  additions  and  emendations, 
often  made  them  so  "  Dickensesque  "  as  to  impart  to  them  a 
disagreeable  mannerism. 

Scarcely  less  prominently  connected  than  Jeffrey  with  the 
origin  and  early  career  of  the  Edinburgh  Review  was  the  Rev. 
Sydney  Smith  (1771-1845),  whose  unique  vein  of  wit  and 
almost  unequalled  power  of  sarcasm  gave  to  his  contributions 
on  temporary  subjects  an  enduring  literary  value.  The  son 
of  a  clever  but  odd  English  gentleman,  he  was  educated 
at  Winchester,  of  which  school  he  in  due  course  rose  to  be 
captain.  Referring  to  this  period  of  his  life,  he  used  to  say, 
"  I  believe,  whilst  a  boy  at  school,  I  made  above  ten  thousand 
Latin  verses,  and  no  man  in  his  senses  would  dream  in  after- 
life of  ever  making  another.  So  much  for  life  and  time 
wasted."  From  Winchester,  Sydney  went  to  Oxford,  where, 
at  the  close  of  his  undergraduate  career,  he  obtained  a  fellow- 
ship worth  about  ;£ioo  a  year.  From  this  period  his  father 
left  him  to  shift  fcr  himself,  and,  wanting  the  means  necessary 
to  gratify  his  desire  to  study  for  the  Bar,  he  was  compelled  to 
enter  the  Church.  After  acting  for  three  years  as  curate  in 
a  small  village  in  Salisbury  Plain,  the  squire  of  the  parish 
engaged  him  as  tutor  to  his  eldest  son.  "  It  was  arranged," 
writes  Sydney,  "  that  I  and  his  son  should  proceed  to  the 
University  of  Weimar,  in  Saxony.  We  set  out,  but  before 
reaching  our  destination  Germany  was  disturbed  by  war,  and 
in  stress  of  politics  we  put  into  Edinburgh,  where  I  remained 
for  five  years."  He  arrived  at  Edinburgh  in  1797,  and  soon 


Sydney  Smith.  349 

found  many  congenial  friends  among  the  numerous  clever 
young  men  then  staying  there.  In  1804  we  find  him  in 
London,  and  during  that  and  the  two  following  years  he  lec- 
tured on  Moral  Philosophy  at  the  Royal  Institution.  His 
lectures,  which  were  attended  by  crowded  and  fashionable 
audiences,  were  published  after  his  death  under  the  title  of 
"Elementary  Sketches  of  Moral  Philosophy."  They  make 
no  pretension  to  philosophic  depth,  but,  like  everything  that 
came  from  his  pen,  they  are  amusing  and  instructive.  In 
1806  he  obtained,  through  the  influence  of  the  Whig  Govern- 
ment, a  presentation  to  the  small  living  of  Foston-le-Ciay,  in 
Yorkshire.  In  1828  Lord  Lyndhurst  presented  him  with  the 
Canonry  of  Bristol  Cathedral ;  and  it  was  through  the  influence 
of  the  same  nobleman,  though  differing  from  him  in  politics, 
that  he  was  enabled  to  exchange  Foston-le-Clay  for  the  living 
of  Combe  Florey,  near  Taunton.  His  pen  had  been  such 
a  powerful  auxiliary  in  aiding  the  Whig  party,  that  from  them 
he  might  reasonably  have  expected  high  ecclesiastical  pro- 
motion, but  such  never  came.  All  they-  did  for  him  was  to 
make  him  a  prebend  of  St.  Paul's  in  1831.  This  neglect  of 
his  reasonable  claims  Sydney  felt  bitterly.  It  is  not  easy  to 
say  exactly  from  what  cause  it  arose.  Perhaps  it  may  have 
been  because  some  of  his  writings  were  considered  to  be  incon- 
sistent with  clerical  decorum,  but  there  were  probably  other  and 
more  cogent  reasons.'  At  any  rate,  his  great  Whig  friends  were 
always  full  of  specious  promises  of  promotion  to  him,  which 
they  were  either  unable  or  unwilling  to  translate  into  acts. 

Sydney  Smith's  contributions  to  the  Edinburgh  Review 
began  with  its  first  number,  and  were  continued  till  1828, 
when,  owing  to  his  ecclesiastical  promo  ion,  he  ceased  to 
write  in  it.  They  embrace  a  very  wide  range  of  topics — 
Education,  Methodism,  Indian  Missions,  the  Game-Laws,  the 
Poor-Laws,  Prisons  and  Prison  Discipline,  Irish  Grievances, 
&c.,  &c.,  all  handled  with  great  acuteness  and  incisiveness, 
an  abundance  of  sparkling  wit,  and  in  general  much  good 
feeling  and  sound  sense.  They  contributed  much — as  well 
they  might — to  the  success  of  the  Edinburgh,  though  some 


350     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

people  complained  of  their  light  style  of  treating  grave 
topics.  Even  Jeffrey,  it  would  seem,  sometimes  joined  in  this 
charge,  which  Smith  successfully  combated  in  an  admirable 
and.  spirited  letter  written  in  1819.  "  You  must  consider,"  he 
wrote  to  Jeffrey,  "  that  Edinburgh  is  a  very  grave  place,  and 
that  you  live  with  philosophers  who  are  very  intolerant  of  non- 
sense. I  write  for  the  London,  not  for  the  Scotch  market,  and 
perhaps  more  people  read  my  nonsense  than  your  sense.  The 
complaint  was  loud  and  universal  against  the  extreme  dulness 
and  lengthiness  of  the  Edinburgh  Review.  Too  much,  I  admit, 
would  not  do  of  my  style;  but  the  proportion  in  which  it  exists 
enlivens  the  Review,  if  you  appeal  to  the  whole  public,  and  not 
to  the  eight  or  ten  grave  Scotchmen  with  whom  you  live.  I 
am  a  very  ignorant,  frivolous,  half-inch  person  ;  but  such  as  I 
am,  I  am  sure  I  have  done  your  Review  good,  and  contributed 
to  bring  it  into  notice.  Such  as  I  am,  I  shall  be,  and  cannot 
promise  to  alter.  Such  is  my  opinion  of  the  .effect  of  my 
articles.  .  .  .  Almost  any  of  the  sensible  men  who  write  for 
the  Review  would  have  written  a  much  wiser  and  more  pro- 
found article  than  I  have  clone  upon  the  game-laws.  I  am 
quite  certain  that  nobody  would  obtain  more  readers  for  his 
essay  upon  such  a  subject ;  and  I  am  equally  certain  that  the 
principles  are  right,  and  that  there  is  no  lack  of  sense  in  it." 
There  was  never  a  lack  either  of  sense  or  wit  in  anything 
he  wrote.  Ridicule  was  invariably  employed  in  his  writings 
to  aid  the  cause  and  opinions  which  he  considered  to  be 
true,  and  just,  and  honourable.  A  hard  hitter,  with  a 
keen  eye  for  the  weak  points  in  an  opponent's  armour,  he 
delighted  in  combat,  not  content  with  only  acting  on  the 
defensive,  but  sallying  into  the  enemy's  country  and  vigor- 
ously attacking  him.  He  would  have  made  an  admirable 
writer  of  leading  articles — his  clearness,  point,  and  vigorous 
way  of  stating  facts  and  arguments  would  have  made  his 
services  invaluable  to  newspaper  editors.  The  only  recent 
writer  we  can  think  of  whose  political  articles  have  something 
of  the  flavour  of  Smith's,  and,  like  them,  bear  reading  after 
the  interest  of  the  questions  which  caused  them  has  passed 


Sydney  SmitJis  Characteristics.          351 

away,  is  Charles  Lever,  whose  "  O'Dowd  Papers,"  different 
though  they  are  from  Smith's  articles  in  many  ways,  resemble 
them  in  their  emphatic,  epigrammatic  way  of  putting  things, 
and  in  their  skill  in  hitting  the  right  nail  on  the  head. 
Besides  his  Review  articles,  Sydney  Smith  wrote  two  volumes 
of  sermons,  not  of  very  great  merit,  and  an  admirable  and 
trenchant  discussion  of  the  Catholic  Question,  under  the  title 
of  "  Letters  on  the  Subject  of  the  Catholics,  by  Peter  Plymley  " 
(1808),  in  addition  to  a  few  smaller  performances.  Mr.  Hay- 
ward  complains  that  Smith's  humorous  writings  are  often  defi- 
cient in  ease,  smoothness,  grace,  rhythm,  and  purity,  because 
he  constantly  aimed  at  effect  by  startling  contrasts,  by  the 
juxtaposition  of  incongruous  images  or  epithets,  or  by  the 
use  of  odd-sounding  words  and  strange  compounds  of  Greek 
and  Latin  derivation — speaking  of  a  preacher  as  wiping  his 
face  with  his  "  cambric  sudarium  ; "  of  a  schoolmaster  as  a 
"  mastigophorous  superior ; "  of  a  weak  and  foolish  man  as 
"anserous  and  asinine,"  &c.  There  does  not  seem  much 
force  in  this  criticism.  Sydney  Smith's  mode  of  producing 
humorous  effects  was  always  original,  and  always  well  adapted 
to  the  subject  in  hand  ;  and  if  his  writings  were  weeded  of  the 
kind  of  expressions  Mr.  Hayward  objects  to,  we  should  lose 
some  of  their  wittiest  and  most  telling  strokes. 

Robust  in  constitution,  constantly  cheerful,  and  one  of  the 
most  entertaining  talkers  ever  listened  to,  Sydney  Smith  was  a 
"  diner-out  of  the  first  water,"  much  sought  after  in  London 
society.  Many  of  his  good  sayings  have  been  preserved, 
and  amply  prove  (what  the  recorded  sayings  of  many  other 
London  wits  certainly  do  not  prove)  that  his  great  contemporary 
fame  as  wit  and  conversationist  was  amply  deserved.  Though 
he  gave  free  scope  to  his  exuberant  humour,  and  did  not 
scruple  to  ridicule  the  little  eccentricities  and  angularities  of 
his  friends,  he  had  the  gift,  granted  to  but  few,  of  expressing 
his  witticisms  so  good-humouredly  that  the  subject  of  them 
laughed  as  heartily  as  any  one.  There  could  be  no  better 
testimony  to  the  want  of  the  venom  in  his  jokes  than  Lord 
Dudley's  remark,  that  Sydney  Smith  had  been  laughing  at 


352     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

him  for  many  years,  and  yet  had  never  said  a  word  to  hint 
him.  In  addition  to  his  gifts  as  a  talker  and  writer,  Smith 
possessed  the  higher  qualities  of  courage,  honesty,  and  inde- 
pendence. A  somewhat  too  great  fondness  for  the  good  things 
of  this  life,  which  he  always  candidly  avowed;  an  over-eager 
love  of  London  society  and  the  things  which  it  prizes,  were 
almost  the  only  weaknesses  which  could  be  laid  to  his  charge. 
He  was  better  fitted  for  the  Bar  than  the  Church ;  and  though 
he  performed  his  duties  as  clergyman  conscientiously  accord- 
ing to  his  lights,  his  heart  was  never  really  in  the  work. 

The  establishment  of  Blackwoo&s  Magazine  in  1817  brought 
into  notice  another  group  of  writers  not  less  distinguished 
than  the  early  contributors  to  the  Edinburgh.  Of  this  group 
the  most  prominent  members  were  Wilson  and  Lockhart,  to 
whose  labours  Blackwood  owed  as  much  of  its  early  success 
as  the  Edinburgh  did  to  Jeffrey  and  Sydney  Smith.  John 
Wilson  (1785-1854)  was  born  at  Paisley,  the  son  of  a  wealthy 
manufacturer  there.  When  twelve  years  of  age  he  became  a 
student  at  Glasgow  University,  where  he  carried  off  the  first 
prize  in  the  Logic  class,  besides  distinguishing  himself,  as  at 
all  subsequent  periods  of  his  life,  by  his  personal  prowess 
and  athletic  feats.  From  Glasgow,  in  1803,  he  proceeded  to 
Oxford,  where  he  became  a  gentleman  commoner  of  Mag- 
dalen College.  There  he  lived  a  very  wild  and  energetic  life, 
which  would  probably  have  soon  broken  down  any  one  of 
inferior  constitution.  He  managed  to  be  at  the  same  time 
a  hard  student,  a  jolly  companion  who  never  flinched  at  his 
cups,  and  a  daring  and  indefatigable  athlete.  In  1807  he 
quitted  Oxford,  having  obtained  his  degree  with  singular  dis- 
tinction, and  leaving  behind  him  many  anecdotes  of  his  eccen- 
tric life  and  his  great  physical  and  intellectual  capacities.  His 
father's  death  had  left  him  possessed  of  an  ample  fortune,  and 
soon  after  leaving  the  University  he  purchased  the  small  estate 
of  Elleray,  a  charming  property  on  the  banks  of  Windermere. 
During  his  residence  there  he  married,  and  for  some  years 
lived  a  life  of  unclouded  prosperity,  indulging  in  long  solitary 
rambles  on  the  mountains,  and  keeping  a  fleet  of  boats  on  the 


John  Wilson.  353 

lake.  In  1812  he  published  his  first  poem,  the  "The  Isle  of 
Palms,"  which  met  with  praise  fully  commensurate  to  its  merit, 
though  by  no  means  answering  to  the  author's  sanguine  expec- 
tations. In  1815  his  affairs  suffered  a  sudden  and  severe 
reverse.  The  money  bequeathed  him  by  his  father  had  been 
allowed  to  remain  in  the  hands  of  an  uncle  who  carried  on 
the  business,  and  his  failure  left  Wilson  almost  penniless. 
From  indulging  in  all  sorts  of  sports  and  amusements,  and 
from  using  his  pen  merely  as  an  amusement  when  it  suited 
him,  he  was  called  upon  to  work  hard  for  the  support  of 
himself  and  his  family.  He  accepted  his  altered  conditions  of 
life  cheerfully  and  bravely.  The  establishment  at  Elleray  was 
broken  up,  and  he  betook  himself  to  Edinburgh,  where  in 
due  course  he  was  called  to  the  Bar.  Literature,  however, 
and  not  law,  was  to  be  his  profession,  and  he  scarcely 
attempted  to  secure  a  practice.  In  1816  he  published  his 
second  volume,  "  The  City  of  the  Plague,"  containing  some 
remarkably  powerful  descriptive  passages.  It  was  not,  how- 
ever, till  the  establishment  of  BlackwoocFs  Magazine  that  he 
found  a  fit  field  for  the  exercise  of  his  erratic  and  impulsive 
genius.  To  that  periodical  he  was.,  a  constant  contributor  from 
its  commencement  to  within  eight  or  ten  months  of  his  death. 
So  close,  indeed,  was  his  connection  with  it,  that  he  was  popu- 
larly supposed  to  be  its  editor — a  mistake,  that  office  being 
in  the  hands  of  its  able  and  sagacious  publisher.  But  popular 
opinion  was  not  so  very  far  wrong  after  all ;  for  though  not 
actual  editor,  Wilson's  advice  regarding  contributions  was  very 
frequently  asked.  He  himself  in  a  letter  thus  accurately  states 
the  facts  of  the  case  : — "  Of  Blackwood  I  am  not  the  editor, 
although  I  believe  I  very  generally  get  both  the  credit  and  dis- 
credit of  being  Christopher  North.  I  am  one  of  the  chief  writers, 
perhaps  the  chief  writer,  but  never  received  one  shilling  from 
the  proprietor  except  for  my  own  compositions.  Being  gene- 
rally on  the  spot,  I  am  always  willing  to  give  him  my  advice, 
and  to  supply  such  articles  as  are  most  wanted,  when  I  have 
leisure."  In  1820  Wilson,  after  a  hard  contest,  was  appointed 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  Edinburgh  University.  The 
16 


354     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

rival  candidate  was  Sir  William  Hamilton  (1788-1856),  a  man 
of  great  erudition  and  profound  philosophical  genius,  who  was 
afterwards  appointed  Professor  of  Logic  in  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity, and  attained  by  his  writings  a  European  reputation.  In  all 
the  qualifications  for  the  chair  Wilson  was  infinitely  Hamilton's 
inferior;  but  Hamilton  was  a  Whig,  while  Wilson  was  a  Tory, 
and  as  most  of  the  Town  Councillors,  in  whose  hands  the  ap- 
pointment lay,  were  Tories  also,  he  was  the  fortunate  candidate. 
Few  professors  have  entered  on  their  duties  more  slenderly 
equipped  for  their  task,  and  fewer  still  have  succeeded  as  Wilson 
did  in  rapidly  overcoming  their  defects.  He  never  became  a 
great  philosopher,  but  he  managed  to  inspire  his  pupils  with  ad- 
miration for  hisenthusiasticgenius,  and  not  many  professors  have 
been  so  much  respected  and  loved  by  their  pupils  as  he  was. 
In  1851  he  retired  from  his  chair  upon  a  pension  of  ^300. 

Wilson's  magnificent  physique  ;  the  countless  anecdotes  told 
of  his  wonderful  feats  of  strength ;  his  great  brilliance  in  conver- 
sation ;  the  admiration  felt  by  many  for  his  intellectual  powers  ; 
even  his  numerous  extravagances  of  conduct,  all  of  which  were 
set  down  to  the  eccentricity  of  genius,  made  him  beyond  all  doubt 
the  most  popular  Scotsman  of  his  time.  By  many  he  was  regarded 
as  one  of  our  very  greatest  writers.  Even  a  critic  usually  so 
cautious  as  De  Quincey  declared  that  from  Wilson's  contribu- 
tions to  Blackwood,  and  more  especially  from  his  meditative 
examinations  of  great  poets  ancient  and  modern,  a  florilegium 
might  ba  compiled  of  thoughts  more  profound  and  more 
gorgeously  illustrated  than  exist  elsewhere  in  human  com- 
position. Yet  the  truth  is  that  people  are  already  begin- 
ning to  wonder  on  what  rested  Wilson's  great  fame  as  a  man 
of  genius.  As  a  poet  he  does  not  occupy  very  high  rank. 
No  doubt  beautiful  passages  may  be  pointed  out  in  his  verse, 
but  no  one  probably  would  maintain  that  it  bids  fair  to  have  a 
long  life.  His  tales,  "  Lights  and  Shadows  of  Scottish  Life,*' 
"  The  Trials  of  Margaret  Lindsay,"  &c.,  are  faulty  in  construc- 
tion, and  are  already  almost  forgotten.  Of  his  criticisms, 
many  are  excellent,  but  they  are  often  extravagant  both  in 
praise  and  blame.  His  impulsive  temperament  was  constantly 


Wilson's  "  Nodes  Ambrosiaita?          355 

hurrying  him  into  extremes  ;  he  could  commend  and  con- 
demn with  great  dash  and  vigour,  but  he  was  constitutionally 
incapable  of  forming  judicious  and  well-balanced  estimates. 
Of  his  most  famous  work,  the  "  Noctes  Ambrosianae,"  what 
shall  we  say?  Here  is  the  opinion  of  an  admirer  of  Wilson, 
Professor  Ferrier,  on  the  principal  figure  in  the  "Noctes," 
"  the  Ettrick  Shepherd  : " — "  The  Ettrick  Shepherd  of  the 
*  Noctes  Ambrosianae '  is  one  of  the  finest  and  most  finished 
creations  which  dramatic  genius  ever  called  into  existence. 
Out  of  very  slender  materials,  an  ideal  infinitely  greater, 
more  real,  and  more  original  than  the  prototype  from 
which  it  was  drawn  has  been  bodied  forth.  Bearing  in 
mind  that  these  dialogues  are  conversations  on  men  and 
manners,  life  and  literature,  we  may  confidently  affirm  that 
nowhere  within  the  compass  of  that  species  of  composition 
is  there  to  be  found  a  character  at  all  comparable  to  this  one 
in  richness  and  readiness  of  resource.  In  wisdom  the  Shep- 
herd equals  the  Socrates  of  Plato  ;  in  humour  he  surpasses  the 
FalstarT  of  Shakespeare.  Clear  and  prompt,  he  might  have 
stood  up  against  Dr.  Johnson  in  close  and  peremptory  argu- 
ment; fertile  and  copious,  he  might  have  rivalled  Burke  in 
amplitude  of  declamation ;  while  his  opulent  imagination  and 
powers  of  comical  description  invest  all  that  he  utters  either 
with  a  picturesque  vividness  or  a  graphic  quaintness  peculiarly 
his  own,"  &c.,  &c.  The  character  of  the  Shepherd  has  cer- 
tainly considerable  merit,  but  to  say  that  he  surpasses  Falstaff 
in  humour  is  as  absurd  as  it  would  "be  to  pronounce  Wilson  a 
greater  man  than  Shakespeare.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is,  that 
the  "  Noctes  "  are  now  for  the  most  part  unreadable.  They 
breathe  an  atmosphere  of  whisky-toddy,  of  rough  fun,  and  of 
practical  jokes,  with  which  the  society  of  to-day  has  no  sym- 
pathy. Who  now  cares  a  straw  for  the  vast  powers  of  eating 
and  drinking  which  the  heroes  possess?  A  few  fine  descrip- 
tions of  scenery,  a  few  profound  observations,  a  few  just  and 
eloquent  criticisms,  are  buried  beneath  mountains  of  rhapso- 
dical magniloquence  and  of  wit  which  has  lost  its  savour. 
Much  the  same  remarks  apply  to  Wilson's  other  writings 


356     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

resembling  the  "Noctes,"  such  as  his  "  Recreations  of  Chris- 
topher North,"  his  "  Dies  Boreales,"  &c.,  &c.  All  his  articles 
were  written  currente  catamo,  dashed  off  at  a  white  heat,  without 
much  previous  thought  or  preparation  ;  and  they  all  bear  traces 
of  their  hasty  composition.  Some  admirer  of  Wilson  ought 
to  carry  out  De  Quincey's  notion  and  collect  an  anthology 
from  his  various  writings.  A  moderately-sized  volume  of 
great  interest  and  value  might  be  thus  compiled,  and  only  in 
some  such  condensation  can  Wilson's  works  hope  to  escape 
the  ravages  of  time.  Wilson's  influence  upon  the  style  of  the 
minor  writers  of  his  day  was  bad,  inspiring  them  with  a 
passion  for  gorgeous  colouring  and  picturesque  epithets  which 
led  to  such  strange  excesses  as  we  find  in  many  of  his 
imitators. 

John  Gibson  Lockhart,  Wilson's  friend  and  fellow-contributor 
to  Blackwood,  while  lacking  Christopher  North's  luxuriance 
and  fertility  of  genius,  had  a  much  more  clear-cut  and  well- 
balanced  mind.  He  was  born  in  1794,  the  son  of  a  Lanark- 
shire minister.  Even  while  a  mere  child  he  showed  the 
qualities  which  distinguished  him  throughout  life,  reserved 
manners,  power  of  concentration,  a  keen  sense  of  the  ludicrous, 
which  found  vent  in  the  many  admirable  caricatures  that  fell 
from  his  pen,  and  remarkable  quickness  of  perception.  "  His 
reading,  like  that  of  clever  children  in  general,  was,  to  be  sure, 
miscellaneous  enough,  for  whatever  came  in  his  way  he 
devoured.  But  whatever  he  had  once  devoured  he  never 
forgot.  This  was  an  advantage  over  other  boys,  which  he 
owed  in  part  at  least  to  nature.  His  memory  was  retentive  in 
the  extreme,  and  continued  so  through  life.  Like  Lord  Mac- 
aulay  and  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis,  Lockhart,  in  the 
maturity  of  his  days,  seldom  thought  it  necessary  to  verify  a 
quotation  of  which  he  desired  to  make  use." *  After  leaving 
the  Glasgow  High  School,  where  he  always  managed  to  keep 
his  place  as  dux,  Lockhart  entered  the  University  of  Glasgow, 

1  From  an  article  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  October  1864,  containing 
the  fullest  account  of  Lockhart  which,  so  far  as  we  know,  has  ever  been 
published. 


John  Gibson  Lockhart  357 

where,  although  apparently  very  idle  and  employing  himself  in 
drawing  caricatures  of  the  professors  instead  of  attending  to 
their  lectures,  he  contrived  to  acquit  himself  with  distinction. 
At  the  close  of  his  Glasgow  curriculum  he  was  presented  to 
one  of  the  Snell  Exhibitions  to  Oxford,  and  became  a  commoner 
of  Balliol  College  ere  he  had  completed  his  fifteenth  year.  He 
left  Oxford  in  1813,  having  obtained  a  first-class  in  classics, 
"  notwithstanding  that  he,  with  unparalleled  audacity,  devoted 
part  of  his  time  to  caricaturing  the  examining  masters."  After 
a  visit  to  Germany,  where  he  saw  Goethe,  whom  through  life 
he  regarded  with  a  reverence  second  only  to  Carlyle's,  he  exe- 
cuted his  first  avowed  piece  of  literary  work,  a  translation  of 
Schlegel's  "  Lectures  on  the  History  of  Literature."  In  1816  he 
was  called  to  the  Scottish  bar,  but  he  never  attained,  nor  indeed 
attempted  to  attain,  any  success  in  his  profession.  In  1817  he 
began  to  contribute  to  Blackwood,  to  which  his  pungent  and 
graphic  pen  lent  powerful  aid,  writing  articles  on  all  sorts  of 
subjects,  besides  many  excellent  rollicking  ballads,  conceived 
in  a  style  of  which  he  alone  possessed  the  secret.  In  1819  he 
published  "  Peter's  Letters  to  his  Kinsfolk,"  clever  and  witty 
sketches  of  the  more  prominent  Edinburgh  celebrities  of  the 
clay,  which  created  no  small  stir,  and  were  bitterly  reviled  by 
many  on  account  of  their  personalities.  In  1820  he  married 
the  eldest  daughter  of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  who  fitted  up  for  the 
young  couple  the  cottage  of  Chiefswood  on  his  own  estate. 
During  the  following  five  or  six  years  Lockhart  produced  his 
"Metrical  Translations  of  Spanish  Ballads,"  which  Macaulay 
thought  decidedly  superior  to  the  originals ;  "  Valerius,  a 
Roman  Story,"  the  first  of  those  novels  which  endeavour  to 
portray  ancient  life;  and  three  other  fictions,  "Adam  Blair," 
"Reginald  Dalton,"  and  "Matthew  Wald."  In  1826  he  re- 
moved to  London,  having  been  appointed  editor  of  the 
Quarterly  Review,  at  a  salary  of  .£1200  a  year,  and,  if  he 
wrote  a  certain  number  of  articles,  ^isoo.1  While  contribut- 
ing largely  to  the  Quarterly — he  wrote  altogether  over  a  hun- 

1  So  stated  in  Moore's  Diary  (Russell's  "  Memoirs  of  Moore,''  voL  iv, 
P-  334). 


358     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

dred  articles  for  it — Lockhart  found  time  to  write  besides  a 
"Life  of  Burns"  for  "Constable's  Miscellany,"  and  a  "Life  of 
Napoleon"  (mainly  an  abridgment  of  Scott)  for  "Murray's 
Family  Library."  In  1838  he  published  the  last  volume  of  his 
greatest  and  most  enduring  work,  the  "  Life  of  Scott,"  the 
profits  of  which  he  generously  handed  over  to  Scott's  creditors. 
He  died  in  1854,  worn  out,  like  Wilson,  in  body  and  in  mind. 
Lockhart's  cold,  sarcastic  manners  to  people  in  general,  and 
his  power  of  trenchant  ridicule,  which  he  never  hesitated  to 
exercise,  brought  him  more  ill-will  than  falls  to  the  lot  of  men  in 
general.  "Some,"  it  is  said  in  the  article  above  referred  to,  "even 
felt  themselves  repelled  from  him  altogether  by  terror  of  a  sar- 
casm, for  tokens  of  which  they  were  constantly  on  the  look-out ; 
and  as  his  manly  figure  was  eminently  stiff,  those  who  were  afraid 
of  him  saw  little  more  than  an  unbending  back.  But  this  was 
a  great  mistake.  In  mixed  companies,  especially  if  composed 
of  persons  for  whom  he  had  little  regard,  Lockhart  was  apt 
enough  to  maintain  a  somewhat  stately  reserve.  Whenever  he 
felt  that  he  was  among  men  and  women  between  whom  and 
himself  no  such  barrier  was  interposed,  he  became  the  most 
agreeable  of  companions."  Certainly,  however,  though  Lock- 
hart  may  have  made  himself  very  pleasant  in  the  society  of 
a  few  eminent  men,  he  was  far  from  amiable,  and  to  his  un- 
fortunate propensity  to  snub  and  quiz  people  he  disliked  must 
be  attributed  many  of  the  disparaging  stories  relative  to  his 
private  life  which  have  been  freely  circulated,  but  which 
probably  had  little  or  no  foundation  in  fact.  In  the  famous 
"  Chaldee  Manuscript,"  the  appearance  of  which  in  the  first 
number  of  Blackwood  caused  such  a  sensation,  and  in  the 
authorship  of  which  Lockhart  himself  had  a  considerable 
share,  he  is  described  as  "  the  scorpion  which  delighteth  to 
sting  the  faces  of  men;"  and  Wilson's  daughter,  in  her  Life  of 
her  father,  says  of  him,  "  Cold,  haughty,  supercilious  in  manner, 
he  seldom  won  love,  and  not  unfrequently  caused  his  friends 
to  distrust  it  in  him,  for  they  sometimes  found  the  warmth  of 
their  own  feelings  thrown  back  upon  them  in  presence  of  this 
cold  indifference." 


Lotkkarts  Writings.  359 

Lockhart  is  one  of  the  select  class  of  writers,  the  perusal  of 
whose  works  impresses  one  with  the  idea  that  they  might  have 
done  greater  things  than  they  actually  accomplished.  He 
possessed  an  intellect  of  great  acuteness  and  refinement ;  his 
style  is  polished,  terse,  and  vigorous  ;  and  his  learning  and  ac- 
complishments were  far  beyond  the  common.  His  novels  are 
not  of  much  value  except  for  the  singular  elegance  of  their 
style :  his  most  ambitious  attempt  in  this  direction,  the  clas- 
sical tale  "Valerius,"  must  be  pronounced  tedious,  as,  indeed, 
novels  written  on  the  same  plan  generally  are.  He  was  not 
well  qualified  to  be  a  novelist;  he  lacked  the  breadth  and 
generosity  of  nature,  the  sympathy  with  different  types  of 
humanity,  without  which  it  is  impossible  to  write  a  really  good 
work  of  fiction.  Biography  was  the  province  in  which  his  best 
work  was  done.  His  "Life  of  Burns"  is  a  really  admirable 
sketch,  by  far  the  most  charmingly  written  of  all  the  many 
biographies  of  the  great  Scottish  peasant.  In  his  most  am- 
bitious performance,  the  "  Life  of  Scott,"  faults  may  no  doubt 
be  pointed  out.  It  is  too  long ;  the  extracts  from  Scott's  cor- 
respondence might  have  been  pruned  down  with  great  advan- 
tage ;  he  might  have  indulged  less  copiously  in  quoting  remini- 
scences of  Scott  by  other  writers ;  and  he  is  unjust  to  Con- 
stable and  the  Ballantynes.  Yet  it  is  an  excellent  biography, 
inferior  only  to  Boswell  s  "  Johnson."  Lockhart  faithfully  car- 
ried  out  the  biographer's  first  duty,  to  extenuate  nothing  and 
to  set  down  naught  in  malice.  We  have  in  it  a  genuine  picture 
of  Scott  as  he  really  was,  in  his  greatness  and  his  littleness,  his 
weakness  and  his  strength.  The  portions  of  the  work  which 
come  from  Lockhart  himself  are  written  with  such  force  and 
incisiveness  as  to  make  us  wish  that  he  had  less  frequently 
resorted  to  paste-and-scissors  work.  It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted 
that  a  selection  from  his  contributions  to  the  Quarterly  Review 
has  not  been  published.  It  would  give  a  better  idea  than  any- 
thing else  of  the  copiousness  and  energy  of  his  style,  of  his  keen 
discernment  of  character,  and  of  his  rare  talent  for  biography. 
He  was  an  excellent  editor,  accurate  and  punctual  in  money 
matters,  and  exercising  wisely  and  well  his  editorial  privileges 


360     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

over  the  articles  submitted  to  him.  "  Every  one,"  we  are  told, 
"who  had  an  opportunity  of  knowing  how  Lockhart  treated 
the  essays  which  it  was  his  function  to  introduce  to  the  public, 
will  remember  the  exquisite  skill  with  which  he  could,  by  a 
fe\v  touches,  add  grace  and  point  to  the  best-written  paper — 
how  he  could  throw  off  superfluous  matter,  develop  a  half- 
expressed  thought,  disentangle  a  complicated  sentence,  and 
give  life  and  spirit  to  the  solid  sense  of  a  heavy  article,  as  the 
sculptor  animates  a  shapeless  stone." 

Among  the  early  contributors  to  Blackwood  was  a  friend  of 
Wilson,  Thomas  De  Quincey,  the  greatest  prose  writer  of 
his  time,  and  one  of  the  greatest  writers  of  English  prose  of 
all  times.  De  Quincey,  who  came  of  an  ancient  Norwegian 
family  which  came  over  with  the  Conqueror,  was  born  in  Man- 
chester in  1785.  His  father  was  a  wealthy  merchant,  who 
died  when  his  son  was  in  his  seventh  year,  leaving  his  widow 
a  fortune  of  ;£i6oo  a  year.  About  1791  the  family  removed 
to  a  country-house,  Greenhay,  about  a  mile  from  Manchester, 
and  there  they  remained  till  1796,  when  they  removed  to  Bath. 
At  the  grammar  school  of  that  town  De  Quincey  distinguished 
himself  by  remarkable  precocity,  earning  fame,  in  particular,  by 
the  excellence  of  his  Latin  verses.  He  was  always  a  thought- 
ful, observant  child  ;  much  more  introspective  than  children 
generally  are,  and  fond  of  reading  and  solitary  meditation.  After 
having  been  for  about  two  years  at  the  Bath  Grammar  School, 
he  was  sent  to  a  private  school  in  Wiltshire,  "  of  which  the 
chief  recommendation  lay  in  the  religious  character  of  the 
master."  He  remained  there  but  a  year,  after  which  he  was 
indulged  in  the  pleasure  of  a  tour  through  Ireland,  along  with 
a  young  friend,  Lord  Wrestport.  On  his  return  he  spent  three 
months  at  Laxton,  the  seat  of  Lord  Carbery,  where  he  talked 
about  theology  to  Lady  Carbery,  a  friend  of  his  mother's,  and 
taught  her  Greek.  He  was  then,  in  1800,  sent,  much  against 
his  will,  to  Manchester  Grammar  School,  where  his  guardians 
had  decided  that  he  should  remain  for  three  years.  Though 
young  in  years  he  was  old  in  mind;  he  felt  something  of 
degradation  in  the  idea  of  associating  with  schoolboys ;  and 


Thomas  de  Quincey.  361 

after  a  year  and  a  half's  experience  of  the  school,  he  found  his 
condition  so  intolerable  that  he  resolved  to  run  away.  This 
he  accordingly  did,  walking  all  the  way  to  Chester,  where  his 
mother  was  then  residing.  He  was  not  sent  back  to  school ; 
on  the  contrary,  at  the  suggestion  of  a  kindly  relative,  it  was 
arranged  that  he  should  have  a  guinea  a  week  allowed  him  for 
a  while,  and  have  liberty  to  make  a  short  excursion.  Then 
ensued  the  most  romantic  episode  of  his  erratic  life.  He  set 
out  for  Wales,  and,  after  wandering  for  some  time  among  the 
mountains,  it  struck  him  that  he  would  break  off  all  connection 
with  his  relatives,  set  out  for  London,  and  borrow  ^200  on 
the  strength  of  his  expectations.  Having  borrowed  £12  from 
two  friends  in  Oswestry,  he  arrived  in  London  in  November 
1802.  Of  his  strange  experience  there,  of  his  negotiations 
with  the  money-lenders,  of  how  he  was  often  on  the  brink  of 
starvation,  of  how  he  was  succoured  by  the  poor  outcast  Anne, 
he  has  given  a  full  and  touching  account  in  his  "  Confessions 
of  an  Opium-Eater."  At  length  he  was  discovered  and  taken 
home,  after  going  through  experiences  unique  in  their  character, 
and  leaving  an  indelible  impress  on  the  rest  of  his  life.  He 
remained  with  his  mother  for  some  time,  after  which,  in  1803, 
he  entered  Worcester  College,  Oxford.  His  guardian  could  be 
prevailed  upon  to  grant  him  only  the  shabby  annual  allowance 
of  ;£ioo ;  but  as  he  had  recourse  to  his  old  friends  the  money- 
lenders, he  was  able  to  make  himself  tolerably  comfortable. 
His  University  career  was  spent  in  as  eccentric  a  manner  as 
the  rest  of  his  life.  Though  he  was  an  excellent  classical 
scholar,  he  never  attempted  to  make  any  figure  in  the  studies 
of  the  place ;  following  the  bent  of  his  own  mind,  he  read  what 
pleased  him,  and  put  academical  routine  at  defiance.  "  Ox- 
ford, ancient  mother!"  he  exclaimed,  "heavy  with  ancestral 
honours,  time-honoured,  and,  haply  it  may  be,  time-shattered 
power,  I  owe  thee  nothing  !  Of  thy  vast  riches  I  took  not  a 
shilling,  though  living  among  multitudes  who  owed  to  thee 
their  daily  bread."  He  speaks  of  the  "  tremendous  hold  taken 
at  this  time  of  his  entire  sensibilities  by  our  own  literature ; " 
and  he  appears  also  to  have  bestowed  attention  on  the  study 


362     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

of  German  literature  and  philosophy.  He  continued  in  nomi- 
nal residence  at  the  university  till  1808,  but  never  made  any 
attempt  to  obtain  a  degree. 

