Chapter IX: The Victorian Age, 1837-1900 (2)

"_Do the Duty which lies nearest thee_, which thou knowest to be a
Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer... The
Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal was never yet occupied by
man. Yes here, in this poor miserable, hampered, despicable Actual,
wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work
it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the
Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition
is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of ..."

The French Revolution.--In 1837 when Carlyle finished the third volume of his historic masterpiece, _The French Revolution_, he handed the manuscript to his wife for her criticism, saying: "This I could tell the world: 'You have not had for a hundred years any book that comes more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living man.'" His Scotch blood boiled over the injustice to the French peasants. His temperature begins to rise when he refers to the old law authorizing a French hunter, if a nobleman, "to kill not more than two serfs."

Carlyle brings before us a vast stage where the actors in the French Revolution appear: in the background, "five full-grown millions of gaunt figures with their hungry faces"; in the foreground, one young mother of seven children, "looking sixty years of age, although she is not yet twenty-eight," and trying to respond to the call for seven different kinds of taxes; and, also in the foreground, "a perfumed Seigneur," taking part of the children's dinner. The scene changes; the great individual actors in the Revolution enter: the tocsin clangs; the stage is reddened with human blood and wreathed in flames. We feel that we are actually witnessing that great historic tragedy.

Carlyle had something of Shakespeare's dramatic imagination, which pierced to the heart of men and movements. More detailed and scholarly histories of this time have been written; but no other historian has equaled Carlyle in presenting the French Revolution as a human tragedy that seems to be acted before our very eyes.

He did not attempt to write a complete history of the time. He used the dramatist's legitimate privilege of selection. From a mass of material that would have bewildered a writer of less ability, he chose to present on the center of the stage the most significant actors and picturesque incidents.

Carlyle's "Real Kings."--Carlyle believed that "universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked here." In accordance with this belief, he studied, not the slow growth of the people, but the lives of the world's great geniuses.

In his course of lectures entitled _Heroes and Hero Worship_ (1841), he considers _The Hero as Prophet, The Hero as Poet, The Hero as Priest_, and _The Hero as King_, and shows how history has been molded by men like Mohammed, Shakespeare, Luther, and Napoleon. It is such men as these whom Carlyle calls "kings," beside whom "emperors," "popes," and "potentates" are as nothing. He believed that there was always living some man worthy to be the "real king" over men, and such a kingship was Carlyle's ideal of government.

Oliver Cromwell was one of these "real kings." In the work entitled _Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations_, Carlyle was the first to present the character of the Protector in its full strength and greatness and to demonstrate once for all that he was a hero whose memory all Englishmen should honor.

The _Life of John Sterling_ (1851) is a fair, true, and touching biography of Carlyle's most intimate friend, the man who had introduced him to Jane Welsh. After reading this book, George Eliot said she wished that more men of genius would write biographies.

Carlyle's next attempt at biography grew into the massive _History of Friedrich II_. (1858-1865), which includes a survey of European history in that dreary century which preceded the French Revolution. "Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demigods." He is "to the last a questionable hero." However, "in his way he is a Reality," one feels "that he always means what he speaks; grounds his actions, too, on what he recognizes for the truth; and, in short, has nothing of the Hypocrite or Phantasm." Despite his tyranny and his bloody career, he, therefore, is another of Carlyle's "real kings." While this work is a history of modern Europe, Friedrich is always the central figure. He gives to these six volumes a human note, a glowing interest of personal adventure, and a oneness that are remarkable in so vast a work.

General Characteristics.--Carlyle's writings must be classed among the great social and democratic influences of the nineteenth century, in spite of the fact that he did not believe in pure democracy. It was his favorite theory that a great man, like Oliver Cromwell, could govern better than the unintelligent multitude. However much he rebelled against democracy in government, his sympathies were with the toiling masses. His work entitled _Past and Present_ (1843) suggests the organization of labor and introduces such modern expressions as "a fair day's wages for a fair day's work." In _Sartor Resartus_, he specially honors "the toilworn Craftsman, that with earthmade implement laboriously conquers the Earth and makes her Man's."

Carlyle had a large fund of incisive wit and humor, which often appear in picturesque setting, as when he said to a physician: "A man might as well pour his sorrows into the long hairy ear of a jackass." As the satiric censor of his time, Carlyle found frequent occasion for caustic wit. He lashed the age for its love of the "swine's trough," of "Pig-science, Pig-enthusiasm and devotion." Although his intentions were good, his satire was not always just or discriminating, and he was in consequence bitterly criticized. The following Dutch parable is in some respects specially applicable to Carlyle:--

"There was a man once,--a satirist. In the natural course of time
his friends slew him and he died. And the people came and stood
about his corpse. 'He treated the whole round world as his
football,' they said indignantly, 'and he kicked it.' The dead man
opened one eye. 'But always toward the goal,' he said."

This goal toward which Carlyle struggled to drive humanity was the goal of moral achievement. Young people on both sides of the Atlantic responded vigorously to his appeals. The scientist John Tyndall said to his students:--

"The reading of the works of two men has placed me here to-day.
These men are the English Carlyle and the American Emerson.
I must ever remember with gratitude that through three long, cold
German winters, Carlyle placed me in my tub, even when ice was on
its surface, at five o'clock every morning ... determined, whether
victor or vanquished, not to shrink from difficulty... They told me
what I ought to do in a way that caused me to do it, and all my
consequent intellectual action is to be traced to this purely moral
force... They called out. 'Act!' I hearkened to the summons."

