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A History of English Literature

R >> Robert Huntington Fletcher >> A History of English Literature





'Tis law as steadfast as the throne of Zeus--
Our days are heritors of days gone by.

Her conviction, or at least her purpose, is optimistic, to show that by
honest effort the sincere and high-minded man or woman may win happiness in
the face of all difficulties and disappointments; but her own actual
judgment of life was somber, not altogether different from that which
Carlyle repudiated in 'The Everlasting Yea'; so that the final effect of
her books, though stimulating, is subdued rather than cheerful.

In technique her very hard work generally assured mastery. Her novels are
firmly knit and well-proportioned, and have the inevitable movement of life
itself; while her great scenes equal those of Thackeray in dramatic power
and, at their best, in reserve and suggestiveness. Perhaps her chief
technical faults are tendencies to prolixity and too much expository
analysis of characters and motives.

SECONDARY MIDDLE AND LATER VICTORIAN NOVELISTS. Several of the other
novelists of the mid-century and later produced work which in a period of
less prolific and less highly developed art would have secured them high
distinction. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) spent most of his life, by his
own self-renouncing choice, as curate and rector of the little Hampshire
parish of Eversley, though for some years he also held the professorship of
history at Cambridge. An aggressive Protestant, he drifted in his later
years into the controversy with Cardinal Newman which opened the way for
Newman's 'Apologia.' From the outset, Kingsley was an enthusiastic worker
with F. D. Maurice in the Christian Socialist movement which aimed at the
betterment of the conditions of life among the working classes. 'Alton
Locke' and 'Yeast,' published in 1849, were powerful but reasonable and
very influential expressions of his convictions--fervid arguments in the
form of fiction against existing social injustices. His most famous books
are 'Hypatia' (1853), a novel dealing with the Church in its conflict with
Greek philosophy in fifth-century Alexandria, and 'Westward Ho!' (1855)
which presents with sympathetic largeness of manner the adventurous side of
Elizabethan life. His brief 'Andromeda' is one of the best English poems
in the classical dactylic hexameter.

Charles Reade (1814-1884), a man of dramatic disposition somewhat similar
to that of Dickens (though Reade had a University education and was
admitted to the bar), divided his interest and fiery energies between the
drama and the novel. But while his plays were of such doubtful quality that
he generally had to pay for having them acted, his novels were often strong
and successful. Personally he was fervently evangelical, and like Dickens
he was often inspired to write by indignation at social wrongs. His 'Hard
Cash' (1863), which attacks private insane asylums, is powerful; but his
most important work is 'The Cloister and the Hearth' (1861), one of the
most informing and vivid of all historical novels, with the father of
Erasmus for its hero. No novelist can, be more thrilling and picturesque
than Reade, but he lacks restraint and is often highly sensational and
melodramatic.

Altogether different is the method of Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) in his
fifty novels. Trollope, long a traveling employé in the post-office
service, was a man of very assertive and somewhat commonplace nature.
Partly a disciple of Thackeray, he went beyond Thackeray's example in the
refusal to take his art altogether seriously as an art; rather, he treated
it as a form of business, sneering at the idea of special inspiration, and
holding himself rigidly to a mechanical schedule of composition--a definite
and unvarying number of pages in a specified number of hours on each of his
working days. The result is not so disastrous as might have been expected;
his novels have no small degree of truth and interest. The most notable are
the half dozen which deal with ecclesiastical life in his imaginary county
of Barsetshire, beginning with 'The Warden' and 'Barchester Towers.' His
'Autobiography' furnishes in some of its chapters one of the noteworthy
existing discussions of the writer's art by a member of the profession.

Richard Blackmore (1825-1900), first a lawyer, later manager of a
market-garden, was the author of numerous novels, but will be remembered
only for 'Lorna Doone' (1869), a charming reproduction of Devonshire
country life assigned to the romantic setting of the time of James II. Its
simple-minded and gigantic hero John Ridd is certainly one of the permanent
figures of English fiction.

Joseph H. Shorthouse (1834-1903), a Birmingham chemical manufacturer, but a
man of very fine nature, is likewise to be mentioned for a single book,
'John Inglesant' (1881). Located in the middle of the seventeenth century,
when the strife of religious and political parties afforded material
especially available for the author's purpose, this is a spiritual romance,
a High Churchman's assertion of the supremacy of the inner over the outer
life. From this point of view it is one of the most significant of English
novels, and though much of it is philosophical and though it is not free
from technical faults, parts of it attain the extreme limit of absorbing
narrative interest.