While  at  Oxford,  De  Quincey  made  frequent  visits  to  Lon- 
don, and  became  acquainted  with  some  literary  celebrities. 
In  1809  he  took  up  his  residence  in  the  Lake  district, 
occupying  the  cottage  at  Grasmere  which  had  been  quitted 
by  Wordsworth,  with  whom  and  Coleridge  he  had  previously 
become  acquainted.  This  cottage  remained  in  his  tenancy  for 
twenty-seven  years,  and  during  twenty  of  these  it  was  his  princi- 
pal place  of  abode.  "From  this  era,"  he  writes,  "during  a  period 
of  about  twenty  years  in  succession,  I  may  describe  my  domicile 
as  being  amongst  the  Lakes  and  mountains  of  Westmoreland. 
It  is  true,  I  have  often  made  excursions  to  London,  Bath,  and 
its  neighbourhood,  or  northwards  to  Edinburgh ;  and  perhaps, 
on  an  average,  passed  one-fourth  part  of  each  year  at  a  distance 
from  this  district ;  but  here  only  it  was  that  henceforwards  I  had 
a  house  and  small  establishment."  At  Grasmere,  De  Quincey 
first  became  a  confirmed  opium-eater.  He  began  to  use  the 
pernicious  drug  in  1804,  but  till  1812  he  only  took  it  occa- 
sionally, "  fixing  beforehand  how  often  in  a  given  time,  and 
when,  I  would  commit  a  debauch  of  opium."  In  1813  "I 
\vas  attacked,"  he  says,  "  by  a  most  appalling  irritation  of  the 
stomach,  in  all  respects  the  same  as  that  which  had  caused 
me  so  much  suffering  in  youth,  and  accompanied  by  a  revival 
of  the  old  dreams.  Now  then  it  was,  viz.,  in  the  year  1813, 
that  I  became  a  regular  and  confirmed  (no  longer  an  intermit- 
ting) opium-eater."  His  appetite  for  the  fatal  narcotic  grew_by 
what  it  fed  on,  till  in  1816  he  was  taking  the  enormous  quantity 
of  8000  drops  of  laudanum  per  day.  About  the  end  of  that 
year  he  married,  and  by  vigorous  efforts  succeeded  in  reducing 
his  daily  allowance  to  1000  drops.  About  a  year  after,  how- 
ever, he  again  succumbed  to  the  tempter,  and  for  three  or 
four  years  took  sometimes  even  so  much  as  12,000  drops  per 
day.  His  affairs  having  become  embarrassed,  he  made  a 
second  attempt  to  free  himself;  and  so  far  succeeded,  that, 
though  he  remained  an  opium-eater  till  the  end  of  his  life,  he 


De  Quinceys  Characteristics.  363 

did  not  again  carry  the  practice  to  such  an  extent  as  to  inca- 
pacitate him  for  literary  exertion. 

De  Quincey's  first  published  literary  efforts  appeared  in  the 
Westmoreland  Gazette,  which  he  edited  for  about  a  year,  be- 
tween 1819-20,  for  the  slender  remuneration  of  a  guinea  a  week. 
In  the  London  Magazine  for  1821  appeared  his  most  popular 
work,  the  "  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium-Eater."  They 
created,  naturally  enough,  a  great  sensation,  and  at  once 
gave  the  author  widespread  celebrity.  In  the  following  year 
they  were  reprinted  in  a  separate  volume.  To  the  London 
Magazine  De  Quincey  continued  a  frequent  contributor  to 
1824.  His  other  principal  literary  engagements  may  be  briefly 
summed  up.  In  1826  began  his  contributions  to  Blackwood's 
Magazine,  for  which  he  wrote  about  fifty  papers.  In  1834 
he  became  a  writer  in  Tail's  Magazine,  to  which  he  contributed 
many  of  his  most  characteristic  autobiographical  papers,  some 
of  which  have  never  been  reprinted,  although  they  are  well 
worth  reprinting.  In  1849  he  began  his  connection  with 
Hoggs  Instructor,  to  the  publisher  of  which,  Mr.  James  Hogg, 
we  are  indebted  for  the  English  edition  of  his  collected  works. 
He  also  wrote  certain  articles  in  the  North  British  Review 
and  in  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  and  published  in  1844 
a  volume  on  the  "  Logic  of  Political  Economy."  From  1843  ne 
lived  at  Lasswade,  a  small  village  near  Edinburgh,  in  which 
city  he  died  in  1859. 

De  Quincey's  eccentric  appearance  and  habits  have  made  him 
the  theme  of  many  anecdotes  and  reminiscences.  He  was  a 
very  little,  slender  figure,  not  more  than  five  feet  high,  with  a 
finely  intellectual  head,  and  square,  lofty  brow.  He  took  pleasure 
in  alluding  to  his  feeble  constitution  and  slender  frame.  "A 
more  worthless  body  than  his  own,  the  author  is  free  to  confess, 
cannot  be.  It  is  his  pride  to  believe  that  it  is  the  very  ideal 
of  a  base,  crazy,  despicable,  human  system,  that  hardly  ever 
could  have  been  meant  to  be  seaworthy  for  two  days  under  the 
ordinary  storms  and  wear  and  tear  of  life  ;  and,  indeed,  if  that 
were  the  creditable  way  of  disposing  of  human  bodies,  he  must 
own  he  should  almost  be  ashamed  to  bequeath  his  wretched 


364     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

structure  to  any  respectable  dog."  Nevertheless  his  frame  must 
have  possessed  considerable  powers  of  endurance,  for  phe 
often  accompanied  Wilson  in  his  walks  about  the  Lake  district; 
and  the  man  who  was  capable  of  doing  that  must  have  been 
no  contemptible  pedestrian.  As  a  conversationist  his  talents 
were  great ;  he  would  go  on  for  hours  talking  in  the  most 
fascinating  manner  in  silvery,  gentle  accents.  His  manners 
were  extremely  graceful  and  polished  ;  but  to  many  of  the 
ordinary  rules  of  society  he  paid  no  heed,  being  in  these  matters 
a  law  unto  himself  Calling  at  Wilson's  house  in  Edinburgh 
on  one  occasion  to  avoid  a  shower,  he  remained  there  for  the 
greater  part  of  a  year,  spending  the  earlier  part  of  the  day 
prostrated  under  the  influence  of  opium,  but  recovering  to- 
wards night,  and  delighting  all  by  his  brilliant  conversation. 
"  The  time,"  writes  Mrs.  Gordon,  Wilson's  daughter,  "when 
he  was  most  brilliant  was  generally  towards  the  early  morning 
hours ;  and  then,  more  than  once,  my  father  arranged  his 
supper  parties  so  that,  sitting  till  three  or  four  in  the  morning, 
he  brought  Mr.  De  Quincey  to  that  point  at  which  in  charm 
and  power  of  conversation  he  was  so  truly  wonderful."  About 
money  matters  he  was  exceedingly  negligent ;  those  who  knew 
him  closely,  it  is  said,  laughed  at  the  idea  of  coupling  any 
notion  of  pecuniary  or  other  like  responsibility  with  his  nature. 
Perhaps  the  tendency  among  those  who  have  written  on  De 
Quincey  has  been  to  underrate  his  worldly  wisdom  and  "  know- 
ingness."  At  any  rate,  while  reading  certain  reminiscences 
of  him,  one  cannot  help  thinking  that  the  Opium-eater  some- 
times laughed  in  his  sleeve  at  those  who  were  admiring  his 
simple-mindedness. 

The  Opium-eater  was  a  man  of  genius,  if  ever  there  was  one. 
Most  of  his  faults,  even  his  wire-drawing,  his  over-elaboration, 
his  occasionally  too  profuse  display  of  his  knowledge,  could 
scarcely  have  been  committed  by  one  less  richly  endowed. 
The  crowning  glory  of  his  writings  is  their  style,  so  full  of 
involved  melody,  so  exact  and  careful,  so  rich  in  magnificent 
apostrophes,  so  markedly  original,  so  polished  and  elaborate. 
He  never  forgot  that  the  prose  writer,  if  he  wishes  to  attain 


Charles  Lamb.  365 

excellence,  must  be  as  much  of  an  artist  as  the  poet,  and 
fashion  his  periods  and  paragraphs  with  as  much  care  as  the 
poet  elaborates  his  rhymes  and  cadences.  Many  passages 
might  be  quoted  from  De  Quincey  of  which  the  melody  is 
so  striking  as  to  irresistibly  attract  attention,  and  make  us 
linger  lovingly  over  them  apart  altogether  from  the  matter 
they  contain.  He  cannot  be  altogether  acquitted  from  the 
charge  of  egotism  and  pedantic  quibbling ;  and  it  must  be 
admitted  that  his  humour  is  sometimes  ponderous  and  far 
fetched.  As  a  critic,  he  is  in  general  remarkable  for  the 
breadth  and  fulness  of  his  judgments ;  his  mind  had  ranged 
over  the  whole  world  of  literature,  and  he  was  singularly  free 
from  those  limitations  of  taste  which  mar  the  work  of  many 
critics.  He  could  read  with  equal  pleasure  Pope  and  Words- 
worth, Coleridge  and  Goldsmith,  Shakespeare  and  Milton. 
To  say  that  he  sometimes  blundered  as  a  critic  is  only  to  say 
that  he  was  mortal — he  never  fully  realised  Goethe's  genius, 
and  he  was  unjust  to  Keats  and  Shelley.  Some  of  the  papers 
where  he  airs  his  scholarship  most  profusely  are  built  up  of 
materials  obtained  at  second  hand,  but  his  classical  erudition 
was  certainly  extraordinary  for  one  not  a  scholar  by  profession. 
Altogether,  this  century  has  produced  no  more  remarkable 
literary  phenomenon,  certainly  none  who  has  more  fully  de- 
veloped the  resources  of  the  English  language  as  the  vehicle 
of  harmonious  prose. 

The  mantle  of  Addison  and  Steele  fell  upon  three  essayists 
who  adorned  the  beginning  of  the  present  century,  Lamb, 
Hazlitt,  and  Leigh  Hunt,  men  of  very  different  talents  and 
idiosyncrasies,  but  alike  in  having  a  genius  for  that  most 
difficult  species  of  composition,  essay-writing.  Of  these,  the 
greatest  was  Charles  Lamb  (1775-1834),  one  of  the  most  cap- 
tivating and  graceful  writers  of  the  century.  His  work  is  small 
in  quantity,  but  how  rare  and  delicate  is  it  in  quality !  The 
son  of  a  London  lawyer's  clerk,  he  was  educated  at  Christ's 
Hospital,  where  he  became  acquainted  with  Coleridge,  and, 
had  not  unkindly  fate  prevented,  would  have  pursued  his 
studies  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge.  To  one  of  his  simple, 


366     Early  Part  of  .the  Nineteenth  Century. 

studious  tastes,  a  college  life  would  have  been  excellently 
suited;  no  man  would  have  more  cheerfully  and  gracefully 
accepted  the  position  of  a  Fellow  of  a  college,  with  no  parti- 
cular duties  to  attend  to  beyond  the  daily  routine  of  ordinary 
tasks.  But  he  never  had  the  chance  of  obtaining  a  fellowship, 
becoming,  when  he  left  Christ's  Hospital,  a  clerk  in  the  Old 
South  Sea  House,  which  he  has  so  inimitably  described  in  one 
of  his  essays.  From  it,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  he  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  service  of  the  East  India  Company,  in  whose 
employ  he  remained  till  1825,  when  he  retired  on  a  handsome 
pension.  Lamb's  life  was  uneventful,  except  for  one  great 
tragedy.  There  was  a  taint  of  insanity  in  his  family  ;  and  one 
day  in  1796,  his  sister  Mary,  in  a  paroxysm  of  madness, 
stabbed  her  mother  to  the  heart.  From  this  time  Charles 
became  the  guardian  of  his  sister,  unselfishly  sacrificing  for  her 
sake  a  passion  he  had  conceived  for  a  young  lady  mentioned 
in  the  Essays  as  "Alice  W.,"  and  devoting  himself  to  her  care 
with  that  noble  love  which  refuses  to  regard  its  efforts  as  any- 
thing praiseworthy  or  out  of  the  way.  It  has  been  well  remarked 
that  the  history  of  the  long  association  between  brother  and 
sister,  broken  from  time  to  time  by  a  fresh  accession  of  the  fatal 
malady,  is  one  of  the  most  touching  things  in  fact  or  fiction. 
Carlyle,  whose  remarks  on  Lamb  in  his  "  Reminiscences  " 
are  positively  cruel,  would  have  done  well  to  ask  himself  be- 
fore penning  them  whether  he,  superior  to  the  gentle  Elia  as  he 
thought  himself,  would  have  been  capable  of  such  continuous 
self-devotion.  Lamb's  first  publications  were  some  verses  con- 
tributed to  a  volume  of  poems  by  Coleridge  and  Lloyd,  pub- 
lished in  1797.  His  prose  tale  " Rosamond  Gray"  followed  in 
1798,  and  in  1801  his  drama,  "  John  Woodvil,"  based  on  Eliza- 
bethan models,  which  was  unmercifully  criticised  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Review — not  altogether  undeservedly,  though  it  contains 
some  fine  passages.  In  1807  he  published  his  "Tales  from 
Shakespeare,"  written  in  conjunction  with  his  sister.  They 
form  one  of  the  best  books  for  intelligent  youthful  readers 
with  which  we  are  acquainted.  The  "  Essays  of  Elia,"  those 
charming  papers  which  will  keep  his  memory  alive  for  many 


Lamb's  Characteristics.  367 

generations,  appeared  from  time  to  time  in  the  London  Magazine, 
from  which  they  were  reprinted  in  a  collected  form  in  1823. 

Lamb  was  a  slight,  nervous,  excitable  man,  full  of  odd  whims 
and  fancies,  and  greatly  given  to  the  utterance  of  paradoxical 
remarks,  made  all  the  more  strange  by  his  stammering  mode  of 
speaking.  Two  or  three  glasses  of  wine  were  sufficient  to  in- 
toxicate, or  at  least  to  elevate  him  ;  and  hence  those  convivial 
excesses,  in  which  there  is  reason  to  fear  that  he  indulged  too 
freely  during  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  were  apt  to  be  exagger- 
ated. Before  condemning  him  too  severely  for  his  habits  of 
intoxication,  we  ought  to  consider  how  heavy  and  trying  was 
the  burden  which  he  had  to  bear.  Lamb's  style,  quaint,  full 
of  ingenious  turns,  having  little  affinity  with  that  of  any  writer 
of  his  day,  but  full  of  resemblances  to  his  favourite  authors  of 
bygone  eras,  was  a  reflex  of  himself.  He  disliked  new  books, 
new  friends,  and  new  fashions.  For  the  literature  of  his  own 
time,  with  the  exception  of  the  limited  portion  of  it  written  by 
his  own  friends,  he  cared  little ;  but  with  what  delight  did  he 
hang  "  for  the  thousandth  time  over  some  passage  in  old 
Burton  or  one  of  his  strange  contemporaries ;"  and  with  what 
enthusiasm  would  he  point  out  the  beauties  in  a  play  written 
by  some  forgotten  Elizabethan  dramatist ;  with  what  eager  zest 
would  he  peruse  one  of  the  comedies  of  intrigue  of  which  Charles 
II. 's  time  produced  so  many  examples  !  He  was  an  admirable 
critic  of  what  really  pleased  him ;  no  one  has  handled  some  of 
our  older  authors  with  finer  discrimination.  The  brief  notices 
of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  in  his  "  Specimens  "  are  perfect 
masterpieces  in  their  way,  full  of  that  swift  insight,  that  delicate 
appreciation  of  merit,  which  only  long  and  loving  study  can 
give.  As  a  humorist,  Lamb  is  quite  sui  generis  :  he  resembled 
no  one,  and  has  found  no  successful  imitator.  His  humour 
had  a  tine  literary  flavour  about  it ;  no  one  who  does  not  love 
reading  is  ever  likely  to  be  a  thoroughgoing  admirer  of  Lamb's. 
It  is  also  intensely  personal ;  Lamb's  likes  and  dislikes,  his 
whims,  caprices,  and  fancies,  figure  on  every  page.  Few  great 
humorists  have  been  less  dramatic  than  Lamb  ;  whatever 
the  topic  on  which  he  was  writing,  he  could  never  get  rid  of 


368     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

his  own  idiosyncrasy.  In  his  various  essays  he  has  left  a 
faithful  and  true  portrait  of  himself,  with  all  his  out-of-the-way 
humour  and  opinions  ;  and  irresistibly  attractive  the  portrait 
is.  How  delightful  it  is,  after  having  experienced  the  glitter 
and  glare  of  much  of  our  modern  literature,  to  converse  with 
the  tranquil  and  gentle  Elia,  with  his  calm  retrospective  glance, 
and  his  love  of  communing  with  invisible  things!  "He  would," 
said  Leigh  Hunt,  "  beard  a  superstition  and  shudder  at  the 
odd  phantasm  while  he  did  it.  One  would  have  imagined 
him  cracking  a  joke  in  the  teeth  of  a  ghost,  and  then  melting 
into  thin  air  himself  out  of  sympathy  with  the  awful."  Not 
many  authors  are  held  in  more  kindly  remembrance  than 
Lamb  by  those  who  have  really  learned  to  love  his  frolic  and 
gentle  spirit.  "  Lamb's  memory,"  said  Southey — and  hundreds 
of  readers  will  re-echo  the  words — "  will  retain  its  fragrance 
as  long  as  the  best  spice  that  ever  was  expended  upon  the 
Pharaohs." 

From  the  placid  and  sweet-tempered  Elia  we  pass  to  the 
vindictive  and  irascible  William  Hazlitt  (1778-1830),  a  writer 
of  very  remarkable  but  ill-regulated  powers.  The  son  of  a 
dissenting  minister,  he  was  educated  with  a  view  to  adopting 
his  father's  profession.  When  seventeen  years  of  age,  how- 
ever, he  determined  to  become  a  painter,  and  spent  some 
years  in  artistic  labour,  till  he  finally  turned  aside  to  literature. 
His  first  publication  was  a  tiny  volume  on  the  "  Principles  of 
Human  Action."  This  work,  which  found  fe\y  to  admire  it 
except  its  author,  who  regarded  it  with  a  parent's  love,  was 
followed  by  many  pieces  of  literary  journey-work  —  abridg- 
ments, translations,  compilations,  and  the  like.  The  first 
performance  of  his  which  attracted  attention  was  his  lectures 
at  the  Surrey  Institution  on  the  "English  Poets"  (1818),  after 
which  came  his  lectures  on  "  English  Comic  Writers,"  on  the 
"  Dramatic  Literature  of  the  Age  of  Elizabeth,"  and  on  the 
<:  Characters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays  " — volumes  containing 
much  sound  and  striking  criticism,  but  often  misleading  as 
containing  judgments  based  on  imperfect  acquaintance  with 
the  works  of  the  writer  criticised.  Hazlitt,  it  must  be  owned, 


William  Hazlitt.  369 

was  by  no  means  sufficiently  impressed  with  the  truth  of  the 
great  fact  that  before  writing  about  an  author  it  is  desirable 
to  read  his  works.  For  example,  he  did  not  begin  to  write  his 
lectures  on  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  till  within  six  weeks  of 
the  time  when  they  had  to  be  delivered,  and  his  judgments 
on  their  qualities  were  based  on  his  hasty  study  of  their  works 
within  that  very  limited  period.  His  other  chief  works  are 
his  "Table-Talk"  (1821-22),  a  series  of  miscellaneous  essays; 
his  "  Spirit  of  the  Age"  (1825),  containing  criticisms  on  con- 
temporary authors  ;  the  "  Plain  Speaker  "  (1826),  another  col- 
lection of  miscellaneous  essays,  and  his  "  Life  of  Napoleon  " 
(1828-30),  which  is  his  most  ambitious  performance.  It  is  a 
characteristic  and  not  altogether  useless  production,  in  which 
he  takes  the  side  of  the  Emperor  as  strongly  as  a  French 
writer  could  have  done,  and  has  nothing  but  contempt  and 
hatred  for  his  opponents.  It  did  not  sell,  and  poor  Hazlitt 
died  in  poverty  after  a  struggling,  restless,  unhappy  life.  Most 
of  his  mischances  were  more  or  less  due  to  himself;  his  dis- 
position was  such  that  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  him  happy 
and  contented,  however  prosperous  had  been  his  fortunes. 

Hazlitt  had  a  genuine  gift  for  style ;  he  was  no  mere 
mechanical  stringer  together  of  phrases.  His  chief  character- 
istics as  a  writer  are  well  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen. 
" Readers,"  he  says,  "who  do  not  insist  upon  measuring  all 
prose  by  the  same  standard  will  probably  agree  that  if  Haz- 
litt is  not  a  great  rhetorician,  if  he  aims  at  no  gorgeous  effects 
of  complex  harmony,  he  has  yet  an  eloquence  of  his  own.  It 
is  indeed  an  eloquence  which  does  not  imply  quick  sympathy 
with  many  modes  of  feeling,  or  an  intellectual  vision  at  once 
penetrating  and  comprehensive.  It  is  the  eloquence  charac- 
teristic of  a  proud  and  sensitive  nature,  which  expresses  a  very 
keen  if  narrow  range  of  feeling,  and  implies  a  powerful  grasp 
of  one,  if  only  one  side  of  the  truth.  Hazlitt  harps  a  good 
deal  upon  one  string,  but  that  string  vibrates  forcibly.  His 
best  passages  are  generally  an  accumulation  of  short,  pithy 
sentences,  shaped  in  strong  feeling  and  coloured  by  pic- 
turesque associations,  but  repeating  rather  than  corroborating 


370     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

each  other.  Each  blow  goes  home,  but  falls  on  the  same 
place.  He  varies  the  phrase  more  than  the  thought;  and 
sometimes  he  becomes  obscure,  because  he  is  so  absorbed  in 
his  own  feelings  that  he  forgets  the  very  existence  of  strangers 
who  require  explanation.  Read  through  Hazlitt,  and  the 
monotony  becomes  a  little  tiresome ;  but  dip  into  them  at 
intervals,  and  you  will  often  be  astonished  that  so  vigorous  a 
writer  has  not  left  some  more  enduring  monument  of  his 
remarkable  powers."  As  a  critic,  Hazlitt's  judgments,  whether 
on  contemporary  or  on  former  writers,  must  be  accepted  with 
reserve.  He  could  always  clothe  his  opinions  in  fitting  words, 
but  he  was  not  always  equally  careful  to  see  that  his  estimates 
were  not  marred  by  personal  prejudice  or  by  the  desire  of 
saying  a  striking  thing,  whether  applicable  to  the  subject  in 
hand  or  not.  His  accounts  of  the  eminent  writers  of  his  day, 
much  abused  though  they  were  at  the  time  of  their  publica- 
tion, are  perhaps  the  most  interesting  and  valuable  portions  of 
his  works.  Often  vindictive  and  splenetic,  they  are  always 
graphic  and  incisive,  and  rarely  fail  to  call  our  attention  to 
traits  in  the  character  of  those  under  notice  which  might 
otherwise  have  escaped  us. 

The  essays  of  Leigh  Hunt  cannot  be  pronounced  equal  in 
value  to  those  of  Hazlitt  and  Lamb.  But  besides  being  an 
essayist,  he  was  a  poet  of  powers  considerably  superior  to 
mediocrity.  James  Henry  Leigh  Hunt  was  born  in  1784, 
the  son  of  a  lawyer,  and,  like  Lamb,  was  educated  at  Christ's 
Hospital.  His  genius  was  precocious,  and  in  1802  his  father 
published  a  collection  of  his  verses  under  the  title  of  "Juve- 
nilia." In  1808  he  became  connected  with  his  brother  in 
conducting  the  Examiner,  in  which  he  resolved  to  speak  out 
his  mind  upon  men  and  measures  without  fear  and  without 
favour.  This  resolution  he  carried  out  so  vigorously  as  to 
expose  himself  to  several  prosecutions  for  libel ;  for  the 
Government  of  that  day  looked  with  a  jealous  eye  on  the 
press,  and  free  discussion  and  ventilation  of  public  grievances 
were  frowned  on  as  much  as  possible.  In  1813  for  a  certainly 
rather  trenchant  but  perfectly  just  comment  on  the  Prince 


Leigh  Hunt.  371 

Regent  in  the  Examiner,  he  was  sentenced  to  imprisonment 
for  two  years.  Hunt's  works  were  many  and  various.  We 
need  only  enumerate  a  few.  A  poem,  the  "Story  of  Ri- 
mini," appeared  in  1816;  in  1819-21  he  published  the  "In- 
dicator," a  series  of  essays  on  the  plan  of  the  Spectator, 
followed  by  one  or  two  similar  periodicals ;  in  1832,  "  Sir  Ralph 
Esher,"  a  fictitious  biography  dealing  with  the  times  of  Charles 
II.;  in  1839  a  poem  of  considerable  merit,  "Captain  Sword 
and  Captain  Pen  ;"  and  in  1850  his  most  interesting  work,  his 
"Autobiography."  In  1847  he  received  a  pension  of  £200 
per  annum  from  Government,  which  he  lived  to  enjoy  till  1859. 
The  works  above  mentioned  are  only  a  small  portion  of  Hunt's 
contributions  to  literature.  He  wrote  lives  of  the  chief  Restora- 
tion dramatists,  two  volumes,  "  Imagination  and  Fancy  "  and 
"  Wit  and  Humour,"  excellent  companions  for  those  beginning 
the  study  of  English  literature,  and  many  other  works.  In 
1828  he  published  a  book,  "Recollections  of  Lord  Byron  and 
his  Contemporaries,"  which  made  a  great  noise  at  the  time. 
It  was  the  record  of  a  brief  and  disappointing  companionship 
with  his  Lordship  in  Italy,  and  was  written  in  a  strain  far  from 
pleasing  to  his  Lordship's  friends,  to  whom  it  gave  great  offence. 
There  does  not  appear  to  have  been  anything  in  it  but  what 
was  strictly  true,  but  as  it  was  written  when  Hunt  was  smart- 
ing under  the  feeling  that  he  had  been  ill-used  by  the  noble 
bard,  its  tone  and  its  revelations  of  Byron's  character  were 
such  that  Hunt  afterwards  regretted  its  publication. 

Hunt's  personal  appearance  is  graphically  described  in 
Carlyle's  "  Reminiscences  : "  "  Dark  complexion  (a  trace  of 
the  African,  I  believe),  copious,  clean, '  strong  black  hair, 
beautifully-shaped  head,  fine  beaming  serious  hazel  eyes ; 
seriousness  and  intellect  the  main  expression  of  the  face 
(to  our  surprise  at  first);  .  .  .  fine  clean  elastic  figure 
too  he  had,  five  feet  ten  or  more."  His  manner  was 
particularly  winning  and  attractive ;  it  is  said  that  no  one, 
however  strongly  opposed  to  his  opinions,  could  become 
personally  acquainted  with  him  without  liking  him.  His 
character  was  one  very  ill  adapted  to  practical  hard-working 


372     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

England.  He  was  the  child  of  sentiment,  careless  about 
business  matters  to  an  extent  that  sorely  tried  the  patience  of 
his  best  friends,  and  taking  no  more  thought  than  lilies  about 
the  pressing  demands  of  active  life.  His  careless  and  san- 
guine temperament  led  him  to  have  no  proper  self-respect 
about  pecuniary  obligations ;  though  earning  by  literature 
what  ought  to  have  decently  supplied  his  wants,  he  was  con- 
stantly in  debt,  and  relied  to  a  considerable  extent  upon  the 
benefactions  of  the  many  friends  whom  his  amiability  of 
character  brought  him.  No  one  can  have  the  notions  about 
money  matters  which  Hunt  had  without  incurring  a  good  deal 
of  contempt — good-humoured  contempt  it  may  be,  but  never- 
theless contempt  of  a  kind  which  a  high-spirited  man  would 
rather  die  than  expose  himself  to.  The  sneering  way  in 
which  Hunt  was  regarded  by  some  of  the  friends  who  aided 
him  may  be  learnt  from  the  remarks  on  him  in  Macaulay's 
diary  and  letters,  and  from  the  use  Dickens  made  of  various 
traits  of  his  character  in  delineating  Harold  Skimpole  in 
"  Bleak  House."  Hunt's  essays  and  other  writings  are 
'pleasant  and  graceful.  He  had  an  unusually  delicate  and 
catholic  literary  taste,  and  considerable  powers  of  good- 
humoured  sarcasm  occasionally  reminding  us  of  Addison.  His 
"  Story  of  Rimini "  has  been  called  the  finest  narrative  poem 
since  Dryden  ;  and  though  this  is  rather  exaggerated  praise, 
Hunt's  poems  are  of  such  merit  which  ought  to  have  saved 
them  from  the  oblivion  into  which  they  have  fallen  of  late 
years. 

In  "  Bleak  House  "  another  character  besides  Harold  Skim- 
pole  is  copied  from  an  eminent  literary  celebrity.  Walter 
Savage  Landor,  whose  works  are  regarded  by  a  select  public 
with  an  admiration  which  they  are  never  likely  to  obtain  from 
the  world  at  large,  sat  for  the  portrait  of  Laurence  Boythorn 
in  that  novel.  Landor  was  born  in  1775,  and  was  educated 
at  Rugby  and  Oxford.  Very  early  he  gave  evidence  of  his 
haughty,  insubordinate  spirit,  and  of  his  ungovernable  temper 
("  the  worst,"  he  himself  very  justly  said,  "that  ever  man  was 
cursed  with  ").  He  was  obliged  to  quit  both  Rugby  and  Ox 


Walter  Savage  Landor.  373 

ford  in  consequence  of  his  defiance  of  the  constituted  autho- 
rities. At  the  same  time  he  did  not  neglect  scholarship, 
showing  in  his  Rugby  days,  as  afterwards,  a  wonderful  taste 
and  power  for  making  Latin  verses,  and  imbuing  himself  deeply 
in  the  spirit  of  the  classical  writers.  After  his  rustication 
from  Oxford  he  was  put  upon  a  yearly  allowance,  with  liberty 
to  travel  where  he  pleased.  His  first  important  work  was  a 
poem,  "Gebir"  (1797),  much  admired  by  Shelley  (who,  it  is 
related,  "  would  read  it  aloud  to  others  or  to  himself  with  a 
tiresome  pertinacity  "),  and  by  the  author  himself,  but  which, 
like  the  rest  of  Lander's  works,  proved  "  caviare  to  the  general." 
Left  wealthy  by  the  death  of  his  father  in  1805,  Landor  lived 
a  rather  "fast"  and  very  extravagant  life  at  Bath  and  Clifton 
for  two  or  three  years,  after  which  in  1808  he  made  a  rash 
but  generous  raid  into  Spain  to  assist  in  the  war  of  liberation, 
which  deeply  engaged  his  sympathies,  he  being  then,  as  always, 
a  zealous  republican.  Having  quarrelled  with  some  of  his 
associates,  he  soon  came  home  again,  "  heartily  disgusted  with 
the  whole  affair,  having  wasted  time  and  money  to  no  good 
whatsoever."  In  1812  he  published  his  tragedy  of  "  Count 
Julian,"  which  was  written  at  Llanthony,  a  small  estate,  his 
purchase  of  which  must  be  reckoned  one  of  the  most  un- 
fortunate events  of  his  stormy  career.  Nothing  prospered 
with  him  there.  He  got  into  endless  disputes  with  his  tenan- 
try and  his  neighbours,  and  in  1814  he  came  to  the  resolution 
to  quit  it  and  England,  never  to  return.  Arriving  in  Italy, 
he  spent  twenty  years  there,  writing  his  "  Imaginary  Conver- 
sations" (1824-29),  and  his  "  Pericles  and  Aspasia"  (1836), 
and  living  more  peacefully  than  at  any  other  period  of  his 
life.  In  1835  he  was  driven  from  Italy  by  a  furious  quarrel 
with  his  wife,  and  returning  to  England,  a  second  time  took  up 
his  residence  at  Bath.  In  1847  he  published  his  "  Hellenics," 
and  in  1853  "  Last  Fruit  off  an  Old  Tree,"  containing  some 
imaginary  conversations  and  other  miscellanies.  The  story 
of  his  remaining  years  has  been  thus  tersely  summed  up  : — 
"  He  fell  into  bad  hands,  got  mixed  up  in  a  disgraceful  scan- 
dal,  published  a  libel  for  which  he  was  cast  in  damages,  and, 


3/4     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

to  avoid  payment  of  the  fine,  left  England  for  Florence  in  1858, 
where  he  died  miserably,  September  17,  1864,  set.  89." 

Landor  was  a  man  of  fine  physique  and  distinguished  bear- 
ing, with  a  wide  and  full  but  retreating  forehead,  massive  head, 
and  large  grey  eyes — in  every  respect  a  very  noticeable  man. 
His  vehement,  reckless,  passionate  temper  and  his  absence 
of  self-control  and  moderation  embittered  his  life;  but  he 
had  in  many  respects  a  noble  and  generous  nature,  and  suc- 
ceeded in  endearing  to  himself  not  a  few  distinguished  friends 
who  patiently  put  up  with  his  many  eccentricities  and  freaks 
of  temper.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  he  ranks  highest  as 
a  poet  or  as  a  prose  writer.  Some  of  his  poems  are  of  such 
classic  finish  and  grace  as  to  be  perfect  gems  of  song,  unique 
and  unapproachable ;  and  De  Quincey  ranked  his  character 
of  Count  Julian  with  the  Satan  of  Milton  and  the  Prometheus 
of  ^Eschylus.  His  ."  Imaginary  Conversations"  are  full  of 
fine  thoughts,  expressed  in  a  style  so  finished,  so  eloquent,  so 
clearly  bearing  the  impress  of  genius  and  cultivated  taste,  so 
felicitous  in  imagery  and  in  diction,  that  one  wonders  why 
they  are  in  general  so  little  read.  The  reason  probably  is  that 
their  subjects  have  little  interest  to  people  in  general,  and  that 
their  tone  of  sentiment  does  not  for  the  most  part  appeal  to  the 
ordinary  sympathies  and  emotions  of  humanity.  "  No  man," 
says  an  admirer,  with  pardonable  exaggeration,  "since  Shake- 
speare's time,  has  written  so  much  wisdom  or  so  much  beauty; 
in  no  other  man's  work  is  there  such  exquisite  tenderness, 
so  much  subtlety  of  thought,  such  wealth  of  imagery,  yet  all 
chaste  and  nothing  glaring,  so  much  suggestiveness,  yet  such 
ample  fulness.  Not  a  page  but  contains  the  most  deathless 
beauty." 

By  far  the  most  eminent  divine  and  preacher  of  the  time 
with  which  we  are  dealing  was  Dr.  Thomas  Chalmers  (1780- 
1847),  a  name  still  never  pronounced  without  reverence  by 
many  in  Scotland,  on  the  ecclesiastical  history  of  which 
country  he  exercised  great  influence.  Chalmers  was  born  at 
Anstruther  in  Fifeshire,  educated  at  St.  Andrews,  and  licensed 
to  preach  in  1799.  The  more  notable  dates  in  his  life  are  the 


Thomas  Chalmers.  375 

following: — From  1802  to  1815  he  was  minister  of  Kilmany 
in  Fifeshire.  In  the  latter  year  he  was  called  to  the  Tron 
Church  in  Glasgow,  and  from  this  period  dates  his  great  vogue 
as  a  preacher.  In  1823  he  was  appointed  Professor  of  Moral 
Philosophy  in  St.  Andrews,  and  in  1828  Professor  of  Divinity 
in  Edinburgh.  Always  a  prominent  figure  in  church  courts, 
he  was  one  of  the  prime  movers  in  the  conflict  which  termi- 
nated in  the  disruption  of  the  Scottish  Church  in  1843,  an<^ 
from  that  time  till  his  death  was  the  presiding  spirit  of  the 
new  Free  Church,  being  appointed  moderator  of  its  first 
Assembly,  and  principal  of  its  college  in  Edinburgh.  The 
description  of  Chalmers  in  Carlyle's  questionable  "Remini- 
scences" is  a  very  admirable  piece  of  character-painting  :  "  He 
was  a  man  of  much  natural  dignity,  ingenuity,  honesty,  and 
kind  affection,  as  well  as  sound  intellect  and  imagination.  A 
very  eminent  vivacity  lay  in  him,  which  could  rise  to  com- 
plete impetuosity  (growing  conviction,  passionate  eloquence, 
fiery  play  of  heart  and  head),  all  in  a  kind  of  rustic  type,  one 
might  say,  though  wonderfully  true  and  tender.  He  had  a 
burst  of  genuine  fun  too,  I  have  heard,  of  the  same  honest, 
but  most  plebeian,  broadly  natural  character  ;  his  laugh  was  a 
hearty  loud  guffaw ;  and  his  tones  in  preaching  would  rise  to 
the  piercingly  pathetic.  No  preacher  ever  went  so  into  one's 
heart.  He  was  a  man  essentially  of  little  culture,  of  narrow 
sphere  all  his  life ;  such  an  intellect  professing  to  be  edu- 
cated and  yet  so  ill-real,  so  ignorant  in  all  that  lay  beyond 
the  horizon  in  place  or  in  time,  I  have  almost  nowhere  met 
with.  A  man  capable  of  much  soaking  indolence,  lazy  brood- 
ing, and  do-nothingism,  as  the  first  stage  of  his  life  well  in- 
dicated ;  a  man  thought  to  be  timid  almost  to  the  verge  of 
cowardice,  yet  capable  of  impetuous  activity  and  blazing 
audacity,  as  his  latter  years  showed.  I  suppose  there  will 
never  again  be  such  a  preacher  in  any  Christian  church." 
If  Chalmers  was  constitutionally  indolent,  he  certainly  man- 
aged to  overcome  his  indolence  to  an  unprecedented  extent, 
for  few  have  passed  more  active  lives  than  he.  A  man  of 
much  force  of  character,  he  was  formed  by  nature  to  take  a 


376     Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Centiiry. 

leading  part  in  all  public  movements  in  which  he  took  an 
interest.  Few  have  excelled  him  in  his  genius  for  organisa- 
tion, and  his  skill  in  the  management  of  men.  He  was  an 
earnest  social  reformer,  took  a  keen  interest  in  political 
economy  and  kindred  subjects,  and  was  indefatigable  in 
forming  plans  for  the  relief  of  the  poor.  A  born  orator, 
wherever  he  preached  he  was  attended  by  admiring  crowds, 
who  hung  eagerly  upon  every  word  that  fell  from  his  lips.  In 
spite  of  his  constant  exertions  in  other  fields,  he  found  time  to 
write  a  great  deal,  his  works  extending  to  over  thirty  volumes, 
of  which  a  considerable  proportion  consists  of  lectures,  ser- 
mons, &c.  His  literary  aptitude  was  unquestionably  great, 
though  he  was  not  free  from  the  common  vice  of  preachers — 
a  tendency  to  diffuseness  and  repetition.  He  has  few  supe- 
riors as  a  master  of  luminous  exposition,  and  not  unfrequently 
we  find  in  his  writings  bursts  of  splendid  eloquence  which 
enable  us  to  comprehend  the  wonderful  influence  which  he 
exerted  over  his  hearers.  His  "Astronomical  Discourses" 
may  be  mentioned  as  a  favourable  specimen  of  his  style.  Al- 
together he  was  the  most  notable  Scotchman  of  his  time 
(Scott,  who  died  before  his  fame  was  at  its  height,  alone 
excepted),  a  wonderful  example  of  the  union  of  literary 
genius,  oratorical  powers,  and  practical  ability. 


