ENGLISH LITERATURE 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



A wider dramatic range, a more 

 curiously analytic mind, a more 

 colloquial style, and a less me- 

 lodious but more varied verse 

 distinguish the not essentially 

 different dramatic monologues and 

 lyrics of Robert Browning. The 

 long and somewhat chaotic and 

 obscure poems, of which the hap- 

 piest is Paracelsus, were followed 

 by experiments in dramas intended 

 to be acted (as some were), and 

 then Browning found himself in a 

 series of shorter dramatic lyrics and 

 monologues, beginning with Pippa 

 Passes and closing with Dramatis 

 Personae. The longest of his dra- 

 matic, analytic studies of the hu- 

 man soul, The Ring and the Book, 

 was followed by many similar stud- 

 ies, subtly intellectual but more fit- 

 fully inspired. 



As a revival of the life and art 

 and spirit of past times the move- 

 ment which began in the 18th 

 century culminated in the exotic, 

 cultured poetry of the middle of 

 the 19th century. But this poetry 

 also reflects that change of spiritual 

 temper which troubled Tennyson 

 and Browning, on the one hand 

 the revival, actual or artistic, 

 of medieval Catholicism, on the 

 other the Lucretian philosophy 

 of life to which modern science 

 tended. 



Learning and Lyrical Inspiration 



In this philosophy, in the poetry 

 of Greece, in Goethe and Words- 

 worth, Matthew Arnold found the 

 inspiration of poems, lyrical, nar- 

 rative, and in Greek dramatic 

 form, with a piercing elegiac note 

 of their own. Medieval art, early 

 Italian poetry, Keats and Brown- 

 ing were the influences which 

 shaped and coloured the ballads, 

 monologues, sonnets, and lyrics, 

 sensuous, mystical, and elaborate, 

 of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Early 

 French poetry, Froissart and Chau- 

 cer, Rossetti and Browning, the 

 architecture and decorative arts 

 of the 12th and 13th centuries, the 

 passionate, stoical heroism of Ice- 

 landic myth and saga, a socialism 

 which is in part an artist's hatred 

 of modern machinery and com- 

 merce, are the blended strains in 

 the lyrical and narrative poetry 

 and prose of William Morris, re- 

 teller of stories classical and 

 northern after the manner of 

 Chaucer, but without his humour. 



A deeper sympathetic compre- 

 hension of the spirit, but even 

 more of the form, the metrical 

 complexities and beauties, of 

 Greek poetry, superior to that of 

 Gray, perhaps even of Milton, for 

 Milton was limited by the scholar- 

 ship, more Latin than Greek, of his 

 day ; an equally intimate know- 



ledge and understanding of French 

 poetry from Villon to Victor Hugo ; 

 a love amounting to idolatry for 

 Shakespeare and the Elizabethan 

 dramatists are the sources of the 

 poetry, decorative and intoxi- 

 catingly harmonious, of Algernon 

 Charles Swinburne. Never have 

 learning and lyrical inspiration 

 been more strangely blended ; 

 never has poetry so spontaneously 

 lyrical been so purely literary in 

 its sources and motives. 



Old Forms and Modern Feeling 



To this school belongs the in- 

 timate, ascetic, religious poetry of 

 Christina Rossetti ; and one of the 

 most remarkable products of the 

 tendency to find inspiration in 

 the past and adapt old forms to 

 modern feeling is Edward Fitz- 

 gerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khay- 

 yam. There is no room here to 

 speak of lesser work, as Keble's The 

 Christian Year, the Lays of Lord 

 Macaulay, the Festus "of Bailey, 

 the poetry of Taylor, Alexander 

 Smith, Sidney Dobell, and Arthur 

 O'Shaughnessy, or the lighter 

 verse of William Edmonstoune 

 Aytoun, C. S. Calverley, and 

 Lewis Carroll. 



