Chapter X: The Return to Nature (2)

(_e_) A word is necessary regarding the fluctuations of his _reputation_. In his earlier manhood he was reckoned among the great poets; he lived to hear himself denounced, and his poetry belittled. After his death Victorian morality held up hands in horror over his iniquity, and his real merits were steadily decried. Since those days his reputation has been climbing back to take a stable position high above the second-rate poets. In some European countries he still ranks second to none among English poets. He broke down the labored insularity of the English, and he gave to non-English readers a clear and forcible example of what the English language can accomplish.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792–1822)

=1. His Life.= Shelley was born in Sussex, the heir to a baronetcy and a great fortune. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but from a very early age showed great eccentricity of character. He frequented graveyards, studied alchemy, and read books of dreadful import. While he was at the university he wrote several extraordinary pamphlets, one of which, _The Necessity of Atheism_, caused him to be expelled from Oxford. He had already developed extreme notions on religion, politics, and morality generally, a violence that was entirely theoretical, for by nature he was among the most unselfish and amiable of mankind. His opinions, as well as an early and unhappy marriage which he contracted, brought about a painful quarrel with his relatives. This was finally composed by the poet’s father, Sir Timothy Shelley, who settled an annuity upon his son. The poet immediately took to the life that suited him best, ardently devoting himself to his writing, and wandering where the spirit led him. In 1816 his first wife committed suicide; and Shelley, having married the daughter of William Godwin, settled in Italy, the land he loved the best. The intoxication of Rome’s blue sky and the delicious unrestraint of his Italian existence set his genius blossoming into the rarest beauty. In the full flower of it he was drowned, when he was only thirty years old, in a sudden squall that overtook his yacht in the Gulf of Spezzia. His body--a fit consummation--was burned on the beach where it was found, and his ashes were laid beside those of Keats in the Roman cemetery that he had nobly hymned. It is impossible to estimate the loss to literature that was caused by his early extinction. The crudeness of his earlier opinions was passing away, his vision was gaining immeasurably in clearness and intensity, and his singing-robes seemed to be developing almost into seraph’s wings. In his case the grave can indeed claim a victory.

=2. His Poetry.= His earliest effort of any note is _Queen Mab_ (1813). The poem is clearly immature; it is lengthy, and contains much of Shelley’s cruder atheism. It is written in the irregular unrhymed meter that was made popular by Southey. The beginning is worth quoting, for already it reveals a touch of the airy music that was to distinguish his later work:

How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When throned on ocean’s wave
It blushes o’er the world:
Yet both so passing wonderful!

_Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude_ (1816) followed. It is a kind of spiritual autobiography. The chief character is a wild youth who retires into the wilderness and stays there under highly romantic circumstances. The poem is too long and formless, and in places the expression becomes so wild as to be only a foamy gabble of words. It is written in blank verse that shows Shelley’s growing skill as a poet. After this came _Laon and Cynthia_ (1817), afterward called _The Revolt of Islam_. It has the fault of its immediate predecessor--lack of grip and coherence; but it is richer in descriptive passages, and has many outbursts of rapturous energy.

Then Shelley left for Italy. The first fruits of his new life were apparent in _Prometheus Unbound_ (1819). This wonderful production is a combination of the lyric and the drama. The story is that of Prometheus, who defied the gods and suffered for his presumption. There is a small proportion of narrative in blank verse, but the chief feature of the poem is the series of lyrics that both sustain and embellish the action. As a whole the poem has a sweep, a soar, and an unearthly vitality that sometimes staggers the imagination. It is peopled with spirits and demigods, and its scenes are cast in the inaccessible spaces of sky, mountain, and sea.

In _The Cenci_ (1819) Shelley started to write formal drama. In this play he seems deliberately to have set upon himself the restraints that he defied in _Prometheus Unbound_. The plot is not of the sky and the sea; it is a grim and sordid family affair; in style it is neither fervent nor ornate, but bleak and austere. Yet behind this reticence of manner there is a deep and smoldering intensity of passion and enormous adequacy of tragic purpose. Many of the poet’s admirers look upon it as his masterpiece; and there can be little doubt that, with the exception possibly of the _Venice Preserved_ of Otway, it is the most powerful tragedy since the days of Shakespeare. The last words of the play, when the heroine goes to her doom, are almost heart-breaking in their simplicity:

_Beatrice._ Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another! Now
We shall not do it any more. My lord,
We are quite ready. Well, ’tis very well.

The poems of this period are extraordinary in their number and quality. Among the longer ones are _Julian and Maddalo_ (1818) and _The Masque of Anarchy_ (1819). The latter, inspired by the news of the massacre of Peterloo, expresses Shelley’s revolutionary political views, and is very severe on Lord Castlereagh. The beginning of the poem is startling enough:

I met Murder on the way,
He had a mask like Castlereagh;
Very smooth he looked, yet grim,
Seven bloodhounds followed him.

In _The Witch of Atlas_ (1820) and _Epipsychidion_ (1821) Shelley rises further and further into the ether of poetical imagination, until he becomes almost impossible of comprehension. _Adonais_ (1821) is a lament for the death of Keats. In plan the poem is crazily constructed, but it glows with some of the most splendid of Shelley’s conceptions:

He has outsoared the shadow of our night.
Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure; and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown grey, in vain--
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.

