Chapter VIII: The Age of Romanticism, 1780-1837 (1)

History of the Period.--Much of the English history of this period was affected directly or indirectly by the French Revolution (1789). The object of this movement was to free men from oppression by the aristocracy and to restore to them their natural rights. The new watchwords were "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality." The professed principles of the French revolutionists were in many respects similar to those embodied in the American _Declaration of Independence_.

At first the movement was applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen; but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister home, and war immediately resulted. With only a short intermission, this lasted from 1793 until 1815, the contest caused by the French Revolution having become merged in the Napoleonic war. The battle of Waterloo (1815) ended the struggle with the defeat of Napoleon by the English general, Wellington.

The War of 1812 with the United States was for England only an incident of the war with France. England had become so powerful on the sea, as a result of the victories of Nelson, that she not only forbade vessels of a neutral power to trade with France, but she actually searched American vessels and sometimes removed their seamen, claiming that they were British deserters. The Americans won astonishing naval victories; but the war was concluded without any very definite decision on the points involved.

The last part of the eighteenth century saw the invention of spinning and weaving machines, the introduction of steam engines to furnish power, the wider use of coal, the substitution of the factory system for the home production of cloth, and the impairment of the home by the employment of women and children for unrestricted hours in the factories.

The long reign of George III., interrupted by periods of insanity, ended in 1820. The next two kings were his sons, George IV. (1820-1830) and William IV. (1830-1837). During these two reigns the spirit of reform was in the air. The most important reforms were (1) the revision of the criminal laws, which had prescribed death for some two hundred offenses, including stealing as much as five shillings; (2) the removal of political disabilities from Catholics, so that for the first time since 1673 they could hold municipal office and sit in Parliament; (3) the Reform Bill of 1832, which (_a_) extended the franchise to the well-to-do middle classes but not to those dependent on day labor, (_b_) gave a fairer apportionment of representatives in Parliament and abolished the so-called "rotten boroughs," _i.e._ those districts which with few or no inhabitants had been sending members to Parliament, while the large manufacturing cities in the north were without representatives; (4) the final bill in 1833 for the abolition of slavery; (5) child labor laws, which ordered the textile factories to cease employing children under nine years of age, prescribed a legal working day of eight hours for children between nine and thirteen, and of twelve hours for those between thirteen and eighteen; (6) the improvement of the poor laws.

The increased interest in human rights and welfare is the most important characteristic of this entire period, but most especially of the reigns of George IV. and William IV. Sir Robert Peel, the elder, although an employer of nearly a thousand children, felt the spirit of the time enough to call the attention of Parliament to the abuses of child labor. As we shall see, this new spirit exerted a strong influence on literature.

Influence of the New Spirit on Poetry.--The French Revolution stirred the young English poets profoundly. They proclaimed the birth of a new humanity of boundless promise. The possibilities of life again seemed almost as great as in Elizabethan days. The usually sober-minded Wordsworth exclaimed:--

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!"[1]

In the age of Pope, the only type of man considered worthy a place in the best literature was the aristocrat. The ordinary laborer was an object too contemptible even for satire. Burns placed a halo around the head of the honest toiler. In 1786 he could find readers for his _The Cotter's Saturday Night_; and ten years later he proclaimed thoughts which would have been laughed to scorn early in the century:--

"Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
* * * * *
The rank is but the guinea stamp;
The man's the gowd[2] for a' that."[3]

Wordsworth strikes almost the same chord:--

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie."[4]

The tenderness and sympathy induced by this new interest in human beings resulted in the annexation to English literature of an almost unexplored continent,--the continent of childhood. William Blake and William Wordsworth set the child in the midst of the poetry of this romantic age.

More sympathy for animals naturally followed the increased interest in humanity. The poems of Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge show this quickened feeling for a starved bird, a wounded hare, a hart cruelly slain, or an albatross wantonly shot. The social disorder of the Revolution might make Wordsworth pause, but he continued with unabated vigor to teach us--

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."[5]

New humanitarian interests affected all the great poets of this age. Although Keats was cut off while he was making an Aeolian response to the beauty of the world, yet even he, in his brief life, heard something of the new message.

Growth of Appreciation of Nature.--More appreciation of nature followed the development of broader sympathy, Burns wrote a lyric full of feeling for a mountain daisy which his plow had turned beneath the furrow. Wordsworth exclaimed:--

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."[6]

For more than a century after Milton, the majority of references to nature were made in general terms and were borrowed from the stock illustrations of older poets, like Vergil. We find the conventional lark, nightingale, and turtledove. Nothing new or definite is said of them.

Increasing comforts and safety in travel now took more people where they could see for themselves the beauty of nature. In the new poetry we consequently find more definiteness. We can hear the whir of the partridge, the chatter of magpies, the whistle of the quail. Poets speak of a tree not only in general terms, but they note also the differences in the shade of the green of the leaves and the peculiarities of the bark. Previous to this time, poets borrowed from Theocritus and Vergil piping shepherds reclining in the shade, whom no Englishman had ever seen. In _Michael_ Wordsworth pictures a genuine English shepherd.

