English literature of the nineteenth century

	ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Charles Dickens	The condition of English literature at the end of the nineteenth century may be not unfitly compared with its condition towards the close of the eighteenth, and we may find something to console us at the comparison. While some of the greatest writers and poets were passing away in the country of Shakespeare and Milton, ofDryden and Pope, Robert Bums, Johnathan Swift, Henry Filding and Toнbias Smollet. In the decade between 1769 and 1779 William Wordнsworth (1770-1850), Taylor Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834), Robнert Southey( 1774-1843), Walter Scott (1772-1832), and Jane Austin (1775-1817) were born. A later group were born beнtween 1788and 1798ЧGeorge Gordon Byron (1788-1824), Perнcy Bisshe Shelley (1792-1822), John Keats (1795-1821), Thomas Hood (1799-1845) and some others. A new outburst of literary energy begins with the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798. This was the beginning of the English Romanticism. William Wordsworth loved the natural world, he loved to hear and tell stories of simple people and sought a style suitable to their feelings and condition. He also wrote many beautiful sonnets about England as well as of other contries of Europe . The main poems by Coleridge are "The-Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", "Christabel", "Kubia Khan", "Dejection". He considнered imagination for a great creative force, and he came to believe that everyday language was not always the best language for poetнry; and in this he differed from Wordsworth but in thewhole their discussions were to the great good to poetry in the whole. The following generation Ч Byron, Shelley, and others Ч were poets whose energies were braced in the death Ч struggle with Naнpoleon, and afterwards in the struggle for political reform Ч saw, almost every year, the production of new works of genius. Poetry and romance formed the chief point of this wonderful age, but philosoнphy, political economy, history and criticism took their share. Walter Scott's poems were published early in the 19-th century. In 1802 he edited the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border"Ч he placed in this edition many of the popular ballads of old, which he himself collected, and often wrote down the texts just from the mouths of the old people reciting and singing them. In 1803 Scott published a new volume of the "Minstrelsy", and there were some portion of the ballads composed by himself, "The Eve of Saint John" and others. After that, in rapid succession, Scott wrote several long poems conнcerning the English and Scottish history, his favourite subject Ч "The Lay of the Last Minstrel", "Marmion", "The Lady of the Lake" and others. These volumes, if they did not represent poetry of the first rank, were full of romance and imagination. But Scott's greatest work is to be found in the wonderful series of historical novels which began with " Waverley " in 1814, and only ended with his death in 1832. These stories, full of action, humour, and character, described for ever the picturesque past, and had an influence on later writers which at the beginning of the twentieth century became even stronger. If the great poems by S. T. Coleridge Ч the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" (1798) and "Christabel" were animated with rare expression and a vivid sence of the supernatural. Lord Byron strikes a different note: the romance is there, but it is animated by the sptrit of revolt, the hatred of all kinds Ч appeared after the French Revнolution. Byron's literary activity was enormous indeed, and beнtween 1812 and his death in 1824 poem after poem Ч such as "Childe Harold", "Giaour", "Corsair", "Lara", "Manfred", "The Prisoner ofChillon" and "Don Juan" Ч made his poetical fluency, his brilliant wit, and his rebellious opinions known throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Shelley, whose views were even more anarchical, than those of Byron, and who, with less common sense displays more spiritual vein than his great contemporary, published his melodious poems Ч "Alastor", "The Revolt of Islam", "Adonais", "The Cloud", "The Skylark", and many others Чbetween 1816 and 1822. The works of Keats, whose "Endymion" and "Hyperion" display the enorнmous love of beauty with which the literature of Greece inspired him, were all created within the short space of four years Ч from 1817 to 1821, when he died. Robert Southy published a vast mass of works, but, though he was Poet-Laureate during the last thirtyyears of his life, most of his poems are almost forgotten now. Wordsworth, who was four years older than Southey, succeeded him as Laureate, and left material of more permanent fame. In his long poems, such as "The Prelude" and "The Excursion", much observation, much reflection are seen, and his best poems the world will not let die. Meanwhile, during the-early decades of the century. Miss Aus-(en was publishing her delicate studies of English provincial life, full of gentle humour and subtle insight. At the same time Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), English phiнlosopher and jurist, was founding a new philosophy which was developed in later days by J. S. Mill; David Ricardo, a political economist (1772-1823), was building his science on the foundaнtion laid by Adam Smith; and Malthus, with his researches into population, was paving the way for Darwin. The generation that followed was not inferior. Wordsworth^s best work was done, but he lived till 1850, when Tennison succeeded him as Laureate. Alfred Tennison (18W-1'892), who was afrfteen-year-old boy when he ran passionately and could not-stop till'he almost suffocated, and then he wrote en & white cliff, "Byron -is dead";'Tennison, who in his romantic side, drank from the fountain unseated by Scott, but who, in his exquisite sense of form and of the charm ofwordh, is exceeded by no other English poet save Milton; Tennison, who i-ombines patriotism with philosophy, modem science with the belief in a future life, and yet remains a poet throughtout. His early poems, published in 1830-1832, were influenced by Keats and other poets. Quite original are "Morte d'Arfhur" and "Ulysses", pubнlished in 1842, "The Princess" (1847). They were followed by "Maud" (185 5), a lyric drama of passion, and by "The Idyls of the King" (1859), in which the old legends of King Arthur and his knights are revived in the light of modem thought and morality. Robert Browning (1812-1889), a little younger than Tennison, is a poet of a very differemttype, often nigged, even to contempt of form, but of a greater dramatic power and a deeper and richer insight into human character. His most philosophical works were succeeded by vivid portraits, such as "Men and Women" (1855); by rapid glimpses of life send action, halflyric, hatf drama; and by other poems, showing the intense interest in every lype of humanity which was the chief mark of his fertile mind. His wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (t 806-1861), in her "Sonnets from the Portuguese" and the "Cry of Children", and other poems, displays a depth of feeling and of human sympathy which few women have surpassed. While these great writers were at their best, a school of novelнists was describing; each in his or in her way, every phase of English life. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), with his playful satire; Charles Dickens (1812-1869), with his humorous pictures drawn from the humbler ranks of society and his vivid sense of social wrongs; Charlotte Bronte, with her insight into women's hearts (1816-1855); miss Evans ("George Eliot", 1819-1880), with her wit and moral purpose; and many others, make this perhaps the greatest epoch of the English novel. About the year 1870 a new school of poets arose, in Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) and William Morris (1834-1896), who turned their backs on philosophy and the deeper problems of humanity, and sought refнuge in art, emotion, or the simple legends of a primitive world. So the nineteenth century was very rich of English literature, poetry, philosophy, criticism and science.

ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Charles Dickens

The condition of English literature at the end of the nineteenth century may be not unfitly compared with its condition towards the close of the eighteenth, and we may find something to console us at the comparison. While some of the greatest writers and poets were passing away in the country of Shakespeare and Milton, ofDryden and Pope, Robert Bums, Johnathan Swift, Henry Filding and Toнbias Smollet. In the decade between 1769 and 1779 William Wordнsworth (1770-1850), Taylor Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834), Robнert Southey( 1774-1843), Walter Scott (1772-1832), and Jane Austin (1775-1817) were born. A later group were born beнtween 1788and 1798ЧGeorge Gordon Byron (1788-1824), Perнcy Bisshe Shelley (1792-1822), John Keats (1795-1821), Thomas Hood (1799-1845) and some others.

A new outburst of literary energy begins with the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" by Wordsworth and Coleridge in 1798. This was the beginning of the English Romanticism.

William Wordsworth loved the natural world, he loved to hear and tell stories of simple people and sought a style suitable to their feelings and condition. He also wrote many beautiful sonnets about England as well as of other contries of Europe .

The main poems by Coleridge are "The-Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner", "Christabel", "Kubia Khan", "Dejection". He considнered imagination for a great creative force, and he came to believe that everyday language was not always the best language for poetнry; and in this he differed from Wordsworth but in thewhole their discussions were to the great good to poetry in the whole.

The following generation Ч Byron, Shelley, and others Ч were poets whose energies were braced in the death Ч struggle with Naнpoleon, and afterwards in the struggle for political reform Ч saw, almost every year, the production of new works of genius. Poetry and romance formed the chief point of this wonderful age, but philosoнphy, political economy, history and criticism took their share.

Walter Scott's poems were published early in the 19-th century. In 1802 he edited the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border"Ч he placed in this edition many of the popular ballads of old, which he himself collected, and often wrote down the texts just from the mouths of the old people reciting and singing them. In 1803 Scott published a new volume of the "Minstrelsy", and there were some portion of the ballads composed by himself, "The Eve of Saint John" and others. After that, in rapid succession, Scott wrote several long poems conнcerning the English and Scottish history, his favourite subject Ч "The Lay of the Last Minstrel", "Marmion", "The Lady of the Lake" and others. These volumes, if they did not represent poetry of the first rank, were full of romance and imagination. But Scott's greatest work is to be found in the wonderful series of historical novels which began with " Waverley " in 1814, and only ended with his death in 1832. These stories, full of action, humour, and character, described for ever the picturesque past, and had an influence on later writers which at the beginning of the twentieth century became even stronger.

