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It is not a part of the plan of this book to present any extended bibliography, but there are certain reference books to which the student's attention should be called.
'Fingal' and
the rest, certainly contributed to the Romantic Movement; and they are
not only unique productions, but, in small quantities, still interesting.
They can best be described as reflections of the misty scenes of Macpherson's
native Highlands--vague impressionistic glimpses, succeeding one another
in purposeless repetition, of bands of marching warriors whose weapons
intermittently flash and clang through the fog, and of heroic women,
white-armed and with flowing hair, exhorting the heroes to the combat
or lamenting their fall.
A very minor
figure, but one of the most pathetic in the history of English literature,
is that of Thomas Chatterton. While he was a boy in Bristol,
the medieval buildings of the city possessed Chatterton’s imagination,
and when some old documents fell into his hands he formed the idea of
composing similar works in both verse and prose and passing them off
as medieval productions which he had discovered. To his imaginary author
he gave the name of Thomas Rowley. Entirely successful in deceiving
his fellow-townsmen, and filled with a great ambition, Chatterton went
to London, where, failing to secure patronage, he committed suicide
as the only resource against the begging to which his proud spirit could
not submit. This was in 1770, and he was still only eighteen years old.
Chatterton's work must be viewed under several aspects. His imitation
of the medieval language was necessarily imperfect and could mislead
no one to-day; from this point of view, the poems have no permanent
significance. The moral side of his action need not be seriously weighed,
as Chatterton never reached the age of responsibility and if he had
lived would soon have passed from forgery to genuine work. That he might
have achieved much is suggested by the evidences of real genius in his
boyish output, which probably justify Wordsworth's description, of him
as 'the marvelous boy.' That he would have become one of the great English
poets, however, is much more open to question.
WILLIAM COWPER.
Equally pathetic
is the figure of William Cowper (pronounced either Cowper or Cooper),
whose much longer life (1731-1800) and far larger literary production
give him a more important actual place than can be claimed for Chatterton,
though his natural ability was far less and his significance to-day
is chiefly historical. Cowper's career, also, was largely frustrated
by the same physical weaknesses which had ruined Collins, present in
the later poet in still more distressing degree. Cowper is clearly a
transition poet, sharing largely, in a very mild fashion, in some of
the main romantic impulses, but largely pseudo-classical in his manner
of thought and expression. His life may be briefly summarized. Morbid
timidity and equally morbid religious introspection, aggravated by disappointments
in love, prevented him as a young man from accepting a very comfortable
clerkship in the House of Lords and drove him into intermittent insanity,
which closed more darkly about him in his later years. He lived the
greater part of his mature life in the household of Mrs. Unwin, a widow
for whom he had a deep affection and whom only his mental affliction
prevented him from marrying. A long residence in the wretched village
of Olney, where he forced himself to cooperate in all phases of religious
work with the village clergyman, the stern enthusiast John Newton, produced
their joint collection of 'Olney Hymns,' many of which deservedly remain
among the most popular in our church song-books; but it inevitably increased
Cowper's disorder. After this, he resigned himself to a perfectly simple
life, occupied with the writing of poetry, the care of pets, gardening,
and carpentry. The bulk of his work consists of long moralizing poems,
prosy, prolix, often trivial, and to-day largely unreadable. Some of
them are in the rimed couplet and others in blank verse. His blank-verse
translation of Homer, published in 1791, is more notable, and 'Alexander
Selkirk' and the humorous doggerel 'John Gilpin' are famous; but his
most significant poems are a few lyrics and descriptive pieces in which
he speaks out his deepest feelings with the utmost pathetic or tragic
power. In the expression of different moods of almost intolerable sadness,
'On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture' and 'To Mary' (Mrs. Unwin) can
scarcely be surpassed, and 'The Castaway' is final as the restrained
utterance of morbid religious despair. Even in his long poems, in his
minutely loving treatment of Nature he is the most direct precursor
of Wordsworth, and he is one of the earliest outspoken opponents of
slavery and cruelty to animals. Mrs. Browning suggests how unsuited
in all respects his delicate and sensitive nature was to the harsh experiences
of actual life with vehement sympathy in her poem, 'Cowper's Grave.'
