Halleck's New English Literature · Chapter 66Chapter VIII: The Age of Romanticism, 1780-1837
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History of the Period.—Much of the English history of this period was affected directly or indirectly by the French Revolution (1789). The object of this movement was to free men from oppression by the aristocracy and to restore to them their natural rights. The new watchwords were "Liberty, Fraternity, Equality." The professed principles of the French revolutionists were in many respects similar to those embodied in the American Declaration of Independence.
At first the movement was applauded by the liberal-minded Englishmen; but the confiscation of property, executions, and ensuing reign of terror soon made England recoil from this Revolution. When France executed her king and declared her intention of using force to make republics out of European powers, England sent the French minister home, and war immediately resulted. With only a short intermission, this lasted from 1793 until 1815, the contest caused by the French Revolution having become merged in the Napoleonic war. The battle of Waterloo (1815) ended the struggle with the defeat of Napoleon by the English general, Wellington.
The War of 1812 with the United States was for England only an incident of the war with France. England had become so powerful on the sea, as a result of the victories of Nelson, that she not only forbade vessels of a neutral power to trade with France, but she actually searched American vessels and sometimes removed their seamen, claiming that they were British deserters. The Americans won astonishing naval victories; but the war was concluded without any very definite decision on the points involved.
The last part of the eighteenth century saw the invention of spinning and weaving machines, the introduction of steam engines to furnish power, the wider use of coal, the substitution of the factory system for the home production of cloth, and the impairment of the home by the employment of women and children for unrestricted hours in the factories.
The long reign of George III., interrupted by periods of insanity, ended in 1820. The next two kings were his sons, George IV. (1820-1830) and William IV. (1830-1837). During these two reigns the spirit of reform was in the air. The most important reforms were (1) the revision of the criminal laws, which had prescribed death for some two hundred offenses, including stealing as much as five shillings; (2) the removal of political disabilities from Catholics, so that for the first time since 1673 they could hold municipal office and sit in Parliament; (3) the Reform Bill of 1832, which (a) extended the franchise to the well-to-do middle classes but not to those dependent on day labor, (b) gave a fairer apportionment of representatives in Parliament and abolished the so-called "rotten boroughs," i.e. those districts which with few or no inhabitants had been sending members to Parliament, while the large manufacturing cities in the north were without representatives; (4) the final bill in 1833 for the abolition of slavery; (5) child labor laws, which ordered the textile factories to cease employing children under nine years of age, prescribed a legal working day of eight hours for children between nine and thirteen, and of twelve hours for those between thirteen and eighteen; (6) the improvement of the poor laws.
The increased interest in human rights and welfare is the most important characteristic of this entire period, but most especially of the reigns of George IV. and William IV. Sir Robert Peel, the elder, although an employer of nearly a thousand children, felt the spirit of the time enough to call the attention of Parliament to the abuses of child labor. As we shall see, this new spirit exerted a strong influence on literature.
Influence of the New Spirit on Poetry.—The French Revolution stirred the young English poets profoundly. They proclaimed the birth of a new humanity of boundless promise. The possibilities of life again seemed almost as great as in Elizabethan days. The usually sober-minded Wordsworth exclaimed:—
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!"[1]
In the age of Pope, the only type of man considered worthy a place in the best literature was the aristocrat. The ordinary laborer was an object too contemptible even for satire. Burns placed a halo around the head of the honest toiler. In 1786 he could find readers for his The Cotter's Saturday Night; and ten years later he proclaimed thoughts which would have been laughed to scorn early in the century:—
"Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! * * * * * The rank is but the guinea stamp; The man's the gowd[2] for a' that."[3]
Wordsworth strikes almost the same chord:—
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie."[4]
The tenderness and sympathy induced by this new interest in human beings resulted in the annexation to English literature of an almost unexplored continent,—the continent of childhood. William Blake and William Wordsworth set the child in the midst of the poetry of this romantic age.
More sympathy for animals naturally followed the increased interest in humanity. The poems of Cowper, Burns, Wordsworth, and Coleridge show this quickened feeling for a starved bird, a wounded hare, a hart cruelly slain, or an albatross wantonly shot. The social disorder of the Revolution might make Wordsworth pause, but he continued with unabated vigor to teach us—
"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."[5]
New humanitarian interests affected all the great poets of this age. Although Keats was cut off while he was making an Aeolian response to the beauty of the world, yet even he, in his brief life, heard something of the new message.
Growth of Appreciation of Nature.—More appreciation of nature followed the development of broader sympathy, Burns wrote a lyric full of feeling for a mountain daisy which his plow had turned beneath the furrow. Wordsworth exclaimed:—
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."[6]
For more than a century after Milton, the majority of references to nature were made in general terms and were borrowed from the stock illustrations of older poets, like Vergil. We find the conventional lark, nightingale, and turtledove. Nothing new or definite is said of them.
