



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Andrew Templeton, Josephine
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A HISTORY

OF

NINETEENTH CENTURY

LITERATURE

(1780-1895)

BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
EDINBURGH

_New York_

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1906

_All rights reserved_


COPYRIGHT, 1896,
BY MACMILLAN AND CO.

Set up and electrotyped, January, 1896. Reprinted October,
1896; August, 1898; September, 1899; April, 1902; March, 1904;
November, 1906.

_Norwood Press_
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




PREFACE


In the execution of the present task (which I took over about two years
ago from hands worthier than mine, but then more occupied) some
difficulties of necessity occurred which did not present themselves to
myself when I undertook the volume of Elizabethan Literature, or to my
immediate predecessor in grappling with the period between 1660 and
1780.

The most obvious and serious of these was the question, "What should be
done with living authors?" Independently of certain perils of selection
and exclusion, of proportion and of freedom of speech, I believe it will
be recognised by every one who has ever attempted it, that to mix
estimates of work which is done and of work which is unfinished is to
the last degree unsatisfactory. I therefore resolved to include no
living writer, except Mr. Ruskin, in this volume for the purpose of
detailed criticism, though some may be now and then mentioned in
passing.

Even with this limitation the task remained a rather formidable one.
Those who are least disposed to overvalue literary work in proportion as
it approaches their own time will still acknowledge that the last
hundred and fifteen years are fuller furnished than either of the
periods of not very dissimilar length which have been already dealt
with. The proportion of names of the first, or of a very high second
class, is distinctly larger than in the eighteenth century; the bulk of
literary production is infinitely greater than in the Elizabethan time.
Further, save in regard to the earliest subsections of this period, Time
has not performed his office, beneficent to the reader but more
beneficent to the historian, of sifting and riddling out writers whom it
is no longer necessary to consider, save in a spirit of adventurous or
affectionate antiquarianism. I must ask the reader to believe me when I
say that many who do not appear here at all, or who are dismissed in a
few lines, have yet been the subjects of careful reading on my part. If
some exclusions (not due to mere oversight) appear arbitrary or unjust,
I would urge that this is not a Dictionary of Authors, nor a Catalogue
of Books, but a History of Literature; and that to mention everybody is
as impossible as to say everything. As I have revised the sheets the old
query has recurred to myself only too often, and sometimes in reference
to very favourite books and authors of my own. Where, it may be asked,
is Kenelm Digby and the _Broad Stone of Honour_? Where Sir Richard
Burton (as great a contrast to Digby as can well be imagined)? Where
Laurence Oliphant, who, but the other day, seemed to many clever men the
cleverest man they knew? Where John Foster, who provided food for the
thoughtful public two generations ago? Where Greville of the caustic
diaries, and his editor (latest deceased) Mr. Reeve, and Crabb Robinson,
and many others? Some of these and others are really _neiges d'antan_;
some baffle the historian in miniature by being rebels to brief and
exact characterisation; some, nay many, are simply crowded out.

I must also ask pardon for having exercised apparently arbitrary
discretion in alternately separating the work of the same writer under
different chapter-headings, and grouping it with a certain disregard of
the strict limits of the chapter-heading itself. I think I shall obtain
this pardon from those who remember the advantage obtainable from a
connected view of the progress of distinct literary kinds, and that,
sometimes not to be foregone, of considering the whole work of certain
writers together.

To provide room for the greater press of material, it was necessary to
make some slight changes of omission in the scheme of the earlier
volumes. The opportunity of considerable gain was suggested in the
department of extract--which obviously became less necessary in the case
of authors many of whom are familiar, and hardly any accessible with
real difficulty. Nor did it seem necessary to take up room with the
bibliographical index, the utility of which in my Elizabethan volume I
was glad to find almost universally recognised. This would have had to
be greatly more voluminous here; and it was much less necessary. With a
very few exceptions, all the writers here included are either kept in
print, or can be obtained without much trouble at the second-hand
bookshops.

To what has thus been said as to the principles of arrangement it cannot
be necessary to add very much as to the principles of criticism. They
are the same as those which I have always endeavoured to maintain--that
is to say, I have attempted to preserve a perfectly independent, and, as
far as possible, a rationally uniform judgment, taking account of none
but literary characteristics, but taking account of all characteristics
that are literary. It may be, and it probably is, more and more
difficult to take achromatic views of literature as it becomes more and
more modern; it is certainly more difficult to get this achromatic
character, even where it exists, acknowledged by contemporaries. But it
has at least been my constant effort to attain it.

In the circumstances, and with a view to avoid not merely repetition but
confusion and dislocation in the body of the book, I have thought it
better to make the concluding chapter one of considerably greater length
than the corresponding part of the Elizabethan volume, and to reserve
for it the greater part of what may be called connecting and
comprehensive criticism. In this will be found what may be not
improperly described from one point of view as the opening of the case,
and from another as its summing up--the evidence which justifies both
being contained in the earlier chapters.

