English Literature Part 50

Footnote 196: From Macaulay's review of Boswell's _Life of Johnson_.

Footnote 197: Many of the writers show a mingling of the cla.s.sic and the romantic tendencies. Thus Goldsmith followed Johnson and opposed the romanticists; but his _Deserted Village_ is romantic in spirit, though its cla.s.sic couplets are almost as mechanical as Pope's. So Burke's orations are "elegantly cla.s.sic" 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 mediaeval 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 cla.s.ses, 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 cla.s.sifications 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 mediaeval 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 t.i.tles 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 pa.s.sage 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 s.h.i.+vering, 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 mediaeval 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: Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley'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 a.s.sumed 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 t.i.tles 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 d.y.k.e'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 mediaeval 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 mediaeval art. In its return to the mysticism and symbolism of the mediaeval 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. x.x.x)

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 att.i.tude toward his subject.

Footnote 241: See pp. 260-261.

Footnote 242: Emily Bronte (1818-1848) was only a little less gifted than her famous sister. Her best known work is _Wuthering Heights_ (1847), a strong but morbid novel of love and suffering. Matthew Arnold said of her that, "for the portrayal of pa.s.sion, vehemence, and grief," Emily Bronte had no equal save Byron. An exquisite picture of Emily is given in Charlotte Bronte's novel _s.h.i.+rley_.