English Literature
poet, and only his liberal opinions, his scorn of royalty and of
conventions, and the prejudice aroused by the pagan spirit of his early
work prevented his appointment as poet laureate. He has written a very
large number of poems, dramas, and essays in literary criticism; but we are
still too near to judge of the permanence of his work or of his place in
literature. Those who would read and estimate his work for themselves will
do well to begin with a volume of selected poems, especially those which
show his love of the sea and his exquisite appreciation of child life. His
_Atalanta in Calydon_ (1864), a beautiful lyric drama modeled on the Greek
tragedy, is generally regarded as his masterpiece. In all his work
Swinburne carries Tennyson's love of melody to an extreme, and often
sacrifices sense to sound. His poetry is always musical, and, like music,
appeals almost exclusively to the emotions.
* * * * *
We have chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, these four writers--Mrs. Browning, D.
G. Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne--as representative of the minor poets of
the age; but there are many others who are worthy of study,--Arthur Hugh
Clough and Matthew Arnold,[239] who are often called the poets of
skepticism, but who in reality represent a reverent seeking for truth
through reason and human experience; Frederick William Faber, the Catholic
mystic, author of some exquisite hymns; and the scholarly John Keble,
author of _The Christian Year_, our best known book of devotional verse;
and among the women poets, Adelaide Procter, Jean Ingelow, and Christina
Rossetti, each of whom had a large, admiring circle of readers. It would be
a hopeless task at the present time to inquire into the relative merits of
all these minor poets. We note only their careful workmanship and exquisite
melody, their wide range of thought and feeling, their eager search for
truth, each in his own way, and especially the note of freshness and
vitality which they have given to English poetry.
II. THE NOVELISTS OF THE VICTORIAN AGE
CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)
When we consider Dickens's life and work, in comparison with that of the
two great poets we have been studying, the contrast is startling. While
Tennyson and Browning were being educated for the life of literature, and
shielded most tenderly from the hardships of the world, Dickens, a poor,
obscure, and suffering child, was helping to support a shiftless family by
pasting labels on blacking bottles, sleeping under a counter like a
homeless cat, and once a week timidly approaching the big prison where his
father was confined for debt. In 1836 his _Pickwick_ was published, and
life was changed as if a magician had waved his wand over him. While the
two great poets were slowly struggling for recognition, Dickens, with
plenty of money and too much fame, was the acknowledged literary hero of
England, the idol of immense audiences which gathered to applaud him
wherever he appeared. And there is also this striking contrast between the
novelist and the poets,--that while the whole tendency of the age was
toward realism, away from the extremes of the romanticists and from the
oddities and absurdities of the early novel writers, it was precisely by
emphasizing oddities and absurdities, by making caricatures rather than
characters, that Dickens first achieved his popularity.
LIFE. In Dickens's early life we see a stern but unrecognized preparation
for the work that he was to do. Never was there a better illustration of
the fact that a boy's early hardship and suffering are sometimes only
divine messengers disguised, and that circumstances which seem only evil
are often the source of a man's strength and of the influence which he is
to wield in the world. He was the second of eight poor children, and was
born at Landport in 1812. His father, who is supposed to be the original of
Mr. Micawber, was a clerk in a navy office. He could never make both ends
meet, and after struggling with debts in his native town for many years,
moved to London when Dickens was nine years old. The debts still pursued
him, and after two years of grandiloquent misfortune he was thrown into the
poor-debtors' prison. His wife, the original of Mrs. Micawber, then set up
the famous Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies; but, in Dickens's
words, no young ladies ever came. The only visitors were creditors, and
they were quite ferocious. In the picture of the Micawber family, with its
tears and smiles and general shiftlessness, we have a suggestion of
Dickens's own family life.
At eleven years of age the boy was taken out of school and went to work in
the cellar of a blacking factory. At this time he was, in his own words, a
"queer small boy," who suffered as he worked; and we can appreciate the boy
and the suffering more when we find both reflected in the character of
David Copperfield. It is a heart-rending picture, this sensitive child
working from dawn till dark for a few pennies, and associating with toughs
and waifs in his brief intervals of labor; but we can see in it the sources
of that intimate knowledge of the hearts of the poor and outcast which was
soon to be reflected in literature and to startle all England by its appeal
for sympathy. A small legacy ended this wretchedness, bringing the father
from the prison and sending the boy to Wellington House Academy,--a
worthless and brutal school, evidently, whose head master was, in Dickens's
words, a most ignorant fellow and a tyrant. He learned little at this
place, being interested chiefly in stories, and in acting out the heroic
parts which appealed to his imagination; but again his personal experience
was of immense value, and resulted in his famous picture of Dotheboys Hall,
in _Nicholas Nickleby_, which helped largely to mitigate the evils of
private schools in England. Wherever he went, Dickens was a marvelously
keen observer, with an active imagination which made stories out of
incidents and characters that ordinary men would have hardly noticed.
