"In yonder grave a Druid lies"—

one of the finest of his poems. Not long after, he was attacked by a disease of the brain, from which he suffered, at intervals, during the remainder of his short life. He died at Chichester in 1759, at the age of thirty-eight.

20. Collins's best poem is the Ode to Evening; his most elaborate, the Ode on the Passions; and his best known, the Ode beginning—

"How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blessed!"

His latest and best critic says of his poems: "His range of flight was perhaps the narrowest, but assuredly the highest, of his generation. He could not be taught singing like a finch, but he struck straight upward for the sun like a lark.... The direct sincerity and purity of their positive and straightforward inspiration will always keep his poems fresh and sweet in the senses of all men. He was a solitary song-bird among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of colour into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could all the rest of his generation into all the labours of their lives."



CHAPTER VII.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

1. Prose-Writers.— The four greatest prose-writers of the latter half of the eighteenth century are Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, and Gibbon. Dr Johnson was the most prominent literary figure in London at this period; and filled in his own time much the same position that Carlyle lately held in literary circles. He wrote on many subjects— but chiefly on literature and morals; and hence he was called "The Great Moralist." Goldsmith stands out clearly as the writer of the most pleasant and easy prose; his pen was ready for any subject; and it has been said of him with perfect truth, that he touched nothing that he did not adorn. Burke was the most eloquent writer of his time, and by far the greatest political thinker that England has ever produced. He is known by an essay he wrote when a very young man— on "The Sublime and Beautiful"; but it is to his speeches and political writings that we must look for his noblest thoughts and most eloquent language. Gibbon is one of the greatest historians and most powerful writers the world has ever seen.

2. SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709-1784), the great essayist and lexicographer, was born at Lichfield in the year 1709. His father was a bookseller; and it was in his father's shop that Johnson acquired his habit of omnivorous reading, or rather devouring of books. The mistress of the dame's school, to which he first went, declared him to be the best scholar she ever had. After a few years at the free grammar-school of Lichfield, and one year at Stourbridge, he went to Pembroke College, Oxford, at the age of nineteen. Here he did not confine himself to the studies of the place, but indulged in a wide range of miscellaneous reading. He was too poor to take a degree, and accordingly left Oxford without graduating. After acting for some time as a bookseller's hack, he married a Mrs Porter of Birmingham— a widow with 800. With this money he opened a boarding-school, or "academy" as he called it; but he had never more than three scholars— the most famous of whom was the celebrated player, David Garrick. In 1737 he went up to London, and for the next quarter of a century struggled for a living by the aid of his pen. During the first ten years of his London life he wrote chiefly for the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' In 1738 his London— a poem in heroic metre— appeared. In 1747 he began his famous Dictionary; it was completed in 1755; and the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of M.A. In 1749 he wrote another poem— also in heroic metre— the 'Vanity of Human Wishes.' In 1750 he had begun the periodical that raised his fame to its full height— a periodical to which he gave the name of The Rambler. It appeared twice a-week; and Dr Johnson wrote every article in it for two years. In 1759 he published the short novel called Rasselas: it was written to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral; and he wrote it "in the evenings of a week." The year 1762 saw him with a pension from the Government of 300 a-year; and henceforth he was free from heavy hack-work and literary drudgery, and could give himself up to the largest enjoyment of that for which he cared most— social conversation. He was the best talker of his time; and he knew everybody worth knowing— Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, the great painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and many other able men. In 1764 he founded the "Literary Club," which still exists and meets in London. Oddly enough, although a prolific writer, it is to another person— to Mr James Boswell, who first met him in 1763— that he owes his greatest and most lasting fame. A much larger number of persons read Boswell's Life of Johnson— one of the most entertaining books in all literature— than Johnson's own works. Between the years 1779 and 1781 appeared his last and ablest work, The Lives of the Poets, which were written as prefaces to a collective edition of the English Poets, published by several London booksellers. He died in 1784.

3. Johnson's earlier style was full of Latin words; his later style is more purely English than most of the journalistic writing of the present day. His Rambler is full of "long-tailed words in osity and ation;" but his 'Lives of the Poets' is written in manly, vigorous, and idiomatic English. In verse, he occupies a place between Pope and Goldsmith, and is one of the masters in the "didactic school" of English poetry. His rhythm and periods are swelling and sonorous; and here and there he equals Pope in the terseness and condensation of his language. The following is a fair specimen:—

"Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart."

4. OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774), poet, essayist, historian, and dramatist, was born at Pallas, in the county of Longford, Ireland, in the year 1728. His father was an Irish clergyman, careless, good-hearted, and the original of the famous Dr Primrose, in The Vicar of Wakefield. He was also the original of the "village preacher" in The Deserted Village.

"A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a-year."

Oliver was educated at Trinity College, Dublin; but he left it with no fixed aim. He thought of law, and set off for London, but spent all his money in Dublin. He thought of medicine, and resided two years in Edinburgh. He started for Leyden, in Holland, to continue what he called his medical studies; but he had a thirst to see the world— and so, with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt, and a flute, he set out on his travels through the continent of Europe. At length, on the 1st of February 1756, he landed at Dover, after an absence of two years, without a farthing in his pocket. London reached, he tried many ways of making a living, as assistant to an apothecary, physician, reader for the press, usher in a school, writer in journals. His first work was 'An Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe,' in 1759; but it appeared without his name. From that date he wrote books of all kinds, poems, and plays. He died in his chambers in Brick Court, Temple, London, in 1774.

5. Goldsmith's best poems are The Traveller and The Deserted Village,— both written in the Popian couplet. His best play is She Stoops to Conquer. His best prose work is The Vicar of Wakefield, "the first genuine novel of domestic life." He also wrote histories of England, of Rome, of Animated Nature. All this was done as professional, nay, almost as hack work; but always in a very pleasant, lively, and readable style. Ease, grace, charm, naturalness, pleasant rhythm, purity of diction— these were the chief characteristics of his writings. "Almost to all things could he turn his hand"— poem, essay, play, story, history, natural science. Even when satirical, he was good-natured; and his Retaliation is the friendliest and pleasantest of satires. In his poetry, his words seem artless, but are indeed delicately chosen with that consummate art which conceals and effaces itself: where he seems most simple and easy, there he has taken most pains and given most labour.

6. EDMUND BURKE (1730-1797) was born at Dublin in the year 1730. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin; and in 1747 was entered of the Middle Temple, with the purpose of reading for the Bar. In 1766 he was so fortunate as to enter Parliament as member for Wendover, in Buckinghamshire; and he sat in the House of Commons for nearly thirty years. While in Parliament, he worked hard to obtain justice for the colonists of North America, and to avert the separation of them from the mother country; and also to secure good government for India. At the close of his life, it was his intention to take his seat in the House of Peers as Earl Beaconsfield— the title afterwards assumed by Mr Disraeli; but the death of his son, and only child— for whom the honour was really meant and wished— quite broke his heart, and he never carried out his purpose. He died at Beaconsfield in the year 1797. The lines of Goldsmith on Burke, in his poem of "Retaliation," are well known:—

"Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much; Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind; Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, And thought of convincing while they thought of dining."

