English Literature
idea of presenting the life of English country society exactly as it was,
in opposition to the romantic extravagance of Mrs. Radcliffe and her
school. But there was this difference,--that Miss Austen had in large
measure the saving gift of humor, which Wordsworth sadly lacked. Maria
Edgeworth, at the same time, set a sane and excellent example in her tales
of Irish life, _The Absentee_ and _Castle Rackrent;_ and Miss Austen
followed up the advantage with at least six works, which have grown
steadily in value until we place them gladly in the first rank of our
novels of common life. It is not simply for her exquisite charm, therefore,
that we admire her, but also for her influence in bringing our novels back
to their true place as an expression of human life. It is due partly, at
least, to her influence that a multitude of readers were ready to
appreciate Mrs. Gaskell's _Cranford_, and the powerful and enduring work of
George Eliot.
LIFE. Jane Austen's life gives little opportunity for the biographer,
unless, perchance, he has something of her own power to show the beauty and
charm of commonplace things. She was the seventh child of Rev. George
Austen, rector of Steventon, and was born in the parsonage of the village
in 1775. With her sisters she was educated at home, and passed her life
very quietly, cheerfully, in the doing of small domestic duties, to which
love lent the magic lamp that makes all things beautiful. She began to
write at an early age, and seems to have done her work on a little table in
the family sitting room, in the midst of the family life. When a visitor
entered, she would throw a paper or a piece of sewing over her work, and
she modestly refused to be known as the author of novels which we now count
among our treasured possessions. With the publishers she had little
success. _Pride and Prejudice_ went begging, as we have said, for sixteen
years; and _Northanger Abbey_ (1798) was sold for a trivial sum to a
publisher, who laid it aside and forgot it, until the appearance and
moderate success of _Sense and Sensibility_ in 1811. Then, after keeping
the manuscript some fifteen years, he sold it back to the family, who found
another publisher.
An anonymous article in the _Quarterly Review_, following the appearance of
_Emma_ in 1815, full of generous appreciation of the charm of the new
writer, was the beginning of Jane Austen's fame; and it is only within a
few years that we have learned that the friendly and discerning critic was
Walter Scott. He continued to be her admirer until her early death; but
these two, the greatest writers of fiction in their age, were never brought
together. Both were home-loving people, and Miss Austen especially was
averse to publicity and popularity. She died, quietly as she had lived, at
Winchester, in 1817, and was buried in the cathedral. She was a bright,
attractive little woman, whose sunny qualities are unconsciously reflected
in all her books.
WORKS. Very few English writers ever had so narrow a field of work as Jane
Austen. Like the French novelists, whose success seems to lie in choosing
the tiny field that they know best, her works have an exquisite perfection
that is lacking in most of our writers of fiction. With the exception of an
occasional visit to the watering place of Bath, her whole life was spent in
small country parishes, whose simple country people became the characters
of her novels. Her brothers were in the navy, and so naval officers furnish
the only exciting elements in her stories; but even these alleged heroes
lay aside their imposing martial ways and act like themselves and other
people. Such was her literary field, in which the chief duties were of the
household, the chief pleasures in country gatherings, and the chief
interests in matrimony. Life, with its mighty interests, its passions,
ambitions, and tragic struggles, swept by like a great river; while the
secluded interests of a country parish went round and round quietly, like
an eddy behind a sheltering rock. We can easily understand, therefore, the
limitations of Jane Austen; but within her own field she is unequaled. Her
characters are absolutely true to life, and all her work has the perfection
of a delicate miniature painting. The most widely read of her novels is
_Pride and Prejudice;_ but three others, _Sense and Sensibility, Emma_, and
_Mansfield Park_, have slowly won their way to the front rank of fiction.
From a literary view point _Northanger Abbey_ is perhaps the best; for in
it we find that touch of humor and delicate satire with which this gentle
little woman combated the grotesque popular novels of the _Udolpho_ type.
Reading any of these works, one is inclined to accept the hearty
indorsement of Sir Walter Scott: "That young lady has a talent for
describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life
which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bowwow strain I
can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders
ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of
the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a
gifted creature died so early!"
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775-1864)
While Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey, and other romantic critics went back to
early English literature for their inspiration, Landor shows a reaction
from the prevailing Romanticism by his imitation of the ancient classic
writers. His life was an extraordinary one and, like his work, abounded in
sharp contrasts. On the one hand, there are his egoism, his unncontrollable
anger, his perpetual lawsuits, and the last sad tragedy with his children,
which suggests _King Lear_ and his daughters; on the other hand there is
his steady devotion to the classics and to the cultivation of the deep
wisdom of the ancients, which suggests Pindar and Cicero. In his works we
find the wild extravagance of _Gebir_, followed by the superb classic style
and charm of _Pericles and Aspasia_. Such was Landor, a man of high ideals,
perpetually at war with himself and the world.