WILLIAM BLAKE.
Still another
utterly unworldly and frankly abnormal poet, though of a still different
temperament, was William Blake (1757-1827), who in many respects is
one of the most extreme of all romanticists. Blake, the son of a London
retail shopkeeper, received scarcely any book education, but at fourteen
he was apprenticed to an engraver, who stimulated his imagination by
setting him to work at making drawings in Westminster Abbey and other
old churches. His training was completed by study at the Royal Academy
of Arts, and for the rest of his life he supported himself, in poverty,
with the aid of a devoted wife, by keeping a print-and-engraving shop.
Among his own engravings, the best known is the famous picture of Chaucer's
Canterbury Pilgrims, which is not altogether free from the weird strangeness
that distinguished most of his work in all lines. For in spite of his
commonplace exterior life Blake was a thorough mystic to whom the angels
and spirits that he beheld in trances were at least as real as the material
world. When his younger brother died, he declared that he saw the released
soul mount through the ceiling, clapping its hands in joy. The bulk
of his writing consists of a series of 'prophetic books' in verse and
prose, works, in part, of genius, but of unbalanced genius, and virtually
unintelligible. His lyric poems, some of them composed when he was no
more than thirteen years old, are unlike anything else anywhere and
some of them are of the highest quality. Their controlling trait is
childlikeness, for Blake remained all his life one of those children
of whom is the Kingdom of Heaven. One of their commonest notes is that
of childlike delight in the mysterious joy and beauty of the world,
a delight sometimes touched, it is true, as in 'The Tiger,' with a maturer
consciousness of the wonderful and terrible power behind all the beauty.
Blake has intense indignation also for all cruelty and everything, which
he takes for cruelty, including the shutting up of children in school
away from the happy life of out-of-doors. These are the chief sentiments
of 'Songs of Innocence.' In 'Songs of Experience' the shadow of relentless
fact falls somewhat more perceptibly across the page, though the prevailing
ideas are the same. Blake's significant product is very small, but it
deserves much greater reputation than it has actually attained. One
characteristic external fact should be added. Since Blake's poverty
rendered him unable to pay for having his books printed, he himself
performed the enormous labor of engraving them, page by page, often
with an ornamental margin about the text.
ROBERT BURNS.
Blake, deeply
romantic as he is by nature, virtually stands by himself, apart from
any movement or group, and the same is equally true of the somewhat
earlier lyrist in whom eighteenth century poetry culminates, namely
Robert Burns. Burns, the oldest of the seven children of two sturdy
Scotch peasants of the best type, was born in 1759 in Ayrshire, just
beyond the northwest border of England. In spite of extreme poverty,
the father joined with some of his neighbors in securing the services
of a teacher for their children, and the household possessed a few good
books, including Shakspere and Pope, whose influence on the future poet
was great. But the lot of the family was unusually hard. The father's
health failed early and from childhood the boys were obliged to do men's
work in the field. Robert later declared, probably with some bitter
exaggeration, that his life had combined 'the cheerless gloom of a hermit
with the unceasing moil of a galley slave.' His genius, however, like
his exuberant spirit, could not be crushed out. His mother had familiarized
him from the beginning with the songs and ballads of which the country
was full, and though he is said at first to have had so little ear for
music that he could scarcely distinguish one tune from another, he soon
began to compose songs (words) of his own as he followed the plough.
In the greatness of his later success his debt to the current body of
song and music should not be overlooked. He is only the last of a long
succession of rural Scottish song-writers; he composed his own songs
to accompany popular airs; and many of them are directly based on fragments
of earlier songs. None the less his work rises immeasurably above all
that had gone before it.