7. Burke's most famous writings are Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents, published in 1773; Reflections on the Trench Revolution (1790); and the Letters on a Regicide Peace (1797). His "Thoughts" is perhaps the best of his works in point of style; his "Reflections," are full of passages of the highest and most noble eloquence. Burke has been described by a great critic as "the supreme writer of the century;" and Macaulay says, that "in richness of imagination, he is superior to every orator ancient and modern." In the power of expressing thought in the strongest, fullest, and most vivid manner, he must be classed with Shakespeare and Bacon— and with these writers when at their best. He indulges in repetitions; but the repetitions are never monotonous; they serve to place the subject in every possible point of view, and to enable us to see all sides of it. He possessed an enormous vocabulary, and had the fullest power over it; "never was a man under whose hands language was more plastic and ductile." He is very fond of metaphor, and is described by an able critic as "the greatest master of metaphor that the world has ever seen."

8. EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1794), the second great prose-writer of the second half of the eighteenth century, was born at Putney, London, in 1737. His father was a wealthy landowner. Young Gibbon was a very sickly child— the only survivor of a delicate family of seven; he was left to pass his time as he pleased, and for the most part to educate himself. But he had the run of several good libraries; and he was an eager and never satiated reader. He was sent to Oxford at the early age of fifteen; and so full was his knowledge in some directions, and so defective in others, that he went there, he tells us himself, "with a stock of knowledge that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a schoolboy would have been ashamed." He was very fond of disputation while at Oxford; and the Dons of the University were astonished to see the pathetic "thin little figure, with a large head, disputing and arguing with the greatest ability." In the course of his reading, he lighted on some French and English books that convinced him for the time of the truth of the Roman Catholic faith; he openly professed his change of belief; and this obliged him to leave the University. His father sent him to Lausanne, and placed him under the care of a Swiss clergyman there, whose arguments were at length successful in bringing him back to a belief in Protestantism. On his return to England in 1758, he lived in his father's house in Hampshire; read largely, as usual; but also joined the Hampshire militia as captain of a company, and the exercises and manoeuvres of his regiment gave him an insight into military matters which was afterwards useful to him when he came to write history. He published his first work in 1761. It was an essay on the study of literature, and was written in French. In 1770 his father died; he came into a fortune, entered Parliament, where he sat for eight years, but never spoke; and, in 1776, he began his history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This, by far the greatest of his works, was not completed till 1787, and was published in 1788, on his fifty-first birthday. His account of the completion of the work— it was finished at Lausanne, where he had lived for six years— is full of beauty: "It was on the day, or rather night, of June 27, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene. The silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not describe the first emotion of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." Gibbon died in 1794, about one year before the birth of another great historian, Grote, the author of the 'History of Greece.'

9. Gibbon's book is one of the great historical works of the world. It covers a space of about thirteen centuries, from the reign of Trajan (98), to the fall of the Eastern Empire in 1453; and the amount of reading and study required to write it, must have been almost beyond the power of our conceiving. The skill in arranging and disposing the enormous mass of matter in his history is also unparalleled. His style is said by a critic to be "copious, splendid, elegantly rounded, distinguished by supreme artificial skill." It is remarkable for the proportion of Latin words employed. While some parts of our translation of the Bible contain as much as 96 per cent of pure English words, Gibbon has only 58 per cent: the rest, or 42 per cent, are words of Latin origin. In fact, of all our great English writers, Gibbon stands lowest in his use of pure English words; and the two writers who come nearest him in this respect are Johnson and Swift. The great Greek scholar, Professor Porson, said of Gibbon's style, that "there could not be a better exercise for a schoolboy than to turn a page of it into English."

10. Poets.— The chief poets of the latter half of the eighteenth century belong to a new world, and show very little trace in their writings of eighteenth-century culture, ideas, or prejudices. Most of the best poets who were born in this half of the eighteenth century and began to write in it— such as Crabbe and Wordsworth— are true denizens, in the character of their minds and feelings, of the nineteenth. The greatest poets of the period are Cowper, Crabbe, and Burns; and along with these may be mentioned as little inferior, Chatterton and Blake, two of the most original poets that have appeared in any literature.

11. WILLIAM COWPER (1731-1800), one of the truest, purest, and sweetest of English poets, was born at Great Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, in 1731. His father, Dr Cowper, who was a nephew of Lord Chancellor Cowper, was rector of the parish, and chaplain to George II. Young Cowper was educated at Westminster School; and "the great proconsul of India," Warren Hastings, was one of his schoolfellows. After leaving Westminster, he was entered of the Middle Temple, and was also articled to a solicitor. At the age of thirty-one he was appointed one of the Clerks to the House of Lords; but he was so terribly nervous and timid, that he threw up the appointment. He was next appointed Clerk of the Journals— a post which even the shyest man might hold; but, when he found that he would have to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, he went home and attempted to commit suicide. When at school, he had been terribly and persistently bullied; and, about this time, his mind had been somewhat affected by a disappointment in love. The form of his insanity was melancholia; and he had several long and severe attacks of the same disease in the after-course of his life. He had to be placed in the keeping of a physician; and it was only after fifteen months' seclusion that he was able to face the world. Giving up all idea of professional or of public life, he went to live at Huntingdon with the Unwins; and, after the death of Mr Unwin, he removed with Mrs Unwin to Olney, in Buckinghamshire. Here, in 1773, another attack of melancholia came upon him. In 1779, Cowper joined with Mr Newton, the curate of the parish, in publishing the Olney Hymns, of which he wrote sixty-eight. But it was not till he was past fifty years of age that he betook himself seriously to the writing of poetry. His first volume, which contained Table-Talk, Conversation, Retirement, and other poems in heroic metre, appeared in 1782. His second volume, which included The Task and John Gilpin, was published in 1785. His translation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer— a translation into blank verse, which he wrote at the regular rate of forty lines a-day— was published in 1791. Mrs Unwin now had a shock of paralysis; Cowper himself was again seized with mental illness; and from 1791 till his death in 1800, his condition was one of extreme misery, depression, and despair. He thought himself an outcast from the mercy of God. "I seem to myself," he wrote to a friend, "to be scrambling always in the dark, among rocks and precipices, without a guide, but with an enemy ever at my heels, prepared to push me headlong." The cloud never lifted; gloom and dejection enshrouded all his later years; a pension of 300 a-year from George III. brought him no pleasure; and he died insane, at East Dereham, in Norfolk, in the year 1800. In the poem of The Castaway he compares himself to a drowning sailor:—

"No voice divine the storm allayed, No light propitious shone, When, far from all effectual aid, We perished— each alone— But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelmed in blacker gulfs than he."

12. His greatest work is The Task; and the best poem in it is probably "The Winter Evening." His best-known poem is John Gilpin, which, like "The Task," he wrote at the request of his friend, Lady Austen. His most powerful poem is The Castaway. He always writes in clear, crisp, pleasant, and manly English. He himself says, in a letter to a friend: "Perspicuity is always more than half the battle... A meaning that does not stare you in the face is as bad as no meaning;" and this direction he himself always carried out. Cowper's poems mark a new era in poetry; his style is new, and his ideas are new. He is no follower of Pope; Southey compared Pope and Cowper as "formal gardens in comparison with woodland scenery." He is always original, always true— true to his own feeling, and true to the object he is describing. "My descriptions," he writes of "The Task," "are all from nature; not one of them second-handed. My delineations of the heart are from my own experience." Everywhere in his poems we find a genuine love of nature; humour and pathos in his description of persons; and a purity and honesty of style that have never been surpassed. Many of his well-put lines have passed into our common stock of everyday quotations. Such are—

"God made the country, and man made the town."

