“His gracious presence upon earthWas as a fire upon a hearth;As pleasant songs, at morning sung,The words that dropped from his sweet tongueStrengthened our hearts, or—heard at night—Made all our slumbers soft and light.”4.Longfellow’s Style.—In one of his prose works, Longfellow himself says, “In character, in manners, in style, in all things, thesupreme excellence is simplicity.” This simplicity he steadily aimed at, and in almost all his writings reached; and the result is the sweet lucidity which is manifest in his best poems. His verse has been characterised as “simple, musical, sincere, sympathetic, clear as crystal, and pure as snow.” He has written in a great variety of measures—in more, perhaps, than have been employed by Tennyson himself. His “Evangeline” is written in a kind of dactylic hexameter, which does not always scan, but which is almost always musical and impressive—“Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.”The “Hiawatha,” again, is written in a trochaic measure—each verse containing four trochees—“‘Farewell!’ said he,‘Minnehaha,Farewell, O my laughing water!All my heart is buried with you,All´ my | thou´ghts go | on´ward | wi´th you!’”He is always careful and painstaking with his rhythm and with the cadence of his verse. It may be said with truth that Longfellow has taught more people to love poetry than any other English writer, however great.5.Alfred Tennyson, a great English poet, who has written beautiful poetry for more than fifty years, was born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1809. He is the youngest of three brothers, all of whom are poets. He was educated at Cambridge, and some of his poems have shown, in a striking light, the forgotten beauty of the fens and flats of Cambridge and Lincolnshire. In 1829 he obtained the Chancellor’s medal for a poem on “Timbuctoo.” In 1830 he published his first volume, with the title ofPoems chiefly Lyrical—a volume which contained, among other beautiful verses, the “Recollections of the Arabian Nights” and “The Dying Swan.” In 1833 he issued another volume, called simplyPoems; and this contained the exquisite poems entitled “The Miller’s Daughter” and “The Lotos-Eaters.”The Princess, a poem as remarkable for its striking thoughts as for its perfection of language, appeared in 1847. TheIn Memoriam, a long series of short poems in memory of his dear friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Hallam the historian, was published in the year 1850. When Wordsworth died in 1850, Tennyson was appointed to the office of Poet-Laureate. This office, from the time when Dryden was forced to resign it in 1689, to thetime when Southey accepted it in 1813, had always been held by third or fourth rate writers; in the present day it is held by the man who has done the largest amount of the best poetical work.The Idylls of the Kingappeared in 1859. This series of poems—perhaps his greatest—contains the stories of “Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.” Many other volumes of poems have been given by him to the world. In his old age he has taken to the writing of ballads and dramas. His ballad ofThe Revengeis one of the noblest and most vigorous poems that England has ever seen. The dramas ofHarold,Queen Mary, andBecket, are perhaps his best; and the last was written when the poet had reached the age of seventy-four. In the year 1882 he was created Baron Tennyson, and called to the House of Peers.6.Tennyson’s Style.—Tennyson has been to the last two generations of Englishmen the national teacher of poetry. He has tried many new measures; he has ventured on many new rhythms; and he has succeeded in them all. He is at home equally in the slowest, most tranquil, and most meditative of rhythms, and in the rapidest and most impulsive. Let us look at the following lines as an example of the first. The poem is written on a woman who is dying of a lingering disease—“Fair is her cottage in its place,Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides:It sees itself from thatch to baseDream 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 passes byTo 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 ship and caught the ropeAnd 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 “Boädicea,” 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 massacred,Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous 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 massiveness 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, afterwardsMrs 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 inalmost 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 noble verse. In 1846 she married Robert Browning, also a great poet. In 1856 she brought outAurora 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 passion. Perhaps her two finest poems in this kind are theCry of the ChildrenandCowper’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 poemParacelsus, 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 God 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 isThe 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 isThe 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 isEvelyn 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 outany 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 noblest 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 beingCromwell. 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 title ofNew 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, noble and musical rhythm, and a certain intense calm. His lines onMoralitygive a good idea of his style:—“We cannot kindle when we willThe fire that in the heart resides:The spirit bloweth and is stillIn mystery our soul abides:But tasks in hours of insight willedCan be through hours of gloom fulfilled.With aching hands and bleeding feetWe dig and heap, lay stone on stone;We bear the burden and the heatOf 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 hisSohrab and Rustum—a taleof the Tartar wastes. One of his noblest poems, calledRugby 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 glass, 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 Parnassus’ hill.”Mr Morris has also translated the Æneid 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 softThat o’er the blossoms of the orchard blow,The thousand things that ’neath the young leaves growThe 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 eyesNo 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 dayIs