Victorian Literature: Sixty Years of Books and Bookmen

by Clement King Shorter

Edward Dowden1843-, who is an Irishman, and a professor of Trinity College, Dublin, has a genius for accuracy and is a master of detail. For textual criticism of Wordsworth and Shelley he has no superior. He has an immense knowledge of the literature of many languages, and holds without dispute the first place among living students of German literature in this country. His knowledge of English literature is profound, and in "Shakspere, his Mind and Art," and "Studies in Literature," he has said some singularly illuminating things about books. With his "Life of Shelley" one observes a certain deterioration; Professor Dowden, with all his profound love of literature, has scarcely the qualities which would find attraction in the curiously impulsive character of the poet Shelley. Dowden was happier when writing about Southey, and he is still more at home with great impersonal literary figures like Shakspere and Goethe.

Richard Garnett1835-,—better known to the world to-day as Dr Garnett—has also written on Shelley, not merely with sympathy but with partisanship. Dr Garnett, who is honourably associated with the British Museum Library, is a most acute critic, a biographer of Carlyle and Emerson, a translator from the Greek and German, and, like Professor Dowden, a poet.

George Saintsbury1845-, who is Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, has been an industrious critic for many years, and his knowledge of French literature in particular is profound. His acquaintance with English literature in the seventeenth century has, however, considerably vitiated his style. It is not easy to tolerate the phraseology of the seventeenth century in modern books. This defect of style is regrettably noticeable in two volumes of literary history which Professor Saintsbury has published, one dealing with the seventeenth and the other with the nineteenth century. It is in certain brief biographies of Sir Walter Scott and others that Professor Saintsbury is most excellent; but his wide knowledge and his genuine grasp of the most salient characteristics of good literature are indisputable qualities which rank him high among the bookmen of his day.

Edmund Gosse1849- is not less distinguished than the writers I have named. He would be widely known as a writer of charming verse were he not actively engaged in literary criticism. The son of a famous naturalist, Mr Gosse is the author of many admirably written books about the literature of the past and the present. What Carlyle so largely did for German literature by introducing it to English readers Mr Gosse has done for Scandinavian literature. In conjunction with Mr William Archer—a dramatic critic of singular insight—he has translated Ibsen, whose influence has been as marked during the past ten years as the influence of German writers was marked during the previous thirty. Mr Gosse's best biography is his "Life of Gray."

A critic of remarkable learning is Leslie Stephen1832-, whose "Hours in a Library" and "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century" are books which have profoundly impressed the age. Mr Leslie Stephen has written a large number of biographies, all of them characterised by singular accuracy, by remarkable graces of style, and by genuine insight. He was the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, a work which has proved invaluable to students of our later literature.

Andrew Lang1844- is the last of the critics I have named, and not the least active. He has shone in many branches of literary work. His "Ballads and Lyrics of Old France," "Ballades in Blue China," and numerous other verses, have gained him considerable reputation as a poet. His translations of Homer and Theocritus are by many counted the finest translations that our literature has seen. Some have contended that his musical prose rendering of the Odyssey is incomparably superior to all the efforts of Pope, of Cowper, and of the many other poets who have attempted to render Homer in verse. Mr Lang is an authority on folk-lore; he has joined issue with Professor Max Müller on many points which are of keen interest to those who are attracted towards the science of language and the study of comparative religion. As a writer of fairy-tales, and as the editor of books of fairy-stories, Mr Lang has endeared himself to thousands belonging to the younger generation. But all this is but dimly and inefficiently to appraise Mr Lang's marvellous versatility. He has written fiction, history, and, above all, biography, his biographical work including a Life of Sir Stafford Northcote and a Life of John Gibson Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law.

Biography has generally been written by literary critics, and one requires no apology in any case for ranking the biographers among the critics. John Gibson Lockhart1794-1854 himself was a notable example. He was editor of the Quarterly Review, and an industrious writer for many years; but he is best known to us by his "Life of Sir Walter Scott," which was published—it is worthy of note—in 1837, the year of the Queen's accession. Lockhart's "Scott" is beyond question the most important biography of the reign. The longest is that of Milton by Professor Masson. David Masson1822- has held a chair of literature in University College, London, and later at Edinburgh. Few men know English literature better than he. His name will always be associated with his monumental "Life of Milton," a solid, accurate, exhaustive book; but he has written pleasantly on "British Novelists and their Styles" and "Drummond of Hawthornden," besides sundry other books. Many of our poets have had capable biographers. Professor Knight of St Andrews has devoted himself for many years to Wordsworth, and has written his biography besides editing his collected works. The late James Dykes Campbell (1835-1894) wrote a biography of Coleridge distinguished by remarkable thoroughness. Professor W. J. Courthope has proved himself Pope's best biographer and editor, and is giving us a good "History of English Poetry," which at present reaches only to the Reformation. Mr Churton Collins, one of the most thorough of our critics, has written on Swift, as has also Sir Henry Craik; and Swift's life in Ireland has been gracefully sketched by Mr Richard Ashe King, a novelist whose "Love the Debt" and "The Wearing of the Green" have commanded a large audience. Swift has been a favourite subject with the biographers. A life of him was the task upon which John Forster1812-1876 was engaged at the time of his death. Forster was an untiring biographer, and he benefited literature as well by his death as by his life, in that he bequeathed his fine library of books and manuscripts to the nation. John Forster wrote a Life of Walter Savage Landor, another of Goldsmith, and another of Charles Dickens, against which it was urged that he had introduced too much of his own personality. Perhaps Forster's best work was his "Life of Sir John Eliot," an expansion of a biography of that patriot which he had contributed to his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth."