The love for mountains and wild nature is of recent growth. One writer in the seventeenth century considered the Alps as so much rubbish swept together by the broom of nature to clear the plains of Italy. A seventeenth century traveler thought the Welsh mountains better than the Alps because the former would pasture goats. Dr. Johnson asked, "Who can like the Highlands?" The influence of the romantic movement developed the love for wild scenery, which is so conspicuous in Wordsworth and Byron.

This age surpasses even the Elizabethan in endowing Nature with a conscious soul, capable of bringing a message of solace and companionship. The greatest romantic poet of nature thus expresses his creed:--

"...Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy."[7]

The Victory of Romanticism.--We have traced in the preceding age the beginnings of the romantic movement. Its ascendancy over classical rules was complete in the period between 1780 and the Victorian age. The romantic victory brought to literature more imagination, greater individuality, deeper feeling, a less artificial form of expression, and an added sense for the appreciation of the beauties of nature and their spiritual significance.

Swinburne says that the new poetic school, "usually registered as Wordsworthian," was "actually founded at midnight by William Blake (1757-1827) and fortified at sunrise by William Wordsworth." These lines from Blake's _To the Evening Star_ (1783) may be given to support this statement:--

"Thou fair-haired Angel of the Evening,
* * * * *
Smile on our loves; and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy West Wind sleep on
The lake."

We may note in these lines the absence of the classical couplet, the fact that the end of the lines necessitates no halt in thought, and a unique sympathetic touch in the lines referring to the flower and the wind.

Blake's _Songs of Innocence_ (1789) and _Songs of Experience_ (1793) show not only the new feeling toward nature, but also a broader sympathy with children and with all suffering creatures. The chimney sweeper, the lost child, and even the sick rose are remembered in his verse. In his poem, _The Schoolboy_, he enters as sympathetically as Shakespeare into the heart of the boy on his way to school, when he hears the call of the uncaged birds and the fields.

These two lines express an oft-recurring idea in Blake's mystical romantic verse:--

"The land of dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star."

The volume of _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798), the joint work of Wordsworth and Coleridge, marks the complete victory of the romantic movement.

The Position of Prose.--The eighteenth century, until near its end, was, broadly speaking, an age of prose. In excellence and variety the prose surpassed the poetry; but in this age (1780-1837) their position was reversed and poetry regained almost an Elizabethan ascendancy. Much good prose was written, but it ranks decidedly below the enchanting romantic poetry.

Prose writers were laying the foundations for the new science of political economy and endeavoring to ascertain how the condition of the masses could be improved. While investigating this subject, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), an Episcopal clergyman, announced his famous proposition, since known as the Malthusian theorem, that population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence. Political economists and philosophers like Adam Smith (1723-1790), professor in the University of Glasgow, agreed on the "let-alone" doctrine of government. They held that individuals could succeed best when least interfered with by government, that a government could not set aside natural law, but could only impede it and cause harm, as for instance, in framing laws to tempt capital into forms of industry less productive than others and away from the employment that it would naturally seek. Many did not even believe in legislation affecting the hours of labor or the work of children. This "let-alone" theory was widely held until the close of the nineteenth century.

In moral philosophy, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), lawyer and philosopher, laid down the principle that happiness is the prime object of existence, and that the basis of legislation should be the greatest happiness to the greatest number, instead of to the privileged few. He measured the morality of actions by their efficiency in producing this happiness, and he said that pushpin is as good as poetry, if it gives as much pleasure. He was followed by James Mill (1773-1836), who maintained that the morality of actions is measured by their utility. The fault with many of the prevalent theories of government and morals lay in their narrow standards of immediate utility, their failure to measure remote spiritual effects.

The taste of the age encouraged poetry. Scott, although a natural born writer of prose romance, made his early reputation by such poems as _Marmion_ and _The Lady of the Lake_. Robert Southey (1774-1843) usually classed with Wordsworth and Coleridge as one of the three so-called Lake Poets, wrote much better prose than poetry. His prose _Life of Nelson_ outranks the poetry in his _Curse of Kehama_. It is probable that, had he lived in an age of prose ascendancy, he would have written little poetry, for he distinctly says that the desire of making money "has already led me to write sometimes in poetry what would perhaps otherwise have been better written in prose." This statement shows in a striking way the spirit of those times. If Coleridge had not written such good poetry, his excellent critical prose would probably be more read to-day; but he doubtless continues to have a thousand readers for _The Ancient Mariner_ to one for his prose.

Among the prose writers of this age, the fiction of Scott and Jane Austen seems destined to the longest lease of life and the widest circle of readers. De Quincey's work, especially his artistic presentation of his thrilling dreams, has many admirers.

