Outlines of English and American Literature Part 33

We are still too near Swinburne to judge him accurately, and his place in the long history of English poetry is yet to be determined. We note here only two characteristics which may or may not be evident to other readers.

In the first place, with his marvelous command of meter and melody, Swinburne has a fatal fluency of speech which tends to bury his thought in a ma.s.s of jingling verbiage. As we read we seem to hear the question, "What readest thou, Hamlet?" and again the Dane makes answer, "Words, words, words." Again, like the Pre-Raphaelites with whom he was at one time a.s.sociated, Swinburne lived too much apart from the tide of common life. He wrote for the chosen few, and in the ma.s.s of his verse one must search long for a pa.s.sage of which one may say, This goes home to the hearts of men, and abides there in the treasure-house of all good poetry.

Among the longer works of Swinburne his masterpiece is the lyrical drama _Atalanta in Calydon_. If one would merely sample the flavor of the poet, such minor works as "Itylus" and the fine sea pieces, "Off Sh.o.r.e,"

"By the North Sea" and "A Forsaken Garden" may be recommended. Nor should we overlook what, to many, is Swinburne's best quality; namely, his love of children, as reflected in such poems as "The Salt of the Earth" and "A Child's Laughter." Among the best of his prose works are his _William Blake_, _Essays and Studies_, _Miscellanies_ and _Studies in Prose and Verse_.

SONGS IN MANY KEYS. In calling attention to the above-named poets, we have merely indicated a few who seem to be chief; but the judgment is a personal one, and subject to challenge. The American critic Stedman, in his _Victorian Anthology_, recognizes two hundred and fifty singers; of these eighty are represented by five or more poems; and of the eighty a few are given higher places than those we have selected as typical. There are many readers who prefer the _Goblin Market_ of Christina Rossetti to anything produced by her gifted brother, who place Jean Ingelow above Elizabeth Barrett, who find more pleasure in Edwin Arnold's _Light of Asia_ than in all the poems of Matthew Arnold, and who cannot be interested in even the best of Pre-Raphaelite verse because of its unreality. Many men, many minds! Time has not yet recorded its verdict on the Victorians, and until there is some settled criticism which shall express the judgment of several generations of men, the best plan for the beginner is to make acquaintance with all the minor poets in an anthology or book of selections. It may even be a mistake to call any of these poets minor; for he who has written one song that lives in the hearts of men has produced a work more enduring than the pyramids.

II. THE VICTORIAN NOVELISTS

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS (1812-1870)

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHARLES d.i.c.kENS]

Among the Victorian novelists were two men who were frequent rivals in the race for fame and fortune. Thackeray, well born and well bred, with artistic tastes and literary culture, looked doubtfully at the bustling life around him, found his inspiration in a past age, and tried to uphold the best traditions of English literature. d.i.c.kens, with little education and less interest in literary culture, looked with joy upon the struggle for democracy, and with an observation that was almost microscopic saw all its picturesque details of speech and character and incident. He was the eye of the mighty Victorian age, as Tennyson was its ear, and Browning its psychologist, and Carlyle its chronic grumbler.

LIFE. In the childhood of d.i.c.kens one may see a forecast of his entire career. His father, a good-natured but s.h.i.+ftless man (caricatured as Mr. Micawber in _David Copperfield_), was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, at Portsmouth. There d.i.c.kens was born in 1812. The father's salary was 80 per year, enough at that time to warrant living in middle-cla.s.s comfort rather than in the poverty of the lower cla.s.ses, with whom d.i.c.kens is commonly a.s.sociated. The mother was a sentimental woman, whom d.i.c.kens, with questionable taste, has caricatured as Mrs. Micawber and again as Mrs. Nickleby. Both parents were somewhat neglectful of their children, and uncommonly fond of creature comforts, especially of good dinners and a bowl of punch. Though there is nothing in such a family to explain d.i.c.kens's character, there is much to throw light on the characters that appear in his novels.