Huxley aptly defined Carlyle as a "great tonic,--a source of intellectual invigoration and moral stimulus."

Carlyle is not only a "great Awakener" but also a great literary artist. His style is vivid, forceful, and often poetic. He loves to present his ideas with such picturesqueness that the corresponding images develop clearly in the reader's mind. Impressive epithets and phrases abound. His metaphors are frequent and forceful. Mirabeau's face is pictured as "rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled." In describing Daniel Webster, Carlyle speaks of "the tanned complexion, that amorphous crag-like face; the dull black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be blown, the mastiff-mouth, accurately closed." He formed many new compound words after the German fashion, such as "mischief-joy"; and when he pleased, he coined new words, like "dandiacal" and "croakery."

His frequent exclamations and inversions make his style seem choppy, like a wave-tossed sea; but his sentences are so full of vigor that they almost call aloud from the printed page. His style was not an imitation of the German, but a characteristic form of expression, natural to him and to his father.

The gift of verse was denied him, but he is one of the great prose poets of the nineteenth century. Much of _Sartor Resartus_ is highly poetic and parts of _The French Revolution_ resemble a dramatic poem.

JOHN RUSKlN, 1819-1900

Life.--The most famous disciple of Carlyle is John Ruskin, the only child of wealthy parents, who was born in London in 1819. When he was four years old the family moved to Herne Hill, a suburb south of London, where his intense love of nature developed as he looked over open fields, "animate with cow and buttercup," "over softly wreathing distances of domestic wood," to the distant hills. His entertaining autobiography, _Praeterita_ (1885-1889), relates how he was reared:--

"I had never heard my father's or mother's voice once raised in any
question with each other ... I had never heard a servant scolded ...
I obeyed word or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as a
ship her helm ...nothing was ever promised me that was not given;
nothing ever threatened me that was not inflicted, and nothing ever
told me that was not true... Peace, obedience, faith; these three
for chief good; next to these, the habit of fixed attention with
both eyes and mind."

He grew up a solitary child without playmates. This solitude was relieved when his parents took him on occasional trips through England, Switzerland, and Italy. In _Praeterita_ he tells in an inimitable way how the most portentious interruption to his solitude came in 1836, when his father's Spanish partner came with his four beautiful daughters to visit Herne Hill. These were the first girls in his own station to whom he had spoken. "Virtually convent-bred more closely than the maids themselves," says Ruskin, "I was thrown, bound hand and foot, in my unaccomplished simplicity, into the fiery furnace." In four days he had fallen so desperately in love with the oldest, Clotilde Adèle Domecq, a "graceful blonde" of fifteen, that he was more than four years in recovering his equilibrium. She laughed at his protestations of love; but she repeatedly visited his parents, and he did not give up hope until 1840, when she married a French baron. His biographer says that the resulting "emotional strain doubtless was contributory to his breakdown at Oxford" and to his enforced absence for a recuperative trip on the continent.

His feminine attachments usually showed some definite results in his writing. Miss Domecq's influence during the long period of his devotion inspired him to produce much verse, which received such high praise that his father desired him to become a poet. Although some of Ruskin's verse was good, he finally had the penetration to see that it ranked decidedly below the greatest, and he later laid down the dictum: "with second-rate poetry _in quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind." In 1886, he had the humor to allude as follows to Miss Domecq and her influence on his rimes, "...her sisters called her Clotilde, after the queen-saint, and I, Adèle, because it rimed to shell, spell, and knell."

Before he was graduated from Oxford in 1842, he wrote the beautiful altruistic story, _The King of the Golden River_ (1841) for Euphemia Gray, the young girl unhappily chosen by his mother to become his wife. He married her in 1848, but was divorced from her in 1854. In 1855 she was married to the Pre-Raphaelite artist, John Millais.

Another attachment led to his writing some of the finest parts of his most popular work, _Sesame and Lilies_ (1864). "I wrote Lilies," he says, "to please one girl." He is here referring to Rose La Touche, a bright, ardent, religious enthusiast, to whom he began to teach drawing when she was ten years old. His affection for her grew so strong that he finally asked her to become his wife. He was then a man of forty while she was scarcely grown. Her religious scruples kept her from definitely accepting him, because his belief was not sufficiently orthodox. The attachment, however, continued until her early death. She was in some respects a remarkable character, and he seems to have had her in mind when he wrote in _Sesame and Lilies_ the "pearly" passage about Shakespeare's heroines.

Although Ruskin's wealth relieved him from earning a living, he was rarely idle. He studied, sketched, arranged collections of minerals, prepared Turner's pictures for the National Gallery, became professor of art at Oxford University, and wrote and lectured on art and social subjects. His later activities, before his health gave way, were in many respects similar to those of a twentieth-century social-service worker. The realization of the misery that overwhelmed so much of human life caused him to turn from art to consider remedies for the evils that developed as the competitive industries of the nation expanded. He endeavored to improve the condition of the working classes in such ways as building sanitary tenements, establishing a tea shop, and forming an altruistic association, known as St. George's Guild. Nearly all his inheritance of £180,000 was expended in such activities. The royalties coming from the sale of his books supported him in old age.

Ruskin suffered from periods of mental depression during his last years, which were spent at Brantwood on Coniston Water in the Lake District. He died in 1900 at the age of eighty-one and was buried in the cemetery at Coniston.