OUR  OWN  TIMES. 


Dickens,  Thackeray,  Lytton,  Charlotte  BrontS  ;  George  Eliot,  Lever,  Charles 
Kingsley,  Lord  Bcaconsfield,  Charles  Keade,  Anthony  Trolhpe,  Black- 
more,  Hardy.  Black ;  Tennyson,  Browning,  Mrs.  Browning,  Rossettit 
Morris,  Swinburne;  Macaulay,  Carlyle,  Grote,  Froude,  Freeman, 
Lecky ;  Rttskin,  Matthew  Arnold,  Sir  Arthur  Helps,  John  Morky, 
W.  H.  Pater ;  Theology,  Philosophy,  Science. 

[ANY  difficulties  beset  any  one  attempting  to  deal, 
however  briefly,  with  the  literature  of  one's  own 
time.  As  distance  is  required  to  judge  properly 
of  the  comparative  height  of  mountains,  which, 
when  we  are  beside  them,  seem  of  about  the  same  size,  so 
before  an  author  can  be  justly  estimated,  sufficient  time  must 
have  elapsed  to  allow  the  din  of  contemporary  applause  or  cen- 
sure to  subside,  and  to  enable  us  to  clear  our  eyes  from  the  mists 
of  prejudice  and  personal  predilection  which  always  more  or 
less  prevent  us  from  forming  perfectly  impartial  judgments  on 
the  men  of  our  own  era.  It  requires  no  very  extensive  acquaint- 
ance with  literary  history  to  know  that  many  reputations  which 
once  blazed  high  have  in  a  few  short  years  sunk  into  nothing 
and  been  heard  of  no  more ;  that  writers  of  the  greatest  popu- 
larity with  their  own  generation  have  been  pronounced  worth- 
less and  unreadable  in  the  generations  that  came  after.  How, 
then,  we  may  ask  ourselves,  as  we  call  to  mind  some  great 
literary  celebrity  of  the  present  day,  can  we  be  sure  that  the 
case  will  prove  otherwise  with  him?  have  we  any  solid  ground 
for  thinking  that  his  fame  too,  great  as  it  now  appears,  is  not 
founded  upon  some  shilling  rock  of  popular  caprice  or  bad 
taste  which  the  remorseless  tide  of  time  will  wash  axvay? 
IT 


37$  Our  Own  Times. 

Moreover,  when  one  begins  to  reflect  upon  the  literature  of 
one's  own  time,  so  many  eminent  names  crowd  in  upon  one's 
recollection,  that  the  task  of  selecting  the  greatest  of  therrf 
appears  full. of  almost  insuperable  difficulties.  It  is  a  case 
of  not  being  able  to  see  the  wood  for  trees ;  we  need,  but 
cannot  find,  some  vantage-ground  from  which  we  may  survey 
the  surrounding  landscape.  The  limits  of  this  book  require 
that  only  a  few  of  many  names  deserving  notice  shall  be 
mentioned  here  ;  but  we  shall  endeavour  to  make  the  selection 
as  representative  as  possible. 

As  the  drama  was  the  favourite  vehicle  of  Elizabethan 
genius,  so  the  novel  has  been  the  most  richly  cultivated  field 
of  literature  during  the  reign  of  Queen  Victoria.  More  pens 
have  been  employed  in  this  department,  and  greater  successes 
have  been  gained,  than  in  any  other.  We  may  therefore  fitly 
begin  our  survey  with  fiction,  being  farther  induced  to  do  so 
by  the  consideration  that  by  far  the  most  popular  author 
of  recent  times  was  a  novelist.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  say 
that  we  refer  to  Charles  Dickens,  whose  literary  career  began 
earlier,  continued  longer,  and  was  more  brilliant  than  that  of 
any  preceding  English  writer  of  fiction.  He  was  born  at  Land- 
port,  Portsea,  in  1812.  His  father,  John  Dickens,  a  clerk  in  the 
Navy  Pay  Office,  was  the  good-hearted,  shiftless,  sanguine, 
and  unfortunate  individual  afterwards  portrayed  in  immortal 
colours  as  Mr.  Micawber.  In  the  silken  sail  of  Dickens's 
infancy  the  wind  of  a  by  no  means  particularly  joyful  dawn 
blew  free.  His  youth  was  a  hard  one,  and  the  dark  reflection 
of  what  he  then  endured  coloured  more  or  less  distinctly  the 
whole  of  his  subsequent  life.  While  he  was  yet  little  more 
than  an  infant  his  father  was  brought  up  by  his  duties  from 
London  to  Portsmouth ;  soon  after  he  was  placed  upon  duty 
at  Chatham  Dockyard  ;  and  at  Chatham  Charles  lived  from  his 
fourth  or  fifth  year  till  he  was  nine.  There  he  received  the 
elements  of  education,  first  from  his  mother,  and  afterwards 
at  two  schools.  He  was  a  small  sickly  boy,  unfitted  to  join 
in  the  rough  sports  of  his  companions,  and  he  read  incessantly, 
devouring  with  intense  eagerness  such  glorious  books  as  the 


Dickens' s  Early  Years.  379 

•Arabian  Nights,"  the  "Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  "Roderick 
Random,"  "Robinson  Crusoe,"  "Gil  Bias,"  &c.,  £c.  But 
his  love  of  reading  was  not  the  only  token  of  his  precocity. 
He  wrote  a  tragedy  called  "  Misnar,  the  Sultan  of  India;" 
was  an  excellent  storyteller;  and  sang  comic  songs  so  well 
that  admiring  friends  used  to  hoist  him  on  a  chair  in  order 
that  he  might  delight  their  guests  with  an  exhibition  of  his 
powers.  When  the  boy  was  nine  years  old,  his  father  was 
removed  from  Chatham  to  Somerset  House,  and  it  was  now 
that  Dickens  began  to  have  experience  of  those  wretched 
shifts  and  petty  trials  brought  on  by  poverty,  with  which  he 
has  rilled  many  pages  of  his  novels.  His  father  fell  into  the 
clutches  of  his  creditors,  and  was  lodged  in  the  Marshalsea ; 
and  Dickens,  never  a  particularly  well-taken-care-of  boy,  was 
now  employed  in  such  vile  offices  as  running  errands  and 
taking  messages  to  the  prisoner,  and  pledging  one  by  one 
nearly  all  the  household  goods  at  the  pawnbroker's  shop. 
The  worst,  however,  was  yet  to  come.  A  relative,  James 
Lamert,  who  had  started  a  blacking  business,  knowing  the 
depressed  circumstances  of  the  Dickens  family,  offered  Charles 
employment  in  his  warehouse  at  a  salary  of  six  or  seven 
shillings  a  week.  The  offer  was  at  once  thankfully  accepted. 
In  the  description  of  the  life  which  David  Copperfield  led  at 
Murdstone  and  Grimby's,  Dickens  has  revealed  to  all  the  world 
how  infinitely  bitter  and  agonising  to  him  was  the  time  he 
passed  at  Lamert's  blacking  warehouse.  A  proud,  sensitive 
boy,  he  shrank  both  from  entering  into  close  companionship 
with  his  rough  fellow-drudges,  and  from  taking  any  one  into 
his  confidence  and  revealing  the  secret  misery  which  was 
gnawing  at  his  heart.  Unconsciously,  all  through  the  troubled 
years  of  his  boyhood,  he  was  receiving  a  better  training  for  his 
future  work  in  life  than  any  school  or  University  could  have 
given  him.  He  employed  his  faculty  of  observation,  which  ap- 
pears from  his  earliest  years  to  have  been  almost  morbidly  keen, 
in  noting  in  his  mind  in  indelible  characters  all  the  odd  scenes, 
and  things,  and  persons  that  he  met  with  in  his  diversified 
existence.  What  is  perhaps  even  more  remarkable  than  the 


380  Our  Own  7imes. 

extraordinary  faculty  of  observation  which  he  possessed  while 
yet  a  mere  child,  is  the  fact  that,  in  spite  of  all  his  bitterness 
of  spirit  at  this  time,  he  seems  to  have  seen  quite  clearly  the 
humorous  side  of  his  father's  misfortunes.  At  last  a  fortunate 
mischance  released  him  from  the  slavery  of  the  blacking  busi- 
ness. His  father  and  James  Lamert  quarrelled,  and  although 
his  mother  set  herself  to  accommodate  the  quarrel,  his  father 
decided  that  he  should  go  back  no  more,  but  should  be  sent 
to  school.  Fortunately  for  Dickens  and  for  the  world  this 
determination  was  acted  on.  "  I  do  not  write  regretfully 
or  angrily,"  he  wrote  many  years  afterwards  in  words  whose 
apparent  harshness  it  is  impossible  not  to  condone,  "  for  I 
know  how  all  these  things  have  worked  together  to  make 
me  what  I  am ;  but  I  never  afterwards  forgot,  I  never  shall 
forget,  I  never  can  forget,  that  my  mother  was  warm  for  my 
being  sent  back." 

Dickens  was  now  sent  to  a  school  called  "  Wellington 
House  Academy,"  where  he  remained  for  nearly  two  years, 
quitting  it  when  a  little  over  fourteen  years  of  age.  While 
here  he,  according  to  his  own  account,  "distinguished  himself 
like  a  brick;"  according  to  the  more  credible  narratives  of  his 
school  companions,  he  was  remarkable  rather  for  his  fondness 
for  fun  and  practical  jokes  than  for  learning.  Nevertheless 
he  somehow  managed  to  pick  up  a  good  deal  of  information, 
including  a  smattering  of  Latin.  Soon  after  he  left  school  he 
became  a  clerk  in  a  lawyer's  office,  at  the  modest  salary  of  ten 
shillings  and  sixpence  a  week.  Encouraged  by  the  example 
of  his  father,  who  had  become  a  reporter  for  the  Morning 
Herald,  Dickens  determined  to  follow  in  his  footsteps,  and 
set  himself  resolutely  to  the  study  of  shorthand,  in  order  that 
he  too  might  obtain  employment  in  that  fairly  remunerated 
and  not  unattractive  profession,  which  has  afforded  a  stepping- 
stone  to  higher  positions  to  so  many  young  men  of  literary 
capacity.  After  much  arduous  labour  Dickens  succeeded  in 
obtaining  a  mastery  of  the  crooked  cipher;  and  there  being 
at  that  time  no  opening  in  the  Gallery,  he  became  a  reporter 
for  one  of  the  offices  in  Doctor's  Commons.  The  work  there 


Dickens 's  First  Writings.  38 1 

was  uninteresting  and  precarious,  and  he  made  an  attempt 
to  escape  from  it  by  going  upon  the  stage.  Had  this  attempt 
succeeded,  there  can  be  no  doubt  he  would  have  distinguished 
himself;  and  instead  of  a  great  comic  author,  we  should  have 
had  a  great  comic  actor.  Fortunately,  however,  it  came  to 
nothing;  and,  advancing  in  his  career  as  reporter,  he  was 
employed  on  various  newspapers,  including,  last  and  most 
important,  the  Morning  Chronicle,  one  of  the  leading  daily 
journals  of  the  time.  He  was  an  excellent  reporter — not 
particularly  neat  indeed,  but  almost  unprecedentedly  rapid 
in  his  execution. 

From  reporting,  the  transition  to  original  writing  is  not 
difficult  One  day  in  1834  Dickens  dropped  "  Mrs.  Joseph 
Porter  over  the  Way,"  the  first  of  the  afterwards  well-known 
"  Sketches  by  Boz,"  into  the  letter-box  of  the  Old  Monthly 
Magazine.  It  was,  to  the  author's  great  pride  and  joy, 
accepted,  and  was  followed  by  eight  more  in  the  same  perio- 
dical, the  remainder  of  the  series  appearing  in  the  Evening 
Chronicle,  the  afternoon  edition  of  the  newspaper  with  which 
Dickens  was  connected.  In  1836  the  "Sketches  by  Boz" 
were  reprinted  in  book  form.  They  were  very  successful 
for  a  first  publication ;  and  Messrs.  Chapman  &  Hall  were 
induced  by  their  originality,  and  the  promise  of  future  power 
which  they  exhibited,  to  ask  Dickens  to  write  the  text  of 
a  humorous  work  to  be  illustrated  by  Seymour,  and  to  be 
published  in  monthly  numbers.  He  consented,  and  the  result 
was  the  "Pickwick  Papers."  The  original  plan  of  the  work 
was  considerably  modified,  owing  to  the  suicide  of  Mr.  Seymour 
before  the  second  number  was  completed.  As  number  after 
number  appeared,  its  circulation  grew  greater  and  greater,  until 
by  the  time  half  of  it  had  been  issued  Dickens  had  taken 
the  position,  which  he  maintained  till  his  death,  of  the  most 
popular  novelist  of  the  day.  During  the  publication  of  "Pick- 
wick," "  Oliver  Twist,"  another  work  of  great  power,  of  a 
different  kind,  however,  from  "  Pickwick,"  was  appearing  in 
Bentlefs  Miscellany,  a  monthly  periodical  of  which  Dickens 
had  become  editor.  No  better  proof  of  the  extraordinary 


382  Our  Own  Times. 

rapidity  with  which-  his  fame  had  increased  could  be  given 
than  the  fact  that  when,  after  the  publication  of  "  Pickwick," 
he  tried  to  buy  back  the  copyright  of  the  "Sketches,"  which 
he  had  sold  for  ^150,  the  publisher  refused  to  sell  it  for  less 
than  ^2000.  After  "Oliver  Twist"  came  "Nicholas  Nick- 
leby,"  which  was  completed  in  October  1839.  Then  followed 
the  collection  of  stories  published  under  the  name  of  "  Master 
Humphrey's  Clock:"  "The  Clock,"  "The  Old  Curiosity  Shop" 
(containing  what  is  perhaps  the  finest  specimen  of  Dickens'a 
pathos — the  death  of  Little  Nell),  and  "  Barnaby  Rudge." 
A  tour  in  America  in  1842  led  to  the  writing  of  ''American 
Notes  for  General  Circulation,"  and  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit " 
(1844),  the  latter  of  which,  in  some  portions  of  it,  must  stand 
for  his  greatest  success.  In  1843,  while  "Chuzzlewit"  was 
appearing  in  monthly  parts,  he  began  that  series  of  Christmas 
books  which  charmed  so  many  hearts,  by  writing  the  "Christ- 
mas Carol."  "  Dombey  and  Son"  came  out  in  1847-48; 
"David  Copperfield,"  a  semi- autobiographical  story,  which 
was  the  favourite  child  of  the  author,  and  of  perhaps  the 
majority  of  his  readers,  in  1849-50;  "Bleak  House"  (which 
marks  the  beginning  of  the  decadence  of  his  genius),  in  1853  ; 
and  thereafter  "Hard  Times,"  "Little  Dorrit,"  "A  Tale  of 
Two  Cities,"  "  Great  Expectations,"  and  "  Our  Mutual  Friend." 
In  1870  began  the  publication  of  "Edwin  Drood,"  never, 
alas !  completed,  death  staying  the  progress  of  his  magic  pen 
on  June  9,  1870.  The  above  is  not  by  any  means  a  full 
list  of  his  publications.  He  wrote  besides  "  A  Child's  His- 
tory of  England,"  excellent  in  plan  but  not  in  execution, 
which  was  published  originally  in  Household  Words,  a  weekly 
periodical  begun  by  him,  and  carried  on  till  1859,  when,  owing 
to  a  quarrel  with  his  publishers,  it  was  incorporated  with  All 
the  Year  Round,  and  went  on  with  unflagging  success  until  the 
editor's  death;  "Pictures  from  Italy,"  &c.,  £c.  Among  his 
more  notable  contributions  to  his  magazine  were  the  Christ- 
mas numbers,  which  he  wrote  in  whole  or  in  part  for  some 
years.  He  left  behind  him  a  fortune  of  .£95,000,  amassed 
partly  by  the  success  of  his  works,  partly  by  the  enormous 


Dickens 's  Characteristics.  383 

sums  he  received  for  his  public  readings,  begun  in  1858  in 
this  country  and  in  America,  to  which  he  paid  an  extremely 
lucrative  and  successful  visit  in  1867-68. 

Dickens's  character  was  not  a  very  complex  or  puzzling  one. 
A  man  of  great  "push  "  and  energy,  casting  aside  any  obstacle 
which  came  across  his  path  with  a  sort  of  fiery  vehemence, 
always  sure  of  his  ground,  and  equally  sure  that  he  was  putting 
his  best  foot  foremost,  he  would  have  made  his  mark  in  any 
calling.  Much  of  his  confidence  in  himself,  his  thorough  con- 
viction that  he  could  fight  through  any  struggle,  must  be 
attributed  to  the  extraordinary  rapidity  with  which  he  attained 
fame  and  fortune.  His  remarkable  self-complacency,  however 
natural,  was  not  a  pleasing  trait  in  his  character ;  his  letters 
frequently  weary  us  by  their  persistent  egotism  ;  their  constant 
ringing  of  the  changes  on  the  same  theme,  "  the  inimitable 
Boz."  It  never  seems  to  have  occurred  to  him  that  anything 
he  did  could  be  faulty ;  everything  that  proceeded  from  his 
pen  was  in  his  eyes  perfect  of  its  kind.  A  natural  result  of 
his  intense  conviction  of  the  greatness  of  his  own  genius  was 
that  he  sometimes  thought  that  he  had  a  right  to  be  a  law 
unto  himself,  and  to  disregard  those  rules  which  are  binding 
on  lesser  men.  His  separation  from  his  wife  in  1858,  brought 
about,  so  far  as  appears,  by  no  other  cause  than  an  alleged  in- 
compatibility of  temper,  and  the  circumstances  attending  that 
unfortunate  occurrence,  were  not  at  all  to  his  credit.  Yet  he 
was  a  man  of  very  affectionate  nature,  singularly  fond  of  his 
children,  and  so  charitable  that  he  met  many  of  the  countless 
applications  to  him  for  aid  with  a  generosity  that  could  hardly 
be  surpassed.  His  love  of  the  poor  was  not  of  that  specious 
sort  which  evaporates  in  sentimental  writing  and  gushing  after- 
dinner  oratory.  In  contrast  to  many  of  his  literary  brethren, 
Dickens,  like  Scott,  was  of  remarkably  methodical  business 
habits,  always  carrying  out  his  favourite  maxim  that  whatever 
is  worth  doing  at  all,  is  worth  doing  well.  Among  his  other 
characteristics,  we  should  not  omit  to  mention  his  remarkable 
liking  and  talent  for  acting,  which  he  displayed  whenever  a 
good  opportunity  offered,  his  favourite  character  being  Bobadil 


384  Our  Own  Times. 

in  Ben  Jonson's  "  Every  Man  in  his  Humour."  The  enormous 
success  of  his  readings  from  his  own  works  was  partly  owing 
to  his  remarkable  elocutionary  powers,  and  to  the  same 
cause  was  partly  due  his  many  triumphs  as  an  after-dinner 
speaker. 

To  the  question,  what  is  the  quality  in  Dickens's  writings 
which  stands  out  most  prominent,  and  which  will  in  all  pro- 
bability secure  for  them  a  permanent  place  in  English  literature  ? 
most  readers  will  return  the  same  answer.  Undoubtedly  it  is 
their  humour.  The  man  is  not  be  envied  who  can  read  the 
"  Pickwick  Papers  " — rwhich,  despite  its  faulty  construction, 
will  stand  as  long  and  as  sure  as  anything  that  Dickens  has 
written — without  frequent  and  hearty  bursts  of  unrestrainable 
laughter ;  and  in  all  his  novels  the  humorous  portions  are  as  a 
rule  infinitely  the  most  attractive.  There  are  few  cultured 
readers  of  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit,"  for  example,  who,  on  a  second 
or  third  perusal,  do  not  sagaciously  skip  the  chapters  devoted 
to  Tom  Pinch  and  his  sister,  while  lingering  fondly  over  the 
exquisite  portions  which  deal  with  Mr.  Pecksniff  and  with 
Martin's  adventures  in  America.  All  critics  and  the  vast  ma- 
jority of  readers  are  now  agreed  in  regarding  Dickens's  pathos 
as  immeasurably  inferior  to  his  humour,  looking  upon  the 
former  as  coarse  and  unrefined,  and  ridiculously  sentimental. 
Yet  at  one  time  not  only  did  thousands  of  ordinary  readers 
cry  over  his  pages,  but  such  men  as  Jeffrey  and  Macready 
followed  suit.  It  is  difficult  to  account  for  this  change  of  popu- 
lar taste ;  unless  we  admit  it  to  be  the  case  that  the  fashion 
of  pathos  changes  much  more  quickly  than  that  of  humour, 
so  that  what  was  considered  pathos  in  one  generation  is  often 
pronounced  bathos  by  the  succeeding  one.  In  Dickens's  latter 
books,  the  humorous  element  grew  more  and  more  scanty  and 
thin.  After  "  David  Copperfield,"  he  wrote  no  story  contain- 
ing in  it  a  large  portion  of  the  fresh  hearty  laughter  that  we  find 
in  every  page  of  "  Pickwick."  Yet  there  was  no  falling  off  in 
his  popularity  ;  the  public  stood  by  him  to  the  last.  "  Little 
Dorrit,"  for  example,  which  has  always  seemed  to  us  to 
resemble  a  story  written  by  a  man  of  genius  in  a  nightmare, 


William  Makepeace  Thackeray.  385 

sold  as  largely  as  any  of  its  predecessors,  in  spite  of  the  de- 
nunciations of  the  critics.  It  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  one  of 
Dickens's  defects  helped  in  securing  his  extraordinary  popu- 
larity, viz.,  his  ignorance.  Perhaps  no  modern  author  of  equal 
eminence  ever  cared  so  little  for  literature  :  indeed,  there  is 
not  much  exaggeration  in  saying  that  his  works  might  have 
been  written  equally  well  though  he  had  never  read  a  book. 
Thus  he  appealed  to  two  publics,  while  other  novelists  of 
wider  culture  have  appealed  to  only  one.  His  genius  was 
such  that  people  of  refinement  could  not  but  read  him,  even 
though  they  found  in  him  much  that  was  repellent  to  them  ; 
while  his  ignorance  prevented  him  from  flying  over  the  heads 
of  the  multitude  by  learned  allusions,  and  kept  him  close  to 
a  style  of  narrative  which,  whatever  may  be  its  artistic  faults, 
is  always  such  as  to  command  popular  sympathy. 

While  Dickens  was  at  the  height  of  his  popularity,  his  great 
rival,  William  Makepeace  Thackeray,  was  slowly  climbing  up 
the  ladder  of  fame,  attaining  each  additional  step  with  difficulty. 
Thackeray  was  born  at  Calcutta  on  July  18,  1811,  the  son  of 
a  gentleman  employed  in  the  East  India  Company's  Service. 
His  father  died  while  he  was  yet  a  child,  and  he  was  brought 
to  England  and  sent  early  to  the  Charterhouse,  of  which  his 
recollections  were  by  no  means  pleasant.  In  1829  he  entered 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where,  however,  his  residence  was 
very  short.  There  he  gave  the  first  indication  of  his  literary 
powers  by  taking  part  in  editing  a  little  paper  called  the  Snob, 
to  which  he  contributed  some  burlesque  verses  in  the  peculiar 
vein  in  which  he  afterwards  distinguished  himself.  On  leaving 
Cambridge  he  went  to  Weimar,  and  for  some  years  alternated 
between  it  and  Paris,  studying  drawing,  as  he  at  that  time 
intended  to  become  an  artist.  Possessed  of  a  very  con- 
siderable fortune,  young  Thackeray,  with  his  quick  sense 
of  humour,  his  enjoyment  of  life,  and  his  propensity  to  indol- 
ence, which  he  was  at  this  time  easily  able  to  gratify,  doubtless 
led  a  very  jovial  existence.  But  in  two  or  three  years  his 
fortune  had  utterly  disappeared.  Part  of  it  was  lost  at  card- 
playing,  part  by  unlucky  speculation,  part  by  two  disastrous 


386  Our  Own  Times. 

newspaper  enterprises  in  which  he  had  been  induced  to  em- 
bark. Then,  finding  that  art  was  not  likely  to  afford  him 
means  of  subsistence,  he  was  induced  to  become  a  writer  by 
profession.  Toilsome  and  trying  was  his  upward  path  in  that 
most  alluring  yet  often  most  deceptive  profession.  His  first  im- 
portant engagement  was  on  the  staff  of  Eraser's  Magazine.  In 
it  he  wrote  among  other  things  the  "  Yellowplush  Correspon- 
dence," of  which  the  first  instalment  appeared  in  1837  ;  the 
"History  of  Mr.  Samuel  Titmarsh  and  the  Great  Hoggarty  Dia- 
mond;" and  "  Barry  Lyndon,"  a  story  of  the  "Jonathan  Wild" 
stamp,  and,  though  unpleasant  in  subject,  in  some  respects  one 
of  the  most  powerful  productions  of  his  pen.  About  1840  he 
began  his  connection  with  Punch>  to  which  some  of  his  best 
work,  including  the  inimitable  "  Snob  Papers,"  was  contributed. 
In  1840  appeared  his  "Paris  Sketch  Book;"  in  1843  ms 
"Irish  Sketch  Book,"  and  in  1844  his  "Journey  from  Corn- 
hill  to  Grand  Cairo,"  all  appearing  under  the  pseudonym  of 
Michael  Angelo  Titmarsh,  though  the  dedication  to  the 
"Irish  Sketch  Book"  was  signed  with  his  own  name.  In 
addition  to  the  above,  he  performed  a  variety  of  other  work 
during  his  literary  "journey-years,"  contributing  to  the  Times, 
the  AVo/  Monthly  Magazine -,  &c. 

Up  to  1846  Thackeray's  name,  though  no  doubt  familiar 
enough  to  literary  people,  was  almost  unknown  to  the  world 
at  large.  Some  clear-sighted  critics,  such  as  John  Sterling,  had 
indeed  recognised  the  originality  and  genius  of  his  work  ;  but  he 
had  not  yet  made  what  is  called  a  "hit,"  and  had  still  to  make  his 
voice  heard  above  the  hundreds  of  clever  writers  whose  work 
perishes  with  their  lives.  In  the  above  mentioned  year,  how- 
ever, began  the  publication  of  "  Vanity  Fair,"  in  the  monthly 
parts  which  Dickens  had  made  popular.  Its  progress  in 
popular  estimation  was  slow  at  first ;  but  gradually  it  began  to 
be  talked  about,  and  on  its  completion  in  1848  it  had  raised 
Thackeray  to  such  a  position  that,  in  the  opinion  of  all  com- 
petent to  judge,  he  now  divided  with  Dickens  the  throne  of 
the  realm  of  fiction.  Its  success  was  aided  by  a  friendly  and 
appreciative  notice  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  January 


Thackeray  and  Dickens.  387 

1848,  which  introduced  Thackeray  to  many  to  whom  he  had 
scarcely  been  known  previously.  This  notice  was  written  by 
a  friend  of  his,  Mr.  Abraham  Hay  ward,  whose  anecdotal  and 
entertaining  pen  is  still  busy,  he  having  written  an  article  in 
nearly  every  number  of  the  Quarterly  Review  for  the  last 
twelve  years.  Following  "  Vanity  Fair,"  appeared  in  1850 
" Pendennis ; "  in  1852,  "Esmond,"  and  in  1855,  the  "New- 
comes."  Meanwhile  Thackeray  had  begun  his  very  profitable 
career  as  a  lecturer.  The  course  on  the  "English  Humor- 
ists of  the  Eighteenth  Century"  was  first  delivered  in  London 
in  1851,  afterwards  repeated  in  many  provincial  towns,  and  in 
the  winter  of  1852-53  delivered  with  great  success  in  America. 
In  1853  he  prepared  an  equally  successful  and  equally  able 
course  on  the  "Four  Georges."  In  1857-59  appeared  the 
"  Virginians,"  a  sequel  to  "  Esmond."  In  January  1860  the 
Cornhill Magazine  was  begun  with  Thackeray  as  editor.  Issued 
under  the  auspices  of  so  great  a  name,  its  circulation  was 
extraordinary,  the  sale  of  its  early  numbers  exceeding  one 
hundred  thousand,  and  it  proved  a  mine  of  wealth  for  both 
editor  and  publishers.  But  Thackeray  was  ill-fitted  to  con- 
duct a  periodical ;  his  habits  of  procrastination,  the  difficulty 
of  selecting  suitable  contributions,  and  the  vexation  which 
he  felt  in  returning  rejected  ones,  made  the  editorial  chair 
to  him  a  bed  of  thorns,  and  he  was  glad  to  abandon  it  in 
April  1862,  continuing  however  to  write  for  the  magazine  to 
the  last.  In  it  appeared  his  delightful  "  Roundabout  Papers," 
"Level the  "Widower,"  the  "  Adventures  of  Philip,"  besides  the 
fragment  of  a  novel,  "  Denis  Duval,"  published  in  1864,  after 
his  death,  which  occurred  on  Christmas  EVe,  1863. 

Thackeray,  as  compared  with  Dickens,  occupies  in  some  re- 
spects the  same  position  among  the  public  as  Macaulay  does 
compared  with  Carlyle.  It  has  been  said  by  certain  critics, 
particularly  in  the  so-called  "  Society  "  journals,  that  Carlyle's 
chief  admirers  were  found  among  the  less  cultured  classes — • 
intelligent  artisans,  clerks,  shopmen,  and  the  like.  This  is 
not  true,  for  some  of  the  greatest  and  most  original  minds  of 
this  generation  have  held  the  Seer  of  Chelsea  in  the  highest 


388  Our  Own  Times. 

reverence  ;  but  it  is  true  that  among  the  classes  indicated  a 
far  larger  number  make,  as  it  were,  companions  and  friends  of 
Carlyle's  writings  than  of  Macaulay's.  The  reason  is  not  far 
to  seek.  Macaulay's  works  are  profitable  for  information,  for 
the  excellence  of  the  style,  for  their  unflagging  interest,  but 
scarcely  for  instruction  in  righteousness.  His  was  a  singularly 
happy  life  ;  he  never  had  any  perplexities  about  the  mysteries 
of  existence  ;  doubts  and  fears  as  to  points  of  conduct  never 
troubled  him ;  and  nothing  will  be  found  in  his  writings 
for  those  who,  harassed  by  daily  trials  and  toils,  look  in  the 
books  they  read  for  some  spiritual  nourishment,  for  something 
to  help  them  in  the  steep  and  thorny  way  which  they  have  to 
tread.  Precisely  the  reverse  is  the  case  with  Carlyle;  and 
hence  it  is  that  he  finds  so  many  readers  among  those  who 
care  little  for  literature  in  itself,  but  who  value  his  works,  not 
on  account  of  their  great  genius  and  picturesque  style,  but 
because  they  are  useful  to  them  from  a  moral  and  spiritual 
point  of  view.  All  this,  of  course,  does  not  apply  to  Thackeray 
as  compared  with  Dickens,  but  it  does  so  partially.  The 
people  to  whom  Macaulay  and  Thackeray  pre-eminently  ad- 
dressed themselves,  whom  consciously  or  unconsciously  they 
had  in  their  mind's  eye  as  they  wrote,  were  those  who  are 
clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen,  and  who  fare  sumptuously 
every  day.  Thackeray's  works  are  full  of  moral  instruction  of 
a  kind,  but  it  is  of  a  kind  which  scarcely  applies  except  to  the 
higher  orders ;  of  the  lower  sections  of  society  he  had  very 
little  knowledge.  With  them  his  writings  never  have  been  and 
never  will  be  popular ;  the  pleasures  of  life  and  character 
with  which  he  loves  to  deal,  and  his  mode  of  dealing  with  them, 
alike  prevent  that.  Dickens  sprung  from  the  people  himself, 
and  early  made  acquainted  with  poverty,  had,  with  all  his 
theatrical  pathos  and  tendency  to  gushing  sentiment,  a  deep 
and  genuine  sympathy  with  the  poor  and  their  trials  ;  and  to 
this  sympathy  is,  we  believe,  in  no  small  measure  due  the  fact 
that  he  enjoyed  a  wider  and  deeper  popularity  than  has  ever 
been  attained  by  any  other  novelist. 

Thackeray  had  none  of  Dickens's  s  mguin.e  temperament  and 


Thackeray  s  Writings.  389 

resolute  confidence  in  himself.  He  was  always  inclined  to 
look  rather  on  the  dark  than  on  the  sunny  side  of  things ; 
doubtful  about  the  success  of  his  works,  and  feeling  acutely 
adverse  criticism  upon  them.  In  his  latter  years,  at  any  rate,  he 
was  a  slow  and  careful  writer,  satisfied  if  he  accomplished  in 
a  month  as  much  as  Scott  did  in  a  few  days ;  and  always  dis- 
posed to  postpone  till  to-morrow  what  ought  to  be  done  to-day, 
tlnlike  Dickens,  he  was  a  bookish  man,  perfectly  at  home  in 
some  fields  of  English  literature,  especially  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  whose  writers  he  knew  and  loved  so  well.  His 
inimitably  graceful  style,  in  which  he  has  been  excelled  by  no 
novelist,  may  be  in  part  due  to  his  familiarity  with  Addison, 
Steele,  Swift,  and  their  contemporaries,  especially  if  it  be  true, 
as  certain  critics  aver,  that  in  the  eighteenth  century  English 
prose  reached  its  high-water  mark. 

Of  Thackeray's  works  certainly  the  most  remarkable  and 
perhaps  the  best  is  "Esmond."  Many  novelists  following  in 
the  wake  of  Scott  have  attempted  to  reproduce  for  us  past 
manners,  scenes,  and  characters ;  but  in  "  Esmond  "  Thack- 
eray not  only  does  this — he  reproduces  for  us  the  style  in 
which  men  wrote  and  talked  in  the  days  of  Queen  Anne.  To 
reproduce  the  forgotten  phraseology,  to  remember  always  not 
how  his  age  would  express  an  idea,  but  how  Steele,  or  Swift, 
or  Addison  would  have  expressed  it,  might  have  been  pro- 
nounced impossible  of  accomplishment.  Yet  in  "  Esmond " 
Thackeray  did  accomplish  it,  and  with  perfect  success.  The 
colouring  throughout  is  exquisite  and  harmonious,  never  by  a 
single  false  note  is  the  melody  broken.  Of  his  writings  in 
general  perhaps  the  most  noticeable  characteristic  is  the  hatred 
they  express  for  all  sorts  of  false  pretences,  sham  sentiment, 
and  unreal  professions.  He  is  never  wearied  of  directing  his 
scathing  satire  against  whited  sepulchres  of  all  descriptions. 
<;  Call  things  by  their  right  names;  do  not  gloss  over  the  villany 
of  Lord  Steyne  because  he  is  a  lord  ;  do  not  condone  George 
Osborne's  selfishness  because  he  is  handsome  ;  don't  pretend 
to  be  what  you  are  not,  and  do  not  let  false  shame  make  you 
conceal  what  you  are,"  is  the  burden  of  his  message.  To  his 


3$  o  Our  Own  Times. 

scorn  and  hatred  of  vice  and  meanness  he  added  sincere  love 
and  admiration  of  all  that  is  true,  and  good,  and  honourable. 
A  large-hearted,  thoughtful  man,  the  temptations  and  trials  and 
sorrows  of  humanity  affected  him  deeply.  His  pathos  is  as 
touching  and  sincere  as  his  humour  is  subtle  and  delicate. 
His  numerous  "asides"  to  the  reader  are  full  of  "  that  sad 
wisdom  which  experience  brings,"  in  striking  contrast  to  those 
of  Dickens,  who,  when  he  leaves  his  story  to  indulge  in 
moralising,  is  generally  trite  and  feeble.  In  a  characteristic 
passage  Thackeray  apologises  for  the  frequency  of  his  casual 
reflections.  "Perhaps  of  all  novel-spinners  now  extant,"  he 
says,  "  the  present  writer  is  the  most  addicted  to  preaching. 
Does  he  not  stop  perpetually  in  his  story  and  begin  to  preach 
to  you  ?  .  .  .  I  say  peccavi  loudly  and  heartily,"  he  adds, 
but  there  was  no  need  of  this  expression  of  repentance,  whether 
sincere  or  not,  for  none  ever  ^wished  Thackeray's  "asides" 
fewer  or  shorter.  Thackeray's  fame  as  a  novelist  has  caused 
his  poems,  of  which  he  wrote  a  good  many,  generally  in  a  half- 
serious,  half-comic  vein,  to  be  frequently  less  noticed  than  they 
deserve.  His  admirable  mock-heroic  ballads  and  society 
verses  attain  a  degree  of  excellence  very  rarely  reached  by 
such  performances. 