[Sidenote: THE STAGE]

The boy himself was far from robust. Having no taste for sports, he amused himself by reading romances or by listening to his nurse's tales,--beautiful tales, he thought, which "almost scared him into fits." His elfish fancy in childhood is probably reflected in Pip, of _Great Expectations_. He had a strong dramatic instinct to act a story, or sing a song, or imitate a neighbor's speech, and the father used to amuse his friends by putting little Charles on a chair and encouraging him to mimicry,--a dangerous proceeding, though it happened to turn out well in the case of d.i.c.kens.

This stagey tendency increased as the boy grew older. He had a pa.s.sion for private theatricals, and when he wrote a good story was not satisfied till he had read it in public. When _Pickwick_ appeared (1837) the young man, till then an unknown reporter, was brought before an immense audience which included a large part of England and America. Thereafter he was never satisfied unless he was in the public eye; his career was a succession of theatrical incidents, of big successes, big lecture tours, big audiences,--always the footlights, till he lay at last between the pale wax tapers. But we are far ahead of our story.

[Sidenote: THE LONDON STREETS]

When d.i.c.kens was nine years old his family moved to London. There the father fell into debt, and by the brutal laws of the period was thrown into prison. The boy went to work in the cellar of a blacking factory, and there began that intimate acquaintance with lowly characters which he used later to such advantage. He has described his bitter experience so often (in _David Copperfield_ for instance) that the biographer may well pa.s.s over it. We note only this significant fact: that wherever d.i.c.kens went he had an instinct for exploration like that of a farm dog, which will not rest in a place till he has first examined all the neighborhood, putting his nose into every likely or unlikely spot that may shelter friend or enemy. So d.i.c.kens used his spare hours in roaming the byways of London by night, so he gained his marvelous knowledge of that foreign land called The Street, with its flitting life of gamins and nondescripts, through which we pa.s.s daily as through an unknown country.

[Sidenote: THE SCRAMBLE FOR PLACE]

A small inheritance brought the father from prison, the family was again united, and for two years the boy attended the academy which he has held up to the laughter and scorn of two continents. There the genius of d.i.c.kens seemed suddenly to awaken. He studied little, being given to pranks and theatricals, but he discovered within him an immense ambition, an imperious will to win a place and a name in the great world, and a hopeful temper that must carry him over or under all obstacles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GADs.h.i.+LL PLACE, NEAR ROCHESTER The last residence of d.i.c.kens]

No sooner was his discovery made than he left school and entered a law office, where he picked up enough knowledge to make court practices forever ridiculous, in _Bleak House_ and other stories. He studied shorthand and quickly mastered it; then undertook to report parliamentary speeches (a good training in oratory) and presently began a prosperous career as a reporter.

This had two advantages; it developed his natural taste for odd people and picturesque incidents, and it brought him close to the great reading public. To please that public, to humor its whims and prejudices, its love for fun and tears and sentimentality, was thereafter the ruling motive in d.i.c.kens's life.

[Sidenote: LITERARY VENTURES]

His first literary success came with some short stories contributed to the magazines, which appeared in book form as _Sketches by Boz_ (1835). A publisher marked these sketches, engaged d.i.c.kens to write the text or letterpress for some comic pictures, and the result was _Pickwick_, which took England and America by storm. Then followed _Oliver Twist_, _Nicholas Nickleby_, _Old Curiosity Shop_,--a flood of works that made readers rub their eyes, wondering if such a fountain of laughter and tears were inexhaustible.

There is little else to record except this: that from the time of his first triumph d.i.c.kens held his place as the most popular writer in English. With his novels he was not satisfied, but wrote a history of England, and edited various popular magazines, such as _Household Words_. Also he gave public readings, reveling in the applause, the lionizing, which greeted him wherever he went. He earned much money; he bought the place "Gads.h.i.+ll," near Rochester, which he had coveted since childhood; but he was a free spender, and his great income was less than his fancied need. To increase his revenue he "toured" the States in a series of readings from his own works, and capitalized his experience in _American Notes_ and parts of _Martin Chuzzlewit_.