The _Essays of Elia_ of Charles Lamb (1775-1834) still charms many readers. For over thirty years he was by day a clerk in the India House and by night a student of the Elizabethan drama and a writer of periodical essays, suggestive of the work of Addison and Steele. Lamb's pervasive humor in discussing trivial subjects makes him very delightful reading. His well-known _Essays of Elia_ first appeared in the _London Magazine_ between 1820 and 1833. The peculiar flavor of his style and humor is shown in his _A Dissertation upon Roast-Pig_, as one of the most popular of these _Essays_ is called. Lamb relates how a Chinese boy, Bo-bo, having accidentally set his house an fire and roasted a litter of pigs, happened to acquire a liking for roast pig when he sucked his fingers to cool them after touching a crackling pig. It was considered a crime to eat meat that was not raw; but the jury fortunately had their fingers burned in the same way and tried Bo-bo's method of cooling them. The boy was promptly acquitted. Lamb gravely proceeds:--

"The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity
of the decision, and when the court was dismissed, went privily
and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a
few days his lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The
thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in
every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the
district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People
built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the
very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the
world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process
of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made
a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal,
might be cooked (_burnt_ as they called it) without the necessity of
consuming a whole house to dress it. Then began the rude form of a
gridiron."

Other enjoyable essays are _Old China_, a lovable picture of his home life with his sister, _Dream Children_, _New Year's Eve_, and _Poor Relations_.

The results of Lamb's Elizabethan studies appeared in the excellent _Tales from Shakespeare_, which he wrote with his sister, and in his _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who wrote about the Time of Shakespeare_.

This age produced much prose criticism. Coleridge remains one of England's greatest critics, and Lamb and De Quincey are yet two of her most enjoyable ones. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) and William Hazlitt (1778-1830) also deserve mention in the history of English prose criticism. Both men were unusually combative. Landor was sent away from Oxford "for criticizing a noisy party with a shot gun," which he discharged against the closed shutters of the room where the roisterers were holding their festivities. He went to Italy, where most of his literary work was done. He avoided people, and even boasted that he took more pleasure with his own thoughts than with those of others. For companionship, he imagined himself conversing with other people. The titles of his best two works are _Imaginary Conversations_ (1824-1848) and _Pericles and Aspasia_ (1836), the latter a series of imaginary letters. His writings are notable for their style, for an unusual combination of dignity with simplicity and directness. A statement like the following shows how vigorous and sweeping his criticisms sometimes are: "A rib of Shakespeare would have made a Milton; the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever since." In spite of many splendid passages and of a style that suggests sculpture in marble, twentieth-century readers often feel that he is under full sail, either bound for nowhere, or voyaging to some port where they do not care to land.

Hazlitt is less polished, but more suggestive, and in closer touch with life than Landor. In seizing the important qualities of an author's works and summarizing them in brief space, Hazlitt shows the skill of a trained journalist. His three volumes, _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ (1817), _Lectures on the English Poets_ (1818), and _Lectures on the English Comic Writers_ (1819) contain criticism that remains stimulating and suggestive. He loves to arrive somewhere, to settle his points definitely. His discussion of the frequently debated question,--whether Pope is a poet, shows this characteristic:--

"The question,--whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been
settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great
poet, he must have been a great prose writer, that is, he was a
great writer of some sort."

His two volumes of essays, _The Round Table_ (1817) and _Table Talk_ (1821-1822), caused him to be called a "lesser Dr. Samuel Johnson."

While the combative dispositions of Landor and Hazlitt did not make them ideal critics of their contemporaries, the taste of the age liked criticism of the slashing type. The newly established periodicals and reviews, such as _The Edinburgh Review_ (started in 1802), furnished a new market for critical essays. Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), editor of _The Edinburgh Review_, accused Wordsworth of "silliness" in his _Lyrical Ballads_; and said vehemently of a later volume of the same poet's verse: "This will never do." _The Quarterly Review_ in 1818 spoke of the "insanity" of the poetry of Keats. In 1819 _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_ gave a fatherly warning to Shelley that Keats as a poet was "worthy of sheer and instant contempt," advised him to select better companions than "Johnny Keats," and promised that compliance with this advice would secure him "abundance of better praise."

Even the more genial Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), the friend of Shelley and Keats, and the writer of many pleasant essays, called Carlyle's style "a jargon got up to confound pretension with performance." We like Hunt best when he is writing in the vein of the _Spectator_ or as a "miniature Lamb." In such papers as _An Earth upon Heaven_, Hunt tells us that in heaven "there can be no clergymen if there are no official duties for them"; that we shall there enjoy the choicest books, for "Shakespeare and Spenser should write us _new ones_." He closes this entertaining paper with the novel assurance: "If we choose, now and then we shall even have inconveniences."

WILLIAM COWPER, 1731-1800

Life.--Cowper's life is a tale of almost continual sadness, caused by his morbid timidity. He was born at Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, in 1731. At the age of six, he lost his mother and was placed in a boarding school. Here his sufferings began. The child was so especially terrified by one rough boy that he could never raise his eyes to the bully's face, but knew him unmistakably by his shoe buckles.

There was some happiness for Cowper at his next school, the Westminster School, and also during the twelve succeeding years, when he studied law; but the short respite was followed by the gloom of madness. Owing to his ungovernable fear of a public examination, which was necessary to secure the position offered by an uncle, Cowper underwent days and nights of agony, during which he tried in many ways to end his miserable life. The frightful ordeal unsettled his reason, and he spent eighteen months in an insane asylum.

