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1843. Southey was a man of beautiful character, upright, tender, true-hearted, brave. His poetry may be neglected, but literary biography is the richer for the memory of his blameless and unselfish life.

Works. Southey's principal works in verse are Wat Tyler (1794); Poems (1795, 1797, 1801); Joan of Arc (1796); Thalaba the Destroyer (1801); Madoc (1805); Metrical Tales (1805); The Curse of Kehama (1810); Roderick (1814); A Vision of Judgment (1821); A Tale of Paraguay (1825). (For his prose writings, see p. 512.)

Views.-Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, Southey began as a Revolutionist and ended as a Tory; but even in his Tory days he remained a zealous social reformer.' There was nothing striking about his literary opinions. On the whole, he sympathized with Wordsworth's naturalism and Coleridge's romanticism; in the latter case, however, with qualifications. He was a strong supporter of simplicity against ornateness in style. Poetry, he held, should aim rather to elevate than to affecta tenet in harmony with the ethical spirit of his own work.

Poems.—Wat Tyler (surreptitiously issued in 1817 by a piratical publisher into whose hands the forgotten manuscript of twenty-three years before had passed) and Joan of Arc, celebrating the glories of French patriotism when England was at war with the Republic, are full of Southey's early Radicalism. Thalaba the Destroyer, The Curse of Kehama, and Madoc are portions of his gigantic scheme (inspired by the reading at school of Picart's Religious Ceremonies) of turning the great mythologies of the world into heroic poems. They illustrate the tendency of Romanticism to go far afield in quest of fresh material; while the irregular rhymeless measure of Thalaba (adopted from Dr. Sayers of Norwich, and in turn imitated by Shelley in Queen Mab) is an extreme example of the breaking up of the formal regularity of 18th-century verse. Southey's minor poems include some admirable lyrics and a number of ballads which connect themselves with the romantic movement by their free use of the supernatural.

Characteristics.Southey was a most industrious poet; and a careful and conscientious craftsman; his work has a fine spirit and a certain air of distinction ; his narrative poems are far more interesting than is commonly supposed. But in inspiration and the higher qualities of poetry he is conspicuously wanting. Except for a few minor poems, little of his enormous output is now really alive.

LANDOR (1775-1864)

Life and Character.-Walter Savage Landor was born at Warwick, January 30, 1775, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. On his father's death in 1801 he inherited a handsome property and established himself at Bath, and later at Llanthony Abbey, Monmouthshire. His marriage in 1811 with the daughter of a Swiss

1 See Sir Thomas More.

banker proved unfortunate. For a number of years he lived in Italy; in 1835, after a serious quarrel with his wife, he settled again at Bath; in 1859 he returned to Florence, where he died, September 17, 1864. Landor was a man of proud and impulsive nature, subject to great bursts of passion; obstinate, self-willed, and in everyday affairs hopelessly irrational. His innumerable quarrels, small and great, fill a considerable space in the story of his life. But he was generous, high-minded, and chivalrous. The essential nobility of his character is attested by the fact that he gained the affection and esteem of such men as Southey, the Hares, Carlyle. Forster, Dickens, and Browning.

Works. His most important works in verse are Miscellaneous Poems (1795,

1800, 1802, 1831); Gebir (1798); Simonides (1806); Count Julian (1812); Hellenics (1847); Italics (1848). (For his prose writings, see p. 470.)

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Views. From the religious standpoint Landor is commonly called a pagan. It is more correct to say that his attitude towards the ultimate mystery of things is what we should now describe as Positivist. At Oxford he was nicknamed "the mad Jacobin"; and though he early came to include hatred of France among the most violent of his prejudices, he never wavered in his republicanism. Yet he was not a democrat in the modern sense of the term. He was, on the contrary, essentially a patrician, with no sympathy with the "vulgar" and no fondness for the "mob." His political temper was that of Greece and Rome, and he even defended tyrannicide on the authority of "the valiant and the wise of old." His poetic taste was also severely fashioned on the antique, while among the moderns he admired most those who themselves had followed most closely in the steps of the classics, like Milton and Alfieri. He held that all great poetry must be substantial in subject.

