A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 19

"Black his hair as the winter night, White his skin as the summer snow, Red his face as the morning light, Cold he lies in the grave below.

My love is dead, Gone to his death-bed All under the willow-tree."

20. WILLIAM BLAKE (+1757-1827+), one of the most original poets that ever lived, was born in London in the year 1757. He was brought up as an engraver; worked steadily at his business, and did a great deal of beautiful work in that capacity. He in fact ill.u.s.trated his own poems-- each page being set in a fantastic design of his own invention, which he himself engraved. He was also his own printer and publisher. The first volume of his poems was published in 1783; the +Songs of Innocence+, probably his best, appeared in 1787. He died in Fountain Court, Strand, London, in the year 1827.

21. His latest critic says of Blake: "His detachment from the ordinary currents of practical thought left to his mind an unspoiled and delightful simplicity which has perhaps never been matched in English poetry." Simplicity-- the perfect simplicity of a child-- beautiful simplicity-- simple and childlike beauty,-- such is the chief note of the poetry of Blake. "Where he is successful, his work has the fresh perfume and perfect grace of a flower." The most remarkable point about Blake is that, while living in an age when the poetry of Pope-- and that alone-- was everywhere paramount, his poems show not the smallest trace of Pope's influence, but are absolutely original. His work, in fact, seems to be the first bright streak of the golden dawn that heralded the approach of the full and splendid daylight of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron. His best-known poems are those from the 'Songs of Innocence'-- such as +Piping down the valleys wild+; +The Lamb+; +The Tiger+, and others. Perhaps the most remarkable element in Blake's poetry is the sweetness and naturalness of the rhythm. It seems careless, but it is always beautiful; it grows, it is not made; it is like a wild field-flower thrown up by Nature in a pleasant green field.

Such are the rhythms in the poem ent.i.tled +Night+:--

"The sun descending in the west, The evening star does s.h.i.+ne; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine.

The moon, like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night.

"Farewell, green fields and happy grove, Where flocks have ta'en delight; Where lambs have nibbled, silent move The feet of angels bright: Unseen they pour blessing, And joy without ceasing, On each bud and blossom, On each sleeping bosom."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

1. +New Ideas.+-- The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century are alike remarkable for the new powers, new ideas, and new life thrown into society. The coming up of a high flood-tide of new forces seems to coincide with the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, when the overthrow of the Bastille marked the downfall of the old ways of thinking and acting, and announced to the world of Europe and America that the old _regime_-- the ancient mode of governing-- was over. Wordsworth, then a lad of nineteen, was excited by the event almost beyond the bounds of self-control. He says in his "Excursion"--

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very Heaven!"

It was, indeed, the dawn of a new day for the peoples of Europe. The ideas of freedom and equality-- of respect for man as man-- were thrown into popular form by France; they became living powers in Europe; and in England they animated and inspired the best minds of the time-- Burns, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, and Byron. Along with this high tide of hope and emotion, there was such an outburst of talent and genius in every kind of human endeavour in England, as was never seen before except in the Elizabethan period. Great events produced great powers; and great powers in their turn brought about great events. The war with America, the long struggle with Napoleon, the new political ideas, great victories by sea and land,-- all these were to be found in the beginning of the nineteenth century. The English race produced great men in numbers-- almost, it might be said, in groups. We had great leaders, like Nelson and Wellington; brilliant generals, like Sir Charles Napier and Sir John Moore; great statesmen, like Fox and Pitt, like Was.h.i.+ngton and Franklin; great engineers, like Stephenson and Brunel; and great poets, like Wordsworth and Byron. And as regards literature, an able critic remarks: "We have recovered in this century the Elizabethan magic and pa.s.sion, a more than Elizabethan sense of the beauty and complexity of nature, the Elizabethan music of language."

2. +Great Poets.+-- The greatest poets of the first half of the nineteenth century may be best arranged in groups. There were +Wordsworth+, +Coleridge+, and +Southey+-- commonly, but unnecessarily, described as the Lake Poets. In their poetic thought and expression they had little in common; and the fact that two of them lived most of their lives in the Lake country, is not a sufficient justification for the use of the term. There were +Scott+ and +Campbell+-- both of them Scotchmen.

There were +Byron+ and +Sh.e.l.ley+-- both Englishmen, both brought up at the great public schools and the universities, but both carried away by the influence of the new revolutionary ideas. Lastly, there were +Moore+, an Irishman, and young +Keats+, the splendid promise of whose youth went out in an early death. Let us learn a little more about each, and in the order of the dates of their birth.

3. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (+1770-1850+) was born at c.o.c.kermouth, a town in c.u.mberland, which stands at the confluence of the c.o.c.ker and the Derwent. His father, John Wordsworth, was law agent to Sir James Lowther, who afterwards became Earl of Lonsdale. William was a boy of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; and as his mother died when he was a very little boy, and his father when he was fourteen, he grew up with very little care from his parents and guardians. He was sent to school at Hawkshead, in the Vale of Esthwaite, in Lancas.h.i.+re; and, at the age of seventeen, proceeded to St John's College, Cambridge. After taking his degree of B.A. in 1791, he resided for a year in France. He took sides with one of the parties in the Reign of Terror, and left the country only in time to save his head. He was designed by his uncles for the Church; but a friend, Raisley Calvert, dying, left him 900; and he now resolved to live a plain and frugal life, to join no profession, but to give himself wholly up to the writing of poetry. In 1798, he published, along with his friend, S. T. Coleridge, the +Lyrical Ballads+. The only work of Coleridge's in this volume was the "Ancient Mariner." In 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson, of whom he speaks in the well-known lines--

"Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair, Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair; But all things else about her drawn From May-time and the cheerful dawn."

He obtained the post of Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland; and, after the death of Southey, he was created +Poet-Laureate+ by the Queen. --He settled with his wife in the Lake country; and, in 1813, took up his abode at Rydal Mount, where he lived till his death in 1850. He died on the 23d of April-- the death-day of Shakespeare.

4. His longest works are the +Excursion+ and the +Prelude+-- both being parts of a longer and greater work which he intended to write on the growth of his own mind. His best poems are his shorter pieces, such as the poems on +Lucy+, +The Cuckoo+, the +Ode to Duty+, the +Intimations of Immortality+, and several of his +Sonnets+. He says of his own poetry that his purpose in writing it was "to console the afflicted; to add suns.h.i.+ne to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous." His poetical work is the n.o.ble landmark of a great transition-- both in thought and in style. He drew aside poetry from questions and interests of mere society and the town to the scenes of Nature and the deepest feelings of man as man. In style, he refused to employ the old artificial vocabulary which Pope and his followers revelled in; he used the simplest words he could find; and, when he hits the mark in his simplest form of expression, his style is as forcible as it is true. He says of his own verse--

"The moving accident is not my trade, To freeze the blood I have no ready arts; 'Tis my delight, alone, in summer shade, To pipe a simple song for _thinking hearts_."

If one were asked what four lines of his poetry best convey the feeling of the whole, the reply must be that these are to be found in his "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle,"-- lines written about "the good Lord Clifford."

"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie, His daily teachers had been woods and rills,-- The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

5. WALTER SCOTT (+1771-1832+), poet and novelist, the son of a Scotch attorney (called in Edinburgh a W.S. or Writer to H.M.'s Signet), was born there in the year 1771. He was educated at the High School, and then at the College-- now called the University-- of Edinburgh. In 1792 he was called to the Scottish Bar, or became an "advocate." During his boyhood, he had had several illnesses, one of which left him lame for life. Through those long periods of sickness and of convalescence, he read Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' and almost all the romances, old plays, and epic poems that have been published in the English language. This gave his mind and imagination a set which they never lost all through life.

6. His first publications were translations of German poems. In the year 1805, however, an original poem, the +Lay of the Last Minstrel+, appeared; and Scott became at one bound the foremost poet of the day.

+Marmion+, the +Lady of the Lake+, and other poems, followed with great rapidity. But, in 1814, Scott took it into his head that his poetical vein was worked out; the star of Byron was rising upon the literary horizon; and he now gave himself up to novel-writing. His first novel, +Waverley+, appeared anonymously in 1814. +Guy Mannering+, +Old Mortality+, +Rob Roy+, and others, quickly followed; and, though the secret of the authors.h.i.+p was well kept both by printer and publisher, Walter Scott was generally believed to be the writer of these works, and he was frequently spoken of as "the Great Unknown." He was made a baronet by George IV. in 1820.