Upon his recovery, he was taken into the house of a Rev. Mr. Unwin, whose wife tended Cowper as a son during the rest of her life. He was never supremely happy, and he was sometimes again thrown into madness by the terrible thought of God's wrath; but his life was passed in a quiet manner in the villages of Weston and Olney, where he was loved by every one. The simple pursuits of gardening, carpentering, visiting the sick, caring for his numerous pets, rambling through the lanes, studying nature, and writing verse, occupied his sane moments when he was not at prayer.

Works.--Cowper's first works were the _Olney Hymns_. His religious nature is manifest again in the volume which consists of didactic poems upon such subjects as _The Progress of Error, Truth, Charity, Table Talk_, and _Conversation_. These are in the spirit of the formal classical poets, and contain sententious couplets such as

"An idler is a watch that wants both hands,
As useless if it goes as when it stands."[8]

"Vociferated logic kills me quite;
A noisy man is always in the right."[9]

The bare didacticism of these poems is softened and sweetened by the gentle, devout nature of the poet, and is enlivened by a vein of pure humor.

He is one of England's most delightful letter writers because of his humor, which ripples occasionally over the stream of his constitutional melancholy. _The Diverting History of John Gilpin_ is extremely humorous. The poet seems to have forgotten himself in this ballad and to have given full expression to his sense of the ludicrous.

The work that has made his name famous is _The Task_. He gave it this title half humorously because his friend, Lady Austen, had bidden him write a poem in blank verse upon some subject or other, the sofa, for instance; and he called the first book of the poem _The Sofa_. _The Task_ is chiefly remarkable because it turns from the artificial and conventional subjects which had been popular, and describes simple beauties of nature and the joys of country life. Cowper says:--

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

To a public acquainted with the nature poetry of Burns, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, Cowper's poem does not seem a wonderful production. Appearing as it did, however, during the ascendancy of Pope's influence, when aristocratic city life was the only theme for verse, _The Task_ is a strikingly original work. It marks a change from the artificial style of eighteenth century poetry and proclaims the dawn of the natural style of the new school. He who could write of--

"...rills that slip
Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
In matted grass, that with a livelier green
Betrays the secret of their silent course,"

was a worthy forerunner of Shelley and Keats.

General Characteristics.--Cowper's religious fervor was the strongest element in both his life and his writings. Perhaps that which next appealed to his nature was the pathetic. He had considerable mastery of pathos, as may be seen in the drawing of "crazed Kate" in _The Task_, in the lines _To Mary_, and in the touchingly beautiful poem _On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture out of Norfolk_, beginning with that well-known line:--

"Oh that those lips had language!"

The two most attractive characteristics of his works are refined, gentle humor and a simple and true manner of picturing rural scenes and incidents. He says that he described no spot which he had not seen, and expressed no emotion which he had not felt. In this way, he restricted the range of his subjects and displayed a somewhat literal mind; but what he had seen and felt he touched with a light fancy and with considerable imaginative power.

ROBERT BURNS, 1759-1796

Life.--The greatest of Scottish poets was born in a peasant's clay-built cottage, a mile and a half south of Ayr. His father was a man whose morality, industry, and zeal for education made him an admirable parent. For a picture of his father and the home influences under which the boy was reared, _The Cotter's Saturday Night_ should be read. The poet had little formal schooling, but under paternal influence he learned how to teach himself.

Until his twenty-eighth year, Robert Burns was an ordinary laborer on one or another of the Ayrshire tenant farms which his father or brothers leased. At the age of fifteen, he was worked beyond his strength in doing a man's full labor. He called his life on the Ayrshire farms "the unceasing toil of a galley slave." All his life he fought a hand-to-hand fight with poverty.

In 1786, when he was twenty-seven years old, he resolved to abandon the struggle and seek a position in the far-off island of Jamaica. In order to secure money for his passage, he published some poems which he had thought out while following the plow or resting after the day's toil. Six hundred copies were printed at three shillings each. All were sold in a little over a month. A copy of this Kilmarnock edition has since sold in Edinburgh for £572. His fame from that little volume has grown as much as its monetary value.

Some Edinburgh critics praised the poems very highly and suggested a second edition. Burns therefore abandoned the idea of going to Jamaica and went to Edinburgh to arrange for a new edition. Here he was entertained by the foremost men, some of whom wished to see how a plowman would behave in polite society, while others desired to gaze on what they regarded as a freak of nature.

The new volume appeared in 1787, and contained but few poems which had not been published the previous year. The following winter he again went to Edinburgh; but having shocked society by his intemperate habits, he was almost totally neglected by the leaders of literature and fashion.

In 1788 Burns married Jean Armour and took her to a farm which he leased in Dumfriesshire. The first part of this new period was the happiest in his life. She has been immortalized in his songs:--

"I see her in the dewy flowers,
I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green
There's not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean."[10]

As this farm proved unprofitable, Burns appealed to influential persons for some position that would enable him to support his family and write poetry. This was an age of pensions, but not a farthing of pension did he ever get. He was made an exciseman or gauger, at a salary of £50 a year, and he followed that occupation for the few remaining years of his life.