He lives, he wakes--’tis Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou, young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone!
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains; and, thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

With the longer poems went a brilliant cascade of shorter lyrical pieces. To name them is to mention some of the sweetest English lyrics. The constantly quoted _Skylark_ and _Cloud_ are among them; so are some exquisite songs, such as _Lines to an Indian Air_, _Music, when soft voices die_, _On a Faded Violet_, _To Night_, and the longer occasional pieces--for example, _Lines written among the Euganean Hills_, and the _Letter to Maria Gisborne_. Of his many beautiful odes, the most remarkable is _To the West Wind_. The stanzas have the elemental rush of the wind itself, and the conclusion, where Shelley sees a parallel to himself, is the most remarkable of all:

Make me thy lyre, ev’n as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

=3. His Prose.= Shelley began his literary career with two boyish romances, _Zastrozzi_ and _St. Irvyne_. These books were written when he was still at school, and are almost laughably bad in style and story. The only other prose work that is worth mention is his short essay _The Defence of Poetry_. The work is soundly written, and is a strong exposition of the Romantic point of view. His published letters show him to have been a man of considerable common sense, and not merely the crazy theorist of popular imagination. His prose style is somewhat heavy, but always clear and readable.

=4. Features of his Poetry.= (_a_) His _lyrical power_ is equal to the highest to be found in any language. It is now recognized to be one of the supreme gifts in literature, like the dramatic genius of Shakespeare. This gift is shown at its best when it expresses the highest emotional ecstasy, as in the lyrics of _Prometheus Unbound_. It is a sign of his great genius that, in spite of the passion that pervades his lyrics, he is seldom shrill and tuneless. He can also express a mood of blessed cheerfulness, a sane and delectable joy. To the Spirit of Delight he says:

I love Love, though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But above all other things,
Spirit, I love thee.
Thou art love and life! O come,
Make once more my heart thy home.

He can also express the keenest note of depression and despair, as in the lyric _O World! O Life! O Time!_

(_b_) In his _choice of subject_ he differs from such a poet as Burns, who is almost the only other poet who challenges him as master of the lyric. Shelley lacks the homely appeal of Burns; he loves to roam through space and infinity. In his own words he

Feeds upon the aerial kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.

He rejoices in nature, but nature of a spiritual kind, which he peoples with phantoms and airy beings:

I love all that thou lovest,
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.

I love snow, and all the forms
Of the radiant frost:
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is nature’s, and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.

(_c_) His _descriptive power_ at once strikes the imagination. The effect is instantaneous. His fancy played among wild and elemental things, but it gave them form and substance, as well as a radiant loveliness. His favorite device for this purpose is personification, of which the following is an excellent example:

For Winter came; the wind was his whip;
One choppy finger was on his lip;
He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles.
_The Sensitive Plant_

We add another extract to show his almost unearthly skill in visualizing the wilder aspects of nature. Note the extreme simplicity and ease of the style:

We paused among the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced.
_The Pine Forest_

(_d_) His _style_ is perfectly attuned to his purpose. Like all the finest lyrical styles, it is simple, flexible, and passionate. Sometimes, as in _The Cenci_, it rises to a commanding simplicity. The extracts already given sufficiently show this.

(_e_) Shelley’s _limitations_ are almost as plain as his great abilities. His continual rhapsodizings tend to become tedious and baffling; in his narrative he is diffuse and argumentative; he lacks humor; and his political poetry is often violent and unreasonable.

(_f_) _His Reputation._ During his lifetime Shelley’s opinions obscured his powers as a poet. Even to Scott, who with all his Tory prejudices was liberal enough in his views on literature, he was simply “that atheist Shelley.” After his death his reputation rose rapidly, and by the middle of the nineteenth century his position was assured. By the curious alternation that seems to affect popular taste, his fame since that time has paled a little; but no fluctuations in taste can ever remove him from his place among the great.

JOHN KEATS (1795–1821)

=1. His Life.= Keats was born in London, the son of the well-to-do keeper of a livery stable. He was educated at a private school at Enfield, and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to a surgeon. In 1814 he transferred his residence to London, and followed part of the regular course of instruction prescribed for medical students. Already, however, his poetical bent was becoming apparent. Surgery lost its slight attraction, and the career of a poet became a bright possibility when he made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt (1815), the famous Radical journalist and poet, whose collisions with the Government had caused much commotion and his own imprisonment. Keats was soon intimate with the Radical brotherhood that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and thus he became known to Shelley and others. In 1817 he published his first volume of verse, but it attracted little notice, in spite of the championship of Hunt. By this time the family tendency to consumption became painfully manifest in him, and he spent his time in searching for places, including the Isle of Wight and the suburbs of London, where his affliction might be remedied. While he was staying in London he became acquainted with Fanny Brawne, and afterward was engaged to her for a time. His malady, however, became worse, and the mental and physical distress caused by his complaint, added to despair regarding the success of his love-affair, produced a frantic state of mind painfully reflected in his letters to the young lady. These letters were foolishly printed (1879), long after the poet’s death.

His second volume of verse, published in 1818, was brutally assailed by _The Quarterly Review_ and (to a lesser degree) by _Blackwood’s Magazine_. These Tory journals probably struck at him because of his friendship with the radical Leigh Hunt. Keats bore the attack with apparent serenity, and always protested that he minded it little; but there can be little doubt that it affected his health to some degree. In 1820 he was compelled to seek warmer skies, and died in Rome early in the next year, at the age of twenty-five.