"Variety's the very spice of life That gives it all its flavour."

"The heart May give a useful lesson to the head, And Learning wiser grow without his books."

"Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away."

13. GEORGE CRABBE (1754-1832), the poet of the poor, was born at Aldborough, in Suffolk, on Christmas Eve of the year 1754. He stands thus midway between Goldsmith and Wordsworth— midway between the old and the new school of poetry. His father was salt-master— or collector of salt duties— at the little seaport. After being taught a little at several schools, it was agreed that George should be made a surgeon. He was accordingly apprenticed; but he was fonder of writing verses than of attending cases. His memory for poetry was astonishing; he had begun to write verses at the age of fourteen; and he filled the drawers of the surgery with his poetical attempts. After a time he set up for himself in practice at Aldborough; but most of his patients were poor people and poor relations, who paid him neither for his physic nor his advice. In 1779 he resolved "to go to London and venture all." Accordingly, he took a berth on board of a sailing-packet, carrying with him a little money and a number of manuscript poems. But nothing succeeded with him; he was reduced to his last eightpence. In this strait, he wrote to the great statesman, Edmund Burke; and, while the answer was coming, he walked all night up and down Westminster Bridge. Burke took him in to his own house and found a publisher for his poems.

14. In 1781 The Library appeared; and in the same year Crabbe entered the Church. In 1783 he published The Village— a poem which Dr Johnson revised for him. This work won for him an established reputation; but, for twenty-four years after, Crabbe gave himself up entirely to the care of his parish, and published only one poem— The Newspaper. In 1807 appeared The Parish Register; in 1810, The Borough; in 1812, Tales in Verse; and, in 1819, his last poetical work, Tales of the Hall. From this time, till his death in 1832— thirteen years after— he produced no other poem. Personally, he was one of the noblest and kindest of men; he was known as "the gentleman with the sour name and the sweet countenance;" and he spent most of his income on the wants of others.

15. Crabbe's poetical work forms a prominent landmark in English literature. His style is the style of the eighteenth century— with a strong admixture of his own; his way of thinking, and the objects he selects for description, belong to the nineteenth. While Pope depicted "the town," politics, and abstract moralities, Crabbe describes the country and the country poor, social matters, real life— the lowest and poorest life, and more especially, the intense misery of the village population of his time in the eastern counties—

"the wild amphibious race With sullen woe displayed in every face."

He does not paint the lot of the poor with the rose-coloured tints used by Goldsmith; he boldly denies the existence of such a village as Auburn; he groups such places with Eden, and says—

"Auburn and Eden can be found no more;"

he shows the gloomy, hard, despairing side of English country life. He has been called a "Pope in worsted stockings," and "the Hogarth, of song." Byron describes him as

"Nature's sternest painter, yet the best."

Now and then his style is flat, and even coarse; but there is everywhere a genuine power of strong and bold painting. He is also an excellent master of easy dialogue.

All of his poems are written in the Popian couplet of two ten-syllabled lines.

16. ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796), the greatest poet of Scotland, was born in Ayrshire, two miles from the town of Ayr, in 1759. The only education he received from his father was the schooling of a few months; but the family were fond of reading, and Robert was the most enthusiastic reader of them all. Every spare moment he could find— and they were not many— he gave to reading; he sat at meals "with a book in one hand and a spoon in the other;" and in this way he read most of the great English poets and prose-writers. This was an excellent education— one a great deal better than most people receive; and some of our greatest men have had no better. But, up to the age of sixteen, he had to toil on his father's farm from early morning till late at night. In the intervals of his work he contrived, by dint of thrift and industry, to learn French, mathematics, and a little Latin. On the death of his father, he took a small farm, but did not succeed. He was on the point of embarking for Jamaica, where a post had been found for him, when the news of the successful sale of a small volume of his poems reached him; and he at once changed his mind, and gave up all idea of emigrating. His friends obtained for him a post as exciseman, in which his duty was to gauge the quantity and quality of ardent spirits— a post full of dangers to a man of his excitable and emotional temperament. He went a great deal into what was called society, formed the acquaintance of many boon companions, acquired habits of intemperance that he could not shake off, and died at Dumfries in 1796, in his thirty-seventh year.

17. His best poems are lyrical, and he is himself one of the foremost lyrical poets in the world. His songs have probably been more sung, and in more parts of the globe, than the songs of any other writer that ever lived. They are of every kind— songs of love, war, mirth, sorrow, labour, and social gatherings. Professor Craik says: "One characteristic that belongs to whatever Burns has written is that, of its kind and in its own way, it is a perfect production. His poetry is, throughout, real emotion melodiously uttered, instinct with passion, but not less so with power of thought,— full of light as well as of fire." Most of his poems are written in the North-English, or Lowland-Scottish, dialect. The most elevated of his poems is The Vision, in which he relates how the Scottish Muse found him at the plough, and crowned him with a wreath of holly. One of his longest, as well as finest poems, is The Cottar's Saturday Night, which is written in the Spenserian stanza. Perhaps his most pathetic poem is that entitled To Mary in Heaven. It is of a singular eloquence, elevation, and sweetness. The first verse runs thus—

"Thou lingering star, with lessening ray, That lov'st to greet the early morn, Again thou usher'st in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? See'st thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast?"

He is, as his latest critic says, "the poet of homely human nature;" and his genius shows the beautiful elements in this homeliness; and that what is homely need not therefore be dull and prosaic.

18. THOMAS CHATTERTON and WILLIAM BLAKE are two minor poets, of whom little is known and less said, but whose work is of the most poetical and genuine kind. —Chatterton was born at Bristol in the year 1752. He was the son of a schoolmaster, who died before he was born. He was educated at Colston's Blue-Coat School in Bristol; and, while at school, read his way steadily through every book in three circulating libraries. He began to write verses at the age of fifteen, and in two years had produced a large number of poems— some of them of the highest value. In 1770, he came up to London, with something under five pounds in his pocket, and his mind made up to try his fortune as a literary man, resolved, though he was only a boy of seventeen, to live by literature or to die. Accordingly, he set to work and wrote every kind of productions— poems, essays, stories, political articles, songs for public singers; and all the time he was half starving. A loaf of bread lasted him a week; and it was "bought stale to make it last longer." He had made a friend of the Lord Mayor, Beckford; but before he had time to hold out a hand to the struggling boy, Beckford died. The struggle became harder and harder— more and more hopeless; his neighbours offered a little help— a small coin or a meal— he rejected all; and at length, on the evening of the 24th August 1770, he went up to his garret, locked himself in, tore up all his manuscripts, took poison, and died. He was only seventeen.

