something in them of the witchery of Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner." The sonnets under the general title of "The House of Life" are devoted to the poet's lost love, and rank with Mrs. Browning's From the Portuguese. William Morris (1834-1896) has been called by his admirers the most Homeric of English poets. The phrase was probably applied to him because of his Sigurd the Volsung, in which WILLIAM MORRIS From a photograph by Walker and Cockerell he uses the material of an old Icelandic saga. There is a captivating vigor and swing in this poem, but it lacks the poetic imagination of an earlier work, The Defence of Guenevere, in which Morris retells in a new way some of the fading medieval romances. His best-known work in poetry is The Earthly Paradise, a collection of twenty-four stories strung together on a plan somewhat resembling that of the Canterbury Tales. A band of mariners are cast away on an island inhabited by a superior race of men, and to while away the time the seamen and their hosts exchange stories. Some of these are from classic sources, others from Norse legends or hero tales. The stories are gracefully told, in very good verse; but in reading them one has the impression that something essential is lacking, some touch, it may be, of present life and reality. For the island is but 1 Some readers will be more interested in Morris's prose romances, The House of the Wolfings, The Roots of the Mountains and The Story of the Glittering Plain. POETRY OF SWINBURNE 285 another Cloudland, and the characters are shadowy creatures having souls but no bodies; or else, as some may find, having the appearance of bodies and no souls whatever. Indeed, in reading the greater part of Pre-Raphaelite literature, one is reminded of Morris's estimate of himself, in the Prelude to The Earthly Paradise: Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, To those who in the sleepy region stay, Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909). This voluminous writer, born in the year of Victoria's accession, is yet so close to our own day that it is difficult to think of him as part of an age that is gone. As a poet he was a master of verbal melody, and had such a command of verse forms that he won his title of "inventor of harmonies." As a critic he showed a wide knowledge of English and French literature, a discriminating taste, and an enthusiasm which bubbled over in eulogy of those whom he liked, and which emptied vials of wrath upon Byron, Carlyle and others who fell under his displeasure. His criticisms are written in an extravagant, almost a torrential, style; at times his prose falls into a chanting rhythm so attractive in itself as to make us overlook the fact that the praise and censure which he dispenses with prodigal liberality are too personal to be quite trustworthy. We are still too near Swinburne to judge him accurately, and his place in the long history of English poetry is yet to be determined. We note here only two characterHis Poetry istics, which may or may not be evident to other readers. In the first place, with his marvelous command of meter and melody, Swinburne has a fatal fluency of speech which tends to bury his thought in a mass of jingling verbiage. As we read we seem to hear the question, "What readest thou, Hamlet?" and again the Dane makes answer, "Words, words, words." Again, like the Pre-Raphaelites with whom he was at one time associated, Swinburne lived too much apart from the tide of common life. He wrote for the chosen few, and in the mass of his verse one must search long for a passage of which one may say, This goes home to the hearts of men, and abides there in the treasure-house of all good poetry. Among the longer works of Swinburne his masterpiece is the lyrical drama Atalanta in Calydon. If one would merely sample the flavor of the poet, such minor works as "Itylus and the fine sea pieces, "Off Shore," "By the North Sea" and "A Forsaken Garden" may be recommended. Nor should we overlook what, to many, is Swinburne's best quality; namely, his love of children, as reflected in such poems as "The Salt of the Earth" and "A Child's Laughter." Among the best of his prose works are his William Blake, Essays and Studies, Miscellanies and Studies in Prose and Verse. Songs in Many Keys. In calling attention to the abovenamed poets, we have merely indicated a few who seem to be chief; but the judgment is a personal one, and subject to challenge. The American critic Stedman, in his Victorian Anthology, recognizes two hundred and fifty singers; of these eighty are represented by five or more poems; and of the eighty a few are given higher places than those we have selected as typical. There are many readers who prefer the Goblin Market of Christina Rossetti to anything produced by her gifted brother, who place Jean Ingelow above Elizabeth Barrett, who find more pleasure in Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia than in all the poems of Matthew Arnold, and who cannot be interested in even the best of Pre-Raphaelite verse because of its unreality. Many men, many minds! Time has not yet recorded its verdict on the Victorians, and until there is some settled criticism which shall express the judgment of several generations of men, the best plan for the beginner is to make acquaintance with all the minor poets in an anthology CHARLES DICKENS 287 or book of selections. It may even be a mistake to call any of these poets minor; for he who has written one song that lives in the hearts of men has produced a work more enduring than the pyramids. II. THE VICTORIAN NOVELISTS CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870) Among the Victorian novelists were two men who were frequent rivals in the race for fame and fortune. Thackeray, well born and well bred, with artistic tastes and literary culture, looked doubtfully at the bustling life around him, found his inspiration in a past age, and tried to uphold the best traditions of English. literature. Dickens, with little education and less interest in literary culture, looked with joy upon the struggle for democracy, and with an observation that was almost microscopic saw all its picturesque details of speech and character and incident. CHARLES DICKENS He was the eye of the mighty Victorian age, as Tennyson was its ear, and Browning its psychologist, and Carlyle its chronic grumbler. Life. In the childhood of Dickens one may see a forecast of his entire career. His father, a good-natured but shiftless man (caricatured as Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield), was a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, at Portsmouth. There Dickens was born in 1812. The father's salary was £80 per year, enough at that time to warrant living in middle-class comfort rather than in the poverty of the lower classes, with whom Dickens is commonly associated. The mother was a sentimental woman, whom Dickens, with questionable taste, has caricatured as Mrs. Micawber and again as Mrs. Nickleby. Both parents were somewhat neglectful of their children, and uncommonly fond of creature comforts, especially of good dinners and a bowl of punch. Though there is nothing in such a family to explain Dickens's character, there is much to throw light on the characters that appear in his novels. The boy himself was far from robust. Having no taste for sports, he amused himself by reading romances or by listening to his nurse's tales, beautiful tales, he thought, which "almost scared The Stage him into fits." His elfish fancy in childhood is probably reflected in Pip, of Great Expectations. He had a strong dramatic instinct to act a story, or sing a song, or imitate a neighbor's speech, and the father used to amuse his friends by putting little Charles on a chair and encouraging him to mimicry, a dangerous proceeding, though it happened to turn out well in the case of Dickens. This stagey tendency increased as the boy grew older. He had a passion for private theatricals, and when he wrote a good story was not satisfied till he had read it in public. When Pickwick appeared (1837) the young man, till then an unknown reporter, was brought before an immense audience which included a large part of England and America. Thereafter he was never satisfied unless he was in the public eye; his career was a succession of theatrical incidents, of big successes, big lecture tours, big audiences, — always the footlights, till he lay at last between the pale wax tapers. But we are far ahead of our story. When Dickens was nine years old his family moved to London. There the father fell into debt, and by the brutal laws of the period The London was thrown into prison. The boy went to work in the Streets cellar of a blacking factory, and there began that intimate acquaintance with lowly characters which he used later to such advantage. He has described his bitter experience so often (in David Copperfield for instance) that the biographer may well pass over it. We note only this significant fact: that wherever Dickens went he had an instinct for exploration like that of a farm dog, which will not rest in a place till he has first examined all the neighborhood, putting his nose into every likely or unlikely spot that may shelter friend or |