A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 21

"Fair is her cottage in its place, Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides: It sees itself from thatch to base Dream in the sliding tides.

"And fairer she: but, ah! how soon to die!

Her quiet dream of life this hour may cease: Her peaceful being slowly pa.s.ses by To some more perfect peace."

The very next poem, "The Sailor Boy," in the same volume, is-- though written in exactly the same measure-- driven on with the most rapid march and vigorous rhythm--

"He rose at dawn and, fired with hope, Shot o'er the seething harbour-bar, And reached the s.h.i.+p and caught the rope And whistled to the morning-star."

And this is a striking and prominent characteristic of all Tennyson's poetry. Everywhere the sound is made to be "an echo to the sense"; the style is in perfect keeping with the matter. In the "Lotos-Eaters," we have the sense of complete indolence and deep repose in--

"A land of streams! Some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go."

In the "Boadicea," we have the rush and the shock of battle, the closing of legions, the hurtle of arms and the clash of armed men--

"Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy ma.s.sacred, Phantom wail of women and children, mult.i.tudinous agonies."

Many of Tennyson's sweetest and most pathetic lines have gone right into the heart of the nation, such as--

"But oh for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!"

All his language is highly polished, ornate, rich-- sometimes Spenserian in luxuriant imagery and sweet music, sometimes even Homeric in ma.s.siveness and severe simplicity. Thus, in the "Morte d'Arthur," he speaks of the knight walking to the lake as--

"Clothed with his breath, and looking as he walked, Larger than human on the frozen hills."

Many of his pithy lines have taken root in the memory of the English people, such as these--

"Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all."

"For words, like Nature, half reveal, And half conceal, the soul within."

"Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood."

7. ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT, afterwards MRS BROWNING, the greatest poetess of this century, was born in London in the year 1809. She wrote verses "at the age of eight-- and earlier," she says; and her first volume of poems was published when she was seventeen. When still a girl, she broke a blood-vessel upon the lungs, was ordered to a warmer climate than that of London; and her brother, whom she loved very dearly, took her down to Torquay. There a terrible tragedy was enacted before her eyes. One day the weather and the water looked very tempting; her brother took a sailing-boat for a short cruise in Torbay; the boat went down in front of the house, and in view of his sister; the body was never recovered. This sad event completely destroyed her already weak health; she returned to London, and spent several years in a darkened room. Here she "read almost every book worth reading in almost every language, and gave herself heart and soul to that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess." This way of life lasted for many years: and, in the course of it, she published several volumes of n.o.ble verse. In 1846 she married Robert Browning, also a great poet. In 1856 she brought out +Aurora Leigh+, her longest, and probably also her greatest, poem. Mr Ruskin called it "the greatest poem which the century has produced in any language;" but this is going too far. --Mrs Browning will probably be longest remembered by her incomparable sonnets and by her lyrics, which are full of pathos and pa.s.sion. Perhaps her two finest poems in this kind are the +Cry of the Children+ and +Cowper's Grave+.

All her poems show an enormous power of eloquent, penetrating, and picturesque language; and many of them are melodious with a rich and wonderful music. She died in 1861.

[Transcriber's Note: The above paragraph is given as printed. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born Elizabeth Barrett Moulton, later Moulton-Barrett, in 1806.

Her year of birth was universally given as 1809 until some time after Robert Browning's death. Her brother's fatal accident took place in 1840.]

8. ROBERT BROWNING, the most daring and original poet of the century, was born in Camberwell, a southern suburb of London, in the year 1812.

He was privately educated. In 1836 he published his first poem +Paracelsus+, which many wondered at, but few read. It was the story of a man who had lost his way in the mazes of thought about life,-- about its why and wherefore,-- about this world and the next,-- about himself and his relations to G.o.d and his fellow-men. Mr Browning has written many plays, but they are more fit for reading in the study than for acting on the stage. His greatest work is +The Ring and the Book+; and it is most probably by this that his name will live in future ages. Of his minor poems, the best known and most popular is +The Pied Piper of Hamelin+-- a poem which is a great favourite with all young people, from the picturesqueness and vigour of the verse. The most deeply pathetic of his minor poems is +Evelyn Hope+:--

"So, hush,-- I will give you this leaf to keep-- See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand, There! that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand."

9. +Browning's Style.+-- Browning's language is almost always very hard to understand; but the meaning, when we have got at it, is well worth all the trouble that may have been taken to reach it. His poems are more full of thought and more rich in experience than those of any other English writer except Shakspeare. The thoughts and emotions which throng his mind at the same moment so crowd upon and jostle each other, become so inextricably intermingled, that it is very often extremely difficult for us to make out any meaning at all. Then many of his thoughts are so subtle and so profound that they cannot easily be drawn up from the depths in which they lie. No man can write with greater directness, greater lyric vigour, fire, and impulse, than Browning when he chooses-- write more clearly and forcibly about such subjects as love and war; but it is very seldom that he does choose. The infinite complexity of human life and its manifold experiences have seized and imprisoned his imagination; and it is not often that he speaks in a clear, free voice.