LIFE. Lander's stormy life covers the whole period from Wordsworth's
childhood to the middle of the Victorian Era. He was the son of a
physician, and was born at Warwick, in 1775. From his mother he inherited a
fortune; but it was soon scattered by large expenditures and law quarrels;
and in his old age, refused help by his own children, only Browning's
generosity kept Landor from actual want. At Rugby, and at Oxford, his
extreme Republicanism brought him into constant trouble; and his fitting
out a band of volunteers to assist the Spaniards against Napoleon, in 1808,
allies him with Byron and his Quixotic followers. The resemblance to Byron
is even more strikingly shown in the poem _Gebir_, published in 1798, a
year made famous by the _Lyrical Ballads_ of Wordsworth and Coleridge.
A remarkable change in Lander's life is noticeable in 1821, when, at
forty-six years of age, after having lost his magnificent estate of
Llanthony Abbey, in Glamorganshire, and after a stormy experience in Como,
he settled down for a time at Fiesole near Florence. To this period of calm
after storm we owe the classical prose works for which he is famous. The
calm, like that at the center of a whirlwind, lasted but a short time, and
Landor, leaving his family in great anger, returned to Bath, where he lived
alone for more than twenty years. Then, in order to escape a libel suit,
the choleric old man fled back to Italy. He died at Florence, in 1864. The
spirit of his whole life may be inferred from the defiant farewell which he
flung to it:
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
WORKS. Landor's reaction from Romanticism is all the more remarkable in
view of his early efforts, such as _Gebir_, a wildly romantic poem, which
rivals any work of Byron or Shelley in its extravagance. Notwithstanding
its occasional beautiful and suggestive lines, the work was not and never
has been successful; and the same may be said of all his poetical works.
His first collection of poems was published in 1795, his last a full half
century later, in 1846. In the latter volume, _The Hellenics_,--which
included some translations of his earlier Latin poems, called _Idyllia
Heroica,--_one has only to read "The Hamadryad," and compare it with the
lyrics of the first volume, in order to realize the astonishing literary
vigor of a man who published two volumes, a half century apart, without any
appreciable diminution of poetical feeling. In all these poems one is
impressed by the striking and original figures of speech which Landor uses
to emphasize his meaning.
It is by his prose works, largely, that Landor has won a place in our
literature; partly because of their intrinsic worth, their penetrating
thought, and severe classic style; and partly because of their profound
influence upon the writers of the present age. The most noted of his prose
works are his six volumes of _Imaginary Conversations_ (1824-1846). For
these conversations Landor brings together, sometimes in groups, sometimes
in couples, well-known characters, or rather shadows, from the four corners
of the earth and from the remotest ages of recorded history. Thus Diogenes
talks with Plato, Æsop with a young slave girl in Egypt, Henry VIII with
Anne Boleyn in prison, Dante with Beatrice, Leofric with Lady Godiva,--all
these and many others, from Epictetus to Cromwell, are brought together and
speak of life and love and death, each from his own view point.
Occasionally, as in the meeting of Henry and Anne Boleyn, the situation is
tense and dramatic; but as a rule the characters simply meet and converse
in the same quiet strain, which becomes, after much reading, somewhat
monotonous. On the other hand, one who reads the _Imaginary Conversations_
is lifted at once into a calm and noble atmosphere which braces and
inspires him, making him forget petty things, like a view from a hilltop.
By its combination of lofty thought and severely classic style the book has
won, and deserves, a very high place among our literary records.
The same criticism applies to _Pericles and Aspasia_, which is a series of
imaginary letters, telling the experiences of Aspasia, a young lady from
Asia Minor, who visits Athens at the summit of its fame and glory, in the
great age of Pericles. This is, in our judgment, the best worth reading of
all Landor's works. One gets from it not only Landor's classic style,
but--what is well worth while--a better picture of Greece in the days of
its greatness than can be obtained from many historical volumes.
SUMMARY OF THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM. This period extends from the war with
the colonies, following the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, to the
accession of Victoria in 1837, both limits being very indefinite, as will
be seen by a glance at the Chronology following. During the first part of
the period especially, England was in a continual turmoil, produced by
political and economic agitation at home, and by the long wars that covered
two continents and the wide sea between them. The mighty changes resulting
from these two causes have given this period the name of the Age of
Revolution. The storm center of all the turmoil at home and abroad was the
French Revolution, which had a profound influence on the life and
literature of all Europe. On the Continent the overthrow of Napoleon at
Waterloo (1815) apparently checked the progress of liberty, which had
started with the French Revolution,[233] but in England the case was
reversed. The agitation for popular liberty, which at one time threatened a