The most typical feature of English literature in the earlier years of the nineteenth century was the extraordinary development of the periodical and newspaper press. The eighteenth century was the golden age of pamphlets. When the "governing classes" represented but a fraction of the population, mostly concentrated in London, the practical effect of such political appeals as those issued by Swift or Burke was incredibly great, and not to be measured by their limited circulation. The rise of journalism as a power in politics may be roughly dated from the notoriety of Wilkes' North Briton, and of the letters of "Junius" in the Public Advertiser. Thenceforward, newspapers, at first mere chronicles of passing events, inevitably grew to be organs of political opinion, and had now almost superseded pamphlets, as addressed to a far larger circle of readers. Notwithstanding the heavy stamp duties, as well as duties on paper and advertisements, six daily journals were published in London, of which the Times was already the greatest. Cobbett's Weekly Political Register, commenced in 1802, was diffusing new ideas among the middle classes, but it was not yet committed to radicalism, and did not win its way into cottages until its price was greatly reduced in 1816. After Cobbett's death in 1835, it ceased to appear. Still the ice was broken, and, as the educated public recovered from the panic caused by the French revolution, the newspaper press became a potent and independent rival of parliament and the platform.
EDINBURGH AND QUARTERLY REVIEWS.
But the influence of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews was perhaps even greater among readers of the highest intelligence. The first of these was founded in 1802 by Jeffrey, Brougham, Horner, and Sydney Smith, but was supported at first by Scott and other able contributors. So remarkable a body of writers must have commanded attention in any age, but at a time when the only periodicals were annuals and miscellanies, the literary vigour and range of knowledge displayed by the new review carried all before it. For several years it had an unique success, but, as it identified itself more and more with the whig party, Canning, with the aid of Scott, determined to challenge its supremacy by establishing a new review to be called the Quarterly. Scott was finally estranged from the Edinburgh by an article against the war of independence in Spain, and the first number of the Quarterly appeared in February, 1809, with three articles by him. It was published by John Murray, and edited by Gifford, on much the same lines as the Edinburgh, but with a strong tory bias, and with somewhat less of literary brilliancy. Blackwood's Magazine followed a few years later, and the almost classical dualism of the Quarterly and Edinburgh has long since been invaded by a multitude of younger serials.
After the loss of its early monopoly of talent, the Edinburgh Review still retained Jeffrey and Sydney Smith, and it was abundantly compensated for the loss of Scott by the acquisition in 1825 of the fluent pen of Macaulay. Born in 1800, the son of Zachary Macaulay, who like many other philanthropists was on the tory side, he was early converted to the whig party. He was well fitted to be a popular writer. His thought, never deep, is always clear and vivid. None knew better how to seize a dramatic incident or a picturesque simile, or to strike the weak points in his adversary's armour. It has been said of him that he always chose to storm a position by a cavalry charge, certainly the most imposing if not the most effective method. Many of his contributions to the Edinburgh Review were afterwards republished as Essays, and already in those earlier essays which appeared before 1837, we can see him assuming the rôle of the historical champion of the whigs. Widely read and with a marvellous memory, he was generally accurate in his facts, but his criticism of Gladstone applies with even greater force to himself: "There is no want of light, but a great want of what Bacon would have called dry light. Whatever Mr. Gladstone sees is refracted and distorted by a false medium of passions and prejudices." The critic is sunk in the advocate, and even a good cause is spoiled by a too obvious reluctance to admit anything that comes from the other side. Perhaps his happiest, though far from his greatest, work is to be found in the stirring ballads of Ivry and the Armada, the precursors of the Lays of Ancient Rome. Deservedly popular and full of patriotic fire, the class of literature to which they belong renders questions of fairness or unfairness beside the point.
Another contributor to the Edinburgh Review, also famous as a historian, was Thomas Carlyle. He was born in 1795 at Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire, and wrote for Brewster's Encyclopædia and the London Magazine as well as the Edinburgh. In 1826 he married Jane Welsh, and in 1828 he retired from journalism to live humbly on her means. It was now that he began to produce his best work. Sartor Resartus appeared in 1833-34, and the History of the French Revolution in 1837. Even in the latter of these works he is as much a preacher as a historian. Perhaps no other writer of the age exercised a greater direct influence, and in his own country, which seems specially amenable to the preacher's powers, his message has been as effective in favour of broader views as the disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 was in favour of the old orthodoxy. His teaching has its roots in a German soil, but it bears the mark of his own strong personality. His style, with a wilful ruggedness, displays the German taste for the humour of an incongruous homeliness, where the subject seems to call for a more dignified treatment. Perhaps this obvious falseness of expression only relieves the weight of his stern earnestness of purpose and makes us the more ready to join in his constant denunciation of everything hollow and pretentious.