Among the many prose writers 

 other than novelists of the early 

 and middle century, historians like 

 George Grote, History of Greece ; 

 Lord Macaulay, Essays, History 

 of England ; James Anthony 

 Froude, History of England ; 

 philosophers as John Stuart Mill, 

 Logic, On Liberty, Utilitarianism ; 

 and Herbert Spencer, Principles 

 of Psychology, First Principles ; 

 theologians and religious writers 

 as John Henry Newman, Apologia 

 pro Vita Sua, Grammar of Assent ; 

 critics of literature and art as 

 Matthew Arnold, Essays on Criti- 

 cism; and Walter Pater, Studies 

 in the History of the Renaissance, 

 Marius the Epicurean, Apprecia- 

 tions, two stand out most vividly. 

 The first is Thomas Carlyle, the 

 tormented, passionate, eloquent 

 prophet of duty and work, whose 

 Sartor Resartus is at once a 

 spiritual autobiography and a 

 philosophy, following Swift and 

 Burke, of the clothes, political and 

 religious, in which the human 

 spirit is ever concealing its 

 " shivering nakedness," only to 

 find them grow old and drop away, 

 if not burnt up in Protestant 

 Reformations and French Revolu- 

 tions, and to begin again to weave 

 them in time's tireless loom. 



In the French Revolution Car- 

 lyle portrayed, with an amazing 

 vividness of dramatic and cinema- 

 tographic presentation, an era of 

 dissolution and rebirth, the flaming 

 apparition of modern democracy. 



In Heroes and Hero-worship, 

 Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 

 and History of Frederick II, he 

 dilated upon and dramatically 

 reconstructed some of those great 

 spirits who, penetrating to the 

 reality which underlies the illusions 

 of life, are the true leaders of men. 

 The reference to current events 

 which runs through all his work 

 found clearest expression in Chart- 

 ism Past and Present, and Latter 

 Day Pamphlets. The other Vic- 

 torian prophet is John Ruskiu, the 

 more musically eloquent expounder 

 of art, painting and architecture, 

 in its relation to the moral na- 

 ture of man and the ordering of 

 society. Modern Painters, Seven 

 Lamps of Architecture, Stones of i 

 Venice, Unto this Last, Sesame | 

 and Lilies. Fora Clavigera, Preter- I 

 ita are among the principal works i 

 which brought art into a closer 

 relation with literature than had 

 ever been done before in England, | 

 and trace the troubled progress of 

 a great and sensitive soul. A less I 

 prophetic but equally prejudiced ! 

 and individual writer of the i 

 period was George Borrow, the 

 first interpreter of the Gipsy 

 character, and a writer of natural, 

 racy prose, Lavengro, and The 

 Romany Rye. 



Dickens and Thackeray 



The Victorian novel resumed 

 with certain definite limitations 

 imposed upon it by the moral 

 taste of the time, the work of the 

 great 18th century novel, the 

 serious and humorous portrayal 

 and the active criticism of con- 

 temporary life and manners, with 

 occasional digressions into the 

 historical. Charles Dickens, humor- 

 ist, sentimentalist, pictorial de- 

 scriber and dramatic, not to say 

 melodramatic, narrator, social 

 critic and reformer, began with 

 The Pickwick Papers a series of 

 novels and tales that enthralled the 

 readers of the world. The greatest 

 are probably Pickwick, Nicholas 

 Nickleby, Martin Chuzxlewit, 

 David Copperfield, and Great 

 Expectations. Barnaby Rudge 

 and A Tale of Two Cities are 

 historical novels, the latter col- 

 oured by the readmg of Carlyle's 

 French Revolution. Dickens's 

 favourite sxibject was the character 

 and manners of the lower middle 

 classes. 



But the most penetrating critic 

 of the devastating snobbishness 

 of English upper class society, 

 never worse than at this time, when 

 wealthy merchants were pressing 

 for aristocratic recognition, was 

 William Makepeace Thackeray, 

 the most unerring portrayer since 

 Fielding of human nature as it is, 



