5. What was the significance of the publication of Species"? "The Origin of 6. Upon what rests the fame of the author of "Coningsby"? 7. Name one great book by Charles Reade, one by Anthony Trollope, and one by Charles Kingsley. 8. What is the thesis of "Culture and Anarchy"? 99 66 9. Who wrote "Diana of the Crossways,' 'Lorna Doone," "The Earthly Paradise," and "Atalanta in Calydon"? 10. What are the qualities of Swinburne's verse? 66 66 Suggested Readings.-The student should make every effort to read the following: Thomas Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs" and The Death Bed"; Lord Lytton's "The Last Days of Pompeii"; Charles Lever's "Charles O'Malley"; Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species"; George Henry Borrow's The Bible in Spain"; Charles Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth"; Anthony Trollope's "Barchester Towers"; Charles Kingsley's "Westward Ho!"; Matthew Arnold's “ Culture and Anarchy,” "Rugby Chapel," Sohrab and Rustum"; Thomas Hughes's "Tom Brown's School Days"; George Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways Richard Blackmore's "Lorna Doone"; Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel”; Algernon Charles Swinburne's Bothwell." 66 66 66 CHAPTER XLIX RECENT WRITERS "They, the heirs of all the ages, in the foremost files of time." -Tennyson. SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN, the nephew of Lord Macaulay, was born 1838. In 1876 he published "The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay," which is the most readable book of its kind in English literature. "The Early History of Charles James Fox," 1880, and its continuation, " The American Revolution," 1899-1915, are almost equally entertaining. The latter is also of particular interest to Americans because it shows the point of view of an Englishman who appreciates Washington, Adams, and Franklin no less than Burgoyne and Cornwallis, Fox, Lord North, and George III. Its motto, taken from Tennyson's " England and America in 1782," is an index to the spirit in which it is written: 66 Strong mother of a lion line, Be proud of those strong sons of thine James Bryce (1838- ) is the author of the standard work on the government of the United States, his " American Commonwealth," 1888, being distinguished by sound scholarship, a luminous style, and a keen appreciation of our institutions. Austin Dobson (1840- ) is an accomplished critic of French and eighteenth century literature and a charming poet. His chief volumes are" Vignettes in Rhyme and Vers de Société " 1873, " Proverbs in Porcelain " 1877, "Old World Idylls" 1883, and "At the Sign of the Lyre" 1885. Perfection of technique, freshness, spontaneity, humor, pathos, and satire-all are to be found in these volumes. As Surrey imported the sonnet into our literature from Italy, Dobson introduced from France the rondel, the rondeau, the ballade, the triolet, the chant royale, and the villanelle, all of which he uses with skill. The following rondeau will give some idea, perhaps, of the delicacy of his art: "You bid me try, blue eyes, to write That makes them eight. The port's in sight;— Now just a pair to end in oo,'— When maids command, what can't we do! You bid me try! Try Dobson's volumes; they are well worth trying. Andrew Lang (1844-1914) is poetically a brother of Dobson. His chief books of verse are Ballades and Lyrics of Old France" 1872, "Ballades in Blue China" 1880, " Rhymes a la Mode" 1884, and "Ballades of Books" 1888. He also wrote extensively and well in prose of myths and books, published one or two novels, edited a beautiful edition of Burns, and won the honor of being the best translator of the day, always excepting our own George Herbert Palmer, whose prose version of the "Odyssey" is unapproachable. Lang's "Theocritus," however, is a wonderful book, and his prose " Homer " (done with Messrs. Butcher, Leaf, and Myers) is a perpetual delight to readers. His " Ballade of the Royal Game of Golf " shows at once his lively humor, his sound Scotch heart, and his mastery of a fascinating but difficult form of verse: "There are laddies will drive ye a ba' To the burn frae the farthermost tee; But ye mauna think driving is a'; Ye may heel her and send her ajee; Ye may land in the sand or the sea; And ye're dune, sir, ye're no worth a preen, "The auld folk are crouse and they craw But to girn, and to gar the sand flee. "I hae played in the frost and the thaw, 66 ENVOY Prince, faith, you're improving a wee, And, Lord, man they tell me you're keen; Tak aye tent to be up on the green." William Butler Yeats (1865 ) has steeped his imagination in Irish myth and tried to create an Irish literature distinct from that of England. The result is that he has written some effective and charming poetry of old unhappy far-off things and battles long ago. Yeats is a disciple of Blake, and believes, with Cowper and Cowley, that God made the country and man made the town. Some of his short plays are admirable. Among these "The Pot of Broth" and "The Hour Glass are best known. John Masefield, according to one critic, has surpassed “Enoch Arden" with his poem, " The Daffodil Fields "; according to another, is, on account of "The Everlasting Mercy" and The Widow in Bye Street," the man of the hour; and, in the opinion of a third, has told, in "The Story of a Round House," better than it has ever been told before, the hardships of a passage around Cape Horn. His "Tragedy of Nan" is a powerful play. He has been a barkeeper in New York, a sailor, and a Red Cross nurse in Flanders. His verse is at once popular and powerful. Unlike most of our poets since Shakespeare, he writes for the general reader instead of for the educated few. As somebody has said, there is life in his poetry and there have been poetry and romance in his life. The boy or girl is little to be envied who does not find pleasure in John Masefield's volumes. In 1885 Henry Rider Haggard (1856- ) won a great success with a novel called " King Solomon's Mines" and in 1887 followed this with "She," which was even more popular. Both are ingenious, weird, mysterious, adventurous, and African. ), a descendant of Dr. Arnold Mrs. Humphry Ward (1851of Rugby and the wife of Thomas Humphry Ward, editor of the English poets and of " The Cambridge History of English Literature," is the author of several powerful novels. The best of these is " Robert Elsmere," which tells the history of a soul adrift on a sea of religious doubt. James Matthew Barrie (1860- ) is a fascinating and ingenious Scot. "A Window in Thrums” 1889 made him one of the most popular novelists of the day. It was followed by "The Little Minister" 1891, "My Lady Nicotine " 1899, "Sentimental Tommy " 1896, and "Tommy and Grizel " 1900. He has since devoted himself largely to the writing of plays. "The Professor's Love Story" is a charming comedy, "The Admirable Crichton" a clever and fantastic defence of society, and " Peter Pan "a child's play without a rival, unless it be Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird." Not the least fascinating of Barrie's books is "Margaret Ogilvy," which is a biography of his mother. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859- ) first won fame in 1887, 1888, and 1890 by publishing" A Study in Scarlet," an exciting Mormon story; "Micah Clarke," a tale of James II; and "The White Company," a history of the adventures of a company of English bowmen in France and Spain in Chaucer's time. The best known of his later books is "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," a series of detective stories unequalled in our literature since Poe's. He was knighted 1902, not on account of his success as a writer of fiction, but because he had explained and justified the conduct of Britain in the Boer war in a short work called "The Cause and Conduct of the War." Anthony Hope Hawkins (1863- ), under the pen-name of Anthony Hope, in 1894 published "The Prisoner of Zenda," a novel which won popular favor by reason of his skill in mixing romanticism, satire, and burlesque. "Rupert of Hentzau " is in the same vein. Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) resembled Stevenson in his life, his fate, and the delicacy of his art. The son of a Greek mother and an Irish father, he was born in the island of Leucadia-that particular isle of Greece" where burning Sappho loved and sung." Part of his youth was spent in England, where he suffered from fog, and part in |