Was  Thackeray  a  cynic?  The  question  has  been  often 
asked  and  variously  answered.  If  we  use  "cynic"  in  the 
proper  sense  of  the  word  as  denned  by  Johnson,  "a  philo- 
sopher of  the  snarling  or  currish  sort;  a  follower  of  Diogenes  ; 
a  rude  man ;  a  snarler  ;  a  misanthrope/'  most  assuredly  it 
cannot  with  any  propriety  be  applied  to  him.  But  in  ordinary 
parlance  we  use  "  cynic  "  in  a  sense  different  from  any  of  these, 
meaning  by  it  a  man  who  is  apt  to  look  on  life  with  a  glance 
half  sad,  half  humorous,  who  is  prone  to  be  distrustful  of  fine 
appearances  and  professions,  who  sees  keenly  the  grains  of 
dust  mingled  in  the  gold  of  the  finest  character,  and  who  is 
fully  aware  of  the  latent  meanness  and  selfish  ambition  which 
orten  lurk  under  actions  professing  to  be  noble  and  generous. 
In  this  sense  of  the  word,  Thackeray  was  a  cynic.  Vanitas 
vanitatum:  all  is  vanity,  is  his  often-repeated  cry;  none  knew 


Lord  Lytton.  3  9 1 

better  than  he  with  what  richly  gilded  coverings  we  are  apt  to 
clothe  the  evil  passions  and  desires  of  our  nature. 

One  of  the  most  industrious  literary  craftsmen  of  the  Victorian 
era  was  Lord  Lyt ton— Edward  George  Earle  Lytton  Buhver 
Lytton,  to  give  him  his  full  name.  Born  in  1805  of  an  ancient 
family,  he  was,  after  a  brilliant  literary  and  political  career, 
elevated  to  the  peerage  in  1866.  During  his  busy  life, 
there  were  few  departments  of  literature  which  he  did  not 
attempt.  Not  only  did  he  write  novels,  but  also  history,  poetry, 
essays,  and  plays.  The  bare  enumeration  of  his  writings  would 
alone  occupy  more  space  than  can  here  be  afforded.  One  of 
his  first  writings,  "  Falkland,"  a  tale  full  of  that  sham  Byronic 
sentiment  with  which  many  young  writers  were  infected  at  the 
time  of  its  publication,  proved  a  failure,  but  with  "  Pelham," 
which  appeared  in  1828,  began  that  career  of  popularity  which 
was  closed  only  by  the  author's  death.  It  is  a  novel  of  fashion- 
able life,  full  of  those  errors  of  taste  into  which  a  young  writer 
is  apt  to  fall,  but  undeniably  clever,  and  containing  some 
brilliant  sketches  of  society.  After  it  came  in  quick  succession 
"  The  Disowned,"  "  Devereux,"  and  "  Paul  Clifford,"  the  last 
one  of  those  attempts  to  "  make  a  hero  out  of  a  scoundrel " 
against  which  Thackeray  during  his  early  career  directed  some 
of  his  most  pungent  satire.  In  1831  Bulwer  (his  name  till  he 
became  a  peer)  entered  Parliament.  In  the  following  year 
appeared  "Eugene  Aram,"  a  tale  of  the  "Paul  Clifford"  species. 
Within  a  few  years  came  his  first  historical  novels,  "The  Last 
Days  of  Pompeii"  and  "Rienzi,"  followed  in  1843  and  1848  by 
two  others  of  a  similar  class  on  subjects  taken  from  English 
history— "The  Last  of  the  Barons"  and  "Harold."  All  these 
are  distinguished  by  the  accuracy  of  their  archaeological  and 
historical  colouring,  though  in  picturesqueness  and  ease  they 
are  far  inferior  to  the  wonderful  series  in  which  Scott  made 
bygone  times  and  men  real  to  us.  In  1849  appeared  "The 
Caxtons,"  in  which  the  versatile  author  took  a  new  departure. 
It  is  a  novel  of  domestic  life,  more  natural  and  pleasing  than 
any  of  his  previous  productions.  Its  success  was  followed  up 
by  two  other  novels  of  the  same  series,  "My  Novel  "and 


392  Our  Own  Times. 

"What  will  He  Do  with  It?"  the  former  of  which  is  generally 
considered  his  masterpiece.  In  1862  appeared  "A  Strange 
Story,"  one  of  those  tales  of  mystery  of  which  he  wrote  several, 
"Zanoni"  (1842)  being  perhaps  the  most  striking.  It  was  a 
great  favourite  with  the  author,  to  whom  the  study  of  magic 
and  kindred  arts  always  presented  a  great  attraction.  He  re- 
mained ardent  in  his  devotion  to  literature  to  the  end.  A 
novel  from  his  pen,  "The  Parisians,"  was  appearing  in  Black" 
wood  at  the  time  of  his  death,  which  occurred  in  1872;  and 
the  final  proofs  of  another  novel,  "  Kenelm  Chillingly,"  were 
corrected  by  him  only  a  few  days  before  the  sad  event. 

Lytton  cannot  be  called  a  novelist  of  the  first  class.  There 
is  an  air  of  artificiality  about  everything  he  says,  a  "stagey" 
sentiment,  a  love  of  concealing  feeble  or  inaccurate  thought 
beneath  a  sort  of  philosophical  jargon,  which,  added  to  other 
faults,  place  him  below  the  really  great  masters  of  the  art  of 
fiction,  the  Fieldings,  the  Scotts,  and  the  Thackerays.  But  he 
was  a  man  of  very  remarkable  endowments,  ardent  ambition, 
and  indomitable  perseverance.  In  1856,  addressing  the  boys 
of  a  school,  he  said,  "  Boys,  when  I  look  at  your  young  faces 
I  could  fancy  myself  a  boy  once  more.  I  go  back  to  the  days 
when  I  too  tried  for  prizes,  sometimes  succeeding,  sometimes 
failing.  I  was  once  as  fond  of  play  as  any  of  you,  and  in  this 
summer  weather  I  fear  my  head  might  have  been  more  full  of 
cricket  than  of  Terence  or  even  Homer.  •  But  still  I  can  re- 
member that,  whether  at  work  or  at  play,  I  had  always  a  deep 
though  quiet  determination,  that  sooner  or  later  I  would  be  a 
somebody  or  do  a  something.  That  determination  continues 
with  me  to  this  hour."  Hence  his  desire  to  excel  in  various 
fields.  His  first  play  was  a  comparative  failure,  but  he  had 
set  his  heart  upon  winning  dramatic  laurels,  and  to  a  certain 
extent  he  succeeded.  "The  Lady  of  Lyons,"  "Richelieu," 
and  the  brilliant  comedy  of  "Money"  are  always  welcome  on 
the  stage.  To  the  fame  of  the  writer  of  works  of  the  imagina- 
tion he  aspired  to  add  that  of  the  scholar,  and  an  unfinished 
"History  of  Athens"  and  a  translation  of  the  "Odes  of 
Horace  "  with  notes,  show  at  all  events  that  he  kept  up  his 


Charlotte  Bronte.  393 

acquaintance  with  the  classics  to  an  extent  very  rare  among 
men  so  multifariously  occupied  as  he  was.  In  one  ambition 
only  he  altogether  failed ;  but  unfortunately  that  ambition  was 
his  most  burning  and  unquenchable  one.  There  was  some- 
thing almost  pitiable  about  the  way  in  which  he  went  on  pub- 
lishing poem  after  poem  without  ever  attaining  such  success 
as  would  place  him  high  even  in  the  second  rank  of  writers  of 
verse.  Nature,  bountiful  to  him  in  many  respects,  had  denied 
him  the  poetical  faculty ;  even  his  highest  performances  of  this 
kind  would  have  been  better  had  they  been  written  in  prose. 
His  son,  the  present  Lord  Lytton  (born  1831),  better  known  as 
a  writer  under  his  pseudonym  of  **  Owen  Meredith,"  has  been 
more  fortunate  in  his  poetical  attempts.  All  his  poems,  if 
occasionally  marred  by  faults  of  diction  and  sentiment,  have 
about  them  that  indescribable  something  which  distinguishes 
the  work  of  a  genuine  poet  from  that  of  the  mere  verse-writer. 
Few  novels  have  made  a  greater  sensation  at  their  first 
appearance  than  "  Jane  Eyre,"  published  in  1847.  All  com- 
petent critics,  however  much  they  might  differ  about  certain 
features  in  the  work,  were  agreed  in  acknowledging  its  original 
power  and  its  thrilling  interest,  and  conjectures  were  rife  as 
to  who  could  be  the  unknown  "  Currer  Bell "  whose  name 
appeared  on  its  title-page.  Most  of  these  conjectures  were 
very  wide  of  the  mark.  "Currer  Bell"  was  the  name  adopted 
by  Charlotte  Bronte,  a  poor  girl,  brought  up  in  a  homely  par- 
sonage amid  the  bleak  wilds  of  Yorkshire,  without  any  literary 
friends  to  aid  her  in  her  struggle  for  fame.  There  are  few 
more  interesting  and  pathetic  stories  than  that  of  her  and  her 
gifted  sisters  Emily  and  Anne.  Charlotte,  the  eldest  of  the 
three,  was  born  at  Thornton,  in  Bradford  parish,  in  1816. 
Four  years  later  her  father,  who  was  a  clergyman,  removed  to 
Haworth,  and  there  she  was  brought  up  and  wrote  her  won- 
derful novels.  Her  life  was  a  sad  one  enough,  chequered  by 
poverty,  by  poor  health,  by  family  trials,  and  by  the  yearn- 
ings of  an  ambition  which  was  late  in  finding  any  fit  field  for 
its  exercise.  All  the  family  were  remarkably  gifted,  and 
many  were  the  manuscripts  which  proceeded  from  their  pens, 


394  ®ur  Own  Times. 

but  it  was  not  till  1846  that  Charlotte  appeared  before  the 
public  as  an  author.  In  that  year  was  published  (at  the  expense 
of  the  writers)  a  small  volume  of  poems  "  by  Currer,  Ellis,  and 
Acton  Bell,"  the  two  last  names  being  the  pseudonyms  of  her 
sisters  Emily  and  Anne.  It  attracted  very  little  attention. 
"  The  book  was  printed,"  wrote  Charlotte,  in  the  biographical 
notice  of  her  sisters;  "it  is  scarcely  known,  and  all  of  it  that 
merits  to  be  known  are  the  poems  of  Ellis  Bell."  During 
the  same  year  a  tale  of  Charlotte  Bronte's,  "  The  Professor," 
was  plodding  a  weary  round  among  the  London  publishers. 
"  Currer  Beli's  book,"  she  says,  "  found  acceptance  nowhere, 
nor  any  acknowledgment  of  merit,  so  that  something  like  the 
chill  of  despair  began  to  invade  his  heart."  Two  other  novels, 
"Wuthering  Heights,"  by  Emily  Bronte,  a  tale  of  great,  though 
morbid  and  undisciplined  power,  and  "  Agnes  Grey,"  by  Anne 
Bronte,  had  found  publishers,  though  on  such  terms  as  could 
afford  no  gratification  to  the  authors ;  but  Charlotte  found  no 
gleam  of  encouragement  till  the  MS.  of  "  The  Professor  "  was 
returned  to  her  by  Messrs.  Smith,  Elder,  &  Co.,  to  whom  it  had 
been  submitted,  along  with  a  courteous  letter,  declining  the 
tale,  but  adding  that  a  novel  in  three  volumes  would  meet 
with  careful  consideration.  "Jane  Eyre,"  on  which  she  had 
been  for  some  time  engaged,  was  accordingly  sent  to  them, 
and  at  once  accepted.  Its  publication  soon  after  gave  her  at 
once  a  fame  and  popularity  which  suffered  no  diminution  from 
her  two  succeeding  novels,  "Shirley"  (1849),  in  which  she 
availed  herself  of  her  experience  of  Yorkshire  character,  and 
"Villette"  (1852),  in  which  she  made  use  of  some  of  the 
material  of  "  The  Professor,"  containing  faithful  transcripts 
from  her  experiences  as  teacher  and  pupil  in  Belgium.  In 
1854  she  married  Mr.  Nicholls,  who  had  been  for  eight  years 
her  father's  curate.  The  union  was  a  very  happy  one  ;  but  her 
health,  always  delicate,  gave  way,  and  she  died  in  March  1855. 
Her  two  sisters  had  preceded  her  to  the  still  country.  Char- 
lotte Bronte's  life  was  written  with  admirable  literary  skill  and 
good  taste  by  her  friend  Mrs.  Gaskell  (1810-1865),  herself 
a  novelist  of  high  merit.  Among  her  best  known  works  are 


Charlotte  Bronte  s  Writings.  395 

"  Mary  Barton,"  a  story  of  factory  life,  "  Ruth,"  and  "  Crau- 
ford." 

Charlotte  Bronte  had  high  notions  of  her  calling.  In  signal 
contrast  to  the  many  lady-novelists,  who  nowadays  pour  forth 
novel  after  novel  with  such  unceasing  rapidity  that  the  panting 
critic  toils  after  them  in  vain,  she  published  nothing  till  it  was 
as  good  as  she  could  make  it,  and  never  wrote  except  when 
she  felt  that  she  was  really  in  the  vein  for  doing  so.  Like  all 
who  labour  conscientiously,  she  has  had  her  reward.  Her 
works  have  not,  like  many  other  fictions,  been  sought  eagerly 
at  circulating  libraries  for  a  season  or  two  and  then  forgotten  ; 
on  the  other  hand,  they  have  taken  a  secure  place  in  the  list 
of  English  classics.  Her  style  is  intense,  vivid,  and  glowing ; 
and  in  the  descriptions  of  certain  aspects  of  nature  —  for 
example,  of  a  stormy,  cloudy  sky — it  would  be  hard  to  men- 
tion a  writer  who  is  her  superior.  There  are  no  dull  places 
in  her  narratives.  Everywhere  we  find  that  vigour  and  anima- 
tion which  are  a  sure  sign  of  a  writer  having  fully  matured 
his  conceptions.  Harriet  Martineau  complained  that  in  her 
novels  she  always  wrote  as  if  love  was  woman's  chief,  almost 
woman's  only,  interest  in  life.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  force 
in  this  remark,  but  no  writer  had  ever  a  more  nure  and  high- 
souled  idea  of  what  passionate  love  really  is  than  Charlotte 
Bronte  had.  Her  want  of  knowledge  of  the  usages  of  society, 
and  her  limited  experience  of  life  and  manners,  led  her  into 
some  mistakes,  but  they  are  so  comparatively  insignificant  as 
in  no  way  to  detract  from  the  nobleness  of  her  work.  We 
entirely  agree  with  Mr.  W.  C.  Roscoe1  in  utterly  repudiating 
the  cry  of  "coarseness"  with  which  "Jane  Eyre,"  in  particular, 
was  assailed.  "  Coarse  materials,  indeed,"  he  says,  "  she  too 
much  deals  with,  and  her  own  style  has  something  rude  and 
uncompromising  in  it  not  always  in  accordance  with  customary 
ideas  of  what  is  becoming  in  a  female  writer ;  but  it  would  be 
scarcely  possible  to  name  a  writer  who,  in  handling  such  diffi- 
cult subject-matter,  carries  the  reader  so  safely  through  by  the 

1  Essays,  vol.  ii.  p.  351. 


396  Our  Own  Times. 

serene  guardianship  and  unconsciously  exercised  influence  of 
her  stainless  purity  and  unblemished  rectitude." 

It  has  been  well  said  that  if,  after  the  university  method, 
we  arranged  our  dead  authors  in  order  of  merit,  the  only 
novelists  since  Scott  who  would  by  general  consent  be  placed 
in  the  first  class  would  be  Thackeray,  Dickens,  and  George 
Eliot;  other  names,  indeed,  would  be  added  by  many,  but 
hardly  any  other  would  receive  a  unanimous  suffrage.  As 
everybody  knows,  George  Eliot  was  the  pseudonym  under 
which  a  female  writer,  Mary  Anne  Evans,  chose  to  veil  he* 
identity.  She  was  born  in  1820  at  Griff  House,  near  Nun- 
eaton,  in  Warwickshire,  the  daughter  of  Robert  Evans,  a  land 
agent  there.  She  received  an  exceptionally  good  education, 
and  in  1846  began  her  literary  career  by  a  translation  of 
Strauss's  "Leben  Jesu,"  for  which  she  received  the  beggarly 
pittance  of  ^20.  In  1851  she  removed  to  London  to  assist 
Mr.  John  Chapman  in  editing  the  Westminster  Review,  to 
which,  between  the  years  1852  and  1859,  she  contributed 
several  articles.  Her  connection  with  the  Review  brought 
her  into  contact  with  George  Henry  Lewes  (1817-1878),  him- 
self a  writer  and  philosopher  of  some  mark,  to  whom  she 
linked  her  fate.  In  1857  her  first  work  of  fiction,  the  "Scenes 
of  Clerical  Life,"  appeared  in  BlackwoocFs  Magazine.  They 
did  not  attract  much  notice  at  first,  though  Dickens,  to  his 
honour  be  it  said,  recognised  their  rare  merit  as  successive 
instalments  came  out.  In  1859  appeared  "  Adam  Bede," 
which  at  once  elevated  her  to  the  front  rank  among  the  ima- 
ginative writers  of  her  time.  Then  followed  the  "  Mill  on  the 
Floss"  (1860);  "Silas  Marner"  (1861);  "Romola"  (1863); 
"  Felix  Holt"  (1866) ;  a  poem,  "The  Spanish  Gipsy"  (1868); 
"Middlemarch"(l872);  "Daniel  Deronda"  (1877);  and  "Im- 
pressions of  Theophrastus  Such"  (1879),  which,  for  want  of 
a  better  name,  may  be  described  as  a  volume  of  essays.  In 
May  1880  she  married  Mr.  J.  W.  Cross.  The  union  was  a 
happy  but  brief  one,  lasting  only  seven  months.  On  Decem- 
ber 22,  1880,  the  great  novelist  expired. 

George  Eliot's  personal  characteristics  are  thus  described 


George  Eliot.  397 

by  one  who  knew  her  well : T — "  Everything  in  her  aspect  and 
presence  was  in  keeping  with  the  bent  of  her  soul.  The 
deeply  lined  face,  the  too  marked  and  massive  features,  were 
united  with  an  air  of  delicate  refinement,  which  in  one  way 
was  the  more  impressive,  because  it  seemed  to  proceed  so 
entirely  from  within.  Nay,  the  inward  beauty  would  some- 
times quite  transform  the  outward  harshness ;  there  would  be 
moments  when  the  thin  hands  that  entwined  themselves  in 
their  eagerness,  the  earnest  figure  that  bowed  forward  to  speak 
and  hear,  the  deep  gaze  moving  from  one  face  to  another  with 
a  grave  appeal — all  these  seemed  the  transparent  symbols  that 
showed  the  presence  of  a  wise  benignant  soul.  But  it  was  the 
voice  which  best  revealed  her,  a  voice  whose  subdued  inten- 
sity and  tremulous  richness  seemed  to  environ  her  uttered 
words  with  the  mystery  of  a  world  of  feeling  that  must  remain 
untold.  .  .  .  And  then,  again,  when,  in  moments  of  more  inti- 
mate converse,  some  current  of  emotion  would  set  strongly 
through  her  soul,  when  she  would  raise  her  head  in  uncon- 
scious absorption  and  look  out  into  the  unseen,  her  expression 
was  one  not  to  be  forgotten." 

Like  Charlotte  Bronte,  George  Eliot  was  a  most  painstaking 
and  conscientious  writer.  No  ill-considered  or  slipshod  sen- 
tence ever  fell  from  her  pen.  Her  rich  culture  and  large 
knowledge  of  life  in  all  its  manifestations,  give  a  breadth  and 
accuracy  to  her  delineations  of  character  which  are  lacking  in 
the  products  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  more  fiery  and  impetuous 
genius.  Her  sympathy  with  all  classes  of  society  was  wide, 
and  proceeded  from  the  general  source  of  all  such  sympathy — 
thorough  insight  into  their  several  modes  of  thought  and  life. 
Herself  an  unbeliever,  she  could  do  full  justice  to  those  of 
intense  religious  convictions,  analysing  and  describing  them  in  a 
way  which  showed  that  she  thoroughly  understood  them.  Her' 
humour  cannot  be  said  to  be  of  equal  excellence  and  spon- 
taneity to  that  of  Dickens  or  Thackeray,  but  it  is  excellent 
of  its  kind,  quiet  and  unobtrusive,  and  full  of  that  kindly  yet 

1  Mr.  F.  \V.  H.  Myers  ift  the  Century  Magatine  for  November  1881. 


398  Our  Own  Times. 

accurate  appreciation  of  the  oddities  and  follies  of  men  which 
is  so  rare.  It  has  been  truly  said  that,  omitting  the  very 
highest  and  the  very  lowest  sections  of  modern  society,  her 
novels  present  photographic  pictures  of  English  life  which 
will  give  to  the  future  reader  the  same  sort  of  truthful  infor- 
mation of  the  early  Victorian  time  that  Shakespeare's  plays  do 
of  Elizabeth's  England.  Not  only  are  George  Eliot's  novels 
excellent  as  works  of  art  ;  their  moral  tendency  is  in  the 
highest  degree  beneficial.  No  novelist  has  dwelt  more  strongly 
upon  the  necessity  of  the  ready  performance  of  duty  if  we  are 
to  lead  noble  lives ;  none  has  painted  in  more  vivid  colours 
how  a  character,  naturally  amiable  perhaps,  sinks  deeper  and 
deeper  in  sin  from  weakness  of  will  and  the  inability  to  prac- 
tise self-renunciation.  In  her  poems,  as  well  as  in  her  novels, 
these  are  themes  she  often  recurs  to.  She  loves  also  to  im- 
press on  her  readers  the  sacredness  of  work,  and  the  value 
of  true  performance,  in  however  humble  a  sphere.  In  her  two 
last  novels  she  erred  by  over-elaboration,  making  them  the 
vehicle  for  many  observations,  good  enough  in  themselves,  but 
altogether  out  of  place  in  a  novel,  which  ought  to  be  a  delinea- 
tion of  life,  with  just  so  much  subsidiary  matter  as  may  be 
necessary  for  the  intelligent  comprehension  of  the  narrative. 
"  Daniel  Deronda,"  in  particular,  contains  a  great  deal  of, 
matter  which  would  have  found  its  fit  abode  in  a  philoso- 
phical treatise.  Her  poems  are  full  of  deep  thought  and 
noble  ideas,  but  she  lacked  the  accomplishment  of  verse,  and 
was  out  of  her  true  element  when  writing  it. 

The  few  other  novelists  who  can  be  mentioned  here  must 
be  disposed  of  very  briefly.  There  never  lived  a  more  manly 
and  true-hearted  writer  of  fiction  than  Charles  Lever  (1806- 
1872),  a  lively  and  mirth-loving  Irishman,  whose  stirring  life 
furnished  him  with  not  a  few  traits  wherewith  to  embellish  the 
portraits  of  his  heroes.  His  novels  may  be  divided  into  three 
classes,  answering  to  corresponding  features  in-  the  author's 
life.  First,  we  have  the  youthful  series,  filled  with  practical 
jokes  and  merriment,  and  peopled  with  those  dashing  dragoons 
who  rode,  and  fought,  and  made  love"  with  such  incredible 


Charles  Kingsley.  399 

vivacity  in  his  earlier  novels.  As  time  wore  on,  the  fun 
became  less  boisterous,  though  far  from  being  altogether 
excluded  ;  and  Lever's  works,  if  perhaps  less  pleasing  to  youth- 
ful readers  who  delight  in  the  accounts  of  extraordinary 
exploits,  showed  a  much  wider  and  deeper  knowledge  of  life. 
But  in  our  opinion  his  best  work  was  done  in  his  latter  years, 
when  in  a  series  of  novels,  wanting,  indeed,  the  fire  and  dash 
of  his  early  performances,  but  infinitely  more  accurate  as  delinea- 
tions of  life  and  character,  he  gave  to  the  world  the  mellowed 
experience  of  an  acute  observer  who  had  seen  many  phases  of 
existence,  and  could  comment  on  them  with  shrewdness  and 
accuracy.  Among  his  best  works  may  be  mentioned  "  Harry 
Lorrequer,"  "Jack  Hinton,"  "The  Dodd  Family  Abroad," 
"Sir  Brook  Fosbrooke,"  and  "Lord  Kilgobbin."  The  last 
mentioned  is  an  excellent  specimen  of  his  matured  style,  well 
worth  reading  for  its  shrewd  common  sense  and  its  many 
acute  observations  on  the  state  of  Ireland.  The  "  O'Dowd 
Paper?,"  with  which  for  some  years  he  delighted  the  readers  of 
Blacku'ood,  discoursing  month  by  month  on  such  topics  as 
happened  to  strike  his  fancy,  were,  of  course,  of  mainly  tempo- 
rary interest,  but  their  lively  style  and  numerous  well-told 
anecdotes  make  them  still  interesting  reading. 

Charles  Kingsley  (1819-1875),  who,  after  holding  various 
ecclesiastical  appointments,  became  Canon  of  Westminster  in 
1873,  was  very  justly  styled  by  J.  S.  Mill  "one  of  the  good 
influences  of  the  age."  His  earnest  advocacy  of  courage, 
purity,  and  love,  healthy  manhood  and  firm  adherence 
to  duty,  added  to  his  vivid  and  kindling  personality,  caused 
him  to  be  looked  up  to  by  many  young  men  as  a  master 
in  whose  steps  they  were  proud  to  follow.  In  1847 
he  published  a  dramatic  poem,  "The  Saint's  Tragedy," 
founded  on  the  story  of  St.  Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  which 
at  once  made  his  genius  known.  The  Chartist  move- 
ment in  England  called  forth  from  him  two  novels,  "Alton 
Locke"  (1850)  and  "  Yeast "  (1851),  which,  amidst  much  that 
is  crude  and  chaotic,  are  full  of  eloquent  writing  and  breathe 
a  spirit  of  earnest  sympathy  with  the  sufferings  of  the  poor. 


400  Our  Own  Times. 

Other  novels,  "  Westward  Ho  !"  "Hereward  the  Wake,"  &c., 
followed,  along  with  poems,  sermons,  historical  sketches,  and 
writings  on  natural  history,  to  which  his  keen  delight  in  all  the 
influences  of  sea  and  sky  gave  singular  force  and  attractive- 
ness. No  more  thoroughly  healthy-souled  man  has  adorned 
this  generation,  and  few  have  been  more  potent  for  good. 

Benjamin  Disraeli,  Earl  of  Beaconsfield  (1804-1881),  son 
of  Isaac  D'Israeli,  whose  gossiping  volumes,  "  Curiosities  of 
Literature,"  &c.,  still  retain  their  popularity,  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  of  English  novelists,  entirely  original,  and 
never  echoing  any  other  writer.  Doubtless  part  of  the  great 
sale  which  his  fictions  enjoyed  is  to  be  attributed  to  his 
renown  as  a  politician,  but  they  possess  intrinsic  merit  suffi- 
cient to  justify  their  popularity.  His  first  novel,  "Vivian 
Grey,"  was  published  in  1826,  and,  despite  its  affectations  and 
errors  in  point  of  taste,  is  certainly  an  amazing  production  for  a 
youth  of  two-and-twenty.  During  the  next  ten  years  appeared 
"  The  Young  Duke  ;  "  *:  Venetia,"a  tale  founded  on  the  lives 
of  Shelley  and  Byron  ;  "  Contarini  Fleming,"  and  "  Henrietta 
Temple,"  the  last  entirely  a  love  story.  "  Coningsby  "  and 
"  Sybil,"  two  political  novels,  remarkable  for  their  keen  and 
incisive  portraits  drawn  from  actual  life,  followed  in  1844- 
1845;  then,  in  1847,  came  "  Tancred,"  in  which  the  author 
gave  vent  to  his  peculiar  notions  about  the  Hebrew  race,  and 
in  1870  "Lothair,"  and  in  1880  his  last  novel,  "  Endymion." 
All  display  a  remarkable  mastery  of  style,  and  that  luminous 
epigrammatic  power  which  was  the  glory  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
speeches.  One  of  the  most  notable  characteristics  of  the  whole 
series,  a  characteristic  which  has  scarcely  received  from  critics 
the  attention  which  so  striking  a  feature  deserves,  has  been  thus 
dealt  with  by  Mr.  J.  H.  Bryce  l  : — "  They  [the  novels]  are  as 
far  as  possible  from  being  immoral ;  that  is  to  say,  there  is  no- 
thing in  them  unbecoming  or  corrupting.  Honour,  friendship, 
love,  are  all  recognised  as  powerful  motives  of  human  conduct. 
That  which  is  wanting  is  the  sense  of  right  and  wrong.  Very 

1  In  the  Century  Magazine  for  March  1882. 


Charles  Reade.  401 

rarely  does  any  one  of  his  personages  ask  himself  whether  such 
and  such  a  course  is  right.  They  move  in  a  world  which  is 
polished,  agreeable,  dignified,  but  in  which  conscience  and 
religion  do  not  seem  to  exist — a  world  more  like  that  of 
Augustus  or  Lorenzo  de'  Medici  than  like  modern  England. 
Though  the  men  live  for  pleasure  or  fame,  the  women  for 
pleasure  or  love,  both  are  capable  of  making  sacrifices  at  the 
altar  of  affection ;  but  the  idea  of  duty  does  not  cross  their 
minds." 

Our  living  novelists  are  such  a  countless  host,  and  many  of 
them  are  so  equal  in  ability,  that  it  is  an  invidious  task  to 
select  two  or  three  for  special  mention.  Far  at  the  head  of 
the  "  sensational "  novelists  of  the  day  stands  Charles  Reade 
(born  1814),  whose  plots  we  follow,  if  not  always  with  pleasure — 
the  colour  is  often  too  thickly  laid  on,  and  horror  too  rapidly 
piled  upon  horror  for  that — at  any  rate  with  constant  excite- 
ment and  never-failing  interest.  It  is  perhaps  unfair  to  place 
a  writer  of  crisp,  nervous  style,  and  extraordinary  power  of 
graphic  description,  in  the  same  category  with  a  crowd  of 
authors  who  hope  to  gain  popularity  by  no  higher  artifice  than 
an  improbable  and  sensational  plot ;  yet  "sensational"  is  the 
only  epithet  we  can  think  of  which  describes  Mr.  Reade's  best 
work  with  any  degree  of  exactness.  He  does  not  excel  in  the 
depth  and  accuracy  of  his  delineations  of  character ;  he  does 
not  hold  the  mirror  up  to  nature  and  give  us  a  faithful  picture 
of  life  as  it  actually  is  ;  his  reflections  on  character  and  man- 
ners are  neither  very  trustworthy  nor  very  profound.  His 
strength  lies  in  the  elaborate  ingenuity  with  which  his  plots 
are  worked  out,  in  the  number  of  striking  incidents  with  which 
a  prolific  fancy  enables  him  to  embellish  his  tales,  and  in  the 
great  mastery  he  has  attained  over  the  difficult  but  very 
necessary  art  of  keeping  the  reader's  attention  enchained  to 
the  end.  "  Hard  Cash"  (1863)  and  "Griffith  Gaunt"  (1866) 
may  be  mentioned  as  favourable  specimens  of  his  genius. 

One  of  the  most  popular  and  one  of  the  most  industrious 
novelists  of  the  age  is  Anthony  Troilope  (born  1815).     How 
he  has  found  time  to  go  through  the  amount  of  work  he  has 
18 


4O2  Our  Own  Times. 

accomplished  is  a  perfect  marvel  He  has  written  above  eighty 
novels  and  novelettes ;  has  written  about  almost  all  English- 
speaking  peoples ;  besides  a  "  Life  of  Cicero,"  memoirs  of 
Caesar,  Thackeray,  and  Palmerston,  and  a  large  amount  of 
anonymous  journalistic  work.  In  addition  to  his  literary 
exertions  he  has  been  twice  round  the  world,  and  for  thirty- 
five  years  held  an  appointment  in  the  post-office.  Mr.  Trol- 
lope's  works,  if  occasionally  rather  spun  out,  are  all  charac- 
terised by  sound  judgment  and  a  wonderful  acquaintance 
with  the  higher  phases  of  English  society.  He  especially 
excels  in  his  description  of  the  life  of  the  English  clergy. 
Among  his  best  writings  may  be  mentioned  "  Framley  Parson- 
age," "  Orley  Farm,"  and  the  "  Last  Chronicle  of  Barset" 
Richard  Doddridge  Blackmore  (born  1825)  has,  after  writing 
for  some  time  in  comparative  obscurity,  at  length  obtained  the 
recognition  due  to  his  great  merits  as  a  describer  of  bygone 
life  in  country  districts  of  England  and  Wales.  He  excels  in 
the  description  of  scenery,  and  in  painting  the  wilder  aspects 
of  the  life  of  our  ancestors  some  generations  ago.  "  Lorna 
Doone,  a  Romance  of  Exmoor,"  and  "  Alice  Lorraine,"  are 
perhaps  his  best  productions.  Of  Thomas  Hardy  (born  1 840)  the 
chief  excellence  consists  in  his  peculiar  power  of  painting  rural 
life,  especially  in  its  idyllic  aspects.  Of  his  best  and  greatest 
work,  "Far  from  the  Madding  Crowd"  (1874),  the  great  at- 
traction is  the  way  in  which,  by  the  studied  quietness  of  the 
style,  the  delicate  shading  of  the  characters,  and  the  descrip- 
tions of  scenery,  the  reader  is  led,  as  it  were,  gradually  to 
breathe  the  slumbrous  atmosphere  of  a  sequestered  rural  dis- 
trict, where  the  bustle  and  turmoil  of  city  life  are  scarcely 
apprehended  even  in  imagination,  and  where  the  annual  sheep- 
shearing  and  the  harvest-home  dinner  are  the  most  important 
events  of  the  year.  The  quiet  humour  and  sympathy  with 
which  the  conversations  of  the  farm-labourers  are  related,  and 
the  technical  accuracy  with  which  various  pastoral  operations 
are  described,  show  that  Mr.  Hardy's  accounts  of  country  life 
are  drawn  from  careful  personal  observation  and  not  from 
books.  William  Black,  who  was  born  in  Glasgow  in  1841, 


Alfred  Tennyson.  403 

attained  his  first  great  success  by  the  publication,  in  1871,  of 
"  A  Daughter  of  Heth,"  one  of  the  most  pleasing  and  healthy 
novels  of  this  generation.  In  1872  followed  the  "Strange 
Adventures  of  a  Phaeton,"  founded  on  a  driving  excursion 
made  by  the  author  from  London  to  Edinburgh,  a  book  full 
of  high  spirits,  genial  humour,  and  showing  an  excellent  eye  for 
scenery.  "  A  Princess  of  Thule,"  which  has  been  translated 
into  many  foreign  tongues,  and  is  perhaps  the  most  popular  of 
Mr.  Black's  novels,  appeared  in  1873.  It  has  been  succeeded 
by  many  other  excellent  novels,  all  written  in  a  healthy  genial 
spirit,  displaying  a  wide  knowledge  of  character,  and  never 
wearying  the  reader  with  needless  digressions  and  moralisings. 
Mr.  Black's  power  of  painting  scenery  is  such  as  is  possessed 
by  few  writers.  The  word-painting  of  most  novelists  is  mere 
padding,  and  is  generally  skipped  by  the  reader — wisely, 
because  it  is  impossible  that  the  description  given  could 
convey  to  the  mind  any  real  idea  of  the  scene  portrayed. 
With  Mr.  Black  the  case  is  different ;  his  descriptions  always 
stand  forth  vivid  and  lifelike.  Other  eminent  novelists  of 
the  day,  such  as  James  Payn,  George  Meredith,  George 
MacDonald,  Wilkie  Collins,  Mrs.  Oliphant,  Mrs.  E.  Lynn 
Linton,  our  limits  forbid  us  to  deal  with.1 

We  now  turn  to  the  poetry  of  our  own  time.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  as  to  who  is  the  most  popular  poet  of  the  Vic- 
torian era.  It  is  long  since  Mr.  Tennyson  took  that  proud 

1  As  illustrating  the  rich  rewards  which  await  a  successful  writer  of  fiction 
in  these  days,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  mention  some  facts  which  came 
out  during  an  action  for  damages  by  Charles  Reade  against  the  proprietors 
of  the  Glasgow  Herald  in  1870.  From  Mr.  Reade's  evidence  it  appeared 
that  Dickens  gave  him  ^5  per  page  for  the  publication  of  "  Hard  Cash  " 
in  All  the  Year  Round,  Mr.  Reade  retaining  the  copyright.  Mr.  Andrew 
Chatto'(of  Messrs.  Cliatto  &  Windus)  stated  that  for  a  series  of  stories 
which  Mr.  Reade  was  then  contributing  to  Bdgravia  they  paid  him  £,$  a 
page,  or  rather  more  than  twopence-halfpenny  a  word,  if  the  stories  did  not 
exceed  four  pages,  and  ^4  a  page  if  the  stories  were  over  that  limit,  Mr. 
Reade's  copyright  being  reserved.  He  also  corroborated  what  Mr.  Reade 
had  mentioned,  that  Mr.  Chatto  had  offered  him  ,£2000  for  a  three-volume 
story,  to  be  published  in  Belgravia  and  separately,  Mr.  Reade  retaining 
the  copyright. 