=2. His Poetry.= When he was about seventeen years old Keats became acquainted with the works of Spenser, and this proved to be the turning-point in his life. The mannerisms of the Elizabethan immediately captivated him, and he resolved to imitate him. His earliest attempt at verse is his _Imitation of Spenser_ (1813), written when he was eighteen. This and some other short pieces were published together in his _Poems_ (1817), his first volume of verse. This book contains little of any outstanding merit. The different poems, which include the pieces _On Death_, _To Hope_, and _Sleep and Poetry_, follow the methods of Shenstone, Gray, and Byron. Of a different quality was his next volume, which bore the title of _Endymion_ (1818). Probably based partly on Drayton’s _Man in the Moon_ and Fletcher’s _Faithful Shepherdess_, this remarkable poem of _Endymion_ professes to tell the story of the lovely youth who was kissed by the moon-goddess on the summit of Mount Latmos. Keats develops this simple myth into an intricate and flowery tale of over four thousand lines. The work is clearly immature, and flawed with many weaknesses both of taste and of construction, but many of the passages are most beautiful, and the poem shows the tender budding of the Keatsian style--a rich and suggestive beauty obtained by a richly ornamented diction. The first line is often quoted, and it contains the theory that Keats followed in a subconscious fashion during most of his poetical career:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

The crudeness of the work laid it temptingly open to attack, and, as we have noticed, the hostile reviews found it an easy prey.

Keats’s health was already failing, but the amount of poetry he wrote is marvelous both in magnitude and in quality. His third and last volume, published just before he left England, contains a collection of poems of the first rank, which were written approximately in the order that follows.

_Isabella, or The Pot of Basil_ (1818), is a version of a tale from Boccaccio, and deals with the murder of a lady’s lover by her two wicked brothers. The poem, which is written in _ottava rima_, marks a decided advance in Keats’s work. The slips of taste are fewer; the style is richer and deeper in tone; and the conclusion, though it is sentimentally treated, is not wanting in pathos.

_The Eve of St. Agnes_ (1818) has for a plot the merest incident dealing with the elopement of two lovers. The tale is so sumptuously adorned with the silks and jewels of poetical imagination that it is almost lost in the decoration. This is sometimes considered his masterpiece; it is certainly the most typical of his poems. The richness of fancy and pictorial effect mark the summit of the poet’s art. It is somewhat hectic and overloaded, but its faults are quite venial. We add one of its exquisite Spenserian stanzas:

Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeleine’s fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven:--Porphyro grew faint:
She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.

_Hyperion_ (1818) is of a different type. For this poem Keats adopts blank verse, and for theme he goes to the primeval warfare between early deities, such as Saturn and Thea, and younger divinities, such as Apollo and Minerva. The poem remains unfinished, owing, it is stated, to the poet’s discouragement over the reception of _Endymion_. It is doubtful if Keats could ever have finished it. The scale of the story is so gigantic, and the style is pitched at such an altitude of sublimity that Keats appears to have been lacking in mere physical fitness to carry it to a conclusion. In the fragment that we have an observant reader can see that the poet’s grip is loosening, and his breath failing, before the effort ceases entirely. Keats, with his usual insight, appropriately writes the poem in a style of bleak and almost terrible simplicity. The opening lines are among the best:

Deep in the shady sadness of a vale,
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer’s day
Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad ’mid her reeds
Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips.

Next was written _The Eve of St. Mark_ (1819), which also remains unfinished. The tale shows how far even Keats can improve upon himself. It is adorned with brilliant descriptive passages, and the strokes are more dashing than usual. The earlier languor and sentimentality are almost eliminated:

The bells had ceased, the prayers begun,
And Bertha had not yet half done
A curious volume, patched and torn,
That all day long, from earliest morn,
Had taken captive her two eyes,
Among its golden broideries;
Perplexed her with a thousand things,
The stars of heaven, and angels’ wings,
Martyrs in a fiery blaze,
Azure saints and silver rays,
Moses’ breastplate, and the seven
Candlesticks John saw in heaven,
The winged Lion of St Mark,
And the Covenantal Ark,
With its many mysteries,
Cherubim and golden mice.

The story of _Lamia_ (1819) is taken from Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, and tells of a beautiful enchantress. It is the weakest of all the longer poems, and the lapses are more numerous. The language becomes mannered and overdone:

He answered, bending to her open eyes,
Where he was mirrored small in paradise,--
“My silver planet, both of eve and morn!
Why will you plead yourself so sad forlorn,
While I am striving how to fill my heart
With deeper crimson, and a double smart?
How to entangle, trammel up and snare
Your soul in mine, and labyrinth you there,
Like the hid scent in an unbudded rose?”

In this passage we observe the strength of Keats running to seed. Phrases like “plead yourself” and “labyrinth you” go beyond the limits of poetical license; and the whole passage in conception resembles the conceits of the Caroline poets rather than the finer and stronger flights of imagination of which Keats was so thoroughly capable.

Together with the longer poems are many shorter pieces of supreme beauty. The great odes--_To a Nightingale_, _On a Grecian Urn_, _To Autumn_--were nearly all written in 1819. Among the other shorter poems _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, a kind of lyrical ballad, is considered to be one of the choicest in the language.