Robert Burns wrote and did some things unworthy of a great poet; but when Scotland thinks of him, she quotes the lines which he wrote for _Tam Samson's Elegy_:--

"Heav'n rest his saul, whare'er he be!
Is th' wish o' mony mae than me:
He had twa faults, or maybe three,
Yet what remead?[11]
Ae social, honest man want we."

Burns's Poetic Creed.--We can understand and enjoy Burns much better if we know his object in writing poetry and the point of view from which he regarded life. It would be hard to fancy the intensity of the shock which the school of Pope would have felt on reading this statement of the poor plowman's poetic creed:--

"Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire,
That's a' the learning I desire;
Then tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire
At pleugh or cart,
My Muse, though hamely in attire,
May touch the heart."[12]

Burns's heart had been touched with the loves and sorrows of life, and it was his ambition to sing so naturally of these as to touch the hearts of others.

With such an object in view, he did not disdain to use in his best productions much of the Scottish dialect, the vernacular of the plowman and the shepherd. The literary men of Edinburgh, who would rather have been convicted of a breach of etiquette than of a Scotticism, tried to induce him to write pure English; but the Scotch words which he first heard from his mother's lips seemed to possess more "o' Nature's fire." He ended by touching the heart of Scotland and making her feel more proud of this dialect, of him, and of herself.

Union of the Elizabethan with the Revolutionary Spirit.--In no respect does the poetry of Burns more completely part company with the productions of the classical school than in the expression of feeling. The emotional fire of Elizabethan times was restored to literature. No poet except Shakespeare has ever written more nobly impassioned love songs. Burns's song beginning:--

"Ae fond kiss and then
we sever"

seemed to both Byron and Scott to contain the essence of a thousand love tales. This unaffected, passionate treatment of love had long been absent from our literature; but intensity of genuine feeling reappeared in Burns's _Highland Mary, I Love My Jean, Farewell to Nancy, To Mary in Heaven, O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast_, which last Mendelssohn thought exquisite enough to set to music. The poetry of Burns throbs with varying emotions. It has been well said that the essence of the lyric is to describe the passion of the moment. Burns is a master in this field.

The spirit of revolution against the bondage and cold formalism of the past made the poor man feel that his place in the world was as dignified, his happiness as important, as that of the rich. A feeling of sympathy for the oppressed and the helpless also reached beyond man to animals. Burns wrote touching lines about a mouse whose nest was, one cold November day, destroyed by his plow. When the wild eddying swirl of the snow beat around his cot, his heart went out to the poor sheep, cattle, and birds.

Burns can, therefore, claim kinship with the Elizabethans because of his love songs, which in depth of feeling and beauty of natural utterance show something of Shakespeare's magic. In addition to this, the poetry of Burns voices the democratic spirit of the Revolution.

Treatment of Nature.--In his verses, the autumn winds blow over yellow corn; the fogs melt in limpid air; the birches extend their fragrant arms dressed in woodbine; the lovers are coming through the rye; the daisy spreads her snowy bosom to the sun; the "westlin" winds blow fragrant with dewy flowers and musical with the melody of birds; the brook flows past the lover's Eden, where summer first unfolds her robes and tarries longest, because of the rarest bewitching enchantment of the poet's tale told there.

In his poetry those conventional birds,--the lark and the nightingale,--do not hold the chief place. His verses show that the source of his knowledge of birds is not to be sought in books. We catch glimpses of grouse cropping heather buds, of whirring flocks of partridges, of the sooty coot and the speckled teal, of the fisher herons, of the green-crested lapwing, of clamoring craiks among fields of flowering clover, of robins cheering the pensive autumn, of lintwhites chanting among the buds, of the mavis singing drowsy day to rest.

It is true that on the poetic stage of Burns, man always stands in the foreground. Nature is employed in order to give human emotion a proper background. Burns chose those aspects of nature which harmonized with his present mood, but the natural objects in his pages are none the less enjoyable for that reason. Sometimes his songs complain if nature seems gay when he is sad, but this contrast is employed to throw a stronger light on his woes.

General Characteristics.--More people often visit the birthplace of Burns near Ayr than of Shakespeare at Stratford-on-Avon. What qualities in Burns account for such popularity? The fact that the Scotch are an unusually patriotic people and make many pilgrimages to the land of Burns is only a partial answer to this question. The complete answer is to be found in a study of Burns's characteristics. In the first place, with his "spark o' Nature's fire," he has touched the hearts of more of the rank and file of humanity than even Shakespeare himself. The songs of Burns minister in the simplest and most direct way to every one of the common feelings of the human heart. Shakespeare surpasses all others in painting universal human nature, but he is not always simple. Sometimes his audience consists of only the cultured few.

Especially enjoyable is the humor of Burns, which usually displays a kindly and intuitive sympathy with human weakness. _Tam o' Shanter_, his greatest poem, keeps the reader smiling or laughing from beginning to end. When the Scottish Muse proudly placed on his brow the holly wreath, she happily emphasized two of his conspicuous qualities,--his love and mirth, when she said:--

"I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth
With boundless love."[13]

Burns is one of the great masters of lyrical verse. He preferred that form. He wrote neither epic nor dramatic poetry. He excels in "short swallow flights of song."