10. MATTHEW ARNOLD, one of the finest poets and n.o.blest stylists of the age, was born at Laleham, near Staines, on the Thames, in the year 1822.

He is the eldest son of the great Dr Arnold, the famous Head-master of Rugby. He was educated at Winchester and Rugby, from which latter school he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford. The Newdigate prize for English verse was won by him in 1843-- the subject of his poem being +Cromwell+.

His first volume of poems was published in 1848. In the year 1851 he was appointed one of H.M. Inspectors of Schools; and he held that office up to the year 1885. In 1857 he was elected Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. In 1868 appeared a new volume with the simple t.i.tle of +New Poems+; and, since then, he has produced a large number of books, mostly in prose. He is no less famous as a critic than as a poet; and his prose is singularly beautiful and musical.

11. +Arnold's Style.+-- The chief qualities of his verse are clearness, simplicity, strong directness, n.o.ble and musical rhythm, and a certain intense calm. His lines on +Morality+ give a good idea of his style:--

"We cannot kindle when we will The fire that in the heart resides: The spirit bloweth and is still In mystery our soul abides: But tasks in hours of insight willed Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled.

With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.

Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern."

His finest poem in blank verse is his +Sohrab and Rustum+-- a tale of the Tartar wastes. One of his n.o.blest poems, called +Rugby Chapel+, describes the strong and elevated character of his father, the Head-master of Rugby. --His prose is remarkable for its lucidity, its pleasant and almost conversational rhythm, and its perfection of language.

12. WILLIAM MORRIS, a great narrative poet, was born near London in the year 1834. He was educated at Marlborough and at Exeter College, Oxford.

In 1858 appeared his first volume of poems. In 1863 he began a business for the production of artistic wall-paper, stained gla.s.s, and furniture; he has a shop for the sale of these works of art in Oxford Street, London; and he devotes most of his time to drawing and designing for artistic manufacturers. His first poem, +The Life and Death of Jason+, appeared in 1867; and his magnificent series of narrative poems-- +The Earthly Paradise+-- was published in the years from 1868 and 1870. 'The Earthly Paradise' consists of twenty-four tales in verse, set in a framework much like that of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.' The poetic power in these tales is second only to that of Chaucer; and Morris has always acknowledged himself to be a pupil of Chaucer's--

"Thou, my Master still, Whatever feet have climbed Parna.s.sus' hill."

Mr Morris has also translated the aeneid of Virgil, and several works from the Icelandic.

13. +Morris's Style.+-- Clearness, strength, music, picturesqueness, and easy flow, are the chief characteristics of Morris's style. Of the month of April he says:--

"O fair midspring, besung so oft and oft, How can I praise thy loveliness enow?

Thy sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft That o'er the blossoms of the orchard blow, The thousand things that 'neath the young leaves grow The hopes and chances of the growing year, Winter forgotten long, and summer near."

His pictorial power-- the power of bringing a person or a scene fully and adequately before one's eyes by the aid of words alone-- is as great as that of Chaucer. The following is his picture of Edward III. in middle age:--

"Broad-browed he was, hook-nosed, with wide grey eyes No longer eager for the coming prize, But keen and steadfast: many an ageing line, Half-hidden by his sweeping beard and fine, Ploughed his thin cheeks; his hair was more than grey, And like to one he seemed whose better day Is over to himself, though foolish fame Shouts louder year by year his empty name.

Unarmed he was, nor clad upon that morn Much like a king: an ivory hunting-horn Was slung about him, rich with gems and gold, And a great white ger-falcon did he hold Upon his fist; before his feet there sat A scrivener making notes of this and that As the King bade him, and behind his chair His captains stood in armour rich and fair."

Morris's stores of language are as rich as Spenser's; and he has much the same copious and musical flow of poetic words and phrases.

14. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (+1811-1863+), one of the most original of English novelists, was born at Calcutta in the year 1811. The son of a gentleman high in the civil service of the East India Company, he was sent to England to be educated, and was some years at Charterhouse School, where one of his schoolfellows was Alfred Tennyson. He then went on to the University of Cambridge, which he left without taking a degree. Painting was the profession that he at first chose; and he studied art both in France and Germany. At the age of twenty-nine, however, he discovered that he was on a false tack, gave up painting, and took to literary work as his true field. He contributed many pleasant articles to 'Fraser's Magazine,' under the name of +Michael Angelo t.i.tmarsh+; and one of his most beautiful and most pathetic stories, +The Great Hoggarty Diamond+, was also written under this name.

