English Literature
Footnote 195: In Johnson's _Dictionary_ we find this definition:
"Grub-street, the name of a street in London much inhabited by writers of
small histories, _dictionaries_, and temporary poems; whence any mean
production is called Grub-street."
Footnote 196: From Macaulay's review of Boswell's _Life of Johnson_.
Footnote 197: Many of the writers show a mingling of the classic and the
romantic tendencies. Thus Goldsmith followed Johnson and opposed the
romanticists; but his _Deserted Village_ is romantic in spirit, though its
classic couplets are almost as mechanical as Pope's. So Burke's orations
are "elegantly classic" in style, but are illumined by bursts of emotion
and romantic feeling.
Footnote 198: A much more interesting work is Thomas Paine's _Rights of
Man_, which was written in answer to Burke's essay, and which had enormous
influence in England and America.
Footnote 199: In the same year, 1775, in which Burke's magnificent
"Conciliation" oration was delivered, Patrick Henry made a remarkable
little speech before a gathering of delegates in Virginia. Both men were
pleading the same cause of justice, and were actuated by the same high
ideals. A very interesting contrast, however, may be drawn between the
methods and the effects of Henry's speech and of Burke's more brilliant
oration. Burke makes us wonder at his learning, his brilliancy, his
eloquence; but he does not move us to action. Patrick Henry calls us, and
we spring to follow him. That suggests the essential difference between the
two orators.
Footnote 200: The romantic revival is marked by renewed interest in
mediæval ideals and literature; and to this interest is due the success of
Walpole's romance, _The Castle of Otranto_, and of Chatterton's forgeries
known as the _Rowley Papers_.
Footnote 201: From _The Task_, Book II.
Footnote 202: See, for instance, Phelps, _Beginnings of the Romantic
Movement_, for a list of Spenserian imitators from 1700 to 1775.
Footnote 203: Such is Goldsmith's version of a somewhat suspicious
adventure, whose details are unknown.
Footnote 204: Goldsmith's idea, which was borrowed from Walpole,
reappears in the pseudo _Letters from a Chinese Official_, which recently
attracted considerable attention.
Footnote 205: Fitz-Greene Halleck's poem "To a Rose from near Alloway
Kirk" (1822) is a good appreciation of Burns and his poetry. It might be
well to read this poem before the sad story of Burns's life.
Footnote 206: Introduction, _Songs of Innocence_.
Footnote 207: Swinburne's _William Blake_.
Footnote 208: There are several omissions from the text in this fragment
from _Fingal_.
Footnote 209: Several fragments of Gaelic poetry, attributed to Ossian or
Oisin, are now known to have existed at that time in the Highlands.
Macpherson used these as a basis for his epic, but most of the details were
furnished by his own imagination. The alleged text of "Ossian" was
published in 1807, some eleven years after Macpherson's death. It only
added another mystery to the forgery; for, while it embodied a few old and
probably genuine fragments, the bulk of it seems to be Macpherson's work
translated back into Gaelic.
Footnote 210: For various other collections of songs and ballads,
antedating Percy's, see Phelps's _Beginnings of the English Romantic
Movement_, ch. vii.
Footnote 211: The first books to which the term "novel," in the modern
sense, may be applied, appeared almost simultaneously in England, France,
and Germany. The rapid development of the English novel had an immense
influence in all European nations.
Footnote 212: The name "romance" was given at first to any story in one
of the Romance languages, like the French metrical romances, which we have
considered. Because these stories were brought to England at a time when
the childish mind of the Middle Ages delighted in the most impossible
stories, the name "romance" was retained to cover any work of the unbridled
imagination.
Footnote 213: This division of works of fiction into romances and novels
is a somewhat arbitrary one, but it seems, on the whole, the most natural
and the most satisfactory. Many writers use the generic term "novel" to
include all prose fiction. They divide novels into two classes, stories and
romances; the story being a form of the novel which relates certain
incidents of life with as little complexity as possible; and the romance
being a form of novel which describes life as led by strong emotions into
complex and unusual circumstances. Novels are otherwise divided into novels
of personality, like _Vicar of Wakefield_ and _Silas Marner_; historical
novels, _Ivanhoe_; novels of romance, like _Lorna Doone_ and novels of
purpose, like _Oliver Twist_ and _Uncle Tom's Cabin_. All such
classifications are imperfect, and the best of them is open to objections.
Footnote 214: One of these tales was called _The Wonderful Things beyond
Thule_. It is the story of a youth, Dinias, who for love of a girl,
Dercyllis, did heroic things and undertook many adventures, including a
journey to the frozen north, and another to the moon. A second tale,
_Ephesiaca_, is the story of a man and a maid, each of whom scoffs at love.
They meet and fall desperately in love; but the course of true love does
not run smooth, and they separate, and suffer, and go through many perils,
before they "live happily ever after." This tale is the source of the
mediæval story, _Apollonius of Tyre_, which is used in Gower's _Confessio
Amantis_ and in Shakespeare's _Pericles_. A third tale is the pastoral love
story, _Daphnis and Chloe_, which reappeared in many forms in subsequent
literature.
Footnote 215: Minto's _Life of Defoe_, p. 139.
