CHAPTER III

THE EARLY VICTORIAN AGE

1840-1870

IN spite of the interesting elements which we have just endeavoured to indicate, the history of English literature between 1825 and 1840 was comparatively uneventful. The romantic revolution was complete the new spirit had penetrated every corner of literary production, and the various strains introduced from Germany, from Celtic sources, from the resuscitated study of natural landscape, from the habit of contemplating radical changes in political, religious, and social ideas, had settled down into an accepted intellectual attitude, which itself threatened to become humdrum and conventional. But this menace of a new classicism passed away under the mental storm and stress which culminated in 1848 in a second and less radical revolution on the lines of that which was then half a century old. This was a revolution which had, in English literature, the effect of unsettling nothing that was valuable in the new romantic tradition, but of scouring it, as it were, of the dust and cobwebs which were beginning to cloud its surface, and of polishing it to the reflection of more brilliant and delicate aspects of nature.

In this second revival of thought and active expression the practice of publishing books grew with a celerity which baffles so succinct a chronicle as ours. It becomes, therefore, impossible from this point forwards to discuss with any approach to detail the careers of any but the most prominent authors. All that we can now hope to do is to show in some degree what was the general trend and what were the main branches of this refreshed and giant body of literature. Between the accession of Queen Victoria and the breaking out of the war with Russia the profession of letters flourished in this country as it had never done before. It is noticeable that in the first years of the century the men of genius are sharply distinguished from the herd of negligible men of talent. We recognise some ten or twelve names so far isolated from all the rest that, with little injustice, criticism may concentrate its attention on these alone. But in the second revival this was not the case; the gradations are infinitely slow, and a sort of accomplished cleverness, highly baffling to the comparative critic, brings us down from the summit, along innumerable slopes and invidiously gentle

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