404  Our  Own  Times. 

position,  and  though  since  then  many  rivals  have  appeared, 
none  has  ever  come  near  to  dislodge  him  from  it.  Alfred 
Tennyson  was  born  on  August  5,  1809,  at  Somersby,  a  hamlet 
in  Lincolnshire,  about  six  miles  from  Horncastle.  Of  Somersby 
and  a  neighbouring  parish  his  father  was  Rector.  After  hav- 
ing received  the  elements  of  education  from  his  father  and  at 
the  village  school,  Tennyson  was  sent  to  the  grammar-school 
at  Louth.  While  there  he  prepared,  along  with  his  brother 
Charles,  his  first  volume  of  poems,  which  was  published  in 
1827  under  the  title  of  "Poems  by  Two  Brothers."  It  is 
scarcely  necessary  to  say  that  none., of  the  pieces  contained  in 
the  little  book  have  been  reprinted.  About  1828  the  poet 
went  to  Cambridge,  and  in  the  same  year  he  wrote  a  poem  of 
greater  promise  than  his  previous  attempts,  "  A  Lover's  Tale," 
not  printed  till  1833,  and  not  published  till  1879,  when  the 
author  was  compelled  to  resuscitate  it  to  prevent  its  being 
pirated.  At  Cambridge,  which  he  left  without  taking  a  degree, 
Tennyson  gained  in  1828  the  Chancellor's  prize  for  a  poem 
on  "  Timbuctoo,"  and  there  began  that  friendship  for  Arthur 
Henry  Hallam,  son  of  Hallam  the  historian,  which  he  has 
rendered  immortal  by  "In  Memoriam."  In  1830  appeared 
"  Poems,  chiefly  Lyrical,  by  Alfred  Tennyson,"  a  volume  con- 
taining 154  pages,  of  which  about  sixty  have  been  thought 
worthy  of  preservation.  Another  little  volume,  containing 
amongst  other  poems  such  gems  of  song  as  "  The  May  Queen," 
"  The  Miller's  Daughter,"  "  CEnone,"  followed  in  the  winter  of 
1832.  Both  were  on  the  whole  favourably  received,  but  as 
yet  Tennyson  had  not  caught  the  public  ear. 

In  1842  appeared  "Poems  by  Alfred  Tennyson,"  in  two 
volumes,  consisting  partly  of  selections  from  the  1830  and 
•1832  volumes,  partly  of  poems  published  for  the  first  time. 
The  reception  of  these  volumes  was  most  enthusiastic  ;  all  the 
critics  were  loud  in  their  praise,  and  such  men  as  Wordsworth, 
J.  S.  Mill,  and  John  Sterling  joined  to  swell  the  popular 
applause.  In  1847  appeared  "The  Princess,"  suggested  ap- 
parently by  a  passage  in  Johnson's  "  Rasselas  :"— "The  Prin- 
cess thought  that  of  all  sublunary  things,  knowledge  was  the 


Tennyson  s  Charact^  rislics.  405 

best.  She  desired  first  to  learn  of  sciences,  and  then  proposed 
to  found  a  college  to  teach  women,  in  which  she  would  pre- 
side." In  1850  was  published  "In  Memoriam,"  a  record  of 
the  poet's  love  for  Arthur  Hallam,  a  young  man  full  of  promise, 
who  died  abroad  in  1833,  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-two.  In 
the  same  year,  on  the  death  of  Wordsworth,  Tennyson  re- 
ceived— 

"The  laurel,  greene  from  the  brows 
Oi  him  that  uttered  nothing  base.* 

"Maud"  appeared  in  1855;  the  "Idylls  of  the  King"  in 
1859  ;  "  Enoch  Arden  "  in  1864  ;  "  The  Holy  Grail  and  other 
Poems,"  containing  four  new  idylls,  in  1870  ;  two  dramas, 
"Queen  Mary  "  and  "Harold,"  in  1875  and  1877  respec- 
tively. The  volume,  "  Ballads  and  other  Poems,"  published  in 
iSSi,  shows  that  the  Laureate's  genius  has  suffered  no  diminu- 
tion by  age  ;  and  the  fervent  prayer  of  all  who  love  poetry  is 
that  he  may  long  be  spared  to  enrich  our  literature  with  many 
more  masterpieces  of  art. 

Mr.  Tennyson's  great  fame  has  not  been  attained  without 
much  patient  labour.  The  research  of  commentators  on  him 
has  shown  that  his  poems  bear  many  marks  of  careful 
revision,  the  textual  variations  in  different  editions  of  some 
of  them  being  considerable.  Refined  taste  and  exquisite  work- 
manship are  the  characteristics  of  all  he  has  written.  Fully  alive 
to  all  the  influences  of  his  time,  there  are  few  phases  of  modern 
thought  which  are  not  touched  on  in  his  writings ;  while  his 
rich  gift  of  imagination,  his  pure  and  elevated  diction,  and  his 
freedom  from  faults  of  taste  and  manner,  give  his  writings  a 
place  among  those  which  the  world  will  not  willingly  let  die. 
His  range  of  poetic  power  is  wide.  As  a  describer  of  natural 
scenery  he  is  so  accurate  that  it  has  been  said  that  a  painter 
might  perfectly  rely  on  his  statements  of  facts. 

"  Perhaps,  compared  with  the  great  old  masters, 

His  range  of  landscape  may  not  be  much  ; 
But  who,  out  of  ail  their  stairy  number, 
Can  beat  our  Allrtd  in  tiuth  of  touch  ?" 

Exquisite  lyrics  of  love,  and  stirring  war-ballads  of  equal  excel- 


406  Our  Own  Times. 

lence,  have  come  from  his  pen.  He  is  as  much  at  home  in  giving 
dramatic  utterance  to  the  reflections  of  the  "  Northern  Farmer" 
as  in  picturing  the  feelings  of  St.  Simeon  Stylites.  Among 
the  least  successful  of  his  works  must  be  placed  his  dramas, 
full  as  they  are  of  passages  of  noble  poetic  eloquence.  Why 
the  writer  who  has  shown  such  admirable  dramatic  skill  in  the 
monologues  put  in  the  mouth  of  Ulysses,  the  Northern  Farmer, 
and  others,  should  have  comparatively  failed  when  he  came  to 
write  a  complete  play,  is  a  question  which  must  have  puzzled 
many  readers.  The  answer  to  it  may  perhaps  be  found  in  the 
following  extract  from  Mr.  VV.  C.  Roscoe,  who  has  written  one 
of  the  best  of  the  many  estimates  of  the  Laureate's  genius.  "  He 
is,"  says  Mr.  Roscoe,  "at  once  the  most  creative  and  the  least 
dramatic  of  poets  ;  the  nearest  to  Shakespeare,  and  the  furthest 
from  him.  He  has  in  the  highest  degree  the  fundamental 
poetic  impulse.  He  fuses  all  things,  and  golden  shapes  spring 
from  his  mould,  with  only  the  material  in  common  with  his  ore ; 
rather,  ideas  are  sown  in  his  brain,  and  spring  up  in  concrete 
organic  forms.  The  passion  to  reproduce  in  concrete  wholes 
constitutes,  indeed,  that  fundamental  poetic  impulse  which  we 
have  ascribed  to  him.  He  may  be  didactic,  philosophical, 
oratorical,  sentimental,  but  all  these  things  he  encloses  in  a 
golden  ball  of  poesy.  He  may  have,  and  often  has,  an  ulti- 
mate moral  object.  This  is  by  no  means  inconsistent  with  the 
highest  effort  of  artistic  production,  as  has  been  sometimes 
too  easily  assumed.  It  is  true,  you  cannot  comply  with  the 
conditions  of  art,  you  cannot  have  the  feelings  of  the  artist, 
if  you  drive  directly  by  the  medium  of  verse  at  a  moral  result 
or  an  intellectual  conclusion  ;  but  you  may  have  these  for 
your  ultimate  object,  and  you  may  embody  them  in  true 
poetical  forms.  .  .  .  To  say  that  Tennyson's  genius  is  not 
dramatic,  is  certainly  to  contradict  some  of  his  critics.  Some- 
thing depends  on  what  is  meant  by  the  term.  He  certainly 
has  the  power  of  penetrating  the  mood  of  another  mind  ;  but 
it  will  generally  be  found  that  this  is  another  mind  in  a  special 
situation ;  and  this  is  a  very  different  thing  from  exhibiting 
character  through  the  medium  of  situations  and  the  self-expression 


Robert  Browning.  407 

elicited  by  these  situations ;  and  in  this,  we  take  it,  consists  the 
essence  of  the  drama."  The  essay  from  which  these  words 
are  taken  was  written  in  1855,  long  before  Mr.  Tennyson 
formally  appeared  as  a  dramatist.  They  certainly  afford  a 
very  remarkable  instance  of  acute  critical  insight. 

While  Tennyson's  works  are  read  and  admired  by  all  who 
make  any  pretensions  to  literary  taste,  it  is  only  to  a  limited 
circle  that  the  genius  of  Robert  Browning  is  known  except  by 
hearsay.  The  frequent  harshness  of  his  phraseology ;  his 
obscurity,  his  love  of  dealing  with  subjects  which  have  little 
interest  for  the  majority  of  people,  have  combined  to  confine 
him  to  an  audience  fit,  perhaps,^  but  certainly  very  few.  Yet 
by  those  who  really  appreciate  him,  no  poet  is  prized  more 
highly ;  and  his  originality  and  genius  have  long  since  been 
acknowledged  by  the  general  consent  of  all  competent  judges. 
No  poet  since  Dryden  has  equalled  him  in  the  power  of 
reasoning  in  verse ;  and  his  masculine  vigour  of  thought  and 
remarkable  faculty  of  setting  dramatically  before  us  different 
types  of  character,  give  him  a  place  by  himself  in  the  roll  of 
English  poets.  He  was  born  at  Camberwell  on  May  7,  1812. 
From  his  earliest  years  he  was  fond  of  writing  verse,  and  by 
the  time  he  was  twelve  years  of  age  had  collected  poems 
enough  to  form  a  volume,  for  which  he  tried  to  get  a  publisher — 
fortunately  in  vain,  he  was  afterwards  doubtless  glad  lo  think. 
His  first  publication,  "Pauline,"  a  little  volume  of  seventy 
pages,  appeared  in  1833.  In  1835  followed  "  Paracelsus,"  a 
drama  of  a  shapeless  kind,  which  found  not  a  few  imitators. 
"  Paracelsus  "  is  a  very  stiff  morsel  for  the  student  of  poetry, 
and  it  is  not  wonderful  that  its  sale  was  small  and  the  criti- 
cisms of  it  for  the  most  part  unfavourable.  In  1837  Mr. 
Browning's  tragedy  of  "Strafford"  was  brought  out  on  the 
boards  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre.  In  1840  appeared  one  of 
his  most  characteristic  works,  the  epic  "Bordello."  In  1841 
he  began  the  publication  of  the  series  of  "  Bells  and  Pome- 
granates," which  extended  to  eight  numbers,  concluding  in 
1846.  In  it  was  published  much  of  Browning's  finest  poetry, 
including  his  tragedy  of  the  "  Blot  on  the  Scutcheon,"  and  the 


408  Our  Own  7imes. 

graceful  dramatic  poem  of  "Pippa  Passes."  In  1846  he  was 
married  to  Miss  Elizabeth  Barrett,  on  the  whole  perhaps  the 
greatest  poetess  England  has  produced.  Our  history  now 
requires  us  to  retrace  our  steps  a  little. 

Mrs.  Barrett  Browning  (to  give  her  at  once  the  name  by 
which  she  is  best  known  to  literature)  was  born  in  1809,  at 
Hope  End,  near  Ledbury.  Like  Mr.  Browning,  she  very 
early  gave  evidence  of  her  taste  for  poetical  composition. 
"  I  wrote  verses,"  she  says,  "as  I  daresay  many  have  done 
who  never  wrote  any  poems,  very  early  :  at  eight  years  old 
and  eariier.  But  what  is  less  common,  the  early  fancy  turned 
into  a  ivill  and  remained  with  me  ;  and  from  that  day  to  this 
poetry  has  been  a  distinct  object  with  me — an  object  to  read, 
think,  and  live  for.  And  I  could  make  you  laugh,  although 
you  could  not  make  the  public  laugh,  by  the  narrative  of 
nascent  odes,  epics,  and  didactics  crying  aloud  on  obsolete 
muses  from  childish  lips."  Her  first  publication  was  an 
"  Essay  on  Mind,"  "  a  didactic  poem,"  she  writes,  "  written 
when  I  was  seventeen  or  eighteen,  and  long  repented  of  as 
worthy  of  all  repentance."  Several  years  after  its  publication 
were  spent  in  the  assiduous  study  of  Greek  literature,  of  which 
one  result  was  a  translation  of  the  "Prometheus"  of  ^Eschy- 
lus.  Other  writings  followed,  and  in  1850  her  collected  works, 
together  with  several  new  poems,  were  published.  "  Casa 
Guidi  Windows,"  a  poem  commemorating  the  struggle  of  the 
Tuscans  for  liberty  in  1849,  appeared  in  1851.  "Aurora 
Leigh,"  a  novel  in  verse,  full  of  power,  but  occasionally  exag- 
gerated and  spasmodic,  was  published  in  1856.  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing died  at  Florence  in  1861.  Apparently  poured  off  hastily, 
without  any  attempt  at  correction  or  curtailment,  her  poems 
contain  many  flaws — faults  of  language,  and  faults  of  thought, 
but  they  also  show  genuine  lyric  impetuosity,  true  pathos,  and 
unfailing  freshness  and  force.  Her  so-called  "  Sonnets  from 
the  Portuguese,"  commemorating  the  progress  of  her  wooing, 
are  among  the  most  enchanting  love  poems  in  the  language. 

Mr.  Browning  is  a  very  voluminous  poet.  His  writings 
since  the  publication  of  those  mentioned  above  have  been 


Dante  Gabriel  Ros set ti.  409 

inany,  including  "  Men  and  Women,"  "  The  Inn  Album," 
"The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  "  Fifine  at  the  Fair,"  &c.  The 
progress  of  time  cannot  be  said  to  have  done  anything  to 
abate  his  faults  ;  indeed,  his  most  recently  published  works  are 
even  more  full  than  their  predecessors  of  crabbed  phraseology 
and  almost  studied  obscurity.  This  is  greatly  to  be  regretted, 
especially  as  Mr.  Browning  has  proved  in  many  of  his  poems 
that  eccentricity  of  diction  is  not  a  necessary  concomitant  of 
his  genius.  What,  for  example,  could  be  more  exquisite  than 
the  following  picture  : — 

"Nobly,  nobly,  Cape  St.  Vincent  to  the  north-west  died  away  j 
Sunset  ran,  one  glorious  blood-red,  reeking  into  Cadiz  Bay  ; 
Blui.^h  'mid  the  burning  \vater,  full  in  face  Trafalgar  lay  ; 
In  the  dimmest  north-east  distance,  dawned  Gibraltar  grand  and  grey  ; 
Here  and  here  did  England  help  me  :  how  can  I  help  England? — say, 
While  Jove's  planet  rises  yonder  silent,  over  Africa." 

From  a  poet  who  can  write  lines  like  these,  the  lover  of 
poetry  is  content  to  put  up  with  occasional  fantasticality  and 
with  a  sometimes  even  exasperating  portion  of  obscurity. 
When  the  dust  and  refuse  of  his  writings  shall  have  been  purged 
away  in  the  furnace  of  time,  enough  of  pure  gold  will  still 
remain  to  justify  the  placing  of  Robert  Browning  among  the 
great  masters  of  song. 

We  come  now  to  a  group  of  poets  whose  fame  has  been 
won  within  the  last  twenty  years.  Their  work  had  its  origin 
in  a  literary  movement  corresponding  to  the  pre-Raphaelite 
movement  in  art.  About  all  they  have  done  is  a  flavour  of 
"sestheticism,"  and  of  none  of  them  can  it  be  said  that,  like 
Tennyson  or  Browning,  he  appeals  to  the  general  hopes  and 
fears  of  humanity.  Around  all,  or  almost  all,  their  writings 
there  is  a  certain  artificial  atmosphere;  their  poems  rather 
resemble  hot-house  plants  than  bright,  fresh,  hardy  flowers 
reared  in  the  open  air.  One  of  the  chief  members  of  the 
school  was  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  the  most  gifted  of  a  very 
gifted  family.  He  was  born  in  1828,  the  son  of  an  Italian 
refugee,  well  known  as  a  commentator  on  Dante,  and  for  many 
years  Professor  of  Italian  Literature  in  King's  College,  Lon 


4io  Our  Own  Times. 

don.  Art  was  Rossetti's  profession;  and  as  one  of  the  leading 
members  of  the  pre-Raphaelite  brotherhood  he  early  attained 
great  fame  as  a  painter  by  his  originality  of  design  and  vivid- 
ness of  colouring.  From  an  early  age  he  also  wrote  verse,  and 
in  1 86 1  published  a  series  of  admirable  translations,  under  the 
title  of  "  Early  Italian  Poets  from  Ciullio  d'Alcanno  to  Dante 
Alighieri."  In  1870  he  was,  rather  reluctantly,  induced 
to  publish  a  collection  of  his  poems,  some  of  them  written 
many  years  previously.  Another  volume  followed  in  the 
year  preceding  his  death.  Rossetti  has  been  well  described 
by  a  eulogistic  critic  as  "  distinctively,  though  not  exclu- 
sively, the  poet  of  the  romance  and  mastery  of  personal 
passion — passion  uttered  sometimes  in  narrative  and  sometimes 
in  lyric  form — his  favourite  type  of  narrative  being  the  archaic 
ballad,  in  which  a  story  is  told  and  its  scenery  realised  at  a 
sustained,  unflagging  pitch  of  detailed  vividness  and  intensity; 
and  his  favourite  type  of  lyric,  the  sonnet,  in  which  he  is  ac- 
customed to  embody  a  mood  or  phase  of  feeling  in  a  pageant 
of  descriptive  images  and  symbols  rather  than  in  direct  terms, 
although  in  directness,  too,  he  can  be  a  master  when  he 
chooses."  His  sonnets,  admirable  in  their  refined  construc- 
tion, are  among  the  best  of  the  kind  in  the  language;  and  it 
would  be  difficult  to  find  a  parallel  to  the  strain  of  weird 
pathos  which  vibrates  through  "Sister  Helen  "  and  some  other 
of  his  ballads.  Mr.  Rossetti  died  in  April  1882,  having 
shortened  his  life  by  the  use  of  chloral,  which  he  took  as  a 
cure  for  insomnia.  His  brother,  William  Michael  Rossetti 
(born  1829),  is  well  known  as  a  critic  and  writer  on  art;  and 
his  sister,  Christina  Georgina  Rossetti  (born  1830),  is  one  of 
the  greatest  of  living  poetesses. 

William  Morris  (born  1834),  the  leading  partner  in  the 
well-known  firm  of  Morris,  Marshall,  &  Faulkner,  which  has 
done  so  much  for  decorative  art,  as  a  storyteller  has  no  rival 
among  living  poets  ;  indeed,  there  are  very  few  since  Chaucer 
who  have  approached  him  in  this  difficult  art.  Among  his 
chief  works  are  the  "Defence  of  Guenevere"  (1858),  the  "  Life 
and  Death  of  Jason"  (1867),  and  the  "Earthly  Paradise"  (1868- 


Algernon  Charles  Swinburne.  411 


70).  He  has  also  written  a  verse  translation  of  the 
which,  in  the  opinion  of  many,  conveys  to  the  unlearned 
reader  a  truer  idea  of  the  charm  of  the  original  than  any  other. 
The  grace  and  melody  of  Mr.  Morris's  versification,  the  delight- 
ful ease  and  delicacy  with  which  he  tells  his  stories,  the  air  of 
culture  and  refinement  which  surrounds  everything  he  writes, 
give  his  works  an  irresistible  attractiveness  to  every  reader 
who  can  feel  the  charms  of  beautiful  tales  beautifully  related. 

The  youngest  of  the  leading  members  of  the  school  of 
poetry  to  which  Mr.  Rossetti  and  Mr.  Morris  belong,  and  per- 
haps the  greatest,  is  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne  (born  1839), 
whose  great  genius  has  long  since  made  itself  heard  above  the 
storm  of  adverse  criticism  which  certain  features  in  his  early 
works  evoked.  In  1861  he  published  two  plays,  "  The  Queen 
Mother"  and  "  Rosamund,"  juvenile  productions  which  at- 
tracted but  little  attention,  and  that  little  not  of  a  favourable 
kind.  The  two  works  following  these,  "  Atlanta  in  Calydon," 
a  tragedy  on  the  Greek  model,  and  "  Chastelard,"  the  first  of 
three  plays  he  has  written  founded  on  the  story  of  Mary  Stuart, 
gained  more  admirers,  but  as  yet  his  circle  of  readers  was 
narrow  and  his  fame  limited.  It  was  not  till  the  publication 
of  "  Poems  and  Ballads,"  in  1866,  that  he  obtained  any  general 
or  widespread  popularity.  Few  who  take  an  interest  in  lite- 
rary history  can  have  forgotten  the  mingled  storm  of  detrac- 
tion and  praise  which  that  volume  called  forth  ;  how  by  some 
organs  of  opinion  it  was  hailed  with  such  laudations  as  would 
have  required  modification  if  applied  to  Shakespeare  or 
Milton  ;  and  how  by  other  journals  it  was  treated  with  af- 
fected contempt  as  the  frenzied  and  meretricious  production 
of  a  naughty  schoolboy.  Part  of  the  praise  and  part  of  the 
censure  were  merited.  .  The  volume,  no  doubt,  contained 
many  objectionable  features,  but  it  also  showed  a  luxuriant 
imagination,  great  command  of  language,  and  consummate 
mastery  of  metre.  As  his  other  works  appeared  in  rapid  suc- 
cession, it  became  universally  recognised  that  in  Mr.  Swin- 
burne we  possess  a  writer  who,  in  spite  of  some  grave  defects, 
can  with  justice  be  ranked  among  our  great  poets.  He  has 


412  Our  Own  Times. 

not  Mr.  Tennyson's  depth  and  tenderness  of  feeling  j  he  lacks 
Mr.  Browning's  masculine  intensity  and  great  faculty  for 
reasoning  in  verse;  it  is  often  painfully  obvious,  especially  in 
his  shorter  pieces,  that  his  command  of  metre  and  language 
greatly  surpasses  the  worth  of  what  he  has  to  say.  Neverthe- 
less his  works  constantly  possess  that  indefinable  aroma  which 
is  always  found  in  the  poetry  of  genius,  and  which  is  always 
absent  from  the  poetry  of  mere  talent,  however,  high  that 
talent  may  be.  The  list  of  Mr.  Swinburne's  works  is  a  long 
one,  when  we  consider  that  he  may  yet  look  for  many  years 
of  productiveness.  Excellent  specimens  of  his  style  may  be 
found  in  "  Mary  Stuart,  a  Tragedy"  (1881),  the  last  portion 
of  the  triology  of  which  "Chastelard"  and  "Bothwell"  form 
parts ;  and  in  <;  Tristram  of  Lyonesse,  and  Other  Poems  " 
(1882).  He  has  also  written  extensively  in  prose, — among 
other  works,  a  volume  of  essays,  containing  much  eloquent  and 
subtle,  if  occasionally  one-sided  and  exaggerated  criticism  ; 
a  cr'uical  study  of  William  Blake  ;  a  "  Note  on  Charlotte 
Bronte,"  and  various  contributions  to  the  edition  of  the  "  Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica"  now  publishing.  His  prose  style  has 
many  of  the  qualities  of  his  poetry ;  it  is  so  highly  coloured, 
so  gorgeous  and  glaring,  as  to  be  sometimes  positively  repug- 
nant to  those  who  think  compression  and  sobriety  of  language 
among  the  lamps  of  style.  Both  praise  and  blame  are  apt  to 
be  dealt  out  in  excess  by  him.  Mr.  Swinburne  is  not  among 
those  who  consider  a  middle  course  the  safest  and  best. 

We  would  willingly  be  detained  by.  many  other  poets  of  the 
Victorian  age,  such  as  Arthur  Clough,  Sydney  Dobell,  Alexander 
Smith,  Gerald  Massey,  Lewis  Morris,  Bell  Scott,  but  we  must 
pass  on.  In  the  department  of  history,  two  great  writers, 
second  to  none  in  power  and  popularity,  have  adorned  our  time 
— Lord  Macaulay  and  Thomas  Carlyle.  Thomas  Babington 
Macaulay  was  born  on  October  25,  1800,  at  Rothley  Temple, 
in  Leicestershire.  His  father  was  Zachary  Macaulay,  a  most 
conscientious,  laborious,  and  highly  respected  man,  who 
devoted  himself  with  unwearied  assiduity  and  persistence  to 
the  cause  of  slave-trade  abolition.  Never  was  the  adage  that 


Lord  Macaulay.  413 

the  child  is  father  of  the  man  better  exemplified  than  in  Mac- 
aulay's  case.  Even  when  little  more  than  a  baby  his  un- 
quenchable love  of  reading  showed  itself;  and  what  he  read 
was  firmly  retained  in  a  memory  of  such  iron  tenacity  that 
anything  fixed  in  it  was  scarcely  ever  forgotten.  He  was  a  re- 
markably precocious  child,  writing  when  about  twelve  verse  and 
prose  which  would  have  done  credit  to  much  maturer  years. 
It  is  curious  to  find  in  his  letters  to  his  parents,  written  when 
he  was  a  mere  boy,  that  literary  way  of  putting  things  which 
never  deserted  him  either  in  his  conversation  or  in  his  most 
familiar  correspondence.  In  his  nineteenth  year  he  entered 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  Nothing  could  be  imagined 
more  to  the  taste  of  a  youth  of  Macaulay's  temperament 
than  a  university  life,  with  its  abundant  means  of  access  to 
books,  and  the  facilities  it  affords  for  becoming  acquainted 
with  persons  of  similar  character  to  oneself.  The  years  of 
his  residence  at  Cambridge  were  among  the  happiest  of  his 
very  happy  life,  though  he  detested  mathematics,  then  as  now 
the  favourite  study  of  the  place,  and  devoted  as  little  time  to 
them  as  possible.  But  in  classics  he  acquired  such  facility  as 
in  1821  to  gain  the  proud  distinction  of  the  Craven  Scholar- 
ship ;  and  he  twice  gained  the  Chancellor's  Medal  for  English 
verse.  He  also  acquired  great  renown  among  his  companions 
as  one  of  the  best  orators  of  the  Cambridge  Union,  and  became 
noted  among  his  friends  for  his  perpetual  flow  of  talk  and 
his  propensity  to  indulge  in  argument.  In  1822  he  took  his 
degree  of  B.A.,  and  in  1824  was  elected  a  Fellow  of  Trinity 
Co.lege. 

Macaulay's  literary  life  began  by  some  contributions  to 
Knight's  Quarterly  Magazine  in  1823-24.  Most  of  these  have 
been  reprinted  in  his  miscellaneous  works,  and  prove  that  he 
was  already  master  of  that  singularly  readable,  clear,  incisive 
style  to  which  he  owes  so  much  of  his  popularity.  His  abili- 
iie£  soon  made  him  known,  and  in  1825  overtures  were  made 
to  him  to  become  a  contributor  to  the  Edinburgh  Jtevizw, 
Jeffrey  being  anxious  to  introduce  a  little  fresh  blood  into  the 
organ  of  the  Whigs.  The  result  of  these  overtures  was  the 


4.14  Our  Own  Times. 

famous  article  on  Milton,  published  in  the  Review  for  August 
1825.  Though  containing  many  assertions  that  will  not  stand 
the  test  of  sober  and  rational  criticism,  and,  as  the  author  after- 
wards acknowledged,  too  glaring  and  redundant  in  style,  the 
article,  with  its  enthusiastic  fervour,  its  sonorous  rhetoric,  and 
its  bursts  of  splendid,  if  occasionally  misleading  eloquence, 
was  one  eminently  calculated  to  attract  attention.  It  did  so 
to  an  extent  almost  without  parallel  in  the  history  of  periodical 
literature.  "  The  effect  on  the  author's  reputation  was  instan- 
taneous. Like  Lord  Byron,  he  awoke  one  morning  and 
found  himself  famous."  Invitations  to  dinner-parties  came  in 
crowds,  and  Macaulay  soon  became  a  great  figure  at  Holland 
House,  where  the  elite  of  Whig  society  gathered  together,  and 
began  to  associate  on  equal  terms  with  Rogers,  Sydney 
Smith,  Luttrel,  Allen,  and  other  famous  talkers  who  made 
that  edifice  famous  in  social  annals.  In  1826  he  was  called 
to  the  Bar  and  went  the  Northern  Circuit,  but  he  never 
looked  seriously  to  law  as  a  profession.  It  was  to  distinction 
in  literature  and  in  politics  that  his  aspirations  were  turned. 
He  was,  and  he  felt  himself  to  be,  equally  qualified  to  succeed 
in  both.  His  literary  fame  steadily  rose  as  article  after  article 
from  his  brilliant  pen  appeared  in  the  Edinburgh  Review.  In 
1828  Lord  Lyndhurst  made  him  a  Commissioner  of  Bank- 
ruptcy, an  office  which,  with  the  sums  he  derived  from  his 
Trinity  Fellowship  and  from  his  contributions  to  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  made  up  his  annual  income  to  about  ^900.  In  1830 
he  was,  through  the  influence  of  Lord  Lansdowne,  who  had 
been  much  struck  by  his  articles  on  Mill,  and  wished  to  be 
the  means  of  first  introducing  their  author  to  public  life,  re- 
turned member  of  Parliament  for  the  borough  of  Calne. 

Macaulay  soon  made  his  mark  in  Parliament.  He  was  one 
of  the  chief  speakers  in  favour  of  the  Reform  Bill,  and  many 
were  the  eulogiums  with  which  his  orations  were  greeted  by 
those  whose  praise  was  all  the  more  valuable  because  they 
were  themselves  distinguished  speakers.  In  1832  he  was  ap- 
pointed one  of  the  Commissioners  of  the  Board  of  Control, 
and  in  the  same  rear  was  returned  member  for  Leeds.  Dun 


Macaulay  in  India.  415 

ing  the  first  session  of  the  reformed  Parliament  he  spoke 
frequently,  and  always  with  success.  In  1834  he  was  made 
president  of  a  new  Law  Commission  for  India,  and  one  of 
the  members  of  the  Supreme  Council,  with  a  salary  of  ;£i  0,000 
a  year.  The  motives  which  induced  him  to  exchange  the 
comforts,  the  books,  and  the  lettered  society  of  England  for 
the  heat  and  isolation  of  Calcutta  are  well  explained  in  a  letter 
of  his  to  Lord  Lansdowne.  "I  feel,"  he  says,  "that  the 
sacrifice  which  I  am  about  to  make  is  great,  but  the  motives 
which  urge  me  to  make  it  are  quite  irresistible.  Every  day 
that  I  live  I  become  less  and  less  desirous  of  great  wealth, 
but  every  day  makes  me  more  sensible  of  the  importance  of  a 
competence.  Without  a  competence  it  is  not  very  easy  for  a 
public  man  to  be  honest ;  it  is  almost  impossible  for  him  to 
be  thought  so.  I  am  so  situated  that  I  can  subsist  only  in 
two  ways  :  by  being  in  office,  and  by  my  pen.  Hitherto, 
literature  has  been  merely  my  relaxation — the  amusement  of 
perhaps  a  month  in  the  year.  I  have  never  considered  it  as 
the  means  of  support  I  have  chosen  my  own  topics,  taken 
my  own  time,  and  dictated  my  own  terms.  The  thought  of 
becoming  a  bookseller's  hack;  of  writing  to  relieve,  not  the 
fulness  of  the  mind,  but  the  emptiness  of  the  pocket ;  of  spur- 
ring a  jaded  fancy  to  reluctant  exertion  ;  of  filling  sheets  with 
trash  merely  that  sheets  may  be  filled ;  of  bearing  from  pub- 
lishers and  editors  what  Dryden  bore  from  Tonson.  ami  what, 
to  my  own  knowledge,  Mackintosh  bore  from  Lardner,  is 
horrible  to  me.  Yet  thus  it  must  be  if  I  should  quit  office. 
Yet  to  hold  office  merely  for  the  sake  of  emolument  would  be 
more  horrible  still."  During  his  outward  voyage  to  India, 
Macaulay  passed  his  time  in  reading,  with,  to  use  his  own 
words,  "  keen  and  increasing  enjoyment.  I  devoured  Greek, 
Latin,  Spanish,  Italian,  French,  and  English  ;  folios,  quartos, 
octavos,  duodecimos."  He  arrived  at  Madras  in  June  1834, 
and  returned  to  England  in  1838.  The  most  important  piece 
of  official  work  done  by  Macaulay  during  his  residence  in 
India  was  the  Indian  Penal  Code.  He  always  regarded 
this  piece  of  work  with  very  considerable  pride  and  satisfac- 


416  Our  Own  Times. 

tion.  During  his  residence  in  India  his  contributions  to  the 
Edinburgh  Rariew  continued  as  before,  and  his  insatiable  love 
of  reading  suffered  no  abatement.  Among  other  articles,  that 
on  Bacon  (one  of  the  most  elaborate  and  ambitious,  if  also  one 
of  the  most  misleading  of  his  performances)  was  written  there ; 
and  there  also  he  went  through  a  course  of  classical  reading 
almost  incredible  in  its  extent  and  variety.  He  used  to  define 
a  scholar  as  "one  who  could  read  Plato  with  his  feet  on  the 
fender."  To  this  definition  he  himself  exactly  answered. 
While  reading  the  works  of  the  great  Greek  writers,  he  did  not 
pause  to  trouble  himself  about  verbal  subtleties  or  grammatical 
minutiae;  he  read  them,  as  he  would  have  read  Shakespeare, 
or  Milton,  or  Burke — for  the  sake  of  their  literary  charm.  It 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  to  Macaulay's  exile  in  the  East 
we  owe  the  local  colouring  of  two  brilliant  essays  from  which 
most  people  have  drawn  their  slender  store  of  Indian  history 
— those  on  Lord  Clive  and  Warren  Hastings. 

After  a  tour  on  the  Continent,  Macaulay  was,  in  1839,  elected 
member  for  Edinburgh,  and  was  appointed  Secretary  at  War, 
with  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet.  On  the  fall  of  the  Melbourne 
Ministry,  of  which  the  country  had  got  heartily  tired,  he  was 
re-elected  for  Edinburgh.  In  1842  he  published  his  "Lays  of 
Ancient  Rome,"  stirring  ballads,  not  containing  many  in- 
trinsically poetical  qualities,  but  full  of  fire  and  spirit.  In  the 
following  year  he  was  prevailed  on  to  republish  his  Edinburgh 
Review  essays,  of  which,  as  in  the  case  of  the  similar  produc- 
tions of  De  Quincey  and  Carlyle, 'a  collected  edition  had 
already  appeared  in  America.  The  most  prominent  event  of 
his  political  career  during  the  time  his  party  was  in  opposition 
was  the  part  he  took  in  bringing  about  the  present  state  of  the 
law  of  copyright.  In  1846,  on  the  return  of  the  W7higs  to 
power,  he  obtained,  in  Lord  Russell's  administration,  the 
office  of  Paymaster-General,  with  a  seat  in  the  Cabinet.  At 
the  general  election  which  followed  the  dissolution  of  Parlia- 
ment in  1847,  Macaulay,  who,  principally  by  his  at  itude  with 
regard  to  certain  religious  questions  which  then  excited  much 
attention,  had  contrived  to  make  himself  exceedingly  un« 


Afacaufay's  Appearance.  417 

popular  in  Edinburgh,  lost  his  seat  for  that  city.  With  his  re- 
jection his  political  life  may  be  said  to  have  closed.  Edin- 
burgh, indeed,  atoned  for  its  error  in  discarding  one  of  the 
most  honest  and  manly  politicians  that  ever  lived  by  returning 
him,  unasked  and  free  of  expense,  in  1852;  but  by  that  time 
all  his  thoughts  and  time  were  occupied  in  the  composition  of 
his  History,  and  he  took  very  little  part  in  public  business. 

Macaulay's  last  article  for  the  Edinburgh  Review — the  sketch 
of  Chatham's  later  years — was  written  in  1844.  After  that  all 
his  literary  energy  was  devoted  to  his  History,  of  which  the 
first  two  volumes  appeared  at  the  close  of  1848.  A  few  days 
after  their  publication  he  wrote  in  his  diary,  "  I  have  felt  to- 
day somewhat  anxious  about  the  fate  of  my  book.  ...  All 
that  I  hear  is  laudatory.  But  who  can  trust  praise  which  is 
poured  into  his  own  ear?  At  all  events,  I  have  aimed  high  ; 
I  have  tried  to  do  something  that  may  be  remembered  ;  I  have 
had  the  year  2000,  and  even  the  year  3000,  often  in  my  mind ; 
I  have  sacrificed  nothing  to  temporary  fashions  of  thought  and 
style ;  and  if  I  fail,  my  failure  will  be  more  honourable  than 
nine-tenths  of  the  successes  which  I  have  witnessed."  His 
apprehensions  were  groundless.  The  History  obtained  enor- 
mous and  universal  success.  In  1855  appeared  the  second 
two  volumes,  which  were  received  with  at  least  equal  avidity. 
In  1857  he  received  a  well-merited  acknowledgment  of  his 
fame  by  being  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Macaulay  of 
Rothley.  Induced  by  personal  regard  to  the  publisher,  Mr 
Adam  Black,  he  was  induced  to  furnish,  between  1853-1859,  for 
the  eighth  edition  of  the  "  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,"  masterly 
sketches  of  Atterbury,  Bunyan,  Goldsmith,  Johnson,  and  Pitt 
The  biography  of  Pitt,  which  is  one  of  the  finest  specimens  of 
style,  was  the  last  work  that  he  lived  to  publish.  He  died 
on  December  28,  1859,  leaving  behind  him  the  rough  draft  of 
what  was  afterwards  published  as  the  fifth  volume  of  his  History 
by  his  sister,  Lady  Trevelyan. 