over to himself, though foolish fameShouts louder year by year his empty name.Unarmed he was, nor clad upon that mornMuch like a king: an ivory hunting-hornWas slung about him, rich with gems and gold,And a great white ger-falcon did he holdUpon his fist; before his feet there satA scrivener making notes of this and thatAs the King bade him, and behind his chairHis 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 ofMichael Angelo Titmarsh; 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 class him with Charles Dickens, and even above him. His most beautiful work is perhapsThe 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 isThe 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 Dickens(1812-1870), the most popular writer ofthis century, was born at Landport, Portsmouth, in the year 1812. His delicate constitution 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 shillings 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 associates 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 passing 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 thePickwick Papers; and this work at once lifted Dickens into the foremost rank as a popular writer of fiction. From this time he was almost constantly engaged in writing novels. HisOliver TwistandDavid Copperfieldcontain 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 isDavid 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 livinginterest in the world about him.” He died in the year 1870, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.16.Dickens’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 passion, it rises into a pure and noble eloquence. The scenery—the external circumstances 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 passions that tear the human breast,—avarice, hate, fear, revenge, remorse. The great American statesman, Daniel Webster, said that Dickens 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 hisModern 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-flowingmusic, 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.”“In mortals, there is a care for trifles, which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles, which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.”His power of painting in words is incomparably greater than that of any other English author: he almost infuses colour into his words and phrases, so full are they of pictorial power. It would be impossible to give any adequate idea of this power here; but a few lines may suffice for the present:—“The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of enlarged and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour; it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God’s tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivered with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald.”19.George Eliot(the literary name forMarian Evans, 1819-1880), one of our greatest writers, was born in Warwickshire in the year 1819. She was well and carefully educated; and her own serious and studious character made her a careful thinker and a most diligent reader. For some time the famous Herbert Spencer was her tutor; and under his care her mind developed with surprising rapidity. She taught herself German, French, Italian—studied the best works in the literature of these languages; and she was also fairly mistress of Greek and Latin. Besides all these, she was an accomplished musician.—She was for some time assistant-editor of the ‘Westminster Review.’ The first of her works which called theattention of the public to her astonishing skill and power as a novelist was herScenes of Clerical Life. Her most popular novel,Adam Bede, appeared in 1859;Romolain 1863; andMiddlemarchin 1872. She has also written a good deal of poetry, among other volumes that entitledThe Legend of Jubal, and other Poems. One of her best poems isThe Spanish Gypsy. She died in the year 1880.20.George Eliot’s Style.—Her style is everywhere pure and strong, of the best and most vigorous English, not only broad in its power, but often intense in its description of character and situation, and always singularly adequate to the thought. Probably no novelist knew the English character—especially in the Midlands—so well as she, or could analyse it with so much subtlety and truth. She is entirely mistress of the country dialects. In humour, pathos, knowledge of character, power of putting a portrait firmly upon the canvas, no writer surpasses her, and few come near her. Her power is sometimes almost Shakespearian. Like Shakespeare, she gives us a large number of wise sayings, expressed in the pithiest language. The following are a few:—“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”“It is easy finding reasons why other people should be patient.”“Genius, at first, is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.”“Things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”“Nature never makes men who are at once energetically sympathetic and minutely calculating.”“To the far woods he wandered, listening,And heard the birds their little stories singIn notes whose rise and fall seem melted speech—Melted with tears, smiles, glances—that can reachMore quickly through our frame’s deep-winding night,And without thought raise thought’s best fruit, delight.”
“His gracious presence upon earthWas as a fire upon a hearth;As pleasant songs, at morning sung,The words that dropped from his sweet tongueStrengthened our hearts, or—heard at night—Made all our slumbers soft and light.”
“His gracious presence upon earth
Was as a fire upon a hearth;
As pleasant songs, at morning sung,
The words that dropped from his sweet tongue
Strengthened our hearts, or—heard at night—
Made all our slumbers soft and light.”
4.Longfellow’s Style.—In one of his prose works, Longfellow himself says, “In character, in manners, in style, in all things, thesupreme excellence is simplicity.” This simplicity he steadily aimed at, and in almost all his writings reached; and the result is the sweet lucidity which is manifest in his best poems. His verse has been characterised as “simple, musical, sincere, sympathetic, clear as crystal, and pure as snow.” He has written in a great variety of measures—in more, perhaps, than have been employed by Tennyson himself. His “Evangeline” is written in a kind of dactylic hexameter, which does not always scan, but which is almost always musical and impressive—
“Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.”