Walter Pater (1839-1894), an Oxford Fellow, also represents distinctly the
spirit of unworldliness, which in his case led to a personal aloofness from
active life. He was the master of a delicately-finished, somewhat
over-fastidious, style, which he employed in essays on the Renaissance and
other historical and artistic topics and in a spiritual romance, 'Marius
the Epicurean' (1885). No less noteworthy than 'John Inglesant,' and better
constructed, this latter is placed in the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, but its atmosphere is only in part historically authentic.

GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1910). Except for a lack of the elements which make
for popularity, George Meredith would hold an unquestioned place in the
highest rank of novelists. In time he is partly contemporary with George
Eliot, as he began to publish a little earlier than she. But he long
outlived her and continued to write to the end of his life; and his
recognition was long delayed; so that he may properly be placed in the
group of later Victorian novelists. His long life was devoid of external
incident; he was long a newspaper writer and afterward literary reader for
a publishing house; he spent his later years quietly in Surrey, enjoying
the friendship of Swinburne and other men of letters.

Among novelists he occupies something the same place which Browning, a
person of very different temperament and ideas, holds among poets. He
writes only for intelligent and thoughtful people and aims to interpret the
deeper things of life and character, not disregarding dramatic external
incident, but using it as only one of the means to his main purpose. His
style is brilliant, epigrammatic, and subtile; and he prefers to imply many
things rather than to state them directly. All this makes large, perhaps
sometimes too large, demands on the reader's attention, but there is, of
course, corresponding stimulation. Meredith's general attitude toward life
is the fine one of serene philosophic confidence, the attitude in general
of men like Shakspere and Goethe. He despises sentimentality, admires
chiefly the qualities of quiet strength and good breeding which are
exemplified among the best members of the English aristocracy; and in all
his interpretation is very largely influenced by modern science. His virile
courage and optimism are as pronounced as those of Browning; he wrote a
noteworthy 'Essay on Comedy' and oftentimes insists on emphasizing the
comic rather than the tragic aspect of things, though he can also be
powerful in tragedy; and his enthusiasms for the beauty of the world and
for the romance of youthful love are delightful. He may perhaps best be
approached through 'Evan Harrington' (1861) and 'The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel' (1859). 'The Egoist' (1879) and 'Diana of the Crossways' (1885)
are among his other strongest books. In his earlier years he wrote a
considerable body of verse, which shows much the same qualities as his
prose. Some of it is rugged in form, but other parts magnificently
dramatic, and some few poems, like the unique and superb 'Love in the
Valley,' charmingly beautiful.

THOMAS HARDY. In Thomas Hardy (born 1840) the pessimistic interpretation of
modern science is expressed frankly and fully, with much the same pitiless
consistency that distinguishes contemporary European writers such as Zola.
Mr. Hardy early turned to literature from architecture and he has lived a
secluded life in southern England, the ancient Wessex, which he makes the
scene of all his novels. His knowledge of life is sure and his technique in
all respects masterly. He has preferred to deal chiefly with persons in the
middle and poorer classes of society because, like Wordsworth, though with
very different emphasis, he feels that in their experiences the real facts
of life stand out most truly. His deliberate theory is a sheer
fatalism--that human character and action are the inevitable result of laws
of heredity and environment over which man has no control. 'The Return of
the Native' (1878) and 'Far from the Madding Crowd' (1874) are among his
best novels, though the sensational frankness of 'Tess of the
D'Urbervilles' (1891) has given it greater reputation.