A question of taste must arise even now in connection with these works. d.i.c.kens had gone to a foreign country for just two things, money and applause; he received both in full measure; then he bit the friendly hand which had given him what he wanted. [Footnote: The chief source of d.i.c.kens's irritation was the money loss resulting from the "pirating" of his stories. There was no international copyright in those days; the works of any popular writer were freely appropriated by foreign publishers. This custom was wrong, undoubtedly, but it had been in use for centuries.

Scott's novels had been pirated the same way; and until Cooper got to windward of the pirates (by arranging for foreign copyrights) his work was stolen freely in England and on the Continent. But d.i.c.kens saw only his own grievance, and even at public dinners was apt to make his hosts uncomfortable by proclaiming his rights or denouncing their moral standards. Moreover, he had a vast conceit of himself, and, like most visitors of a week, thought he knew America like a book. It was as if he looked once at the welter cast ash.o.r.e by mighty Lake Superior in a storm, and said, "What a dirty sea!"] Thackeray, who followed him to America, had a finer sense of the laws of hospitality and good breeding.

[Sidenote: THE PRICE OF POPULARITY]

In 1844 d.i.c.kens resolved to make both ends meet, and carried out his resolve with promptness and precision. To decrease expenses he went to the Continent, and lived there, hungry for the footlights, till a series of stories ending with _Dombey and Son_ put his finances on a secure basis. Then he returned to London, wrote more novels, and saved a fortune for his descendants, who promptly spent it. Evidently it was a family trait. More and more he lived on his nerves, grew imperious, exacting, till he separated from his wife and made wreck of domestic happiness. The self-esteem of which he made comedy in his novels was for him a tragedy. Also he resumed the public readings, with their false glory and nervous wear and tear, which finally brought him to the grave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: d.i.c.kEN'S BIRTHPLACE, LANDPORT, PORTSEA]

He died, worn out by his own exertions, in 1870. He had steadily refused t.i.tles and decorations, but a grateful nation laid his body to rest in the Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey. It is doubtful whether he would have accepted this honor, which was forced upon him, for he had declared proudly that by his works alone he would live in the memory of his countrymen.

WORKS OF d.i.c.kENS. In the early stories of d.i.c.kens is a promise of all the rest. His first work was called _Sketches by Boz_, and "Boz" was invented by some little girl (was it in _The Vicar of Wakefield?_) who could not say "Moses"; also it was a pet name for a small brother of d.i.c.kens. There was, therefore, something childlike in this first t.i.tle, and childhood was to enter very largely into the novelist's work. He could hardly finish a story without bringing a child into it; not an ordinary child, to make us smile, but a wistful or pathetic child whose sorrows, since we cannot help them, are apt to make our hearts ache.

[Sidenote: THE PATHETIC ELEMENT]

d.i.c.kens is charged with exaggerating the woes of his children, and the charge is true; but he had a very human reason for his method. In the first place, the pathetic quality of his children is due to this simple fact, that they bear the burden and the care of age. And burdens which men or women accept for themselves without complaint seem all wrong, and are wrong, when laid upon a child's innocent shoulders. Again, d.i.c.kens sought to show us our error in thinking, as most grown-ups do, that childish troubles are of small account. So they are, to us; but to the child they are desperately real. Later in life we learn that troubles are not permanent, and so give them their proper place; but in childhood a trouble is the whole world; and a very hopeless world it is while it lasts. d.i.c.kens knew and loved children, as he knew the public whom he made to cry with his Little Nell and Tiny Tim; and he had discovered that tears are the key to many a heart at which reason knocks in vain.

