Those who in days to come will want to know what provincial life was really like in England in early Victorian times will enquire for the novels of Anthony Trollope1815-1822. "Barchester Towers," "Framley Parsonage," and "Dr Thorne," are the most popular of a series of tales, in all of which the country life of England, its clergy and squirearchy, are portrayed. Trollope wrote on many subjects. His "Life of Cicero" secured the commendation of Professor Freeman, and his biography of Thackeray, though all too slight, is the best book about the author of "Vanity Fair" that has so far been given us.
Another novelist of about equal status with Trollope in mid-Victorian fiction is George John Whyte Melville1821-1878. Major Whyte Melville is the novelist of all lovers of the hunting-field, and strangely enough he fell a victim to the very sport which he had done so much to picture. He was killed by a fall from his horse. Whyte Melville's hunting novels include "Katerfelto" and "Black but Comely." He also wrote historical novels, of which "The Queen's Maries" and "The Gladiators" were the most popular, and he had a pretty gift of verse.
Literature has rarely produced a more picturesque figure than Robert Louis Stevenson1850-1894. The son of a famous Scottish engineer he was destined, like his great countryman Sir Walter Scott, for a Writership to the Signet. He took, however, to literature instead, and died at forty-four in Samoa,—where he had gone for his health,—after a remarkable literary achievement. With a style not always rigidly grammatical, but always impressive and distinguished, he shone in many branches of literary work. He wrote travel pictures like "With a Donkey in the Cevennes," which were incomparably superior to those of any contemporary; his plays—written in collaboration with Mr W. E. Henley—had a power of their own, and one of them, "Beau Austin," although not accepted by the public, is probably the greatest contribution to the drama of the era. As a critic of life and of books Stevenson has also an honourable place. I know of no better treatment of the one than "Virginibus Puerisque," or of the other than "Some Aspects of Robert Burns." He has given abundant pleasure to children by "A Child's Garden of Verses," and in "Underwoods" he has scarcely less successfully appealed to their elders.
It is as a novelist, however, that Stevenson fills the largest place. He is the inheritor of the traditions of Scott, with the world-pain of his own epoch superadded. Men and boys alike have found "Treasure Island" absorbing, while men have also pondered over the widely different powers which are displayed in "The New Arabian Nights" and "The Master of Ballantrae," "Prince Otto," and "St Ives." "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" is a parable which has thrilled us all.
Stevenson delighted to call Mr George Meredith his master, and the two men were friends of years. George Meredith1828- began his literary career in 1851, with a volume of poems, one of which, "Love in a Valley," is still an unqualified joy to all who read it. Mr Meredith has published several volumes of poems since then, and all of them have their loyal admirers, but it is as a novelist that the world at large appraises him.
His concentrated thought and vivid passion have gained for him the title of the "Browning of novelists." Each of his books in turn has had its ardent partisans among cultivated and thoughtful readers. "The Shaving of Shagpat" appeared in 1856, and "Farina" in 1857. "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," which appeared in 1859, is by many considered Meredith's best novel. It treats, with subtle humour and profound philosophical insight, of the problem of a youth's education, and is full of truth to life. "Feverel" was followed by "Evan Harrington" (1861), while "Rhoda Fleming" (1865), "The Adventures of Harry Richmond" (1871), "Beauchamp's Career" (1876), "The Egoist" (1879), "The Tragic Comedians" (1881), and "Diana of the Crossways" (1885), have each of them abundance of readers. Merely to enumerate George Meredith's novels is to call to the memory of all who have read them a widening of mental and moral vision. The rich vein of poetry running through the books, their humour and imagination, place their author in the very front rank of English novelists. "I should never forgive myself," said Robert Louis Stevenson, "if I forgot 'The Egoist,' which, of all the novels I have read (and I have read thousands), stands in a place by itself. I have read 'The Egoist' five or six times, and I mean to read it again." Others have spoken with equal enthusiasm of "Sandra Belloni," with its sweet singer Emilia; others of "Beauchamp's Career," with its aristocratic Radical, now generally understood to have been intended for Admiral Maxse.
Mr Meredith dedicated his volume of "Poems" of 1851 to Thomas Love Peacock1785-1866, who, perhaps, more than any other writer influenced his own style. Peacock was born at Weymouth, and he was mainly self-educated. In 1804 and 1806 he published two small volumes of poetry, "The Monks of St Mark" and "Palmyra." In 1812 he became acquainted with Shelley, and the two were intimate at Great Marlow where Peacock lived in 1815, and later. Peacock's novels "Headlong Hall" (1816-1817), "Melincourt" (1817) and "Nightmare Abbey" (1818), which have been two or three times reprinted within the last five or six years, gained no commensurate attention on their appearance, although one of them was translated into French. In 1819 Peacock became a clerk in the India House, and married a Welsh girl, Jane Gryffdh. "Maid Marion" appeared in 1822, "Crotchet Castle" in 1831, and in 1837 "Paper Money Lyrics and other Poems." All the novels I have named, and they are his most famous, belong to the pre-Victorian period, but "Gryll Grange," his last novel, was published in 1861. Peacock is interesting as a novelist and for his relations with other famous men. He was, as I have said, the friend of Shelley, and he was the father-in-law of Mr George Meredith. Added to this he succeeded to James Mill's post at the India House, and vacated it for James Mill's son, John Stuart Mill.
To R. L. Stevenson we undoubtedly owe much of the impulse to the modern romantic movement, which adds every day an historical novel or a story of adventure to our libraries. It has given us Stanley Weyman, "Q" (A. T. Quiller Couch), "Anthony Hope," Max Pemberton, and Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Another Scotsman, George MacDonald1824-, whose "Robert Falconer," "David Elginbrod," and "Alec Forbes of Howglen," have charmed nearly a generation, had less influence than might have been thought upon the younger Scottish writers, who have made Scottish scenes and Scottish dialect so marked an element in many popular works. James Matthew Barrie, for example, had written "A Window in Thrums," before he had read one of Dr MacDonald's books. Mr Barrie was probably influenced, however, by John Galt (1779-1859), whose "Ayrshire Legatees" and "Annals of the Parish" were written before the Queen began to reign.
A writer whose most striking book was published sufficiently long ago to justify its inclusion here, was Joseph Henry Shorthouse1834-. His "John Inglesant" gained for him a reputation which his "Sir Percival" did not sustain. Mr Shorthouse has written nothing since "John Inglesant" so beautiful as his "Little Schoolmaster Mark," a singularly poetical conception of abnormal childhood.
The best stories for children have been written by Lewis Carroll1833-. This is the pseudonym of the Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a lecturer on mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and the author of several mathematical text-books. In "Euclid and his Modern Rivals" and "A Tangled Tale," Mr Dodgson has succeeded in combining his taste for science with a rich humour, but his fame rests upon his remarkable fairy-stories, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," published in 1865, and its sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass," which appeared in 1872. Men and women, quite as much as little children, have found pleasure and entertainment in these happy efforts of a genius as individual as anything our age has produced.