LAMB.
Two new magazines appeared in or about 1817, Blackwood's and the London. Brilliant as the leading contributors to the former were, none of them perhaps can claim a place in the front rank of English literature. Of the contributors to the London Lamb is doubtless entitled to the first place. Born in 1775, he was employed as a clerk in the East India House from 1792 to 1825. He was a schoolfellow of Coleridge and contributed to his earlier volume of poems It is, however, to the Essays of Elia that he owes his fame. These appeared in the London Magazine and were published in a collected form after his death in 1834. Few authors that have been so much admired have exercised so little influence. The reason for this is not far to seek. His style defies imitation, and he would have been the last man to endeavour to win disciples to his opinions. Another essayist who belongs to the same group of writers as Coleridge and Lamb is Thomas de Quincey. He wrote both for Blackwood's and for the London Magazine, in the latter of which appeared in 1821 his best known work, the Confessions of an English Opium Eater. He excelled in what was the dominant characteristic of English prose of this period, in imagery, a quality which is conspicuous in the light fancy of Coleridge's most famous poems, and which gives life to an author so uniformly in dead earnest as Macaulay. Viewed historically, this taste for imagery is the English side of the romantic movement, which in Germany reacted against the conventional, not only in works of the imagination, but in the heavier form of new philosophical systems. But these systems, in spite of Coleridge, never became native in England. The growth of the scientific spirit has made such thought and such language seem unreal in serious literature, and prevents a later generation from imitating, though not from admiring, the brilliance of the early essayists.
Hazlitt's genius was of a heavier type. As an essayist his work breathes the spirit of an earlier age; but as a literary critic he is a leader, and displays an inwardness in his appreciation that makes him in a sense the model of the new age in which criticism has so largely supplanted creation. It may be doubted, however, whether the abnormal growth of criticism, as a distinct branch of English letters, has been a benefit on the whole to our literature. Certainly it has tended to substitute the elaborate study of other men's thoughts for original production, and, after all, the greatest critics have been those who, being more than critics, have shown themselves capable of constructive efforts.
Two statesmen-novelists, Bulwer and Disraeli, are among the most interesting literary characters of the end of this period. The former of these, like his French contemporary Victor Hugo, had a remarkable gift for expressing each successive phase of popular taste. He resembled Disraeli in acquiring a pre-eminent position in letters in early youth, which was followed by political success at a later age. Though neither rose to cabinet rank before a time of life which must with literary men rank as "middle age," Bulwer had, in the midst of an active parliamentary career, been an active novelist, in fact the most popular novelist of his day. Disraeli, on the other hand, only entered parliament after the close of the period dealt with in this volume, and it is to this period, while he was still unknown to politics, that the greater part of his literary work belongs. One other resemblance between these writers is perhaps not less interesting to the historian than to the critic. Both made use of literature to establish for themselves a reputation as "men of the world," an ambition which Bulwer's social position might easily justify, and without which it would be impossible to understand the career of Disraeli. Born in 1803 and 1804 respectively, both made their mark with their first novels in 1827, Bulwer with Falkland, Disraeli with a work in which his own career has been supposed to be foreshadowed—Vivian Grey. One other great novelist had appeared before the close of the reign of William IV. In 1836 Charles Dickens produced Sketches by Boz and began the Pickwick Papers, but he belongs properly to the next reign.
Among the historians of this period the first place undoubtedly belongs to Henry Hallam. Born in 1788, he produced his View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages in 1818, and his Constitutional History of England in 1827, while his Introduction to the Literature of Europe began to appear in 1837. Like Macaulay he represents the whig attitude towards politics, but does so less consciously and less emphatically than his younger contemporary. There is a sense in which no constitutional historian has adopted so strictly legal an attitude. It is not merely that his interest centres on the legal side of the constitution, but, lawyer-like, he judges every constitutional issue of the past in the light of the legal system which the law of his own day presupposes for the date in question. No one can deny the validity of this principle in a court of justice, but no one gifted either with historical imagination or with historical sympathy could wish to introduce it into a historical work. Yet the very narrowness of his outlook made it easier for him to adopt the impartiality of a judge; his criterion of justice is too definite to allow him to indulge in special pleading or to twist facts to suit his theories; and the student still turns to Hallam with a sense of security which he does not feel in reading Macaulay or Carlyle.