A history of English literature

by Edward Albert

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE

With such an amount of writing as characterizes this age it is quite certain that both in prose and poetry a wide range of style will be observable.

1. Poetry. In the case of poetry the more ornate style was represented in Tennyson, who developed artistic schemes of vowel-music, alliteration, and other devices in a manner quite unprecedented. The Pre-Raphaelites carried the method still further. In diction they were simpler than Tennyson, but their vocabulary was more archaic and their mass of detail more highly colored. The style of Browning was to a certain extent a protest against this aureate diction. He substituted for it simplicity and a heady speed, especially in his earlier lyrics; his more mature obscurity was merely an effect of his eager imagination and reckless impetuosity. Matthew Arnold, in addition, was too classical in style to care for over-developed picturesqueness, and wrote with a studied simplicity. On the whole, however, we can say that the average poetical style of this period, as a natural reaction against the simpler methods of the period immediately preceding, was ornate rather than simple.

2. Prose. With regard to prose, the greater proportion by far is written in the middle style, the established medium in journalism, in all manner of miscellaneous work, and in the majority of the novels. Outside this mass of middle prose, the style of Ruskin stands highest in the scale of ornateness; of a like kind are the scholarly elegance of Pater and the mannered dictions of Meredith and Stevenson. The style of Carlyle and that of Macaulay are each a peculiar brand of the middle style, Macaulay’s being hard, clear, and racy, and Carlyle’s gruff and tempestuous, with an occasional passage of soothing beauty.

Of the simpler writers there is a large number, among whom many novelists find a place. We have space here to refer only to the easygoing journalistic manner of Dickens and to the sub-acid flavor of the prose of Thackeray.

We add a specimen of Stevenson’s prose style. This style, which in its mannered precision is typical of many modern prose styles, is noteworthy on account of its careful selection of epithet, its clear-cut expressiveness, and its delicate rhythm.

But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the Bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence. In the playing-fields, and amongst his own companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at his father’s table (when the time came for him to join these revels) he turned pale and sickened in silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered, he had toleration for only one: David Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord Glenalmond was tall and emaciated, with long features and long delicate hands. He was often compared with the statue of Forbes of Culloden in the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty, preserved some of the fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with any of his fellow-guests, his appearance, as of an artist and an aristocrat stranded in rude company, rivetted the boy’s attention; and as curiosity and interest are the things in the world that are the most immediately and certainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted to the boy.

Weir of Hermiston

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

Date	Poetry		Drama		Prose
	Lyrical	Narrative-Descriptive	Tragedy	Comedy	Novel	Essay	Miscellaneous
						Carlyle	Macaulay
	Tennyson[225]
		Tennyson[226]					Carlyle[227]
		Browning[228]
					Dickens[229]	Macaulay
1840	E.B. Browning	E.B. Browning
	Browning[230]				Thackeray[231]		Ruskin[232]
			Browning[233]				Borrow
		Clough
	M. Arnold	M. Arnold			C. Brontë
1850					Kingsley
					Borrow
				C. Reade
					C. Reade
					Trollope
					Collins
	W. Morris	W. Morris			G. Eliot
1860		Fitzgerald			Meredith[234]
	C. G. Rossetti					Thackeray
		Swinburne	Swinburne[235]
						Froude	Froude
1870					Besant
	D. G. Rossetti	D. G. Rossetti
					Butler
						Symonds
			Tennyson[236]				Symonds
1880						Stevenson
					Stevenson
1890

EXERCISES

1. The following are brief extracts from dramatic monologues by Tennyson, Browning, and William Morris. Compare them with regard to subject, point of view, and style. How far does each reflect the character of the author?

(1) There lies the port: the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Tennyson, Ulysses

(2) First, every sort of monk, the black and white,

I drew them, fat and lean: then, folk at church,

From good old gossips waiting to confess

Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends,—

To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot,

Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there

With the little children round him in a row

Of admiration, half for his beard, and half

For that white anger of his victim’s son

Shaking a fist at him with one fierce arm,

Signing himself with the other because of Christ

(Whose sad face on the cross sees only this

After the passion of a thousand years).

Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi

(Guenevere speaking.)

(3) And every morn I scarce could pray at all,

For Launcelot’s red-golden hair would play,

Instead of sunlight, on the painted wall,

Mingled with dreams of what the priest would say;

Grim curses out of Peter and of Paul;

Judging of strange sins in Leviticus;

Another sort of writing on the wall,

Scored deep across the painted heads of us.

Christ sitting with the woman at the well,

And Mary Magdalen repenting there,

Her dimmed eyes scorched and red at sight of hell

So hardly ’scaped, no gold light on her hair.

Morris, King Arthur’s Tomb

2. In the following extracts point out the features of subject and style that are characteristic of their respective authors. In each case say how far the style suits the subject.