If the great poems by S. T. Coleridge Ч the "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" (1798) and "Christabel" were animated with rare expression and a vivid sence of the supernatural. Lord Byron strikes a different note: the romance is there, but it is animated by the sptrit of revolt, the hatred of all kinds Ч appeared after the French Revнolution. Byron's literary activity was enormous indeed, and beнtween 1812 and his death in 1824 poem after poem Ч such as "Childe Harold", "Giaour", "Corsair", "Lara", "Manfred", "The Prisoner ofChillon" and "Don Juan" Ч made his poetical fluency, his brilliant wit, and his rebellious opinions known throughout the length and breadth of Europe.

Shelley, whose views were even more anarchical, than those of Byron, and who, with less common sense displays more spiritual vein than his great contemporary, published his melodious poems Ч "Alastor", "The Revolt of Islam", "Adonais", "The Cloud", "The Skylark", and many others Чbetween 1816 and 1822. The works of Keats, whose "Endymion" and "Hyperion" display the enorнmous love of beauty with which the literature of Greece inspired him, were all created within the short space of four years Ч from 1817 to 1821, when he died.

Robert Southy published a vast mass of works, but, though he was Poet-Laureate during the last thirtyyears of his life, most of his poems are almost forgotten now. Wordsworth, who was four years older than Southey, succeeded him as Laureate, and left material of more permanent fame. In his long poems, such as "The Prelude"

and "The Excursion", much observation, much reflection are seen, and his best poems the world will not let die.

Meanwhile, during the-early decades of the century. Miss Aus-(en was publishing her delicate studies of English provincial life, full of gentle humour and subtle insight.

At the same time Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), English phiнlosopher and jurist, was founding a new philosophy which was developed in later days by J. S. Mill; David Ricardo, a political economist (1772-1823), was building his science on the foundaнtion laid by Adam Smith; and Malthus, with his researches into population, was paving the way for Darwin.

The generation that followed was not inferior. Wordsworth^s best work was done, but he lived till 1850, when Tennison succeeded him as Laureate. Alfred Tennison (18W-1'892), who was afrfteen-year-old boy when he ran passionately and could not-stop till'he almost suffocated, and then he wrote en & white cliff, "Byron -is dead";'Tennison, who in his romantic side, drank from the fountain unseated by Scott, but who, in his exquisite sense of form and of the charm ofwordh, is exceeded by no other English poet save Milton;

Tennison, who i-ombines patriotism with philosophy, modem science with the belief in a future life, and yet remains a poet throughtout. His early poems, published in 1830-1832, were influenced by Keats and other poets. Quite original are "Morte d'Arfhur" and "Ulysses", pubнlished in 1842, "The Princess" (1847). They were followed by "Maud" (185 5), a lyric drama of passion, and by "The Idyls of the King" (1859), in which the old legends of King Arthur and his knights are revived in the light of modem thought and morality.

Robert Browning (1812-1889), a little younger than Tennison, is a poet of a very differemttype, often nigged, even to contempt of form, but of a greater dramatic power and a deeper and richer insight into human character. His most philosophical works were succeeded by vivid portraits, such as "Men and Women" (1855);

by rapid glimpses of life send action, halflyric, hatf drama; and by other poems, showing the intense interest in every lype of humanity which was the chief mark of his fertile mind.

His wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (t 806-1861), in her "Sonnets from the Portuguese" and the "Cry of Children", and other poems, displays a depth of feeling and of human sympathy which few women have surpassed.

While these great writers were at their best, a school of novelнists was describing; each in his or in her way, every phase of English life. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), with his playful satire; Charles Dickens (1812-1869), with his humorous pictures drawn from the humbler ranks of society and his vivid sense of social wrongs; Charlotte Bronte, with her insight into women's hearts (1816-1855); miss Evans ("George Eliot", 1819-1880), with her wit and moral purpose; and many others, make this perhaps the greatest epoch of the English novel.

About the year 1870 a new school of poets arose, in Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) and William Morris (1834-1896), who turned their backs on philosophy and the deeper problems of humanity, and sought refнuge in art, emotion, or the simple legends of a primitive world. So the nineteenth century was very rich of English literature, poetry, philosophy, criticism and science.