Walter Savage Landor (S. Kensington Museum.)

A pretty sonnet may be written on a lambkin or a parsnip . . . but a great poet must clasp the higher passions breast-high, and compel them in an authoritative tone to answer his interrogatories.-Pentameron, II.

We may write little things well . . . but never will any be justly called a great poet unless he has treated a great subject worthily.-Ibid., IV.

1 Letter to Emerson.

Yet he was very deeply concerned about the technique of poetry. His lifelong devotion to classic studies and his practice of writing in Latin, the modern use of which he defended, and which he employed as a second mother-tongue, profoundly affected his style, and largely account for its reserve and excessive concentration.

Poems.-Gebir is based on the legendary story of one Gebir, Moorish invader of Spain, whose name survives in Gibraltar. The plot is confused, the style so condensed, and the transitions so abrupt, that it is difficult to grasp the poem as a whole. Separate passages, however, are unrivalled since Milton for loftiness of thought and majesty of diction. Incidentally, the narrative bears a message of rebuke to tyrannous ambition.

Count Julian, the first and best-known example of Landor's work in the poetic drama, was written at a time when he was ambitious of "treading down at heel the shoes of Alfieri." His interest in the patriotic struggle in Spain led him to turn again to the legendary history of that country for his material. The play has great power in places, but it is weak in construction, and the characters are so idealized as to be scarcely human.

MINOR POEMS. Among these are several narrative poems, like Chrysaor and The Hamadryad, which deserve the highest praise; and some lyrics, like the famous lines on Rose Aylmer, of exquisite beauty of feeling and workmanship.

Characteristics.-Landor was a classic writing in a romantic age; but his classicism, born of instinctive sympathy and nourished by scholarship, has nothing in common with what went under that name in the 18th century. He is classic in particular by reason of his reserve and the statuesque quality of his work. His blank verse is severe, massive, stately, but monotonous. His lyrics and epigrams are often perfect in expression. But his habit of over-concentration and his use at times of syntactical forms which are Latin rather than English render him often obscure.

There are those who seek popularity without finding it, and those who find it without seeking it. Landor belonged to neither class, for he neither sought nor found. He is emphatically the poet of the cultured few. He founded no school, and his influence over other poets was very slight.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

Texts.-WORDSWORTH, W.: Poetical Works, ed. W. Knight (8 vols., Macmillan, 1896); ed. J. Morley (Macmillan, 1888); ed. T. Hutchinson (Oxford University Press, 1895); Selections, ed. M. Arnold (Golden Treasury Series, Macmillan, 1879); Prose Works, ed. W. Knight (2 vols., Macmillan, 1896).— COLERIDGE, S. T.: Poetical Works, ed. J. D. Campbell (Macmillan, 1893); ed. E. H. Coleridge (Oxford University Press, 1912); Biographia Literaria (Everyman Library, Dent, 1906); Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare, etc. (2 vols., Bell, 1849).—Scorr, Sir W.: Poetical Works, ed. J. I.. Robertson (Oxford University Press, 1904); ed. A. Lang (Nimmo, 1905).-BYRON, Lord: Poetical Works, ed. E. H. Coleridge

1 Letter to Southey.

(7 vols.); Letters and Journals, ed. R. E. Prothero (6 vols., Murray, 1898-1904).-SHELLEY, P. B.; Works in Prose and Verse, ed. H. Buxton Forman (8 vols., Bell, 1880); Poetical Works, ed. E. Dowden (Globe edition, Macmillan, 1890).—KEATS: Poetical Works, ed. H. B. Forman; Poems, ed. S. Colvin (Chatto, 1915); F. T. Palgrave; Letters, ed. S. Colvin; Letters to Fanny Brawne, ed. Forman.-SOUTHEY : Complete Poetical Works; Selections in Canterbury Poets.-LANDOR: Collected Works, ed. Forster (1876); ed. Ellis (1886-90); ed. Crump (1890–92).