In 1819 Keats collaborated in a drama, _Otho the Great_, and began another, _King Stephen_, which he did not complete. Neither effort is of much consequence. _The Cap and Bells_, a longish fairy-tale which also is unfinished, is much below the level of his usual work.

=3. Features of his Poetry.= (_a_) His _style_ should be considered first, for Keats is above all a stylist. The typical Keatsian poetry is, one imagines, the ideal of what is popularly considered to be “poetry”: it is gorgeously attractive, with its melodic beauty and sensuous passion; soft and caressing, like velvet; and richly colored and odorous. At its very best the spell of it works like a divine enchantment; but at even a little less than the best it becomes unctuous, sickly, and stuffily uncomfortable. There can be little doubt that Keats’s physical malady shows itself in his writings. With all their genius, they are the work of an unhealthy brain. His heroes are languid and neurotic creatures, and his style is attuned to their swoons and faintings. A stanza from _Isabella_ will illustrate what has already been exemplified in the verse we have quoted from _The Eve of St. Agnes_:

So once more had he waked and anguished
A dreary night of love and misery,
If Isabel’s quick eye had not been wed
To every symbol on his forehead high;
She saw it waxing very pale and dead,
And straight all flushed; so, lisped tenderly,
“Lorenzo!”--here she ceased her timid quest,
But in her tone and look he read the rest.

(_b_) His _descriptive and romantic quality_ is of the highest. He modeled his work upon that of Spenser, but before he had finished he almost bettered his model. In beauty and splendor he is nearly unrivaled. He ranges among classical and medieval subjects, and distills from them the essence of their beauty. For example, he knew no Greek, but he could reproduce the full charm of the Greek seaboard:

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
_Ode on a Grecian Urn_

(_c_) Keats’s _lyrical faculty_ is limited. When brooding over his woes he can utter a complaint on the true lyrical note. Hence we obtain such results as his wonderful last sonnet and _La Belle Dame sans Merci_, which is a lyric thinly disguised as a ballad. He was perhaps physically unable to experience the healthier joys of Burns, and so was incapable of expressing them.

(_d_) _His Influence._ A single glance at the table at the head of this chapter will show how piteously short was his poetical career; but, short as it was, his labor created a larger school than that of any of his contemporaries. His tradition was carried on by Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites, and to this day his influence is strong in English poetry.

OTHER POETS

=1. Robert Southey (1774–1843).= Southey was born at Bristol, educated at Westminster School and at Oxford, and settled down to lead the laborious life of a man of letters. He produced a great mass of work, much of which is of considerable merit, and he ranked as one of the leading writers of his age. Most of his work was written at Greta Hall, near Keswick, where he lived most of his life. He was made Poet Laureate in 1813. His reputation, especially as a poet, has not been maintained.

His poems, which are of great bulk, include _Joan of Arc_ (1798), _Thalaba the Destroyer_ (1801), _The Curse of Kehama_ (1810), and _Roderick the Goth_ (1814); they are pretentious in style and subject, but are now almost forgotten. Some shorter pieces, such as _The Holly-tree_, _The Battle of Blenheim_, and _The Inchcape Rock_, are still in favor, and deservedly so.

His numerous prose works include _The History of Brazil_ (1810–19) and _The Peninsular War_ (1822–33). The slightest of them all, _The Life of Nelson_ (1813), is the only one now freely read. It shows Southey’s easy yet scholarly style at its best.

=2. Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864).= Landor had a long life, for he was born five years after Wordsworth, and lived to see the full yield of the Victorian era. Of an ancient family, he was born in Warwickshire, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. Later he was fired with republican ideas, abandoned his projected career in the British Army, and supported the revolutionaries in Spain. In temper he was impulsive to the point of mania; and his life is marked by a succession of violent quarrels with his friends and enemies. The middle years of his life were passed in Italy. He returned to England in 1838, and lived in Bath until 1858. In this year his pugnacity involved him in an action for damages, in which as defendant he cut a lamentable figure. Poor and dishonored, he forsook England, and settled again in Florence, where he died.

His _Gebir_ (1798) is a kind of epic poem written in blank verse. It is “classical” in its stiff and formal style; but it has a stately beauty and much powerful natural description. _Count Julian_ (1812), a tragedy, has much the same qualities, good and bad, as _Gebir_. His shorter pieces, especially the eight-line lyric _Rose Aylmer_, have more ease and passion, and are gracefully expressed.

His bulkiest prose work is his _Imaginary Conversations_, which was published at intervals from 1824 to 1846. The volumes record imaginary dialogues between all kinds of people on a great variety of subjects. They have Landor’s chief defect, a stony lifelessness; but in style they are stately, strong, and scholarly, with frequent passages of noble description. All his life he continued to issue essays and pamphlets. A collection of them, called _Dry Sticks_ (1858), as has been noticed, brought upon his head the weight of the law. Landor professed to despise popularity; he was moody, crotchety, and often deliberately perverse. Posterity has repaid him by consigning him to an oblivion that only the devotion of a small but eminent band of admirers keeps from being absolute.