There are not many ways in which a poet can keep larger audiences or come nearer to them than by writing verses that naturally lend themselves to daily song. There are few persons, from the peasant to the lord, who have not sung some of Burns's songs such as _Auld Lang Syne, Coming through the Rye, John Anderson my Jo_, or _Scots Wha hae wi' Wallace Bled_. Since the day of his death, the audiences of Robert Burns have for these reasons continually grown larger.

WALTER SCOTT, 1771-1832

Life.--Walter Scott, the son of a solicitor, was born in Edinburgh in 1771. In childhood he was such an invalid that he was allowed to follow his own bent without much attempt at formal education. He was taken to the country, where he acquired a lasting fondness for animals and wild scenery. With his first few shillings he bought the collection of early ballads and songs known as Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_. Of this he says, "I do not believe I ever read a book half so frequently, or with half the enthusiasm." His grandmother used to delight him with the tales of adventure on the Scottish border.

Later, Scott went to the Edinburgh High School and to the University. At the High School he showed wonderful genius for telling stories to the boys. "I made a brighter figure in the _yards_ than in the _class_," he says of himself at this time. This early practice of relating tales and noting what held the attention of his classmates was excellent training for the future Wizard of the North.

After the apprenticeship to his father, the son was called to the bar and began the practice of law. He often left his office to travel over the Scottish counties in search of legendary ballads, songs, and traditions, a collection of which he published under the title of _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. In 1797 he married Miss Charlotte Carpenter, who had an income of £500 a year. In 1799, having obtained the office of sheriff of Selkirkshire at an annual salary of £300, with very light duties, he found himself able to neglect law for literature. His early freedom from poverty is in striking contrast to the condition of his fellow Scotsman, Robert Burns.

During the period between thirty and forty years of age, he wrote his best poems. Not until he was nearly forty-three did he discover where his greatest powers lay. He then published _Waverley_, the first of a series of novels known by that general name. During the remaining eighteen years of his life he wrote twenty-nine novels, besides many other works, such as the _Life of Napoleon_ in nine volumes, and an entertaining work on Scottish history under the title of _Tales of a Grandfather_.

The crisis that showed Scott's sterling character came in the winter of 1825-1826, when an Edinburgh publishing firm in which he was interested failed and left an his shoulders a debt of £117,000. Had he been a man of less honor, he might have taken advantage of the bankrupt law, which would have left his future earnings free from past claims; but he refused to take any step that would remove his obligation to pay the debt. At the age of fifty four, he abandoned his happy dream of founding the house of Scott of Abbotsford and sat down to pay off the debt with his pen. The example of such a life is better than the finest sermon on honor. He wrote with almost inconceivable rapidity. His novel _Woodstock_, the product of three months' work, brought him £8228. In four years he paid £70,000 to his creditors. One day the tears rolled down his cheeks because he could no longer force his fingers to grasp the pen. The king offered him a man-of-war in which to make a voyage to the Mediterranean. Hoping to regain his health, Scott made the trip, but the rest came too late. He returned to Abbotsford in a sinking condition, and died in 1832, at the age of sixty-one.

Poetry.--Scott's three greatest poems are _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805), _Marmion_ (1808), and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810). They belong to the distinct class of story-telling poetry. Like many of the ballads in Percy's collection, these poems are stories of old feuds between the Highlander and the Lowlander, and between the border lords of England and Scotland. These romantic tales of heroic battles, thrilling incidents, and love adventures, are told in fresh, vigorous verse, which breathes the free air of wild nature and moves with the prance of a war horse. Outside of Homer, we can nowhere find a better description of a battle than in the sixth canto of _Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field_:--

"They close, in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword sway and with lance's thrust;
And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if men fought upon the earth,
And fiends in upper air;
* * * * *
And in the smoke the pennons flew,
As in the storm the white sea mew."

_The Lady of the Lake_, an extremely interesting story of romantic love and adventure, has been the most popular of Scott's poems. Loch Katrine and the Trossachs, where the scene of the opening cantos is laid, have since Scott's day been thronged with tourists.

The most prominent characteristic of Scott's poetry is its energetic movement. Many schoolboys know by heart those dramatic lines which express Marmion's defiance of Douglas, and the ballad of _Lochinvar_, which is alive with the movements of tireless youth. These poems have an interesting story to tell, not of the thoughts, but of the deeds, of the characters. Scott is strangely free from nineteenth century introspection.

Historical Fiction.--Seeing that Byron could surpass him as a poet, and finding that his own genius was best adapted to writing prose tales, Scott turned to the composition of his great romances. In 1814 he published _Waverly_, a story of the attempt of the Jacobite Pretender to recover the English throne in 1745. Seventeen of Scott's works of fiction are historical.