Art Works.--Ruskin published the first volume of _Modern Painters_ in 1843, the year after he was graduated from Oxford, and the fifth and last volume, seventeen years later, in 1860. Many of his views changed during this period; but he honestly declared them and left to his readers the task of reconciling the divergent ideas in _Modern Painters_. The purpose of this book was, in his own words, "to declare the perfectness and eternal beauty of the work of God; and test all works of man by concurrence with, or subjection to that."

_Modern Painters_ contains painstaking descriptions of God's handiwork in cloud formation, mountain structure, tree architecture, and water forms. In transferring these aspects of nature to canvas, Ruskin shows the superiority of modern to ancient painting. He emphasizes the moral basis of true beauty, and the necessity of right living as a foundation for the highest type of art. Perhaps _Modern Painters_ achieved its greatest success in freeing men from the bondage of a conventional criticism that was stifling art, in sending them direct to nature as a guide, and in developing a love for her varied manifestations of beauty.

Two of Ruskin's works on architecture, _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_ (1849) and _The Stones of Venice_ (1851-1853), had a decided effect on British taste in building. The three volumes of the _The Stones of Venice_ give a history of the Venetians and of their Gothic architecture. He aims to show that the beauty of such buildings as St. Mark's Cathedral and the Doges' Palace is due to the virtue and patriotism of the people, the nobility of the designers, and the joy of the individual workmen, whose chisels made the very stones of Venice tell beautiful stories.

The most important of his many other writings on art is the volume entitled _Lectures on Art, Delivered before the University of Oxford, 1870_. In his famous _Inaugural_ of this series, he thus states what he considers the central truth of his teaching: "The art of any country is the exponent of its social and political virtues."

Social Works.--By turning from the criticism of art to consider the cause of humanity, Ruskin shows the influence of the ethical and social forces of the age. In middle life he was overwhelmed with the amount of human misery and he determined to do his best to relieve it. He wrote:--

"I simply cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do
anything else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky,
when there is any--which is seldom, nowadays, near London--has
become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see
signs of, where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret
too bitterly."[9]

After 1860 his main efforts with both pen and purse were devoted to improving the condition of his fellow men. His attempts to provide a remedy led him to write _Unto this Last_ (1860), his first and most complete work on political economy, _Munera Pulveris_ (1863), _Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne_ (1868), _Fors Clavigera_ (1871-1884), which is a long series of letters to workingmen, and a number of other works, that also present his views on social questions.

He abhorred the old political economy, which he defined as "the professed and organized pursuit of money." Instead of considering merely the question of the production and distribution of articles, his interest lay in the causes necessary to produce healthy, happy workmen. It seemed to him that the manufacture "of souls" ought to be "exceedingly lucrative." This statement and his maxim, "There is no wealth but life," were called "unscientific." In his fine book of essays, entitled _Sesame and Lilies_ (1864), he actually had printed in red those pathetic pages describing how an old cobbler and his son worked night and day to try to keep a little home of one room, until the father died from exhaustion and the son had a film come over his eyes.

John Ruskin, social reformer, has an important place in the social movement of the nineteenth century. Many of his theories, which were considered revolutionary, have since become the commonplace expressions of twentieth-century social economists.

General Characteristics.--Ruskin was a champion of the Pre-Raphaelite school of art. He used his powerful influence to free art from its conventional fetters and to send people direct to nature for careful loving study of her beautiful forms. His chief strength lies in his moral enthusiasm and his love of the beautiful in nature. Like his master, Carlyle, Ruskin is a great ethical teacher; but he aimed at more definite results in the reformation of art and of social life. He moralized art and humanized political economy.

Some of his art criticisms and social theories are fanciful, narrow, and sometimes even absurd. He did not seem to recognize with sufficient clearness the fact that immoral individuals might produce great works of art; but no one can successfully assail his main contention that there must be a connection between great art and the moral condition of a people. His rejection of railroads and steam machinery as necessary factors in modern civilization caused many to pay little attention to any of his social theories. Much of the gospel that he preached has, however, been accepted by the twentieth century. He was in advance of his time when he said in 1870 that the object of his art professorship would be accomplished if "the English nation could be made to understand that the beauty which is indeed to be a joy forever must be a joy for all."

At the age of fifty-eight, he thus summed up the principal work of his life:--

"_Modern Painters_ taught the claim of all lower nature on the
hearts of men; of the rock, and wave, and herb, as a part of their
necessary spirit life... _The Stories of Venice_ taught the laws of
constructive Art, and the dependence of all human work or edifice,
for its beauty, on the happy life of the workman. _Under this Last_
taught the laws of that life itself and its dependence on the Sun of
Justice; the _Inaugural Oxford Lectures_, the necessity that it
should be led, and the gracious laws of beauty and labor recognized,
by the upper, no less than the lower classes of England; and,
lastly, _Fors Clavigera_ has declared the relation of these to each
other, and the only possible conditions of peace and honor, for low
and high, rich and poor..."

Ruskin has written remarkable descriptive prose. A severe English critic, George Saintsbury, says of Ruskin's works "...they will he found to contain the very finest prose (without exception and beyond comparison) which has been written in English during the last half of the nineteenth century... _The Stones of Venice_ ... is _the_ book of descriptive prose in English, and all others toil after it in vain."