Macaulay's  outward  man,  his  nephew  tells  us,  was  never 
better  described  than  in  two  sentences  of  Praed's  Introduction 
to  Knighfs  Quarterly  Magazine.  "There  came  up  a  short 


4i 8  Our  Own  Times. 

manly  figure,  marvellously  upright,  with  a  bad  neckcloth,  and 
one  hand  in  his  waistcoat  pocket.  Of  regular  beauty  he  had 
little  to  boast,  but  in  faces  where  there  is  an  expression  of 
great  power,  or  of  great  good-humour,  or  both,  you  do  not 
regret  its  absence."  In  everything  that  requires  manual 
dexterity  he  was  singularly  awkward,  and  he  was  utterly 
destitute  of  all  bodily  accomplishments.  When,  during  his 
attendance  at  Windsor  as  a  Cabinet  Minister,  he  was  informed 
that  there  was  a  horse  at  his  disposal,  he  replied,  "If  Her 
Majesty  wishes  to  see  me  ride,  she  must  order  out  an  ele- 
phant." Much  might  be  said  in  praise  of  the  dignity,  honesty, 
and  manliness  of  his  private  character.  No  language  could 
be  too  strong  to  describe  the  deep  affection  which  he  felt  for 
some  of  his  relatives,  especially  his  sisters  and  a  few  cherished 
friends.  For  them  he  considered  no  sacrifice  too  great.  Yet 
he  was  not  exactly  what  is  known  as  a  good-hearted  man. 
He  was,  it  is  true,  generous  in  supplying  the  pecuniary  wants 
of  the  many  applicants  for  his  bounty ;  but  the  money  so 
bestowed  was  often  given  with  a  grudge  and  a  sneer. 

As  an  author,  Macaulay's  conscientious  industry  and  never- 
ceasing  carefulness  deserve  the  highest  commendation.  It  is, 
indeed,  as  Mr.  Gladstone,  in  his  most  candid  and  judicious 
essay  on  Macaulay,  has  observed,  delightful  to  find  that  the 
most  successful  prose-writer  of  the  day  was  also  the  most 
painstaking.  Though,  after  the  establishment  of  his  fame, 
he  could  have  commanded  whatever  price  he  chose  for  any- 
thing that  came  from  his  pen,  his  vigilance  never  for  a 
moment  relaxed.  He  "  unshrinkingly  went  through  an  im- 
mense mass  of  inquiry,  which  even  he  felt  sometimes  to  be 
irksome,  and  which  to  most  men  would  have  been  intolerable. 
He  was  perpetually  picking  the  grain  of  corn  out  of  the 
bushel  of  chaff.  He  freely  chose  to  undergo  the  dust,  and 
heat,  and  strain  of  battle' before  he  would  challenge  from  the 
public  the  crown  of  victory."  His  method  in  composing  his 
History  was  first  to  write  rapidly  out  a  rough  draft,  and  then 
begin  to  fill  it  in  at  the  rate  of  six  pages  of  foolscap  every 
morning,  written  in  so  large  a  hand  and  containing  so  many 


Macaulays  Writings.  419 

erasures  as  to  make  on  an  average  not  more  than  two  pages 
of  print 

Now  that  the  heat  of  contemporary  feeling  has  subsided, 
Macaulay's  merits  can  be  appraised  with  some  degree  of 
accuracy.  Narrative  was  his  peculiar  forte.  As  a  critic  his 
work  is  not  of  great  value.  He  could  point  out  the  in- 
accuracies of  a  Croker  or  the  absurdities  of  a  Robert  Mont- 
gomery with  inimitable  vigour  and  power  of  rough  raillery, 
but  that  "slashing"  kind  of  criticism  has  had  its  day,  and  no 
writer  of  equal  eminence  would  now  think  of  engaging  in  such 
work.  The  higher  kind  of  criticism,  which  consists  in  trying 
to  get  at  the  inner  meaning  and  substance  of  great  literary 
works,  he  had,  as  he  himself  was  aware,  little  talent  for  and 
rarely  attempted.  His  poetry,  with  the  exception  of  a  few 
lines,  may  be  described  as  brilliant  rhymed  rhetoric.  But  his 
biographical  papers,  in  which  in  terse  and  striking  fashion  are 
set  forth  the  main  features  of  the  lives  of  such  men  as  the 
Earl  of  Chatham,  Warren  Hastings,  Addison,  are  matchless 
in  their  own  department.  They  are  not,  like  the  similar 
essays  of  Carlyle,  a  series  of  original  reflections  suggested  by 
the  subjects  under  discussion,  with  the  leading  details  about 
whom  the  reader  is  supposed  to  be  familiar,  but  vigorous 
resumes  in  which  are  comprised  all  the  leading  features  in  the 
life  and  character  of  the  men  who  are  handled.  His  "  His- 
tory of  England  from  the  Accession  of  James  II.,"  to  give  the 
full  title,  is  but  a  fragment  of  a  much  larger  design  which 
v'.eath  prevented  him  from  accomplishing.  He  prepared,  as  he 
tells  us  in  the  first  words  of  the  opening  chapter,  "  to  write 
the  history  of  England  from  the  accession  of  King  James  II. 
down  to  a  time  which  is  within  the  memory  of  men  still 
living ; "  but  he  lived  to  bring  it  down  only  to  the  death  of 
William.  His  reading  in  all  sorts  of  the  contemporary 
literature,  pamphlets,  squibs,  songs,  &c.,  joined  to  his  extra- 
ordinary strength  of  memory,  enabled  him  to  give  his  History 
a  picturesqueness  and  freshness  of  colour  after  which  every 
historian  ought  to  aspire,  but  to  which  very  few  have  attained 
in  anything  like  the  same  degree.  No  writer  ever  possessed 


420  Our  Own  Times. 

in  a  higher  measure  the  art  of  rendering  whatever  he  dealt 
with  interesting  and  attractive.  To  say  that  he  is  not  an 
impartial  historian  is  only  to  say  what  must  to  some  extent 
be  said  of  every  writer  who  treats  of  subjects  regarding  which 
party  prejudice  has  not  altogether  subsided.  His  History 
has  been  described  as  "an  epic  poem,  of  which  King 
William  is  the  hero,"  and  certainly  he  sometimes  allows  his 
Whig  propensities  to  get  the  better  of  strict  justice.  Many 
assaults  have  been  made  upon  his  accuracy,  but  they  have 
had  little  effect  upon  his  fame.  It  would  be  strange  indeed 
if  in  so  large  a  work  as  the  History,  containing  innumerable 
petty  facts,  no  errors  could  be  pointed  out ;  but  of  direct 
errors  there  are  not  many.  The  real  and  weighty  objection 
to  Macaulay's  accuracy  is  his  habit  of  making  broad,  sweeping 
statements,  which  have  indeed  some  foundation,  but  not 
enough  to  support  the  assertion  based  on  them.  The  same 
fault  occurs  in  all  his  writings.  For  example,  in  his  "  Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica  "  sketch  of  Johnson,  he  says  that  Johnson 
was  "repeatedly  provoked  into  striking  those  who  had  taken 
liberties  with  him."  The  "repeatedly'7  is  a  gross  exaggera- 
tion. The  opinion  of  some  of  the  best  recent  critics  has  been 
strongly  adverse  to  Macaulay's  style.  It  is  said  to  be  rhe- 
torical, to  want  repose,  to  have  about  it  a  hard  metallic  ring, 
and  to  be  disfigured  by  too  frequently  employed  and  obvious 
artifices.  In  these  censures  there  is  a  good  deal  of  truth ; 
nevertheless,  there  was  never  a  better  style  for  purposes  of 
popular  effect.  It  is  always  lucid  and  vigorous  and  telling. 
Its  influence  upon  the  style  of  contemporary  writers  has  been 
very  wide,  and  upon  the  whole  beneficial.  Force  and  clear- 
ness are  qualities  to  which  many  other  less  important  qualities 
of  writing  may  well  be  sacrificed. 

There  are  almost  no  points  of  comparison  between  Ma- 
caulay  and  Thomas  Carlyle.  In  their  ways  of  life,  their 
characters,  their  mental  habits,  their  way  of  writing,  they  were 
well-nigh  totally  dissimilar.  Macaulay  found  Carlyle's  literary 
heterodoxy  so  obnoxious  to  him  that  he  would  not  read  his 
works ;  and  it  is  easy  to  imagine  that  Carlyle  found  certain 


Thomas  Carlyle.  421 

features  in  Macaulay's  writings  which  rendered  them  almost 
equally  repugnant  to  him.  Carlyle  was  born  at  Ecclefechan, 
Dumfriesshire,  on  December  4,  1795.  His  father,  originally 
a  stonemason,  afterwards  a  small  farmer,  was  an  excellent 
specimen  of  the  best  type  of  Scottish  peasant,  a  man  of  great 
force  of  character,  rigid  morals,  deep  religious  feelings  of  the 
Galvinistic  kind,  and  of  abilities  which,  if  cultivated,  would 
have  made  their  mark  in  any  sphere.  His  mother,  whom 
throughout  life  he  loved  as  he  never  loved  any  one  else,  was  a 
woman  of  gentle  nature  and  much  practical  good  sense. 
After  acquiring  the  elements  of  knowledge  at  the  parish  school 
of  Ecclefechan,  Carlyle  was  sent  to  the  academy  at  Annan, 
where  he  remained  till,  in  1809,  he  entered  the  University  of 
Edinburgh.  There  he  went  through  the  ordinary  course,  dis- 
tinguishing himself  in  mathematics,  but  quitting  it  in  1804 
without  taking  a  degree.  His  parents  had  indulged  the  hope, 
common  to  Scottish  people  of  their  class,  that  they  might  yet 
see  their  son  "  wag  his  head  in  a  pulpit."  But  it  was  not 
destined  so  to  be.  After  leaving  the  University,  Carlyle,  to  use 
his  own  words,  "  got  (by  competition  at  Dumfries,  summer 
1814)  to  be  'mathematical  master'  in  Annan  Academy,  with 
some  potential  outlook  on  divinity  as  ultimatum  (a  rural 
divinity  student  visiting  Edinburgh  for  a  few  days  each  year, 
and  '  delivering  '  certain  '  discourses  ').  Six  years  of  that 
would  bring  you  to  the  church  gate,  as  four  years  of  con- 
tinuous '  divinity  hall '  would  ;  unluckily  only  that  in  my  case  I 
never  had  the  least  enthusiasm  for  the  business,  and  there 
were  even  grave  prohibitive  doubts  more  and  more  rising 
ahead."  His  theological  studies  were  pretty  much  confined 
to  the  writing  and  delivering  in  the  Divinity  Hall  of  two  dis- 
courses— one  in  English,  the  other  in  Latin.  In  1816  he 
was  appointed  "  classical  and  mathematical "  master  at  Kirk- 
caldy,  in  room  of  the  old  parish  schoolmaster,  who  had  been 
bought  off  as  incapable.  Edward  Irving,  whose  death  he 
Commemorated  in  words  of  burning  eloquence,  was  then 
master  of  an  "  academy  "  there,  and  Carlyle  and  he,  who  were 
previously  acquainted  with  each  other,  spent  much  time  to- 


422  Our  Own  Times. 

gether.  From  the  books  in  Irving's  library  Carlyle  derived 
great  benefit.  The  destinies  of  the  two  friends  were  very 
different.  Irving,  after  a  career  of  blazing  popularity  as  a 
London  preacher,  is  now  a  name  and  nothing  besides;  Car- 
lyle, long  unnoticed  and  unknown,  has  left  an  abiding  impress 
on  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Carlyle  was  ill  fitted  to  be  a  teacher,  and  his  impatience 
of  folly  and  stupidity  made  him  a  harsh  and  stern  preceptor. 
"In  1818,"  he  writes,  "I  had  come  to  the  grim  conclusion 
that  schoolmastering  must  end,  whatever  pleased  to  follow ; 
that  *  it  were  better  to  perish,'  as  I  exaggeratively  said  to  my- 
self, than  continue  schoolmastering."  He  accordingly  went 
to  Edinburgh,  "intending,  darkly,  towards  potential  'litera- 
ture.'" His  first  publications  were  sixteen  articles,  mostly 
biographical,  contributed  to  Brewster's  "  Edinburgh  Encyclo- 
paedia" in  1820-23.  These  articles,  which  have  never  been 
reprinted,  cannot  be  said  to  show  any  extraordinary  promise. 
To  the  New  Edinburgh  Review,  a  short-lived  periodical,  he 
contributed  in  1821  a  paper  on  Joanna  Baillie's  "Metrical 
Legends,"  and  in  1822  another  on  Goethe's  "Faust,"  interest- 
ing as  being  his  earliest  reference  to  the  great  German  whom 
he  did  so  much  to  make  known  in  this  country.  In  1822  he 
became  tutor  to  Charles  Buller,  whose  premature  death 
in  1848  cut  short  the  course  of  a  politician  of  whom  great 
things  were  expected.  This  connection  was  profitable  to 
Carlyle  in  many  ways.  He  received  ^200  a  year  as  salary; 
and  the  Bullers,  who  recognised  the  great  genius  that  lay 
beneath  his  rough  and  occasionally  harsh  exterior,  were  in- 
strumental in  introducing  him  to  a  better  order  of  society 
than  he  had  previously  been  accustomed  to.  Meanwhile  his 
pen  was  not  idle.  In  1823-24  his  "Life  of  Schiller"  ap- 
peared by  instalments  in  the  London  Magazine.  In  1824  were 
published  his  translation  of  "  Legendre's  Geometry,"  with  an 
able  essay  on  Proportion  by  Carlyle  himself;  and  his  first 
important  work,  the  admirable  translation  of  Goethe's  "  Wil« 
helm  Meister."  In  the  same  year  he  paid  his  first  visit  to 
London,  and  in  1824.  also,  his  engagement  with  the  Bullers 


Carlyles  Works.  423 

was  brought  to  an  end  at  his  own  desire.  In  1825  his  "  Life 
of  Schiller"  was  republished  in  book  form.  In  the  following 
year  occurred  his  marriage  to  Miss  Jane  Welsh,  only  daughter 
of  Dr.  John  Welsh,  a  Haddington  physician,  who,  as  Carlyle 
liked  to  think,  was  believed  to  be  a  lineal  descendant  of  John 
Knox.  Along  with  his  wife,  Carlyle  settled  at  Comely  Bank, 
Edinburgh,  where  his  first  two  articles  for  the  Edinburgh 
Review^ — those  on  "Richter"  and  on  the  "State  of  German 
Literature," — were  written.  They  were  published  in  1827,  in 
which  year  also  appeared,  in  four  volumes,  "  German  Ro- 
mance," a  series  of  translations,  which  formed  Carlyle's  last 
piece  of  literary  journey-work. 

In  1828  he  removed  to  Craigenputtoch,  in  Dumfriesshire, 
a  small  estate  belonging  to  his  wife,  where,  for  about  six 
years,  he  lived  amid  the  bleak  mountain  solitudes,  "  in  those 
quiet  ways  where  alone  it  is  well  with  us,"  perfecting  his 
self-culture.  There  he  wrote  many  articles  for  the  Edinburgh 
Review ',  the  Foreign  Quarterly  Review,  and  Eraser's  Magazine; 
and,  in  1830,  "Sartor  Resartus,"  which  may  be  described 
as  a  spiritual  biography  of  himself,  containing  the  leading 
features  of  all  his  subsequent  teaching.  In  1834  he  removed 
to  London,  fixing  his  residence  at  5  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea, 
where  he  remained  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  In  the  same  year 
he  began  the  writing  of  his  "French  Revolution,"  published 
in  1837.  "Sartor  Resartus,"  for  which  he  failed  to  find  a 
publisher,  had  appeared  by  instalments  in  Erasers  Magazine 
in  1833-34.  In  1838  it  was  published  in  book  form,  after 
having  been  reprinted  in  America  with  a  preface  by  Emerson. 
In  the  following  year  his  essays  were  collected  and  published. 
In  1837  he  delivered  in  London  a  course  of  lectures  on  Ger- 
man Literature;  in  1838  a  course  on  the  History  of  Litera- 
ture; in  1839  a  course  on  the  Revolutions  of  Modern  Europe, 
and  in  1840  a  course  on  Hero-Worship.  Of  these  only  the 
last  series  was  published,  appearing  in  1841.  "Chartism," 
in  which  he  broke  ground  upon  the  "Condition  of  England" 
question,  appeared  in  1839;  "Past  and  Present"  in  1843; 
"  Oliver  Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches"  in  1845  ;  "Latter- 


424  Our  Own  Times. 

Day  Pamphlets,"  a  series  of  fiery  diatribes  on  social  and  poli- 
tical problems,  in  1850;  and  the  "Life  of  John  Sterling  "in 
1851.  In  1858  the  first  two  volumes  of  his  "Life  of  Frederick 
the  Great  "were  published,  the  third  in  1862,  the  fourth  in 
1864,  and  in  1865  the  work  was  completed.  In  1865  he  was 
appointed  Lord  Rector  of  Edinburgh  University,  and  in  April 
of  the  following  year  delivered  his  installation  address  to  a 
crowded  and  enthusiastic  audience.  All  the  pleasure  of  his 
triumph  on  this  occasion  was  drowned  in  his  sorrow  at  the 
sudden  death  of  his  wife,  which  occurred  during  his  absence 
in  Edinburgh.  The  only  important  publication  of  the  solitary 
years  of  his  old  age  was  his  "  Early  Kings  of  Norway "  and 
"Essay  on  the  Portraits  of  John  Kncx,"  reprinted  in  1875 
from  Prater's  Magazine.  He  died  on  February  5,  1881. 

Such  is  a  brief  summary  of  the  more  important  events  in 
Carlyle's  life.  It  was  the  lot  of  the  present  writer  to  read  nearly 
all  the  obituary  notices  of  him  which  appeared  in  the  leading 
journals  after  his  death.  With  not  an  exception  they  were 
extremely  eulogistic,  praising  his  works  and  applauding  in 
the  highest  terms  the  dignity  and  stern  conscientiousness  of  his 
life.  But  when,  about  three  weeks  later,  the  "  Reminiscences  " 
were  published  by  Mr.  Froude,  the  tide  took  a  turn.  They 
were  found  to  be  full  of  harsh,  and,  as  in  the  case  of  Charles 
Lamb,  even  cruel  and  heartless  judgments;  and  Carlyle's 
faults  of  temper,  his  malice,  and  his  uncharitableness  began 
to  be  sharply  commented  on.  A  few  of  the  more  sturdy 
admirers  of  the  Seer  of  Chelsea  protested  that  the  "  Reminis- 
cences "  did  not  give  any  idea  of  the  real  Carlyle  at  all ;  that 
nothing  could  be  more  unjust  than  to  form  an  estimate  of  his 
character  from  angry  passages  written  in  his  old  age,  when 
weak  health  and  agonising  sorrow  had  rendered  him  scarcely 
responsible  for  his  utterances.  This  defence  proved  to  be  but 
a  refuge  of  lies.  In  1882  Mr.  Froude  published  his  memoir 
of  the  first  forty  years  of  CarJyle's  life,  and  it  was  found  that 
the  most  sharp  and  biting  passages  of  the  "  Reminiscences  " 
might  be  easily  paralleled  from  the  letters  he  wrote  when  in 
the  prime  of  manhood.  The  truth  is,  that  Carlyle  was  very 


Carlyles  Characteristics.  425 

far  indeed  from  being  a  faultless  character.  The  higher  duties 
of  morality  he  acted  up  to  as  few  have  done.  No  praise  can 
be  deemed  too  high  for  the  resolute  devotion  with  which, 
through  evil  report  and  good  report,  through  poverty  and 
riches,  through  obscurity  and  fame,  he  remained  constantly 
honest  to  his  convictions;  resolved  to  write  on  no  subject 
which  he  had  not  studied  to  the  bottom,  and  determined  to 
speak  out  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth,  however  unpalat- 
able it  might  be  to  the  world.  Nor  are  we  soon  tired  of 
admiring  his  inflexible  integrity,  his  lofty  spirit  of  indepen- 
dence, his  unwearied  affection  for  all  the  members  of  his 
family,  and  the  stern  dignity  which  prevented  him  from  ever, 
even  on  a  single  occasion,  treading  the  miry  ways  of  falsehood 
or  chicanery.  But  it  must  be  confessed  that  in  him  virtue 
was  often  clothed  in  a  very  unattractive  guise.  He  was  arro- 
gant and  contemptuous  beyond  any  man  recorded  in  literary 
history.  Whatever  was  foolish  and  vicious  in  a  character  was 
sure  to  be  carefully  noted  by  him,  while  geniality,  kind-hearted- 
ness, and  self-sacrifice  often  passed  with  no  recognition  at  all, 
or  at  best  a  very  slight  and  grudging  one.  He  was  constantly  in- 
tolerant of  those  who  differed  from  him  ;  never  by  any  chance 
imagining  the  possibility  that  they  might  be  right  and  he  wrong. 
Always  proclaiming  in  his  books  the  infinite  virtues  of  silence 
and  patience,  he  made  no  attempt  whatever  to  practise  as  he 
preached.  The  least  illness,  the  least  personal  inconvenience, 
such  as  getting  his  tea  too  weak  or  his  coffee  too  cold,  made 
him  complain  as  if  all  the  world  had  been  going  headlong  to 
ruin,  and  he  himself  were  the  only  righteous  man  left  alive. 
His  temper,  which  he  was  at  no  particular  pains  to  curb,  was 
harsh  and  violent.  Altogether  he  was,  as  his  mother  well 
observed,  "  gey  ill  to  live  wiV  There  is  something  very 
pathetic  in  the  story  of  the  relations  of  himself  and  his  gifted 
wife,  as  retold  by  Mr.  Froude.  The  bond  which  linked  them 
together  was  one  of  duty  rather  than  of  love.  Both  were 
persons  of  strong  character,  sharp  temper,  and  a  rather  cynical 
way  of  looking  at  things.  They  admired  each  other  cordially ; 
but  they  never  knew  that  mutual  confidence  and  domestic 
19 


426  Our  Own  Times. 

felicity  which  has  thrown  a  halo  over  thousands  of  humble 
hearths. 

Carlyle's  works  fall  naturally  into  three  divisions.  First  we 
have  his  writings  on  literary  subjects,  including  his  Lives  of 
Schiller  and  Sterling,  and  most  of  his  essays.  Then  there  aie 
his  lucubrations  on  political  subjects,  comprising  "Chartism," 
the  "Latter-Day  Pamphlets,"  and,  in  part,  "Past and  Present." 
Lastly  come  his  historical  works,  "  The  French  Revolution," 
"  Oliver  Cromwell,"  and  the  "  History  of  Frederick."  "  Sartor 
Resartus  "  belongs  to  none  of  these  classes,  but  contains  the 
great  principles  which  underlie  the  works  contained  in  all  of 
them.  "To  blench  at  no  paradox,  to  accept  no  convention, 
to  pierce  below  the  surface  at  whatever  cost  apparently  of  safe 
and  comfortable  foothold,  to  get  rid  of  belief  in  believing  and 
assumption  of  knowing — these  are  the  lessons  taught  in  this 
earliest  book,  as  it  may  perhaps  be  allowably  taken  to  be,  of 
the  master,  and  no  others  will  be  learned  from  the  most  at- 
tentive student  of  his  latter  lucubrations."  Carlyle's  essays 
are  among  the  most  valuable  of  his  writings.  He  was  the  first 
to  make  the  great  writers  of  Germany  known  in  this  country; 
and  his  writings  on  the  more  illustrious  figures  of  the  epoch 
of  the  French  Revolution — Voltaire,  Diderot,  Mirabeau — are 
models  of  insight  into  character,  profound  and  discriminat- 
ing estimates  of  men  who  had  hitherto  proved  stumbling-blocks 
to  British  critics.  The  essays  on  Burns  and  Johnson  may  be 
said  to  have  struck  the  keynote  of  all  succeeding  writings  on 
these  men ;  while  his  criticism  of  Scott,  which  has  provoked  a 
good  deal  of  hostility,  is  more  and  more  coming  to  be  gene- 
rally recognised  as  substantially  correct  in  its  main  features. 
The  "Life  of  Schiller,"  though  warmly  praised  by  Goethe, 
who  added  a  preface  to  the  German  translation  of  it,  is  not  a 
first-rate  performance.  But  the  "  Life  of  Sterling  "  is  a  perfect 
triumph  of  literary  art,  far  and  away  the  best  biography  of  its 
size  in  the  language.  Those  who  wish  to  see  how  differently 
the  same  subject  may  be  handled  by  a  second-rate  man  and 
by  a  man  of  genius  should  compare  Archdeacon  Hare's 
memoir  of  Sterling  with  Carlyle's.  From  the  poor  and 


Carlyle  as  an  Historian,  427 

priggish  book  of  the  worthy  Archdeacon  we  get  no  picture  of 
the  man  Sterling  at  all ;  no  bright,  vivid  portrait  of  his  life  and 
environment,  such  as  remains  permanently  fixed  on  the  memory 
of  every  one  who  reads  Carlyle's  matchless  memoir.  The  "  Life 
of  Sterling  "  is  valuable,  also,  in  that,  more  than  any  other  of 
his  books,  it  throws  light  on  Carlyle''s  personal  character — his 
half-contemptuous,  half-pitying  estimate  of  most  of  those  with 
whom  he  came  into  contact — and  on  his  religious  belief,  which 
may  be  described  as  Catholicism  minus  Christianity.  Carlyle's 
political  writings  display,  in  very  marked  fashion,  both  the 
strength  and  limitations  of  his  mind.  They  are  full  of  that 
protest,  which  it  is  the  glory  of  literature  to  uphold,  against 
selfish  utilitarianism  and  lago's  gospel,  "  put  money  in  your 
purse."  Not  in  the  worship  of  the  "almighty  dollar,"  not  by 
making  "getting  on  in  the  world"  one's  purpose  in  life,  can 
we  hope  to  find  rest  and  peace.  Our  social  shams,  the  weak 
and  faulty  points  in  our  political  organisation,  are  exposed  with 
remorseless  sarcasm,  and,  as  men  of  all  parties  will  admit,  with 
only  too  much  truth.  But  Carlyle  was  never  careful  to  bear 
in  mind  that  "'Tis  better  to  fight  for  the  good  than  to  rail  at 
the  ill."  He  is  barren  of  practical  suggestion  to  remedy  the 
evils  of  which  he  so  eloquently  declaims,  except  what  may 
be  summed  up  in  the  too  vague  words,  education  and  emigra- 
tion. Of  his  historical  works,  the  most  wonderful,  as  regards 
literary  effect,  is  the  "  French  Revolution,"  that  extraordinary 
series  of  historical  paintings,  sketched  in  colours  so  vivid  and 
gorgeous  as  to  rivet  themselves  upon  the  memory  of  the  reader 
for  ever.  As  scene  after  scene  of  the  terrible  drama  passes 
before  our  eyes,  we  almost  seem  to  view  the  dreadful  deeds 
done  and  the  men  who  did  them.  Through  all  the  book  we 
breathe  the  same  sultry  atmosphere,  full  of  thunder  and  light- 
ning, which  hung  over  the  Paris  of  the  Revolution.  Vet 
accuracy  is  never  sacrificed  to  pictorial  effect.  It  has  been 
said  by  a  very  competent  authority  that  "  to  most  English- 
men, even  if  they  have  taken  the  trouble  to  ascertain  the  facts 
by  careful  reference  to  authorities  the  most  indisputable  and 
the  most  diverse,  the  mysterious  and  almost  incredible  events 


428  Our  Own  Times. 

of  the  French  Revolution  range  themselves  into  a  possible  and 
intelligible  whole  in  Mr.  Carlyie's  account,  and  in  that  account 
almost  alone."  But  Carlyie's  most  important  service  to  histo- 
rical truth  was  his  "  Letters  and  Speeches  of  Oliver  Cromwell," 
a  work  of  enormous  research  and  labour,  which  none  but  him- 
self could  have  done  so  well.  It  put  an  end  at  once  and  for 
ever  to  the  extraordinary  amount  of  misrepresentation  and  ab- 
surdity with  which  the  memory  of  the  great  Protector  had  been 
assailed  since  his  death.  In  the  "  Life  of  Frederick,"  the  most 
laborious  and  the  most  irksome  task  of  his  life,  Carlyle  had 
the  disadvantage  of  dealing  with  a  man  who  was,  and  who 
will  probably  always  remain,  hateful  to  the  majority  of  English 
readers.  Moreover,  even  his  genius  for  graphic  representation 
cannot  make  uniformly  interesting  to  us  the  tangled  maze 
of  eighteenth  century  politics  ;  and  throughout  the  work  the 
endless  eccentricities  of  his  style  reach  a  height  which  some- 
times becomes  positively  wearisome.  Yet  some  episodes  in  the 
book — for  example,  the  account  of  the  relations  of  Frederick 
and  Voltaire — are  entirely  admirable  ;  and  none  of  his  writings 
affords  better  illustrations  of  Carlyie's  faculty  of  hitting  off  a 
character  in  two  or  three  descriptive  touches  of  marvellous 
felicity.  By  Carlyie's  earliest  critics,  no  feature  in  his  works 
was  more  objected  to  than  his  style,  which  is  certainly  often  of 
a  kind  to  make  the  hair  of  those  whose  literary  orthodoxy  is 
strict  stand  on  end.  But  it  is  now  pretty  generally  agreed  that 
a  writer  of  first-rate  genius  has  a  right  to  choose  the  mode  of 
expression  best  suited  to  him,  and  that  all  attempts  to  make 
him  alter  it  in  accordance  with  the  dicta  of  critics  are  as  vain 
as  to  expect  grapes  from  apple-trees  or  roses  from  oaks.  No 
competent  critic  would  be  willing  to  have  Carlyie's  power  of 
humorous  description  and  exquisite  felicity  of  epithet  pruned 
down  for  the  sake  of  making  his  style  bear  a  closer  resemblance 
to  conventional  models. 

The  greatest  contribution  to  the  history  of  the  ancient  world 
which  has  appeared  since  Edward  Gibbon  laid  aside  his  philo- 
sophic pen  is  the  "  History  of  Greece "  by  George  Grote, 
published  between  1846-1856.  Like  Gibbon,  Grote  owed 


George  Grote.  429 

nothing  to  University  education ;  his  vast  fund  of  knowledge  was 
entirely  the  result  of  his  own  exertions.  Born  in  1794,  the  son 
of  a  wealthy  London  banker,  he  entered  upon  business  life  at 
the  age  of  sixteen;  but  every  available  leisure  hour  was  devoted 
to  study — not  light,  miscellaneous  reading,  but  works  of 
philosophy  and  classical  literature.  His  design  of  writing  a 
history  of  Greece  was  formed  as  early  as  1823.  In  1832  he 
entered  Parliament  as  member  for  the  City  of  London,  but 
retired  from  political  life  in  1841,  in  order  that  he  might 
devote  himself  exclusively  to  his  great  work.  The  most  pro- 
minent feature  of  his  parliamentary  career  was  his  advocacy 
of  vote  by  ballot.  The  practical  experience  of  political  affairs 
which  he  gained  in  the  House  of  Commons  was  of  great  ser- 
vice to  him  in  dealing  with  the  political  life  of  ancient  Greece. 
After  his  History,  his  most  important  works  are  his  elaborate 
study  of  "  Plato  and  other  Companions  of  Socrates,"  and  a 
fragment  ofa  similar  work  on  Aristotle,  published  after  his  death, 
which  occurred  in  1871.  G rote's  learning,  sagacity,  candour, 
and  perfect  mastery  over  his  materials  give  his  work  a  place 
among  the  very  few  great  histories  which  England  has  pro- 
duced. But  its  literary  execution  is  by  no  means  first-rate  ; 
he  never  seems  to  have  realised  that  prose  composition  is  an 
art.  Comparing  the  excellent  "  History  ol  Greece  "  by  Bishop 
Thirlwall  (originally  published  in  1835-41  in  "  Lardner's 
Cabinet  Cyclopaedia,"  afterwards  in  1845-52  reprinted  and 
revised)  with  Grote's,  a  recent  critic1  has  observed,  that  "when 
we  come  to  compare  Thirlwall  with  Grote,  we  find  .  .  .  the 
full  opposition  of  the  presence  of  style  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  absence  of  it  on  the  other.  The  late  Bishop  of  St.  David's 
will  probably  never  be  cited  among  the  greatest  masters  of 
English  prose  style,  but  still  we  can  see  without  difficulty  that 
he  has  inherited  its  traditions.  It  would  be  difficult,  on  the 
other  hand,  to  persuade  a  careful  critic  that  Grote  ever  thought 
of  such  things  as  the  cadence  of  a  sentence  or  the  composition 
ofa  paragraph.  That  he  took  so  much  trouble  as  might  suffice 

1  Mr.  George   Saintsbury,    in  a  suggestive  and   interesting  article  on 
"Modern  English  Prose,"  in  the  Fortnightly  Kcvirw  for  February  1876. 


430  Oiir  Own  Times. 

to  make  his  meaning  clear  and  his  language  energetic  is  ob- 
vious ;  that  in  no  case  did  he  think  of  looking  beyond  this  is 
I  think  certain." 

No  one  is  likely  to  make  any  such  criticism  on  the  style  of 
James  Anthony  Froude  (born  1818),  of  which,  says  the  critic 
quoted  above,  "it  may  be  asserted,  without  any  fear  whatever 
of  contradiction  carrying  weight,  that  at  its  best  it  is  surpassed 
by  no  style  of  the  present  day,  and  by  few  of  any  other." 
Nevertheless  no  historian,  perhaps,  of  equal  eminence,  indeed 
few  who  deserve  to  be  called  eminent  at  all,  has  met  with  so 
much  severe  and  searching  criticism  as  has  fallen  to  the  lot 
of  Mr.  Froude.  He  has  written  extensively ;  but  his  most 
important  works  are  his  "  History  of  England  from  the  Fall 
of  \Volsey  to  the  Death  of  Elizabeth,"  in  twelve  volumes  (1856- 
70),  and  his  "  English  in  Ireland  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  " 
(1871-74).  With  all  their  charm  of  style  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  these  works  will  stand  the  test  of  time.  Mr.  Froude 
is  very  apt  to  fall  into  the  besetting  sin  of  an  historian,  colour- 
ing his  facts  to  suit  preconceived  theories  instead  of  adapting 
his  theories  to  suit  his  facts.  His  Histories  may  always  be 
read  with  pleasure,  but  to  read  them  with  profit  we  must  take 
care  not  to  trust  them  implicitly,  but  to  correct  his  judgments 
by  those  of  less  paradoxical  if  not  so  brilliant  authorities.  A 
great  living  historian  has  thus  expressed  his  opinion  of  him, 
in  words  too  harsh  indeed,  but  unfortunately  not  without  a 
strong  basis  of  facts : — "  Mr  Froude  is  a  man  of  undoubted 
ability,  of  undoubted  power  of  writing.  If  there  is  any  branch 
of  science  or  learning  in  which  accuracy  of  statement  is  a 
matter  of  indifference,  in  which  a  calm  putting  forth  of  state- 
ments which  are  arbitrary  can  be  accepted  in  its  stead,  in  that 
branch  of  science  or  learning  Mr.  Froude's  undoubted  ability, 
his  gift  of  description  and  narrative,  may  stand  him  in  good 
stead.  But  for  the  writing  of  history,  while  those  gifts  are  pre- 
cious, other  gifts  are  more  precious  still.  In  that  field  *  before 
all  things  Truth  beareth  away  the  victory  ;'  and  among  those 
whom  Truth  has  enrolled  in  her  following  as  her  men,  among 
those  who  go  forth  to  do  battle  for  her  as  their  sovereign  lady, 


Edward  A.  Freeman.  431 

Mr.  Froude  has  no  part  or  lot.  It  may  be  his  fault,  it  may 
be  his  misfortune,  but  the  fact  is  clear.  History  is  a  record 
of  things  which  happened ;  what  passes  for  history  in  the  hands 
of  Mr.  Froude  is  a  writing  in  which  the  things  which  really 
happened  find  no  place,  and  in  which  their  place  is  taken  by 
the  airy  children  of  Mr.  Froude's  imagination." l 

The  writer  of  these  words,  Mr.  Freeman,  is  perhaps  the 
most  celebrated  member  of  the  recent  critical  school  of  histo- 
rians, which  numbers  in  its  ranks  such  men  as  William  Stubbs, 
whose  "Constitutional  History  of  England"  is  a  work  of  great 
research  and  value  ;  Professor  S.  R.  Gardiner,  who  has  thrown 
much  new  light  on  the  history  of  the  Stuart  family  in  England, 
and  Mr.  J.  R.  Green,  whose  "  Short  History  of  England"  has 
attained  such  extraordinary  success.  The  leading  principle 
of  the  school  may  be  said  to  be  its  insistance  upon  the  neces- 
sity of  the  historian  always  going  to  original  sources  for  his 
facts,  and  stating  these  facts  with  minute,  sometimes  even,  as 
scoffing  critics  would  say,  with  pedantic  accuracy.  Edward 
Augustus  Freeman  (born  1823)  has  done  a  vast  amount  of 
very  important  historical  work  in  various  fields.  Two  cardinal 
points  he  has  always  insisted  on  with  beneficent  iteration : 
first,  the  unity  of  history,  fighting  against  all  arbitrary,  ancient 
and  modern,  classical,  and  something  else ;  second,  the  un- 
broken being  of  the  English  people  from  the  beginning.  He 
has  nothing  but  contempt  for  people  who  still  persist  in  talk- 
ing about  "  Anglo-Saxon  "  instead  of  "  Early  English."  His 
great  work  is  his  "  History  of  the  Norman  Conquest  in  Eng- 
land" (1867—79),  to  which,  in  1882,  appeared  a  supplement  in 
the  shape  of  two  volumes  on  the  "  Reign  of  William  Rufus." 
The  "Norman  Conquest"  will  remain  a  standing  monument 
to  his  learning  and  soundness  of  judgment,  though  partly 
owing  to  the  subject,  partly  to  his  mode  of  treating  it,  it  will 
probably  always  be  rather  a  work  for  students  than  for  general 
readers.  Mr.  Freeman  cannot  be  said  to  be  a  very  powerful 
or  picturesque  writer,  but  his  love  of  truth  and  patient  accuracj 

1  Contemporary  Review  for  September  1878,  p.  241. 


432  Our  Own  Times. 

is  great,  and  he  possesses  the  high  merit  of  always  trying  to 
make  his  words  fit  his  thoughts,  and  his  thoughts  the  facts. 

