



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