Ruskin could be severely plain in expression, but much of his earlier prose is ornate and almost poetic. The following description of the Rhone deserves to be ranked with the painter's art:--

"There were pieces of wave that danced all day as if Perdita were
looking on to learn; there were little streams that skipped like
lambs and leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the
sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of overlaid
ripples, like crystal sand; here were currents that twisted the
light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise
enamel; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the
lake been mill streams, and were busily looking for mills to turn
again."[10]

CHARLES DICKENS, 1812-1870

Life.--The first of the great Victorian novelists to make his mark was Charles Dickens. This great portrayer of child life had a sad painful childhood. He was born in 1812 at Landport, a district of the city of Portsmouth, Hampshire, where his father was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office. John Dickens, the prototype of Mr. Micawber, was a kind, well-intentioned man, who knew far better how to harangue his large household of children than how to supply it with the necessities of life. He moved from place to place, sinking deeper into poverty and landing finally in a debtors' prison.

The dreams of a fine education and a brilliant career, which the future novelist had fondly cherished in his precocious little brain, had to be abandoned. At the age of eleven the delicate child was called upon to do his part toward maintaining the family. He was engaged, at six-pence a week, to paste labels on blacking bottles. He was poorly clothed, ill fed, forced to live in the cheapest place to be found, and to associate with the roughest kind of companions. This experience was so bitter and galling to the sensitive boy that years after, when he was a successful, happy man, he could not look back upon it without tears in his eyes. Owing to a rupture between his employer and the elder Mr. Dickens, Charles was removed from this place and sent to school. At fifteen, however, he had to seek work again. This time he was employed in an attorney's office at Gray's Inn.

It was impossible, of course, for this ambitious boy to realize that he was receiving an education in the dirty streets, the warehouses, the tenements, and the prisons. Yet, for his peculiar bent of mind, these furnished far richer stores of learning than either school or college could have given. He had marvelous powers of observation. He noted everything, from the saucy street waif to the sorrowful prison child, from the poor little drudge to the brutal schoolmaster, and he transplanted them from life to fiction, in such characters as Sam Weller, Little Dorrit, the Marchioness, Mr. Squeers, and a hundred others.

While in the attorney's office, Dickens began to study shorthand, in order to become a reporter. This was the beginning of his success. His reports were accurate and racy, even when they happened to be written in the pouring rain, in a shaking stagecoach, or by the light of a lantern. They were also promptly handed in at the office, despite the fact that the stages sometimes broke down and left their passengers to plod on foot through the miry roads leading into London. These reports and newspaper articles soon attracted attention; and Dickens received an offer for a series of humorous sketches, which grew into the famous _Pickwick Papers_, and earned £20,000 for the astonished publishers. He was able to make his own terms for his future novels. Fame came to him almost at a bound. He was loved and toasted in England and America before he had reached the age of thirty. When, late in life, he made lecture tours through his own country, or through Scotland or America, they were like triumphal marches.

In his prime Dickens was an energetic, high-spirited, fun-loving man. He made a charming host, and was never happier than when engineering theatrical entertainments at his delightful home, Gads Hill. He was esteemed by all the literary men of London, and idolized by his children and friends. As his strong personality was communicated to his audiences and his readers, his death in 1870 was felt as a personal loss throughout the English-speaking world.

Works.--_Pickwick Papers_ (1836-1837), Dickens's first long story, is one of his best. Mr. Pickwick, with his genial nature, his simple philosophy, and his droll adventures, and Sam Weller, with his ready wit, his acute observations, and his almost limitless resources, are amusing from start to finish. The book is brimful of its author's high spirits. It has no closely knit plot, but merely a succession of comical incidents, and vivid caricatures of Mr. Pickwick and his friends. Yet the fun is so good-natured and infectious, and the looseness of design is so frankly declared that the book possesses a certain unity arising from its general atmosphere of frolic and jollity.

_Oliver Twist_ (1837-1838) is a powerful story, differing widely from _Pickwick Papers_. While the earlier work is delightful chiefly for its humor, _Oliver Twist_ is strong in its pictures of passion and crime. Bill Sykes the murderer, Fagin the Jew, who teaches the boys deftness of hand in stealing, and poor Nancy, are drawn with such power that they seem to be still actually living in some of London's dark alleys. Little Oliver, born in the poor-house, clothed by charity, taught by the evil genius of the streets, starved in body and soul, is one of the many pathetic portraits of children drawn with a sure and loving hand by Dickens. There are some improbable features about the plot and some overwrought sentimental scenes in this story. Dickens reveled in the romantic and found it in robbers' dens, in bare poverty, in red-handed crime. The touching pathos and thrilling adventures of _Oliver Twist_ make a strong appeal to the reader's emotions.

With the prodigality of a fertile genius, Dickens presented his expectant and enthusiastic public with a new novel on an average of once a year for fourteen years; and, even after that, his productivity did not fall off materially. The best and most representative of these works are _Nicholas Nickleby_ (1838-1839), _Barnaby Rudge_ (1841), _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-1844), _Dombey and Son_ (1846-1848), _David Copperfield_ (1849-1850), _Bleak House_ (1852-1853), _Hard Times_ (1854), _A Tale of Two Cities_ (1859), and _Our Mutual Friend_ (1864).

