In the art of merely or mainly humorous singing two names, those of Edward Lear and Charles Stuart Calverley, entirely dominate the rest among dead writers in the last part of the century. Lear, a good deal the elder man of the two, was born in 1813, was a painter by profession, and was the "E. L." of a well-known poem of Tennyson's. It was not till 1861 that his delightful nonsense-verses, known to his friends in private, were first published, and they received various additions at intervals till his death in 1888. The sheer nonsense-verse—the amphigouri as the French call it—has been tried in various countries and at various times, but never with such success as in England, and it has seldom, if ever, been cultivated in England with such success as by Lear. His happy concoction of fantastic names, the easy slipping flow of his verse, and above all, the irresistible parody of sense and pathos that he contrived to instil into his rigmarole are unapproachable. In a new and not in the least opprobrious sense he was "within the realms of Nonsense absolute."
Calverley attempted less "uttermost isles" of fun. Born in 1831 of an excellent Yorkshire family, he was educated at Harrow, and—a thing as rare in the nineteenth as common in the seventeenth century—at both universities, gaining at both a great reputation for scholarship, eccentricity, and bodily strength. After some time he married and began to work at the Bar; but an accident on the ice in 1867 brought on concussion of the brain, though he lingered in constantly weakening health till 1884. His Verses and Translations twenty-two years earlier had made him the model of all literary undergraduates with a turn for humour; and he was able in spite of his affliction to issue some things later, the chief being Fly Leaves in 1872. Calverley, as has been said, was a scholar, and his versions both from and into the classical languages would of themselves have given him a reputation; but his forte lay partly in the easier vein of parody, wherein few excelled him, partly in the more difficult one of original light verse, wherein he had a turn (as in his famous eulogy on tobacco) quite his own. He has never been equalled in this, or even approached, except by James Kenneth Stephen (1859-92), whose premature death deprived his friends of a most amiable personality, and literature, in all probability, of a considerable ornament. As it was, "J. K. S." left next to nothing but two tiny collections of verse, showing an inspiration midway between Calverley and Praed, but with quite sufficient personal note.
Two other writers of less scholarly style, but belonging to the London Bohemian school of the third quarter of the century, W. J. Prowse, "Nicholas" (1836-70), and H. S. Leigh (1837-83), may be noticed. Prowse, whose career was very short, was the author of the charming lines on "The beautiful City of Prague," which have been attributed to others: while Leigh's Carols of Cockayne (he was also a playwright) vary the note of Hood happily, and now and then with a real originality.
Except Miss Rossetti, no woman during this time approached the poetical excellence of Mrs. Barrett Browning. But the whole period has been unprecedentedly fertile in poetesses, and whereas we had but five or six to mention in the earlier chapter devoted to verse, we have here at least a dozen, though no one who requires very extended notice here. Lady Dufferin (1807-1867), mother of the well-known diplomatist, a member of the Sheridan family, and her sister, and junior by a year, Mrs. Norton (1808-1876), were both writers of facile and elegant verse, with the Irish note of easy melody. The former was the less known to the general reader, though a few of her pieces, such as "The Irish Emigrant" and "Katie's Letter," have always been favourite numbers for recitation. Mrs. Norton at one time enjoyed a considerable reputation as a poetess by contributions to "Annuals" and "Souvenirs," chiefly in the sentimental ballad style which pleased the second quarter of the century. "The Outward Bound," "Bingen on the Rhine," and other things are at least passable, and one of the author's latest and most ambitious poems, The Lady of La Garaye, has a sustained respectability. To a few fanatical admirers the scanty verse of Emily Brontë has seemed worthy of such high praise that only mass of work would appear to be wanting to put her in the first rank of poetesses if not of poets. Part of this, however, it is to be feared, is due to admiration of the supposed freedom of thought in her celebrated "Last Lines," which either in sincerity or bravado pronounce that "vain are the thousand creeds," and declare for a sort of vague Pantheism, immanent at once in self and the world. At thirty, however, a genuine poetess should have produced more than a mere handful of verse, and its best things should be independent of polemical partisanship either for or against orthodoxy. As a matter of fact, her exquisite "Remembrance," and the slightly rhetorical but brave and swinging epigram of "The Old Stoic," give her better claims than the "Last Lines," and with them and a few others place her as a remarkable though not by any means a supreme figure.
The more prudent admirers of Marian Evans (George Eliot), who wrote a good deal of verse, either admit that her verse was not poetry, or hold up a much-quoted passage, "Oh, may I join the choir invisible," which, like the far superior piece just referred to, is only a hymn on the side which generally dispenses with hymns; and not a very good one, though couched in fair Wordsworthian blank verse. They would no doubt indulge in derisive scorn at the idea of the mild muse of Adelaide Anne Procter, daughter of "Barry Cornwall," receiving praise denied to Miss Brontë and Miss Evans; and it must be admitted that Miss Procter never did anything so good as "Remembrance." On the other hand, she was quite free from the "sawdust" and heaviness which mar George Eliot's verse. Her style was akin to that which has been noticed in speaking of Mrs. Norton, though of a somewhat later fashion, and like those of her father, her songs, especially the famous "Message," had the knack of suiting composers. Menella Bute Stedley and Dora Greenwell, a respectable pair, somewhat older than Miss Procter (she was born in 1825 and died in 1864), considerably outlived her, Miss Stedley's life lasting from 1820 to 1877, and Miss Greenwell's from 1821 to 1882. Both were invalids, and soothed their cares with verse, the latter to the better effect, though both in no despicable strain. Augusta Webster (1840-94) and Emily Pfeiffer ( -1890) were later poetesses of the same kind, but lower rank, though both were greatly praised by certain critics. Sarah Williams, a short-lived writer of some sweetness (1841-68), commended herself chiefly to those who enjoy verse religious but "broad"; Constance Naden to those who like pessimist agnosticism; Amy Levy to those who can deplore a sad fate and admire notes few and not soaring, but passionate and genuine.
CHAPTER VII
THE NOVEL SINCE 1850
Certain novelists who were mentioned at the end of chapter iii., though they all lived far into the last half of the century, not only belonged essentially to its first division, but strictly speaking fell out of strict chronological arrangement of any kind, being of the class of more or less eccentric men of genius who may appear at any time and belong to none in particular; and certain others of the earlier time, less eccentric, lived on far towards our own. About 1850 however, a little before or a little after it, there appeared a group of novelists of great talent, and in some cases of genius itself, who were less self-centred, and exemplified to a greater degree the special tendencies of the time. These tendencies were variously connected with the Oxford or Tractarian Movement; the transfer of political power from the upper to the middle classes by the first Reform Bill; the rise of what is for shortness called Science; the greater esteem accorded to and the more general practice of what is, again for shortness, called Art; the extension in a certain sense of education; the re-engagement of England, long severed from continental politics, in those politics by the Crimean war; the enormous development of commerce by the use of steam navigation and of railways; the opening up of Australia and its neighbourhood; the change effected in the East by the removal, gradual for some time, then rapid and complete after the Indian Mutiny, of the power of the East India Company; and the "Liberal" movement generally.