7. His expenses in building Abbotsford, and his desire to acquire land, induced him to go into partners.h.i.+p with Ballantyne, his printer, and with Constable, his publisher. Both firms failed in the dark year of 1826; and Scott found himself unexpectedly liable for the large sum of 147,000. Such a load of debt would have utterly crushed most men; but Scott stood clear and undaunted in front of it. "Gentlemen," he said to his creditors, "time and I against any two. Let me take this good ally into my company, and I believe I shall be able to pay you every farthing." He left his beautiful country house at Abbotsford; he gave up all his country pleasures; he surrendered all his property to his creditors; he took a small house in Edinburgh; and, in the short s.p.a.ce of five years, he had paid off 130,000. But the task was too terrible; the pace had been too hard; and he was struck down by paralysis. But even this disaster did not daunt him. Again he went to work, and again he had a paralytic stroke. At last, however, he was obliged to give up; the Government of the day placed a royal frigate at his disposal; he went to Italy; but his health had utterly broken down, he felt he could get no good from the air of the south, and he turned his face towards home to die. He breathed his last breath at Abbotsford, in sight of his beloved Tweed, with his family around him, on the 21st of September 1832.

8. His poetry is the poetry of action. In imaginative power he ranks below no other poet, except Homer and Shakespeare. He delighted in war, in its movement, its pageantry, and its events; and, though lame, he was quartermaster of a volunteer corps of cavalry. On one occasion he rode to muster one hundred miles in twenty-four hours, composing verses by the way. Much of "+Marmion+" was composed on horseback. "I had many a grand gallop," he says, "when I was thinking of '+Marmion+.'" His two chief powers in verse are his narrative and his pictorial power. His boyhood was pa.s.sed in the Borderland of Scotland-- "a district in which every field has its battle and every rivulet its song;" and he was at home in every part of the Highlands and the Lowlands, the Islands and the Borders, of his native country. But, both in his novels and his poems, he was a painter of action rather than of character.

9. His prose works are now much more read than his poems; but both are full of life, power, literary skill, knowledge of men and women, and strong sympathy with all past ages. He wrote so fast that his sentences are often loose and ungrammatical; but they are never unidiomatic or stiff. The rush of a strong and large life goes through them, and carries the reader along, forgetful of all minor blemishes. His best novels are +Old Mortality+ and +Kenilworth+; his greatest romance is +Ivanhoe+.

10. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (+1772-1834+), a true poet, and a writer of n.o.ble prose, was born at Ottery St Mary, in Devons.h.i.+re, in 1772. His father, who was vicar of the parish, and master of the grammar-school, died when the boy was only nine years of age. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, in London, where his most famous schoolfellow was Charles Lamb; and from there he went to Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1793 he had fallen into debt at College; and, in despair, left Cambridge, and enlisted in the 15th Light Dragoons, under the name of Silas Tomkins Comberbatch. He was quickly discovered, and his discharge soon obtained. While on a visit to his friend Robert Southey, at Bristol, the plan of emigrating to the banks of the Susquehanna, in Pennsylvania, was entered on; but, when all the friends and fellow-emigrants were ready to start, it was discovered that no one of them had any money. --Coleridge finally became a literary man and journalist. His real power, however, lay in poetry; but by poetry he could not make a living. His first volume of poems was published at Bristol, in the year 1796; but it was not till 1798 that the +Rime of the Ancient Mariner+ appeared in the 'Lyrical Ballads.' His next greatest poem, +Christabel+, though written in 1797, was not published till the year 1816. His other best poems are +Love+; +Dejection--an Ode+; and some of his shorter pieces. His best poetry was written about the close of the century: "Coleridge," said Wordsworth, "was in blossom from 1796 to 1800." --As a critic and prose-writer, he is one of the greatest men of his time. His best works in prose are +The Friend+ and the +Aids to Reflection+. He died at Highgate, near London, in the year 1834.

11. His style, both in prose and in verse, marks the beginning of the modern era. His prose style is n.o.ble, elaborate, eloquent, and full of subtle and involved thought; his style in verse is always musical, and abounds in rhythms of the most startling and novel-- yet always genuine-- kind. +Christabel+ is the poem that is most full of these fine musical rhythms.

12. ROBERT SOUTHEY (+1774-1843+), poet, reviewer, historian, but, above all, man of letters,-- the friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth,-- was born at Bristol in 1774. He was educated at Westminster School and at Balliol College, Oxford. After his marriage with Miss Edith Fricker-- a sister of Sara, the wife of Coleridge-- he settled at Greta Hall, near Keswick, in 1803; and resided there until his death in 1843. In 1813 he was created +Poet-Laureate+ by George III. --He was the most indefatigable of writers. He wrote poetry before breakfast; history between breakfast and dinner; reviews between dinner and supper; and, even when taking a const.i.tutional, he had always a book in his hand, and walked along the road reading. He began to write and to publish at the age of nineteen; he never ceased writing till the year 1837, when his brain softened from the effects of perpetual labour.