The story of
Burns' mature life is the pathetic one of a very vigorous nature in
which genius, essential manliness, and good impulses struggled against
and were finally overcome by violent passions, aggravated by the bitterness
of poverty and repeated disappointments. His first effort, at eighteen,
to better his condition, by the study of surveying at a neighboring
town, resulted chiefly in throwing him into contact with bad companions;
a venture in the business of flax-dressing ended in disaster; and the
same ill-fortune attended the several successive attempts which he made
at general farming. He became unfortunately embroiled also with the
Church, which (the Presbyterian denomination) exercised a very strict
control in Scotland. Compelled to do public penance for some of his
offenses, his keen wit could not fail to be struck by the inconsistency
between the rigid doctrines and the lives of some of the men who were
proceeding against him; and he commemorated the feud in his series of
overwhelming but painfully flippant satires.
His brief period
of dazzling public success dawned suddenly out of the darkest moment
of his fortunes. At the age of twenty-seven, abandoning the hope which
he had already begun to cherish of becoming the national poet of Scotland,
he had determined in despair to emigrate to Jamaica to become an overseer
on a plantation. (That this chief poet of democracy, the author of 'A
Man's a Man for a' That,' could have planned to become a slave-driver
suggests how closely the most genuine human sympathies are limited by
habit and circumstances.) To secure the money for his voyage Burns had
published his poems in a little volume. This won instantaneous and universal
popularity, and Burns, turning back at the last moment, responded to
the suggestion of some of the great people of Edinburgh that he should
come to that city and see what could be done for him. At first the experiment
seemed fortunate, for the natural good breeding with which this untrained
countryman bore himself for a winter as the petted lion of the society
of fashion and learning (the University) was remarkable. None the less
the situation was unnatural and necessarily temporary, and unluckily
Burns formed associations also with such boon companions of the lower
sort as had hitherto been his undoing. After a year Edinburgh dropped
him, thus supplying substantial fuel for his ingrained poor man's jealousy
and rancor at the privileged classes. Too near his goal to resume the
idea of emigrating, he returned to his native moors, rented another
farm, and married Jean Armour, one of the several heroines of his love-poems.
The only material outcome of his period of public favor was an appointment
as internal revenue collector, an unpopular and uncongenial office which
he accepted with reluctance and exercised with leniency. It required
him to occupy much of his time in riding about the country, and contributed
to his final failure as a farmer. After the latter event he removed
to the neighboring market-town of Dumfries, where he again renewed his
companionship with unworthy associates. At last prospects for promotion
in the revenue service began to open to him, but it was too late; his
naturally robust constitution had given way to over-work and dissipation,
and he died in 1796 at the age of thirty-seven.
Burns' place
among poets is perfectly clear. It is chiefly that of a song-writer,
perhaps the greatest songwriter of the world. At work in the fields
or in his garret or kitchen after the long day's work was done, he composed
songs because he could not help it, because his emotion was irresistibly
stirred by the beauty and life of the birds and flowers, the snatch
of a melody which kept running through his mind, or the memory of the
girl with whom he had last talked. And his feelings expressed themselves
with spontaneous simplicity, genuineness, and ease. He is a thoroughly
romantic poet, though wholly by the grace of nature, not at all from
any conscious intention--he wrote as the inspiration moved him, not
in accordance with any theory of art. The range of his subjects and
emotions is nearly or quite complete--love; comradeship; married affection,
as in 'John Anderson, My Jo'; reflective sentiment; feeling for nature;
sympathy with animals; vigorous patriotism, as in 'Scots Wha Hae' (and
Burns did much to revive the feeling of Scots for Scotland); deep tragedy
and pathos; instinctive happiness; delightful humor; and the others.
It should be clearly recognized, however, that this achievement, supreme
as it is in its own way, does not suffice to place Burns among the greatest
poets. The brief lyrical outbreaks of the song-writer are no more to
be compared with the sustained creative power and knowledge of life
and character which make the great dramatist or narrative poet than
the bird's song is to be compared with an opera of Wagner. But such
comparisons need not be pressed; and the song of bird or poet appeals
instantly to every normal hearer, while the drama or narrative poem
requires at least some special accessories and training. Burns' significant
production, also, is not altogether limited to songs. 'The Cotter's
Saturday Night' (in Spenser's stanza) is one of the perfect descriptive
poems of lyrical sentiment; and some of Burns' meditative poems and
poetical epistles to acquaintances are delightful in a free-and-easy
fashion. The exuberant power in the religious satires and the narrative
'Tam o' Shanter' is undeniable, but they belong to a lower order of
work.