Of these, _David Copperfield_ is at once Dickens's favorite work and the one which the world acclaims as his masterpiece. The novel is in part an autobiography. Some incidents are taken directly from Dickens's early experiences and into many more of David's childish sorrows, boyish dreams, and manly purposes, Dickens has breathed the breath of his own life. David Copperfield is thus a vitally interesting and living character. The book contains many of Dickens's most human men and women. Petted Little Em'ly with her pathetic tragedy is handled with deep sympathy and true artistic delicacy. Peggotty and Mrs. Steerforth are admirably drawn and contrasted. Mrs. Gummidge's thoughtful care of Peggotty exhibits Dickens's fine perception of the self-sacrificing spirit among the very poor. Uriah Heep remains the type of the humble sycophant, and Mr. Micawber, the representative of the man of big words and pompous manners. These various characters and separate life histories are bound in same way to the central story of David. General Characteristics.--England has produced no more popular novelist than Charles Dickens. His novels offer sound and healthy entertainment, hearty laughter, a wide range of emotions, and a wonderful array of personalities. He presents the universal physical experiences of life that are understood by all men, and irradiates this life with emotion and romance. He keeps his readers in an active state of feeling. They laugh at the broad humor in Sam Weller's jokes; they chuckle over the sly exposure of Mr. Pecksniff in _Martin Chuzzlewit_; they weep in _Dombey and Son_ over poor Paul crammed with grown-up learning when he wanted to be just a child; they rejoice over David Copperfield's escape from his stepfather into the loving arms of whimsical, clever Aunt Betsey Trotwood; they shiver with horror in _Our Mutual Friend_ during the search for floating corpses on the dark river; and they feel more kindly toward the whole world after reading _A Christmas Carol_ and taking Tiny Tim into their hearts.

Dickens excels in the portrayal of humanity born and reared in poverty and disease. He grasps the hand of these unfortunates in a brother's clasp. He says in effect "I present to you my friends, the beggar, the thief, the outcast. They are men worth knowing." He does not probe philosophically into complex causes of poverty and crime. His social creed was well formulated by Dowden in these words: "Banish from earth some few monsters of selfishness, malignity, and hypocrisy, set to rights a few obvious imperfections in the machinery of society, inspire all men with a cheery benevolence, and everything will go well with this excellent world of ours."

Every student of the science of society, however, owes a debt to Dickens. He did what no science or knowledge or logic can do alone. He reached the heart, awoke the conscience, and pierced the obtuseness of the public. He aroused its protests because his genius painted prisons and hovels and dens of vice so vividly that his readers actually suffered from the scenes thus presented and wanted such horrors abolished.

Dickens's infectious humor is a remarkable and an unfailing quality of his works. It pervades entire chapters, colors complete incidents, and displays the temper of the optimist through the darkest pictures of human suffering.

A hypocrite is an abomination to Dickens. Speaking of Mr. Pecksniff in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, Dickens says: "Some people likened him to a direction-post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there." His humor can be fully appreciated only by reading long passages, such as the scene of Mr. Pickwick's trial, the descriptions of Mr. Micawber and of Miss Betsey Trotwood, or the chapter on Podsnappery in _Our Mutual Friend_. Dickens's humor has an exuberant richness, which converts men and women into entertaining figures of comedy.

Closely allied to his fund of humor is his capacity for pathos, especially manifest in his treatment of childhood. Dickens has a large gallery of children's portraits, fondly and sympathetically executed. David Copperfield, enduring Mr. Murdstone's cruel neglect, Florence Dombey pining for her father's love, the Marchioness starving upon cold potatoes, Tom and Louise Gradgrind, stuffed with facts and allowed no innocent amusement, and the waifs of Tom's-All-Alone dying from abject poverty and disease, are only a few of the sad-eyed children peering from the pages of Dickens and yearning for love and understanding. He wrings the heart; but, happily, his books have improved the conditions of children, not only in public asylums, factories, and courts, but also in schools and homes.

Dickens's chief faults arise from an excess of sensibility and humor. His soft heart and romantic spirit lead him to exaggerate. In such passages as the death of Little Nell in _The Old Curiosity Shop_ and the interviews between Dora and David in _David Copperfield_, Dickens becomes mawkish and sentimental. While his power of portraiture is amazing, he often overleaps the line of character drawing and makes side-splitting caricatures of his men and women. They are remembered too often by a limp or a mannerism of speech, or by some other little peculiarity, instead of by their human weaknesses and accomplishments.

Dickens is not a master in the artistic construction of his plots. The majority of his readers do not, however, notice this failing because he keeps them in such a delightful state of interest and suspense by the sprightliness with which he tells a story.

He was a very rapid writer, and his English is consequently often careless in structure and in grammar. As he was not a man of books, he never acquired that half-unconscious knowledge of fine phrasing which comes to the careful student of literature. No novelist has, however, told more graphically such appealing stories of helpless childhood and of the poor and the outcast.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, 1811-1863

Life_.--Though nearly a year older than Dickens, Thackeray made his way to popularity much more slowly. These two men, who became friends and generous rivals, were very different in character and disposition. Instead of possessing the self-confidence, energy, and industry that brought Dickens fame in his youth, Thackeray had to contend with a somewhat shy and vacillating temperament, with extreme modesty, and with a constitutional aversion to work.

Born in Calcutta in 1811, he was sent to England to be educated. He passed through Charter House and went one year to Cambridge. He was remembered by his school friends for his skill in caricature sketching. He hoped to make painting a profession and went to Paris to study; but he never attained correctness in drawing, and when he offered to illustrate the works of Dickens, the offer was declined. Thackeray certainly added to the charm of his own writings by his droll and delightful illustrations.