When we wish a vivid picture of the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, of the knight and the castle, of the Saxon swineherd Gurth and of the Norman master who ate the pork, we may read _Ivanhoe_. If we desire some reading that will make the Crusaders live again, we find it in the pages of _The Talisman_. When we wish an entertaining story of the brilliant days of Elizabeth, we turn to _Kenilworth_. If we are moved by admiration for the Scotch Covenanters to seek a story of their times, we have Scott's truest historical tale, _Old Mortality_. Shortly after this story appeared, Lord Holland was asked his opinion of it. "Opinion!" he exclaimed; "we did not one of us go to bed last night--nothing slept but my gout." The man who could thus charm his readers was called "the Wizard of the North."

Scott is the creator of the historical novel, which has advanced on the general lines marked out by him. Carlyle tersely says: "These historical novels have taught all men this truth, which looks like a truism, and yet was as good as unknown to writers of history and others till so taught: that the by-gone ages of the world were actually filled by living men, not by protocols, state papers, controversies, and abstractions of men."

The history in Scott's novels is not always absolutely accurate. To meet the exigencies of his plot, he sometimes takes liberties with the events of history, and there are occasional anachronisms in his work. Readers may rest assured, however, that the most prominent strokes of his brush will convey a sufficiently accurate idea of certain phases of history. Although the hair lines in his pictures may be neglected, most persons can learn more truth from studying his gallery of historic scenes than from poring over volumes of documents and state papers. Scott does not look at life from every point of view. The reader of _Ivanhoe_, for instance, should be cautioned against thinking that it presents a complete picture of the Middle Ages. It shows the bright, the noble side of chivalry, but not all the brutality, ignorance, and misery of the times.

Novels that are not Historical.--Twelve of Scott's novels contain but few attempts to represent historic events. The greatest of these novels are _Guy Mannering, The Heart of Midlothian, The Antiquary, and The Bride of Lammermoor_.

Scott said that his most rapid work was his best. _Guy Mannering_, an admirable picture of Scottish life and manners, was written in six weeks. Some of its characters, like Dominie Sampson, the pedagogue, Meg Merrilies, the gypsy, and Dick Hatteraick, the smuggler, have more life than many of the people we meet.

A century before, Pope said that most women had no characters at all. His writings tend to show that this was his real conviction, as it was that of many others during the time when Shakespeare was little read. _The Heart of Midlothian_ presents in Jeanie Deans a woman whose character and feminine qualities have won the admiration of the world. Scott could not paint women in the higher walks of life. He was so chivalrous that he was prone to make such women too perfect, but his humble Scotch lass Jeanie Deans is one of his greatest creations.

When we note the vast number of characters drawn by his pen, we are astonished to find that he repeats so little. Many novelists write only one original novel. Their succeeding works are merely repetitions of the first. The hero may have put on a new suit of clothes and the heroine may have different colored hair, or each may be given a new mannerism, but there is nothing really new in character, and very little in incident. Year after year, however, Scott wrote with wonderful rapidity, without repeating his characters or his plots.

General Characteristics.--All critics are impressed with the healthiness of Scott's work, with its freedom from what is morbid or debasing. His stories display marked energy and movement, and but little subtle analysis of feelings and motives. He aimed at broad and striking effects. We do not find much development of character in his pages. "His characters have the brilliance and the fixity of portraits."

Scott does not particularly care to delineate the intense passion of love. Only one of his novels, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, is aflame with this overmastering emotion. He delights in adventure. He places his characters in unusual and dangerous situations, and he has succeeded in making us feel his own interest in the outcome. He has on a larger scale many of the qualities that we may note in the American novelist Cooper, whose best stories are tales of adventure in the forest or on the sea. Like him, Scott shows lack of care in the construction of sentences. Few of the most cultured people of to-day could, however, write at Scott's breakneck speed and make as few slips. Scott has far more humor and variety than Cooper.

Scott's romanticism is seen in his love for supernatural agencies, which figure in many of his stories. His fondness for adventure, for mystery, for the rush of battle, for color and sharp contrast, and his love for the past are also romantic traits. Sometimes, however, he falls into the classical fault of overdescription and of leaving too little to the imagination.

In the variety of his creations, he is equaled by no one. He did more than any other pioneer to aid fiction in dethroning the drama. His influence can be seen in the historical novels of almost every nation.

JANE AUSTEN, 1775-1817

Life and Works.--While Sir Walter Scott was laying the foundations of his large family estates and recounting the story of battles, chivalry, and brigandage, a quiet little woman, almost unmindful of the great world, was enlivening her father's parsonage and writing about the clergy, the old maids, the short-sighted mothers, the marriageable daughters, and other people that figure in village life.

This cheery, sprightly young woman was Jane Austen, who was born in Steventon, Hampshire, in 1775.

She spent nearly all her life in Hampshire, which furnished her with the chief material for her novels. She loved the quiet life of small country villages and interpreted it with rare sympathy and a keen sense of humor, as is shown in the following lines from _Pride and Prejudice_:--

"'Oh, Mr. Bennet, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an
uproar! You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she
vows she will not have him; and if you do not make haste he will
change his mind and not have her!'

"'Come here, child,' cried her father ... 'I understand that Mr.
Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?' Elizabeth
replied that it was. 'Very well--and this offer of marriage you have
refused?'

"'I have, sir.'