19. Wordsworth and Coleridge spoke with awe of his genius; Keats dedicated one of his poems to his memory; and Coleridge copied some of his rhythms. One of his best poems is the Minstrel's Roundelay—

"O sing unto my roundelay, O drop the briny tear with me, Dance no more on holy-day, Like a running river be. My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree.

"Black his hair as the winter night, White his skin as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, Cold he lies in the grave below. My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree."

20. WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827), one of the most original poets that ever lived, was born in London in the year 1757. He was brought up as an engraver; worked steadily at his business, and did a great deal of beautiful work in that capacity. He in fact illustrated his own poems— each page being set in a fantastic design of his own invention, which he himself engraved. He was also his own printer and publisher. The first volume of his poems was published in 1783; the Songs of Innocence, probably his best, appeared in 1787. He died in Fountain Court, Strand, London, in the year 1827.

21. His latest critic says of Blake: "His detachment from the ordinary currents of practical thought left to his mind an unspoiled and delightful simplicity which has perhaps never been matched in English poetry." Simplicity— the perfect simplicity of a child— beautiful simplicity— simple and childlike beauty,— such is the chief note of the poetry of Blake. "Where he is successful, his work has the fresh perfume and perfect grace of a flower." The most remarkable point about Blake is that, while living in an age when the poetry of Pope— and that alone— was everywhere paramount, his poems show not the smallest trace of Pope's influence, but are absolutely original. His work, in fact, seems to be the first bright streak of the golden dawn that heralded the approach of the full and splendid daylight of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Shelley and Byron. His best-known poems are those from the 'Songs of Innocence'— such as Piping down the valleys wild; The Lamb; The Tiger, and others. Perhaps the most remarkable element in Blake's poetry is the sweetness and naturalness of the rhythm. It seems careless, but it is always beautiful; it grows, it is not made; it is like a wild field-flower thrown up by Nature in a pleasant green field. Such are the rhythms in the poem entitled Night:—

"The sun descending in the west, The evening star does shine; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine. The moon, like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night.

"Farewell, green fields and happy grove, Where flocks have ta'en delight; Where lambs have nibbled, silent move The feet of angels bright: Unseen they pour blessing, And joy without ceasing, On each bud and blossom, On each sleeping bosom."



CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

1. New Ideas.— The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century are alike remarkable for the new powers, new ideas, and new life thrown into society. The coming up of a high flood-tide of new forces seems to coincide with the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, when the overthrow of the Bastille marked the downfall of the old ways of thinking and acting, and announced to the world of Europe and America that the old rgime— the ancient mode of governing— was over. Wordsworth, then a lad of nineteen, was excited by the event almost beyond the bounds of self-control. He says in his "Excursion"—

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven!"

It was, indeed, the dawn of a new day for the peoples of Europe. The ideas of freedom and equality— of respect for man as man— were thrown into popular form by France; they became living powers in Europe; and in England they animated and inspired the best minds of the time— Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. Along with this high tide of hope and emotion, there was such an outburst of talent and genius in every kind of human endeavour in England, as was never seen before except in the Elizabethan period. Great events produced great powers; and great powers in their turn brought about great events. The war with America, the long struggle with Napoleon, the new political ideas, great victories by sea and land,— all these were to be found in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The English race produced great men in numbers— almost, it might be said, in groups. We had great leaders, like Nelson and Wellington; brilliant generals, like Sir Charles Napier and Sir John Moore; great statesmen, like Fox and Pitt, like Washington and Franklin; great engineers, like Stephenson and Brunel; and great poets, like Wordsworth and Byron. And as regards literature, an able critic remarks: "We have recovered in this century the Elizabethan magic and passion, a more than Elizabethan sense of the beauty and complexity of nature, the Elizabethan music of language."

2. Great Poets.— The greatest poets of the first half of the nineteenth century may be best arranged in groups. There were Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey— commonly, but unnecessarily, described as the Lake Poets. In their poetic thought and expression they had little in common; and the fact that two of them lived most of their lives in the Lake country, is not a sufficient justification for the use of the term. There were Scott and Campbell— both of them Scotchmen. There were Byron and Shelley— both Englishmen, both brought up at the great public schools and the universities, but both carried away by the influence of the new revolutionary ideas. Lastly, there were Moore, an Irishman, and young Keats, the splendid promise of whose youth went out in an early death. Let us learn a little more about each, and in the order of the dates of their birth.

3. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850) was born at Cockermouth, a town in Cumberland, which stands at the confluence of the Cocker and the Derwent. His father, John Wordsworth, was law agent to Sir James Lowther, who afterwards became Earl of Lonsdale. William was a boy of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; and as his mother died when he was a very little boy, and his father when he was fourteen, he grew up with very little care from his parents and guardians. He was sent to school at Hawkshead, in the Vale of Esthwaite, in Lancashire; and, at the age of seventeen, proceeded to St John's College, Cambridge. After taking his degree of B.A. in 1791, he resided for a year in France. He took sides with one of the parties in the Reign of Terror, and left the country only in time to save his head. He was designed by his uncles for the Church; but a friend, Raisley Calvert, dying, left him 900; and he now resolved to live a plain and frugal life, to join no profession, but to give himself wholly up to the writing of poetry. In 1798, he published, along with his friend, S. T. Coleridge, the Lyrical Ballads. The only work of Coleridge's in this volume was the "Ancient Mariner." In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of whom he speaks in the well-known lines—

"Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair, Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn."

He obtained the post of Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland; and, after the death of Southey, he was created Poet-Laureate by the Queen. —He settled with his wife in the Lake country; and, in 1813, took up his abode at Rydal Mount, where he lived till his death in 1850. He died on the 23d of April— the death-day of Shakespeare.

4. His longest works are the Excursion and the Prelude— both being parts of a longer and greater work which he intended to write on the growth of his own mind. His best poems are his shorter pieces, such as the poems on Lucy, The Cuckoo, the Ode to Duty, the Intimations of Immortality, and several of his Sonnets. He says of his own poetry that his purpose in writing it was "to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous." His poetical work is the noble landmark of a great transition— both in thought and in style. He drew aside poetry from questions and interests of mere society and the town to the scenes of Nature and the deepest feelings of man as man. In style, he refused to employ the old artificial vocabulary which Pope and his followers revelled in; he used the simplest words he could find; and, when he hits the mark in his simplest form of expression, his style is as forcible as it is true. He says of his own verse—

"The moving accident is not my trade, To freeze the blood I have no ready arts; 'Tis my delight, alone, in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for thinking hearts."

If one were asked what four lines of his poetry best convey the feeling of the whole, the reply must be that these are to be found in his "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,"— lines written about "the good Lord Clifford."

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachers had been woods and rills,— The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

5. WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832), poet and novelist, the son of a Scotch attorney (called in Edinburgh a W.S. or Writer to H.M.'s Signet), was born there in the year 1771. He was educated at the High School, and then at the College— now called the University— of Edinburgh. In 1792 he was called to the Scottish Bar, or became an "advocate." During his boyhood, he had had several illnesses, one of which left him lame for life. Through those long periods of sickness and of convalescence, he read Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' and almost all the romances, old plays, and epic poems that have been published in the English language. This gave his mind and imagination a set which they never lost all through life.