[Sidenote: PICKWICKIAN HUMOR]

The second work, _Pickwick,_ written in a harum-scarum way, is even more typical of d.i.c.kens in its spirit of fun and laughter. He had been engaged, as we have noted, to furnish a text for some comic drawings, thus reversing the usual order of ill.u.s.tration. The pictures were intended to poke fun at a club of sportsmen; and d.i.c.kens, who knew nothing of sport, bravely set out with Mr. Winkle on his rook-shooting. Then, while the story was appearing in monthly numbers, the ill.u.s.trator committed suicide; d.i.c.kens was left with Mr. Pickwick on his hands, and that innocent old gentleman promptly ran away with the author. Not being in the least adventurous, Mr. Pickwick was precisely the person for whom adventures were lying in wait; but with his chivalrous heart within him, and Sam Weller on guard outside, he was not to be trifled with by cabman or constable. So these two took to the open road, and to the inns where punch, good cheer and the unexpected were awaiting them. Never was such another book! It is not a novel; it is a medley of fun and drollery resulting from high animal spirits.

[Sidenote: THE MOTIVE OF HORROR]

In his next novel, _Oliver Twist_, the author makes a new departure by using the motive of horror. One of his heroes is an unfortunate child, but when our sympathies for the little fellow are stretched to the point of tears, d.i.c.kens turns over a page and relieves us by Pickwickian laughter.

Also he has his usual medley of picturesque characters and incidents, but the shadow of f.a.gin is over them all. One cannot go into any house in the book, and lock the door and draw the shades, without feeling that somewhere in the outer darkness this horrible creature is prowling. The horror which f.a.gin inspires is never morbid; for d.i.c.kens with his healthy spirit could not err in this direction. It is a boyish, melodramatic horror, such as immature minds seek in "movies," dime novels, secret societies, detective stories and "thrillers" at the circus.

In the fourth work, _Nicholas Nickleby_, d.i.c.kens shows that he is nearing the limit of his invention so far as plot is concerned. In this novel he seems to rest a bit by writing an old-fas.h.i.+oned romance, with its hero and villain and moral ending. But if you study this or any subsequent work of d.i.c.kens, you are apt to find the four elements already noted; namely, an unfortunate child, humorous interludes, a grotesque or horrible creature who serves as a foil to virtue or innocence, and a medley of characters good or bad that might be transferred without change to any other story. The most interesting thing about d.i.c.kens's men and women is that they are human enough to make themselves at home anywhere.

WHAT TO READ. Whether one wants to study the method of d.i.c.kens or to enjoy his works, there is hardly a better plan for the beginner than to read in succession _Pickwick_, _Oliver Twist_ and _Nicholas Nickleby_, which are as the seed plot out of which grow all his stories.

For the rest, the reader must follow his own fancy. If one must choose a single work, perhaps _Copperfield_ is the most typical. "Of all my books," said d.i.c.kens, "I like this the best; like many parents I have my favorite child, and his name is David Copperfield." Some of the heroines of this book are rather stagey, but the Peggotys, Betsy Trotwood, Mrs.

Gummidge, the Micawbers,--all these are unrivaled. "There is no writing against such power," said Thackeray, who was himself writing _Pendennis_ while d.i.c.kens was at work on his masterpiece.

[Ill.u.s.tration: YARD OF REINDEER INN, DANBURY The scene of the races, in _Old Curiosity Shop_]

[Sidenote: TALE OF TWO CITIES]

Opinion is divided on the matter of _A Tale of Two Cities_. Some critics regard it as the finest of d.i.c.kens's work, revealing as it does his powers of description and of character-drawing without his usual exaggeration. Other critics, who regard the exaggeration of d.i.c.kens as his most characteristic quality, see in _Two Cities_ only an evidence of his weakening power. It has perhaps this advantage over other works of the author, that of them we remember only the extraordinary scenes or characters, while the entire story of _Two Cities_ remains with us as a finished and impressive thing. But there is also this disadvantage, that the story ends and is done with, while _Pickwick_ goes on forever. We may lose sight of the heroes, but we have the conviction, as Chesterton says, that they are still on the road of adventure, that Mr. Pickwick is somewhere drinking punch or making a speech, and that Sam Weller may step out from behind the next stable and ask with a droll wink what we are up to now.