STEVENSON. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), the first of the rather
prominent group of recent Scotch writers of fiction, is as different as
possible from Hardy. Destined for the career of civil engineer and
lighthouse builder in which his father and grandfather were distinguished,
he proved unfitted for it by lack both of inclination and of health, and
the profession of law for which he later prepared himself was no more
congenial. From boyhood he, like Scott, studied human nature with keen
delight in rambles about the country, and unlike Scott he was incessantly
practising writing merely for the perfection of his style. As an author he
won his place rather slowly; and his whole mature life was a wonderfully
courageous and persistent struggle against the sickness which generally
prevented him from working more than two or three hours a day and often
kept him for months in bed unable even to speak. A trip to California in an
emigrant train in 1879-1880 brought him to death's door but accomplished
its purpose, his marriage to an American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, whom he had
previously met in artist circles in France. He first secured a popular
success with the boys' pirate story, 'Treasure Island,' in 1882. 'A Child's
Garden of Verses' (1885) was at once accepted as one of the most
irresistibly sympathetic of children's classics; and 'The Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1886), a unique and astonishingly powerful moral
lesson in the form of a thrilling little romance which strangely
anticipates the later discoveries of psychology, made in its different way
a still stronger impression. Stevenson produced, considering his
disabilities, a remarkably large amount of work--essays, short stories, and
romances--but the only others of his books which need here be mentioned are
the four romances of Scotch life in the eighteenth century which belong to
his later years; of these 'The Master of Ballantrae' and the fragmentary
'Weir of Hermiston' are the best. His letters, also, which, like his
widely-circulated prayers, reveal his charming and heroic personality, are
among the most interesting in the history of English Literature. His bodily
weakness, especially tuberculosis, which had kept him wandering from one
resort to another, at last drove him altogether from Europe to the South
Seas. He finally settled in Samoa, where for the last half dozen years of
his life he was busy not only with clearing his land, building his house,
and writing, but with energetic efforts to serve the natives, then involved
in broils among themselves and with England, Germany, and the United
States. His death came suddenly when he was only forty-four years old, and
the Samoans, who ardently appreciated what he had done for them, buried him
high up on a mountain overlooking both his home and the sea.

Stevenson, in the midst of an age perhaps too intensely occupied with the
deeper questions, stood for a return to the mere spirit of romance, and for
occasional reading he furnishes delightful recreation. In the last
analysis, however, his general lack of serious significance condemns him at
most to a secondary position. At his best his narrative technique (as in
'The Master of Ballantrae') is perfect; his portrayal of men (he almost
never attempted women) is equally certain; his style has no superior in
English; and his delicate sensibility and keenness of observation render
him a master of description. But in his attitude toward life he never
reached full maturity (perhaps because of the supreme effort of will
necessary for the maintenance of his cheerfulness); not only did he retain
to the end a boyish zest for mere adventure, but it is sometimes adventure
of a melodramatic and unnecessarily disagreeable kind, and in his novels
and short stories he offers virtually no interpretation of the world. No
recent English prose writer has exercised a wider influence than he, but
none is likely to suffer as time goes on a greater diminution of
reputation.

RUDYARD KIPLING. The name which naturally closes the list of Victorian
writers is that of Rudyard Kipling, though he belongs, perhaps, as much to
the twentieth century as to the one preceding. The son of a professor of
architecture and sculpture in the University of Bombay, India, he was born
in that city in 1865. Educated in England in the United Services College
(for officers in the army and navy), he returned at the age of seventeen to
India, where he first did strenuous editorial work on newspapers in Lahore,
in the extreme northwestern part of the country. He secured his intimate
knowledge of the English army by living, through the permission of the
commanding general, with the army on the frontiers. His instinct for
story-telling in verse and prose had showed itself from his boyhood, but
his first significant appearance in print was in 1886, with a volume of
poems later included among the 'Departmental Ditties.' 'Plain Tales from
the Hills' in prose, and other works, followed in rapid succession and won
him enthusiastic recognition. In 1890 he removed to the United States,
where he married and remained for seven years. Since then he has lived in
England, with an interval in South Africa. He wrote prolifically during the
'90's; since then both the amount of his production and its quality have
fallen off.

Kipling is the representative of the vigorous life of action as led by
manly and efficient men, and of the spirit of English imperialism. His poem
"The White Man's Burden" sums up his imperialism--the creed that it is the
duty of the higher races to civilize the lower ones with a strong hand; and
he never doubts that the greater part of this obligation rests at present
upon England--a theory, certainly, to which history lends much support.
Kipling is endowed with the keenest power of observation, with the most
genuine and most democratic human sympathies, and with splendid dramatic
force. Consequently he has made a unique contribution to literature in his
portrayals, in both prose and verse, of the English common soldier and of
English army life on the frontiers of the Empire. On the other hand his
verse is generally altogether devoid of the finer qualities of poetry.
'Danny Deever,' 'Pharaoh and the Sergeant,' 'Fuzzy Wuzzy,' 'The Ballad of
East and West,' 'The Last Chantey,' 'Mulholland's Contract,' and many
others, are splendidly stirring, but their colloquialism and general
realism put them on a very different level from the work of the great
masters who express the deeper truths in forms of permanent beauty. At
times, however, Kipling too gives voice to religious feelings, of a simple
sort, in an impressive fashion, as in 'McAndrews' Hymn,' 'The Recessional,'
and 'When earth's last picture is painted.' His sweeping rhythms and his
grandiose forms of expression, suggestive of the vast spaces of ocean and
plain and of inter-stellar space with which he delights to deal, have been
very widely copied by minor verse-writers. His very vivid and active
imagination enables him not only to humanize animal life with remarkable
success, as in the prose 'Jungle-Books,' but to range finely in the realms
of the mysterious, as in the short stories 'They' and 'The Brushwood Boy.'
Of short-stories he is the most powerful recent writer, as witness 'The Man
Who Would Be King,' 'The Man Who Was,' 'Without Benefit of Clergy,' and
'Wee Willie Winkie'; though with all the frankness of modern realism he
sometimes leads us into scenes of extreme physical horror. With longer
stories he is generally less successful; 'Kim,' however, has much power.