Increasing comforts and safety in travel now took more people where they could see for themselves the beauty of nature. In the new poetry we consequently find more definiteness. We can hear the whir of the partridge, the chatter of magpies, the whistle of the quail. Poets speak of a tree not only in general terms, but they note also the differences in the shade of the green of the leaves and the peculiarities of the bark. Previous to this time, poets borrowed from Theocritus and Vergil piping shepherds reclining in the shade, whom no Englishman had ever seen. In Michael Wordsworth pictures a genuine English shepherd.
The love for mountains and wild nature is of recent growth. One writer in the seventeenth century considered the Alps as so much rubbish swept together by the broom of nature to clear the plains of Italy. A seventeenth century traveler thought the Welsh mountains better than the Alps because the former would pasture goats. Dr. Johnson asked, "Who can like the Highlands?" The influence of the romantic movement developed the love for wild scenery, which is so conspicuous in Wordsworth and Byron.
This age surpasses even the Elizabethan in endowing Nature with a conscious soul, capable of bringing a message of solace and companionship. The greatest romantic poet of nature thus expresses his creed:—
"…Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy."[7]
The Victory of Romanticism.—We have traced in the preceding age the beginnings of the romantic movement. Its ascendancy over classical rules was complete in the period between 1780 and the Victorian age. The romantic victory brought to literature more imagination, greater individuality, deeper feeling, a less artificial form of expression, and an added sense for the appreciation of the beauties of nature and their spiritual significance.
Swinburne says that the new poetic school, "usually registered as Wordsworthian," was "actually founded at midnight by William Blake (1757-1827) and fortified at sunrise by William Wordsworth." These lines from Blake's To the Evening Star (1783) may be given to support this statement:—
"Thou fair-haired Angel of the Evening, * * * * * Smile on our loves; and while thou drawest the Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes In timely sleep. Let thy West Wind sleep on The lake."
We may note in these lines the absence of the classical couplet, the fact that the end of the lines necessitates no halt in thought, and a unique sympathetic touch in the lines referring to the flower and the wind.
Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1793) show not only the new feeling toward nature, but also a broader sympathy with children and with all suffering creatures. The chimney sweeper, the lost child, and even the sick rose are remembered in his verse. In his poem, The Schoolboy, he enters as sympathetically as Shakespeare into the heart of the boy on his way to school, when he hears the call of the uncaged birds and the fields.
These two lines express an oft-recurring idea in Blake's mystical romantic verse:—
"The land of dreams is better far, Above the light of the morning star."
The volume of Lyrical Ballads (1798), the joint work of Wordsworth and Coleridge, marks the complete victory of the romantic movement.
The Position of Prose.—The eighteenth century, until near its end, was, broadly speaking, an age of prose. In excellence and variety the prose surpassed the poetry; but in this age (1780-1837) their position was reversed and poetry regained almost an Elizabethan ascendancy. Much good prose was written, but it ranks decidedly below the enchanting romantic poetry.
Prose writers were laying the foundations for the new science of political economy and endeavoring to ascertain how the condition of the masses could be improved. While investigating this subject, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), an Episcopal clergyman, announced his famous proposition, since known as the Malthusian theorem, that population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence. Political economists and philosophers like Adam Smith (1723-1790), professor in the University of Glasgow, agreed on the "let-alone" doctrine of government. They held that individuals could succeed best when least interfered with by government, that a government could not set aside natural law, but could only impede it and cause harm, as for instance, in framing laws to tempt capital into forms of industry less productive than others and away from the employment that it would naturally seek. Many did not even believe in legislation affecting the hours of labor or the work of children. This "let-alone" theory was widely held until the close of the nineteenth century.
In moral philosophy, Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), lawyer and philosopher, laid down the principle that happiness is the prime object of existence, and that the basis of legislation should be the greatest happiness to the greatest number, instead of to the privileged few. He measured the morality of actions by their efficiency in producing this happiness, and he said that pushpin is as good as poetry, if it gives as much pleasure. He was followed by James Mill (1773-1836), who maintained that the morality of actions is measured by their utility. The fault with many of the prevalent theories of government and morals lay in their narrow standards of immediate utility, their failure to measure remote spiritual effects.
[Illustration: ROBERT SOUTHEY.]
The taste of the age encouraged poetry. Scott, although a natural born writer of prose romance, made his early reputation by such poems as Marmion and The Lady of the Lake. Robert Southey (1774-1843) usually classed with Wordsworth and Coleridge as one of the three so-called Lake Poets, wrote much better prose than poetry. His prose Life of Nelson outranks the poetry in his Curse of Kehama. It is probable that, had he lived in an age of prose ascendancy, he would have written little poetry, for he distinctly says that the desire of making money "has already led me to write sometimes in poetry what would perhaps otherwise have been better written in prose." This statement shows in a striking way the spirit of those times. If Coleridge had not written such good poetry, his excellent critical prose would probably be more read to-day; but he doubtless continues to have a thousand readers for The Ancient Mariner to one for his prose.