It is hardly necessary to add that our reading of d.i.c.kens must not end until we are familiar with some of his Yuletide stories, in which he gladly followed the lead of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving. The best of all his short stories is _A Christmas Carol_, which one must read but not criticize. At best it is a farce, but a glorious, care-lifting, heart-warming farce. Would there were more of the same kind!

A CRITICISM OF d.i.c.kENS. The first quality of d.i.c.kens is his extravagant humor. This was due to the fact that he was alive, so thoroughly, consciously alive that his vitality overflowed like a spring. Here, in a word, is the secret of that bubbling spirit of prodigality which occasions the criticism that d.i.c.kens produced not characters but caricatures.

[Sidenote: HIS EXAGGERATION]

The criticism is true; but it proclaims the strength of the novelist rather than his weakness. Indeed, it is in the very exaggeration of d.i.c.kens that his astonis.h.i.+ng creative power is most clearly manifest. There is something primal, stupendous, in his grotesque characters which reminds us of the uncouth monsters that nature created in her sportive moods. Some readers, meeting with Bunsby, are reminded of a walrus; and who ever saw a walrus without thinking of the creature as nature's Bunsby? So with Quilp, Toots, Squeers, Pumblechook; so with giraffes, baboons, dodoes, dromedaries,--all are freaks from the aesthetic viewpoint, but think of the overflowing energy implied in creating them!

The same sense of prodigality characterized d.i.c.kens even in his sober moods, when he portrayed hundreds of human characters, and not a dead or dull person among them. To be sure they are all exaggerated; they weep too copiously, eat or drink too intemperately, laugh too uproariously for normal men; but to criticize their superabundant vitality is to criticize Beowulf or Ulysses or Hiawatha; nay, it is to criticize life itself, which at high tide is wont to overflow in heroics or absurdity. The exuberance of Pickwick, Micawber, Pecksniff, Sairey Gamp, Sam Weller and a host of others is perhaps the most normal thing about them; it is as the rattling of a safety valve, which speaks not of stagnant water but of a full head of steam. For d.i.c.kens deals with life, and you can exaggerate life as much as you please, since there is no end to either its wisdom or foolishness.

Nothing but a question can be added to the silent simplicity of death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GATEHOUSE AT ROCHESTER, NEAR d.i.c.kENS'S HOME]

[Sidenote: HIS MOTIVE AND METHOD]

Aside from his purpose of portraying life as he saw it, in all its strange complexity, d.i.c.kens had a twofold object in writing. He was a radical democrat, and he aimed to show the immense hopefulness and compa.s.sion of Democracy on its upward way to liberty. He was also a reformer, with a profound respect for the poor, but no respect whatever for ancient laws or inst.i.tutions that stood in the way of justice. The influence of his novels in establis.h.i.+ng better schools, prisons, workhouses, is beyond measure; but we are not so much interested in his reforms as in his method, which was unique. He aimed to make men understand the oppressed, and to make a laughing stock of the oppressors; and he succeeded as no other had ever done in making literature a power in the land. Thus, the man or the law that stands defiantly against public opinion is beaten the moment you make that man or that law look like a joke; and d.i.c.kens made a huge joke of the parish beadle (as Mr. b.u.mble) and of many another meddlesome British inst.i.tution. Moreover, he was master of this paradox: that to cure misery you must meet it with a merry heart,--this is on the principle that what the poor need is not charity but comrades.h.i.+p. By showing that humble folk might be as poor as the Cratchits and yet have the medicine of mirth, the divine gift of laughter, he made men rejoice with the poor even while they relieved the poverty.