When Thackeray came of age in 1832, he inherited a small fortune, which he soon lost in an Indian bank and in newspaper investments. He was then forced to overcome his idle, procrastinating habits. He became a literary hack, and contributed humorous articles to such magazines as _Fraser_ and _Punch_. While his pen was causing mirth and laughter in England, his heart was torn by suffering. His wife, whom he had married in 1837, became insane. He nursed her patiently with the vain hope that she could recover; but he finally abandoned hope and put her in the care of a conscientious attendant. His home was consequently lonely, and the club was his only recourse. Here, his broad shoulders and kindly face were always greeted with pleasure; for his affable manners and his sparkling humor, which concealed an aching heart, made him a charming companion.

It is pleasant to know that the later years of his life were happier. They were cheered by the presence of his daughters, and were free from financial worries. He had the satisfaction of knowing that, through the sales of his book; and the returns from his lectures, he had recovered his lost fortune.

Novels.--_Vanity Fair_ (1847-1848) is Thackeray's masterpiece. For the lifelikeness of its characters, it is one of the most remarkable creations in fiction. Thackeray called this work "A Novel without a Hero." He might have added "and without a heroine"; for neither clever Becky Sharp nor beautiful Amelia Sedley satisfies the requirements for a heroine. No perfect characters appear in the book, but it is enlivened with an abundance of genuine human nature. Few people go through life without meeting a George Osborne, a Mrs. Bute Crawley, or a Mrs. Sedley. Even a penurious, ridiculous, old Sir Pitt Crawley is sometimes seen. The greatest stroke of genius in the book, however, is the masterly portrayal of the artful, scheming Becky Sharp, who alternately commands respect for her shrewdness and repels by her moral depravity.

In _Vanity Fair_ certain classes of society are satirized. Their intrigues, frivolities, and caprices are mercilessly dealt with. Thackeray probes almost every weakness, vanity, or ambition that leads humanity to strive for a place in society, to long for a bow from a lord, and to stint in private in order to shine in public. He uncovers the great social farce of life, which is acted with such solemn gravity by the snobs, the hypocrites, and the other superficial _dramatis personae_. Amid these satirized frivolities there appear occasional touches of true pathos and deep human tragedy, which are strangely effective in their unsympathetic surroundings.

Thackeray gives in _Henry Esmond_ (1852) an enduring picture of high life in the eighteenth century. This work is one of the great historical novels in our language. The time of queen Anne is reconstructed with remarkable skill. The social etiquette, the ideals of honor, the life and spirit of that bygone day, reappear with a powerful vividness. Thackeray even went so far as to disguise his own natural, graceful style, and to imitate eighteenth-century prose. _Henry Esmond_ is a dangerous rival of _Vanity Fair_. The earlier work has a freshness of humor and a spontaneity of manner that are not so apparent in _Henry Esmond_. On the other hand, _Esmond_ has a superior plot and possesses a true hero.

In _The Newcomes_ (1854-1855), Thackeray exhibits again his incisive power of delineating character. This book would continue to live if for nothing except the simple-hearted, courtly Colonel Newcome. Few scenes in English fiction are more affecting than those connected with his death. The accompanying lines will show what a simple pathos Thackeray could command:--

"At the usual evening hour the chapel bell begin to toll, and
Thomas Newcome's hands outside the bed feebly beat time--and just
as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face,
and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said, '_Adsum_'--and
fell back. It was the word we used at school when names were called;
and, lo! he whose heart was as that of a little child had answered
to his name, and stood in the presence of the Master!"

_The History of Pendennis_ (1849) and _The Virginians_ (1857-1859) are both popular novels and take rank inferior only to the author's three greatest works. _The Virginians_ is a sequel to _Esmond_, and carries the Castlewood family through adventures in the New World.

Essays.--Thackeray will live in English literature as an essayist as well as a novelist. _The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century_ (1853) and _The Four Georges_ (1860) are among the most delightful essays of the age. The author of _Henry Esmond_ knew Swift, Addison, Fielding, and Smollett, almost as one knows the mental peculiarities of an intimate friend. In _The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century_, Thackeray writes of their conversations, foibles, and strong points of character, in a most easy and entertaining way. There is a constant charm about his manner, which, without effort or display of learning, brings the authors vividly before the reader. In addition to this presentation of character, the essays contain appreciative literary criticism. The essence of the humor in these eighteenth-century writers is distilled in its purest, most delicate flavor, by this nineteenth-century member of their brotherhood.

_The Four Georges_ deals with England's crowned heads in a satiric vein, which caused much comment among Thackeray's contemporaries. The satire is, however, mild and subdued, never venomous. For example, he says in the essay on George III.:--

"King George's household was a model of an English gentleman's
household. It was early; it was kindly; it was charitable; it was
frugal; it was orderly; it must have been stupid to a degree which I
shudder now to contemplate. No wonder all the princes ran away from
the lap of that dreary domestic virtue. It always rose, rode, dined,
at stated intervals. Day after day was the same. At the same hour at
night the King kissed his daughters' jolly cheeks; the Princesses
kissed their mother's hand; and Madame Thielke brought the royal
nightcap."

General Characteristics.--Dickens and Thackeray have left graphic pictures of a large portion of contemporary London life. Dickens presents interesting pictures of the vagabonds, the outcasts, and the merchants, and Thackeray portrays the suave, polite leisure class and its dependents.

