1. Gilbert K. Chesterton was born in London in the year 1874. He was educated at St. Paul’s School, then studied art, but ultimately became a journalist. He wrote much literary and miscellaneous prose for journals, and distinguished himself as a writer of much ingenuity, topsy-turvy humor, and a robust, rampageous style. His books of verse, such as Gray-beards at Play (1900), The Wild Knight (1900), and Wine, Water, and Song (1915), are quite excellent in their way: clever and vigorous, skillfully constructed, and genuinely funny. His novels are fine-spun webs of ingenious nonsense, and include The Club of Queer Trades (1905) and The Man Who was Thursday (1908). His literary and miscellaneous work, often apparently willful and inconsequent, is usually sane and substantial at bottom. His critical work is well represented by his books on Dickens and Browning, and his miscellaneous writing, gloriously Chestertonian, by Tremendous Trifles (1909) and A Shilling for my Thoughts (1916).

2. Hilaire Belloc, the son of a Frenchman, was born in France in 1870. He was educated in England, served two years with the French Artillery, and finished his education at Oxford University. Mr. Belloc has contributed to most kinds of literature. His serious verses are noteworthy for their ease and vigor, and his nonsense verses, such as A Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, are excellent fooling. As a humorist Mr. Belloc specializes in a super-solemnity of manner while he is stating the most ridiculous problems. His humor, however, rarely lacks the sharp stab of satire. His novels, like those of Disraeli, are a shrewd commentary upon our political life. They have an unwinkingly solemn humor, biting scorn scarcely concealed, and a clear and incisive style. Mr. Clutterbuck’s Election (1908) and A Change in the Cabinet (1909) come high in the thin ranks of the first-rate political novel. His miscellaneous work is often clever, whimsically learned, and often distinguished by the same parade of grave nonsense. On Nothing (1908) sets him high among modern essayists. His two travel volumes, The Path to Rome (1902) and The Pyrenees (1909), in spite of their somewhat labored mannerisms, deserve to become classical.

3. Lord Morley (1838–1923) is the sole writer of serious miscellaneous prose that we have space to mention. He was born at Blackburn, took his degree at Oxford, and became a journalist of a Radical and philosophical type. He was in turn editor of more than one important review, entered Parliament (1883), and was closely associated with Mr. Gladstone during the struggles over the Irish Home Rule Bills. He held high offices under the Liberal Government, was created Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1908), and on the outbreak of war in 1914 retired from public life.

Lord Morley wrote a great deal of literary, philosophical, and miscellaneous work, distinguished by its scholarly care and accuracy, by a deep but placable seriousness, and by a strong and flexible style. His monographs on Voltaire (1872), Burke (1879), and Walpole (1889) are models of what such brief works ought to be; his Life of Cromwell (1900) is a sane and scholarly treatment of a difficult subject; and his monumental Life of Gladstone (1903), though it lacks proportion in some respects, is a well-filled storehouse of historical fact, and, on this side of idolatry, a reverent tribute to a great man.

THE POETS

In the section that follows we have made a careful selection from the poets of the period. Many more names might have been included, of a value and interest little inferior to those given a place. In any case, a selection such as this must be in the nature of an experiment, for time alone will sift out the poems of permanent value.

1. Sir William Watson was born in 1858, the son of a Yorkshire farmer, and was educated privately. His life has been devoted to letters: a devotion that was recognized by Mr. Gladstone, who transferred to him (1893) the Civil List pension that had been granted to Tennyson. He was knighted in 1917.

His fairly abundant poetry includes The Prince’s Quest (1880), after the manner of Tennyson; Wordsworth’s Grave (1890), the style of which suggests the meditative poetry of Matthew Arnold; Lacrymæ Musarum (1893), which contains a fine elegy on the death of Tennyson; The Muse in Exile (1913); and The Superhuman Antagonists (1919). Sir William Watson is at his best as an elegiac poet, when, though he is apt to become diffusely meditative, he writes with sincerity and a scholarly enthusiasm. In the heroic vein, such as he attempted in the last poem mentioned above, he is merely violent, without being impressive. His political poetry, such as The Year of Shame (1897), is strong rhetorical verse, palpably sincere, but of no high poetical merit.

2. Francis Thompson (1859–1907) had a career suggestive of that of the poets of the eighteenth century. He was born in Lancashire, and was dedicated to the profession of medicine. He abandoned medicine, and went to London as a friendless literary adventurer. Then followed the tragically familiar tale of loneliness, poverty, opium, and disease. After a time (1893) his poems drew a little attention to himself, and he was rescued just in time from the fate of Chatterton. His health, however, was never fully restored, and finally he died of consumption.

In style and temper Thompson is a strange blend of the poets of past epochs. He has the rapt religious enthusiasm and the soaring imagination of the Metaphysical poets, as can be clearly seen in his truly magnificent Hound of Heaven; or again, as in The Daisy, he is the inspired babbler of the type of William Blake. In one sense he wrote too much, when he marred his splendid lyrical energy with too abundant detail; in another sense he wrote too little, for the fire that was within him was extinguished before it could burn clear. He is not quite another Coleridge, hag-ridden with opium, but at least he is a lyrical poet far above mediocrity.