It is perhaps not improper to add that the completion of this book has
been made a little difficult by the incidence of new duties, not in
themselves unconnected with its subject. But I have done my best to
prevent or supply oversight.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

PAGE

     The Starting-point--Cowper--Crabbe--Blake--Burns--Minor
     Poets--The Political Satirists--Gifford--Mathias--Dr. Moore,
     etc.--Paine--Godwin--Holcroft--Beckford, etc.--Mrs.
     Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis--Hannah More--Gilpin               1


CHAPTER II

THE NEW POETRY

     Wordsworth--Coleridge--Southey--Scott--Byron--Shelley--Keats--
     Rogers--Campbell--Moore--Leigh Hunt--Hogg--Landor--Minor
     Poets born before Tennyson--Beddoes--Sir Henry Taylor--Mrs.
     Hemans and L, E. L.--Hood and Praed                          49




CHAPTER III

THE NEW FICTION

     Interval--Maturin--Miss Edgeworth--Miss Austen--The _Waverley
     Novels_--Hook--Bulwer--Dickens--Thackeray--Marryat--Lever--Minor
     Naval Novelists--Disraeli--Peacock--Borrow--Miss
     Martineau--Miss Mitford                                     125


CHAPTER IV

THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERIODICALS.

     New Periodicals at the beginning of the
     Century--Cobbett--The _Edinburgh Review_--Jeffrey--Sydney
     Smith--The _Quarterly_--_Blackwood's_ and the _London
     Magazines_--Lamb--Hazlitt--Wilson--Lockhart--De
     Quincey--Leigh Hunt--Hartley Coleridge--Maginn and
     _Fraser_--Sterling and the Sterling Club--Edward
     FitzGerald--Barham                                          166


CHAPTER V

THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY

     Occasional
     Historians--Hallam--Roscoe--Mitford--Lingard--Turner--
     Palgrave--The Tytlers--Alison--Milman--Grote and
     Thirlwall--Arnold--Macaulay--Carlyle--Minor
     Figures--Buckle--Kinglake--Freeman and Green--Froude        211


CHAPTER VI

THE SECOND POETICAL PERIOD

     Tennyson--Mr. and Mrs. Browning--Matthew Arnold--The
     Prae-Raphaelite Movement--Rossetti--Miss
     Rossetti--O'Shaughnessy--Thomson--Minor Poets--Lord
     Houghton--Aytoun--The Spasmodics--Minor
     Poets--Clough--Locker--The Earl of Lytton--Humorous
     Verse-Writers--Poetesses                                    253


CHAPTER VII

THE NOVEL SINCE 1850

     Changes in the Novel--Miss Bronte--George Eliot--Charles
     Kingsley--The Trollopes--Reade--Minor Novelists--Stevenson  317


CHAPTER VIII

PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

     Limits of this and following Chapters--Bentham--
     Mackintosh--The Mills--Hamilton and the Hamiltonians--
     Mansel--Other Philosophers--Jurisprudents:
     Austin, Maine, Stephen--Political Economists and
     Malthus--The Oxford Movement--Pusey--Keble--Newman--The
     Scottish Disruption--Chalmers--Irving--Other
     Divines--Maurice--Robertson                                 342


CHAPTER IX

LATER JOURNALISM AND CRITICISM IN ART AND LETTERS

     Changes in Periodicals--The _Saturday Review_--Critics of
     the middle of the Century--Helps--Matthew Arnold in
     Prose--Mr. Ruskin--Jefferies--Pater--Symonds--Minto         378


CHAPTER X

SCHOLARSHIP AND SCIENCE

     Increasing Difficulty of
     Selection--Porson--Conington--Munro--Sellar--Robertson
     Smith--Davy--Mrs. Somerville--Other Scientific Writers--
     Darwin--_Vestiges of Creation_--Hugh Miller--Huxley         404


CHAPTER XI

DRAMA

     Weakness of this department throughout--O'Keefe--Joanna
     Baillie--Knowles--Bulwer--Planche                           417


CHAPTER XII

CONCLUSION

     Survey and Analysis of the Period in the several
     divisions--Revolutions in Style--The present state of
     Literature                                                  425


INDEX                                                            471




CHAPTER I

THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY


The period of English literary history which is dealt with in the
opening part of the present volume includes, of necessity, among its
most illustrious names, not a few whose work will not be the subject of
formal discussion here, because the major part of it was done within the
scope of the volume which preceded. Thus, to mention only one of these
names, the most splendid displays of Burke's power--the efforts in which
he at last gave to mankind what had previously been too often devoted to
party--date from this time, and even from the later part of it; while
Gibbon did not die till 1794, and Horace Walpole not till 1797. Even
Johnson, the type and dictator at once of the eighteenth century in
literary England, survived the date of 1780 by four years.