(1) Day has bent downwards. Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field labour; the village artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. Still summer-eventide everywhere! The great sun hangs flaming on the utmost Northwest; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will erelong be at their ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on long-shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the Earth.

Carlyle, The French Revolution

(2) Monmouth was startled by finding that a broad and profound trench lay between him and the camp which he had hoped to surprise. The insurgents halted on the edge of the rhine and fired. Part of the royal infantry on the opposite bank returned the fire. During three-quarters of an hour the roar of the musketry was incessant. The Somersetshire peasants behaved themselves as if they had been veteran soldiers, save only that they levelled their pieces too high.

Macaulay, The History of England

(3) We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakespeare’s peculiar joy, would open on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom—paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness—look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, “He maketh grass to grow up on the mountains.”

Ruskin, Modern Painters

(4)Rats!

They fought the dogs and killed the cats,

And bit the babies in the cradles,

And ate the cheeses out of the vats,

And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles,

Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,

And even spoiled the women’s chats,

By drowning their speaking

With shrieking and squeaking

In fifty different sharps and flats.

Browning, The Pied Piper of Hamelin

3. The two extracts given below are typical of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Point out the features in style and subject common to both. Write a brief appreciation of this style of poetry.

(1) The banners seemed quite full of ease,

That over the turret roofs hung down;

The battlements could get no frown

From the flower-moulded cornices.

Who walked in that garden there?

Miles and Giles and Isabeau,

Tall Jehane du Castel Beau,

Alice of the golden hair,

Big Sir Gervaise, the good knight,

Fair Ellayne le Violet,

Mary, Constance fille de fay,

Many dames with footfall light.

Morris, Golden Wings

(2) “We two,” she said, “will seek the groves

Where the lady Mary is,

With her five handmaidens, whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret and Rosalys.

“Circlewise sit they, with bounds locks

And foreheads garlanded;

Into the fine cloth white like flame

Weaving the golden thread,

To fashion the birth-robes for them

Who are just born, being dead.

“He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:

Then will I lay my cheek

To his, and tell about our love,

Not once abashed or weak:

And the dear Mother will approve

My pride, and let me speak.

“Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,

To Him round whom all souls

Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads

Bowed with their aureoles:

And angels meeting us shall sing

To their citherns and citoles.”

D. G. Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel

4. From a consideration of the specimens given below, and of other examples that occur to you, write a brief essay on the Victorian lyric.

(1) Say not the struggle naught availeth,

The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,

And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,

Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly!

But westward, look, the land is bright!

Clough

(2) Oh, to be in England

Now that April’s there,

And whoever wakes in England

Sees, some morning unaware,

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough

In England—now!

And after April, when May follows,

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover

Blossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—

That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,

Lest you should think he never could recapture

The first fine careless rapture!

And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew

The buttercups, the little children’s dower

—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

R. Browning

(3) Strew on her roses, roses,

And never a spray of yew!

In quiet she reposes;

Ah, would that I did too!

Her mirth the world required;

She bathed it in smiles of glee.

But her heart was tired, tired,

And now they let her be.

Matthew Arnold

5. Compare the novels of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, the chief women novelists of the middle of the nineteenth century.

6. Trace the development of the historical novel from the death of Scott to the death of Stevenson.

7. Write a brief account of the drama of this period.

8. Who are the principal prose stylists of the period? Write a note on the style of each, quoting whenever you can.

9. “The characteristic of the novel, as it was reconstituted towards the middle of the century, was the preference for strictly ordinary life.” (Saintsbury.) Examine this statement.

10. “Prose style in our day is a complex matter.” (Craik.) Expand this statement, pointing out the wide range of style necessary to meet modern requirements.

11. “Men of genius may be divided into regular and irregular.” Bagehot, who makes this remark, calls Dickens an irregular genius. Suggest some of his reasons for doing so.

12. “Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning represent respectively the pure, ornate, and grotesque in poetry.” (Bagehot.) What justification is there for such a statement?

13. “Tennyson’s poetry undoubtedly represents the ideas and tastes, the inherited predilections, the prevailing currents of thought, of Englishmen belonging to his class and generation.” (Sir A. Lyall.) Write a brief essay on this statement.

14. “Thackeray’s manner was mainly realistic.” (Trollope.) How far was Thackeray a realist? How far did he describe persons and actions as they really were? Quote examples from his novels. Compare him in this respect with Dickens.

15. “The novel has supplanted the sermon, the essay, and the play in the place which each at different times held as the popular form of literature.” (Saintsbury.) Expand and comment upon this quotation.

16. In what respects did the spread of popular education affect the literary production of the period?

CHAPTER XII
THE POST-VICTORIAN AGE