Biography is the great medium of instruction and inspiration of that little band of Positive philosophers who accept their gospel from Auguste Comte, whose "Philosophie Positive" they have translated into English. "Study the 'Philosophie Positive' for yourself," says George Henry Lewes, who, with George Eliot, had much enthusiasm for the new cult; "study it patiently, give it the time and thought you would not grudge to a new science or a new language; and then, whether you accept or reject the system, you will find your mental horizon irrevocably enlarged. 'But six stout volumes!' exclaims the hesitating aspirant: Well, yes; six volumes requiring to be meditated as well as read. I admit that they 'give pause' in this busy bustling life of ours; but if you reflect how willingly six separate volumes of philosophy would be read in the course of the year the undertaking seems less formidable. No one who considers the immense importance of a doctrine which will give unity to his life, would hesitate to pay a higher price than that of a year's study." Among the most gifted of the Positivists is Frederic Harrison1831-, whose "Order and Progress," and "Choice of Books," are well known. Among his companions in literary and religious warfare have been James Cotter Morison1831-1888, who wrote biographies of St Bernard of Clairvaux and Macaulay, "The Service of Man" which was a contribution to religious propaganda; and Richard Congreve (born 1818), who was a pupil of Dr Arnold at Rugby, and who has written many thoughtful political tracts.

An attempt to popularise Comte by an abridgment of his great work was made by Harriet Martineau1802-1876, who was born at Norwich, and was one of the most versatile of Victorian writers. None of her work has stood the test of time, perhaps because she had so little of real genius, although possessed undoubtedly of great intellectual endowments. Not the less readily should we recognise that she exercised considerable influence upon her own generation. She wrote many stories dealing with social subjects, and tales illustrative of Political Economy, which dispersed many a popular illusion. In a visit to America she learned to sympathise with the Northern States, and perhaps no writer of the day did so much in England to excite sympathy with the cause which ultimately proved victorious. Miss Martineau's "Biographical Sketches" were originally published in the Daily News, a journal to which she was for many years a regular contributor, and for which she wrote her own obituary notice. Her historical work is mere compilation, destitute alike of originality and thoroughness, and the greater part of her other work has proved to be ephemeral. Such tales, however, as "Deerbrook" and "The Hour and the Man" have still admiring readers. The publication of her "Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development" (1851) excited much controversy, although her fearless honesty won the respect even of her opponents.

A writer who distinguished himself most notably at one period by a combination of antagonism to Supernatural Christianity, and a gift for writing biography, was John Morley1838-. Mr Morley was born at Blackburn, and educated at Cheltenham and at Lincoln College, Oxford. Much of his work was done in journalism; he edited in succession the Morning Star, the Literary Gazette, the Fortnightly Review, the Pall Mall Gazette, and Macmillan's Magazine. He resigned the editorship of the Pall Mall Gazette in 1883, when he entered Parliament as member for Newcastle-on-Tyne, and he gave up his post on Macmillan's Magazine on entering a Liberal Cabinet in 1886. He still edits the "English Men of Letters Series," a remarkable collection of handy biographies, for which he wrote a "Life of Burke." His literary achievement, apart from his essays, is entirely biographical, but it was of enormous influence upon the intellectual development of thoughtful young men at the Universities during the seventies and eighties. He has written lives of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, which throw much light on the period prior to the French Revolution, and give abundant evidence that, had he not devoted himself to politics he would have been able to produce a history of the French Revolution of inestimable value. On the other hand his "Life of Cobden" was a failure from a literary standpoint. The essay "On Compromise" is a most interesting development of the fundamental idea of Milton's "Areopagitica," and is probably the most exhaustive treatment of the question—how far we are justified in keeping back the expression of our opinions in deference to the views and customs of our fellow-men.