Among the prose writers of this age, the fiction of Scott and Jane Austen seems destined to the longest lease of life and the widest circle of readers. De Quincey's work, especially his artistic presentation of his thrilling dreams, has many admirers.
[Illustration: CHARLES LAMB. From a drawing by Maclise.]
The Essays of Elia of Charles Lamb (1775-1834) still charms many readers. For over thirty years he was by day a clerk in the India House and by night a student of the Elizabethan drama and a writer of periodical essays, suggestive of the work of Addison and Steele. Lamb's pervasive humor in discussing trivial subjects makes him very delightful reading. His well-known Essays of Elia first appeared in the London Magazine between 1820 and 1833. The peculiar flavor of his style and humor is shown in his A Dissertation upon Roast-Pig, as one of the most popular of these Essays is called. Lamb relates how a Chinese boy, Bo-bo, having accidentally set his house an fire and roasted a litter of pigs, happened to acquire a liking for roast pig when he sucked his fingers to cool them after touching a crackling pig. It was considered a crime to eat meat that was not raw; but the jury fortunately had their fingers burned in the same way and tried Bo-bo's method of cooling them. The boy was promptly acquitted. Lamb gravely proceeds:—
"The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision, and when the court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his lordship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then began the rude form of a gridiron."
[Illustration: BO-BO AND ROAST PIG. From a drawing by B. Westmacott.]
Other enjoyable essays are Old China, a lovable picture of his home life with his sister, Dream Children, New Year's Eve, and Poor Relations.
The results of Lamb's Elizabethan studies appeared in the excellent Tales from Shakespeare, which he wrote with his sister, and in his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who wrote about the Time of Shakespeare.
This age produced much prose criticism. Coleridge remains one of England's greatest critics, and Lamb and De Quincey are yet two of her most enjoyable ones. Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) and William Hazlitt (1778-1830) also deserve mention in the history of English prose criticism. Both men were unusually combative. Landor was sent away from Oxford "for criticizing a noisy party with a shot gun," which he discharged against the closed shutters of the room where the roisterers were holding their festivities. He went to Italy, where most of his literary work was done. He avoided people, and even boasted that he took more pleasure with his own thoughts than with those of others. For companionship, he imagined himself conversing with other people. The titles of his best two works are Imaginary Conversations (1824-1848) and Pericles and Aspasia (1836), the latter a series of imaginary letters. His writings are notable for their style, for an unusual combination of dignity with simplicity and directness. A statement like the following shows how vigorous and sweeping his criticisms sometimes are: "A rib of Shakespeare would have made a Milton; the same portion of Milton, all poets born ever since." In spite of many splendid passages and of a style that suggests sculpture in marble, twentieth-century readers often feel that he is under full sail, either bound for nowhere, or voyaging to some port where they do not care to land.
Hazlitt is less polished, but more suggestive, and in closer touch with life than Landor. In seizing the important qualities of an author's works and summarizing them in brief space, Hazlitt shows the skill of a trained journalist. His three volumes, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817), Lectures on the English Poets (1818), and Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819) contain criticism that remains stimulating and suggestive. He loves to arrive somewhere, to settle his points definitely. His discussion of the frequently debated question,—whether Pope is a poet, shows this characteristic:—
"The question,—whether Pope was a poet, has hardly yet been settled, and is hardly worth settling; for if he was not a great poet, he must have been a great prose writer, that is, he was a great writer of some sort."
His two volumes of essays, The Round Table (1817) and Table Talk (1821-1822), caused him to be called a "lesser Dr. Samuel Johnson."
While the combative dispositions of Landor and Hazlitt did not make them ideal critics of their contemporaries, the taste of the age liked criticism of the slashing type. The newly established periodicals and reviews, such as The Edinburgh Review (started in 1802), furnished a new market for critical essays. Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850), editor of The Edinburgh Review, accused Wordsworth of "silliness" in his Lyrical Ballads; and said vehemently of a later volume of the same poet's verse: "This will never do." The Quarterly Review in 1818 spoke of the "insanity" of the poetry of Keats. In 1819 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine gave a fatherly warning to Shelley that Keats as a poet was "worthy of sheer and instant contempt," advised him to select better companions than "Johnny Keats," and promised that compliance with this advice would secure him "abundance of better praise."
Even the more genial Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), the friend of Shelley and Keats, and the writer of many pleasant essays, called Carlyle's style "a jargon got up to confound pretension with performance." We like Hunt best when he is writing in the vein of the Spectator or as a "miniature Lamb." In such papers as An Earth upon Heaven, Hunt tells us that in heaven "there can be no clergymen if there are no official duties for them"; that we shall there enjoy the choicest books, for "Shakespeare and Spenser should write us new ones." He closes this entertaining paper with the novel assurance: "If we choose, now and then we shall even have inconveniences."