Biography and Criticism.-KNIGHT: Life of Wordsworth (3 vols.).-MYERS: Life of Wordsworth (English Men of Letters).-LEGOUIS: La Jeunesse de Wordsworth.-RALEIGH, W. Wordsworth.-CAMPBELL, J. D. Coleridge: A Narrative.-TRAILL, H. D.: Coleridge (Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1884).— Letters of Coleridge, ed. E. H. Coleridge.-BRANDT: Coleridge und die englische Romantik.-LOCKHART, J. G.: Life of Scott (5 vols., Macmillan, 1900).—HUTTON, R. H.: Scott (Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1887). -Scott's Familiar Letters (2 vols., Douglas, 1894).—Moore, THOMAS: Life of Byron (Murray, 1830; new edition, 1875).-ELZE, K.: Byron (English translation, Murray, 1872).-NICHOL, J.: Byron (English Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1879).—NOEL, R.: Byron (Great Writers, Scott, 1890).-TRELAWNY, E. J. : Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author (Routledge, 1906).-Dowden, E.: Life of Shelley (2 vols., Kegan Paul, 1886).-SYMONDS, J. A.: Shelley (English Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1887), and W. SHARPE (Great Writers).—HOUGHTON, Lord: Life and Letters of Keats.-COLVIN, S.: Keats (English Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1887).—Life and Correspondence of Southey, ed. Rev. C. Southey (6 vols., 1850, o.p.).— DOWDEN, E.: Southey (English Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1888).-FORSTER, J.: Life of Landor (8 vols., Chapman, 1868-76).—COLVIN, S.: Landor (English Men of Letters, Macmillan, 1881).—Letters and Unpublished Writings (1897).-Letters, Public and Private (1898).

CHAPTER 3. THE NOVELISTS

Maria Edgeworth: her Stories for Children, Irish Stories, Novels of Fashionable Life

Jane Austen's Novels-Sir Walter Scott-Other Novelists: Galt, Miss Ferrier, Peacock,
Captain Marryat, etc.

It was not till the middle of the 19th century that novelists began that deeper reading of life which has made the novel of to-day a very different thing from the novel of Fielding, though no one has improved on the dramatic structure exemplified in Tom Jones. Jane Austen accepted his dramatic method and comic treatment, confining herself, however, to an even narrower field than that cultivated by the authoress of Evelina. But her refined artistic sense made her suppress herself so completely, that after her first attempts she achieved that highest form of intellectual realism in which the meaning is unfolded in the story itself, as it is revealed unconsciously by the characters in Shakespearean comedy. Scott likewise adopted in a modified form Fielding's dramatic scheme, though not his intellectual interpretation. Scott simply enjoyed life. He painted characters for the sake of their picturesqueness, their humours, their rich idiosyncrasy, without criticizing life or propounding any theories; but with an all-embracing sympathy and understanding that widened the scope of the novel, and made him a greater force in the development of fiction than any other writer.

MARIA EDGEWORTH (1767–1849)

Miss Edgeworth's first stories might have been grouped with the didactic fiction considered in an earlier chapter. She collaborated with her erudite father in his Practical Education (1798), and at a precocious age began a translation of Madame de Genlis's letters on education. The edifying stories in The Parent's Assistant (1796) skilfully adapted her father's maxims to the understanding of children, and emanate from the same school of thought as Day's Sandford and Merton. But they are richer in human interest than any other productions of this school. "Simple Susan" and "Lazy Lawrence" still rank as children's classics, and her Popular Tales (1803), uniformly designed as they are to inculcate homely precepts, have a genuine charm in their picturing of the quiet, uneventful lives of a rustic world. Miss Edgeworth was a pioneer of the short story in English, as she was also of local colour and racial idiosyncrasy and dialect in her Irish novels.

"Castle Rackrent.”"-Her first longer story, Castle Rackrent (1800), was a work of higher reach. It is not her most characteristic story, but it is the one that has

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