William  Edward  Hartpole  Lecky,  born  near  Dublin  in  1838, 
after  publishing  two  or  three  books  which  proved  failures, 
obtained  his  first  success  by  his  "  History  of  the  Rise  of 
Rationalism  in  Europe"  (1865).  It  was  followed  in  1869 
by  a  "  History  of  European  Morals  from  Augustus  to  Charle- 
magne," and  in  1878  by  two  volumes  of  a  "  History  of  Eng- 
land in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  to  which  other  two  were 
added  in  1882.  Mr.  Lecky  is  a  brilliant  and  captivating 
writer,  although  his  works  are  rather  disquisitions  on  historical 
subjects  than  histories.  There  is  little  original  research  in  his 
"  England  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  nor  are  his  views  of 
men  and  events  as  a  rule  such  as  to  modify  received  judg- 
ments ;  but  some  portions  of  it,  as,  for  example,  the  account 
of  the  rise  of  Methodism,  are  so  good  that  if  published  as 
essays  they  would  have  ranked  almost  as  highly  as  Macaulay's. 

Among  what  may,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  be  called  the 
critics  and  essayists  of  the  Victorian  age,  John  Ruskin,  who, 
as  has  been  well  said,  has  created  a  new  literature — the  litera- 
ture of  Art — occupies  the  foremost  place.  He  was  born  in 
London  in  1819,  the  son  of  a  wine  merchant.  In  many 
pleasing  passages  in  the  discursive  pages  of  "  Fors  Clavigera" 
he  has  given  us  reminiscences  of  his  childhood,  of  the  per- 
fect order  and  obedience  in  which  he  was  trained  up,  of  his 
reading  the  Bible  carefully  through  from  beginning  to  end 
with  his  mother — omitting  nothing  and  slurring  nothing;  of 
his  summer  excursions  with  his  father,  who  had,  he  says,  a  per- 
fect natural  taste  in  painting,  and  who  took  him  to  see  all  the 
good  collections  of  paintings  to  which  he  could  obtain  access, 
directing  him  to  the  best  paintings,  and  never  permitting  him 
to  waste  a  look  on  inferior  or  worthless  ones.  His  early 
education  over,  he  entered  Christ  Church  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  graduated.  Except  the  Newdigate  prize,  \\lnch  he 
gained  in  1839  for  a  poem  entitled  "Salsette  and  Elephanta," 
he  did  not  obtain  any  University  distinction.  His  blameless 
character,  his  religious  nature,  and  his  love  of  study  led  hig 


John  Ruskin.  433 

parents  to  cherish  the  hope  that  he  would  enter  the  Church, 
and  great  was  their  grief  when  he  decided  otherwise.     "  He 
might  have  been  a  bishop,"  said  his  father  regretfully  in  after 
years.     As  he  was  an  only  son,  and  as  his  father  had  by  this 
time  amassed  a  considerable  fortune,  it  was  not  necessary  for 
him  to  enter  any  profession,  and  he  accordingly  gratified  his 
love  of  art  by  studying  painting  under  Copley  Fielding  and 
J.  D.  Harding.     To  a  present  of  Moxon's  magnificent  edition 
of  Rogers's  "  Italy,"  which  he  received  from  his  father  in  his 
youth,  is  to  be  attributed  much  of  Ruskiri's  lifework.     Many 
of  the  engravings  in  it  were  by  Turner,  and  by  their  means 
his  attention  was  attracted  to  the  pictures  of  the  greatest  of 
modern  landscape-painters,  whom  he  henceforth  admired  with 
an  intensity  approaching  to  idolatry.     Certain  articles  in  a 
Review   condemnatory  of  Turner's   paintings   offended   him 
keenly,  and  he  addresssd  a  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Review 
"reprobating  the  matter  and  style  of  these  critiques,  and  point- 
ing out  their  dangerous  tendency,"  because  "  he  knew  it  to 
be  demonstrable  that  Turner  was  right  and   true,   and  that 
his   critics  were  wrong,   false,   and   base."      The  letter  grew 
into  a  book,  and  the  defence  of  Turner  into  the  most  ela- 
borate English  treatise  upon  art.     In  1843  appeared  the  first 
volume  of  "  Modern  Painters :  their  Superiority  in  the  Art  of 
Landscape  Painting  to  all  the  Ancient  Masters.     By  a  Gra- 
duate of  Oxford."     The  "  Oxford  Graduate,"  who  in  this  work 
boldly  set  aside  many  of  the  articles  of  the  orthodox  art  creed, 
succeeded  at  least  in  attracting  attention,  though  most  of  the 
reviews  of  his  book  were  condemnatory  of  its  doctrines.     In 
1846  a  second  volume  of  "Modern   Painters"  was  issued, 
to  accompany  an  enlarged  and  amended  edition  of  the  first. 
By  this  time  the  value  of  the  work  had  become  widely  recog- 
nised, and  Mr.  Ruskin  was  justly  regarded  as  one  of  the  first 
writers  of  the  day.     In  1856  two  more  volumes  were  added, 
and  in   1860  the  work  was  completed  by  the  publication  of  a 
third  volume.    On  the  composition  of  "  Modern  Painters  "  the 
author  bestowed  the  utmost  pains,  often  rewriting  a  paragraph 
several  times,  till  its  melody  was  such  as  to  suit  his  fastidious 


434  Our  Own  Times. 

ear.  A  new  and  final  edition  of  '-'Modern  Painters"  was 
issued  in  1873,  since  which  time  the  author  has  steadfastly 
refused  to  reprint  it,  so  that  it  cannot  be  obtained  unless  one 
is  prepared  to  pay  a  fancy  price  for  it.  Mr.  Ruskin's  reasons 
for  not  reprinting  it  are  various.  He  has  modified  some  of 
his  opinions  since  it  was  written,  and,  in  particular,  he  does 
not  regard  the  Church  of  Rome  with  the  same  horror.  When 
11  Modern  Painters  "  was  composed  his  views  were  of  the  kind 
called  "  Evangelical ;"  and  while  still  Protestant  in  the  genuine 
sense  of  the  word,  his  language  in  one  of  his  latest  produc- 
tions, "The  Bible  of  Amiens,"  regarding  the  worship  of  the 
Virgin,  has  evoked  an  indignant  protest  from  a  section  of  the 
press.  A  little  volume  of  selections  from  "Modern  Painters" 
was  published  in  1876  under  the  title  of  "Frondes  Agrestes." 

During  the  interval  between  the  publication  of  the  first  and 
the  last  volume  of  "  Modern  Painters,"  many  of  Mr.  Ruskin's 
most  important  works  appeared.  "  The  Seven  Lamps  of 
Architecture,"  which  did  for  architecture  what  "  Modern  Pain- 
ters "  did  for  painting,  was  published  in  1849.  In  1851  he 
published  a  pamphlet  advocating  Pre-Raphaelitism,  then  in  its 
infancy,  and  issued  the  first  volume  of  his  magnificent  "  Stones 
of  Venice,"  which  was  completed  by  the  publication  of  two 
more  volumes  in  1853.  Among  many  by  whom  this  great 
work  was  read  with  admiration,  none  was  more  enthusiastic 
in  its  praise  than  Charlotte  Bronte,  who  declared  that  Mr. 
Ruskin  seemed  to  her  one  of  the  few  genuine  writers,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  bookmakers,  of  this  age.  "  His  earnestness 
even  amuses  me  in  certain  passages ;  for  I  cannot  help  laugh- 
ing to  think  how  Utilitarians  will  fume  and  fret  over  his  deep, 
serious,  and  (as  they  will  think)  fanatical  reverence  for  art. 
That  pure  and  severe  mind  you  ascribed  to  him  speaks  in 
every  line.  He  writes  like  a  consecrated  Priest  of  the 
Abstract  and  Ideal." 

"  Modern  Painters,"  "  The  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture," 
and  the  "  Stones  of  Venice"  are  Mr.  Ruskin's  most  important 
works,  but  he  has  written  much  besides.  "  Unto  this  Last," 
four  essays  on  the  principles  of  political  economy,  very  much 


Ruskiris  Writings.  435 

opposed  to  the  received  ones  and '  extremely  paradoxical, 
appeared  in  1862,  having  been  previously  published  in  the 
Cornhill  Magazine.  "  Sesame  and  Lilies,"  originally  delivered 
as  lectures  in  Manchester  in  1864,  gives  his  views  "about 
books,  and  the  way  we  read  them,  and  could  or  should  read 
them  ; "  and  also  about  the  education  of  women.  We  need 
not  chronicle  "  the  legions  of  little  books  with  parody-provok- 
ing titles  "  in  which  of  late  years  Mr.  Ruskin  has  lifted  up  his 
voice  against  our  social  evils,  and  told  us  how  we  should 
remove  them.  Of  these,  the  most  characteristic  is  fi  Fors 
Clavigera,"  a  series  of  letters  to  the  workmen  and  labourers  of 
Great  Britain,  begun  in  1871  and  carried  on  for  several  years. 
It  must  not  be  supposed  that  Mr.  Ruskin  has  altogether 
abandoned  his  art  studies ;  precious  productions  of  this  nature 
still  come  from  his  pen,  although  it  is  his  work  as  a  social 
reformer  which  he  now  estimates  most  highly.  However 
erroneous  and  one-sided  many  of  his  opinions  on  the  condi- 
tion of  society  and  on  modern  improvements,  however  hope- 
lessly unpractical  many  of  his  schemes  for  the  regeneration  of 
mankind  may  be,  all  must  admire  his  noble  purity  of  heart,  his 
earnest  aspirations  after  better  things,  and  his  unflinching  de- 
votion to  what  he  believes  to  be  the  truth. 

We  have  mentioned  the  care  with  which  "  Modern  Painters" 
was  written.  This  care  has  had  its  reward.  The  ease  and  grace 
of  Mr.  Ruskin's  style,  his  appropriateness  of  expression,  his 
splendour  of  imaginative  effect,  the  harmonious  roll  of  his 
sentences,  and  the  beautiful  thoughts  sustained  in  them,  make 
the  study  of  his  great  works  one  of  the  highest  intellectual 
pleasures.  And  they  are  works  which  none  can  study  without 
learning  much  and  benefiting  greatly.  Yet  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  to  a  very  large  number  of  readers  Ruskin  is  a  name  and 
nothing  besides.  While  the  various  editions  of  the  works  of 
Tennyson,  the  greatest  poet  of  the  day,  are  selling  by  hundreds 
of  thousands,  Raskin,  the  greatest  living  prose  writer,  is  known 
to  most  only  by  the  paragraphs  of  true  or  false  gossip  regard- 
ing him  that  appear  from  time  to  time  in  the  newspapers. 
The  cause  of  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  In  accordance  with  one 


4.36  Our  Own  Times. 

of  his  peculiar  theories,  Mr.  Ruskin  has  chosen  to  sell  his  books 
only  through  a  provincial  bookseller,  to  sell  them  at  the  same 
price  to  the  trade  as  to  the  public,  and,  last  but  not  least,  to 
sell  them  at  such  a  price  as  places  them  almost  quite  beyond 
the  reach  of  people  of  moderate  means.  Moreover,  some  of 
them  are  out  of  print,  and  not  to  be  procured  save  for  a  sum 
which  would  seem  a  small  fortune  to  many  a  working  man. 
Hence  arises  the  fact,  probably  unique  in  literary  history,  of 
the  writings  of  a  man  universally  admitted  to  be  one  of  the 
greatest  geniuses  of  his  time,  being  very  little  known  to  the 
reading  public  at  large,  and  being  absent  from  the  book- 
shelves of  many  of  the  most  assiduous  collectors  of  modern 
literature. 

The  greatest  living  critic  and  one  of  .the  greatest  living  poets 
is  Matthew  Arnold,  son  of  the  famous  Dr.  Arnold  of  Rugby,  who 
revolutionised  the  discipline  of  our  great  public  schools,  and 
who  occupies  no  mean  rank  as  an  historian.  Mr.  Arnold,  who 
was  born  in  1822,  was  educated  at  Rugby,  on  leaving  which 
he  was  elected  to  a  scholarship  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford. 
The  following  passage  from  a  poem  by  Principal  Shairp,  himself 
a  distinguished  critic,  describes  how  Mr.  Arnold  at  Oxford — 

"  Wide-welcomed  for  a  father's  fame, 

Entered  with  free,  bold  step,  that  seemed  to  claim 

Fame  for  himself,  nor  on  another  lean  ; 
So  full  of  power,  yet  blithe  and  debonair, 

Ral  ying  his  friends  with  pleasant  banter  gay, 
Or  half  a-dream,  chaunting  with  jaunty  air 

Great  words  of  Goethe,  scrap  of  Beranger. 
We  see  the  banter  sparkle  in  his  prose, 

But  knew  not  then  the  undertone  that  flows, 
So  calmly  sad  through  all  his  stately  lay." 

During  his  undergraduate  career,  Mr.  Arnold,  like  Mr.  Rus- 
kin, obtained  the  Newdigate  prize  for  English  verse.  He 
graduated  with  second-class  honours ;  and  was,  in  1845, 
elected  to  a  Fellowship  at  Oriel.  In  1847  he  was  appointed 
private  secretary  to  the  late  Lord  Landsowne,  which  office 
he  retained  till  his  marriage  in  1851,  when  he  became  an 


Matthew  A  mold.  437 

inspector  of  schools,  a  position  he  still  holds.  His  first 
volume,  "  The  Strayed  Reveller,  and  other  Poems,  by  A.," 
appeared  in  1849;  the  second,  "  Empedocles  on  Etna,  and 
other  Poems,  by  A.,"  in  1852.  In  .1853  he  published  a 
volume  of  poems  tinder  his  own  name,  consisting  of  selections 
from  the  two  previously  published  volumes,  along  with  some 
new  pieces.  Another  volume  followed  in  1855.  In  1858, 
"  Merope,"  a  tragedy  in  the  Greek  manner,  was  published,  and 
in  1867  "New  Poems,"  in  which  "Empedocles,"  only  scraps 
of  which  had  been  reprinted  since  1852,  was  republished  in 
entirety,  at  the  request  of  Mr.  Robert  Browning.  Mr.  Arnold 
belongs  to  the  classical  school  of  poetry,  regarding  the  Greeks, 
with  their  strength  and  simplicity  of  phrase  and  their  perfect 
sense  of  form,  as  his  masters.  To  the  imaginative  power  of  a 
true  poet,  he  adds  a  delicacy  and  refinement  of  taste,  and  a 
purity  and  severity  of  phrase  which  uncultivated  readers  often 
mistake  for  boldness.  Nowhere  in  his  poems  do  we  find 
those  hackneyed  commonplaces,  decked  out  with  gaudy  and 
ungraceful  ornament,  which  pass  for  poetry  with  many  people. 
His  fault  rather  is  that  he  is  too  exclusively  the  poet  of  culture. 
Many  of  his  verses  will  always  seem  flat  and  insipid  to  those 
who  have  not  received  a  classical  education,  while,  on  the  other 
hand,  students  of  Greek  literature  will  be  disposed  to  praise  cer- 
tain of  his  pieces  more  highly  than  their  intrinsic  merit  demands. 
Yet  it  may  be  doubted  whether  some  of  his  work  as  a  poet 
will  not  stand  the  ordeal  of  time  better  than  that  of  any  con- 
temporary poet,  Mr.  Tennyson  and  Mr.  Browning  excepted. 
There  are  few  poems  which  show  such  a  refined  sense  of 
beauty,  such  dignity  and  self-restraint,  such  admirable  adapta- 
tion of  the  form  to  the  subject,  as,  to  give  one  or  two  examples, 
Mr.  Arnold's  "  Sohrab  and  Rustum,"  "  Tristram  and  Iseult," 
and  the  "  Forsaken  Merman."  On  the  last  of  these,  Mr. 
Swinburne's  eloquent  and  enthusiastic  criticism  may  be  quoted. 
"The  song  is  a  piece  of  thesea-wind,astray  breath  of  the  air  and 
bloom  of  the  bays  and  hills.  Its  mixture  of  mortal  sorrow 
with  the  strange  wild  sense  of  a  life  that  is  not  after  mortal 
law,  the  child-like  moan  after  lost  love  mingling  with  the  pure 


43  8  Ottr  Own  Times. 

outer  note  of  a  song  not  human,  the  look  in  it  as  of  bright, 
bewildered  eyes  with  tears  not  theirs  and  alien  wonder  in  the 
watch  of  them,  the  tender,  marvellous,  simple  beauty  of  the 
poem,  its  charm,  as  of  a  sound  or  a  flower  of  the  sea,  set  it 
and  save  it  apart  from  all  others  in  a  niche  of  the  memory." 
These  glowing  words  of  Mr.  Swinburne  cause  us  to  recollect 
that  readers  have  now  an  excellent  opportunity  of  comparing 
his  style  with  Mr.  Arnold's  by  reading  together  "  Tristram  of 
Lyonesse"  and  "Tristram  and  Iseult,"  in  which  the  same 
legend  is  handled.  Mr.  Swinburne  has  many  qualities  as  a 
poet  which  Mr.  Arnold  has  not,  yet  not  a  few  will  be  inclined 
to  think  that  Mr.  Arnold's  thoughtful  and  touching  treatment 
of -the  story  is  superior  to  Mr.  Swinburne's  more  gorgeous  but 
less  impressive  mode  of  dealing  with  it. 

Mr.  Arnold's  first,  and  certainly  not  worst,  work  as  a  critic 
appeared  in  the  form  of  prefaces  to  his  poems.  In  1857  he 
was  appointed  Professor  of  Poetry  in  Oxford  University, 
which  led  to  his  publishing  two  series  of  "  Lectures  on  Trans- 
lating Homer"  (1861-62),  in  which  he  advocates  the  use  of 
the  hexameter  as  the  proper  metre  for  the  English  translator 
of  the  author  of  the  "Iliad."  In  1865  appeared  his  most 
celebrated  prose  work,  the  "  Essays  in  Criticism,"  a  precious 
little  book,  to  the  influence  of  which  much  of  the  spirit  of 
current  criticism  may  be  traced.  Denning  criticism  as  "a 
disinterested  endeavour  to  learn  and  propagate  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  world,"  Mr.  Arnold  spared  no 
pains  to  make  critics  feel  that  their  duty  is  "  to  see  things  as 
they  are,"  to  shun  insular  prejudice  and  self-complacency,  to 
avoKTall  eccentricity  and  exaggeration,  never  to  praise  with 
blind  enthusiasm  or  to  condemn  with  equally  blind  indigna- 
tion, and  to  keep  themselves  pure  from  the  contagion  of 
personal,  or  political,  or  national  bias.  In  this,  as  in  all  his 
prose  writings,  he  treated  with  an  air  of  bantering  ridicule, 
beneath  which  lay  a  serious  purpose,  the  "  Philistinism"  of 
his  countrymen,  defining  Philistinism  as  "on  the  side  of 
beauty  and  taste,  vulgarity;  on  the  side  of  morality  and 
feeling,  coarseness  ;  on  the  side  of  mind  and  spirit,  unintelli- 


Sir  Arthur  Helps.  439 

gence."  One  book,  "Friendship's  Garland"  (1871),  he  has 
entirely  devoted  to  an  assault  on  the  kingdom  of  Philistia. 
To  religious  thought  Mr.  Arnold  has  contributed  largely. 
Among  his  writings  in  this  department  may  be  mentioned 
"  Literature  and  Dogma,"  "  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism,"  and 
"Last  Essays  on  Church  and  State."  These  cannot  be  criti- 
cised here.  Their  main  purport  has  been  thus  tersely  sum- 
marised :  "  His  design  is  to  retain  the  morality  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testament  without  retaining  what  he  thinks  superstitious 
excrescences — the  miracles,  the  promises  of  a  physical  life 
after  death,  and  the  like.  In  his  view  it  was  in  righteousness, 
in  "conduct,"  that  the  prophets  and  our  Lord  placed  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  He,  too,  holds  that  happiness  depends 
on  morality,  and  that  the  Bible  is  the  great  teacher  and 
inspirer  of  morality.  On  the  Continent  it  is  being  rejected 
because  of  its  want  of  conformity  to  physical  science.  In 
England  and  America,  where  religion  is  still  so  strong,  Mr. 
Arnold  hopes  to  anticipate  and  weaken  the  crude  scepticism 
which  rejects  what  is  true  and  divine  because  it  is  mixed  up 
with  what  is  human  and  erroneous."  Such  views  as  these,  it 
is  hardly  necessary  to  say,  have  met  with  much  powerful 
opposition  ;  and  there  are  few  of  Mr.  Arnold's  admirers  who) ", 
will  not  join  in  regretting  that  his  advocacy  of  them  has  occu-)  ' 
pied  so  much  time  that  he  would  have  better  employed  in 
the  field  of  literary  and  social  criticism.  Other  writings  of 
Mr.  Arnold's,  besides  those  mentioned,  are  "  Culture  and 
Anarchy,"  "Mixed  Essays,"  and  "Irish  Essays."  He  has 
also  edited  selections  from  Wordsworth  and  from  Byron,  with 
very  suggestive  introductory  essays  ;  and  has  done  other  simi- 
lar work. 

One  of  the  most  pleasing  of  the  few  writers  of  the  Victorian 
era  whose  fame  has  been  won  by  essay-writing,  as  distinct  from 
critical  and  biographical  articles,  is  Sir  Arthur  Helps  (1817- 
1875).  His  "Essays  Written  in  the  Intervals  of  Business" 
(1841),  "Claims  of  Labour"  (1844),  and  "Friends  in  Coun- 
cil" (1847-49),  are  full  of  wise  and  kindly  reflections  on  our 
everyday  experiences,  and  of  sagacious  and  high-minded  advice 


44O  Our  Own  Times. 

on  the  conduct  of  life.  He  also  won  for  himself  a  high  posi- 
tion as  an  historian  by  his  "  Conquerors  of  the  New  World 
and  their  Bondsmen"  (1848-51),  and  his  *; Spanish  Conquest 
in  America"  (1855-61),  and  wrote  one  or  two  interesting 
novels  touching  on  social  questions.  The  chief  attraction  of 
his  writings  lies  in  their  pure  and  graceful  style  and  their 
elevated  and  healthy  moral  tone. 

One  of  the  ablest  journalists  of  the  day,  and  one  of  the  first 
writers  on  subjects  connected  with  political  history,  is  John 
Morley  (born  1838).  Mr.  Morley  early  took  to  journalism, 
and  was  connected  as  editor  with  several  not  very  successful 
journalistic  adventures.  In  1867  he  succeeded  Mr.  G.  H. 
Lewes  as  editor  of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  which  he  con- 
ducted with  marked  ability  till  October  1882,  when  he  was 
succeeded  by  Mr.  T.  H.  S.  Escott.  Towards  the  close  of 
1880  he  became  editor  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  when  that 
post  was  vacated  by  Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood,  owing  to  the 
political  views  of  himself  and  the  proprietor  of  that  paper 
being  found  to  be  at  variance.  On  his  journalistic  labours 
Mr.  Morley  has  brought  to  bear  a  moral  earnestness,  a  depth 
of  conviction,  and  a  ripeness  and  power  of  style  surpassed  by 
no  living  newspaper-writer.  His  principal  works  are  two 
volumes  on  "Edmund  Burke,"  an  "Essay  on  Compromise;" 
studies  of  some  of  the  leading  characters  of  the  period  of  the 
French  Revolution, — Rousseau,  Voltaire,  Diderot;  and  a 
t;  Life  of  Richard  Cobden,"  which  may  fairly  claim  to  be  more 
powerfully  written  and  to  contain  more  suggestive  thought 
than  any  political  biography  in  the  language. 

There  are  many  other  living  essayists  and  critics  who  do 
credit  to  their  age  both  by  their  literary  skill  and  their  patient 
research  and  wide  knowledge.  Among  authors  of  the  so- 
called  "aesthetic"  school,  who  have  written  with  a  refinement 
and  subtlety  of  thought  and  an  elaboration  of  form  which 
would  have  been  a  stumbling-block  to  critics  of  the  Macaulay 
and  Jeffrey  type,  and  which  is  foolishness  to  the  Philistines, 
Mr.  Walter  H.  Pater  (born  1838)  is  especially  noteworthy. 
His  "Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Renaissance"  (1873), 


Cardinal  Newman.  44 1 

while  assailed  by  many  critics  on  account  of  their  dilettantism^ 
the  supreme  position  they  assign  to  art,  and  as  being  per- 
meated by  the  tone  of  an  inner  circle  of  illuminati,  was  wel- 
comed by  cultivated  and  discerning  readers  for  the  finish  and 
picturesqueness  of  its  composition.  The  "  History  of  the 
Renaissance  in  Italy,"  the  chief  work  of  John  Addington 
Symonds  (bom  1840),  which  was  published  in  1875-81,  has 
been  accepted  as  the  standard  authority  on  the  subject,  and 
is  written  in  a  style  which,  though  occasionally  overloaded 
with  ornament,  is  rarely  deficient  in  grace  and  colour.  Rev. 
Mark  Pattison,  the  Rector  of  Lincoln  College,  Oxford  (born 
1813),  has,  among  other  scholarly  productions,  written  a 
"Life  of  Casaubon"  (1875),  a  tvPe  of  scholar  now  altogether 
extinct,  with  an  insight  and  sympathy  which,  added  to  his 
wide  knowledge  of  the  subject,  make  it  one  of  the  best  bio- 
graphies of  its  class.  There  is  a  distinction  and  strenuousness 
about  Mr.  Pattison's  style  which  lift  it  above  the  ordinary 
level,  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  sometimes  careless  and  even 
ungrammatical.  A  host  of  other  writers  who  have  done  good 
service  to  the  cause  of  literature — Dr.  John  Brown,  Leslie 
Stephen,  William  Minto,  Edward  Dowden,  George  Saintsbury, 
R.  L.  Stevenson,  and  many  others — occur  to  us  as  we  write, 
but  these  we  must  refrain  from  particularising. 

With  the  theologians,  the  philosophers,  and  the  men  of 
science  of  our  own  times  we  do  not  propose  to  deal.  To 
enter  at  any  length  upon  their  characteristics  would  lead  us 
greatly  beyond  our  limits,  besides  being  in  some  measure  alien 
to  the  purpose  of  this  work  ;  and  to  give,  on  the  other  hand,  a 
barren  catalogue  of  names  and  dates  would  be  profitless  and 
tedious.  There  are  few  writers  whose  style  deserves  higher 
praise  than  that  of  Cardinal  Newman  (born  1801),  the  leading 
spirit  in  the  "  Oxford  movement,"  which  may  be  said  to  have 
been  at  its  height  between  1835-45,  and  which  finally  led  so 
many  distinguished  members  of  the  Church  of  England  within 
the  pale  of  the  Church  of  Rome.  The  finish  and  urbanity  of 
Cardinal  Newman's  prose  have  been  universally  commended, 
even  by  those  who  are  most  strenuously  opposed  to  his  opinions, 


4-4 2  Our  Oivn  Times. 

and  he  is  also  the  author  of  some  of  the  finest  religious  verse 
in  the  language.  Frederick  Denison  Maurice  (1805-1872),  the 
leader  of  the  "  Broad  Church  "  school,  is  a  great  figure  in  the 
history  of  theological  thought  in  England ;  and  the  same  may 
be  said  of  the  late  Dean  Stanley  (1815-1881),  who  always  wrote 
in  an  easy  and  graceful,  if  not  very  powerful  style.  The  ser- 
mons of  Frederick  William  Robertson  (1816-1853)  show  very 
well  the  favourable  influence  which  literary  taste  and  culture 
may  have  on  pulpit  oratory.  But  we  need  not  go  on  men- 
tioning more  names.  In  philosophy,  the  names  of  John 
Stuart  Mill  (1806-1873),  of  Herbert  Spencer  (born  1820), 
and  of  Alexander  Bain  (1818),  are  perhaps  the  best  known  to 
general  readers  among  those  who  have  made  their  mark  in 
the  world  of  metaphysical  speculation.  The  number  and  emi- 
nence of  the  men  of  science  who  appeared  in  the  Victorian 
era  will  strike  future  historians  as  one  of  its  most  noticeable 
features.  The  theory  of  Evolution  propounded  by  Charles 
Darwin  (1809-1882)  has  had  a  powerful  influence  not  only 
on  scientific  but  on  many  other  forms  of  thought — historic, 
scientific,  and  philosophical.  The  elegance  and  lucidity  of 
style  which  is  now  a  common  characteristic  of  scientific  men  is 
one  of  the  most  marked  features  of  the  time.  It  is  no  longer 
the  rule  for  chemists  and  natural  historians  to  be  incapable, 
when  called  on  to  address  a  general  audience,  of  writing  save 
in  a  jargon  lacking  ease,  finish,  and  intelligibility.  On  the 
other  hand,  such  men  as  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  Michael  Faraday, 
Professor  Huxley,  Professor  Tyndali  have  shown  that  they 
can  use  the  English  language  so  skilfully,  that  had  they 
made  literature  instead  of  science  their  specialty,  they  would 
assuredly  have  obtained  scarcely  less  high  honours  in  that 
profession  than  in  that  which  they  chose. 


XI 


PERIODICALS,  REVIEWS,  AND  ENCYCLOPEDIAS. 

jHAT  the  highly-finished  models  of  periodical  com- 
position which  had  been  given  to  the  world  by 
Steele  and  Addison  should  excite  a  spirit  of  emula- 
tion and  give  birth  to  a  number  of  competitors, 
was  an  event  equally  to  be  wished  for  and  expected."  So 
writes  the  industrious  Dr.  Nathan  Drake  at  the  beginning  of 
his  instructive,  if  rather  long-winded  essays  on  the  Ranibler, 
Adventurer,  and  Idler.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  same  work 
he  gives  a  chronological  table,  from  which  it  appears  that  be- 
tween the  Toiler  and  Rambler,  a  period  of  forty-one  years,  one 
hundred  and  six  periodical  papers  of  a  similar  kind  were 
issued,  and  between  the  jRambler  and  the  year  1809,  one 
hundred  and  thirteen,  making  altogether,  with  the  two  men- 
tioned added,  a  grand  total  of  two  hundred  and  twenty-one 
— a  surprising  number  truly.  Of  these,  a  vast  proportion, 
as  may  be  supposed,  were  quite  worthless,  and  have  been  de- 
servedly consigned  to  oblivion ;  others  of  more  merit,  indeed, 
but  still  of  not  sufficient  excellence  to  stand  the  test  of  time, 
have  shared  the  same  fate ;  others,  written  with  a  political 
intent,  are  of  value  only  to  the  historian.  A  very  few,  how- 
ever, are  still  of  interest,  either  because  of  the  value  of  their 
contents  or  on  account  of  the  fame  of  those  connected  with 
them.  Of  these  we  shall  give  some  brief  account. 

Of  the  many  periodicals,  political  and  social,  started  during 


444   Periodicals,  Reviews,  and  Encyclopedias. 

the  lifetime  of  Addison  and  Steele,  and  up  till  the  beginning 
of  Johnson's  Rambler  (1750),  all  or  nearly  all  of  any  merit 
have  been  already  mentioned  in  the  account  given  of  the 
literature  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne.  The  others  form  a 
very  motley  assemblage.  "Fortunate,"  says  Dr.  Drake, 
"  would  it  have  been  for  the  interests  of  general  literature  had 
the  swarm  of  imitators  strictly  confined  themselves  to  the 
plan  of  the  Spectator,  to  a  laudable  attempt  at  reforming  the 
morals  and  the  manners  of  the  age.  The  facility,  however, 
with  which  this  mode  of  writing  might  be  rendered  a  vehicle 
for  slander,  for  rancorous  politics,  and  virulent  satire,  soon 
tempted  many  to  deviate  from  the  salutary  example  of  the 
authors  of  the  Tatler  and  Spectator;  and  the  former  of  these 
papers  had  not  run  half  its  course  before  it  was  assailed 
by  a  multitude  of  writers  who  were  actuated  by  no  other 
motives  than  those  of  envy  and  .ill-nature."  One  of  them, 
the  Female  Tatler,  begun  in  1809,  obtained  such  notoriety 
for  its  personalities  that  it  was  presented  as  a  nuisance  by  the 
grand  jury  at  the  Old  Bailey.  Of  the  rest,  the  most  notable 
are  the  Lay  Monastery  (1713  !),  of  which  the  principal  writer 
was  the  poetical  knight  Sir  Richard  Blackmore,  who  was 
a  constant  butt  of  the  wits  of  his  time;  the  Censor  (1715), 
conducted  by  Theobald,  the  original  hero  of  the  "  Dun- 
ciad ; "  the  Craftsman  (1826),  which  proved  a  very  power- 
ful organ  of  the  opposition  to  Sir  Robert  Wai  pole ;  and 
three  papers  of  which  the  great  novelist  Henry  Fielding  was 
the  presiding  spirit,  the  Champion  (1739),  and  the  True 
Patriot,  begun  in  1745,  and  succeeded  by  \\~\Q  Jacobite  Journal. 
Of  these,  the  first,  besides  containing  essays  on  the  follies, 
vices,  amusements,  and  literature  of  the  age,  had  a  political 
intent,  being  directed  against  the  administration  of  Walpole ; 
while  the  first  and  second  were  designed  to  throw  ridicule 
upon  the  Jacobite  party,  and  to  aid  the  cause  of  the  House  of 
Hanover,  of  which  Fielding  was  a  very  strenuous  supporter. 
Some  years  later,  in  January  1752,  Fielding  started  another 

1  When    only  one    date   is    given,    it   refers  to   the  beginning  of  the 
periodical. 


The  Adventurer.  445 

periodical,  the  Covent  Garden  Journal,  which  was  published 
twice  a  week  for  a  twelvemonth.  Most  of  the  contents  were 
of  a  humorous  and  sarcastic  kind,  and  it  had  a  considerable 
flavouring  of  personal  satire. 

The  Covent  Garden  Journal  properly  belongs  to  the  second 
division  of  our  subject — the  papers  published  after  the 
Rambler.  Some  of  these  are  of  considerable  importance, 
especially  the  Adventurer,  which  had  a  very  considerable  sale 
both  during  its  publication  and  afterwards  when  collected  into 
volumes.  It  was  begun  in  November  1752,  and  continued 
till  March  1754.  It  appeared  twice  a  week,  and  the  price  of 
each  number  was  twopence,  the  same  as  that  of  the  Rambler. 
Of  the  hundred  and  forty  numbers  to  which  the  periodical 
extended,  Dr.  John  Hawkesworth,  its  editor,  was  the  author 
of  seventy.  Hawkesworth  (1715-1773)  was  one  of  the  many 
imitators  of  Johnson,  whose  style,  as  Burke  with  great  felicity 
of  phrase  observed  to  Boswell,  on  the  latter  remarking 
that  the  pompous  "Life  of  Young,"  which  Sir  Herbert 
Croft  contributed  to  the  "  Lives  of  the  Poets/'  was  very  much 
in  Johnson's  manner,  "  has  all  the  nodosities  of  the  oak  with- 
out its  strength  ;  all  the  contortions  of  the  Sybil  without  the 
inspiration."  A  considerable  proportion  of  Hawkesworth's  con- 
tributions consist  of  those  Oriental  and  allegorical  tales  of 
which  the  Spectator  presents  examples,  and  which  may  now  be 
reckoned  an  extinct  department  of  literature,  though  they  were 
so  popular  during  the  last  century.  That  they  have  ceased 
to  be  written  is  not  matter  for  regret,  for  nothing  can  be 
imagined  more  jejune  and  wearisome  than  most  of  them 
were.  Hawkesworth's  principal  assistants  in  the  Adventurer, 
besides  Dr.  Johnson,  who  contributed  a  good  many  papers, 
were  Richard  Bathurst  (whose  name  will  live  as  long  as  that 
of  the  individual  whom  Johnson  praised  as  "  a  man  to  my  very 
heart's  content ;  he  hated  a  fool,  and  he  hated  a  rogue,  and  he 
hated  a  Whig  :  he  was  a  very  good  hater  ") ;  Dr.  Joseph  Wai  ton  ; 
and  Hester  Chapone,  one  of  the  "  literary  ladies  "  of  Johnson's 
time,  whom  it  was  his  habit,  when  in  a  genial  mood,  to  over- 
praise ridiculously.  Joseph  Warton,  a  brother  of  Thomas 


446    Periodicals,  Reviews,  and  Encyclopedias. 

Warton,  the  author  of  the  "  History  of  English  Poetry/*  was  & 
man  of  considerable  note  in  his  day,  much  beloved  by  a  large 
circle  of  friends.  His  most  important  work  is  an  "  Essay  on 
the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope,"  much  of  which  he  after- 
wards incorporated  in  an  edition  of  that  poet's  works.  It  may 
be  mentioned  that  it  appears  from  a  letter  of  Johnson's  to 
\Varton  that  the  pay  of  the  contributors  to  the  Adventurer 
was  two  guineas  a  number.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  loose 
talking  about  the  wretched  remuneration  writers  received  dur- 
ing the  eighteenth  century.  Vast  sums  such  as  Scott,  Dickens, 
and  Macaulay  got  for  their  works  would,  of  course,  have  ap- 
peared almost  fabulous  even  to  the  most  successful  author  of 
that  time,  when  the  reading  public  was  so  small  compared  to 
what  it  is  now.  But  it  may  be  doubted  if  literary  "journey- 
work  "  was  not  paid  just  as  well  as  at  present. 

