PROBLEMS OF ENGLISH LITERARY HISTORY 429 



principal interest. With some of them indeed, as especially in the 

 case of Shelley, form and matter are almost equally balanced, equally 

 prominent, but in none of them is form domineering. 



This prevalence of matter, of contents, is still stronger in the tend- 

 ency of Carlyle's works, which indeed in a manner are hostile to all 

 poetry. Resulting partly from the tradition of Scottish Puritanism, 

 partly from the influence of German thinkers, a rigid moral standard 

 is here set up for judging literature, and aesthetic aims are made sub- 

 servient to ethics. In the outward garb of Carlyle's writings, too, 

 form is entirely subordinate to matter; his capricious language has 

 deservedly been reprimanded for its impossible imitations of German 

 models, though it should never be forgotten that underlying this 

 rough and rugged surface there is an elementary force of mind and 

 character in the Sage of Chelsea which has impressed its stamp upon 

 the literature and the thought of a whole age, and it is an unjust 

 exaggeration when Gosse compares Carlyle to an ill-tempered dog 

 that barks at mankind, "angry if it is still, yet more angry if it 

 moves." 



The same combination of deep thinking with outward formlessness 

 recurs in Browning, who adds dramatic power and subtle psychological 

 analysis to the moral strength of Carlyle. Striking and original 

 though his poetic images frequently are if judged singly, his language 

 in general is the reverse of formally beautiful. 



Although both Carlyle and Browning lived till the ninth decade of 

 the nineteenth century, literature in the second half of this century 

 was on the whole rather characterized by a trend towards refinement 

 of form. In many respects this was directly antagonistic to the style 

 of Carlyle and Browning, and derived its inspiration from such lofty 

 singers as Shelley, or perhaps even more so from romanticists like 

 Coleridge and especially Keats, who endeavored to teach mankind 

 the lesson that " Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all ye know on 

 earth, and all ye need to know," and in whose poetry the significance 

 of matter decidedly yielded to the beauty of form. 



The victory of the formal element this time was not. as in the 

 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, achieved by classicism, but by 

 romanticism. Tennyson was strongly influenced by Keats, but in 

 Tennyson as in Shelley, and, for the matter of that, also in "Words- 

 worth, contents and form are harmoniously balanced. It was espe- 

 cially Ruskin. the apostle of beauty, and his friends the pre-Raphael- 

 ites. to whose work this triumph of form was largely due. Starting as 

 he did from the ethical standpoint of Carlyle, which he retained in his 

 views on social policy, Kuskin at the same time supplied what was 

 lacking in Carlyle by adding the aesthetic principle to his view of the 

 world. He thus became the leader and adviser of the younger gener- 

 ation of poets. 