6. His first publications were translations of German poems. In the year 1805, however, an original poem, the Lay of the Last Minstrel, appeared; and Scott became at one bound the foremost poet of the day. Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, and other poems, followed with great rapidity. But, in 1814, Scott took it into his head that his poetical vein was worked out; the star of Byron was rising upon the literary horizon; and he now gave himself up to novel-writing. His first novel, Waverley, appeared anonymously in 1814. Guy Mannering, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, and others, quickly followed; and, though the secret of the authorship was well kept both by printer and publisher, Walter Scott was generally believed to be the writer of these works, and he was frequently spoken of as "the Great Unknown." He was made a baronet by George IV. in 1820.

7. His expenses in building Abbotsford, and his desire to acquire land, induced him to go into partnership with Ballantyne, his printer, and with Constable, his publisher. Both firms failed in the dark year of 1826; and Scott found himself unexpectedly liable for the large sum of 147,000. Such a load of debt would have utterly crushed most men; but Scott stood clear and undaunted in front of it. "Gentlemen," he said to his creditors, "time and I against any two. Let me take this good ally into my company, and I believe I shall be able to pay you every farthing." He left his beautiful country house at Abbotsford; he gave up all his country pleasures; he surrendered all his property to his creditors; he took a small house in Edinburgh; and, in the short space of five years, he had paid off 130,000. But the task was too terrible; the pace had been too hard; and he was struck down by paralysis. But even this disaster did not daunt him. Again he went to work, and again he had a paralytic stroke. At last, however, he was obliged to give up; the Government of the day placed a royal frigate at his disposal; he went to Italy; but his health had utterly broken down, he felt he could get no good from the air of the south, and he turned his face towards home to die. He breathed his last breath at Abbotsford, in sight of his beloved Tweed, with his family around him, on the 21st of September 1832.

8. His poetry is the poetry of action. In imaginative power he ranks below no other poet, except Homer and Shakespeare. He delighted in war, in its movement, its pageantry, and its events; and, though lame, he was quartermaster of a volunteer corps of cavalry. On one occasion he rode to muster one hundred miles in twenty-four hours, composing verses by the way. Much of "Marmion" was composed on horseback. "I had many a grand gallop," he says, "when I was thinking of 'Marmion.'" His two chief powers in verse are his narrative and his pictorial power. His boyhood was passed in the Borderland of Scotland— "a district in which every field has its battle and every rivulet its song;" and he was at home in every part of the Highlands and the Lowlands, the Islands and the Borders, of his native country. But, both in his novels and his poems, he was a painter of action rather than of character.

9. His prose works are now much more read than his poems; but both are full of life, power, literary skill, knowledge of men and women, and strong sympathy with all past ages. He wrote so fast that his sentences are often loose and ungrammatical; but they are never unidiomatic or stiff. The rush of a strong and large life goes through them, and carries the reader along, forgetful of all minor blemishes. His best novels are Old Mortality and Kenilworth; his greatest romance is Ivanhoe.

10. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834), a true poet, and a writer of noble prose, was born at Ottery St Mary, in Devonshire, in 1772. His father, who was vicar of the parish, and master of the grammar-school, died when the boy was only nine years of age. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, in London, where his most famous schoolfellow was Charles Lamb; and from there he went to Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1793 he had fallen into debt at College; and, in despair, left Cambridge, and enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons, under the name of Silas Tomkins Comberbatch. He was quickly discovered, and his discharge soon obtained. While on a visit to his friend Robert Southey, at Bristol, the plan of emigrating to the banks of the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania, was entered on; but, when all the friends and fellow-emigrants were ready to start, it was discovered that no one of them had any money. —Coleridge finally became a literary man and journalist. His real power, however, lay in poetry; but by poetry he could not make a living. His first volume of poems was published at Bristol, in the year 1796; but it was not till 1798 that the Rime of the Ancient Mariner appeared in the 'Lyrical Ballads.' His next greatest poem, Christabel, though written in 1797, was not published till the year 1816. His other best poems are Love; Dejection—an Ode; and some of his shorter pieces. His best poetry was written about the close of the century: "Coleridge," said Wordsworth, "was in blossom from 1796 to 1800." —As a critic and prose-writer, he is one of the greatest men of his time. His best works in prose are The Friend and the Aids to Reflection. He died at Highgate, near London, in the year 1834.

11. His style, both in prose and in verse, marks the beginning of the modern era. His prose style is noble, elaborate, eloquent, and full of subtle and involved thought; his style in verse is always musical, and abounds in rhythms of the most startling and novel— yet always genuine— kind. Christabel is the poem that is most full of these fine musical rhythms.

12. ROBERT SOUTHEY (1774-1843), poet, reviewer, historian, but, above all, man of letters,— the friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth,— was born at Bristol in 1774. He was educated at Westminster School and at Balliol College, Oxford. After his marriage with Miss Edith Fricker— a sister of Sara, the wife of Coleridge— he settled at Greta Hall, near Keswick, in 1803; and resided there until his death in 1843. In 1813 he was created Poet-Laureate by George III. —He was the most indefatigable of writers. He wrote poetry before breakfast; history between breakfast and dinner; reviews between dinner and supper; and, even when taking a constitutional, he had always a book in his hand, and walked along the road reading. He began to write and to publish at the age of nineteen; he never ceased writing till the year 1837, when his brain softened from the effects of perpetual labour.

13. Southey wrote a great deal of verse, but much more prose. His prose works amount to more than one hundred volumes; but his poetry, such as it is, will probably live longer than his prose. His best-known poems are Joan of Arc, written when he was nineteen; Thalaba the Destroyer, a poem in irregular and unrhymed verse; The Curse of Kehama, in verse rhymed, but irregular; and Roderick, the last of the Goths, written in blank verse. He will, however, always be best remembered by his shorter pieces, such as The Holly Tree, Stanzas written in My Library, and others. —His most famous prose work is the Life of Nelson. His prose style is always firm, clear, compact, and sensible.

14. THOMAS CAMPBELL (1777-1844), a noble poet and brilliant reviewer, was born in Glasgow in the year 1777. He was educated at the High School and the University of Glasgow. At the age of twenty-two, he published his Pleasures of Hope, which at once gave him a place high among the poets of the day. In 1803 he removed to London, and followed literature as his profession; and, in 1806, he received a pension of 200 a-year from the Government, which enabled him to devote the whole of his time to his favourite study of poetry. His best long poem is the Gertrude of Wyoming, a tale written in the Spenserian stanza, which he handles with great ease and power. But he is best known, and will be longest remembered, for his short lyrics— which glow with passionate and fiery eloquence— such as The Battle of the Baltic, Ye Mariners of England, Hohenlinden, and others. He was twice Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. He died at Boulogne in 1844, and was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

15. THOMAS MOORE (1779-1852), poet, biographer, and historian— but most of all poet— was born in Dublin in the year 1779. He began to print verses at the age of thirteen, and may be said, like Pope, to have "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." He came to London in 1799, and was quickly received into fashionable society. In 1803 he was made Admiralty Registrar at Bermuda; but he soon gave up the post, leaving a deputy in his place, who, some years after, embezzled the Government funds, and brought financial ruin upon Moore. The poet's friends offered to help him out of his money difficulties; but he most honourably declined all such help, and, like Sir W. Scott, resolved to clear off all claims against him by the aid of his pen alone. For the next twenty years of his life he laboured incessantly; and volumes of poetry, history, and biography came steadily from his pen. His best poems are his Irish Melodies, some fifteen or sixteen of which are perfect and imperishable; and it is as a writer of songs that Moore will live in the literature of this country. He boasted, and with truth, that it was he who awakened for this century the long-silent harp of his native land—

"Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long, When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee, And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song."