"'Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists
upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?'

"'Yes, or I will never see her again.'

"'An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day
you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will
never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will
never see you again if you do!'"

She began her literary work early, and at the age of sixteen she had accumulated quite a pile of manuscripts. She wrote as some artists paint, for the pure joy of the work, and she never allowed her name to appear on a title page. The majority of her acquaintances did not even suspect her of the "guilt of authorship."

She disliked "Gothic" romances, such as _The Mysteries of Udolpho_, and she wrote _Northanger Abbey_ as a burlesque of that type. In this story the heroine, Catherine Moreland, who has been fed on such literature, is invited to visit Northanger Abbey in Gloucestershire, where with an imagination "resolved on alarm," she is prepared to be agitated by experiences of trapdoors and subterranean passages. On the first night of her visit, a violent storm, with its mysterious noises, serves to arouse the most characteristic "Gothic" feelings; but when the complete awakening comes and the "visions of romance are over," Catherine realizes that real life is not fruitful of such horrors as are depicted in her favorite novels.

_Pride and Prejudice_ is usually considered Jane Austen's best work, although _Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park_, and _Persuasion_ have their ardent admirers. In fact, there is an increasing number of discriminating readers who enjoy almost everything that she wrote. During the last five years of the eighteenth century, she produced some of her best novels, although they were not published until the period between 1811 and 1818.

The scenes of her stories are laid for the most part in small Hampshire villages, with which she was thoroughly familiar, the characters being taken from the middle class and the gentry with whom she was thrown. Simple domestic episodes and ordinary people, living somewhat monotonous and narrow lives, satisfy her. She exhibits wonderful skill in fashioning these into slight but entertaining narratives. In _Pride and Prejudice_, for example, she creates some refreshing situations by opposing Philip Darcy's pride to Elizabeth Bennet's prejudice. She manages the long-delayed reconciliation between these two lovers with a tact that shows true genius and a knowledge of the human heart.

A strong feature of Jane Austen's novels is her subtle, careful manner of drawing character. She perceives with an intuitive refinement the delicate shadings of emotion, and describes them with the utmost care and detail. Her heroines are especially fine, each one having an interesting individuality, thoroughly natural and womanly. The minor characters in Miss Austen's works are usually quaint and original. She sees the oddities and foibles of people with the insight of the true humorist, and paints them with most dexterous cunning.

William D. Howells, the chief American realist of the nineteenth century, wrote in 1891 of her and her novels:--

"She was great and they were beautiful because she and they were
honest and dealt with nature nearly a hundred years ago as realism
deals with it to-day. Realism is nothing more and nothing less than
the truthful treatment of material."

She was, indeed, a great realist, and it seems strange that she and Scott, the great romanticist, should have been contemporaries. Scott was both broad and big-hearted enough to sum up her chief characteristics as follows:--

"That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of
feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most
wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself,
like any one going; but the exquisite touch which renders
commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the
description and the sentiment is denied to me."

She died in 1817 at the age of forty-one and was buried in Winchester Cathedral, fourteen miles from her birthplace. The merit of her work was apparent to only a very few at the time of her death. Later years have slowly brought a just recognition of the important position that she holds in the history of the realistic novel of daily life. Of still greater significance to the majority is the fact that the subtle charm of her stories continues to win for her an enlarged circle of readers.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850

Early Life and Training.--William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770. He went to school in his ninth year at Hawkshead, a village on the banks of Esthwaite Water, in the heart of the Lake Country. The traveler who takes the pleasant journey on foot or coach from Windermere to Coniston, passes through Hawkshead, where he may see Wordsworth's name cut in a desk of the school which he attended. Of greater interest is the scenery which contributed so much to his education and aided his development into England's greatest nature poet.

We learn from his autobiographical poem, _The Prelude_, what experiences molded him in boyhood. He says that the--

"...common face of Nature spake to me
Rememberable things."

In this poem he relates how he absorbed into his inmost being the orange sky of evening, the curling mist, the last autumnal crocus, the "souls of lonely places," and the huge peak, which terrified him at nightfall by seeming to stride after him and which awoke in him a--

"...dim and undermined sense
Of unknown modes of being."

In his famous lines on the "Boy of Winander," Wordsworth tells how--

"...the voice
Of mountain torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven, received
Into the bosom of the steady lake."

At the age of seventeen he entered Cambridge University, from which he was graduated after a four years' course. He speaks of himself there as a dreamer passing through a dream. There came to him the strange feeling that he "was not for that hour nor for that place;" and yet he says that he was not unmoved by his daily association with the haunts of his illustrious predecessors, or of--

"Sweet Spenser, moving through his clouded heaven
With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace,"

and of Milton whose soul seemed to Wordsworth "like a star."

Influence of the French Revolution.--His travels on the continent in his last vacation and after his graduation brought him in contact with the French Revolution, of which he felt the inspiring influence. He was fond of children, and the sight of a poor little French peasant girl seems to have been one of the main causes leading him to become an ardent revolutionist. _The Prelude_ tells in concrete fullness how he walked along the banks of the Loire with his friend, a French patriot:--