Nevertheless the beginning of the ninth decade of the century did
actually correspond with a real change, a real line of demarcation. Not
only did the old writers drop off one by one, not only did no new
writers of utterly distinct idiosyncrasy (Burns and Blake excepted) make
their appearance till quite the end of it, but it was also marked by the
appearance of men of letters and of literary styles which announced, if
not very distinctly, the coming of changes of the most sweeping kind.
Hard as it may be to exhibit the exact contrast between, say, Goldsmith
and men like Cowper on the one side and Crabbe on the other, that
contrast cannot but be felt by every reader who has used himself in the
very least to the consideration of literary differences. And as with
individuals, so with kinds. No special production of these twenty years
may be of the highest value; but there is a certain idiosyncrasy, if
only an idiosyncrasy of transition--an unlikeness to anything that comes
before, and to anything, unless directly imitated, that comes
after--which is equally distinguishable in the curious succession of
poetical satires from Peter Pindar to the _Anti-Jacobin_, in the
terror-and-mystery novels of the school of Mrs. Radcliffe and Monk
Lewis, in the large, if not from the literary point of view extremely
noteworthy, department of politics and economics which in various ways
employed the pens of writers so different as Moore, Young, Godwin,
Priestley, Horne, Tooke, Cobbett, and Paine.

Giving poetry, as usual, the precedence even in the most unpoetical
periods, we shall find in the four names already cited--those of Crabbe,
Cowper, Blake, and Burns--examples of which even the most poetical
period need not be ashamed. In what may be called the absolute spirit of
poetry, the _nescio quid_ which makes the greatest poets, no one has
ever surpassed Burns and Blake at their best; though the perfection of
Burns is limited in kind, and the perfection of Blake still more limited
in duration and sustained force. Cowper would have been a great poet of
the second class at any time, and in some times might have attained the
first. As for Crabbe, he very seldom has the absolute spirit of poetry
just mentioned; but the vigour and the distinction of his verse, as well
as his wonderful faculty of observation in rendering scene and
character, are undeniable. And it is not perhaps childish to point out
that there is something odd and out of the way about the poetical career
of all these poets of the transition. Cowper's terrible malady postpones
his first efforts in song to an age when most poets are losing their
voices; Crabbe, beginning brilliantly and popularly, relapses into a
silence of nearly a quarter of a century before breaking out with
greater power and skill than ever; Burns runs one of the shortest, if
one of the most brilliant, Blake one of the longest, the strangest, the
most intermittent, of poetical careers. Nor is it superfluous to draw
attention further to the fact that when we leave this little company--at
the best august, at the worst more than respectable--we drop suddenly to
the flattest and most hopeless bog of poesiless verse that lies anywhere
on the map of England's literature. Passing from the ethereal music of
the Scottish ploughman and the English painter, from Cowper's noble or
gentle thought and his accomplished versification, from Crabbe's manly
vigour and his Rembrandt touch, we find nothing, unless it be the
ingenious but not strictly poetical burlesque of the Wolcots and the
Lawrences, till we come to the drivel of Hayley and the drought of
Darwin.

Of the quartette, William Cowper was by far the oldest; the other three
being contemporaries within a few years. He was born on 26th November
1731 at Great Berkhampstead. His father was a clergyman and a royal
chaplain, his mother one of the Norfolk Donnes. Her early death, and
that school discomfort which afterwards found vent in _Tirocinium_,
appear to have aggravated a natural melancholia; though after leaving
Westminster, and during his normal studies at both branches of the law,
he seems to have been cheerful enough. How what should have been the
making of his fortune,--his appointment as Clerk of the Journals to the
House of Lords,--not unassisted by religious mania, drove him through
sheer nervousness to attempt suicide, is one of the best known things in
English literary biography, as indeed are most of the few events of his
sad life,--owing partly to his own charming letters, partly to the
biographies of Southey and others. His latest days were his unhappiest,
and after years of more or less complete loss of reason he died on 27th
April 1800.

It has been said that Cowper did not take to writing till late in life.
He had had literary friends--Churchill, Lloyd, and others--in youth, and
must always have had literary sympathies; but it was not till he was
nearly fifty, nor till the greater part of twenty years after his first
mental seizure, that he attempted composition at the instance of his
friend Newton and the Unwins. Beginning with hymns and trifles, he
before long undertook, at this or that person's suggestion, longer
poems, such as _Truth_, _The Progress of Error_, and _Expostulation_,
which were finished by 1781 and published next year, to be followed by
the still better and more famous _Task_, suggested to him by Lady
Austen. This appeared in 1785, and was very popular. He had already
begun to translate Homer, which occupied him for the greater part of
seven years. Nothing perhaps settled him more in the public affections
than "John Gilpin," the subject of which he also owed to Lady Austen;
and he continued to write occasional pieces of exquisite accomplishment.
Almost the last, if not actually the last, of these, written just before
the final obscuration of his faculties, was the beautiful and terrible
"Castaway," an avowed alleg