Shelley, imbued with revolutionary ideas and aspirations after an ideal being, was one of the greatest poets of the age, now Miltonic in his elegiac verse in Adonais, and now unapproachable in his lyrics. No singer has ever drawn deeper from the wells of poetic inspiration.
Wordsworth, contemplative and philosophic the patriarch of the Lake School, taught the dependence of the poet on nature, and from the Lyrical Ballads to the Excursion he illustrated his own saying in his works, that “poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity.” He threw off the conventional, and endeavored to pierce to the heart of things, whether in man or in nature.
Fancy and imagination were made perfect in the exquisite creations and sensuous verse of Keats; wit and pathos abounded in Thomas Hood; while historic and romantic poetry found notable exemplars in Southey, Scott, Rogers, Campbell, and Coleridge. Hannah More and Joanna Baillie sought to galvanize the classical drama; Cunningham sang his Scottish songs; and Keble consecrated sacred hopes in the Christian Year.
The historic novel was made memorable by Sir Walter Scott, whose extraordinary fecundity was the wonder of his generation. His novels were the first and greatest prose result of the revived spirit of romanticism. Jane Austen did for the domestic novel what Scott did for the historical. The pictures of English life in Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and the remaining stories by this writer, have never been excelled. Her painting of manners was exquisite, and while her characters and incidents were of the most every-day description, she lifted them out of the commonplace by her exquisite touch and her absolute truthfulness to nature.
THE VICTORIAN PERIOD TO THE PRESENT, 1837- ——
The Victorian age may justly be called great in history, philosophy, biography, fiction, and poetry. Macaulay, in the earlier half of the Victorian period, illumined history by the brilliant glow of his imagination; while in the latter half Carlyle was not only his equal in history, but the first man of letters of his time. In his prose epic, The French Revolution, there was the vigor of a Rembrandt; biography was ennobled by his Cromwell; while throughout all his works—from Sartor Resartus to the latest of his utterances—he upheld the dignity of labor, and the sacredness of duty.
English history in all periods, and the progress and growth of the constitution, found brilliant chroniclers or scholarly interpreters in Hallam, Freeman, Froude, Green, Stubbs, Brewer, and Gardiner; while the philosophical aspects of history have been vividly presented by Buckle and Lecky. Rome lived again in the pages of Merivale; the Jewish race in those of Milman; and Greece in those of Grote and Thirlwall.
Turning to philosophy and science, John Stuart Mill exercised a profound influence upon the age as metaphysician, logician, politician, and moralist. Charles Darwin revolutionized scientific thought by promulgating the theory of evolution, which Herbert Spencer, its most conspicuous philosophical exponent, applied to psychology, morals, and politics. Logic and science had other exponents in Brewster, Whately, Bain, Hugh Miller, John Tyndall, T. H. Huxley, T. G. Tait, and W. K. Clifford. John Ruskin has eloquently wedded art and morality, while biography and criticism have found representative writers in Lockhart, Forster, De Quincey, Masson, Arnold, “Christopher North,” Lewes, Helps, Trevelyan, John Morley, and others. Religious thought was deeply impressed by the school of religious literature which arose with the Oxford movement. In poetry, its greatest result was Keble’s Christian Year, while its greatest product in prose was the beautiful and haunting style of Cardinal Newman, best shown in his Apologia.
Pusey, Arnold, Maurice, Robertson, Stanley, Liddon, Martineau, Gladstone, Spurgeon, and many more of all creeds contributed in a lesser degree.
ALFRED TENNYSON’S BEAUTIFUL “LADY OF SHALOTT”