(1841-46), a cheap series with a characteristically far-fetched title. Vainly his plays were acted, his poems printed. In the future, a Rossetti might copy out Pauline, and write to ask if it were indeed his; "Owen Meredith," Roden Noel, and Augusta Webster would hail him master. But as yet, up to his marriage in 1846, nay to the end of the 'Forties and well into the 'Fifties, his name was known to few. His noble wife chafed to find herself praised, him ignored. His influence on the literature of our period was therefore small indeed. The fault For this he had himself mainly to thank. "O British Public, ye who like me not," he wrote even in 1868, when it had become something of his own. an anachronism. But the public had reason for misliking. Intellectual waywardness was rewarded in kind. "Less matter with more art " would have secured Browning's welcome at any time. And no man could have given this more easily. On all technical points, not merely of metrical structure but of general composition-handling and draughtsmanship, what to select and what avoid-he was beyond question an expert. Not the power, but the will, can have been lacking. Artist and student of verse, he should have had a higher ideal of the expression as well as the conception of poetry. Form may not be everything, but it is a condition of incalculable importance, a necessary element in the highest success. We cannot acquit him of wilful disregard for some fundamental principles of his chosen art. Yet the public lost much too. Browning's earlier verse lacks little of its matured power. His genius The misfortune flowered early and bore fruit long. High mutual. thought, strong passion, eager vision, relentless tracking of the human soul through all disguises of speech or action-these were there to find, could but his contemporaries have known to seek. Browning's lynx-eyed scrutiny omitted no corner of human affairs. His photographic snapshots are as vivid as they are swift. Above all, his strong sense and masculine vigour would have been invaluable correctives for much that was faulty then. It is interesting to speculate what might have followed his earlier popularity. He himself might have profited by adequate criticism,―might have clarified his brew, and strained out more of the lees. These things belong to the "might have been." But one cannot help regretting that Browning gave himself and his readers no better chance of coming to a mutually profitable knowledge. Conclusion. Here, however, it is time to make end. We began with the elder Romantics in mid-vigour of life. We leave off with the neo-Romantic leaders similarly in their zenith of genius. The foregoing survey has traced the Romantic Triumphin this country, and in its most characteristic form, that of pure poetry-through successive stages of maturity, decay, and renovation. It is next incumbent to follow this movement, at home, into regions where its working may seem less obvious. Imag inative poetry was its most natural expression, but is very far from being its only or even its most important one. The widespread activity and manysided influence of the Romantic Movement is precisely what justifies depicting it in such detail. And it will be found that no department of what can be called in any sense literary labour escaped the leavening influence of this great principle. 73 CHAPTER II. FICTION AND LIGHT LITERATURE. DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOVEL-SCOTT'S PREDECESSORS-HIS OWN METHOD -TRUTH TO LIFE-OUTSIDE AND INSIDE-HIS PERSONAL HISTORY -HIS RELATION TO ROMANCE-HIS IMMENSE INFLUENCE-SISTER NOVELISTS-MISS AUSTEN: HER ATTACK ON ULTRA-ROMANTICISM -MISS EDGEWORTH MISS FERRIER OTHER CONTEMPORARIES GALT-IMMEDIATE FOLLOWERS-INFLUENCES OTHER THAN FICTION -JOURNALS THE MAGAZINE PROPER-ITS LITERARY VALUECHARLES QUINCEY LAMB-SOUTHEY-COBBETT-HAZLITT-DE THACKERAY: HIS JOHN WILSON-JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART THE BLACKWOOD SCHOOL A REMARKABLE feature of the time we are considering was that it exalted imaginative prose almost to the level of the best verse.1 1 Saintsbury and Herford, as before. English Literature (4th edition, 2 vols., Poetry had indeed Chambers's Cyclopædia of 1892) gives extracts from prose writers: cf. Craik, English Prose Writers (vol. v., 1896). Con of the novel. often condescended to prose, consciously or uninDevelopment tentionally; but never before had the younger sister (for such we must call her) aspired to fulfil so many of the elder's functions. The best Elizabethan prose is heavy-footed though weighty, the best Addisonian mannered and confined. It was our Romantic Movement that revealed the full capabilities of prose, vindicated its place in the concert of the Muses. Various causes, various departments, contributed to this result. First and foremost comes the renascence of fiction, the writing of which, as we all know, took such a new start within the period we are reviewing. Novels of many kinds of course existed before. Defoe, Swift, and SterneFielding and Smollett-Richardson-Godwin and his school-Mrs Radcliffe and a host of imitators,—these had familiarised English readers with various forms of tale, and also of whimsical variant. Collections of "British Novelists" were already formed; the word temporary accounts in Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age (3rd edition, 1858), Horne's New Spirit of the Age (2 vols., 1844), Leigh Hunt's Autobiography (revised edition, 1869), &c., &c. De Quincey, Works (16 vols., 1875-80) passim. For later criticism, Nassau Senior, Essays on Fiction (1864); Bagehot, Literary Studies (2 vols., 1879); Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library (3 vols., 1874-79); R. H. Hutton, Essays (2 vols., 1876, now with other volumes in "Eversley Library "); Saintsbury, Essays in English Literature (1890), Corrected Impressions (1895); Mrs Oliphant, Victorian Age of English Literature (2 vols., 1892). Genest, Some Account of the English Stage (10 vols., 1832), comes down only to 1830. Compare Hazlitt, Book of the Stage; Leigh Hunt, Critical Essays on London Performers. Brewer's Reader's Handbook (last edition, 1898), Appendix III., gives a list of all plays, with date of performance. |