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CHAPTER IV

OTHER NOVELISTS OF THE PAST

HE only way to give a systematic survey of the bewildering crowd of English novelists of little value and even less reputation is to eliminate everything that is ephemeral. With the exception of a few great names, it must be said of the modern English novel generally that its aims are low and chiefly confined to the domain of amusement, not of art; it is only in most recent times that a change for the better has begun.

The future will pass lightly over many of the writers here mentioned. Probably only one name will endure or be placed still higher than it has hitherto stood, at least in Germany, that of THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859). Whether considered as a man or as a writer, he was a singular phenomenon. A confirmed opium-eater to an unheard-of extent-twenty grains daily-he preserved a marvellously clear intellect amidst the fumes of the fearful poison. His writings, which fill several volumes, contain mediocre work, and are confusing in their abundance. His own record of his terrible passion, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1882) possesses a lasting, weird fascination. It is a brilliantly written, almost dangerous book, for it is more favourable to opium than otherwise, and describes its felicities with an eloquence that carries one away.

The Spanish Nun and, in particular, the collection of memorable murders in the Essay on Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts are the most remarkable of his shorter and longer works. There is no doubt that Thomas de Quincey, as well as Defoe, exercised a powerful influence upon the American writer Edgar Poe.

WILKIE COLLINS (1824-89) also devoted the greater part of his indefatigable activity to what may be called the novel of horrors. He has hardly an equal in the subtly-contrived excitement, by means of which he rivets the attention of even the most exacting reader. The Woman in White (1860) made him a European celebrity at a single bound. Collins's descriptions have the effect of a nightmare; his

power of the consistent development, even of the most improbable plot and characters, forces us under his spell. The character of Count Fosco is, besides, a real work of art. The number of his novels, like those of every successful English novelist, is very large-as a rule, two or three volumes a year. Next to The Woman in White, the best are The Moonstone and No Name.

In the nineteenth century a revival of the novel of adventure that has always been popular in England was brought about by Captain FREDERICK MARRYAT (1792-1848). He evidently took Smollett as his model, to whom he is equal in what is good as well as in what is doubtful. His own and all his youthful readers' favourite hero is the "Midshipman," who ends by becoming an admiral or something great. Jacob Faithful, Peter Simple (1834, the most amusing of his books), Percival Keene, and many others. Who of us does not remember his boyish days, when he devoured with breathless excitement the story of the wanderings and heroic deeds of those splendid scapegraces ? Marryat's place as a writer of books for the young has never been filled, not even by Stevenson. At the present day, in the place of fantastic but harmless amusement, which at least early aroused the poetical feeling of youth, there is a mania for making everything a source of instruction, that is, for stuffing young heads with figures and dead languages. Marryat's style cannot be commended; on the other hand, his narrative art is no mean one.

Of those who have recently died, ANTHONY TROLLOPE (1815-83) takes a high place amongst the writers of the novel, the object of which is merely to amuse. The number of books he wrote prevented the complete development of his vigorous talent for vivid descriptions of society; it is impossible, in the space of thirty-five years, to write twice that number of volumes without becoming mechanical. Certainly Trollope, like Balzac, introduced the same characters into more than one novel, which saved the trouble of inventing them; yet their creator does not trouble himself much as to what becomes of his heroes in their new embodiments. In the case of Trollope, more than any other writer of a certain importance, we feel that he wrote at random without any artistic plan. It would be superfluous to give the title of the dozens of novels written by him. The best are Barchester Towers, The Three Clerks, The Eustace Diamonds (not a bad attempt at a woman's character after Thackeray's "Becky Sharp"), Phineas Phinn, and The Prime Minister.

Trollope rivets the reader's attention by all permissible, sometimes non-permissible, means, and even does not shrink from a murder or other auxiliary of the novel of horrors; but he chiefly delights in the true reproduction of the higher social life of England. In the course

of the next ten years the novel reader will not trouble himself about Trollope; but the future inquirer into the history of civilisation will do well to consult him upon the life of the upper classes in England in the nineteenth century. His novels, in spite of all their superficiality, are documents for such a history.

The most prolific of modern novelists of a much lower order was Mrs. HENRY WOOD (1814-87). Her novels are counted by hundreds of volumes, which need only be mentioned here, since they serve as a standard of the taste of an uncommonly large, chiefly female, section of the public. They are part of the ballast of English literature, but have also provided intellectual food in Germany to numerous lady readers of the lending libraries and newspaper feuilletons.

Far above her stands DINAH MARY MULOCK (1826-87), better known by her married name, Craik, the author of the excellent novel, John Halifax, Gentleman (1857). It is one of the most agreeable specimens of improved Puritanism in modern England, and holds its ground as one of the productions of a more refined and entertaining literature. The sincere piety that it breathes is not obtrusive, and some of the characters give evidence of real literary talent. In the distant future her name will perhaps be mentioned by the side of George Eliot.

