WITH VICTORIAN POETRY 397 



the development of mechanical industry, have saddened and 

 subdued the tone of our poets ; how criticism and the physical 

 sciences, together with changes in religious thought, have 

 affected their outlook over the world and man ; why they 

 have become more contemplative and analytical, less spon- 

 taneous, with a tendency to pessimism, instead of the genial 

 optimism of their predecessors ; and finally to what extent 

 the absence of a commanding type of national art, like the 

 drama, has forced them into idyllic, descriptive, meditative, 

 and lyrical forms of utterance. 



It is impossible to condense the net result of this comparison 

 in a single formula. Yet one of the principal conclusions to 

 which it leads us may be singled out. When we survey the 

 literatures of these two epochs, we shall be struck with the 

 generalising force and breadth of the earlier, the particularising 

 subtlety and minuteness of the latter. The Elizabethans 

 seem to sing with one voice, although the key in which their 

 melody is cast may vary. They treat of nature and of man 

 from a common point of view, albeit the world and humanity 

 affect them differently. The Victorians have each a voice 

 of his own, an attitude toward man and nature determined 

 by specific mental faculty. Each has been born something 

 separate, and made something still more separate by education. 

 Elizabethan art is instinctive, Victorian art reflective. The 

 material submitted to the workman in the one age is a com- 

 plex whole ; and this is surveyed in its superficies, seized in 

 its salient aspects. In the other age the complex has been 

 disintegrated, parcelled into details by the operation of sym- 

 pathies and intuitions proper to distinct individualities. Our 

 first question with regard to an Elizabethan is : What grasp 

 and grip does he possess upon the common stuff of art ? Our 

 first question with regard to a Victorian is : How does the 

 man envisage things, from what point of view does he start, 

 by what specific spirit is he controlled ? Thus in the nine- 

 teenth century we come face to face with individualities who 

 affect us mainly through the tone of their particular natures. 

 The poets are critical and self-conscious in creation. We are 

 critical and self-conscious in submission to their influence, in 



