With these two exceptions, the Grecian marbles and the Shakespeare plays, the nineteenth century has produced more for the benefit of man than all the centuries of the past. In this century, in one direction, I think the mind has reached the limit. I do not believe the music of Wagner will ever be excelled. He changed all passions, longing, memories and aspirations into tones, and with subtle harmonies wove tapestries of sound, whereon were pictured the past and future, the history and prophecy of the human heart. Of course Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Kepler laid the foundations of astronomy. It may be that the three laws of Kepler mark the highest point in that direction that the mind has reached.
In the other centuries there is now and then a peak, but through ours there runs a mountain range with Alp on Alp—the steamship that has conquered all the seas; the railway, with its steeds of steel with breath of flame, covers the land; the cables and telegraphs, along which lightning is the carrier of thought, have made the nations neighbors and brought the world to every home; the making of paper from wood, the printing presses that made it possible to give the history of the human race each day; the reapers, mowers and threshers that superseded the cradles, scythes and flails; the lighting of streets and houses with gas and incandescent lamps, changing night into day; the invention of matches that made fire the companion of man; the process of making steel, invented by Bessemer, saving for the world hundreds of millions a year; the discovery of anesthetics, changing pain to happy dreams and making surgery a science; the spectrum analysis, that told us the secrets of the suns; the telephone, that transports speech, uniting lips and ears; the phonograph, that holds in dots and marks the echoes of our words; the marvelous machines that spin and weave, that manufacture the countless things of use, the marvelous machines, whose wheels and levers seem to think; the discoveries in chemistry, the wave theory of light, the indestructibility of matter and force; the discovery of microbes and bacilli, so that now the plague can be stayed without the assistance of priests.
The art of photography became known, the sun became an artist, gave us the faces of our friends, copies of the great paintings and statues, pictures of the world's wonders, and enriched the eyes of poverty with the spoil of travel, the wealth of art. The cell theory was advanced, embryology was studied and science entered the secret house of life. The biologists, guided by fossil forms, followed the paths of life from protoplasm up to man. Then came Darwin with the "Origin of Species," "Natural Selection," and the "Survival of the Fittest." From his brain there came a flood of light. The old theories grew foolish and absurd. The temple of every science was rebuilt. That which had been called philosophy became childish superstition. The prison doors were opened and millions of convicts, of unconscious slaves, roved with joy over the fenceless fields of freedom. Darwin and Haeckel and Huxley and their fellow-workers filled the night of ignorance with the glittering stars of truth. This is Darwin's victory. He gained the greatest victory, the grandest triumph. The laurel of the nineteenth century is on his brow.
Question. How does the literature of to-day compare with that of the first half of the century, in your opinion?
Answer. There is now no poet of laughter and tears, of comedy and pathos, the equal of Hood. There is none with the subtle delicacy, the aerial footstep, the flame-like motion of Shelley; none with the amplitude, sweep and passion, with the strength and beauty, the courage and royal recklessness of Byron. The novelists of our day are not the equals of Dickens. In my judgment, Dickens wrote the greatest of all novels. "The Tale of Two Cities" is the supreme work of fiction. Its philosophy is perfect. The characters stand out like living statues. In its pages you find the blood and flame, the ferocity and self-sacrifice of the French Revolution. In the bosom of the Vengeance is the heart of the horror. In 105, North Tower, sits one whom sorrow drove beyond the verge, rescued from death by insanity, and we see the spirit of Dr. Manette tremblingly cross the great gulf that lies between the night of dreams and the blessed day, where things are as they seem, as a tress of golden hair, while on his hands and cheeks fall Lucie's blessed tears. The story is filled with lights and shadows, with the tragic and grotesque. While the woman knits, while the heads fall, Jerry Cruncher gnaws his rusty nails and his poor wife "flops" against his business, and prim Miss Pross, who in the desperation and terror of love held Mme. Defarge in her arms and who in the flash and crash found that her burden was dead, is drawn by the hand of a master. And what shall I say of Sidney Carton? Of his last walk? Of his last ride, holding the poor girl by the hand? Is there a more wonderful character in all the realm of fiction? Sidney Carton, the perfect lover, going to his death for the love of one who loves another. To me the three greatest novels are "The Tale of Two Cities," by Dickens, "Les Miserables," by Hugo, and "Ariadne," by Ouida.
"Les Miserables" is full of faults and perfections. The tragic is sometimes pushed to the grotesque, but from the depths it brings the pearls of truth. A convict becomes holier than the saint, a prostitute purer than the nun. This book fills the gutter with the glory of heaven, while the waters of the sewer reflect the stars.
In "Ariadne" you find the aroma of all art. It is a classic dream. And there, too, you find the hot blood of full and ample life. Ouida is the greatest living writer of fiction. Some of her books I do not like. If you wish to know what Ouida really is, read "Wanda," "The Dog of Flanders," "The Leaf in a Storm." In these you will hear the beating of her heart.
Most of the novelists of our time write good stories. They are ingenious, the characters are well drawn, but they lack life, energy. They do not appear to act for themselves, impelled by inner force. They seem to be pushed and pulled. The same may be said of the poets. Tennyson belongs to the latter half of our century. He was undoubtedly a great writer. He had no flame or storm, no tidal wave, nothing volcanic. He never overflowed the banks. He wrote nothing as intense, as noble and pathetic as the "Prisoner of Chillon;" nothing as purely poetic as "The Skylark;" nothing as perfect as the "Grecian Urn," and yet he was one of the greatest of poets. Viewed from all sides he was far greater than Shelley, far nobler than Keats. In a few poems Shelley reached almost the perfect, but many are weak, feeble, fragmentary, almost meaningless. So Keats in three poems reached a great height—in "St. Agnes' Eve," "The Grecian Urn," and "The Nightingale"—but most of his poetry is insipid, without thought, beauty or sincerity.
We have had some poets ourselves. Emerson wrote many poetic and philosophic lines. He never violated any rule. He kept his passions under control and generally "kept off the grass." But he uttered some great and splendid truths and sowed countless seeds of suggestion. When we remember that he came of a line of New England preachers we are amazed at the breadth, the depth and the freedom of his thought.
Walt Whitman wrote a few great poems, elemental, natural—poems that seem to be a part of nature, ample as the sky, having the rhythm of the tides, the swing of a planet.