13. Southey wrote a great deal of verse, but much more prose. His prose works amount to more than one hundred volumes; but his poetry, such as it is, will probably live longer than his prose. His best-known poems are +Joan of Arc+, written when he was nineteen; +Thalaba the Destroyer+, a poem in irregular and unrhymed verse; +The Curse of Kehama+, in verse rhymed, but irregular; and +Roderick, the last of the Goths+, written in blank verse. He will, however, always be best remembered by his shorter pieces, such as +The Holly Tree+, +Stanzas written in My Library+, and others. --His most famous prose work is the +Life of Nelson+. His prose style is always firm, clear, compact, and sensible.

14. THOMAS CAMPBELL (+1777-1844+), a n.o.ble poet and brilliant reviewer, was born in Glasgow in the year 1777. He was educated at the High School and the University of Glasgow. At the age of twenty-two, he published his +Pleasures of Hope+, which at once gave him a place high among the poets of the day. In 1803 he removed to London, and followed literature as his profession; and, in 1806, he received a pension of 200 a-year from the Government, which enabled him to devote the whole of his time to his favourite study of poetry. His best long poem is the +Gertrude of Wyoming+, a tale written in the Spenserian stanza, which he handles with great ease and power. But he is best known, and will be longest remembered, for his short lyrics-- which glow with pa.s.sionate and fiery eloquence-- such as +The Battle of the Baltic+, +Ye Mariners of England+, +Hohenlinden+, and others. He was twice Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. He died at Boulogne in 1844, and was buried in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.

15. THOMAS MOORE (+1779-1852+), poet, biographer, and historian-- but most of all poet-- was born in Dublin in the year 1779. He began to print verses at the age of thirteen, and may be said, like Pope, to have "lisped in numbers, for the numbers came." He came to London in 1799, and was quickly received into fas.h.i.+onable society. In 1803 he was made Admiralty Registrar at Bermuda; but he soon gave up the post, leaving a deputy in his place, who, some years after, embezzled the Government funds, and brought financial ruin upon Moore. The poet's friends offered to help him out of his money difficulties; but he most honourably declined all such help, and, like Sir W. Scott, resolved to clear off all claims against him by the aid of his pen alone. For the next twenty years of his life he laboured incessantly; and volumes of poetry, history, and biography came steadily from his pen. His best poems are his +Irish Melodies+, some fifteen or sixteen of which are perfect and imperishable; and it is as a writer of songs that Moore will live in the literature of this country. He boasted, and with truth, that it was he who awakened for this century the long-silent harp of his native land--

"Dear Harp of my Country! in darkness I found thee, The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long, When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee, And gave all thy chords to light, freedom, and song."

His best long poem is +Lalla Rookh+. --His prose works are little read nowadays. The chief among them are his +Life of Sheridan+, and his +Life of Lord Byron+. --He died at Sloperton, in Wilts.h.i.+re, in 1852, two years after the death of Wordsworth.

16. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (+1788-1824+), a great English poet, was born in London in the year 1788. He was the only child of a reckless and unprincipled father and a pa.s.sionate mother. He was educated at Harrow School, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge. His first volume-- +Hours of Idleness+-- was published in 1807, before he was nineteen.

A critique of this juvenile work which appeared in the 'Edinburgh Review' stung him to pa.s.sion; and he produced a very vigorous poetical reply in +English Bards and Scotch Reviewers+. After the publication of this book, Byron travelled in Germany, Spain, Greece, and Turkey for two years; and the first two cantos of the poem ent.i.tled +Childe Harold's Pilgrimage+ were the outcome of these travels. This poem at once placed him at the head of English poets; "he woke one morning," he said, "and found himself famous." He was married in the year 1815, but left his wife in the following year; left his native country also, never to return. First of all he settled at Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of the poet Sh.e.l.ley, and where he wrote, among other poems, the third canto of +Childe Harold+ and the +Prisoner of Chillon+. In 1817 he removed to Venice, where he composed the fourth canto of +Childe Harold+ and the +Lament of Ta.s.so+; his next resting-place was Ravenna, where he wrote several plays. Pisa saw him next; and at this place he spent a great deal of his time in close intimacy with Sh.e.l.ley. In 1821 the Greek nation rose in revolt against the cruelties and oppression of the Turkish rule; and Byron's sympathies were strongly enlisted on the side of the Greeks. He helped the struggling little country with contributions of money; and, in 1823, sailed from Geneva to take a personal share in the war of liberation. He died, however, of fever, at Missolonghi, on the 19th of April 1824, at the age of thirty-six.