His best long poem is Lalla Rookh. —His prose works are little read nowadays. The chief among them are his Life of Sheridan, and his Life of Lord Byron. —He died at Sloperton, in Wiltshire, in 1852, two years after the death of Wordsworth.

16. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (1788-1824), a great English poet, was born in London in the year 1788. He was the only child of a reckless and unprincipled father and a passionate mother. He was educated at Harrow School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume— Hours of Idleness— was published in 1807, before he was nineteen. A critique of this juvenile work which appeared in the 'Edinburgh Review' stung him to passion; and he produced a very vigorous poetical reply in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. After the publication of this book, Byron travelled in Germany, Spain, Greece, and Turkey for two years; and the first two cantos of the poem entitled Childe Harold's Pilgrimage were the outcome of these travels. This poem at once placed him at the head of English poets; "he woke one morning," he said, "and found himself famous." He was married in the year 1815, but left his wife in the following year; left his native country also, never to return. First of all he settled at Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of the poet Shelley, and where he wrote, among other poems, the third canto of Childe Harold and the Prisoner of Chillon. In 1817 he removed to Venice, where he composed the fourth canto of Childe Harold and the Lament of Tasso; his next resting-place was Ravenna, where he wrote several plays. Pisa saw him next; and at this place he spent a great deal of his time in close intimacy with Shelley. In 1821 the Greek nation rose in revolt against the cruelties and oppression of the Turkish rule; and Byron's sympathies were strongly enlisted on the side of the Greeks. He helped the struggling little country with contributions of money; and, in 1823, sailed from Geneva to take a personal share in the war of liberation. He died, however, of fever, at Missolonghi, on the 19th of April 1824, at the age of thirty-six.

17. His best-known work is Childe Harold, which is written in the Spenserian stanza. His plays, the best of which are Manfred and Sardanapⱥlus, are written in blank verse. —His style is remarkable for its strength and elasticity, for its immensely powerful sweep, tireless energy, and brilliant illustrations.

18. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822),— who has, like Spenser, been called "the poet's poet,"— was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex, in the year 1792. He was educated at Eton, and then at University College, Oxford. A shy, diffident, retiring boy, with sweet, gentle looks and manners— like those of a girl— but with a spirit of the greatest fearlessness and the noblest independence, he took little share in the sports and pursuits of his schoolfellows. Obliged to leave Oxford, in consequence of having written a tract of which the authorities did not approve, he married at the very early age of nineteen. The young lady whom he married died in 1816; and he soon after married Mary, daughter of William Godwin, the eminent author of 'Political Justice.' In 1818 he left England for Italy,— like his friend, Lord Byron, for ever. It was at Naples, Leghorn, and Pisa that he chiefly resided. In 1822 he bought a little boat— "a perfect plaything for the summer," he calls it; and he used often to make short voyages in it, and wrote many of his poems on these occasions. When Leigh Hunt was lying ill at Leghorn, Shelley and his friend Williams resolved on a coasting trip to that city. They reached Leghorn in safety; but, on the return journey, the boat sank in a sudden squall. Captain Roberts was watching the vessel with his glass from the top of the Leghorn lighthouse, as it crossed the Bay of Spezzia: a black cloud arose; a storm came down; the vessels sailing with Shelley's boat were wrapped in darkness; the cloud passed; the sun shone out, and all was clear again; the larger vessels rode on; but Shelley's boat had disappeared. The poet's body was cast on shore, but the quarantine laws of Italy required that everything thrown up on the coast should be burned: no representations could alter the law; and Shelley's ashes were placed in a box and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome.

19. Shelley's best long poem is the Adonas, an elegy on the death of John Keats. It is written in the Spenserian stanza. But this true poet will be best remembered by his short lyrical poems, such as The Cloud, Ode to a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind, Stanzas written in Dejection, and others. —Shelley has been called "the poet's poet," because his style is so thoroughly transfused by pure imagination. He has also been called "the master-singer of our modern race and age; for his thoughts, his words, and his deeds all sang together." He is probably the greatest lyric poet of this century.

20. JOHN KEATS (1795-1821), one of our truest poets, was born in Moorfields, London, in the year 1795. He was educated at a private school at Enfield. His desire for the pleasures of the intellect and the imagination showed itself very early at school; and he spent many a half-holiday in writing translations from the Roman and the French poets. On leaving school, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton— the scene of one of John Gilpin's adventures; but, in 1817, he gave up the practice of surgery, devoted himself entirely to poetry, and brought out his first volume. In 1818 appeared his Endymion. The 'Quarterly Review' handled it without mercy. Keats's health gave way; the seeds of consumption were in his frame; and he was ordered to Italy in 1820, as the last chance of saving his life. But it was too late. The air of Italy could not restore him. He settled at Rome with his friend Severn; but, in spite of all the care, thought, devotion, and watching of his friend, he died in 1821, at the age of twenty-five. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome; and the inscription on his tomb, composed by himself, is, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

21. His greatest poem is Hyperion, written, in blank verse, on the overthrow of the "early gods" of Greece. But he will most probably be best remembered by his marvellous odes, such as the Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn, and others. His style is clear, sensuous, and beautiful; and he has added to our literature lines that will always live. Such are the following:—

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

"Silent, upon a peak in Darien."

"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken."

"Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn."

22. Prose-Writers.— We have now to consider the greatest prose-writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. First comes Walter Scott, one of the greatest novelists that ever lived, and who won the name of "The Wizard of the North" from the marvellous power he possessed of enchaining the attention and fascinating the minds of his readers. Two other great writers of prose were Charles Lamb and Walter Savage Landor, each in styles essentially different. Jane Austen, a young English lady, has become a classic in prose, because her work is true and perfect within its own sphere. De Quincey is perhaps the writer of the most ornate and elaborate English prose of this period. Thomas Carlyle, a great Scotsman, with a style of overwhelming power, but of occasional grotesqueness, like a great prophet and teacher of the nation, compelled statesmen and philanthropists to think, while he also gained for himself a high place in the rank of historians. Macaulay, also of Scottish descent, was one of the greatest essayists and ablest writers on history that Great Britain has produced. A short survey of each of these great men may be useful. Scott has been already treated of.

23. CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834), a perfect English essayist, was born in the Inner Temple, in London, in the year 1775. His father was clerk to a barrister of that Inn of Court. Charles was educated at Christ's Hospital, where his most famous schoolfellow was S. T. Coleridge. Brought up in the very heart of London, he had always a strong feeling for the greatness of the metropolis of the world. "I often shed tears," he said, "in the motley Strand, for fulness of joy at so much life." He was, indeed, a thorough Cockney and lover of London, as were also Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Lamb's friend Leigh Hunt. Entering the India House as a clerk in the year 1792, he remained there thirty-three years; and it was one of his odd sayings that, if any one wanted to see his "works," he would find them on the shelves of the India House. —He is greatest as a writer of prose; and his prose is, in its way, unequalled for sweetness, grace, humour, and quaint terms, among the writings of this century. His best prose work is the Essays of Elia, which show on every page the most whimsical and humorous subtleties, a quick play of intellect, and a deep sympathy with the sorrows and the joys of men. Very little verse came from his pen. "Charles Lamb's nosegay of verse," says Professor Dowden, "may be held by the small hand of a maiden, and there is not in it one flaunting flower." Perhaps the best of his poems are the short pieces entitled Hester and The Old Familiar Faces. —He retired from the India House, on a pension, in 1825, and died at Edmonton, near London, in 1834. His character was as sweet and refined as his style; Wordsworth spoke of him as "Lamb the frolic and the gentle;" and these and other fine qualities endeared him to a large circle of friends.

24. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775-1864), the greatest prose-writer in his own style of the nineteenth century, was born at Ipsley Court, in Warwickshire, on the 30th of January 1775— the anniversary of the execution of Charles I. He was educated at Rugby School and at Oxford; but his fierce and insubordinate temper— which remained with him, and injured him all his life— procured his expulsion from both of these places. As heir to a large estate, he resolved to give himself up entirely to literature; and he accordingly declined to adopt any profession. Living an almost purely intellectual life, he wrote a great deal of prose and some poetry; and his first volume of poems appeared before the close of the eighteenth century. His life, which began in the reign of George III., stretched through the reigns of George IV. and William IV., into the twenty-seventh year of Queen Victoria; and, in the course of this long life, he had manifold experiences, many loves and hates, friendships and acquaintanceships, with persons of every sort and rank. He joined the Spanish army to fight Napoleon, and presented the Spanish Government with large sums of money. He spent about thirty years of his life in Florence, where he wrote many of his works. He died at Florence in the year 1864. His greatest prose work is the Imaginary Conversations; his best poem is Count Julian; and the character of Count Julian has been ranked by De Quincey with the Satan of Milton. Some of his smaller poetic pieces are perfect; and there is one, Rose Aylmer, written about a dear young friend, that Lamb was never tired of repeating:—

"Ah! what avails the sceptred race! Ah! what the form divine! What every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine!

"Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes Shall weep, but never see! A night of memories and sighs I consecrate to thee."

25. JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817), the most delicate and faithful painter of English social life, was born at Steventon, in Hampshire, in 1775— in the same year as Landor and Lamb. She wrote a small number of novels, most of which are almost perfect in their minute and true painting of character. Sir Walter Scott, Macaulay, and other great writers, are among her fervent admirers. Scott says of her writing: "The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me." She works out her characters by making them reveal themselves in their talk, and by an infinite series of minute touches. Her two best novels are Emma and Pride and Prejudice. The interest of them depends on the truth of the painting; and many thoughtful persons read through the whole of her novels every year.

26. THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859), one of our most brilliant essayists, was born at Greenhays, Manchester, in the year 1785. He was educated at the Manchester grammar-school and at Worcester College, Oxford. While at Oxford he took little share in the regular studies of his college, but read enormous numbers of Greek, Latin, and English books, as his taste or whim suggested. He knew no one; he hardly knew his own tutor. "For the first two years of my residence in Oxford," he says, "I compute that I did not utter one hundred words." After leaving Oxford, he lived for about twenty years in the Lake country; and there he became acquainted with Wordsworth, Hartley Coleridge (the son of S. T. Coleridge), and John Wilson (afterwards known as Professor Wilson, and also as the "Christopher North" of 'Blackwood's Magazine'). Suffering from repeated attacks of neuralgia, he gradually formed the habit of taking laudanum; and by the time he had reached the age of thirty, he drank about 8000 drops a-day. This unfortunate habit injured his powers of work and weakened his will. In spite of it, however, he wrote many hundreds of essays and articles in reviews and magazines. In the latter part of his life, he lived either near or in Edinburgh, and was always employed in dreaming (the opium increased his power both of dreaming and of musing), or in studying or writing. He died in Edinburgh in the year 1859. —Many of his essays were written under the signature of "The English Opium-Eater." Probably his best works are The Confessions of an Opium-Eater and The Vision of Sudden Death. The chief characteristics of his style are majestic rhythm and elaborate eloquence. Some of his sentences are almost as long and as sustained as those of Jeremy Taylor; while, in many passages of reasoning that glows and brightens with strong passion and emotion, he is not inferior to Burke. He possessed an enormous vocabulary— in wealth of words and phrases he surpasses both Macaulay and Carlyle; and he makes a very large— perhaps even an excessive— use of Latin words. He is also very fond of using metaphors, personifications, and other figures of speech. It may be said without exaggeration that, next to Carlyle's, De Quincey's style is the most stimulating and inspiriting that a young reader can find among modern writers.

27. THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881), a great thinker, essayist, and historian, was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, in the year 1795. He was educated at the burgh school of Annan, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh. Classics and the higher mathematics were his favourite studies; and he was more especially fond of astronomy. He was a teacher for some years after leaving the University. For a few years after this he was engaged in minor literary work; and translating from the German occupied a good deal of his time. In 1826 he married Jane Welsh, a woman of abilities only inferior to his own. His first original work was Sartor Resartus ("The Tailor Repatched"), which appeared in 1834, and excited a great deal of attention— a book which has proved to many the electric spark which first woke into life their powers of thought and reflection. From 1837 to 1840 he gave courses of lectures in London; and these lectures were listened to by the best and most thoughtful of the London people. The most striking series afterwards appeared in the form of a book, under the title of Heroes and Hero-Worship. Perhaps his most remarkable book— a book that is unique in all English literature— is The French Revolution, which appeared in 1837. In the year 1845, his Cromwell's Letters and Speeches were published, and drew after them a large number of eager readers. In 1865 he completed the hardest piece of work he had ever undertaken, his History of Frederick II., commonly called the Great. This work is so highly regarded in Germany as a truthful and painstaking history that officers in the Prussian army are obliged to study it, as containing the best account of the great battles of the Continent, the fields on which they were fought, and the strategy that went to win them. One of the crowning external honours of Carlyle's life was his appointment as Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1866; but at the very time that he was delivering his famous and remarkable Installation Address, his wife lay dying in London. This stroke brought terrible sorrow on the old man; he never ceased to mourn for his loss, and to recall the virtues and the beauties of character in his dead wife; "the light of his life," he said, "was quite gone out;" and he wrote very little after her death. He himself died in London on the 5th of February 1881.