=3. Thomas Moore (1779–1852).= Moore was born in Dublin, took his degree at Trinity College, and studied law in the same city. He too was imbued with revolutionary notions, and attempted to apply them to Ireland, but with no success. He obtained a valuable appointment in the Bermudas, the duties of which were discharged by a deputy, who in this case proved faithless and caused Moore financial loss. Moore was a friend of Byron and a prominent literary figure of the time. Most of his life was passed as a successful man of letters.

His poems were highly successful during his lifetime, but after his death there was a reaction against them. His _Irish Melodies_ are set to the traditional musical airs of Ireland. They are graceful, and adapt themselves admirably to the tunes. Moore, however, lacked the depth and far-ranging strength of Burns, and so he failed to do for Ireland what the Ayrshire poet did for Scotland: he did not raise the national sentiment of Ireland into one of the precious things of literature. His _Lalla Rookh_ (1817) is an Oriental romance, written in the Scott-Byron manner then so popular. The poem had an immense success, which has now almost totally faded. It contains an abundance of florid description, but as poetry it is hardly second-rate. Moore’s political satires, such as _The Twopenny Postbag_ (1813), _The Fudge Family in Paris_ (1818), and _Fables for the Holy Alliance_ (1823), are keen and lively, and show his Irish wit at its very best.

His prose works include his _Life of Byron_ (1830), which has taken its place as the standard biography of that poet. It is an able and scholarly piece of work, and is written with much knowledge and sympathy.

=4. Thomas Campbell (1777–1844).= Campbell was born in Glasgow, of a poor but ancient family. After studying at Glasgow University he became tutor to a private family; but his _Pleasures of Hope_ (1799) brought him fame, and he adopted the career of a poet. He visited the Continent, and saw much of the turmoil that there reigned. Returning, he settled in London, where he was editor of _The New Monthly Magazine_ from 1820 to 1830.

His longer poems are quite numerous, and begin with the _Pleasures of Hope_, which consists of a series of descriptions of nature in heroic couplets, written in a style that suggests Goldsmith. Other longer poems include _Gertrude of Wyoming_ (1809), a longish tale of Pennsylvania, written in Spenserian stanzas, and _The Pilgrim of Glencoe_ (1842). Campbell, however, is chiefly remembered for his stirring songs, some of which were written during his early Continental tour and were published in newspapers. His most successful are _Ye Mariners of England_ and _The Battle of the Baltic_, which are spirited without containing the bluster and boasting that so often disfigure the patriotic song.

=5. Samuel Rogers (1763–1855).= Rogers was born in London, the son of a rich banker. He soon became a partner in his father’s firm, and for the rest of his life his financial success was assured. His chief interest lay in art and poetry, which he cultivated in an earnest fashion. He was a generous patron of the man of letters, and was acquainted with most of the literary people of the time. His breakfasts were famous.

His _Pleasures of Memory_ (1792) is a reversion to the typical eighteenth-century manner, and as such is interesting. He could compose polished verses, but he was little of the poet. Other works are _Columbus_ (1812), _Jacqueline_ (1814), a tale in the Byronic manner, and _Italy_ (1822).

Rogers was a careful and fastidious writer, but his excellence does not go much further. His name is a prominent one in the literary annals of the time, but his wealth rather than his merit accounts for this.

=6. Leigh Hunt (1784–1859)=, unlike Rogers, was not a wealthy amateur who could trifle for years with mediocre production; he was of the arena, taking and giving hard knocks in both political and literary scuffles. He was born in Middlesex, educated at Christ’s Hospital, and while still in his teens became a journalist, and remained a journalist all his life. His Radical journal _The Examiner_ (1808) was strongly critical of the Government, and Hunt’s aptitude for abuse landed him in prison for two years. His captivity, as he gleefully records, made a hero of him; and most of the literary men who prided themselves upon their Liberalism--among them being Wordsworth, Byron, Moore, Keats, and Shelley--sought his friendship. Hunt had a powerful influence on Keats, and published some of the latter’s shorter poems in _The Examiner_. He tried various other journalistic ventures, but none of them had the success of _The Examiner_; his attempted collaboration in journalism with Byron was a lamentable failure. He died, like Wordsworth and others, a respectable pensioner of the Government he had once so strongly condemned.

He much fancied himself as a poet, and popular taste confirmed him in his delusion. The best of his longer poems is _Rimini_ (1811), an Italian tale in verse. The poem is of interest because its flowing couplets were the model for Keats’s _Endymion_. Hunt’s shorter pieces--for example, _Abou Ben Adhem_--are often graceful, but their poetical value is not very high.

His prose includes an enormous amount of journalistic matter, which was occasionally collected and issued in book form. Such was his _Men, Women, and Books_ (1847). His _Autobiography_ (1850) contains much interesting biographical and literary gossip. He is an agreeable essayist, fluent and easygoing; his critical opinions are solid and sensible, though often half-informed. He wrote a novel, _Sir Ralph Esher_ (1832), and a very readable book on London called _The Town_ (1848). Hunt is not a genius, but he is a useful and amiable second-rate writer.

=7. James Hogg (1770–1835).= Hogg became known to the world as “the Ettrick Shepherd,” for he was born of a shepherd’s family in the valley of the Ettrick, in Selkirkshire. He was a man of much natural ability, and from his infancy was an eager listener to the songs and ballads of his district. He was introduced to Walter Scott (1802) while the latter was collecting the Border minstrelsy, and by Scott he was supported both as a literary man and as a farmer. Many of his admirers assisted him in the acquisition of a sheep-farm, but Hogg proved to be a poor farmer. He was known to most of the members of the Scottish literary circle, but his shiftless and unmanageable disposition alienated most of his friends. He died in his native district.