17. His best-known work is +Childe Harold+, which is written in the Spenserian stanza. His plays, the best of which are +Manfred+ and +Sardanapalus+, are written in blank verse. --His style is remarkable for its strength and elasticity, for its immensely powerful sweep, tireless energy, and brilliant ill.u.s.trations.

18. PERCY BYSSHE Sh.e.l.lEY (+1792-1822+),-- who has, like Spenser, been called "the poet's poet,"-- was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Suss.e.x, in the year 1792. He was educated at Eton, and then at University College, Oxford. A shy, diffident, retiring boy, with sweet, gentle looks and manners-- like those of a girl-- but with a spirit of the greatest fearlessness and the n.o.blest independence, he took little share in the sports and pursuits of his schoolfellows. Obliged to leave Oxford, in consequence of having written a tract of which the authorities did not approve, he married at the very early age of nineteen. The young lady whom he married died in 1816; and he soon after married Mary, daughter of William G.o.dwin, the eminent author of 'Political Justice.' In 1818 he left England for Italy,-- like his friend, Lord Byron, for ever. It was at Naples, Leghorn, and Pisa that he chiefly resided. In 1822 he bought a little boat-- "a perfect plaything for the summer," he calls it; and he used often to make short voyages in it, and wrote many of his poems on these occasions. When Leigh Hunt was lying ill at Leghorn, Sh.e.l.ley and his friend Williams resolved on a coasting trip to that city. They reached Leghorn in safety; but, on the return journey, the boat sank in a sudden squall.

Captain Roberts was watching the vessel with his gla.s.s from the top of the Leghorn lighthouse, as it crossed the Bay of Spezzia: a black cloud arose; a storm came down; the vessels sailing with Sh.e.l.ley's boat were wrapped in darkness; the cloud pa.s.sed; the sun shone out, and all was clear again; the larger vessels rode on; but Sh.e.l.ley's boat had disappeared. The poet's body was cast on sh.o.r.e, but the quarantine laws of Italy required that everything thrown up on the coast should be burned: no representations could alter the law; and Sh.e.l.ley's ashes were placed in a box and buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome.

19. Sh.e.l.ley's best long poem is the +Adonas+, an elegy on the death of John Keats. It is written in the Spenserian stanza. But this true poet will be best remembered by his short lyrical poems, such as +The Cloud+, +Ode to a Skylark+, +Ode to the West Wind+, +Stanzas written in Dejection+, and others. --Sh.e.l.ley has been called "the poet's poet,"

because his style is so thoroughly transfused by pure imagination. He has also been called "the master-singer of our modern race and age; for his thoughts, his words, and his deeds all sang together." He is probably the greatest lyric poet of this century.

20. JOHN KEATS (+1795-1821+), one of our truest poets, was born in Moorfields, London, in the year 1795. He was educated at a private school at Enfield. His desire for the pleasures of the intellect and the imagination showed itself very early at school; and he spent many a half-holiday in writing translations from the Roman and the French poets. On leaving school, he was apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton-- the scene of one of John Gilpin's adventures; but, in 1817, he gave up the practice of surgery, devoted himself entirely to poetry, and brought out his first volume. In 1818 appeared his +Endymion+. The 'Quarterly Review' handled it without mercy. Keats's health gave way; the seeds of consumption were in his frame; and he was ordered to Italy in 1820, as the last chance of saving his life. But it was too late. The air of Italy could not restore him. He settled at Rome with his friend Severn; but, in spite of all the care, thought, devotion, and watching of his friend, he died in 1821, at the age of twenty-five. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome; and the inscription on his tomb, composed by himself, is, "_Here lies one whose name was writ in water_."

21. His greatest poem is +Hyperion+, written, in blank verse, on the overthrow of the "early G.o.ds" of Greece. But he will most probably be best remembered by his marvellous odes, such as the +Ode to a Nightingale+, +Ode on a Grecian Urn+, +To Autumn+, and others. His style is clear, sensuous, and beautiful; and he has added to our literature lines that will always live. Such are the following:--

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

"Silent, upon a peak in Darien."