“Fair was she and young, when in hope began the long journey;
Faded was she and old, when in disappointment it ended.”
The “Hiawatha,” again, is written in a trochaic measure—each verse containing four trochees—
“‘Farewell!’ said he,‘Minnehaha,Farewell, O my laughing water!All my heart is buried with you,All´ my | thou´ghts go | on´ward | wi´th you!’”
“‘Farewell!’ said he,‘Minnehaha,
Farewell, O my laughing water!
All my heart is buried with you,
All´ my | thou´ghts go | on´ward | wi´th you!’”
He is always careful and painstaking with his rhythm and with the cadence of his verse. It may be said with truth that Longfellow has taught more people to love poetry than any other English writer, however great.
5.Alfred Tennyson, a great English poet, who has written beautiful poetry for more than fifty years, was born at Somersby, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1809. He is the youngest of three brothers, all of whom are poets. He was educated at Cambridge, and some of his poems have shown, in a striking light, the forgotten beauty of the fens and flats of Cambridge and Lincolnshire. In 1829 he obtained the Chancellor’s medal for a poem on “Timbuctoo.” In 1830 he published his first volume, with the title ofPoems chiefly Lyrical—a volume which contained, among other beautiful verses, the “Recollections of the Arabian Nights” and “The Dying Swan.” In 1833 he issued another volume, called simplyPoems; and this contained the exquisite poems entitled “The Miller’s Daughter” and “The Lotos-Eaters.”The Princess, a poem as remarkable for its striking thoughts as for its perfection of language, appeared in 1847. TheIn Memoriam, a long series of short poems in memory of his dear friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of Hallam the historian, was published in the year 1850. When Wordsworth died in 1850, Tennyson was appointed to the office of Poet-Laureate. This office, from the time when Dryden was forced to resign it in 1689, to thetime when Southey accepted it in 1813, had always been held by third or fourth rate writers; in the present day it is held by the man who has done the largest amount of the best poetical work.The Idylls of the Kingappeared in 1859. This series of poems—perhaps his greatest—contains the stories of “Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.” Many other volumes of poems have been given by him to the world. In his old age he has taken to the writing of ballads and dramas. His ballad ofThe Revengeis one of the noblest and most vigorous poems that England has ever seen. The dramas ofHarold,Queen Mary, andBecket, are perhaps his best; and the last was written when the poet had reached the age of seventy-four. In the year 1882 he was created Baron Tennyson, and called to the House of Peers.
6.Tennyson’s Style.—Tennyson has been to the last two generations of Englishmen the national teacher of poetry. He has tried many new measures; he has ventured on many new rhythms; and he has succeeded in them all. He is at home equally in the slowest, most tranquil, and most meditative of rhythms, and in the rapidest and most impulsive. Let us look at the following lines as an example of the first. The poem is written on a woman who is dying of a lingering disease—
“Fair is her cottage in its place,Where yon broad water sweetly slowly glides:It sees itself from thatch to baseDream 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 passes byTo some more perfect peace.”
“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 passes 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 ship and caught the ropeAnd whistled to the morning-star.”
“He rose at dawn and, fired with hope,
Shot o’er the seething harbour-bar,
And reached the ship 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.”
“A land of streams! Some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go.”
In the “Boädicea,” 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 massacred,Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous agonies.”
“Phantom sound of blows descending, moan of an enemy massacred,
Phantom wail of women and children, multitudinous 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!”
“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 massiveness 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“For words, like Nature, half reveal,
And half conceal, the soul within.”
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,And simple faith than Norman blood.”
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”
7.Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, afterwardsMrs 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 inalmost 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 noble verse. In 1846 she married Robert Browning, also a great poet. In 1856 she brought outAurora 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 passion. Perhaps her two finest poems in this kind are theCry of the ChildrenandCowper’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 poemParacelsus, 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 God 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 isThe 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 isThe 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 isEvelyn 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.”
“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 outany 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 noblest 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 beingCromwell. 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 title ofNew 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, noble and musical rhythm, and a certain intense calm. His lines onMoralitygive a good idea of his style:—
“We cannot kindle when we willThe fire that in the heart resides:The spirit bloweth and is stillIn mystery our soul abides:But tasks in hours of insight willedCan be through hours of gloom fulfilled.With aching hands and bleeding feetWe dig and heap, lay stone on stone;We bear the burden and the heatOf the long day, and wish ’twere done.Not till the hours of light return,All we have built do we discern.”