Hogg had little education and very little sense of discrimination, so that much of his poetry is very poor indeed. Sometimes, however, his native talent prevails, and he writes such poems as _Kilmeny_ and _When the Kye comes Hame_. The latter is a lyric resembling those of Burns in its humor and simple appeal. In _Kilmeny_ (in _The Queen’s Wake_) he achieves what is commonly held to be the true Celtic note: the eerie description of elves and the gloaming, and murmuring and musical echoes of things half seen and half understood. Some of his books are _The Forest Minstrel_ (1801), _The Queen’s Wake_ (1813), and _The Brownie of Bodsbeck_ (1818), the last being a prose tale.

=8. Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849).= Elliott was born at Masborough, in Yorkshire, and worked as an iron-founder. The struggles of the poor, oppressed by the Corn Laws, were early borne in upon him, and his poetical gift was used in a fierce challenge to the existing system. Like Crabbe, he devoted himself to the cause of the poor; and it is a tribute to his merit as a poet that, in spite of his bristling assertiveness, he produced some work of real value. He became known as the “Corn Law Rhymer,” and he lived to see the abolition of the laws that he had always attacked.

His best book is _Corn Law Rhymes_ (1830), which includes the powerful and somber _Battle-song_. This poem is a kind of anthem for the poor, and breathes a spirit of fierce unrest.

=9. Felicia Hemans (1793–1835).= Mrs. Hemans’s maiden name was Browne, and she was born at Liverpool. Later she removed to Wales, where a large part of her life was spent. At the age of fifteen she began to write poetry, and persisted in the habit all her life. She married somewhat unhappily, but she lived to be a highly popular poetess, and produced a large amount of work. She died in Dublin.

Nobody can call Mrs. Hemans a great poetess, but her verses are facile and fairly melodious, and she can give simple themes a simple setting. One can respect the genuine quality of her emotions, and the zeal with which she expressed them. Some of her better lyrics--for example, _The Stately Homes of England_, _The Graves of a Household_, and _The Pilgrim Fathers_--are in their limited fashion well done.

=10. Thomas Hood (1799–1845).= Hood was a native of London, and became a partner in a book-selling firm. He took to a literary career, and contributed to many periodicals, including _The London Magazine_. For a time he edited _The New Monthly Magazine_, but he was much troubled by illness, and died prematurely.

Hood first gained notoriety with some humorous poems, published under the title of _Whims and Oddities_ (1826). To modern taste the humor is rather cheap, for it consists largely of verbal quibblings, such as the free use of the pun. It seemed to be acceptable to the public of the time, for the book had much success. Other volumes in the same vein were _The Comic Annual_, _Up the Rhine_ (1839), and _Whimsicalities_ (1843). Hood, in spite of his smartness, could not keep free of vulgarity, and his wit often jars. As a kind of tragic relief Hood sometimes produced poems of a tearful intensity, such as _The Death-bed_ and _The Bridge of Sighs_. One could believe that his grief was genuine if he did not dwell so much upon it. His _Song of the Shirt_, first published in _Punch_ in 1845, is rather a versified political pamphlet than a real poem, but it is powerful verse, and one can forgive much on account of the motive, which was to help the sweated sempstress. His _Dream of Eugene Aram_ (1829) was an attempt at the horrible, and was long a _bravura_ piece for aspiring elocutionists. It is a middling specimen of poetical rhetoric.

=11. John Clare (1793–1864)= was a true peasant poet, and in his day he had a great popularity. After his death his works fell into neglect, but recently (1920) a reissue of his poems, some of them new to the public, has recalled attention to the considerable value of much that he wrote. He was born near Peterborough, his father being a cripple and a pauper. At the age of thirteen he saved sufficient money to buy a copy of _The Seasons_, which fired his poetic ability. His _Collection of Original Trifles_ (1817) attracted notice, and his _Poems_ (1820) was much praised. The patronage of rich admirers put him above poverty, but a tendency to insanity developed, and, like Christopher Smart, he died in a madhouse.

Clare’s poems are seen at their best when they deal with simple rustic themes, and then they are quite charming. He rejoices in the ways of animals and insects. He is not a great poet, but there are many poets with flaunting credentials who have less claims to consideration than he.

=12. James Smith (1775–1837)= and =Horace Smith (1779–1849)=, two brothers, collaborated in the production of a work that was one of the “hits” of the period. This book was _Rejected Addresses_ (1812). When the Drury Lane Theatre was burned down and rebuilt the management offered a prize for the best poem to be recited on the opening night. The Smiths hit on the idea of making parodies of the notable poets of the time and pretending that they were the rejected poems of the writers mentioned. The result is the classical collection of parodies in English. Scott, Wordsworth, and other well-known authors are imitated, usually with much cleverness. The Wordsworth poem is recited by Nancy Lake, a girl of eight, who is drawn upon the stage in a perambulator:

My brother Jack was nine in May,
And I was eight on New Year’s Day;
So in Kate Williams’ shop
Papa (he’s my papa and Jack’s)
Bought me, last week, a doll of wax,
And brother Jack a top.

