Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

THE CENTURY’S LITERATURE
By JAMES P. BOYD, A.M., L.B.

In contrasting the world’s nineteenth century literature with that of the eighteenth, one is impressed with the many remarkable differences. But by no means all of such differences are to the discredit of the older literature. As instances, the prose literature of the nineteenth century may not surpass that of the eighteenth in elegance and accuracy of expression, though its progress has been very marked in the diversity of its applications to mental needs; and the poetical literature of the nineteenth century may not excel that of the eighteenth in beauty and virility, though it has advanced in loftiness of theme and tenderness of mode. And so, when literature is divided into its many minor branches, as history, philosophy, the sciences, etc., various features of the old compare favorably with the new.

It is in its general tone and universal aptitude that the literature of the nineteenth century stands out preëminent. The wonderful intellectual activity of the century has been, as it were, compelled to go forth along literary lines quite parallel with those that distinguish other fields of activity. This may have had a tendency in some instances to rob the century’s literature of some of the sweetly imaginative elements, and to harden it in some of its essential forms, but the process was necessary to secure for it just that quality which would best meet a progressive demand. As the drift of human energy was toward the practical, so the dominant literary thought took on the form of direct and exact expression. There was less and less room for the indulgence of literary foible or speculative whimsicality. Even where elegance of style met with occasional sacrifice, it was more than compensated by that general rise in literary tone which has characterized the century. Literature could not be untruthful amid active inquiry and scientific progress. It must reflect, more accurately than ever before, its birth inspirations and its legitimate uses. It must keep even pace with the demands for it. A world crying for intellectual bread could not be put off with an antiquated stone.

Without closer analysis, the above is true of the literature of all reading and writing peoples who have kept touch with the century’s progress. But it is especially true in the literature of English speaking peoples. History has, in accordance with a growing spirit of research, become more truthful, philosophy more expressive, and science more exact. The outcrop of books shows the yearnings of the century, not only as to their number but as to theme and treatment. Authors have multiplied as during no other world’s era, and the proportion of those who have attained permanent distinction was never larger.

“German literature,” says Professor Ford, in “Self Culture” for February, 1899, “has had its measure of ups and downs, but its first age was its golden age. From the beginning of the century to the present day is a far cry in German letters. Romanticism, idealism, realism—the Fatherland has lived through them all. And for what? In a land of scholars no great philosopher; among hosts of verse-makers no great poet; among innumerable story-writers, not one who has become known over a continent.

GEORGE BANCROFT.

“Still these last years in Germany have not been without some good work done, though often achieved under the spur of wrong ideals and improper motives. From the days of ’48, when Young Germany felt for the first time the seductive charm of revolutionism, a new feeling has possessed German literature—a feeling that the past is past and out of date, potent once but potent no longer, and that the new age of man demands new principles, new ideals, a new faith. And so the modern literature, particularly so since 1870, has been marked by iconoclasm and startling innovation; it has discarded sentiment and line writing, and made a plea for scientific methods, with the privilege of exhibiting exact, scientific results. Crimes, disease, and grinning skeletons have been dragged forth to the public gaze, for art is no longer art that portrays the ideal and not the true. Such, in short, is the creed by which the realistic or naturalistic school has thought to overthrow the old, conventional, and frivolous, to foster the spirit of the new nationality, and prepare a balm for the wounds of the poor.

“Two men stand to-day as leaders of this new movement,—Hermann Sudermann and Gerhardt Hauptmann,—the most commanding figures in contemporaneous German literature.”