Lastly, we may mention one of England's most amusing gossips, DOUGLAS JERROLD (1803-57). His numerous poor theatrical pieces have long been forgotten, as also his attempts to rival Dickens in his Men of Character. But the delightful Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures, which were published in a collected form in 1846, have lived, and will still live. They were originally published weekly in Punch, to which Jerrold regularly contributed from its foundation up to his death. Enjoyed in small doses, the "Curtain Lectures" still produce hearty laughter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DE QUINCEY.-Most complete edition (19 vols., Boston, 1855); D. Masson, De Quincey (in English Men of Letters); Life, by H. A. Page (1881); J. R. Findlay, Personal Recollections of De Quincey.

WILKIE COLLINS.-E. van Wolzogen, Wilkie Collins.

MARRYAT.-Life and Letters of Marryat, by Florence Marryat (his daughter); D. Hannay, Life of Marryat.

TROLLOPE.-Autobiography (1883); F. Harrison, A. Trollope's Place in Literature. WOOD.-Mrs. Henry Wood, a Memoir by her Son, C. Wood.

CRAIK.-See Men and Women of the Time; Athenæum, October 22nd, 1887.

JERROLD.-Complete works in eight volumes (1854); Life, by his son, Blanchard Jerrold.

CHAPTER V

SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL PROSE

T is not necessary to say anything here about the high position England holds as a scientific nation. Names like Carlyle, Macaulay, Ruskin, Mill, Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer belong to that scientific literature which is known throughout the world.

What distinguishes so many English scientific works is that they belong to the finer class of literature, and therefore to art. This is, indeed, less the case than it is in France, where no scientific work achieves success that is not at the same time a literary work; but English scientific prose writers attach more importance to the employment of an artistic style than do those of Germany. In Germany even to this day the author of a learned work runs the risk of being cried down as "unscientific" by the so-called experts, if he takes the trouble to write artistically or even agreeably. As a consequence of this we find that, as scientific knowledge advances, German works, which were formerly highly esteemed, are now quite forgotten: while French and English ones survive, because, though no longer appertaining to science, they are valuable as literary works.

In the department of history, the English writers of the nineteenth century have maintained and increased that reputation, of which Gibbon laid the foundation. Besides a series of excellent books of the second rank, they have produced some artistic works, which will long endure to the enrichment of prose literature.

Of the older historians, ARCHIBALD ALISON (1792-1859), is worthy of our notice, even at the present day. His history of Europe in fourteen volumes (from the commencement of the French Revolution to the return of the Bourbons) treats, from a conservative point of view, the wondrous changes which took place when the eighteenth century was passing into the nineteenth; it is reliable as a book of reference. In a later work he treated of the period between the downfall of the first Napoleon and the coup d'état of the third.

The History of Latin Christianity by HENRY HART MILMAN (1791

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1868), in six volumes, is the best work on the subject; and its dignified and powerful language has raised it to the position of a classical English prose work.

The historical works of HENRY HALLAM (1777-1859), on the Middle Ages and the development of the English Constitution, and still more his Introduction to the Literature of Europe from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century (1839), bear witness to the enormous extent of his reading and to his historical insight into the internal relation between political and literary affairs. In other respects he is not an attractive writer; we seldom find any warmth in his works, his style lacks animation, and in his æsthetic views of poetry he is a man of the eighteenth rather than of the nineteenth century. His dry, cold manner reminds us of Ranke.

What places THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-59) among the first historians of more recent times is that he was also a poet. To prove this we may refer the reader to his poem the Battle of Naseby (see p. 238). An historian who so thoroughly understood the spirit and the language of past times and men, as this poem proves him to have done, is the man best qualified to describe external events correctly. Besides the Battle of Naseby, Macaulay wrote the Battle of Ivry, and a collection of ballads founded on the most ancient history and traditions of Rome: Lays of Ancient Rome. But in no other poem did he attain to the same wonderful and real effect that we find in the Battle of Naseby.

In his essay on Hallam, Macaulay has expressed his opinion on the art of writing history in this sentence: "History, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy." He then proceeds to say that historical truth is not arrived at by the study, however deep, of its so-called sources; but that the historian at best can only draw a living picture of the past, as his mind enables him to conceive of it from a knowledge of corroborative documents and to present it in his own peculiar style. He did not, on this account, despise the investigation of facts: few historians read more extensively.

Macaulay succeeded in making the study of history an enjoyable occupation in the widest circles, because he was an artist. It is probable that his principal work, The History of England from the Accession of James II., which appeared in five volumes between 1849 and 1859, may need a good deal of correction in some respects. But that is the case with every historical work; for after a generation men's views of facts progress considerably, and consequently alter. But that the value of this book as a work of art has not diminished is proved by the world-wide favour it enjoys, not only in England, but

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