Many of Burns' poems are in the Lowland Scots dialect; a few are wholly in ordinary English; and some combine the two idioms. It is an interesting question whether Burns wins distinctly greater success in one than in the other. In spite of his prevailing literary honesty, it may be observed, his English shows some slight traces of the effort to imitate Pope and the feeling that the pseudo-classical style with its elegance was really the highest--a feeling which renders some of his letters painfully affected.
[Footnote:
For the sake of brevity, the sternly realistic poet George Crabbe is
here omitted.]
THE NOVEL.
We have traced
the literary production of the eighteenth century in many different
forms, but it still remains to speak of one of the most important, the
novel, which in the modern meaning of the word had its origin not long
before 1750. Springing at that time into apparently sudden popularity,
it replaced the drama as the predominant form of literature and has
continued such ever since. The reasons are not hard to discover. The
drama is naturally the most popular literary form in periods like the
Elizabethan when the ability (or inclination) to read is not general,
when men are dominated by the zest for action, and when cities have
become sufficiently large to keep the theaters well filled. It is also
the natural form in such a period as that of the Restoration, when literary
life centers about a frivolous upper class who demand an easy and social
form of entertainment. But the condition is very different when, as
in the eighteenth and still more in the nineteenth century, the habit
of reading, and some recognition of its educating influence, had spread
throughout almost all classes and throughout the country, creating a
public far too large, too scattered, and too varied to gain access to
the London and provincial theaters or to find all their needs supplied
by a somewhat artificial literary form. The novel, on the other hand,
gives a much fuller portrayal of life than does the drama, and allows
the much more detailed analysis of characters and situations which the
modern mind has come more and more to demand.
The novel,
which for our present purpose must be taken to include the romance,
is, of course, only a particular and highly developed kind of long story,
one of the latest members of the family of fiction, or the larger family
of narrative, in prose and verse. The medieval romances, for example,
included most of the elements of the novel, even, sometimes, psychological
analysis; but the romances usually lacked the unity, the complex and
careful structure, the thorough portrayal of character, and the serious
attention to the real problems of life which in a general way distinguish
the modern novel. Much the same is true of the Elizabethan 'novels,'
which, besides, were generally short as well as of small intellectual
and ethical caliber. During the Restoration period and a little later
there began to appear several kinds of works which perhaps looked more
definitely toward the later novel. Bunyan's religious allegories may
likely enough have had a real influence on it, and there were a few
English tales and romances of chivalry (above, pages 184-5), and a few
more realistic pieces of fiction. The habit of journal writing and the
letters about London life sent by some persons in the city to their
friends in the country should also be mentioned. The De Coverly papers
in 'The Spectator' approach distinctly toward the novel. They give real
presentation of both characters and setting (social life) and lack only
connected treatment of the story (of Sir Roger). Defoe's fictions, picaresque
tales of adventure, come still closer, but lack the deeper artistic
and moral purpose and treatment suggested a moment ago. The case is
not very different with Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels,' which, besides,
is primarily a satire. Substantially, therefore, all the materials were
now ready, awaiting only the fortunate hand which should arrange and
shape them into a real novel. This proved to be the hand of a rather
unlikely person, the outwardly commonplace printer, Samuel Richardson.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON.
It is difficult,
because of the sentimental nature of the period and the man, to tell
the story of Richardson's career without an appearance of farcical burlesque.
Born in 1689, in Derbyshire, he early gave proof of his special endowments
by delighting his childish companions with stories, and, a little later,
by becoming the composer of the love letters of various young women.
