The Age of Tennyson

by Hugh Walker

John Hill Burton, best known as the historian of Scotland, was an industrious man of letters, who wrote on many subjects,—The Scot Abroad, The Book Hunter, and The Age of Queen Anne, as well as the History of Scotland. The last is the work of a capable and careful writer rather than of a great historian. Burton is sensible and dispassionate, and he has collected and put into shape the principal results of modern research as applied to Scotland.

John Forster
(1812-1876).

John Forster was a laborious but somewhat commonplace writer. He was the author of a Life of Goldsmith (1848) and a Life of Sir John Eliot (1864). But his most valuable works are two biographies of contemporaries, the Life of Landor (1869) and the Life of Dickens (1872-1874). Forster had little power of realising character, and the subjects of his biographies are never clearly outlined. His Life of Dickens has an importance beyond its intrinsic merits, because it is the most authoritative book on the great novelist.

Walter Farquhar Hook
(1798-1875).

Walter Farquhar Hook was a prominent clergyman, whose doctrine, that the English Roman Catholics were really seceders from the Church of England, caused a great stir when it was first promulgated. His vast design of the Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury (1860-1876) was ultimately executed in twelve big volumes. The plan was too large and the characters treated too multifarious for really good biography, but it is solid and valuable work.

Sir John William Kaye
(1814-1876).

Sir John William Kaye wrote two meritorious books of military history, The History of the War in Afghanistan (1851), and The History of the Sepoy War in India (1864-1876). The latter, which roused some controversy, was left unfinished at Kaye’s death, and was afterwards completed by Colonel Malleson.

Sir Francis Palgrave
(1788-1861).

Sir Francis Palgrave was in the early part of his life an active contributor to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, and a diligent editor of state documents. His Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth (1832) threw much light on the early history of England. Palgrave was in his day one of the most earnest students of mediæval history.

Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope
(1805-1875).