Thackeray is an uncompromising realist and a satirist. He insisted upon picturing life as he believed that it existed in London society; and, to his satiric eye, that life was composed chiefly of the small vanities, the little passions, and the petty quarrels of commonplace people, whose main objects were money and title. He could conceive noble men and women, as is proved by Esmond, Lady Castlewood, and Colonel Newcome; but such characters are as rare in Thackeray as he believed they were in real life. The following passage upon mankind's fickleness is a good specimen of his satiric vein in dealing with human weakness:--

"There are no better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your
dear friend's letters of ten years back--your dear friend whom you
hate now. Look at a pile of your sister's! How you clung to each
other until you quarreled about the twenty-pound legacy!... Vows,
love promises, confidence, gratitude,--how queerly they read after a
while!...The best ink for Vanity Fair use would be one that faded
utterly in a couple of days, and left the paper clean and blank, so
that you might write on it to somebody else."

The phases of life that he describes have had no more subtle interpreter. He does not label his characters with external marks, but enters into communion with their souls. His analytic method of laying bare their motives and actions is strictly modern. His great master, Fielding, would have been baffled by such a complex personality as Becky Sharp. Amid the throng of Thackeray's men and women, there are but few who are not genuine flesh and blood.

The art of describing the pathetic is unfailing in Thackeray. He never jars upon the most sensitive feelings nor wearies them by too long a treatment. With a few simple but powerful expressions he succeeds in arousing intense emotions of pity or sorrow. He has been wrongly called a cynic; for no man can be a cynic who shows Thackeray's tenderness in the treatment of pathos.

Thackeray is master of a graceful, simple prose style. In its ease and purity, it most resembles that of Swift, Addison, or Goldsmith. Thackeray writes as a cultured, ideal, old gentleman may be imagined to talk to the young people, while he sits in his comfortable armchair in a corner by the fireplace. The charm of freshness, quaintness, and colloquial familiarity is seldom absent from the delightfully natural pages of Thackeray.

GEORGE ELIOT, 1819-1880

Life.--Mary Ann Evans, known to her family as Marian and to her readers as George Eliot, was born in 1819, at South Farm, in Arbury, Warwickshire, about twenty-two miles north of Stratford-on-Avon. A few months later, the family moved to a spacious ivy-covered farmhouse at Griff, some two miles east, where the future novelist lived until she was twenty-two.

She was a thoughtful, precocious child. She lived largely within herself, passed much time in reverie, and pondered upon deep problems. She easily outstripped her schoolmates in all mental accomplishments, and, from the first, gave evidence of a clear, strong intellect.

The death of her mother and the marriage of a sister left the entire care of the house and dairy to Marian before she was seventeen years old. Her labors were quite heavy for the neat six years. At the end of that time, she and her father moved to Foleshill, near Coventry, where she had ample leisure to pursue her studies and music. At Foleshill, she came under the influence of free-thinking friends and became an agnostic, which she remained through the rest of her life. This home was again broken up in 1849 by the death of her father. Through the advice of friends she sought comfort in travel on the continent.

Upon her return, she settled in London as assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_. By this time she had become familiar with five languages, had translated abstruse metaphysical books from the German into English, and had so thoroughly equipped her naturally strong intellect that she was sought after in London by such men as Herbert Spencer and George Henry Lewes. A deep attachment sprang up between Mr. Lewes and Miss Evans, and they formed an alliance that lasted until his death.

George Eliot's early literary labors were mainly critical and scientific, being governed by the circle in which she moved. When she came under the influence of Mr. Lewes, she was induced to attempt creative work. Her novels, published under the pen name of George Eliot, quickly became popular. Despite this success, it is doubtful whether she would have possessed sufficient self-reliance to continue her work without Mr. Lewes's encouragement and protecting love, which shielded her from contact with publishers and from a knowledge of harsh criticisms.

Their companionship was so congenial that her friends were astonished when she formed another attachment after his death in 1878, and married Mr. Cross. Her husband said that her affectionate nature required some deep love to which to cling. She had never been very robust, and, during her later years, she was extremely frail. She died in 1880.

Works.--George Eliot was fast approaching forty when she found the branch of literature in which she was to achieve fame. Her first volume of stories, _Scenes of Clerical Life_ (1858), showed decisively that she was master of fiction writing. Three novels followed rapidly, _Adam Bede_ (1859), _The Mill on the Floss_ (1860), and _Silas Marner_ (1861). Her mind was stored with memories of the Midland counties, where her young life was spent; and these four books present with a powerful realism this rich rural district and its quaint inhabitants, who seem flushed with the warmth of real life.

_Adam Bede_ is the freshest, healthiest, and most delightful of her books. This story leaves upon the memory a charming picture of peace and contentment, with its clearly drawn and interesting characters, its ideal dairy, the fertile stretches of meadow lands, the squire's birthday party, the harvest supper, and the sweet Methodist woman preaching on the green.

_The Mill on the Floss_ also gives a fine picture of village life. This novel is one of George Eliot's most earnest productions. She exhibits one side of her own intense, brooding girlhood, in the passionate heroine, Maggie Tulliver. There is in this tragic story a wonderfully subtle revelation of a young nature, which is morbid, ambitious, quick of intellect, and strong of will, and which has no hand firm enough to serve as guide at the critical period of her life.

