is ebbing, but in Morality and Self Dependence he affirms his belief that the only road to happiness when religious belief falters is a renewed emphasis upon moral truth.

Narrative poetry in the Victorian period is as rich and varied as lyrical poetry. The two most interesting types are the idyll, which Tennyson made his own, and the dramatic monologue, which Browning wrote in vivid and novel form.

The idylls of Tennyson are modern adaptations of material from the old romances, especially from the version of the Arthurian legends made by Sir Thomas Malory (c.1430c. 1470) in the Morte D'Arthur. Written in blank verse and filled with richly descriptive lines, the Idylls of the King roused a new interest in the literature of the middle ages.

The dramatic monologue was practically an invention of Robert Browning. In this form a character tells his thoughts or experiences at a moment of crisis. The interest of lyric, drama, and narrative are united in this form which became rapidly popular as interest grew in the analysis of men's motives and ideals. Typical monologues are My Last Duchess in which an Italian nobleman tells the story of his late wife, revealing as he tells it his own wretched soul; and Fra Lippo Lippi in which an Italian painter tells the story of his life and indirectly presents a philosophy of art. A collection of dramatic monologues makes up Browning's greatest work The Ring and the Book in which the characters concerned in an old Italian murder trial give each his version of the story. Browning's most powerful, passionate, and vivid poetry is in this form.

The regular verse tale was also cultivated. Tennyson's Enoch Arden tells the story of a shipwrecked sailor who returns home to find himself supposed dead. Browning's Hervé Riel tells the daring exploit of an obscure French sailor who saved the French fleet; and Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum in measured and dignified verse tells the old tale

of the Persian warrior who killed, unknowingly, his own

son.

The influence of the popular ballad, so strong in the work of Coleridge and Scott, diminishes in the Victorian period. This form was too simple for the demands of modern poets who saw life as a far too intricate thing to be expressed in ballad measures. One interesting example of the influence of the ballad, however, is Tennyson's The Revenge: A Ballad of the Fleet which tells in stirring stanzas a tale of the Spanish Armada.

A form new to English literature is the versified novel, the best example of which is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh. For a time this form was highly popular, but its vogue speedily waned.

Prose

The varied life of Victorian England and the innumerable avenues of knowledge which suddenly appeared immensely widened the field of prose literature.

The essay ceased to have its chief development in the presentation of the author's moods and emotions, and became primarily the vehicle for the expression of his ideas on every subject. The greatest essayists of the period are Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), and Matthew Arnold (1822-1888).

Carlyle brought to the essay a powerful and penetrating mind, a passion for righteousness and a style which was sometimes merely harsh and tortuous, and sometimes vigorous and picturesque. His Essay on Burns is perhaps the best known of his numerous essays. Macaulay was clear, sharp, specific, and definite in style. His mind was a rich storehouse of facts drawn from every corner of the world's history and literature. His Life of Samuel Johnson is best known to students in schools and is an excellent example of

his literary power. Arnold has none of the popular qualities of either Carlyle or Macaulay. His style is much more subtle, his subjects much less known, and his ideas much less easily grasped. His Study of Poetry shows him in his most pleasant mood.

Important as the essay is, however, it is overshadowed by an immense variety of miscellaneous prose by these and many other writers. Carlyle's French Revolution and Macaulay's History of England are great histories in the comprehensive and picturesque manner which contemporary scientific historians seldom care to cultivate. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus presents Carlyle's philosophy, stressing what Theodore Roosevelt in a later time called "the strenuous life." Arnold's Culture and Anarchy is an affirmation of the value of culture in a world which seemed to Arnold about to be overwhelmed in its search for wealth and power. John Henry Newman's (1801-1890) Idea of a University is a series of lectures on education developing many ideas which advocates of liberal education still believe valid. John Ruskin's (1819-1900) Modern Painters is a masterly study of the nature and function of art. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) wrote various essays on scientific subjects, popularizing the epoch-making discoveries and theories of the great naturalist Charles Darwin.

Novel

The novel, the newest of the great forms of English literature, comes to its fullest development in the Victorian period. In general it follows the paths laid down in the eighteenth century.

One of the greatest novelists of the period was Charles Dickens (1812-1870) whose novels of English life, especially among the poor, made him one of the best known and best

loved writers of the time. His humor, his genius for discovering grotesque figures, his love of vivid incident, and his passionate hatred of social injustice are found in all his works. He wrote novels based upon history, such as A Tale of Two Cities; novels of adventure in a setting of his own time, such as Great Expectations; and novels describing large groups of people in varied stations in life, such as David Copperfield. He was happiest in writing novels whose purpose was to throw a vivid light upon social abuses. In Oliver Twist he exposed the evils of poorhouses; in Nicholas Nickleby he called upon the public conscience to put an end to the evils of a certain type of school in England; and in Hard Times he described the sufferings of exploited factory hands.

Thackeray, on the other hand, was interested chiefly in satirizing the shams and pretense of English society among the wealthier classes. In Vanity Fair and The Newcomes, for instance, he shows how people make themselves miserable in a circle of worldly, vain, and pleasure seeking companions. He also tried his hand at historical novels in Henry Esmond and The Virginians, showing in these, too, his satirical bent.

Lesser novelists are Frederick Marryatt (1792-1848) whose Mr. Midshipman Easy is still an interesting tale of the sea; Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) whose Jane Eyre is a story of a poor governess in romantic surroundings; Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) who wrote in Westward Ho! a story of adventure in the days of Queen Elizabeth and in Alton Locke a bitter exposure of the London sweatshops; and Bulwer-Lytton (18031873) whose Last Days of Pompeii carried the historical novel into new fields.

Two aspects of the novel receive special emphasis in the Victorian novel. The analysis of character with careful attention to the motives which cause men and women to act as they do particularly interested George Eliot (1819-1880).

This emphasis in Adam Bede, Romola, and Middlemarch caused critics to call her books "psychological novels," a term which at a later time became rather overworked. In Benjamin Disraeli's (1804-1881) Coningsby and in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights there is special emphasis upon setting, the background out of which the story grows. In these novels the interest lies not so much in the plot or characters as in the atmosphere of savage gloom-in Wuthering Heights or in the men and women who made up a social set from which Disraeli was trying to create a new party in English politics.