The  World)  begun  in  January  1753,  and  carried  on  weekly 
for  four  years,  is  of  interest  as  being  the  periodical  in  which  ap- 
peared Lord  Chesterfield's  articles  on  Johnson's  "  Dictionary," 
which  called  forth  the  "great  lexicographer's "  celebrated  letter. 
The  proprietor  of  the  World  and  its  principal  contributor 
was  Edward  Moore,  whose  tragedy,  the  "  Gamester,"  is  still 
occasionally  acted.  Horace  Walpole,  Lord  Hailes,  and 
Soame  Jenyns,  whose  book  on  the  "  Origin  of  Evil "  formed 
the  subject  of  one  of  Johnson's  most  caustic  criticisms, 
also  occasionally  wrote  in  it.  Chesterfield's  two  papers  in 
recommendation  of  Johnson's  "Dictionary"  appeared  in 
November  28  and  December  5,  1754.  Johnson  seems  to  have 
thought  over  his  rejoinder  for  a  considerable  time,  his  letter 
bearing  date  February  7,  1755. 

In  the  Connoisseur,  a  periodical  begun  in  January  1754, 
and  continued  weekly  for  three  years,  appeared  in  1756  the 
first  publications  of  William  Cowper.  His  first  paper  was  on 
"  Keeping  a  Secret/'containing  sketches  of  faithless  confidantes ; 
the  second  an  account  of  the  present  state  of  country  churches, 
their  clergy,  and  their  congregations  ;  and  the  third  an  essay  on 
conversation  and  its  abuses.  Two  other  papers  have,  on  un- 
certain evidence,  been  attributed  to  him.  The  chief  writers 


The  Mirror.  447 

in  the  Connoisseur  were  George  Colman,  a  lively  play-writer, 
and  Bonnel  Thornton,  who  was  well  known  in  his  day  as 
a  clever  writer  of  satirical  verses  and  essays.  The  character  of 
this  periodical  is  thus  given  by  Dr.  Drake  :  "  The  Connoisseur 
labours  under  the  same  defect  which  has  been  attributed  to 
the  World — it  is  too  uniformly  a  tissue  of  ridicule  and  carica- 
ture. In  this  line,  however,  several  of  its  papers  are  superior 
to  those  of  the  same  species  in  the  World,  and  it  displays 
likewise  more  classical  literature  that  its  rival.  It  is,  on  the 
whole,  more  entertaining  than  the  World,  but,  if  we  except 
a  few  papers,  inferior  in  point  of  composition.  To  the  juven- 
ility of  the  two  chief  writers  in  it,  and  to  their  strong  attach- 
ment to  satire  and  burlesque,  we  are  to  attribute  its  occasional 
incorrectness  of  style  and  its  poverty  of  matter." 

With  the  Mirror  and  the  Lounger,  two  periodicals  pub- 
lished at  Edinburgh,  and  conducted  by  Northern  literati,  the 
list  of  classical  papers  of  the  Spectator  class  closed,  for 
though  a  few  followed  the  two  mentioned,  none  of  them 
attained  any  celebrity.  The  Mirror  \\zs  published  pretty  con- 
stantly every  Tuesday  and  Saturday  from  January  23,  1779, 
to  May  27,  1780.  Its  editor  and  principal  contributor  was 
Henry  Mackenzie,  the  author  of  the  "  Man  of  Feeling,"  who 
gives  the  following  account  of  its  origin  : — "  The  idea  of  pub- 
lishing a  periodical  paper  in  Edinburgh  took  its  rise  in  a  com- 
pany of  gentlemen  whom  particular  circumstances  of  connec- 
tion brought  frequently  together.  Their  discourse  often  turned 
upon  subjects  of  manners,  of  taste,  and  of  literature.  By  one 
of  those  accidental  resolutions  of  which  the  origin  cannot 
easily  be  traced,  it  was  determined  to  put  their  thoughts  into 
writing,  and  to  read  them  for  the  entertainment  of  each.  The 
essays  assumed  the  form,  and  soon  after  some  one  gave  them 
the  name,  of  a  periodical  publication;  the  writers  of  it  were  natu- 
rally associated,  and  their  meetings  increased  the  importance 
as  well  as  the  number  of  their  productions."  By  and  by  the  idea 
of  publication  suggested  itself;  and  as  number  after  number  of 
the  Mirror  appeared,  it  came  to  be  regarded  by  all  Scotchmen 
with  just  pride.  Of  the  hundred  and  ten  numbers  of  which 


448    Periodicals,  Reviews,  and  Encyclopedias. 

it  consists,  Mackenzie  was  the  sole  author  of  thirty-nine, 
besides  assisting  in  the  composition  of  others.  Among  the 
other  contributors  were  Lord  Hailes  ;  Professor  Richardson  of 
Glasgow;  William  Strahan,  the  printer,  frequently  mentioned 
by  Bos  well ;  Beattie,  the  author  of  the  "  Minstrel ; "  and  David 
Hume,  the  nephew  of  the  historian.  In  interest  and  variety 
of  contents  the  Mirror  is  superior  to  the  Adventurer,  with 
which  its  merits  in  other  respects  are  about  on  a  level. 
The  most  noticeable  contribution  to  it  is  probably  Mackenzie's 
"Story  of  La  Roche,"  the  pathos  of  which  has  been  much  praised. 
The  publication  of  the  Lounger,  a  continuation  of  the  Mirror, 
possessing  the  same  characteristics,  and  likewise  conducted 
by  members  of  the  "  Mirror  Club,"  as  it  was  called,  begun 
on  February  5,  1785,  was  continued  till  January  6,  1787. 

We  pass  on  to  a  new  era  in  periodical  literature,  which 
dawned  when,  in  1802,  the  first  number  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review  appeared.  Of  the  origin  of  this  epoch-making  journal, 
Sydney  Smith,  one  of  its  earliest  and  most  brilliant  contribu- 
tors, has  given  the  following  account : — "  Towards  the  end  of 
my  residence  in  Edinburgh,  Brougham,  Jeffrey,  and  myself 
happened  to  meet  in  the  eighth  or  ninth  storey,  or  flat,  in  Buc- 
cleuch  Place,  the  then  elevated  residence  of  Mr.  Jeffrey.  I 
proposed  that  we  should  set  up  a  Review.  This  was  acceded 
to  with  acclamation.  I  was  appointed  editor,  and  remained 
long  enough  in  Edinburgh  to  edit  the  first  number  of  the 
Rei'icw.  The  motto  I  proposed  for  the  Review  was  *  Tenui 
Musam  meditamur  avena"' — '  We  cultivate  literature  on  a  little 
oatmeal.'  But  this  was  too  near  the  truth  to  be  admitted  ;  so 
we  took  our  present  grave  motto  from  Publius  Syrus  ["  Judex 
damnatur  cum  nocens  absolvitur" — "The  judge  is  con- 
demned when  the  guilty  is  acquitted  "],  of  whom  none  of  us 
had,  I  am  sure,  read  a  single  line ;  and  so  began  what  turned 
out  to  be  a  very  important  and  able  journal.  When  I  left 
Edinburgh,  it  fell  into  the  stronger  hands  of  Lord  Jeffrey  and 
Brougham,  and  reached  the  highest  point  of  popularity  and 
success."  This  account,  bati.ig  a  slight  touch  or  two  of 
humorous  exaggeration,  as,  for  example,  "  the  eighth  or  ninth 


The  Edinburgh  Review.  449 

storey,"  is  substantially  correct.  The  effect  of  the  first  num- 
ber of  the  Review  was,  says  Jeffrey's  biographer,  Lord  Cock- 
burn,  "electrical."  To  readers  accustomed  to  the  tedious, 
inane  twaddle  which  formed  the  staple  of  the  magazines  of  the 
day,  it  was  a  very  welcome  relief  to  find  such  fresh,  vigorous 
writing  as  was  to  be  found  in  the  new  periodical  Yet  it  can- 
not be  said  that  the  early  volumes  of  the  Review  strike  one 
who  looks  at  them  nowadays  as  of  any  extraordinary  merit  or 
interest.  Many  of  the  articles  are  of  the  kind  called  "pad- 
ding," consisting  of  a  sort  of  epitome  of  the  work  noticed,  with 
copious  extracts.  In  the  early  years  of  the  Review's  exist- 
ence, it  contained  none  of  those  brief  monographs,  often 
having  only  a  very  slight  connection  with  the  works  nominally 
under  notice,  in  which  writers  possessed  of  special  know- 
ledge on  particular  subjects  tersely  sum  up  the  results  of  their 
investigations.  Some  account  of  Jeffrey's  connection  with 
the  Review  has  already  been  given.  He  was  succeeded  by 
Macvey  Napier,  Professor  of  Conveyancing  in  Edinburgh 
University,  who  occupied  the  editorial  chair  till  his  death 
in  1847.  The  entertaining  volume  of  selections  from  his 
correspondence,  published  in  1879,  shows  how  difficult  he 
found  his  position  in  having  to  settle  the  conflicting  claims  of 
various  contributors,  and,  in  particular,  of  having  to  pacify 
as  best  he  could  the  vindictive  passions  of  Brougham,  who 
wished  to  make  the  Review  a  vehicle  for  venting  his  spite 
against  his  political  opponents.  Since  Napier's  death,  the 
Review  has  been  edited  by  Jeffrey's  son-in-law,  William 
Empson  ;  Sir  George  Cornewall  Lewis,  distinguished  as  a 
statesman  and  a  scholar ;  and  Mr.  Henry  Reeve,  its  present 
editor,  who  succeeded  Sir  G.  C.  Lewis  in  1855.  Mr.  Reeve, 
who  is  Registrar  of  the  Privy  Council,  is  chiefly  known  by  his 
translation  of  De  Tocqueville's  "  Democracy  in  America."  A 
very  long  and  brilliant  list  of  the  leading  contributors  to  the 
Edinburgh  Review  under  its  various  editors  might  be  drawn 
up,  including  such  men  as  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Hallam,  Macaulay, 
Carlyle,  Henry  Rogers,  the  author  of  the  "  Eclipse  of  Faith," 
whose  really  wonderful  gift  of  style  should  keep  his  memory 
20 


45°    Periodicals,  Reviews,  and  Encyclopedias. 

alive  ;  Sir  James  Stephen,  Lytton,  Thackeray,  Leigh  Hunt, 
Froude,  and  others. 

During  the  early  years  of  the  existence  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review  it  did  not  adopt  a  very  decided  tone  in  politics.  Social 
and  political  reforms  were  indeed  advocated,  but  the  advocacy 
was  not  carried  on  in  very  emphatic  fashion ;  and  the  Review 
could  scarcely  be  called  a  party  organ  till  the  appearance  in 
1808  of  an  article  on  the  work  of  Don  Pedro  Cevallos  on  the 
"  French  Usurpation  of  Spain"  gave  undisguised  expression  to 
its  Whig  leanings.  Great  was  the  consternation  and  indigna- 
tion excited  by  the  article  in  the  breasts  of  many  Tories,  not  a' 
few  of  whom  had  already  begun  to  regard  the  Review  with 
suspicion.  When  the  number  containing  it  appeared,  Scott 
wrote  to  Constable,  the  publisher,  in  these  terms : — "  The 
Edinburgh  Review  had  become  such  as  to  render  it  impos- 
sible for  me  to  continue  a  contributor  to  it.  Now  it  is  such 
as  I  can  no  longer  continue  to  receive  or-  read  it."  The  list 
of  the  then  subscribers  exhibits,  in  an  indignant  dash  of  Con- 
stable's pen  opposite  Scott's  name,  the  word — "  Stopt ! ! ! " 
The  eccentric  Earl  of  Buchan  took  a  more  conspicuous  way  of 
showing  his  displeasure  than  Scott  Throwing  the  obnoxious 
number  on  the  floor  of  his  hall,  he  solemnly  kicked  it  out  into 
the  street.  Already  there  had  been  negotiations  among  vari- 
ous parties  as  to  the  starting  of  a  Tory  Quarterly,  and  the 
article  on  the  "  French  Usurpation  of  Spain "  had  the  effect 
of  bringing  these  negotiations  at  once  to  a  point.  Canning, 
then  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs,  was  warmly  interested  in 
the  new  project ;  Scott  exerted  himself  to  the  utmost  to  further 
it ;  many  eminent  writers  of  Tory  politics  promised  their  aid  ; 
and  at  length,  in  February  1809,  the  opening  number  appeared. 
The  original  editor  was  William  Gifford,  who  retained  the  post 
till  within  about  a  year  of  his  death  in  1826.  Gifford,  "  a  little 
dumpled-up  man,"  who,  originally  a  shoemaker,  had  fought  his 
way  up  to  eminence  and  power,  is  now  chiefly  remembered  for 
his  connection  with  the  Quarterly,  and  for  the  work  he  did  in 
editing  the  old  dramatists.  His  satires,  the  "  Baviad "  and 
the  "  Mseviad,"  are  now  as  entirely  forgotten  as  the  schools 


The  Quarterly  Review.  451 

of  poetry  they  were  meant  to  ridicule.  The  chief  contribu- 
tors to  the  early  numbers  of  the  Quarterly  were  Scott,  Southey, 
George  Ellis,  William  Rose,  the  translator  of  Ariosto,  Reginald 
Heber,  Sir  John  Barrow,  and  last,  but  by  no  means  least  not- 
able, John  Wilson  Croker.  To  most  readers  of  the  present 
day,  Croker  is  known  only  from  the  annihilating  review  by 
Macaulay  of  his  edition  of  Boswell's  "  Johnson,"  and  from  the 
inimitably  trenchant  and  incisive  portrait  of  him  under  the 
name  of  Rigby  in  Disraeli's  "  Coningsby."  Truculent  bru- 
tality, combined  with  a  sort  of  attorney  sharpness,  may  be 
described  as  the  leading  characteristics  of  his  many  articles  in 
the  Quarterly,  which  may  be  easily  recognised  from  their 
abundance  of  italics  and  small  capitals.1  On  the  whole,  the 
early -volumes  of  the  Quarterly  are  not  equal  in  interest  and 
ability  to  the  early  numbers  of  the  Edinburgh.  Political  par- 
tisanship appears  in  every  page ;  no  mercy  is  ever  shown  to 
the  work  of  a  Whig,  however  great  its  literary  merit  may  be. 
When  Gifford  withdrew  from  the  editorship  of  the  Quarterly, 
it  was  for  a  short  time  held  by  Henry  Nelson  Coleridge,  after 
which,  in  1826,  Lockhart  became  editor.  Lockhart  resigned 
the  office  in  1853,  and  was  succeeded  by  the  Rev.  Whitwell 
EUvin,  well  known  as  the  editor  of  Pope,  who  continued  in 
office  till  1860.  His  place  was  taken  by  a  Mr.  Macpherson, 
after  which,  in  1867,  the  present  editor,  Dr.  William  Smith, 
was  appointed.  Under  his  management  the  Quarterly  has 
reached  a  perhaps  higher  level  of  excellence  than  it  had  ever 
previously  attained,  the  articles  on  literary  subjects  being  par- 
ticularly able  and  scholarly. 

Since  the  commencement  of  the  Edinburgh  and  the 
Quarterly,  many  Reviews  in  imitation  of  them  have  been 
started.  Among  these  may  be  mentioned  the  Westminster 
Review,  begun  in  1824  to  advocate  the  views  of  advanced 

1  Croker  was  a  man  who  incurred  a  great  deal  of  enmity,  and  whose 
character  possessed  some  highly  objectionable  features.  An  account  of 
his  life,  and  a  not  very  forcible  defence  of  his  character,  will  be  found  in 
an  article  in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  July  1876,  written  by  the  present 
editor,  Dr.  William  Smith. 


452    Periodicals,  Reviews,  and  Encyclopedias. 

thinkers  in  religion  and  politics,  and  still  continued  after  a 
not  very  prosperous  career ;  the  British  Quarterly,  begun  by 
Dr.  Vaughan  to  represent  the  cause  of  dissent;  the  North 
British  Review,  originally  started  as  the  organ  of  the  Free 
Church  Party  in  Scotland ;  the  Dublin  Review,  the  Catholic 
organ,  &c.,  &c. 

While  in  the  early  part  of  this  century  most  of  the  higher 
and  middle  classes  of  Edinburgh  were  Conservative  in  their 
politics,  the  Edinburgh  Review,  the  only  Scottish  literary 
journal  on  which  they  could  look  with  any  pride,  was  Liberal. 
Such  a  state  of  things  was  naturally  galling  to  many  staunch 
Northern  Tories  ;  but  for  some  years  nothing  was  done  to 
remedy  it.  At  length,  in  December  1816,  William  Black- 
wood,  an  enterprising  young  Edinburgh  publisher,  was  applied 
to  by  two  literary  men  of  some  slight  reputation,  James  Cleg- 
horn  and  Thomas  Pringle,  to  become  the  publisher  of  a  new 
monthly  magazine,  which  they  had  projected.  He  consented, 
and  in  April  1817  the  first  number  of  the  Edinburgh  Monthly 
Magazine  appeared.  It  was  conducted  with  little  spirit  or 
ability,  and  after  six  numbers  of  it  had  been  published,  the 
editors,  who  resented  Blackwood's  interference  with  their  func- 
tions, were  obliged  to  abandon  their  office.  Blackwood  now 
took  the  editorship  into  his  own  hands,  and  in  October  1817 
appeared  the  first  number  of  Blackwood's  Edinburgh  Magazine. 
"  It  needed,"  says  the  biographer  of  Christopher  North,  "  no 
advertising  trumpet  to  let  the  world  know  that  a  new  reign  (a 
reign  of  terror  in  its  way)  had  begun.  .  .  .  Among  a  consider- 
able variety  of  papers,  most  of  them  able  and  interesting,  it  con- 
tained not  less  than  three  of  a  kind  well  calculated  to  arouse 
curiosity  and  to  give  deep  offence  to  sections  more  or  less 
extensive  of  the  reading  public.  The  first  was  a  most  unwarrant- 
able assault  on  Coleridge's  '  Biographia  Literaria,'  which  was 
judged  to  be  a  'most  execrable'  performance,  and  its  author 
a  miserable  compound  of  'egotism  and  malignity.'"  The 
second  was  an  even  more  unjustifiable  attack  on  Leigh  Hunt, 
who  was  spoken  of  as  a  "  profligate  creature,"  a  person  with- 
out reverence  either  for  God  or  man.  "  The  third  was  the 


Chambers  s  Journal.  453 

famous  *  Chaldee  Manuscript,'  compared  with  which  the  sins 
of  the  others  were  almost  pardonable  in  the  eyes  of  the  public. 
The  effect  of  this  article  upon  the  small  society  of  Edinburgh 
can  hardly  be  realised."  The  numerous  bitter  personalities  of 
the  early  volumes  of  Blackwood,  if  far  from  creditable  to  its 
writers,  had  the  effect  of  attracting  public  attention  to  it  and 
of  promoting  its  sale.  From  its  commencement  till  now  it 
has  been  conducted  with  great  ability,  always  securing  as  its 
contributors  writers  of  the  highest  literary  merit.  Its  ad- 
vocacy of  Conservative  opinions  has  been  uniformly  staunch 
and  vigorous.  In  1830  Erasers  Magazine,  conducted  on  the 
same  lines  as  the  early  numbers  of  Blackwood,  and  even  more 
intensely  personal  than  they  were,  began  to  be  published. 
During  its  long  career,  which  came  to  a  close  in  October 
1882,  Fraser  numbered  many  very  distinguished  names  among 
its  contributors,  including  Coleridge,  Carlyle,  Thackeray, 
"  Billy "  Maginn,  Allan  Cunningham,  Froude,  Kingsley,  and 
many  others.  When  the  effervescence  of  its  youth  had  sub- 
sided, it  became  a  very  decorous  and  respectable  journal, 
adding  in  its  latter  years  not  a  little  of  the  dulness  of  age  to 
its  respectability.  At  the  close  of  1859  a  new  departure  was 
made  in  periodical  literature  by  the  almost  simultaneous 
commencement  of  two  new  first-class  monthly  magazines,  Mac- 
millarfs  and  the  Corn/till,  which  still,  though  now  surrounded 
by  several  rivals,  pursue  their  career  vigorously.  The  publi- 
cation of  the  first  number  of  Macmillan  preceded  the  first 
number  of  the  Corn/till  by  a  month. 

The  issue  of  cheap  periodicals  for  the  million  was  inaugurated 
by  the  publication  of  the  first  number  of  Chambers' s  Journal  on. 
February  4,  1832.  Other  cheap  periodicals  had  been  started 
previously,  but  they  had  not  been  of  sufficient  excellence  to 
ensure  a  large  enough  sale  to  render  them  remunerative  and 
permanent  The  Journal,  consisting  of  four  large  folio  pages 
of  excellent  and  instructive  matter  at  the  low  price  of  three- 
halfpence,  was  at  once  a  great  success,  attaining  immediately  a 
sale  of  over  30,000  copies,  which  soon  rose  to  50,000.  With 
the  thirty-seventh  number,  the  bulky  folio  size  was  exchanged 


454    Periodicals,  Reviews,  and  Encyclopedias* 

for  the  more  convenient  quarto  form.  In  1845  the  quarto 
form  was  exchanged  for  the  octavo;  and  simultaneously 
the  Journal  somewhat  altered  its  character,  appealing  more 
directly  to  educated  readers.  The  original  editor  of  the 
Journal  was  Dr.  William  Chambers.  After  the  fourteenth 
number  his  brother,  Robert,  became  associated  with  him  as 
joint-editor.  Between  1843  and  1844  Mr.  W.  H.  Wills  con- 
ducted it.  He  was  succeeded  by  Leitch  Ritchie,  who  was 
editor  from  1845  to  1859.  In  the  latter  year  Mr.  James  Payn 
became  editor,  and  was  a  very  large  and  constant  contributor 
of  sketches  and  novels  till  1874,  when  he  ceased  to  be  con- 
nected with  it.  It  has  since  been  under  the  management  of 
members  of  the  firm. 

As  was  natural,  the  great  success  of  Chambers 's  Journal 
caused  many  imitations  of  it  to  be  published.  Most  of  these 
had  only  a  short  life.  Two  only  we  shall  mention.  The  first 
number  of  the  Penny  Magazine,  published  by  the  Society  for 
the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge,  appeared  in  March  1832, 
a  few  weeks  subsequent  to  Chambers^  Journal,  which  it  at 
first  far  outstripped  in  point  of  circulation.  Among  the  con- 
tributors to  the  Penny  Magazine  were  George  Long,  Allan 
Cunningham,  and  De  Morgan ;  but  as  rivals  pressed  thickly 
around  it,  it  had  to  succumb  in  the  fierce  struggle  for  life 
which  all  periodicals  have  to  wage.  Hoggs  Weekly  Instructor 
merits  mention  here  as  having  had  a  more  distinct  character  of 
its  own  than  most  of  its  compeers.  It  was  started  in  March 
1845,  and  continued  in  varying  forms  till  December  1859,  when 
it  completed  its  twenty-ninth  volume.  At  the  time  of  its  com- 
mencement, there  was  no  cheap  periodical  accessible  to  the 
masses,  except  those  conducted  on  strictly  secular  principles, 
and  the  monthly  religious  journals  advocating  the  special 
views  of  the  various  denominations  from  which  they  emanatedl 
A  widespread  opinion  was  entertained  that  a  periodical  was 
wanted  which,  while  unsectarian,  should  yet  be  imbued  with 
a  decidedly  religious  spirit.  Dr.  Arnold  well  expressed  the 
idea  which  animated  the  projectors  of  Hogg's  Instructor  when 
he  said,  "  I  never  wanted  articles  on  religious  subjects  half  so 


The  Encyclopedia  Britanmca.  455 

much  as  articles  on  common  subjects  written  in  a  decidedly 
Christian  spirit"  The  mode  in  which  the  Instructor  was 
conducted,  by  degrees  attracted  the  attention  of  the  leading 
ministers,  clergymen,  and  professors  of  all  denominations, 
many  of  whom  wrote  expressing  their  strong  approval  of  the 
enterprise;  and  in  1849  Her  Majesty  the  Queen  was  pleased 
to  bestow  her  especial  patronage  upon  the  Instructor.  During 
its  course  it  numbered  among  i.s  contributors  many  names 
well  known  in  literature,  such  as  Mrs.  Crowe,  Frances  Browne, 
George  Gilfillan,  De  Quincey,  Dr.  Peter  Bayne,  Francis  Jacox, 
Rev.  A.  B.  Grosart,  and  "Cuthbert  Bede."  The  repeal  of 
the  paper  duty  in  1861  gave  an  immense  impetus  to  cheap 
periodical  literature,  and  hundreds  of  ventures  have  since 
been  started,  of  which  space  will  not  permit  us  to  give  any 
account.1 

The  first  English  encyclopaedia  was  the  work  of  a  London 
clergyman,  John  Harris.  It  is  entitled  "Lexicon  Technicum, 
or  an  Universal  English  Dictionary  of  Arts  and  Sciences, 
explaining  not  only  all  the  Terms  of  Art,  but  the  Arts  them- 
selves," and  was  published  in  1704  in  one  thick  folio  volume. 
In  1728  Ephraim  Chambers  published  his  "Cyclopaedia,  or 
a  Universal  Dictionary  of  Arts  and  Sciences,"  in  two  volumes 
folio.  This  was  the  fiist  English  work  bearing  the  name  of 
cyclopaedia.  It  was  a  great  success,  and  had  many  imitators. 
In  1778-88  Abraham  Rees  published  a  revised  and  enlarged 
edition  of  Chambers's  work  in  two  volumes  folio.  Previous 
to  the  publication  of  "Rees'  Cyclopaedia,"  as  it  is  generally 
called,  the  first  edition  of  the  "Encyclopaedia  Britannica"  had 
been  issued  at  Edinburgh.  It  appeared  in  parts  between 
1768-71.  It  "professed  to  be  'by  a  society  of  gentlemen  in 
Scotland/  but  the  '  society  of  gentlemen '  consisted  of  Mr. 
William  Smellie  only,  who,  according  to  his  biographer,  Kerr, 

1  For  a  full  account  of  the  repeal  of  the  taxes  on  knowledge,  and  the 
vast  increase  in  periodical  literature  which  followed  that  repeal,  I  may 
be  allowed  to  refer  to  the  chapter  on  the  "Repeal  of  the  Fiscal  Restric- 
tions on  Literature  and  the  Press"  in  my  work,  "Great  Movements,  nnd 
those  who  Achieved  them." 


456   Periodicals,  Revieivs,  and  Encyclopedias. 

compiled  single-handed  the  whole  of  the  first  edition,  and 
'used  to  say  jocularly  that  he  had  made  a  dictionary  of  the 
arts  and  sciences  with  a  pair  of  scissors.' "  The  second  edition 
of  the  "Britannica"  was  begun  in  1777,  and  concluded  in 
1784.  To  the  second  edition  historical  and  geographical 
articles,  which  had  hitherto  been  excluded  from  English 
encyclopaedias,  were  admitted,  greatly  against  the  wish  of 
Smellie,  who,  because  of  their  admission,  refused  to  have  any- 
thing further  to  do  with  the  "  Encyclopaedia."  His  place 
was  taken  by  a  certain  James  Tytler,  a  man  of  thoroughly 
Bohemian  habits,  concerning  whom  many  amusing  stories  are 
told.  From  the  time  of  this  second  edition  "  every  cyclopaedia 
of  note  in  England  or  elsewhere  has  been  a  cyclopaedia  not 
solely  of  the  arts  and  sciences,  but  of  the  whole  wide  circle 
of  general  learning  and  miscellaneous  information."1  The 
publication  of  the  ninth  edition  of  the  "Encyclopaedia"  is  now 
in  progress,  having  been  begun  in  1875.  The  seventh  edition 
was  edited  by  Macvey  Napier,  assisted  by  Dr.  James  Browne. 
The  eighth,  to  a  considerable  extent  a  reprint  of  the  seventh, 
was  edited  by  Dr.  T.  S.  Traill,  Professor  of  Medical  Juris- 
prudence in  Edinburgh  University.  It  contained  many  con- 
tributions from  distinguished  writers,  but  its  crowning  glory 
was  the  articles  contributed  to  it  by  Macaulay,  on  account  of 
his  friendship  for  the  publisher,  Mr.  Adam  Black.  The  edition 
now  publishing,  edited  by  Professor  T.  S.  Baynes  along  with 
(after  vol.  xiii.)  Dr.  Robertson  Smith,  bids  fair  to  surpass  all 
its  predecessors  in  thoroughness  and  value ;  and  is  certainly 
a  noble  specimen  of  the  excellent  work  in  many  fields  of 
literature,  science,  and  art  which  English  writers  of  the  Vic- 
torian e*a  are  able  to  perform. 

Of  the  rivals  which  the  success  of  the  "  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica"  brought  into  the  field,  the  greatest  was  the 
"  Penny  Cyclopaedia,"  the  most  valuable  undertaking  of  the 
Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge.  It  was  begun 
in  1833  and  concluded  in  1846.  In  the  list  of  contri- 

1  From  an  interesting  article  on  the  "  History  of  Cyclopaedias,"  in  the 
Quarterly  Keview  for  April  1864. 


The  Encyclopedia  Metropolitana.         457 

butors  to  it  are  found  the  names  of  Airy,  the  Astronomer- 
royal,  Professor  Key,  Sir  Charles  Eastlake,  Sir  George  Cor- 
newall  Lewis,  Dr.  J.  W.  Donaldson,  Ritter,  the  famous  German 
geographer,  and  others  of  equal  note.  Despite  its  humble 
name,  the  "  Penny  "  proved  a  work  of  great  merit  "  It  hap- 
pened," it  has  been  said,  "  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  two  enthu- 
siasts, Charles  Knight  and  George  Long.  It  was  intended  to 
be  a  mere  light  popular  work,  skimming  science  and  literature 
for  penny  purchasers ;  but  it  was  made  a  scholarly  work,  in 
which  some  of  the  ablest  men  of  the  day  in  their  special 
departments  partook."  The  "  English  Cyclopaedia,"  in  part  a 
new  edition  of  the  "  Penny,"  was  issued  under  the  superin- 
tendence of  Charles  Knight  in  1854-62.  It  is  in  four  divi- 
sions:— i.  Geography;  2.  Natural  History;  3.  Biography;  4. 
Arts  and  Sciences.  A  re-issue  was  commenced  in  1866  and 
completed  in  1874,  with  a  supplementary  volume  to  each  of 
the  four  divisions,  under  the  editorship  of  James  Thorne. 
The  biographical  section  forms  decidedly  the  best  dictionary 
of  biography  in  the  English  language. 

Many  other  encyclopaedias,  as,  for  example,  the  "  Edin- 
burgh Encyclopaedia,"  edited  by  Sir  David  Brewster,  and 
remarkable  as  containing  Carlyle's  first  contributions  to  litera- 
ture ;  the  "Encyclopaedia  Perthensis  ; "  the  " London  Encyclo- 
paedia," &c.,  would  'jngage  our  attention  did  we  attempt  to 
give  a  full  history  of  English  encyclopaedias.  Only  two  others, 
however,  need  we  refer  to  specially.  The  "Encyclopaedia 
Metropolitana,"  begun  in  1817,  was  distributed  into  four  divi- 
sions, the  first  consisting  of  the  pure  sciences,  the  second  of 
the  moral  and  applied  sciences,  the  third  of  biographical  and 
historical  matter  in  chronological  form,  and  the  fourth  miscel- 
laneous, comprising  geography,  a  dictionary  of  the  English 
language,  &c.  "  The  plan,"  says  the  writer  of  the  article  in 
the  Quarterly  Review  already  referred  to,  "  was  the  proposal 
of  the  poet  Coleridge,  and  it  had  at  least  enough  of  a  poetical 
character  to  be  eminently  unpractical.  It  sufficed  to  obscure 
for  a  time  all  that  was  excellent  in  the  execution.  Richard- 
son's '  Dictionary  of  the  English  language,'  which  was  part 


45 8    Periodicals y  Reviews,  and  Encyclopedias. 

of  the  miscellaneous  department,  did  not  receive  its  proper 
meed  of  reputation  till  disengaged  and  re-issued  in  a  separate 
shape.  A  great  portion  of  the  Cyclopaedia  was,  as  it  were, 
dug  out  of  the  ruins  and  re-issued  in  separate  volumes  by 
fresh  publishers  who  acquired  the  property  of  the  work, 
and  thus  distinctly  recognised  it  as  a  mere  quarry  of  valuable 
materials.  The  *  Metropolitana '  ran  to  twenty-nine  quarto 
volumes,  and  was  finished  in  1845."  "  Chambers's  En- 
cyclopaedia," issued  in  ten  royal  octavo  volumes  between 
1859-1868,  is  correctly  described  on  the  title-page  as  a 
"  Dictionary  of  Universal  Knowledge  for  the  People."  It 
was  founded  on  the  German  "  Conversations  Lexicon "  of 
Brockhaus ;  but,  under  the  skilful  editorship  of  Dr.  Andrew 
Findlater,  who  gathered  round  him  an  excellent  body  of  con- 
tributors, it  turned  out  something  much  better  than  a  mere 
adaptation.  For  profound  or  exhaustive  information  larger 
encyclopaedias  must  be  consulted ;  but  even  the  possessors  of 
these  find  "Chambers's"  very  convenient  on  account  of  the 
ease  with  which  it  may  be  consulted,  and  the  terse  way  in 
which  information  on  the  subjects  dealt  with  is  summed  up. 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS. 


Addison,  171. 
Akenskle,  202. 
Alison,  344. 
Arbuthnott,  184. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  436. 
Ascham,  50. 
Austen,  Miss,  235. 
Bacon,  90. 
Bain,  A.,  442. 
Barrow,  153. 
Baxter,  101. 
Beaconsfield,  400. 
Beattie,  280. 
Beaumont,  87. 
Beckford,  234. 
Berkeley,  184. 
Black,  402. 
Blackmore,  402. 
Blake,  281. 
Bolingbroke,  184. 
Boswell,  248. 
Bronte,  393. 
Browne,  106. 
Browning,  407. 
Browning,  Mrs.,  408. 
Bunyan,  101. 
Burke,  256. 
Burnet,  157. 
Burney,  Miss,  235. 
Burns,  288. 
Butler,  Samuel,  130. 
Butler,  Bishop,  185. 
Byron,  310. 
Campbell,  322. 
Carlyle,  421. 
Chalmers,  374. 
Chapman,  86. 
Chatterton,  280. 
Chaucer,  26. 
Churchill,  197. 
Clarendon,  108. 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  303. 
Coleridge,  Hartley,  306. 
Coleridge,  Sara,  306. 
Collins,  200. 
Congreve,  147. 


Coverdale,  43. 
Cowley,  126. 
Cowper,  282. 
Crabbe,  293. 
Darwin,  Charles,  442. 
Defoe,  204. 
Denham,  127. 
De  Quincey,  360. 
Dickens,  378. 
Donne,  125. 
Douglas,  39. 
Dryden,  134. 
Dunbar,  38. 
Edgeworth,  Miss,  235. 
Eliot,  George,  396. 
Farquhar,  150. 
Fielding,  214. 
Fletcher,  87. 
Ford,  88. 
Foxe,  48. 
Freeman,  431. 
Froude,  43P' 
Fuller.  95. 
Gaskell,  Mrs.,  394. 
Gay,  196. 
Gibbon,  270. 
Godwin,  234. 
Goldsmith,  249. 
Gray,  198. 
Greene,  73. 
Grote,  428. 
Hallam,  342. 
Hardy,  402. 
Haywood,  387. 
Hazlitt,  368. 
Helps,  439. 
Herbert,  no. 
Herrick,  no. 
Hobbes,  109. 
Hogg,  321. 
Hooker,  63. 
Hume,  263. 
Hunt,  370. 

James  I.  of  Scotland,  37. 
effrey,  345. 
ohnson,  238. 


460 


Index. 


Jonson,  86. 
Junius,  261. 
Keats,  319. 
Kingsley,  399. 
Lamb,  365. 
Landor,  372. 
Latimer,  46. 
Lecky,  432. 
Lee,  153. 
Lever,  398. 
Lewes,  396. 
Locke,  159. 
Lockhart,  356. 
Lovelace,  no. 
Lyly,  67. 
Lyndsay,  40. 
Lytton,  391. 
Macau  lay,  412. 
Mackenzie,  234. 
Mackintosh,  341. 
Malory,  44. 
Mandeville,  41. 
Marlowe,  71. 
Massinger,  80. 
Maurice,  F.  D.,  442. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  442. 
Milton,  112. 
Moore,  322. 
More,  44. 
Morley,  John,  440. 
Morris,  William,  410. 
Newman,  Cardinal,  441. 
Newton,  1 6^, 
Oldham,  132. 
Otway,  152. 
Pater,  440. 
Paulson,  Mark,  441. 
Peele,  73. 
Percy,  279. 
Pope,  185. 
Prior,  194. 
Radcliffe,  Mrs.,  234. 
Raleigh,  66. 
Reade,  Charles  401. 
Richardson,  208. 
Robertson,  William,  268. 
Robertson,  F.  W.,  442. 
Rogers,  Samuel,  32 1. 


Rossetti,  C.  G.,  410. 
Rossetti,  D.  G.,  409. 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  410. 
Rowe,  153. 
Ruskin,  432. 
Scott,  324. 
Shakespeare,  74. 
Shelley,  317. 
Shenstone,  280. 
Sheridan,  151. 
Sherlock,  156. 
Shirley,  80. 
Sidney,  59. 
Smith,  Sydney,  348. 
Smollett,  222. 
South,  187. 
Southey,  307. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  442. 
Spenser,  52. 
Stanley,  Dean,  442. 
Steele,  175. 
Sterne,  229. 
Stfllingfleet,  106, 
Suckling,  no. 
Surrey,  51. 
Swift,  163. 
Swinburne,  411. 
Symonds,  J.  A.,  441. 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  97. 
Temple,  164. 
Tennyson,  403. 
Thackeray,  385. 
Thomson,  197. 
Tillotson,  155. 
Trollope,  Anthony,  401. 
Tyndale,  43- 
Vanbrugh,  150. 
Waller,  127. 
Walpole,  Horace,  234. 
Walton,  105. 
Warton,  Thomas,  279. 
Webster,  87. 
Wiclif,  42. 
Wilson,  John,  352. 
Wordsworth,  295. 
Wyatt,  50. 
Wycherley,  146. 
Young,  196. 


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