He did not, however, take his true place as an English novelist of the first rank until the year 1847, when he published his first serial novel, +Vanity Fair+. Readers now began everywhere to cla.s.s him with Charles d.i.c.kens, and even above him. His most beautiful work is perhaps +The Newcomes+; but the work which exhibits most fully the wonderful power of his art and his intimate knowledge of the spirit and the details of our older English life is +The History of Henry Esmond+-- a work written in the style and language of the days of Queen Anne, and as beautiful as anything ever done by Addison himself. He died in the year 1863.

15. CHARLES d.i.c.kENS (+1812-1870+), the most popular writer of this century, was born at Landport, Portsmouth, in the year 1812. His delicate const.i.tution debarred him from mixing in boyish sports, and very early made him a great reader. There was a little garret in his father's house where a small collection of books was kept; and, hidden away in this room, young Charles devoured such books as the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and many other famous English books. This was in Chatham. The family next removed to London, where the father was thrown into prison for debt. The little boy, weakly and sensitive, was now sent to work in a blacking manufactory at six s.h.i.+llings a-week, his duty being to cover the blacking-pots with paper. "No words can express," he says, "the secret agony of my soul, as I compared these my everyday a.s.sociates with those of my happier childhood, and felt my early hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man crushed in my breast.... The misery it was to my young heart to believe that, day by day, what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, was pa.s.sing away from me, never to be brought back any more, cannot be written." When his father's affairs took a turn for the better, he was sent to school; but it was to a school where "the boys trained white mice much better than the master trained the boys." In fact, his true education consisted in his eager perusal of a large number of miscellaneous books. When he came to think of what he should do in the world, the profession of reporter took his fancy; and, by the time he was nineteen, he had made himself the quickest and most accurate-- that is, the best reporter in the Gallery of the House of Commons. His first work, +Sketches by Boz+, was published in 1836. In 1837 appeared the +Pickwick Papers+; and this work at once lifted d.i.c.kens into the foremost rank as a popular writer of fiction. From this time he was almost constantly engaged in writing novels. His +Oliver Twist+ and +David Copperfield+ contain reminiscences of his own life; and perhaps the latter is his most powerful work. "Like many fond parents," he wrote, "I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child; and his name is _David Copperfield_." He lived with all the strength of his heart and soul in the creations of his imagination and fancy while he was writing about them; he says himself, "No one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing;" and each novel, as he wrote it, made him older and leaner.

Great knowledge of the lives of the poor, and great sympathy with them, were among his most striking gifts; and Sir Arthur Helps goes so far as to say, "I doubt much whether there has ever been a writer of fiction who took such a real and living interest in the world about him." He died in the year 1870, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

16. +d.i.c.kens's Style.+-- His style is easy, flowing, vigorous, picturesque, and humorous; his power of language is very great; and, when he is writing under the influence of strong pa.s.sion, it rises into a pure and n.o.ble eloquence. The scenery-- the external circ.u.mstances of his characters, are steeped in the same colours as the characters themselves; everything he touches seems to be filled with life and to speak-- to look happy or sorrowful,-- to reflect the feelings of the persons. His comic and humorous powers are very great; but his tragic power is also enormous-- his power of depicting the fiercest pa.s.sions that tear the human breast,-- avarice, hate, fear, revenge, remorse. The great American statesman, Daniel Webster, said that d.i.c.kens had done more to better the condition of the English poor than all the statesmen Great Britain had ever sent into the English Parliament.

17. JOHN RUSKIN, the greatest living master of English prose, an art-critic and thinker, was born in London in the year 1819. In his father's house he was accustomed "to no other prospect than that of the brick walls over the way; he had no brothers, nor sisters, nor companions." To his London birth he ascribes the great charm that the beauties of nature had for him from his boyhood: he felt the contrast between town and country, and saw what no country-bred child could have seen in sights that were usual to him from his infancy. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and gained the Newdigate prize for poetry in 1839. He at first devoted himself to painting; but his true and strongest genius lay in the direction of literature. In 1843 appeared the first volume of his +Modern Painters+, which is perhaps his greatest work; and the four other volumes were published between that date and the year 1860. In this work he discusses the qualities and the merits of the greatest painters of the English, the Italian, and other schools. In 1851 he produced a charming fairy tale, 'The King of the Golden River, or the Black Brothers.' He has written on architecture also, on political economy, and on many other social subjects. He is the founder of a society called "The St George's Guild," the purpose of which is to spread abroad sound notions of what true life and true art are, and especially to make the life of the poor more endurable and better worth living.

18. +Ruskin's Style.+-- A glowing eloquence, a splendid and full-flowing music, wealth of phrase, aptness of epithet, opulence of ideas-- all these qualities characterise the prose style of Mr Ruskin. His similes are daring, but always true. Speaking of the countless statues that fill the innumerable niches of the cathedral of Milan, he says that "it is as though a flight of angels had alighted there and been struck to marble."

His writings are full of the wisest sayings put into the most musical and beautiful language. Here are a few:--

"Every act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct renders, after a certain number of generations, human art possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little a one; and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible."