-*iji^:^r 
 
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 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE 
 WORDSWORTH COLLECTION 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924105500551 
 
Some Representative Poets 
 
 OF THE Nineteenth 
 
 Century 
 
 A Syllabus of University Extension Lectures 
 
 BY 
 
 Melville B. Anderson 
 
 Professor of English Literature, Stanford University 
 
 San Francisco 
 
 WILLIAM DOXEY 
 
 i8q6 
 
Ll) ■ , it 
 
 Copyright, 1896 
 William Doxey 
 
SOME REPRESENTATIVE POETS 
 
 OF THE NINETEENTH 
 
 CENTURY. 
 
 I. 
 
 WORDSWORTH: The Poet of Nature. 
 
 Introductory word upon the Nature, Function, and 
 
 Tests of Literature. 
 
 I. 
 
 REASONS FOR BEGINNING WITH WORDSWORTH. 
 
 In a sense, the father of the EngHsh and American 
 poetry of the century: its freedom, simplicity, fidelity, pas- 
 sion for Nature traceable to him. Indebtedness to him of 
 Bryant, Emerson, Tennyson, Lowell, Arnold, and others. 
 His predecessors: Thomson, Cowper, Burns, Blake. His 
 commanding position in literary history. The enormous 
 social and literary revolutions of which he was a witness 
 during his long life (i 770-1 850). 
 
 11. 
 
 EARLY EDUCATION. 
 
 William Wordsworth, born at Cockermouth, Cumberr 
 land, April 7, 1770. Peculiarly favorable surroundings. 
 Resultant harmony of development and unity of life. The 
 child the father of the man. His inconsiderable debt to 
 
 — 3 — 
 
schools, masters, and books. His enormous debt to 
 
 Nature, especially to his own nature. Rare value of "The 
 
 Prelude" as an account of "The Growth of a Poet's 
 
 Mind." (See Book I., especially passages beginning, 
 
 "Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe," and "Ye Presences 
 
 of Nature.") 
 
 III. 
 
 WORDSWORTH AND HUMAN SOCIETY. 
 A. -POLITICAL. 
 His early attitude toward the French Revolution. Chill- 
 ing of his enthusiasm. Later conservatism. Analogous 
 process in the minds of Coleridge, Southey, Schiller. Tes- 
 timony of his poems to his interest in public affairs. (See 
 the first eighteen sonnets in Matthew Arnold's Selections 
 from Wordsworth, and the lines about the French Revolu- 
 tion in "The Excursion," Books HI. and IV.) 
 
 B.— DOMESTIC AND LOCAL. 
 
 (a) Testimony of his rustic neighbors: " A plainish- 
 featured man, as had no pleasure in his face." "A deal 
 upon the road." "A desolate-minded man." "A plain- 
 faced man and a mean liver." "Mrs. Wudsworth was the 
 plainest woman in these parts, and she was a manasher an' 
 aw, and kep' accounts." "He and she was truly compan- 
 ionable, and they was ter'ble fond of one another; but 
 Dorothy hed the wits on 'em both." "Miss Dorothy was 
 the cleverest man of the two at his job, and he allays went 
 to her when he was puzzelt" " He wozn't a man as said 
 a deal to common folk, but talked a deal to hissen." "He 
 did most of his study upon the road. I suppose he was a 
 cleverish man, but he wozn't set much count of by none 
 of us." 
 
 — 4 — 
 
{b) Influence upon architecture, and in the preservation 
 of trees, rocks, and landmarks in his own neighborhood. 
 
 {c) Helpfulness to the sick. 
 
 (^) Wordsworth's friends : Coleridge and Hartley, 
 Southey, Prof. Wilson, De Quincey. 
 
 (e) Wordsworth died at noon, Tuesday, April 23, 
 1850, at Rydal Mount, and his body was laid in Grasmere 
 churchyard by the Rotha. 
 
 C.—EDUCA TIONAL. 
 
 Read "Expostulation and Reply," "The Tables 
 
 Turned," "The Prelude" passim, "The Excursion," 
 
 Book IX. 
 
 D. — PHILANTHROPIC. 
 
 Read "The Excursion," Book VIII., "Sonnet to Clark- 
 son," the sonnets upon the "Punishment of Death." 
 
 E.— RELIGIOUS. 
 
 No poet has been more pervasively imbued with the 
 spirit of "pure religion, breathing household laws." It 
 will be found in all his works. 
 
 IV. 
 
 WORDSWORTH'S THEISM. 
 
 (See John Veitch's paper in Knight's "Wordsworthiana.") 
 
 A. 
 Man is set in the midst of infinitude, the visible world 
 surrounded by the invisible. 
 
 B. 
 Invisible Powers and Presences which speak to the soul 
 through natural objects. (See the first Book of "The 
 
 Prelude.") 
 
 — 5 — 
 
c. 
 
 These Powers and Presences are varying manifestations 
 of one Spirit, an object of love and adoration, which "rolls 
 thro' all things" and binds all into one, transforming things 
 into a Universe. (Of this, the most perfect expression is 
 "Tintern Abbey.") 
 
 D. 
 
 From this spirit the human soul takes its rise; to this 
 it returns as to its home. ("Intimations of Immortahty.") 
 
 V. 
 
 ETHICS. 
 
 (a) Comparison of stanzas "To My Sister," (begin- 
 ning, "It is the first mild day of March,") with the "Ode 
 to Duty." 
 
 (d) The deep, moral lesson of "The Leech-Gatherer." 
 (c) Wordsworth's own belief concerning the moral 
 influence of his poems. "They will co-operate with the 
 benign tendencies in human nature and society, and will, 
 in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, 
 and happier." 
 
 VI. 
 
 CRITICISM. 
 ^. 
 
 Wordsworth, as Arnold says, has been fortunate in his 
 critics. Reasons for this: (a) His historical position; (d) 
 his originality; (c) the essential solidity of his thought; 
 (d) his spirituality, attractive to serious minds in an age 
 of religious uncertainty. 
 
 — 6 — 
 
B. 
 
 Is he one of the supreme poets ? The personal, the 
 historical, and the real estimate. (See Matthew Arnold's 
 essay on " The Study of Poetry.") Significance of the fact 
 that each one of these estimates can be justly made. 
 
 C.—RESER VA TIONS. 
 
 (a) His personal coldness and egoism. Impression 
 made upon Emerson, Lowell, Arnold, Ruskin, FitzGerald, 
 his rustic neighbors. 
 
 (d) His deficiency in humor. 
 
 (<r) The inequality of his longer poems, and the vapid- 
 ness of some of the shorter. 
 
 (d) Other points in the case of the Advocatus Diaboli: 
 Not enough interested in men; poems lacking in narrative 
 and dramatic interest, and in passion; note of provincial- 
 ity, etc. 
 
 D. 
 
 {a) Position assigned him by the most competent 
 critics — the presidents of the Wordsworth Society (see 
 Knight's " Wordsworthiana,"), Aubrey De Vere, R. H. 
 Hutton, Edmond Scherer. 
 
 {U) The incomparable merit of a few of his best poems; 
 their unique blending of the highest thought and spiritual 
 passion with felicity of expression. 
 
 (<;) In the sonnet form he is all but supreme in our 
 language. Reasons for this. 
 
 (^) After Shakspere and Pope, perhaps the most 
 quotable of our poets. 
 
 ((?) No other English poet so welcome a companion 
 in one's most serious moods. 
 
 (y*) No other unites to an equal degree the power of 
 the poet, the thinker, and the seer. 
 
II. 
 
 SHELLEY: The Idealist of the Revolution and the 
 Revolutionist of Ideals* 
 
 L 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL. (1792-1822.) 
 
 A. 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, born at Field Place, near Horsham, 
 Sussex, August 4, 1792. Contrast between his life and 
 Wordsworth's. His eyes first opened upon "the star-light 
 smile of children, the sweet looks of women." It was a 
 lovely dawn before a short and cloudy day. 
 
 B. 
 
 Brief account of his youth and education; his taste in 
 reading; his thorough literary equipment. His scholastic 
 training cut short, but not his education. 
 
 C. 
 
 His "passion for reforming the world." His early 
 unwise exhibition of this passion. Enthusiasm and moral 
 courage commoner in youth than sound judgment. Injus- 
 tice of condemning Shelley upon the evidence contained in 
 "Queen Mab" and his boyish manifestoes. 
 
 D. — CHA RA CTER. 
 
 Modest, manly, sincere, sympathetic. Quite as devoid 
 of the egoism, stiffness, grotesqueness of Wordsworth, as of 
 the stage-strut of Byron. In character, perhaps the most 
 winning of our poets; a brotherly man, who gains upon 
 acquaintance. 
 
 — 8 — 
 
E.— RELATIONS WITH WOMEN. 
 
 Harriet Westbrook; Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. More 
 sinned against than sinning. His theory and practice simi- 
 lar to those of Milton, whom he resembles in some other 
 respects, especially in enthusiasm for freedom. 
 
 F.—SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO SURROUNDED 
 
 HIM. 
 
 Hogg, Godwin, Leigh Hunt, Peacock, Byron. His 
 moral and spiritual superiority to them. 
 
 G. — CAUSES OF THE MISERY OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 Fault not entirely that of society, nor entirely his own. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley's ejaculation (quoted by Arnold). Would it 
 
 have been better had Shelley thought like other people? 
 
 The later conservatism of Wordsworth and Southey more 
 
 comfortable, but less noble. The world was not his friend, 
 
 nor the world's law. 
 
 H. 
 
 Shelley was drowned in the Gulf of Genoa, Monday, 
 July 8, 1822. His ashes lie in the Protestant cemetery at 
 Rome, near the grave of Keats. 
 
 n. 
 
 PROSE WRITINGS. 
 
 A. 
 
 The Letters, especially those to Peacock ; Arnold's 
 
 praise of them. 
 
 B. 
 
 The "Defense of Poetry"; its Platonism ; memorable 
 
 definitions ; compared with Sidney's "Apology for Poetry " ; 
 
 with Wordsworth's Prefaces. 
 
 — 9 — 
 
c 
 
 The admirable taste and measure of this prose ; 
 
 originahty ; descriptive power ; occasional splendor ; the 
 
 keenness of the analytic intellect. Shelley's taste for 
 
 abstractions ; with less passion and zeal he might have been 
 
 a metaohysician. 
 
 III. 
 
 POETRY. 
 A.— ETHICAL AND PHILOSOPHIC. 
 Sense in which it contains "nothing earthly or human." 
 Its idealism; its essential humanity; its militant quality. 
 The ethical strain less marked than in Wordsworth. Ethi- 
 cally, Shelley is the St. John of poets : " Love is the fulfil- 
 ment of the Law." 
 
 B.—RELLGIOUS. 
 
 His maturest convictions symbolized in his masterpiece, 
 the " Prometheus Unbound" : W. M. Rossetti's interpreta- 
 tion. (See Encyc. Britannica.) Robert Browning's essay 
 on Shelley : "Correspondence of the Universe to Deity." 
 
 C— SOCIAL. 
 The prophet of a better day. "The Revolution of 
 the Golden City"; last chorus in "Hellas." Rossetti's 
 opinion that he is the poet of the future. 
 
 D. 
 
 In what sense the idealist of the Revolution; in what, 
 the revolutionist of ideals. 
 
 CRITICISM. 
 A. 
 Shelley not so fortunate in his critics as Wordsworth. 
 Views of Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, Bagehot, Arnold. 
 
Silence of Lowell; coldness of Emerson; contempt of 
 Carlyle. 
 
 B.— SHORTCOMINGS. 
 
 (a) Vagueness and lack of substance; luxuriance of 
 imagery; a certain boyishness. These are rather defects 
 of matter than of style. 
 
 (6) The most considerable limitation he suffers in 
 common with Wordsworth: — lack of humor. All the others 
 may be incident to youth, but maturity never would have 
 made him master of "the nobler art of comedy." 
 
 C — COMPENSATING MERITS. 
 
 Classic purity of diction ; music of words and verse ; 
 harmony of construction. The most perfect lyrical artist 
 of our language, and one of the two or three supreme 
 lyrists of recorded Hterature. Love of beauty ; spiritual 
 vitality and passion. 
 
 D.—SOME PECULIARITIES. 
 
 ' ' The abstract lyric ' ' ; the predominance of constructive 
 
 imagination over decorative fancy ; comparisons of outward 
 
 objects to things of the mind, illustrating his vivid sense ot 
 
 the truth that 
 
 "The everlasting universe of things 
 Flows through the mind." 
 
 His theism, as in the "Lines to Mont Blanc." Is it 
 Wordsworthian ? Is it pantheism? Compare the "Pro- 
 metheus." Significance of the contrast between Words- 
 worth's "Ode to Duty" and the "Hymn to Intellectual 
 Beauty." 
 
 He finds in the perception of Beauty and in the senti- 
 ment of Love the surest pledges of the Divine Nature. 
 
IV. 
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 
 
 The proper symbol of Shelley's life and work is not a 
 truncated cone, but a blasted and broken tree. The growth 
 of his character was continuous at the base as well as at the 
 top. No other poet, not even Shakspere, dying before 
 the age of thirty, would have left so many titles to admira- 
 tion. It is his glory to have surpassed the "highest 
 reaches" of other poets in the attempt to express the 
 
 "One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, 
 Which into words no virtue can dig:est." 
 
III. 
 
 BYRON: The Poet of the Political Revolution, 
 
 I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY (1788-1824). 
 
 A.~ANCESTRY. 
 
 The wild lives of his forebears. His father's recklessness 
 and infidelity. His mother's vicious temper. His uncle 
 "the wicked Lord Byron." George Gordon, Lord Byron, 
 born in Holies Street, London, January 22, 1788. 
 
 B.— EDUCATION. 
 
 No home training ; no systematic school training ; wide 
 and desultory reading ; shooting, fencing, swimming, box- 
 ing, drinking. Innocent early loves ; guilty amours of 
 adolescence. 
 
 C— CHARACTER UPON ENTERING THE WORLD. 
 
 Hunger for distinction ; wild, ungovernable passions ; 
 generosity, amiability, loyalty to friends ; sensible to kind- 
 ness, but revengeful ; sensitiveness on the subject of his 
 physical deformity ; excessive vanity and pride ; ' ' the 
 canker of aristocracy ; " " angel or demon ? ' ' 
 
 His early obscurity and his sudden dazzling success ; 
 " English Bards and Scotch Reviewers"; the first two 
 cantos of " Childe Harold"; becomes a man about town 
 and a lady-killer. 
 
 — 13 — 
 
E. 
 
 The tragic five acts of Byron's life (Rossetti): — 
 (i) Boyhood and adolescence, Miss Chaworth. 
 
 (2) Commences poet, travels, " Childe Harold," 
 dandyism. 
 
 (3) Marriage and separation. 
 
 (4) Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, the Guiccioli. 
 
 (5) The war for the liberation of Greece. 
 
 F. 
 
 He died April 19, 1824, at Mesolonghi, Greece. The 
 Greeks wished to lay his body in the Temple of Theseus, 
 at Athens. It was taken to England, denied interment at 
 Westminster, and was laid in the village church of Huck- 
 nall, Nottinghamshire, beside the body of his mother. 
 
 H. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Materials for the formation of an opinion : his letters 
 and journal, the letters of Shelley, the conversations and 
 impressions recorded by Moore, Leigh Hunt, Medwin, Tre- 
 lawney. Lady Blessington, the Countess Guiccioli, Crabbe 
 Robinson, and the revelations of Lady Byron to Mrs. Stowe. 
 
 HL 
 
 WRITINGS. 
 
 A. — CRITICISM. 
 
 John Morley thinks him pre-eminently the poet of 
 the political Revolution; Matthew Arnold emphasizes his 
 "excellence of sincerity and strength"; Swinburne pro- 
 nounces his style "base beyond parody," his tragedies 
 "villainously bad," his satire characterized by "impotent 
 
 — 14 — 
 
malignity," and classes him with Southey as a poet; Ruskin 
 thinks him the first of political satirists, and places him as a 
 poet far above Wordsworth ; Edmond Scherer lays stress 
 upon his defects of character, — his littleness, affectation, 
 pretentious dandyism, — as pervading his works, but admits 
 that "in France we have not got beyond Byron"; Goethe 
 regards him as- "the greatest talent of our century," but 
 remarks that "when he begins to reflect he is a child"; 
 Carlyle insists that "no genuine good thought was ever 
 revealed by him to mankind"; Mazzini points out that he 
 gave a "European role to English literature," and bears 
 witness to his efficacy as the poet of political progress ; 
 Castelar cries out, "This great genius lived to repeat the 
 aspirations of all peoples." 
 
 B. 
 Elements of truth in almost all these judgments. A 
 superb rebel at a time when rebellion chariced to mean pro- 
 gress. Thus Byron became the inspirer of much nobler 
 men than himself. Despite his splendid attacks upon 
 British Philistinism, it is questionable whether his influence 
 has not been more baleful than salutary among us. Other 
 nations less influenced by his affectations, impurity, and 
 seductive glamor. Reasons why his role should have been 
 European rather than national ; the translatable quality of 
 
 his work. 
 
 C. 
 
 In what respects is " Don Juan," a great poem of the 
 modern spirit? The "Vision of Judgment," the greatest 
 political satire in the language. The "Isles of Greece," 
 the noblest of political lyrics. Essential greatness and 
 nobility of the mind of which these are the expression. 
 
 15 
 
IV. 
 
 VICTOR HUGO: The Poet of Humanity. 
 
 I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL (1S02-1885). 
 A.— ANCESTRY AND YOUTH. 
 
 Victor Marie Hugo, born at Besancon, February 26, 
 1802. His father, Joseph, an officer of the Revolution and 
 a general under Napoleon. Five uncles killed in the wars of 
 the Revolution. His mother a Bretonne, of Bourbon sym- 
 pathies, and a Catholic. Victor, a puny child, the third 
 son. Composed at fifteen a poem, which won. an "honor- 
 able mention" from the French Academy, and the famous 
 word of praise from Chateaubriand, '' V enfant sicblimer 
 Biig-Jargal^ said to have been first composed about the 
 same time; the prize poem on the statue of Henry IV., at 
 seventeen. 
 
 B.— THE LEADER OF THE '' ROMANTIC SCHOOL:' 
 
 "The Odes and Ballads" (1822). The unofficial but pen- 
 sioned laureate of Charles X. Becomes the leader of the 
 French " Romantiques." Preface to "Cromwell" (1827), 
 the great manifesto of Romanticism. The first performance 
 of" Hernani" (Feb, 25, 1830). His great romance " Notre 
 Dame de Paris" (1831). Already a revolutionist, both in 
 letters and in politics. An unsuccessful candidate for the 
 French Academy in 1836, 1839, and 1840; he was elected 
 in 1841. Made a peer of France, by Louis Philippe, in 
 1845. His hesitation at the time of the February Revolu- 
 tion (1848). Elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1849. 
 Exiled by Napoleon the Little after the Coup (T E tat (1851). 
 
 — 16 — 
 
C— TWENTY YEARS OF EXILE (1851-1870). 
 Political Satire: " Les Chatiments " (1853). Social Re- 
 form and Philanthropy: "Les Miserables " (1862). The 
 Social and Humane Function of Letters: "William Shake- 
 speare" (1864) [translated by the present author, and pub- 
 lished in 1887 by A. C. McClurg & Co.]. The Epic of 
 the Ascent of Man: "The Legend of the Centuries" (first 
 series, 1859; second series, 1877). Identified with the 
 movement for the abolition of the Death Penalty. 
 
 D.— LAST YEARS. 
 Returns to Paris after Sedan (Sept., 1870). Represents 
 Paris in the National Assembly. Resignation. Attitude 
 toward the Commune: " L'Annee Terrible." Elected to 
 the Senate to represent the department of the Seine (1876). 
 "The Art of Being a Grandfather" (1877). Belief in God 
 and Immortality: "Religions and Religion" (1880). " The 
 Golden Wedding," — fiftieth anniversary of " Hernani " 
 (Feb. 25, 1880). Died at Paris, May 22, 1885. 
 
 E.— CHARACTER. 
 The widely diverse estimates of Swinburne and F. W. 
 H. Myers. Hugo difficult to comprehend. Everything 
 about him somewhat grandiose: sympathies, imagination, 
 vanity. Lacks that simplicity which usually marks great- 
 ness. One cannot always take him so seriously as do his 
 friends — not to speak of himself 
 
 II. 
 
 SUBSTANCE AND MATTER. 
 A. — SOCIAL TENDENCY. 
 The social bent of French literature, as opposed to the 
 individualism of English. Victor Hugo exhibits more than 
 
 — 17 — 
 
any other French poet this social preoccupation. He has 
 been the poet and often the prophetic forerunner of most 
 of the movements of the century for civil emancipation, 
 social reform, and the broader interpretation of political 
 rights. In this respect, he is the successor to Byron and 
 Shelley; and perhaps the English contemporaries who have 
 written most in his spirit are Mrs. Browning, Dickens, and 
 Swinburne. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the forlorn 
 hopes which he has championed; this would be to recapitu- 
 late the efforts, successful and unsuccessful, of such leaders 
 as O'Connell, Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mazzini, Gambetta, John 
 Brown, Garrison, and many others. 
 
 A.— IVHV CALLED THE POET OF HUMANLTY. 
 
 Politically , he is the poet of Democracy militant. So- 
 cially, he is the voice of the dumb oppressed; the poet of 
 humane sympathy and social endeavor; the revealer of the 
 essential attributes of humanity in the wretched; the un- 
 masker of man's inhumanity to man; the pleader for 
 '' sweeter manners, purer laws." 
 
 In " Les Miserables" he makes the comfortable classes 
 uncomfortable by persistently keeping before them the 
 dreadful spectacle of needless human misery. 
 
 Despite his preoccupation with human injustice, oppres- 
 sion, and degradation, he is as hearty an optimist as Brown- 
 ing. His most considerable poetic work, "The Legend of 
 the Centuries," is written to show that all the aspects of 
 human life, thought, and history "combine to form one 
 single, immense upward movement toward the light." No 
 poet has expressed such abiding faith in human progress, 
 in the face of such studies of human misery. Knowing 
 
 — iS — 
 
the condition of the masses much better than did Tenny- 
 son, he has far more faith in and hope for humanity. 
 
 C— RELIGION AND ETHICS. 
 
 Religiously^ as socially^ he is an optimist; and his re- 
 hgious views are substantially in harmony with those of 
 Tennyson and Browning. His belief in God and Immor- 
 tality is unquestioning. Ethically, he is perhaps less sound 
 than his great English contemporaries. The ethical motives 
 predominant with him are Justice, Love., and Social Sympa- 
 thy. The conception of Duty as a matter of Law is rela- 
 tively weak; the ethical role of the emotions is enormous 
 
 D.— PHILOSOPHIC IDEALISM. 
 
 Philosophically and scientifically , his opinions are vague 
 and hardly worth considering. He is a seer and an artist 
 rather than a thinker. Not in the least an Agnostic; rather 
 a Mystic and an Idealist. Like Tennyson, penetrated with 
 the sense of the "necessary interlacement of the perceptible 
 with the non-perceptible." (See the remarkable chapters 
 in his "William Shakespeare," entitled "Souls.") Not a 
 psychologist, like Browning. 
 
 III. 
 
 ART. 
 
 A.— ROMANTICISM. 
 
 What is it ? Origin and early apphcation of the word. 
 Differences in its use in France and Germany. 
 
 {a) It had its origin in the longing for greater wealth 
 of substance, variety of color, and freedom of treatment in 
 literature. 
 
 — 19 — 
 
{b) It found its models in Shakspere, in Calderon, in 
 the newly discovered medieval epics and romances, in 
 popular poetry, — ballads, etc. 
 
 (<:) Its materials were at first principally history, medie- 
 val romance, and folk-lore ; but it opened the way for that 
 broad literary treatment of social questions and conditions 
 which characterizes the poetry and fiction of the latter half 
 of the century. 
 
 id) In forin it was opposed to classicism, — i. <?., to the 
 enforcement of certain rules, like the three unities, which 
 were felt to impair freedom and originality of expression. 
 
 {e) Its sigyiificance is far more than merely literary. 
 This literary struggle for freedom and fresh air can be 
 understood only when considered as a part of the great 
 movement whereof the French Revolution is one of the 
 political and social phases. 
 
 B.— CHARACTERISTICS OF MIND AND STYLE. 
 
 1. Victor Hugo is distinguished from other writers of 
 the Romantic School by the following characteristics: 
 
 (/?) His vast range as to subjects and modes of treatment. 
 (yb) The constancy and splendor of his imaginative 
 activity. 
 
 (<r) His vigor, virility, and fruitfulness. 
 
 2. Technically, his work is characterized — 
 
 id) By an astonishing variety and flexibility of metrical 
 forms. 
 
 (J?) By unexampled command of the resources, living 
 and latent, of the French language. 
 
 (<:) By unprecedented harmony of period and melody of 
 diction and rhythm. 
 
(d) By the greatest wealth and vividness of imagery. 
 ((?) By a certain energetic sequence of thought, stroke 
 upon stroke, that kindles the reader's mind. 
 
 3. Negatively, his work is marred by rhetorical 
 exaggeration, by an excessive tendency to antithesis and 
 epigram, by want of reserve, by violations of taste, by re- 
 dundance, repetition, dififuseness, lengthiness. The materials 
 are so vast that his art is incapable of assimilating them. 
 Many of his faults are probably due to a deficiency in the 
 sense of humor, which might have restrained the excesses of 
 so warm a temperament. 
 
 C— DRAMA riC SKILL — CREA IIVE POWER — 
 POETIC MAGIC. 
 
 1. Although frequently amorphous, through the inter- 
 jection of vast masses of foreign material, he has wonderful 
 constructive power. He is a very skilful dramatist, with 
 great command of stage effect. His dramas have abundance 
 of incident, are always interesting, and generally fascinating. 
 His characters, now by their superhuman faculties, now by 
 their strange conversions and transformations, and again by 
 their grotesqueness, seem to belong to some other world 
 than ours. If he be not a great dramatist, he is at least a 
 great dramatic enchanter. 
 
 2. In his romances we perceive the same mingling of 
 the natural with the preternatural. He certainly deserves 
 the title of wizard more truly than does Scott. Here and 
 there he creates a character exquisitely simple and true. 
 Compare the good Bishop Myriel with Jean Valjean. 
 
 3. As a lyric and narrative poet, he is without doubt 
 the greatest France has produced. Is he the greatest of the 
 century ? ,The future must decide. He is certainly our 
 most potent literary magician. 
 
V. 
 TENNYSON: The Asscrtcr of Law- 
 
 I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY (1809-1892) 
 
 A.— ANCESTRY AND FAMILY. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson (afterwards Lord), born at Somersby, 
 Lincolnshire, August 6, 1809. Aristocratic lineage : '^In 
 his veins ran the blood of a dozen kings" (Stead). 
 Contrast between the lineage of Tennyson and that of 
 Byron. Excellence of his parents ; talent and high char- 
 acter of his two brothers, Charles and Frederick. 
 
 B.— EDUCATION AND EARLY FRIENDSHIPS. 
 
 Early training from his father, and from the grammar 
 school at Louth. Before going to the University, publishes 
 with Charles the "Poems by Two Brothers" in 1827. 
 Like so many English men of letters, a Cambridge man 
 (Spenser, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Bacon, Milton, Dryden, 
 Newton, Gray, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, 
 Macaulay, Thackeray — Oxford boasts no such "eternal 
 beadroll.") 
 
 Born in 1809: Tennyson, Darwin, Gladstone, Mrs. 
 Browning, E. A. Poe, O. W. Holmes, Lord Houghton, 
 Mendelssohn, Edward FitzGerald. Of his early and life- 
 long friends, the following were his contemporaries at Cam- 
 bridge: Arthur Hallam, FitzGerald, Milnes (Lord Hough- 
 ton), Trench, Maurice, Spedding, Brookfield, Thackeray. 
 Traces of these friendships in his poems. 
 
c 
 
 Purity, beauty, and tranquillity of his life. A noble and 
 lofty character, though over-sensitive, moody, and shrink- 
 ing. His outward life happy, comfortable, and exactly as 
 he could have wished it. The devotion of his admirable 
 wife and son. This life lacked nothing but self-sacrifice to 
 make it ideal. 
 
 Lord Tennyson died at Aldworth House, Hazlemere, 
 Surrey, October 6, 1892, and was buried in Westminster 
 Abbey, near the grave of Chaucer. 
 
 D. — CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 By descent, by temperament, and by the seclusion of 
 his life, he was an aristocrat of the best type. Though his 
 sympathies were generous, he was unable to divest himself 
 — as did Byron partly, and Shelley completely, — of the 
 prejudices and limitations of his class. Did not descend 
 with Milton, Byron, Shelley into the arena; was terrified and 
 helpless before the spectacle of human misery. Paid the 
 penalty of isolation in a certain social blindness and restric- 
 tion of sympathy. Not a "popular" poet — no shilling 
 edition of his poems. 
 
 n. 
 
 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ETHICS. 
 A— LAW PREDOMINANT. 
 
 The poet of a scientific age, Tennyson's theories — 
 ethical, social, political — are all subject to the conception 
 of Law. He opposes the slow, sure processes of evolution 
 to the haste and waste of revolution. This involves an 
 advance in wisdom, perhaps, but a falling off in poetry. 
 
 — 23 — 
 
The conservatism and discouragement of " Locksley Hall 
 Sixty Years After" far less inspiring than Byron's ''Isles 
 of Greece" and Shelley's " Hellas." Tennyson has noth- 
 ing but scorn and reprobation for "the red fool-fury of the 
 Seine" ("In Memoriam," cxxvii.), and for the Irish peas- 
 ants who "drive innocent cattle under thatch, and burn 
 the kindlier brutes alive." ( " Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
 
 After.") 
 
 Illustratio7is : 
 
 "The thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.'" 
 
 — Locksley Hall. 
 
 " I can but trust that good shall fall 
 
 At last — far off — " 
 
 — In Memoriam, liv. 
 
 " Ev^olution ever climbing after some ideal good, 
 And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud." 
 
 — Locksley Hall Sixty Years After. 
 
 The poem entitled " By an Evolutionist." 
 
 B. 
 
 Though there is a certain Lucretian sadness in his relig- 
 ious verse, he struggles nobly into hope and light. But the 
 political and social verse is profoundly sad. No note of the 
 trumpet, except in his poems of war. Inconsistency in argu- 
 ing, as in the Epilogue to "The Charge of the Heavy 
 Brigade" — the necessity of war, while denying the neces- 
 sity of revolution. The attitude of Byron and Shelley 
 more logical, as well as more poetical. He puts the day of 
 social regeneration too "far ofT" for the poor and the 
 oppressed. The wealthy poet of the comfortable and the 
 cultivated, he can afTord to wait while 
 
 " Freedom slowly broadens down 
 From precedent to precedent." 
 
 — 24 — 
 
It is harder for the victim to wait ; it was harder for Byron, 
 for Shelley, for Milton. Tennyson's attitude may be that 
 of the poet, but it is not that of the seer. He did not hear 
 the divine mandate — 
 
 "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." 
 
 III. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION. 
 
 A.— IDEALISM AND SPIRITUALISM. 
 
 1. Mr. F. W. H. Myers's four cosmical laws: Uni- 
 formity, Conservation, Evolution, and the Interpenetration 
 of the Spiritual and Material. Tennyson's preoccupation 
 with the last of these ("Nineteenth Century," January, 
 
 1893)- 
 
 2. Glimpses of this supposed law by the Platonist 
 
 Vaughan ("Happy those early days," etc.); Wordsworth 
 in the "Intimations"; Shelley in the conclusion of "The 
 Sensitive Plant"; Goethe (" Die Geisterwelt ist nicht ver- 
 schlossen "). 
 
 3. Tennyson's waking trances and visions. "I've 
 often had a strange feeling of being wound and wrapped in 
 the * Great Soul.' " 
 
 4. Expression of this in his poetry — "In Memoriam," 
 xcv. ; "The Holy Grail" (concluding lines); "The 
 Ancient Sage" ("the passion of the past"); "The Higher 
 Pantheism"; " The Voice and the Peak " ; " The Ring " ; 
 "The Princess," iv. ("Tears, idle tears" — another ex- 
 pression of " the passion of the past "). 
 
 5. The infinite divisibility of matter makes the real 
 existence of the material world unthinkable. (Cf "The 
 
 Ancient Sage.") 
 
 — 25 — 
 
B.— THEOLOGY. 
 
 I. — Critical. " Men have generally taken God for the 
 Devil. . . The majority of Englishmen think of him as 
 an immeasurable clergyman in a white tie." 
 
 2. — Negative. No church nor system can claim him. 
 He was "of the religion of all sensible men." Our little 
 systems are but "broken lights" of God. 
 
 3. — Constructive, (a) Theory of a "lesser god," or 
 Demiurge, to account for the evil and suffering in the 
 world, (d) The fundamental simplicity of his creed — 
 " There 's a Something that watches over us, and our indi- 
 viduality endures. That's my faith, and that's all my 
 faith." (For these quotations from Tennyson's own words, 
 see the "Nineteenth Century," January, 1893, — "Aspects 
 of Tennyson," by James Knowles. ) {c) Suggestions for a 
 new religious synthesis: 
 
 "The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
 And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
 — T/ie Passing- of Arthur. 
 
 "O living will." 
 
 — bi Metnoriam, cxxxi. 
 
 "Or in man's hand when man is more than man." 
 
 — The Aficiefit Sage. 
 
 Forward till you see the highest Human Nature is divine." 
 
 — Locksley Hall Sixty Years /^fter. 
 
 The limitations of our knowledge, and the relative char- 
 acter of the little that we know. Possible inferences. 
 
 C— BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 
 If there is an ethical principle which more than another 
 underlies the poetry of Tennyson, it is that this life has 
 
 — 26 — 
 
beauty, completeness, and worth only in the light of another 
 
 life under more favorable conditions. Does not profess to 
 
 understand the meaning and end of life: — 
 
 "What use to brood? this life of mingled pains 
 And joys to me, 
 Despite of every Faith and Creed, remains 
 
 ^ ^" — To Mary Boyle. 
 
 His whole philosophy is very well summed up in the 
 quatrain: 
 
 THE PLAY. 
 
 "Act first, this Earth, a stage so gloom'd with woe 
 You all but sicken at the shifting scenes. 
 And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show 
 In some fifth Act what this wild Drama means." 
 
 Never tired of touching what is in one sense the most 
 interesting and in another the most futile of all questions. 
 Does not pretend to solve it ; life becomes a harder riddle 
 as he grows older. If there be a revelation, it is no new 
 one. "Listen," he seems to tell us, "to the voices ot 
 Duty and of Love, and let the Intellect not meddle 
 with questions to which only the Emotions can give an 
 answer." When Intellect fails, our primal instincts come 
 to our relief; who knows if they be not better guides ? 
 ("Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," couplets 33 to 36, 
 beginning: " Gone for ever ! Ever? no — "). The immor- 
 tality of the belief in immortality is perhaps the best 
 evidence of immortality. His works an explanation and 
 illustration of the Apostle's words: "Whether there be 
 prophecies, they shall fail ; whether there be tongues, they 
 shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish 
 away," but faith, hope, love abide. ("In Memoriam," 
 cxxxi. ; "Vastness," conclusion.) 
 
 — 27 — 
 
IV. 
 
 CRITICISM. 
 A.— PERFECTION OF STYLE. 
 
 The most perfect poet in our literature since Milton with 
 respect to mastery of meter, melody, and diction. In these 
 respects he is rivaled by Milton only, and may perhaps be 
 placed beside Vergil. But constructively he must be pro- 
 nounced inferior to Milton. "In Memoriam" and "The 
 Idylls" somewhat inorganic, viewed as wholes. He has 
 fused into song a greater mass of ideas than any preceding 
 poet. He has given our matter-of-fact race a most salutary 
 example of artistic conscience. Tennyson and Milton have 
 given us the best examples of perfect workmanship ; they 
 are classic. He joins hands with Keats and with Milton, 
 rather than with Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth. His 
 influence predominant in our time; his "dainty trick 
 caught by a whole generation of versifiers." 
 
 B.— SIMPLICITY. 
 
 The most wonderful characteristic of his art is the 
 simplicity of its means. This applies especially to his 
 diction: probably no other writer has managed to express 
 with memorable felicity so vast a number of thoughts in 
 words so short and common. Predominance, in the most 
 intense and vivid passages, of Saxon diction. (Cf. espe- 
 cially "In Memoriam" and " The Idylls.") 
 
 Shakspere and Milton probably use more polysyllables 
 than Tennyson, but Milton's poetry is frequently charac- 
 terized by a similar simplicity. Comparison and contrast 
 with Byron, Shelley, Swinburne, Lowell. 
 
c 
 
 This simple directness gives the reader confidence in the 
 
 soUdity of the subject-matter, and suggests enormous 
 
 resources and reserve power. There is scarcely ever a 
 
 doubt as to the meaning, because the poet is able to say 
 
 just what he means. 
 
 D. 
 
 The probable permanence of such perfect art, whatever 
 fluctuations thought may be subject to. Analogy of Vergil, 
 Dante, Milton, who are read in spite of the obsoleteness of 
 their subject-matter. The immortality of Beauty. 
 
 — 29 — 
 
VI. 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING: The Vindicator of Personal 
 
 Freedom^ 
 
 I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL (1812-1889). 
 A. 
 
 Born at Camberwell, near London, May 7, 181 2. 
 Excellent parentage and education. His father resembles, 
 Milton's in wise liberality to his remarkable son. Shelley 
 the poetical master of his youth. Wrote "Pauline" at 
 the age of twenty, — some threescore years before his death. 
 First visit to Italy in 1838, just 200 years after Milton's ; 
 to him, as to Milton and to Goethe, Italy was a "Univer- 
 sity." His life was divided between England and Italy, 
 and it is hard to say which he loved best. The chief event 
 of his life the ideal marriage with Elizabeth Barrett (1846). 
 This and George Eliot's perhaps the only thoroughly happy 
 unions of the kind on record. Their son, Robert Wiede- 
 mann Barrett, born in 1849. Mrs. Browning died in 1861. 
 The son, an artist, survives. 
 
 Robert Browning died at Venice, December 12, 1889, 
 and his body was laid in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 B. — CHARACTER AND ATTAINMENTS, 
 
 Rare union of amiability, purity, sympathy, sanity, and 
 energy. One of the most virile of poets. Breadth of his 
 interests and range of his reading. Full of quaint and 
 curious lore. Everything was grist that came to his mill : 
 his most considerable poem based upon a stray record of a 
 
forgotten old Roman law case, that chanced to fall into his 
 hands. Probably he learned even more from observation than 
 from books. His subject being the human soul, social 
 intercourse furnished material. Unlike Tennyson, he was 
 a very social man, and a great diner-out. Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes met him everywhere in London. Lan- 
 dor's testimony: — 
 
 " Since Chaucer was alive and hale, 
 No man has walked along our roads with step 
 So active, so enquiring eye, or tongue 
 So varied in discourse." 
 
 n. 
 
 THOUGHT. 
 A.— SUBJECTIVITY. 
 
 Browning might say truly, what Wordsworth says 
 mistakenly, that the Mind of Man is 
 
 " My haunt, and the main region of my song." 
 He is the most psychological of poets. His theme is the 
 growth or the dwindling of the human Soul, as it is brought 
 into contact with life and its moral problems. By the Soicl 
 Browning means "a man's physical, mental, and spiritual 
 attributes, developing interdependently throughout life on 
 earth, and culminating or sinking into an identity which 
 may or may not be immortal" (Nettleship). Alfred Domett, 
 the original of Browning's " Waring," calls him the 
 
 " Subtlest assertor of the Soul in song." 
 
 — Ranolf and Aniohia. 
 
 B.— INDIVIDUALISM. 
 
 His works consist, for the most part, of a vast collection 
 of studies of the inner experiences of individual souls, each 
 
 — 31 — 
 
confronting iu its own way its life, or some particular cir- 
 cumstance of its life. Browning differs from the great 
 world-poets in being less preoccupied with man collectively 
 than with man individually. His genius has not, like 
 Dante's and Milton's, a theological bent, nor, like Byron's, 
 a political bent, he is not, like Shelley and Hugo, a poet 
 of social revolution; he does not, like Goethe, teach that 
 culture may make man's earthly existence sufficient to 
 itself; nor is he, like Tennyson, forever oppressed with a 
 sense of "the burden and the mystery of all this unintelli- 
 gible world " ; least of all is he, with Wordsworth, a revealer 
 of the consolations and glories of Nature. He cares noth- 
 ing for the machinery of systems, creeds, society, govern- 
 ment. It matters little, in his estimation, whether a man 
 believes in Christ or in Buddha; whether he be nihilist, dem- 
 ocrat, aristocrat, or autocrat; whether he be bond or free; 
 whether his lot be cast in one century or another. Nor is 
 the difference between saint and sinner intrinsically of pri- 
 mary moment. Browning gives you the picture of the man 
 in all his surroundings, shows him confronted with a given 
 moral problem, and then lets him act, explaining the mo- 
 tives, and tracing the effect upon his character. Every- 
 where individual men and women loving, hating, and acting 
 themselves out. In this respect like Shakspere. There is 
 nothing symbolical as in Tennyson's "King Arthur," or 
 cosmical, as in Shelley's "Prometheus." All Browning's 
 characters are strongly individualized. He is a psycholo- 
 gist; he has the power of poBtraying motives and influences, 
 as well as actions. 
 
 32 — 
 
III. 
 
 ART. 
 A.— OBJECTIVITY. 
 
 A psychologist, and an artist as well. His mind a sen- 
 sitive plate, played upon by the subtle actinism of subcon- 
 scious emotion, responding to the lightest movement of 
 volition or of velleity. The inner life reproduced in his art 
 with photographic fidelity. The reproductive process in- 
 volves, in his best work, no obscurity, except such obscurity 
 as may already exist in the mind of the reader. He is 
 objective — that is, he gives to the things of the mind the 
 vividness of concrete images. This he does by never for- 
 getting the intimate union of mind and body, soul and 
 sense, and the interaction between the two. To every 
 phase of emotion he fits its appropriate gesture; to every 
 thought, its phrase; to every fancy, its symbol; to every 
 volition, its act; to every cause, its effect. Hence, Brown- 
 ing is never found — where Matthew Arnold finds Shelley — 
 
 " Pinnacled dim in the intense inane." 
 
 B.— DRAMATIC POWER. 
 
 In an age favorable to the success of the drama. Brown- 
 ing would have been a great dramatist. " Strafibrd," ''A 
 Blot in the 'Scutcheon," and " Colombe's Birthday," are 
 proof of this. But his chief preoccupation being with inte- 
 rior situations, most of his dramas are full of long mono- 
 logues, which interrupt the action. In the letter prefixed 
 to " Sordello" he says: " My stress lay on the incidents 
 
 — 33 — 
 
in the development of a soul: little else is worth study. I^ 
 at leasX always thought so; . . ." Compare Shakspere's 
 most subjective drama, " Hamlet," with any of Browning's, 
 with respect to the amount of space devoted to monologue. 
 Contrast " Othello" with " Luria." 
 
 IV. 
 ALLEGED OBSCURITY. 
 
 In most cases, the obscurity is in the organs of the 
 
 teader, 
 
 "which endure 
 No Hght, being themselves obscure." 
 
 Those who tax Browning with obscurity should bear in 
 mind the unexampled difficulty of his subject-matter. He 
 voyages " thro' strange seas of thought," into which no 
 other poet has adventured. 
 
 B. 
 
 (a) Browning's syntax is often involved by the exces- 
 sive use of parenthetical clauses and phrases — wheel within 
 
 wheel, 
 
 "Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb." 
 
 (<5) It is further rendered harsh, if not obscure, by the 
 omission of connectives, especially the pronouns of relation 
 "that" and ''which." 
 
 (<:) There is also frequently a structural carelessness, — 
 exemplified most egregiously in "Sordello," — consisting 
 in the interjection of huge masses of matter having no 
 relation to the subject, "except in God"; also, in unfore- 
 seen and unexplained digressions of variable length. 
 
 — 34 — 
 
c 
 
 Note especially his method of making- a character reveal 
 himself in the "Dramatic Monologue," which begins ab- 
 ruptly ^V^ medias res, so that all antecedent circumstances 
 are left to be inferred by the reader. 
 
 V. 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 A. 
 
 Many of the peculiarities of Browning' s art may be ascribed 
 to the swiftness and intensity of his mental activity. He 
 was an impatient writer, chiefly intent upon the faithful 
 transcription of the contents of his mind. He wreaked 
 himself upon expression with Byronic haste, audacity, and 
 energy. If the result in the case of Byron is clearer and more 
 melodious, the fact is due {a) to Byron's relative deficiency 
 in depth and fulness of thought; {b) to Byron's fortunate 
 conservatism in matters of literary art. 
 
 B. 
 
 Browning, like Carlyle, belongs to the individual school 
 of thought and art. He will first be himself — i. e., live his 
 own life ; and secondly, express himself — i. e., write his own 
 thoughts. It is hardly too much to say that Browning 
 wrote for himself rather than for the public. He regarded 
 his art as the means of self-activity, self-development, self- 
 culture. Hence his fertility as a writer to the last, and long 
 after he had ceased to charm. Tennyson subordinates him- 
 self to his art; Browning subordinates his art to himself. 
 Hence, as Tennyson himself avers, King Arthur is a symbol, 
 
 - 35 — 
 
rather than an individual, and "In Memoriam" itself is a 
 singing of the universal grief of the bereaved. Browning, 
 on the other hand, is always dramatic, always individual. 
 He never speaks in his own person, except perhaps in 
 " Waring" and "The Guardian Angel," in the Invocation 
 to his " lyric Love " and in the conclusion of " The Ring 
 and the Book," in "Prospice" and in " One Word More." 
 
 C 
 
 Is Emerson's saying true of Browning, that "he who 
 writes for himself writes to an eternal public"? Will his 
 enormous poems survive? Or did he disburden his mind 
 at the expense of his fame? Tennyson's deliberately 
 chosen epithets, his 7ii7ie-pipe lines, are likely to be longer 
 borne in the memory of men, — 
 
 "Jewels five-words-long, 
 That on the stretched forefinger of all Time 
 Sparkle forever." 
 
 D. 
 
 Whatever may be his fate with posterity, — an entity about 
 whose opinion he did not greatly concern himself, — Brown- 
 ing's role in his own time has been an enviable one. Despite 
 his ruggedness, he has been an inspirer, a revealer to us of 
 our better selves, undiscovered but for him. It is much 
 that this high-hearted poet should have kept his own joy 
 in life and hope for the future, in an age when even an 
 optimist, like Tennyson, is saddened and cast down. It is 
 far more that he should have been able to contribute so 
 much out of his own abundant stores, to the solace and 
 sustainment of two or three generations of toilers and 
 doubters. 
 
 -36 - 
 
E. 
 
 His own ideal of art is well and briefly expressed in the 
 "Epilogue to Dramatic Idylls, Second Series." 
 
 "Touch him ne'er so lightly." 
 
 The symbol of the highest poetic product is not the flower, 
 but the pine. Yet this rough soil produces in unexpected 
 places many a mountain daisy. Browning was a skilful 
 musical amateur, while Tennyson preferred the music of 
 words, and though Browning's verse is often anything but 
 musical, he has proved himself capable of singing with the 
 best. Examples: — "Over the sea our galleys went" ("Para- 
 celsus," IV.), the songs in "A Blot in the 'Scutcheon" and 
 "Pippa Passes," "Saul," "In a Gondola," " Rudel," 
 *' CavaHer Tunes," "The Last Ride Together." For 
 his more intimate knowledge of the science of music, see 
 "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha," " Abt Vogler," "A 
 Toccata of Galuppi's." 
 
 F. 
 
 As an exponent of the theory and functions of poetry, 
 Browning deserves a very high place. See especially his 
 "Essay on Shelley" and the conclusion of "The Ring 
 and the Book." 
 
 — 37 — 
 
VII. 
 
 EMERSON: ''The Friend and Aider of those who 
 would live in the Spirit/^ 
 
 I. 
 
 BIOGRAPHY (1803-1882). 
 A. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 
 May 25, 1803. Fourth child and third son of the Rev- 
 erend William and Ruth (Haskins) Emerson. The broth- 
 ers who grew to maturity were William (born 1801), 
 Edward Bliss (born 1805), Robert Bulkeley (born 1807), 
 Charles Chauncy (born 1808). The brothers were all very 
 able men, except Robert, who was simple. Edward and 
 Charles seemed of greater promise than Ralph, but they 
 died in early manhood. 
 
 Emerson's forefathers, for several generations, had been 
 ministers. His grandfather, William, the builder of the 
 Old Manse, was minister at Concord in 1775, and an active 
 patriot, dying of camp-fever at Ticonderoga; his great- 
 grandfather. Father Moody, a man of fiery zeal and com- 
 manding character; his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, a 
 woman of character and genius; his father, a minister of 
 liberal views and accomplishments, and of buoyant temper; 
 his mother, a woman of strong character and severe sense 
 
 of duty. 
 
 B. 
 
 Death of father in 181 1. Poverty and pious endurance 
 of the family. " Whose turn is it to wear the coat to-day?" 
 Hunger and cold. High counsels of Aunt Mary — "These 
 
 -38- 
 
boys are born to be educated. " " Lift your aims. " " Scorn 
 trifles." "Always do what you are afraid to do." ( Refer- 
 ence to these early relations in the poem, " The Dirge.") 
 
 Entered Harvard in 1817, where he was "President's 
 Freshman." His brother William had preceded him. 
 Graduated in the class of 18 21. Was made class poet — 
 after seven had declined the appointment. Was not espe- 
 cially distinguished at college, except as a reader of the 
 
 English poets. 
 
 C 
 
 Taught, with William, a school for fashionable young 
 ladies in Boston; then studied theology. His first sermon, 
 1826. Pastor of Second Church, Boston, until 1832. 
 Scruples about the Communion. 
 
 Tragedy of Edward Emerson (1828). 
 
 Tragedy of Ellen Tucker (1828-183 1). 
 
 First visit to Europe (1833); Landor, Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, Carlyle. 
 
 Marries Lidian Jackson, and settles in Concord (1835). 
 Death of Charles Emerson. 
 
 n. 
 
 Address, "The American Scholar" (1837); Divinity 
 School Address (1838); Transcendentalism and "The 
 Dial" (1840); "Essays," First Series (1841). Second 
 visit to England (1848). Lectures there on "Represen- 
 tative Men. " " English Traits. ' ' 
 
 Friendship and correspondence with Carlyle (1834 to 
 the end). Contrast between the two. What drew them 
 together? 
 
 Emerson's function during these years. Emerson the 
 lecturer. Poems collected in 1847. 
 
 — 39 — 
 
E. 
 
 The Slavery Conflict and the Civil War. 
 
 Died at his home in Concord, Massachusetts, April 27, 
 1882, not long after the deaths of Longfellow and of 
 Darwin. 
 
 II. 
 
 CHARACTER, OPINIONS, AND INFLUENCE. 
 
 A. 
 
 Charm of his presence and conversation. Ireland's 
 testimony; Carlyle's. His hesitating courtliness; expectant 
 and deferential attitude. A meek man, yet never betraying 
 want of faith in himself "A man more impersonal one 
 seldom meets." Lowell held him to be the finest gentle- 
 man he had ever met. Serenity his abiding mark. 
 
 B, — OPINIONS. 
 
 1. He was not at all controversial; wanted no disciples. 
 His profound faith in Spiritual Law; in the doctrines of the 
 Over-Soul, of Self-reliance, of Compensation, of Idealism. 
 
 2. Exploring the soul, he finds spiritual laws — laws 
 correspondent to those of the Universe. These laws tend 
 against the machinery with which society cumbers itself 
 Some of these are: 
 
 (<2) A man has his vocation. 
 
 {b) He may have his own. " The soul's ernphasis is 
 
 always right." 
 
 (<:) He may see what he makes, and read what he 
 writes. 
 
 (^) He shall have his own society. 
 
 (<?) He may set his own rate. 
 
 — 40 — 
 
3- Illustrations of the law of Compensation. Its eth- 
 ical apphcation — ''There is a deeper fact in the soul than 
 compensation, to-wit, its own nature." "Things are ar- 
 ranged for truth and benefit." God saw the world that it 
 was good ; Mephistopheles is the spirit of dejiial. 
 
 C. 
 
 Not properly a philosopher; had no well-ordered system, 
 and was careless of inconsistency or contradiction. He is 
 rather a preacher, with large endowments of insight and 
 poetical power. He is one of the most hopeful and encour- 
 aging of thinkers; bravely genetic and stimulating. If he 
 has not the method and coherence of the philosopher, he 
 has the breadth of one. His range of thought included 
 the results of scientific research; he has pre-Darvvinian 
 suggestions of the survival of the fittest; and he adopts 
 Evolution into his optimistic pantheism. Professor Tyndall 
 remarks that his religious sense remained undaunted by the 
 advances of science — *' By Emerson scientific conceptions 
 are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer 
 hues of an ideal world." 
 
 n.~ THEOLOGICALL Y. 
 
 As he exalts the instincts above the will^ so he exalts 
 
 grace above duty. Combining the principle of the over-soul 
 
 with \ki2X oi self -trust, we are led to ask, "Who is the 
 
 trustee?" Hence the inference, " The kingdom of God is 
 
 within.^ ^ As the earth rests in the soft arms of ether, so 
 
 man in the soul. 
 
 E. 
 
 Testimonies to his influence : Americaji — Parker, 
 Stedman, Holmes, Lowell, the Californian Woodbury. 
 
 — 41 — 
 
English — Stanley, Tyndall, Arnold, Morley, Garnett. 
 Germayi — Herman Grimm, Ewald Flugel. His acolytes: 
 Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, Jones Very. 
 
 HI. 
 
 CRITICISM. 
 A.— VARIOUS ESTIMATES. 
 
 Reasons why Americans should distrust their own esti- 
 mates of Emerson. Potency of his influence upon us. 
 The criticisms of Herman Grimm, Matthew Arnold, John 
 Morley. 
 
 Arnold denies him the place of philosophy-maker, poet, 
 or great writer, but finds him something better, — a great 
 inspirer. Classes him with Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus. 
 
 Morley's verdict is similar; lays stress upon Emerson's 
 excess of optimism and joy, due to his blindness to the sins 
 and woes which sadden other moralists (as Pascal) and 
 poets (as Dante). 
 
 Herman Grimm thinks him the greatest writer of the 
 
 century. 
 
 B.— LI MIT A TIONS. 
 
 Emerson is limited by: 
 
 1. The comparative coldness of his temperament. He 
 did not know the great passions and the great temptations. 
 
 2. His peaceful and happy life. He was too happy to 
 be a profound moralist. 
 
 3. His seclusion and aversion to thoughts of pain and 
 disease. He knew too little of the world. 
 
 C— PROSE. 
 
 I. See Matthew Arnold's criticism. He lacks the 
 ''wholeness of good tissue" requisite to the great prose 
 
 — 42 — 
 
writer. He has too little the power of developing his 
 thought and of giving it flowing expression. Criticism in 
 the "Carlyle-Emerson Correspondence." 
 
 2. His power lies — (a) In his originality and freedom 
 from commonplaces. Note his brave mode of fighting his 
 way through subjects upon which commonplace is so 
 perilously easy, (d) In his "choice and pith of phrase." If 
 the sentences be "infinitely repellent particles," we have 
 had no greater artist in the rounding and polishing of 
 these particles. 
 
 1. To his poetry the foreign critics have done scant 
 justice. He lacks, indeed, passion, harmony, coherence, 
 concreteness. His verse is far from being "simple, 
 sensuous, passionate." 
 
 2. His merits are: (a) Profound insight. Nowhere 
 ha've idealism and spiritual laws received more penetrating 
 expression. (See the poem, "The Two Rivers," for 
 spirituality and harmony.) 
 
 (i?) If not commonly harmonious, he can be so in short 
 passages. (See certain movements in "Woodnotes.") But 
 he is more distinguished for occasional, fitful, ballad-like 
 melody. 
 
 (^) His implicit reliance upon genuine inspiration and 
 upon such homely expression as the Muse may vouchsafe. 
 He never writes for effect, hence no bombast or affectation; 
 he never writes to order, hence no padding. In view of 
 the diffuseness of many modern poets, this validity of every 
 part is no small recommendation to the judicious. 
 
 (d) As in his prose, he abounds in jewel-like lines and 
 captivating phrases. Hence, within the narrow limits, or at 
 least the unworldly limits, of his subjects, he is one of the 
 most quotable of poets (<?. g-, ''* The Problem"). 
 
 — 43 — 
 
VIII. 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: Poet and Patriot, 
 
 L 
 
 BIOGRAPHY. (1819-1891.) 
 A.— FAMILY. 
 
 Born at the Elmwood residence, Cambridge, February 
 22, 1 8 19; died in the same house, August 12, 1891. Was 
 of the eighth generation of his family in New England. 
 Great-grandfather, Rev. John Lowell, of Newburyport ; 
 grandfather, Chief-Justice John Lowell ; father, Rev. 
 Charles Lowell ; his mother, Harriet Spence, of an old 
 Orkney family, is said to have brought in a strain of Celtic 
 blood; sister, Mary (Mrs. Putnam), born 18 10, author of 
 " Records of an Obscure Man, " etc.; brother. Rev. Rob- 
 ert Traill Spence Lowell, born 18 16, author of " The New 
 Priest of Conception Bay," etc. James Russell, the 
 youngest of six children. 
 
 Married, in 1844, Maria White (1821-1853). Three 
 children, Blanche, Rose, and Walter, died in infancy; one, 
 Mabel (Mrs. Edward Burnett), survives. Married, in 1857, 
 Frances Dunlap, who died in February, 1885. 
 
 Three heroic nephews. Gen. C. R. Lowell, Lieut. J. J. 
 Lowell, and Capt. William Lowell Putnam, were slain in 
 the Civil War. 
 
 The Lowell family, as a whole, is one of the first of 
 New England in ability, usefulness, and distinction. Fran- 
 cis Cabot Lowell, founder of the cotton manufactures of 
 New England; John Lowell, founder of the Lowell Insti- 
 tute, in Boston; Percival Lowell, and other authors of the 
 
 present day. 
 
 — 44 — 
 
B.— YOUTH AND EDUCATION. 
 
 In Lowell's boyhood, Cambridge was a mere village — 
 hence the bucolic allusions and descriptions which abound 
 in his works; hence, also, the racy dialect of the " Biglow 
 Papers." Was prepared for Harvard at the classical school 
 of William Wells, along with W. W. Story, the poet and 
 sculptor. Graduated from Harvard in 1838. Was an 
 irregular student ; the poet of his class. Rusticated to 
 Concord, where he made his first acquaintance with Emer- 
 son. Was not permitted to deliver his "class poem," 
 in which he satirized Emerson, Carlyle, the Transcendent- 
 alists, and the Abolitionists. 
 
 C. — EA RL Y MA NHO D : LA IV, POE TR Y, L VE, A ND 
 
 REFORM. 
 
 1. Takes the degree of LL. B. at the Harvard Law 
 School, and is admitted to the bar (1840). His love for 
 Maria White gives a serious purpose to his life. Under 
 her influence, he becomes a poet and a reformer. His first 
 volume, "A Year's Life" (1841). "The Boston Miscel- 
 lany " ; " My First Client." His magazine, "The Pioneer " 
 
 (1843). 
 
 2. Marriage, and a second volume, "Poems" (1844). 
 "The Vision of Sir Launfal" (1848). 
 
 3 A regular contributor to "The Anti- Slavery 
 Standard." 
 
 4. "The Biglow Papers," published in "The Boston 
 Courier" (1846 to 1848). 
 
 5. First work in criticism, " Conversations on Some of 
 the Old Poets " (1845). "A Fable for Critics " (1848). 
 
 — 45 — 
 
D.— SCHOLAR, PROFESSOR, AND CRITIC. 
 
 1. Goes with his wife to Europe in 1851, and resides 
 in Italy. At this time, he lays the foundation of his superb 
 Dante scholarship. Lowell is a remarkable example of a 
 man with sufficient energy and persistence to settle down 
 to scholarship in his mature years. 
 
 2. Death of his wife in 1853. In January, 1855, appointed 
 Longfellow's successor to the Chair of Modern Languages 
 and Belles-Lettres at Harvard. Two years' study abroad. 
 
 3. One of the founders and first editor of the ''Atlantic 
 Monthly" (1857). Married Frances Dunlap (1857). Be- 
 comes editor of the "North American Review" (1863- 
 1872). 
 
 4. ''Among My Books" (1870); "My Study Win- 
 dows" (1871). 
 
 E.—POET OF PATRIOTISM. 
 
 1. The Civil War. Revival of the " Biglow Papers." 
 The "Commemoration Ode" (July 21, 1865). 
 
 2. Centennial period. "Three Memorial Poems" 
 
 (1875-76). 
 
 F.— AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE ABROAD. 
 
 I. Minister to Spain (1877). Minister to England 
 (i 880-1 885). " Envoy Extraordinary from the American 
 Republic of Letters to the Court of Shakspere." His literary 
 addresses and after-dinner speeches in England. Signifi- 
 cance of the Birmingham address on " Democracy" (1884). 
 Death of his wife (1885). 
 
 -46- 
 
G.— OUR FOREMOST MAN OF LETTERS AT HOME 
 
 (i8Ss-iSgi). 
 
 1. The "Harvard Anniversary Address" (1886). 
 
 2. Course on the ''EngHsh Dramatists" before the 
 Lowell Institute (1887), The Chicago Address (Feb. 22, 
 1887). 
 
 3. "The Place of the Independent in Politics" (1888). 
 
 4. "Heartsease and Rue" (1888). 
 
 II. 
 
 THE MAN : HIS ENVIRONMENT AND CHARACTER. 
 
 A.— POSITION AND CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 Never were the conditions more favorable for the career 
 of letters. To one whose habit it is to " mark what ills the 
 scholar's life assail," Lowell's seems peculiarly fortunate. 
 Born to comparative affluence; endowed with genius and 
 wit; having mens sana in corpore sano ; the heir to sound 
 moral traditions and high culture; having all that books, 
 travel, and society can give; a member of a most remark- 
 able group of men of genius, talent, and attainments; 
 stimulated by the love of a woman of noble character and 
 exalted aims; fired with enthusiasm for great causes, and 
 for a country, the embodiment of the fairest hopes of man- 
 kind; granted length of life, health, leisure, and exemption 
 from galling professional drudgery, and so enabled to work 
 himself out to the uttermost; — surely, this is rare and 
 enviable fortune. In good luck, as well as in range, sanity, 
 and continuous self-development, he comes nearer than 
 any other writer to Goethe. 
 
 — 47 - 
 
B.— CHARACTER AND ATTAINMENTS. 
 
 Cannot be better summed up than by Dr. Holmes 
 ("Atlantic," October, 1891):— 
 
 "This singer whom we long have held so dear 
 
 Was Nature's darling, shapely, strong, and fair; 
 Of keenest wit, of judgment crystal-clear. 
 Easy of converse, courteous, debonair; 
 
 " Fit for the loftiest or the lowliest lot, 
 
 Self-poised, imperial, yet of simplest ways; 
 At home alike in castle or in cot. 
 
 True to his aim, let others blame or praise. 
 
 " Freedom he found an heirloom from his sires; 
 
 Song, letters, statecraft, shared his years in turn; 
 All went to feed the nation's altar-fires 
 
 Whose mourning children wreathe his funeral urn. 
 
 "He loved New England, — people, language, soil, — 
 Unweaned by exile from her arid breast. 
 Farewell awhile, white-handed son of toil ! 
 
 Go with her brown-armed laborers to thy rest. 
 
 " Peace to thy slumber in the forest-shade! 
 Poet and patriot, every gift was thine; 
 Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade, 
 And grateful memory guard thy leafy shrine ! " 
 
 Compare with this the tribute of George William Curtis. 
 
 III. 
 OPINIONS AND INFLUENCE. 
 
 A.— POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 
 
 I. The anti-slavery agitation: Immense popularity of 
 the first series of the " Biglow Papers," which must have 
 done much to arouse the conscience of the Nation. Courage 
 
 o 
 
 and energy of such poems as the "The Present Crisis" 
 (December, 1845), "An Interview with Miles Standish," 
 
and that "On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Wash- 
 ington." 
 
 2. The Civil War: Second series of the " Biglow 
 Papers," the "Poems of the War," and the "Political 
 Essays." Lowell did more than any other writer, — 
 probably more than all others, — to define the principles 
 and express the ideals for which we fought. In expressing 
 these ideals he exalted them, and his expression of them is 
 itself one of our national glories. See the ' ' Commemora- 
 tion Ode," and the "Three Memorial Poems." 
 
 3. In his life and conversation in England, he was an 
 exemplary product of democratic institutions. In his 
 Birmingham address on "Democracy," he showed himself 
 the best interpreter of American civil hopes and social ideals. 
 
 4. In the address on the "The Place of the Inde- 
 pendent in Policies," and in his energetic futherance of the 
 International Copyright movement, he was a sure guide 
 and a wise inspirer of young men. See the "Epistle to 
 George William Curtis." 
 
 B. —EDUCA TIONAL. 
 
 Though a professor of modern languages, he was an 
 advocate of classical training. See his " Harvard Anniver- 
 sary Address" (1886), which is the best expression of 
 educational conservatism. For what he thought of the 
 educative power of the modern languages, see the "Address 
 Before the Modern Language Association" (1890). He 
 pronounces the study of modern languages to be " quite as 
 good in point of mental discipline as any other, if pursued 
 with the same thoroughness and to the same end. And 
 that end is Literature." 
 
 — 49 — 
 
C— ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 1. The completest expression of the reverent and 
 Hberal piety of his early and middle life is "The Cathedral. ' ' 
 See especially the conclusion: — 
 
 " O Power more near my life than life itself! 
 
 Missed in the commonplace of miracle." 
 
 2. For a half-playful expression of his latter-day 
 
 conservatism in the face of Huxley and Darwin, see his 
 
 " Credidimus Jovem Regnare." 
 
 " My soul — I mean the bit of phosphorus 
 That fills the place of what that was for us — 
 Can't bid its inward bores defiance 
 With the new nursery -tales of science." 
 
 3. For an expression of his faith in Immortality, see 
 the "Postscript" to the "Epistle to George William 
 Curtis." 
 
 4. He was in no wise the originator and inspirer of a 
 new movement of ethical and religious thought, as was 
 Emerson; but he shows many traces of Emerson's influence, 
 notably in his invincible optimism, his idealism, his faith in 
 the Republic, and in the future of man. 
 
 IV. 
 ART. 
 
 A. — OUR FOREMOST MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Lowell stands in America for the refining, the civilizing 
 agencies of art, of letters, of style. Even in England, 
 according to Henry James, he stood for style : no English- 
 man could speak upon so great a variety of occasions with 
 a taste so sure, a humor so refreshing, and with such 
 mingled grace and dignity. 
 
 — 50 - 
 
He is our foremost man of letters: that is, no one else 
 in America has used letters so variously and so flexibly to 
 illustrate and dignify life. He lacks the originality of Haw- 
 thorne and Emerson, — the creative genius of the one, and 
 the penetrating voice of the other; but he is far broader, 
 more flexible, more various than either. 
 
 B.— PARTIAL SACRIFICE OF ART TO SELF-CULTURE, 
 
 Possibly he lacked the concentration of purpose essential 
 to the highest art. Contrast his expansive activity with the 
 solitary self-absorption of such men as Tennyson, Carlyle, 
 Emerson. He was man of the world, lover, and keen 
 observer of nature, deep-read scholar, professor, critic, 
 magazine editor, political writer, lecturer, after-dinner 
 orator, foreign minister, as well as poet. Tennyson and 
 Longfellow were content to be only the last. Had Dante 
 attempted so many things, his " Divina Commedia " might 
 have fallen short of supreme perfection. 
 
 Lowell did all these things well — better than any one 
 else. Yet he seems to have been haunted by a sense of a 
 better possibility. Very pathetic are his references to the 
 "Might Be," which grow more frequent with advancing 
 years. As far back as 185 1, under the genial stimulus of 
 the poet Clough, he projected a long poem, or series of 
 narrative poems, to be called "The Nooning." Of this, 
 " Fitz Adam's Story" is all that was completed. 
 
 C— POETIC MASTERPIECES. 
 
 He will be known to the future as the poet of 
 {a) "The Biglow Papers": the most humorous, pun- 
 gent, quotable, political satire in the language, — and among 
 the most serious and poetical. 
 
 (b) ' ' The Vision of Sir LaunfaL' ' 
 
 — 51 — 
 
(<:) The "Commemoration Ode," surely the noblest 
 of modern patriotic poems. 
 
 We may be pretty sure that posterity will treasure 
 these, — unless, indeed, the dialect of the " Biglow Papers " 
 shall render it unintelligible except to students. Probably 
 others will be remembered; for, as one looks over his works, it 
 seems impossible that such marvels of wit-saturated wisdom, 
 of pathos, of gayety, of generous indignation, of tender 
 sentiment, shall be forgotten. "Oblivion," he says, "looks 
 in the face of the Grecian Muse only to forget her errand." 
 One would fain say it of his own Muse. 
 
 D. — PROSE: CRITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 1. As a critic he is, in some respects, in the very first 
 rank. He has not the originality of Lessing, of Sainte-Beuve, 
 or of Arnold. He has not the philanthropic method of Taine, 
 or of Brunetiere. He belongs rather with such critics as 
 Coleridge, Goethe, Lamb, — critics who interpret by the 
 power of a genial, a large, or a rare personality, and 
 Lowell's personality was all of these. He belongs with the 
 sturdy race whose appetite for mental food is rapacious; only, 
 unlike most devourers of books, he transmuted whatever 
 he read into his own finer substance. 
 
 2. So it comes about that his criticism is creative. 
 Lessing, Buckle, Taine, strive to make criticism, literary 
 or historic, a science; Lowell makes it an art. His critical 
 essays are themselves literature, — finer sometimes than that 
 whereof they treat, — and may be read for themselves, 
 independently of their subject-matter. 
 
 3. In equipment, he is second to no critic. He had an 
 easy familiarity with the best literature, wherever found. 
 
 — 52 — 
 
He was something of a philologian in his day, with a special 
 acquaintance with Old French, Italian, and Spanish. Of 
 Dante, he knew far more than Longfellow, the translator 
 of Dante. Probably no man, beginning his serious scholar- 
 ship after the age of thirty, has ever read and assimilated 
 so much. It is comforting to know that his criticism, 
 personal and artistic as it is, has a solid foundation. He 
 sometimes makes mistakes, his philological prelections are 
 sometimes unsound, but he never writes at random, or 
 without energetic effort to master his subject. This solidity 
 and conscientiousness place him far above such critics as 
 Jeffrey and De Quincey, — or even Coleridge, — who some- 
 times guessed — and missed. 
 
 E.—AN INSPIRER. 
 
 The supreme excellence of his prose, as of his verse, is 
 its stimulating and bracing quality. He is everywhere 
 poet and moralist, as well as critic, and his brightness, hope- 
 fulness, breadth of outlook, and charity of judgment, are 
 unfailing. It is good to return to his books, when one's 
 light is low; for his affluence and his cheer are perennial. If 
 he be not, like Matthew Arnold, a liberator of the intelli- 
 gence, he is at least equal to that eminent writer in the 
 power to tone and feed the mind. And while we are quick- 
 ened by his wit and fortified by his wisdom, we become 
 aware not only of his sagacity, but of his sympathy, and we 
 perceive this formidable acuteness of insight to be the instru- 
 ment of genuine nobleness of heart. 
 
 53 
 
IX. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD: The Critic of Life. 
 
 I. 
 
 A.— BIOGRAPHICAL (1822-1888). 
 
 Born at Laleham, near Staines, in Middlesex, December 
 24, 1822. Eldest son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, of Rugby. 
 Educated at Rugby and Oxford. Took the Newdegate 
 prize for an English poem at the age of twenty-two; next 
 year, Fellow of Oriel College. Published his first volume 
 of poems anonymously in 1849. An inspector of British 
 schools in 1851. From 1857 to 1867, Professor of Poetry 
 at the University of Oxford. Visited America in 1885. 
 Died at Liverpool, April 15, 1888. His body was laid in 
 the village churchyard of his birthplace, Laleham. 
 
 1849 
 
 1853 
 
 1855 
 1858 
 
 1861 
 
 1865 
 
 1867 
 
 1868 
 
 1869 
 
 1870 
 
 1871 
 
 1873 
 1875 
 
 B.— BIBLIOGRAPHICAL. 
 
 The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems." 
 
 Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems." 
 
 Poems." 
 
 Merope." 
 
 On Translating Homer." 
 
 Essays in Criticism." 
 
 The Study of Celtic Literature." 
 
 Schools and Universities on the Continent." 
 
 Culture and Anarchy." 
 
 St. Paul and Protestantism." 
 
 Friendship's Garland." 
 
 Literature and Dogma." 
 
 God and the Bible." 
 
 — 54 — 
 
i877- " Last Essays on Church and Rehgion." 
 
 1879. " Mixed Essays. " 
 
 1882. "Irish Essays." 
 
 1885. " Discourses in America." 
 
 1888. " Essays in Criticism," Second Series. (A post- 
 humous volume.) 
 
 1888. " Civihzation in the United States." (An un- 
 authorized American reprint of certain articles.) 
 
 II. 
 A— POETRY. 
 
 1. Definiiions. — "A criticism of life under the condi- 
 tions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth 
 and poetic beauty." " Nothing less than the most perfect 
 speech of man, that in which he comes nearest to being 
 able to utter the truth." "More and more mankind will 
 discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life 
 for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our 
 science will appear incomplete; and most of what now 
 passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced 
 by poetry." 
 
 2. Tried by these high definitions and searching tests, 
 what are we to think of Matthew Arnold's own poetical 
 performance ? This is a question difficult to answer without 
 doing injustice to the poet; for his poetical work, while 
 relatively inconsiderable in extent, is of highly wrought and 
 exquisite quality. It is lucid and concise in expression, 
 pure and serious in tone, and penetrating in its emotion. 
 All of it is tasteful, much is noble, and there are not lack- 
 ing examples of the grand style. Its noble simplicity and 
 sincerity show to what purpose the author had lived with 
 
 — 55 — 
 
Wordsworth and the Greek masters; they also evince his 
 genuine inspiration. 
 
 But do his poems sustain, soothe, and console? Some 
 of them certainly do not. The author seems to have re- 
 served all his gloom, his sense of defeat, his conviction of 
 the futility of human effort, for his verse. In his prose he 
 is invariably cheerful, strong, and at times even breezy and 
 gay. In much of his verse he is a different man. Exam- 
 ple: *' Dover Beach." 
 
 His best work is distinguished rather by seriousness of 
 thought than by the "liquid diction and fluid movement" 
 which he himself so much admires. The thought may be 
 more solid than in Tennyson, but one misses the music; 
 the diction is chaste, but the lyric thrill is too seldom felt. 
 It is felt in the first two stanzas of "Morality": here is 
 criticism of life worthy to be compared with that in Words- 
 worth's " Ode to Duty." Other examples of the power of 
 this poet to touch the gravest problems of life and destiny 
 with emotion, and thus to produce work of religious value, 
 are, "Progress," " Self-Dependence," "The Future." 
 
 His narrative poems, " Sohrab and Rustum" and "Tris- 
 tram and Iseult," are, in artistic quality, no whit inferior to 
 Tennyson's "Idylls of the King." Compare, also, Ar- 
 nold's exquisite hexameters in his essays, " On Translating 
 
 Homer." 
 
 B.— PROSE STYLE. 
 
 In lucidity, flexibility, dignity, urbanity, and in all that 
 pertains to good taste and good temper, Arnold's style 
 is unsurpassed. More powerful, more eloquent, more 
 picturesque, more poetical prose may here and there 
 be found; but, in all the essential attributes of good style, 
 Matthew Arnold is nearly exemplary. If he have any 
 rival for pre-eminence, that rival is Cardinal Newman. 
 
 -56- 
 
III. 
 
 A CRITIC: LITERARY, SOCIAL, THEOLOGICAL. 
 
 A.— LITERARY. 
 
 Inasmuch as Arnold is our most expert master of the 
 art of definition, his methods and aims are best expressed 
 in his own words: 
 
 1. Definition. — Criticism is " a disinterested endeavor 
 to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought 
 in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and 
 true ideas." 
 
 2. Tendency. — " It is the business of the critical power 
 . . to see the object as in itself it really is. Thus it 
 
 tends, at last, to make an intellectual situation of which 
 the creative power can profitably avail itself It tends to 
 establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true 
 by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the 
 best ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach society, 
 the touch of truth is the touch of life, and there is a stir 
 and growth everywhere; out of this stir and growth come 
 the creative epochs of literature." 
 
 3. Influeyice up07i the mind. — Its best spiritual work is 
 "to keep man from a self-satisfaction which is retarding 
 and vulgarizing, to lead him toward perfection, by making 
 his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the 
 absolute beauty and fitness of things." 
 
 ( All the above quotations are from ' ' The Function of 
 Criticism at the Present Time.") 
 
 B.— SOCIAL AND POLITICAL. 
 
 I. Diagnosis. — "The great inequality of classes and 
 property which came to us from the Middle Ages, and 
 
 — 57 — 
 
which we maintain because we have the reUgion of inequal- 
 ity, . . . has the natural and necessary effect, under 
 present circumstances, of materializing our upper class, 
 vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our lower 
 class. And this is to fail in civilization." 
 
 2. Rejuedy. — " Choose equality and flee greed." 
 
 3. How to apply this remedy. — By the transformation 
 of the great English middle class, which is to de-vulgarize 
 itself by acquiring the French power of social intercourse 
 and manners, the Greek and Italian power of beauty, the 
 German power of intellect and knowledge. 
 
 4. Politically. — The English-speaking race is destined 
 to become more and more democratic. "Nations are not 
 truly great solely because the individuals composing them 
 are numerous, free, and active ; but they are great when 
 these numbers, this freedom, and this activity are employed 
 in the service of an ideal higher than that of an ordinary 
 man taken by himself" 
 
 (The above quotations are from the essays on ''Equality" 
 and on " Democracy.") 
 
 C— RELIGION AND CULTURE. 
 
 Arnold rejects ready-made definitions of the Supreme 
 Being, but clearly perceives at the heart of things a strea?n 
 of tendency , not ourselves, making for righteousness. 
 
 Religion is morality touched with emotion. The strenuous 
 Hebraism of the English-speaking race requires to be 
 balanced with Hellenism. In other words, our religious 
 ideals need to be completed by a broader culture. Our 
 study of perfection has been conducted upon a line too 
 narrowly Biblical. Arnold is one of the stoutest advocates 
 
 - 58 - 
 
of Bible-Study: the religion of the New Testament is "the 
 greatest and most important of the efforts by which the 
 human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself" 
 
 But the study of the Bible can be rendered fruitful only 
 by culture ; i. e. , we must bring to bear upon it a criticism 
 based upon the best that has been thought and said in the 
 world. And our religious ideals must be elevated and 
 vitalized by culture, which is "a study of perfection." 
 Culture exhibits itself in "an inward spiritual activity, 
 having for its character increased sweetness, increased light, 
 increased life, increased sympathy." 
 
 Culture must not be merely individual and personal. 
 "The individual is required, under pain of being stunted 
 and enfeebled in his own development, if he disobeys, to 
 carry others along with him in his march toward perfection, 
 to be continually doing all he can to enlarge and increase 
 the volume of the human stream sweeping thitherward." 
 
 Culture is active, progressive, genetic, creative, — never 
 passive. "It is in making endless additions to itself, in 
 the endless expansion of its powers, in endless growth in 
 wisdom and beauty, that the human race finds its ideal." 
 (Most of the above quotations are from "Culture and 
 Anarchy"). 
 
 D.— EFFECTS OF HIS CRITICISM. 
 To break down a protective tariff on moral and social 
 ideas, to puncture the bladder of cockney conceit, to 
 demonstrate to the ' ' imperial race ' ' that its sense of beauty 
 was starved, its manners odious, its social life one of 
 "immense ennui," its intellectual life barren, its religious 
 tenets perverted, its whole civilization opposed to the 
 instinct of self-preservation in humanity, was a task from 
 
 — 59 
 
which a man even of the persuasive power of Bacon might 
 have .shrunk. No one can cahiily survey the intellectual 
 history of the Enghsh race since i860, and assert that this 
 courageous and persistent effort has entirely failed. Long 
 before his death a "current of fresh and true ideas," 
 flowing from him, had begun to transform certain waste 
 places. 
 
 E.— THE ABIDING QUALITIES OF HIS STYLE AND 
 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 Matthew Arnold's teachings are likely to remain fruit- 
 fully operative for a long time. His works are compact, 
 portable, interesting, and can be read again and again with 
 profit and pleasure. He avoided most of the mistakes of 
 our other great teachers. Victor Hugo weakens his influ- 
 ence by rhetorical excesses, Carlyle by infinite grumbling 
 and imprecation, Emerson by discontinuity of thought, 
 Lowell by indistinctness of aim, Swinburne by paucity of 
 thought. Browning by overplus of thought, Ruskin by 
 losing his head; Gladstone alienates half the political world 
 by being a partisan, Newman half the religious world by 
 becoming a Roman Catholic. Nearly all commit the great 
 mistake of writing too much, — /. (?., of writing much that is 
 below the level of their best. Such interminable books as 
 some of George Eliot's, Browning's, Hugo's, and Carlyle' s, 
 are out of keeping with the conditions of modern life. 
 
 Arnold had greater definiteness of aim, as well as a 
 better sense of balance and proportion, than most of these. 
 Yet he was not, like Gladstone and Newman, too definite : 
 he did not cut himself oft* from permanent influence by 
 sinking himself in party or in church. 
 
 — 60 — 
 
Arnold's prose is classic and his ideas vital and abiding. 
 Like Voltaire, he has left no sentence that is not clear, 
 bright, and valid. 
 
 SUGGESTIONS TO THOSE PROPOSING TO 
 TAKE THE EXAMINATION. 
 
 1. Read, if possible, a biography of each author. 
 
 2. Be familiar with the outlines of the lectures, and 
 follow out carefully the suggestions therein contained. 
 
 3. Read through attentively at least one longer poem 
 or drama by each author, 
 
 4. Read many times, and inwardly digest, several 
 of the shorter poems of each author, and memorize at 
 least one. 
 
 The following list includes those works upon which it is 
 proposed to base the examination. For the longer works 
 mentioned equivalents will be accepted. 
 
 1. Wordsworth.— ''^\\^ Prelude," "Ode to Duty," 
 "Intimations of Immortality," "Tintern Abbey." 
 
 2. i5j/;wz. — "Childe Harold" or "Don Juan," "Man- 
 fred" or "Cain." 
 
 3. Shelley. — "Prometheus Unbound," "Adonais," 
 "Intellectual Beauty," "West Wind," "Skylark." 
 
 4. Tenriyson. — "In Memoriam " or "The Idylls of 
 the King," "Maud" or "The Princess." 
 
 5. Browimig. — " Pippa Passes, " or "The Blot in the 
 'Scutcheon, ' or "Colombe's Birthday," "Bishop Blou- 
 gram's Apology," "Andrea Del Sarto," "The Flight of 
 the Duchess," "Childe Roland." 
 
 — 6r — 
 
6. Victor Hugo. — Anderson's translation of his "Wil- 
 liam Shakespeare," " Hernani," one of the romances. 
 
 7. Emerso7i. — Essays: "The American Scholar," 
 ' ' Literary Ethics, " " Self-Reliance, " " Compensation. ' ' 
 Poems: "Wood Notes," " The Problem," "The Dirge," 
 " The Song of Nature," "The Two Rivers." 
 
 8. Lowell. — Essays: "Shakespeare," "Emerson," 
 "Democracy," "Harvard Anniversary." Poems: "Sir 
 "Launfal," " Commemoration Ode," "Cathedral," "Agas- 
 siz." 
 
 9. Arnold. — The essays and poems quoted or referred 
 to in the outHne. 
 
 62 — 
 
EXAMINATION. 
 
 DIRECTIONS. 
 
 1. Read over all the questions attentively, marking the 
 five you choose to answer. 
 
 2. Take time to think, and write deliberately. If you 
 write three hours, you have considerably more than half 
 an hour for each question. 
 
 3. Credit will be given for good answers to more than 
 five questions. But a thorough treatment of five questions 
 will count for more than a superficial treatment of any 
 number. 
 
 4. Number the answers to correspond to the questions. 
 
 SPECIMEN QUESTIONS. (Any Five.) 
 
 I. 
 
 {a) What are the ' ' Intimations of Immortality ' ' referred 
 to in Wordsworth's great Ode? (Express them either 
 in your own words or in those of the poet.) 
 
 {F) Have you ever experienced such ** intimations " ? 
 If so, do you account for them as the poet does ? 
 
 2. 
 
 {a) What significance, historical, social, political, or 
 spiritual, can such a poem as Byron's "Don Juan" have 
 for us at the present day ? 
 
 -63- 
 
(b) What do you consider the abiding element, if any, 
 in Byron's poetry? 
 
 3. 
 
 {a) In what way w^as Byron's poetry affected by his 
 personal character? 
 
 (<5) In what way Shelley's? 
 
 4- 
 
 Compare and contrast the following poems with respect 
 to {a) style and manner; (^) substance and matter; {c) the 
 author's moral attitude: — Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty," 
 Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and Arnold's 
 " Morality." 
 
 5- 
 {a) Compare and contrast the styles of Browning and 
 Tennyson. 
 
 {b) Which of the two do you prefer, and for what 
 
 reasons ? 
 
 6. 
 
 Give a brief analysis, and a brief critical and ethical in- 
 terpretation, of one of the longer poems of Tennyson. 
 
 7- 
 The same of one of the dramas or longer poems of 
 
 Browning. 
 
 8. 
 
 {a) What is the historical position of Victor Hugo, the 
 poet, in French literature ? 
 
 (^) Mention what 3^ou have read by him, and enumerate 
 what seem to you the most salient characteristics of his 
 style and manner. 
 
 9. 
 
 Give an ethical interpretation, with critical comments, of 
 one of Emerson's poems. 
 
 -61- 
 
lO. 
 
 Mention some testimonies of thinkers, domestic and for- 
 eign, to the influence of Emerson, and add anything you 
 can from your own experience. 
 
 11. 
 
 (a) What is the ethical significance of the " Biglow 
 Papers"? 
 
 (d) What is to be learned from them of the characteris- 
 tics of the "Yankee Nation"? 
 
 12. 
 
 Tell what you can of Lowell's range and variety of 
 power and achievement. 
 
 13- 
 
 (a) Give as complete an exposition as you can of Mat- 
 thew Arnold's conception of culture, 
 
 (d) What would be your criticism of this conception as a 
 
 working theory? 
 
 14. 
 
 (a) Enumerate the poems of all these authors which you 
 have chosen, or should choose, to commit to memory. 
 
 (d) Quote one or two of the most remarkable lines of each 
 one of these authors. 
 
 15- 
 
 The works of which one should you choose for mental 
 
 and spiritual companionship, were you limited to but one ? 
 Give reasons in full. 
 
 65- 
 
HINTS, BIBLIOGRAPHIC AND 
 
 OTHER. 
 
 I. WORDSWORTH. 
 
 A. — Myers's Biography of Wordsworth in the " EngHsh 
 Men of Letters" series. 
 
 B. — Read at least so much of the poetry as is contained in 
 the poems chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. 
 Macmillan & Co., New York; price, $i.oo. 
 
 C. — Wordsworth's Prefaces. The best single volume edi- 
 tion of Wordsworth, complete, is edited by John Mor- 
 ley, and published by Macmillan & Co.; price, $1.75. 
 
 D. — "The Prelude." Contained in the edition just men- 
 tioned. Also published separately by Heath & Co., 
 Boston. 
 
 E. — *' Wordsworthiana: a Selection from Papers read to 
 the Wordsworth Society. ' ' Edited by William Knight. 
 Macmillan & Co.; price, $2.25. 
 
 • - 
 H. BYRON. 
 
 A. — Roden Noel's "Life of Byron," in the "Great 
 Writers" series, or Nichol's "Bvron," in the " Ene- 
 lish Men of Letters" series; the former is preferable. 
 
 — 65 — 
 
B. — Poems chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. Har- 
 per's FrankHn Square Library; price, 20 cents. Also 
 published as a book by Macmillan & Co. ; price, $1.00. 
 
 C. — Of the dramas read: 
 
 1. "Manfred." 
 
 2. "Cain." 
 
 3. "Heaven and Earth." 
 
 D. — Read the whole of " Childe Harold " and the first four 
 cantos of "Don Juan." 
 
 E. — Read "The Vision of Judgment," and compare 
 Southey's poem of the same name. 
 
 HI. SHELLEY. 
 