His command of language and an insistent tendency to moralize seemed
to mark him out for the ministry, but his father was unable to pay for
the necessary education and apprenticed him to a London printer. Possessed
of great fidelity and all the quieter virtues, he rose steadily and
became in time the prosperous head of his own printing house, a model
citizen, and the father of a large family of children. Before he reached
middle life he was a valetudinarian. His household gradually became
a constant visiting place for a number of young ladies toward whom he
adopted a fatherly attitude and who without knowing it were helping
him to prepare for his artistic success.
When he was
not quite fifty his great reputation among his acquaintances as a letter-writer
led some publishers to invite him to prepare a series of 'Familiar [that
is, Friendly] Letters' as models for inexperienced young people. Complying,
Richardson discovered the possibilities of the letter form as a means
of telling stories, and hence proceeded to write his first novel, 'Pamela,
[Footnote: He wrongly placed the accent on the first syllable.] or Virtue
Rewarded,' which was published in 1740. It attained enormous success,
which he followed up by writing his masterpiece, 'Clarissa Harlowe'
(1747-8), and then 'The History of Sir Charles Grandison' (1753). He
spent his latter years, as has been aptly said, in a sort of perpetual
tea-party, surrounded by bevies of admiring ladies, and largely occupied
with a vast feminine correspondence, chiefly concerning his novels.
He died of apoplexy in 1761.
At this distance of time it is easy to summarize the main traits of Richardson's novels.
1. He gave form to the modern novel by shaping it according to a definite plot with carefully selected incidents which all contributed directly to the outcome. In this respect his practice was decidedly stricter than that of most of his English successors down to the present time. Indeed, he avowedly constructed his novels on the plan of dramas, while later novelists, in the desire to present a broader picture of life, have generally allowed themselves greater range of scenes and a larger number of characters. In the instinct for suspense, also, no one has surpassed Richardson; his stories are intense, not to say sensational, and once launched upon them we follow with the keenest interest to the outcome.
2. Nevertheless, he is always prolix. That the novels as published varied in length from four to eight volumes is not really significant, since these were the very small volumes which (as a source of extra profit) were to be the regular form for novels until after the time of Scott. Even 'Clarissa,' the longest, is not longer than some novels of our own day. Yet they do much exceed the average in length and would undoubtedly gain by condensation. Richardson, it may be added, produced each of them in the space of a few months, writing, evidently, with the utmost fluency, and with little need for revision.
3. Most permanently important, perhaps, of all Richardson's contributions, was his creation of complex characters, such as had thitherto appeared not in English novels but only in the drama. In characterization Richardson's great strength lay with his women--he knew the feminine mind and spirit through and through. His first heroine, Pamela, is a plebeian serving-maid, and his second, Clarissa, a fine-spirited young lady of the wealthy class, but both are perfectly and completely true and living, throughout all their terribly complex and trying experiences. Men, on the other hand, those beyond his own particular circle, Richardson understood only from the outside. Annoyed by criticisms to this effect, he attempted in the hero of his last book to present a true gentleman, but the result is only a mechanical ideal figure of perfection whose wooden joints creak painfully as he moves slowly about under the heavy load of his sternly self-conscious goodness and dignity.
4. Richardson's
success in his own time was perhaps chiefly due to his striking with
exaggerated emphasis the note of tender sentiment to which the spirit
of his generation was so over-ready to respond. The substance of his
books consists chiefly of the sufferings of his heroines under ingeniously
harrowing persecution at the hands of remorseless scoundrels. Pamela,
with her serving-maid's practical efficiency, proves able to take care
of herself, but the story of the high-bred and noble-minded Clarissa
is, with all possible deductions, one of the most deeply-moving tragedies
ever committed to paper. The effect in Richardson's own time may easily
be imagined; but it is also a matter of record that his novels were
commonly read aloud in the family circle (a thing which some of their
incidents would render impossible at the present day) and that sometimes
when the emotional strain became too great the various listeners would
retire to their own rooms to cry out their grief. Richardson appealed
directly, then, to the prevailing taste of his generation, and no one
did more than he to confirm its hold on the next generation, not only
in England, but also in France and Germany.