28. Carlyle's Style.— Carlyle was an author by profession, a teacher of and prophet to his countrymen by his mission, and a student of history by the deep interest he took in the life of man. He was always more or less severe in his judgments— he has been called "The Censor of the Age,"— because of the high ideal which he set up for his own conduct and the conduct of others. —He shows in his historic writings a splendour of imagery and a power of dramatic grouping second only to Shakespeare's. In command of words he is second to no modern English writer. His style has been highly praised and also energetically blamed. It is rugged, gnarled, disjointed, full of irregular force— shot across by sudden lurid lights of imagination— full of the most striking and indeed astonishing epithets, and inspired by a certain grim Titanic force. His sentences are often clumsily built. He himself said of them: "Perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered." There is no modern writer who possesses so large a profusion of figurative language. His works are also full of the pithiest and most memorable sayings, such as the following:—

"Genius is an immense capacity for taking pains."

"Do the duty which lies nearest thee! Thy second duty will already have become clearer."

"History is a mighty drama, enacted upon the theatre of time, with suns for lamps, and eternity for a background."

"All true work is sacred. In all true work, were it but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven."

"Remember now and always that Life is no idle dream, but a solemn reality based upon Eternity, and encompassed by Eternity. Find out your task: stand to it: the night cometh when no man can work."

29. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859), the most popular of modern historians,— an essayist, poet, statesman, and orator,— was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, in the year 1800. His father was one of the greatest advocates for the abolition of slavery; and received, after his death, the honour of a monument in Westminster Abbey. Young Macaulay was educated privately, and then at Trinity College, Cambridge. He studied classics with great diligence and success, but detested mathematics— a dislike the consequences of which he afterwards deeply regretted. In 1824 he was elected Fellow of his college. His first literary work was done for Knight's 'Quarterly Magazine'; but the earliest piece of writing that brought him into notice was his famous essay on Milton, written for the 'Edinburgh Review' in 1825. Several years of his life were spent in India, as Member of the Supreme Council; and, on his return, he entered Parliament, where he sat as M.P. for Edinburgh. Several offices were filled by him, among others that of Paymaster-General of the Forces, with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord John Russell. In 1842 appeared his Lays of Ancient Rome, poems which have found a very large number of readers. His greatest work is his History of England from the Accession of James II. To enable himself to write this history he read hundreds of books, Acts of Parliament, thousands of pamphlets, tracts, broadsheets, ballads, and other flying fragments of literature; and he never seems to have forgotten anything he ever read. In. 1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and in 1857 was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley— the first literary man who was ever called to the House of Lords. He died at Holly Lodge, Kensington, in the year 1859.

30. Macaulay's Style.— One of the most remarkable qualities in his style is the copiousness of expression, and the remarkable power of putting the same statement in a large number of different ways. This enormous command of expression corresponded with the extraordinary power of his memory. At the age of eight he could repeat the whole of Scott's poem of "Marmion." He was fond, at this early age, of big words and learned English; and once, when he was asked by a lady if his toothache was better, he replied, "Madam, the agony is abated!" He knew the whole of Homer and of Milton by heart; and it was said with perfect truth that, if Milton's poetical works could have been lost, Macaulay would have restored every line with complete exactness. Sydney Smith said of him: "There are no limits to his knowledge, on small subjects as on great; he is like a book in breeches." His style has been called "abrupt, pointed, and oratorical." He is fond of the arts of surprise— of antithesis— and of epigram. Sentences like these are of frequent occurrence:—

"Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of being a heretic only by arguments which made him out to be a murderer."

"The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."

Besides these elements of epigram and antithesis, there is a vast wealth of illustration, brought from the stores of a memory which never seemed to forget anything. He studied every sentence with the greatest care and minuteness, and would often rewrite paragraphs and even whole chapters, until he was satisfied with the variety and clearness of the expression. "He could not rest," it was said, "until the punctuation was correct to a comma; until every paragraph concluded with a telling sentence, and every sentence flowed like clear running water." But, above all things, he strove to make his style perfectly lucid and immediately intelligible. He is fond of countless details; but he so masters and marshals these details that each only serves to throw more light upon the main statement. His prose may be described as pictorial prose. The character of his mind was, like Burke's, combative and oratorical; and he writes with the greatest vigour and animation when he is attacking a policy or an opinion.



CHAPTER IX.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

1. Science.— The second half of the nineteenth century is distinguished by the enormous advance made in science, and in the application of science to the industries and occupations of the people. Chemistry and electricity have more especially made enormous strides. Within the last twenty years, chemistry has remade itself into a new science; and electricity has taken a very large part of the labour of mankind upon itself. It carries our messages round the world— under the deepest seas, over the highest mountains, to every continent, and to every great city; it lights up our streets and public halls; it drives our engines and propels our trains. But the powers of imagination, the great literary powers of poetry, and of eloquent prose,— especially in the domain of fiction,— have not decreased because science has grown. They have rather shown stronger developments. We must, at the same time, remember that a great deal of the literary work published by the writers who lived, or are still living, in the latter half of this century, was written in the former half. Thus, Longfellow was a man of forty-three, and Tennyson was forty-one, in the year 1850; and both had by that time done a great deal of their best work. The same is true of the prose-writers, Thackeray, Dickens, and Ruskin.

2. Poets and Prose-Writers.— The six greatest poets of the latter half of this century are Longfellow, a distinguished American poet, Tennyson, Mrs Browning, Robert Browning, William Morris, and Matthew Arnold. Of these, Mrs Browning and Longfellow are dead— Mrs Browning having died in 1861, and Longfellow in 1882. —The four greatest writers of prose are Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, and Ruskin. Of these, only Ruskin is alive.

3. HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1807-1882), the most popular of American poets, and as popular in Great Britain as he is in the United States, was born at Portland, Maine, in the year 1807. He was educated at Bowdoin College, and took his degree there in the year 1825. His profession was to have been the law; but, from the first, the whole bent of his talents and character was literary. At the extraordinary age of eighteen the professorship of modern languages in his own college was offered to him; it was eagerly accepted, and in order to qualify himself for his duties, he spent the next four years in Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. His first important prose work was Outre-Mer, or a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea. In 1837 he was offered the Chair of Modern Languages and Literature in Harvard University, and he again paid a visit to Europe— this time giving his thoughts and study chiefly to Germany, Denmark, and Scandinavia. In 1839 he published the prose romance called Hyperion. But it was not as a prose-writer that Longfellow gained the secure place he has in the hearts of the English-speaking peoples; it was as a poet. His first volume of poems was called Voices of the Night, and appeared in 1841; Evangeline was published in 1848; and Hiawatha, on which his poetical reputation is perhaps most firmly based, in 1855. Many other volumes of poetry— both original and translations— have also come from his pen; but these are the best. The University of Oxford created him Doctor of Civil Law in 1869. He died at Harvard in the year 1882. A man of singularly mild and gentle character, of sweet and charming manners, his own lines may be applied to him with perfect appropriateness—

"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, the supreme 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 thoughts go onward with 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 of Poems 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 simply Poems; 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. The In 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 the time 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 King appeared 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 of The Revenge is one of the noblest and most vigorous poems that England has ever seen. The dramas of Harold, Queen Mary, and Becket, 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 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 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 "Bodicea," 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, 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 noble 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 passion. 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 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 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 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 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 title 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, noble 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 noblest 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 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 neid 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 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 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 DICKENS (1812-1870), the most popular writer of this 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 the Pickwick 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. 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. 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.