WALTER SCOTT (1771–1832)

=1. His Life.= Scott was born in Edinburgh, of an ancient stock of Border freebooters. At the age of eighteen months he was crippled for life by a childish ailment; and though he grew up to be a man of great physical robustness he never lost his lameness. He was educated at the High School of Edinburgh and at the university; and there he developed that powerful memory which, though it rejected things of no interest to it, held in tenacious grasp a great store of miscellaneous knowledge. His father was a lawyer, and Scott himself was called to the Scottish Bar (1792). As a pleader he had little success, for he was much more interested in the lore and antiquities of the country. He was glad, therefore, to accept a small legal appointment as Sheriff of Selkirkshire (1799). Just before this, after an unsuccessful love-affair with a Perthshire lady, he had married the daughter of a French exile. In 1806 he obtained the valuable post of Clerk of Session, but for six years he received no salary, as the post was still held by an invalid nominally in charge.

In 1812, on receipt of his first salary as Clerk of Session, he removed from his pleasant home of Ashiestiel to Abbotsford, a small estate near Melrose. For the place he paid £4000, which he characteristically obtained half by borrowing and half on security of the poem _Rokeby_, still unwritten. During the next dozen years he played the laird at Abbotsford, keeping open house, sinking vast sums of money in enlarging his territory, and adorning the house in a manner that was frequently in the reverse of good taste. In 1826 came the crash. In 1801 he had assisted a Border printer, James Ballantyne, to establish a business at Edinburgh. In 1805 Scott became secretly a partner. As a printing firm the concern was a fair success; but in an evil moment, in 1809, Scott, with another brother, John Ballantyne, started a publishing business. The new firm was poorly managed from the beginning; in 1814 it was only the publication of _Waverley_ that kept it on its legs, but the enormous success of the later Waverley Novels gave it abounding prosperity--for the time. Then John Ballantyne, a reckless fellow, plunged heavily into further commitments, which entailed great loss; Scott in his easy fashion also drew heavily upon the firm’s funds; and in 1826 the whole erection tumbled into ruin. With great courage and sterling honesty Scott refused to take the course that the other principals accepted naturally, and compound with his creditors. Instead he attempted what turned out to be the impossible task of paying the debt and surviving it. His liabilities amounted to £117,000, and before he died he had cleared off £70,000. After his death the remainder was made good, chiefly from the proceeds of Lockhart’s _Life_, and his creditors were paid in full.

The gigantic efforts he made brought about his death. He had a slight paralytic seizure in 1830. It passed, but it left him with a clouded brain. He refused to desist from novel-writing, or even to slacken the pace. Other illness followed, his early lameness becoming more marked. After an ineffectual journey to Italy, he returned to Abbotsford, and died within sound of the river he loved so well.

=2. His Poetry.= Scott’s earliest poetical efforts were translations from the German. _Lenore_ (1799), the most considerable of them, is crude enough, but it has much of his later vigor and clatter. In 1802 appeared the first two volumes of _The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. In some respects the work is a compilation of old material; but Scott patched up the ancient pieces when it was necessary, and added some original poems of his own, which were done in the ancient manner. The best of his own contributions, such as _The Eve of St. John_, have a strong infusion of the ancient force and fire, as well as a grimly supernatural element.

In _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805) there is much more originality. The work is a poem of considerable length, professing to be the lay of an aged bard who seeks shelter in the castle of Newark. As a tale the poem is confused and difficult; as poetry it is mediocre; but the abounding vitality of the style, the fresh and intimate local knowledge, and the healthy love of nature made it a revelation to a public anxious to welcome the new Romantic methods. The poem was a great and instant success, and was quickly followed up with _Marmion_ (1808).

In popular estimation _Marmion_ is held to be Scott’s masterpiece. The story deals with Flodden Field, and is intricate in detail, as Scott labors to obtain a _dénouement_. For several cantos the tale is cumbered with the masses of antiquarian and topical matter with which Scott’s mind was fully charged. Once the narrative is within touch of Flodden it quickens considerably. The conclusion, dealing with the death of Marmion and the close of the battle, is one of the triumphs of martial verse:

But as they left the dark’ning heath,
More desperate grew the strife of death.
The English shafts in volleys hail’d,
In headlong charge their horse assail’d;
Front, flank, and rear, the squadrons sweep
To break the Scottish circle deep,
That fought around their King.
But yet, though thick the shafts as snow,
Though charging knights like whirlwinds go
Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow,
Unbroken was the ring;
The stubborn spear-men still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.
No thought was there of dastard flight;
Link’d in the serried phalanx tight,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well;
Till utter darkness closed her wing
O’er their thin host and wounded King....

Next came _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810), a still greater success, but clumsy in plot and heavy with unpoetical matter. The poem made the fortune of the Trossachs. In _Rokeby_ (1813) the scene shifts to the North of England. As a whole this poem is inferior to its predecessors, but some of the lyrics have a seriousness and depth of tone that are quite uncommon in the spur-and-feather pageantry of Scott’s verse. _The Bridal of Triermain_ (1813) and _The Lord of the Isles_ (1814) mark a decline in quality.