THE HISTORIANS. The present book, as a brief sketch of English Literature
rather strictly defined, has necessarily disregarded the scientists,
economists, and philosophers whose writings did much to mold the course of
thought during the Victorian period. Among the numerous prominent
historians, however, two must be mentioned for the brilliant literary
quality of their work. James Anthony Froude (1818-1894) was a disciple of
Carlyle, from whom he took the idea of making history center around its
great men and of giving to it the vivid effectiveness of the drama. With
Froude too this results in exaggeration, and further he is sadly
inaccurate, but his books are splendidly fascinating. His great 'History of
England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Armada' is his longest work; his
'Sketch' of Julius Cæsar is certainly one of the most interesting books of
biography and history ever written. John Richard Green (1837-1883), who was
a devoted clergyman before he became a historian, struggled all his life
against the ill-health which finally cut short his career. His 'History of
the English People' is an admirable representative of the modern historical
spirit, which treats general social conditions as more important than mere
external events; but as a narrative it vies in interest with the very
different one of Macaulay. Very honorable mention should be made also of W.
E. H. Lecky, who belongs to the conscientiously scientific historical
school. His 'History of Rationalism in Europe,' for example, is a very fine
monument of the most thorough research and most effective statement; but to
a mature mind its interest is equally conspicuous.


THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Beginning as early as the latter part of the eighteenth century literary
production, thanks largely to the tremendous increase of education and of
newspapers and magazines, has steadily grown, until now it has reached
bewildering volume and complexity, in which the old principles are partly
merged together and the new tendencies, for contemporary observers, at
least, scarcely stand out with decisive distinctness. Most significant
to-day, perhaps, are the spirit of independence, now carried in some
respects beyond the farthest previous Romantic limits, and the realistic
impulse, in which the former impulses of democracy and humanitarianism play
a large part. Facts not to be disregarded are the steady advance of the
short story, beginning early in the Victorian period or before, to a
position of almost chief prominence with the novel; and the rise of
American literature to a position approaching equality with that of
England. Of single authors none have yet certainly achieved places of the
first rank, but two or three may be named. Mr. William De Morgan, by
profession a manufacturer of artistic pottery, has astonished the world by
beginning to publish at the age of sixty-five a series of novels which show
no small amount of Thackeray's power combined with too large a share of
Thackeray's diffuseness. Mr. Alfred Noyes (born 1880) is a refreshingly
true lyric poet and balladist, and Mr. John Masefield has daringly enlarged
the field of poetry by frank but very sincere treatment of extremely
realistic subjects. But none of these authors can yet be termed great.
About the future it is useless to prophesy, but the horrible war of 1914 is
certain to exert for many years a controlling influence on the thought and
literature of both England and the whole world, an influence which, it may
be hoped, will ultimately prove stimulating and renovating.

Whatever may be true of the future, the record of the past is complete. No
intelligent person can give even hasty study to the fourteen existing
centuries of English Literature without being deeply impressed by its range
and power, or without coming to realize that it stands conspicuous as one
of the noblest and fullest achievements of the human race.




A LIST OF AVAILABLE EDITIONS FOR THE STUDY OF IMPORTANT AUTHORS


The author has in preparation an annotated anthology of poems from the
popular ballads down, exclusive of long poems. In the meantime existing
anthologies may be used with the present volume. The following list
includes rather more of the other authors than can probably be studied at
first hand in one college year. The editions named are chosen because they
combine inexpensiveness with satisfactory quality. It is the author's
experience that a sufficient number of them to meet the needs of the class
may well be supplied by the college. 'Everyman' means the editions in the
'Everyman Library' series of Messrs. E. P. Dutton and Co.; 'R. L. S.' the
'Riverside Literature Series' of The Houghton Mifflin Co.