Footnote 216: These were not what the booksellers expected. They wanted a
"handy letter writer," something like a book of etiquette; and it was
published in 1741, a few months after _Pamela_.
Footnote 217: See p. 315.
Footnote 218: For titles and publishers of general reference works, and
of inexpensive texts, see General Bibliography at end of this book.
Footnote 219: Mrs. Radcliffe's best work is the _Mysteries of Udolpho_.
This is the story of a tender heroine shut up in a gloomy castle. Over her
broods the terrible shadow of an ancestor's crime. There are the usual
"goose-flesh" accompaniments of haunted rooms, secret doors, sliding
panels, mysterious figures behind old pictures, and a subterranean passage
leading to a vault, dark and creepy as a tomb. Here the heroine finds a
chest with blood-stained papers. By the light of a flickering candle she
reads, with chills and shivering, the record of long-buried crimes. At the
psychologic moment the little candle suddenly goes out. Then out of the
darkness a cold, clammy hand--ugh! Foolish as such stories seem to us now,
they show, first, a wild reaction from the skepticism of the preceding age;
and second, a development of the mediæval romance of adventure; only the
adventure is here inward rather than outward. It faces a ghost instead of a
dragon; and for this work a nun with her beads is better than a knight in
armor. So heroines abound, instead of heroes. The age was too educated for
medieval monsters and magic, but not educated enough to reject ghosts and
other bogeys.
Footnote 220: The _Lyrical Ballads_ were better appreciated in America
than in England. The first edition was printed here in 1802.
Footnote 221: _The Prelude_ was not published till after Wordsworth's
death, nearly half a century later.
Footnote 222: _The Prelude_, Book IV.
Footnote 223: Dowden's _Selections from Wordsworth_ is the best of many
such collections. See Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the end
of this chapter.
Footnote 224: See "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," in
_Essays of Elia_.
Footnote 225: See Scott's criticism of his own work, in comparison with
Jane Austen's, p. 439.
Footnote 226: Scott's novels were not the first to have an historical
basis. For thirty years preceding the appearance of _Waverley_, historical
romances were popular; but it was due to Scott's genius that the historical
novel became a permanent type of literature. See Cross, _The Development of
the English Novel_.
Footnote 227: See Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the end of
this chapter.
Footnote 228: Shelley undoubtedly took his idea from a lost drama of
Aeschylus, a sequel to _Prometheus Bound_, in which the great friend of
mankind was unchained from a precipice, where he had been placed by the
tyrant Zeus.
Footnote 229: This idea is suppported by Shelley's poem _Adonais_, and by
Byron's parody against the reviewers, beginning, "Who killed John Keats? I,
says the Quarterly."
Footnote 230: See "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," in
_Essays of Elia_.
Footnote 231: See _Essays of Elia,_ "The Superannuated Man."
Footnote 232: In the first essay, "The South Sea House," Lamb assumed as
a joke the name of a former clerk, Elia. Other essays followed, and the
name was retained when several successful essays were published in book
form, in 1823. In these essays "Elia" is Lamb himself, and "Cousin Bridget"
is his sister Mary.
Footnote 233: See histories for the Congress of Vienna (1814) and the
Holy Alliance (1815).
Footnote 234: For full titles and publishers of general reference books,
see General Bibliography at end of this book.
Footnote 235: An excellent little volume for the beginner is Van Dyke's
"Poems by Tennyson," which shows the entire range of the poet's work from
his earliest to his latest years. (See Selections for Reading, at the end
of this chapter.)
Footnote 236: Tennyson made a distinction in spelling between the _Idylls
of the King_, and the _English Idyls_, like "Dora."
Footnote 237: An excellent little book for the beginner is Lovett's
_Selections from Browning_. (See Selections for Reading, at the end of this
chapter.)
Footnote 238: This term, which means simply Italian painters before
Raphael, is generally applied to an artistic movement in the middle of the
nineteenth century. The term was first used by a brotherhood of German
artists who worked together in the convent of San Isodoro, in Rome, with
the idea of restoring art to its mediæval purity and simplicity. The term
now generally refers to a company of seven young men,--Dante Gabriel
Rossetti and his brother William, William Holman Hunt, John Everett
Millais, James Collinson, Frederick George Stevens, and Thomas Woolner,--
who formed the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in England in 1848. Their
official literary organ was called _The Germ_, in which much of the early
work of Morris and Rossetti appeared. They took for their models the early
Italian painters who, they declared, were "simple, sincere, and religious."
Their purpose was to encourage simplicity and naturalness in art and
literature; and one of their chief objects, in the face of doubt and
materialism, was to express the "wonder, reverence, and awe" which
characterizes mediæval art. In its return to the mysticism and symbolism of
the mediæval age, this Pre-Raphaelitism suggests the contemporary Oxford or
Tractarian movement in religion. (See footnote, p. 554).
Footnote 239: Arnold was one of the best known poets of the age, but
because he has exerted a deeper influence on our literature as a critic, we
have reserved him for special study among the essayists. (See p. xxx)
Footnote 240: It should be pointed out that the _English Humorists_ is
somewhat too highly colored to be strictly accurate. In certain cases also,
notably that of Steele, the reader may well object to Thackeray's
patronizing attitude toward his subject.
Footnote 241: See pp. 260-261.