Moreover he was a born actor, and was at one time the leading spirit of a
band of amateurs who gave entertainments for charity all over England.
These three things, his keen observation, his active imagination, and the
actor's spirit which animated him, furnish a key to his life and writings.
When only fifteen years old, he left the school and again went to work,
this time as clerk in a lawyer's office. By night he studied shorthand, in
order to fit himself to be a reporter,--this in imitation of his father,
who was now engaged by a newspaper to report the speeches in Parliament.
Everything that Dickens attempted seems to have been done with vigor and
intensity, and within two years we find him reporting important speeches,
and writing out his notes as the heavy coach lurched and rolled through the
mud of country roads on its dark way to London town. It was largely during
this period that he gained his extraordinary knowledge of inns and stables
and "horsey" persons, which is reflected in his novels. He also grew
ambitious, and began to write on his own account. At the age of twenty-one
he dropped his first little sketch "stealthily, with fear and trembling,
into a dark letter-box, in a dark office up a dark court in Fleet Street."
The name of this first sketch was "Mr. Minns and his Cousin," and it
appeared with other stories in his first book, _Sketches by Boz_, in 1835.
One who reads these sketches now, with their intimate knowledge of the
hidden life of London, can understand Dickens's first newspaper success
perfectly. His best known work, _Pickwick_, was published serially in
1836-1837, and Dickens's fame and fortune were made. Never before had a
novel appeared so full of vitality and merriment. Though crude in design, a
mere jumble of exaggerated characters and incidents, it fairly bubbled over
with the kind of humor in which the British public delights, and it still
remains, after three quarters of a century, one of our most care-dispelling
books.
The remainder of Dickens's life is largely a record of personal triumphs.
_Pickwick_ was followed rapidly by _Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Old
Curiosity Shop_, and by many other works which seemed to indicate that
there was no limit to the new author's invention of odd, grotesque,
uproarious, and sentimental characters. In the intervals of his novel
writing he attempted several times to edit a weekly paper; but his power
lay in other directions, and with the exception of _Household Words_, his
journalistic ventures were not a marked success. Again the actor came to
the surface, and after managing a company of amateur actors successfully,
Dickens began to give dramatic readings from his own works. As he was
already the most popular writer in the English language, these readings
were very successful. Crowds thronged to hear him, and his journeys became
a continuous ovation. Money poured into his pockets from his novels and
from his readings, and he bought for himself a home, Gadshill Place, which
he had always desired, and which is forever associated with his memory.
Though he spent the greater part of his time and strength in travel at this
period, nothing is more characteristic of the man than the intense energy
with which he turned from his lecturing to his novels, and then, for
relaxation, gave himself up to what he called the magic lantern of the
London streets.
In 1842, while still a young man, Dickens was invited to visit the United
States and Canada, where his works were even better known than in England,
and where he was received as the guest of the nation and treated with every
mark of honor and appreciation. At this time America was, to most
Europeans, a kind of huge fairyland, where money sprang out of the earth,
and life was happy as a long holiday. Dickens evidently shared this rosy
view, and his romantic expectations were naturally disappointed. The crude,
unfinished look of the big country seems to have roused a strong prejudice
in his mind, which was not overcome at the time of his second visit,
twenty-five years later, and which brought forth the harsh criticism of his
_American Notes_ (1842) and of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-1844). These two
unkind books struck a false note, and Dickens began to lose something of
his great popularity. In addition he had spent money beyond his income. His
domestic life, which had been at first very happy, became more and more
irritating, until he separated from his wife in 1858. To get inspiration,
which seemed for a time to have failed, he journeyed to Italy, but was
disappointed. Then he turned back to the London streets, and in the five
years from 1848 to 1853 appeared _Dombey and Son, David Copperfield_, and
_Bleak House_,--three remarkable novels, which indicate that he had
rediscovered his own power and genius. Later he resumed the public
readings, with their public triumph and applause, which soon came to be a
necessity to one who craved popularity as a hungry man craves bread. These
excitements exhausted Dickens, physically and spiritually, and death was
the inevitable result. He died in 1870, over his unfinished _Edwin Drood_,
and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
DICKENS'S WORK IN VIEW OF HIS LIFE. A glance through even this
unsatisfactory biography gives us certain illuminating suggestions in
regard to all of Dickens's work. First, as a child, poor and lonely,
longing for love and for society, he laid the foundation for those
heartrending pictures of children, which have moved so many readers to
unaccustomed tears. Second, as clerk in a lawyer's office and in the
courts, he gained his knowledge of an entirely different side of human
life. Here he learned to understand both the enemies and the victims of