“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 hisSohrab and Rustum—a taleof the Tartar wastes. One of his noblest poems, calledRugby 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 glass, 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 Parnassus’ hill.”
“Thou, my Master still,
Whatever feet have climbed Parnassus’ hill.”
Mr Morris has also translated the Æneid 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 softThat o’er the blossoms of the orchard blow,The thousand things that ’neath the young leaves growThe hopes and chances of the growing year,Winter forgotten long, and summer near.”
“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 eyesNo 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 dayIs over to himself, though foolish fameShouts louder year by year his empty name.Unarmed he was, nor clad upon that mornMuch like a king: an ivory hunting-hornWas slung about him, rich with gems and gold,And a great white ger-falcon did he holdUpon his fist; before his feet there satA scrivener making notes of this and thatAs the King bade him, and behind his chairHis captains stood in armour rich and fair.”
“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 ofMichael Angelo Titmarsh; 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 class him with Charles Dickens, and even above him. His most beautiful work is perhapsThe 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 isThe 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 Dickens(1812-1870), the most popular writer ofthis century, was born at Landport, Portsmouth, in the year 1812. His delicate constitution 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 shillings 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 associates 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 passing 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 thePickwick Papers; and this work at once lifted Dickens into the foremost rank as a popular writer of fiction. From this time he was almost constantly engaged in writing novels. HisOliver TwistandDavid Copperfieldcontain 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 isDavid 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 livinginterest in the world about him.” He died in the year 1870, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
16.Dickens’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 passion, it rises into a pure and noble eloquence. The scenery—the external circumstances 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 passions that tear the human breast,—avarice, hate, fear, revenge, remorse. The great American statesman, Daniel Webster, said that Dickens 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 hisModern 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-flowingmusic, 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.”
“In mortals, there is a care for trifles, which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles, which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base.”
His power of painting in words is incomparably greater than that of any other English author: he almost infuses colour into his words and phrases, so full are they of pictorial power. It would be impossible to give any adequate idea of this power here; but a few lines may suffice for the present:—
“The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of enlarged and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour; it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God’s tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivered with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald.”
19.George Eliot(the literary name forMarian Evans, 1819-1880), one of our greatest writers, was born in Warwickshire in the year 1819. She was well and carefully educated; and her own serious and studious character made her a careful thinker and a most diligent reader. For some time the famous Herbert Spencer was her tutor; and under his care her mind developed with surprising rapidity. She taught herself German, French, Italian—studied the best works in the literature of these languages; and she was also fairly mistress of Greek and Latin. Besides all these, she was an accomplished musician.—She was for some time assistant-editor of the ‘Westminster Review.’ The first of her works which called theattention of the public to her astonishing skill and power as a novelist was herScenes of Clerical Life. Her most popular novel,Adam Bede, appeared in 1859;Romolain 1863; andMiddlemarchin 1872. She has also written a good deal of poetry, among other volumes that entitledThe Legend of Jubal, and other Poems. One of her best poems isThe Spanish Gypsy. She died in the year 1880.
20.George Eliot’s Style.—Her style is everywhere pure and strong, of the best and most vigorous English, not only broad in its power, but often intense in its description of character and situation, and always singularly adequate to the thought. Probably no novelist knew the English character—especially in the Midlands—so well as she, or could analyse it with so much subtlety and truth. She is entirely mistress of the country dialects. In humour, pathos, knowledge of character, power of putting a portrait firmly upon the canvas, no writer surpasses her, and few come near her. Her power is sometimes almost Shakespearian. Like Shakespeare, she gives us a large number of wise sayings, expressed in the pithiest language. The following are a few:—
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
“It is easy finding reasons why other people should be patient.”
“Genius, at first, is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.”
“Things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
“Nature never makes men who are at once energetically sympathetic and minutely calculating.”
“To the far woods he wandered, listening,And heard the birds their little stories singIn notes whose rise and fall seem melted speech—Melted with tears, smiles, glances—that can reachMore quickly through our frame’s deep-winding night,And without thought raise thought’s best fruit, delight.”
“To the far woods he wandered, listening,
And heard the birds their little stories sing
In notes whose rise and fall seem melted speech—
Melted with tears, smiles, glances—that can reach
More quickly through our frame’s deep-winding night,
And without thought raise thought’s best fruit, delight.”