In addition to the longer poems Scott composed many lyrics, and continued to write such till late in his career. Most of them are passable in a tuneful and picturesque fashion; and in a few, such as _Proud Maisie_ and _A Weary Lot is Thine_, he attains to something finer and deeper. A ballad from _Rokeby_ has an intensity that gives it a strongly lyrical cast. The conclusion is as follows:

“With burnish’d brand and musketoon
So gallantly you come,
I read you for a bold Dragoon,
That lists the tuck of drum.”
“I list no more the tuck of drum,
No more the trumpet hear;
But when the beetle sounds his hum,
My comrades take the spear.

“And O! though Brignall banks be fair,
And Greta woods be gay,
Yet mickle must the maiden dare,
Would reign my Queen of May!

“Maiden! a nameless life I lead,
A nameless death I’ll die;
The fiend whose lantern lights the mead
Were better mate than I!
And when I’m with my comrades met
Beneath the green-wood bough,
What once we were we all forget,
Nor think what we are now.

“Yet Brignall banks are fresh and fair,
And Greta woods are green,
And you may gather garlands there,
Would grace a summer queen.”

As a poet Scott’s reputation has depreciated and continues to depreciate. His faults, like his merits, are all on the surface: he lacks the finer poetical virtues, such as reflection, melody, and delicate sympathy; he (in poetry) is deficient in humor; he records crude physical action simply portrayed. Even the vigor that is often ascribed to him exists fitfully, for he loads his narrative with overabundant detail, often of a technical kind. When he does move freely he has the stamp, the rattle, and the swing of martial music. One must nevertheless do credit to the service he did to poetry by giving new zest to the Romantic methods that had already been adopted in poetry.

=3. His Prose.= About 1814 Scott largely gave up writing poetry, and save for a few short pieces wrote no more in verse. There are two chief reasons for his desertion of the poetical form. With his native shrewdness he saw that he had marketed as much verse as the public could absorb; and, secondly, as he confessed in the last year of his life, Byron had “bet” him by producing verse tales that were fast swallowing up the popularity of his own. In 1814 Scott returned to a fragment of a Jacobite prose romance that he had started and left unfinished in 1805. He left the opening chapters as they stood, and on to them tacked a rapid and brilliant narrative dealing with the Forty-five. This made the novel _Waverley_, which was issued anonymously in 1814. Owing chiefly to its ponderous and lifeless beginning, the book hung fire for a space; but the remarkable remainder was almost bound to make it a success. After _Waverley_ Scott went on from strength to strength: _Guy Mannering_ (1815), _The Antiquary_ (1816), _The Black Dwarf_ (1816), _Old Mortality_ (1816), _Rob Roy_ (1818), _The Heart of Midlothian_ (1818), _The Bride of Lammermoor_ (1819), and _The Legend of Montrose_ (1819). All these novels deal with scenes in Scotland, but not all with historical Scotland. They are not of equal merit, but even the weakest, _The Black Dwarf_, is astonishingly good. Scott now turned his gaze abroad, producing _Ivanhoe_ (1820), the scene of which is pitched in early England; then turned again to Scotland and suffered failure with _The Monastery_ (1820), though he triumphantly rehabilitated himself with _The Abbot_ (1820), a sequel to the last. Henceforth he ranged abroad or stayed at home as he fancied in _Kenilworth_ (1821), _The Pirate_ (1822), _The Fortunes of Nigel_ (1822), _Peveril of the Peak_ (1823), _Quentin Durward_ (1823), _St. Ronan’s Well_ (1824), _Redgauntlet_ (1824), _The Betrothed_ (1825), and _The Talisman_ (1825). By this time such enormous productivity was telling even on his gigantic powers. In the later books the narrative is often heavier, the humor more cumbrous, and the descriptions more labored.

Then came the financial deluge, and Scott began a losing battle against misfortune and disease. But even yet the odds were not too great for him; for in succession appeared _Woodstock_ (1826), _The Fair Maid of Perth_ (1828), _Count Robert of Paris_ (1831), and _Castle Dangerous_ (1831). The last works were dictated from the depths of mental and bodily anguish, and the furrows of mind and brow are all over them. Yet frequently the old spirit revives and the ancient glory is renewed.

It should never be forgotten that along with these literary] labors Scott was filling the office of Clerk of Session, was laboriously performing the duties of a Border laird, and was compiling a mass of miscellaneous prose. Among this last are his editions of Dryden (1808) and Swift (1814), heavy tasks in themselves; the _Lives of the Novelists_ (1820); the _Life of Napoleon_ (1827), a gigantic work that cost him more labor than ten novels; and the admirable _Tales of a Grandfather_ (1827–29). His miscellaneous articles, pamphlets, journals, and letters are a legion in themselves.

=4. Features of his Novels.= (_a_) _Rapidity of Production._ Scott’s great success as a novelist led to some positive evils, the greatest of which was a too great haste in the composition of his stories. His haphazard financial methods, which often led to his drawing upon future profits, also tended to overproduction. Haste is visible in the construction of his plots, which are frequently hurriedly improvised, developed carelessly, and finished anyhow. As for his style, it is spacious and ornate, but he has little ear for rhythm and melody, and his sentences are apt to be shapeless. The same haste is seen in the handling of his characters, which sometimes finish weakly after they have begun strongly. An outstanding case of this is Mike Lambourne in _Kenilworth_.

It is doubtful if Scott would have done any better if he had taken greater pains. He himself admitted, and to a certain extent gloried in, his slapdash methods. So he must stand the inevitable criticisms that arise when his methods are examined.