 A. — Symonds's "Shelley," in the "English Men of Let- 
 ters " series. 
 
 B. — Read all the shorter lyrical poems, especially the fol- 
 lowing: 
 
 I. "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." 
 
 "Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills." 
 "Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples." 
 "The Ode to the West Wind." 
 "The Cloud." 
 "To a Skylark." 
 "The Ode to Liberty." 
 
 C. — The two dramas: 
 
 1. "■ Prometheus Unbound. ' ' 
 
 2. "TheCenci." 
 
 -67- 
 
D. — Of the longer poems 
 I. "Alastor." 
 
 "Julian and'Maddalo." 
 
 " Epipsychidion." 
 
 " Adonais." 
 
 "Hellas." 
 
 At least one canto of " The Revolt of Islam." 
 
 The best single-volume edition of Shelley's poems is 
 that edited by Dowden, and published by Macmillan 
 & Co.; price, $1.75. 
 
 E. — Shelley's "Defense of Poetry," Cook's edition, pub- 
 lished by Ginn & Co. 
 
 IV. TENNYSON. 
 
 A. — Waugh's "Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Study of his 
 Life and Work" (Macmillan) contains an interesting 
 sketch of the poet's life. 
 
 B. — Of the poems of Tennyson, especial familiarity is 
 desired with the following: 
 
 1. " Enoch Arden." 
 
 2. " The Princess." 
 
 3. "Maud." 
 
 C. — " In Memoriam." 
 
 D.— "The Idylls of the King." 
 
 E. — The principal lyrical poems and odes, especially the 
 following: 
 
 1. "The Lady of Shalott." 
 
 2. " The Two Voices." 
 
 3. " The Lotus-Eaters." 
 
 — 68 — 
 
9 
 
 lO 
 
 II 
 
 12 
 
 13 
 
 " The Dream of Fair \Vomen." 
 "Locksley Hall." 
 
 " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After." 
 "The Ode on the Death of the Duke of 
 
 Wellington." 
 "Rizpah." 
 "Tiresias." 
 " The Ancient Sage." 
 " By An Evolutionist." 
 " Crossing the Bar." 
 All the sonnets. 
 
 The best single-volume edition of Tennyson is pub- 
 lished by Macmillan & Co.; price, $1.75. 
 
 V. BROWNING. 
 
 A. — Sharp's " Life of Browning," in the " Great Writers " 
 series; or, still better, Mrs. Sutherland Orr's "Life 
 and Letters of Robert Browning," published by 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Mrs. Orr was the intimate 
 friend of the poet. 
 
 B. — An excellent introduction to the poetry of Browning 
 will be found in either of the following works: Cor- 
 son's "Introduction to the Study of Robert Brown- 
 ing's Poetry," published by D. C. Heath & Co.; 
 Alexander's " Introduction to the Poetry of Robert 
 Browning," published by Ginn & Co. Students would 
 do well to procure both works. A good book of 
 selections from the poetry of Browning is that pub- 
 lished by Dodd, Mead & Co., with a spirited introduc- 
 tion by Richard Grant White. All the poems quoted 
 or referred to in these three volumes should be mas- 
 tered. 
 
 -69- 
 
C. — In addition to the above, the student who wishes to 
 make a fuller study of this author will provide himself 
 with either of the three following works: Mrs. 
 Sutherland Orr's " Browning Handbook," published 
 by Macmillan & Co. ($1.75); Cooke's "Guide-Book 
 to the Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Brown- 
 ing," published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston 
 ($2.00); or Berdoe's "Browning Encyclopedia," pub- 
 lished by Macmillan & Co. ($3.50). 
 
 D. — In addition to the dramatic poems, lyrics, and romances 
 included in the books mentioned in B^ one or more of 
 the following longer poems should be read: 
 
 1. "Paracelsus." 
 
 2. "Sordello." 
 
 3. " Balaustion's Adventure," including a tran- 
 
 script from Euripides. 
 
 4. "Aristophanes' Apology," including a tran- 
 
 script from Euripides. 
 
 5. "The Ring and the Book." 
 
 6. "The Inn Album." 
 
 E. — Of the dramas, the following should be read by all: 
 
 1. "Strafford" 
 
 2. " Pippa Passes." 
 
 3. " A Blot in the 'Scutcheon." 
 
 4. "Colombe's Birthday." 
 
 There is a complete edition of Browning's work in 
 one volume, published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; 
 price, $3.00. This is of course preferable to any 
 book of selections. It is well-edited, clearly printed, 
 and contains the essay upon Shelley. 
 
 70 
 
VI. VICTOR HUGO. 
 
 A. — Marzial's "Life of Victor Hugo," in the "Great 
 Writers" series, is the best accessible biography of 
 the poet. 
 
 B. — For some notion of Victor Hugo's poetry, those 
 who do not read French must, unfortunately, depend 
 upon the translations of his prose works, inasmuch 
 as most of the translations of his poems are extremely 
 bad. There is a volume of selected translations, such 
 as they are, in Bohn's Library, republished by Crowell 
 & Co. ' 
 
 C. — Victor Hugo is, however, a poet in prose as well as in 
 verse. Readers of French will, perhaps, need no guide 
 to his poems. His most famous poetical work is, on 
 the whole, "The Legend of the Centuries." 
 
 D. — His greatest satirical work is " Les Chatiments." His 
 
 most celebrated dramas are " Hernani," " Le Roi 
 
 s' Amuse," and " Ruy Bias." To enumerate his best 
 lyrical poems would require too much space. 
 
 E. — Some idea of his creative genius can be drawn 
 from a perusal of "Notre Dame de Paris " (The 
 Hunchback of Notre Dame), but his most celebrated 
 romance is, oi course, " Les Mise rabies." His 
 famous summary of his literary, social, and philo- 
 sophical opinions, to which he gave the name of 
 "William Shakespeare," has been translated by the 
 present author (A. C. McClurg & Co.). 
 
 — 71 — 
 
VII. EMERSON. 
 
 A. — The standard biography of Emerson is Cabot's two 
 volumes, pubhshed by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Gar- 
 nett's brief biography in the "Great Writers" series is 
 admirable. That by Dr. O. W. Holmes in the 
 '' American Men of Letters " is the tribute of a friend 
 and a man of genius. Dr. Edward Emerson's 
 "Emerson in Concord," gives perhaps the best con- 
 ception of the character of the man (Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co.). "Talks With Emerson," by Mr. 
 Charles F, Woodbury, of Oakland, Cal., is worth 
 reading (The Baker & Taylor Co.). "The Corre- 
 spondence of Carlyle and Emerson (1834-1872)," 
 edited by Professor Norton (2 vols., Houghton, Mif- 
 flin & Co.), contains many weighty criticisms by and 
 upon Emerson, while it is in other ways deeply 
 interesting. 
 
 B. — Of Emerson's poems, the following should be read 
 and inwardly digested: 
 
 1. "The Humble-Bee." 
 
 2. " The Snow-Storm." 
 
 3. "Wood Notes." 
 
 4. "The Dirge." 
 
 5. "The Threnody." 
 
 6. "The Concord Hymn." 
 
 7. "The Concord Ode." 
 
 8. " The Boston Hymn." 
 
 9. The poem, entitled "Boston." 
 
 10. "May Day." 
 
 11. " The Seashore." 
 
 12. " The Song of Nature." 
 
 13. "The Two Rivers." 
 
 72 
 
C.~ Of Emerson's essays, the following should be read 
 I. "Nature." 
 
 "The American Scholar." 
 
 " The Address to the Divinity Class." 
 
 " Literary Ethics." 
 
 " Self-reliance.'' 
 
 " Compensation." 
 
 "Manners." 
 
 "Culture." 
 
 "Books." 
 
 Essays on Lowell and Emerson will be found in 
 Stedman's " Poets of America "; Stedman's essays on 
 Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold, in "Victorian 
 Poets " may also be consulted. 
 
 Vin. LOWELL. 
 
 A. — No complete biography of Lowell as yet exists. 
 Underwood's ''The Poet and the Man" (Lee & 
 Shepard) is a useful and appreciative biographical 
 sketch. The most intimate acquaintance with the man 
 is, however, to be obtained from his "Letters" 
 (2 vols., Harper). Every one should read tlie beau- 
 tiful commemorative address of George William 
 Curtis, published separately in Harper's "Black and 
 White Series" (50 cents), also with Curtis's collected 
 "Orations and Addresses" (Harper). 
 
 B. — Lowell's great satire, " The Biglow Papers," first and 
 second series, should be familiar to all. Of his longer 
 poems, the following are, perhaps, the most important: 
 
 1. " Prometheus." 
 
 2. " The Vision of Sir Launfal." 
 
 — 73 — 
 
3- " An Indian Summer Reverie." 
 
 4. " The Commemoration Ode." 
 
 5. "The Cathedral." 
 
 6. The three memorial poems. 
 
 7. The poem upon Agassiz. 
 
 C. — Of his shorter poems, the following should be read: 
 
 "Rhoecus." 
 
 "A Glance Behind the Curtain." 
 
 ''Stanzas on Freedom." 
 
 •'Hebe." 
 
 " 'i'he Present Crisis." 
 
 "An Interview with Miles Standish." 
 
 "On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near 
 
 Washington. 
 " To a Dandelion." 
 "The First Snow-Fall." 
 "After the Burial." 
 
 "A Winter Evening Hymn to My Fire." 
 " Credidimus Jovem Regnare." 
 "An Epistle to George WilHam Curtis." 
 "At the Burns Centennial." 
 All the sonnets. 
 
 9 
 10 
 1 1 
 12 
 
 13 
 14 
 15 
 
 D. — Of the prose essays, the following are perhaps the most 
 notable: 
 
 " My Garden Acquaintance." 
 
 " On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners. " 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 "Dryden." 
 
 '' Chaucer." 
 
 — 74 
 
6. '' Shakespeare Once More." 
 
 7. "Dante." 
 
 8. "Spenser." 
 
 9. "Emerson, the Lecturer." 
 
 10. "Gray." 
 
 11. " Democracy in America." 
 
 12. "The Harvard Anniversary Address." 
 
 IX. MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 A. — The most important poems of Matthew Arnold will be 
 found in a volume of the " Golden Treasury Series," 
 uniform with his Selections from Byron and Words- 
 worth ($1.00). The publishers of his complete works 
 are Macmillan & Co. The volumes can be purchased 
 separately, or in sets, at $1.50 each vol. There are 
 9 vols, of prose, 3 of poems, and 2 of letters. Every 
 one should be familiar with the following longer poems: 
 
 1. " Empedocles on Etna." 
 
 2. " Sohrab and Rustum." 
 
 3. " Tristram and Iseult." 
 
 B. — Of the shorter poems, at least the following should 
 be read: 
 
 1. " Self dependence." 
 
 2. "Morality." 
 
 3. "A Summer Night." 
 
 4. "The Future." 
 
 5. " The Scholar Gypsy." 
 
 6. "Thyrsis." 
 
 7. " Memorial Verses." 
 
 — 75 — 
 
8. "A Southern Night." 
 
 9. " Stanzas from the Grand Chartreuse." 
 
 10. " Rugby Chapel." 
 
 11. All the Sonnets. 
 
 C. — The best essays in literary criticism are collected in 
 two volumes, entitled "Essays in Criticism," first and 
 second series. The first volume has been called the 
 " golden book of English criticism." Of the essays 
 therein, at least the following should be mastered: 
 
 1. The Preface. 
 
 2. " The Functions of Criticism at the Present 
 
 Time." 
 
 3. " Literary Influence of Academies." 
 •4. "Heine." 
 
 Of the second series, the following are perhaps the 
 most important: 
 
 1. " On the Study of Poetry." 
 
 2. "Wordsworth." 
 
 3. "Byron." 
 
 The lecture on Emerson, in the volume entitled 
 "Discourses in America," is important. Arnold is 
 said to have remarked that he should be glad to be 
 remembered by these discourses (Letters, IL 327). 
 
 D. — Of Arnold's more extended works, the most important 
 for our purpose is "Culture and Anarchy," which con- 
 tains the celebrated chapter on " Sweetness and 
 
 Light." 
 
 76 
 
E. — ThG "Letters, 1848-1888 ' (Macmillan), prove that 
 Arnold's character was as sweet and serene as his 
 intellect was lucid and penetrating. 
 
 F, — Every student will be glad to place by the side ot 
 Arnold's exquisite "Memorial Verses (April, 1850)," 
 William Watson's equally fine and just elegy upon 
 Arnold, — "In Laleham Churchyard;" nor should 
 we forget the poetic tributes of this kindred spirit to 
 Wordsworth, to Shelley, and to Tennyson (" Lach- 
 rymae Musarum " ). These are all in " The Poems of 
 William Watson," Macmillan & Co., 1893 ($1.25). 
 
 f^/y 
 
Some Representative Poets 
 
 OF THE Nineteenth 
 
 Century 
 
 A Syllabus of University Extension Lectures 
 
 Melville B. Anderson 
 
 Professor of English Literature, Stanford University 
 
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