_Silas Marner_, artistically considered, is George Eliot's masterpiece. In addition to the ruddy glow of life in the characters, there is an idyllic beauty about the pastoral setting, and a poetic, half mystic charm about the weaver's manner of connecting his gold with his bright-haired Eppie. The slight plot is well planned and rounded, and the narrative is remarkable for ease and simplicity.

_Romola_ (1863) is a much bolder flight. It is an attempt to present Florence of the fifteenth century, to contrast Savonarola's ardent Christianity with the Greek aestheticism of the Medicis, and to show the influence of the time upon two widely different characters, Romola and Tito Melema. This novel is the greatest intellectual achievement of its author; but it has neither the warmth of life, nor the vigor of her English stories. Though no pains is spared to delineate Romola, Tito, and the inspiring monk, Savonarola, yet they do not possess the genuineness and reality that are felt in her Warwickshire characters.

_Middlemarch_ (1871-1872) and _Daniel Deronda_ (1876) marked the decline of George Eliot's powers. Although she still possessed the ability to handle dialogue, to analyze subtle complex characters, and to attain a philosophical grasp of the problems of existence, yet her weakening powers were shown in the length of tedious passages, in an undue prominence of ethical purpose, in the more studied and, on the whole, duller characters, and in the prolixity of style.

George Eliot's poetry does not bear comparison with her prose. _The Spanish Gypsy_ (1868) is her most ambitious poem, and it contains some fine dramatic passages. Her most beautiful poem is the hymn beginning:--

"Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence!"

There is a strain of noble thought and lofty feeling in her poems, and she rises easily to the necessary passion and fervor of verse; but her expression is hampered by the metrical form.

General Characteristics.--George Eliot is more strictly modern in spirit than either of the other two great contemporary novelists. This spirit is exhibited chiefly in her ethical purpose, her scientific sympathies, and her minute dissection of character.

Her writings manifest her desire to benefit human beings by convincing them that nature's laws are inexorable, and that an infraction of the moral law will be punished as surely as disobedience to physical laws. She strives to arouse people to a knowledge of hereditary influences, and to show how every deed brings its own results, and works, directly or indirectly, toward the salvation or ruin of the doer. She throws her whole strength into an attempt to prove that joy is to be found only in strict attendance upon duty and in self-renunciation. In order to carry home these serious lessons of life, she deals with powerful human tragedies, which impart a somberness of tone to all her novels. In her early works she treats these problems with artistic beauty; but in her later books she often forgets the artist in the moralist, and uses a character to preach a sermon.

The analytical tendency is pronounced in George Eliot's works, which exhibit an exhaustive study of the feelings, the thoughts, the dreams, and purposes of the characters. They become known more through description than through action.

A striking characteristic of her men and women is their power to grow. They do not appear ready-made and finished at the beginning of a story, but, like real human beings amid the struggles of life, they change for the better or the worse. Tito Melema in _Romola_ is an example of her skill in evolving character. At the outset, he is a beautiful Greek boy with a keen zest for pleasure. His selfishness, however, which betrays itself first in ingratitude to his benefactor, leads step by step to his complete moral degradation. The consequences of his deeds entangle him finally in such a network of lies that he is forced to betray "every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe."

George Eliot occasionally brightens the seriousness of her works with humor. Her stories are not permeated with joyousness, like those of Dickens, nor do they ripple with quiet amusement, like the novels of Thackeray; but she puts witty and aphoristic sayings into the conversations of the characters. The scene at the "Rainbow" inn is bristling with mother wit. Mr. Macey observes:--

"'There's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has of
himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd be
two 'pinions about a cracked bell if the bell could hear
itself.'"[11]

Great precision and scholarlike correctness mark the style of George Eliot. Her vocabulary, though large, is too full of abstract and scientific terms to permit of great flexibility and idiomatic purity of English. She is master of powerful figures of speech, original, epigrammatic turns of expression, and, sometimes, of a stirring eloquence.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, 1850-1894

Life.--By preferring romantic incident to the portrayal of character, Stevenson differed from his great Victorian predecessors in the field of fiction. He was born in 1850 in the romantic city of Edinburgh, which he has described so well in his _Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh_. Being an invalid from early childhood, he was not sent regularly to school; yet he was ready at the age of seventeen to enter Edinburgh University. He says of himself that in college he neglected all the studies that did not appeal to him, to read with avidity English poetry and fiction, Scottish legend and history. During his summer vacations he worked at lighthouse engineering. The out-of-door life was just what he liked; but the office work was irksome to him. When finally he made his dislike known, his father, although bitterly disappointed at his son's aversion to the calling followed by two generations of Stevensons, nevertheless consented to a change; and they compromised on the law. In 1875 Stevenson succeeded in gaining admission to the bar; but he soon realized that he would never feel at home in this profession. Moreover, he had always wanted to be a writer. He says:--

"All through my boyhood and youth...
I was always busy on my own private end,
which was to learn to write. I kept always
two books in my pocket, one to read, one
to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy
fitting what I saw with appropriate words.
...Thus I lived with words. And what I
thus wrote was for no ulterior use; it was
written consciously for practice."

The next year, therefore, he decided to devote himself entirely to literature.

He was by heredity predisposed to weak lungs. For the greater part of his life he moved from place to place, searching for some location that would improve his health and allow him to write. He lived for a while in Switzerland, in the south of France, in the south of England, in the Adirondack Mountains, and in California. In 1880 he married in California, Mrs. Fanny Osbourne, of whom he wrote:--

"Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer made my mate."