(c) Satirical poems were numerous; and their tone was fierce, for the success of the French Revolution led to the expression of new hopes and desires. Outstanding examples were Byron’s Don Juan and The Vision of Judgment and Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy.
2. Drama. Drama was written as freely as ever, but rather as a form of literary exercise than as a serious attempt at creating a new dramatic standard. Tragedy almost monopolized the activities of the major poets. Of all the tragedies Shelley’s Cenci came first in power and simplicity. Byron’s tragedies had little merit as dramas; and Wordsworth’s Borderers and Coleridge’s Remorse added little to the fame of their authors.
The comic spirit in drama was in abeyance. Shelley’s Œdipus Tyrannus, or Swellfoot the Tyrant, is almost the only instance of it worth mention, and this was a poor specimen of that writer’s creative power.
3. Prose. (a) The Novel. Of the different kinds of prose composition, the novel showed in this period the most marked development. This was largely due to the work of Scott and Jane Austen, who respectively established the historical and domestic types of novel.
With regard to the work of Scott, we can here only briefly summarize what has already been said. He raised the historical novel to the rank of one of the major kinds of literature; he brought to it knowledge, and through the divine gift of knowledge made it true to life; he fired historical characters with living energy; he set on foot the device of the unhistorical hero—that is, he made the chief character purely fictitious, and caused the historical persons to rotate about it; he established a style that suited many periods of history; and pervading all these advances was a great and genial personality that transformed what might have been mere lumber into an artistic product of truth and beauty.
Miss Austen’s achievement was of a different kind. She revealed the beauty and interest that underlie ordinary affairs; she displayed the infinite variety of common life, and so she opened an inexhaustible vein that her successors were assiduously to develop.
Most of the other novelists of the time were either imitators of Scott, like James and Ainsworth, or a combination of Scott and Miss Austen, like Bulwer-Lytton. Disraeli developed a rather different species in his brilliant society novels, which depended for their chief effects on satiric insight and caustic epigram. Tancred is probably the best of this species.
(b) Periodical Literature. At the beginning of this chapter we noted the chief members of a great new community of literary journals. These periodicals were of a new type. Previous literary journals, like The Gentleman’s Magazine (1731), had been feeble productions, the work of elegant amateurs or underpaid hack-writers. Such papers had little weight. The new journals were supreme in the literary world; they attracted the best talent; they inspired fear and respect; and in spite of many defects their literary product was worthy of their reputation.
(c) The Essay. Finding a fresh outlet in the new type of periodical, the essay acquired additional importance. The purely literary essay, exemplified in the works of Southey, Hazlitt, and Lockhart, increased in length and solidity. It now became a review—that is, a commentary on a book or books under immediate inspection, but in addition expounding the wider theories and opinions of the reviewer. This new species of essay was to be developed still further in the works of Carlyle and Macaulay.
The miscellaneous essay, represented in the works of Lamb, likewise, acquired an increased dignity. It was growing beyond the limits set by Addison and Johnson. It was more labored and aspiring, and contained many more mannerisms of the author. This kind also was to develop in the hands of the succeeding generation.