BÉOWULF. Prose translation by Child; R. L. S., cloth, 25 cents. Metrical
translation by J. L. Hall; D. O. Heath & Co., cloth, 75 cents, paper, 30
cents.

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT. Prose translation by Miss J. L. Weston,
Scribner, 75 cents.

CHAUCER. Among numerous school editions of the Prolog and The Knight's Tale
may be named one issued by The American Book Co., 20 cents.

MALORY'S MORTE DARTHUR. Everyman, two vols., 35 cents each. The Medieval
Drama, Early Plays, ed. Child, R. L. S., cloth, 40 cents. 'Everyman and
Other Plays' (modernized), Everyman, 35 cents.

SPENSER'S FAERIE QUEENE. Everyman, three vols., 35 cents each. Vol. I
contains Books I and II.

ELIZABETHAN LYRICS, ed. Schelling, Ginn, 75 cents. Marlowe's Plays. Mermaid
ed., Scribner, $1.00.

SHAKSPERE'S PLAYS. Among the most useful 25 cent editions are those in the
R. L. S., the Arden series of D. C. Heath and Co., and the Tudor Series of
the Macmillan Co.

JONSON'S SEJANUS. Mermaid ed. of Jonson (Scribner), Vol. II, $1.00.

BACON'S ESSAYS. R. L. S., cloth, 40 cents. Everyman, 35 cents.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY LYRICS, ed. Schelling, Ginn, 75 cents.

MILTON'S PARADISE LOST. Astor ed., T. Y. Crowell and Co., 60 cents.

BUNYAN'S PILGRIMS' PROGRESS. Everyman, 35 cents.

DRYDEN'S ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL. In Satires of Dryden, ed. Collins,
Macmillan.

DEFOE'S ROBINSON CRUSOE. Everyman.

SWIFT'S GULLIVER'S TRAVELS. Everyman. There are two excellent volumes of
Selections from Swift, ed. Craik, Oxford University Press.

THE SPECTATOR PAPERS. Everyman, four vols.

SAMUEL JOHNSON. Selections, ed. Osgood, Henry Holt and Co., 50 cents.

BURKE. Selections, ed. Perry, Holt, 50 cents.

THOMSON'S SEASONS. Astor ed., Crowell, 60 cents.

MACAULAY'S ESSAYS. Everyman, three vols. Vol. I has the essays on Clive and
Hastings.

CARLYLE'S SARTOR RESARTUS. Everyman.

RUSKIN. Selections, ed. Tinker, R. L. S., 50 cents.

ARNOLD'S CULTURE AND ANARCHY. Nelson and Sons, 25 cents.

NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVELS. Largely included in Everyman.




ASSIGNMENTS FOR STUDY


These assignments must of course be freely modified in accordance with
actual needs. The discussions of the authors' works should sometimes, at
least, be made by the student in writing, sometimes after a day or two of
preliminary oral discussion in class. In addition to the special questions
here included, the treatment of the various authors in the text often
suggests topics for further consideration; and of course the material of
the preliminary chapter is assumed. Any discussion submitted, either orally
or in writing, may consist of a rather general treatment, dealing briefly
with several topics; or it may be a fuller treatment of a single topic.
Students should always express their own actual opinions, using the
judgments of others, recorded in this book or elsewhere, as helps, not as
final statements. Students should also aim always to be definite, terse,
and clear. Do not make such vague general statements as 'He has good choice
of words,' but cite a list of characteristic words or skilful expressions.
As often as possible support your conclusions by quotations from, the
author or by page-number references to relevant passages.


THE ASSIGNMENTS

1. Above, Chapter I. One day.

2. 'BÉOWULF.' Two days. For the first day review the discussion of the poem
above, pp. 33-36; study the additional introductory statement which here
follows; and read in the poem as much as time allows. For the second day
continue the reading, at least through the story of Béowulf's exploits in
Hrothgar's country (in Hall's translation through page 75, in Child's
through page 60), and write your discussion. Better read one day in a prose
translation, the other in a metrical translation, which will give some idea
of the effect of the original.

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