A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)

This shows itself distinctly enough, and perhaps at not far from its best, in almost his earliest work. Among this earliest is the magnificent sonnet on Shakespeare which perhaps better deserves to be set as an epigraph and introduction to Shakespeare's own work than anything else in the libraries that have been written on him except Dryden's famous sentence; "Mycerinus," a stately blending of well-arranged six-lined stanzas with a splendid finale of blank verse not quite un-Tennysonian, but slightly different from Tennyson's; "The Church of Brou," unequal but beautiful in the close (it is a curious and almost a characteristic thing that Matthew Arnold's finales, his perorations, were always his best); "Requiescat," an exquisite dirge. To this early collection, too, belongs almost the whole of the singular poem or collection of poems called "Switzerland," a collection much rehandled in the successive editions of Mr. Arnold's work, and exceedingly unequal, but containing, in the piece which begins —

Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

one of the noblest poems of its class which the century has produced; the mono-dramatic "Strayed Reveller," which as mentioned above is one of the very earliest of all; and the more fully dramatised and longer "Empedocles on Etna," in regard to which Mr. Arnold showed a singular vacillation, issuing it, withdrawing nearly all of it, and than issuing it again. Its design, like that of the somewhat later "Merope," is not of the happiest, but it contains some lyrical pieces which are among the best-known and the best of their author's work. Early too, if not of the earliest, are certain longer narrative or semi-narrative poems, not seldom varied with or breaking into lyric – "Sohrab and Rustum" with another of the fine closes referred to, perhaps indeed the finest of all; "The Sick King in Bokhara"; "Balder Dead"; "Tristram and Iseult"; "The Scholar-Gipsy," a most admirable "poem of place," being chiefly devoted to the country round Oxford; "Thyrsis" (an elegy on Clough which by some is ranked not far below Lycidas and Adonais). But perhaps Mr. Arnold's happiest vein, like that of most of the poets of the last two-thirds of the century, lay, not in long poems but in shorter pieces, more or less lyrical in form but not precisely lyrics – in short of the same general class (though differing often widely enough in subject and handling) as those in which the main appeal of Tennyson himself has been said to consist. Such is "The Forsaken Merman," the poet's most original and perhaps most charming if not his deepest or most elaborate thing – a piece of exquisite and passionate music modulated with art as touching as it is consummate; "Dover Beach," where the peculiar religious attitude, with the expression of which so much of Mr. Arnold's prose is concerned, finds a more restrained and a very melodious voice; the half-satiric, half-meditative "Bacchanalia"; the fine "Summer Night"; the Memorial Verses (Mr. Arnold was a frequent and a skilled attempter of epicedes) on Wordsworth, on Heine, and on the dog Geist; with, almost latest of all and not least noble, "Westminster Abbey," the opening passages of which vie in metre (though of a more complicated mould) and in majesty with Milton's "Nativity Ode," and show a wonderful ability to bear this heavy burden of comparison.

Perhaps these last words may not unfairly hint at a defect – if not the defect – of this refined, this accomplished, but this often disappointing poetry. Quite early, in the preface before referred to, the poet had run up and nailed to the mast a flag-theory of poetic art to which he always adhered as far as theory went, and which it may be reasonably supposed he always endeavoured to exemplify in practice. According to this "all depends on the subject," and the fault of most modern poetry and of nearly all modern criticism is that the poets strive to produce and the critics expect to receive, not an elaborately planned and adjusted treatment of a great subject, but touches or bursts of more or less beautiful thought and writing. Now of course it need not be said that in the very highest poetry the excellence of the subject, the complete appropriateness of the treatment, and the beauty of patches and passages, all meet together. But it will also happen that this is not so. And then the poet of "the subject" will not only miss the happy "jewels five words long," the gracious puffs and cat's paws of the wind of the spirit, that his less austere brother secures, but will not make so very much of his subjects, of his schemes of treatment themselves. His ambition, as ambition so often does, will over-reach itself, and he will have nothing to show but the unfinished fragments of a poetical Escurial instead of the finished chantries and altar-tombs which a less formal architect is able to boast.

However this may be, two things are certain, the first that the best work of Matthew Arnold in verse bears a somewhat small proportion to the work that is not his best, and that his worst is sometimes strangely unworthy of him; the second, that the best where it appears is of surpassing charm – uniting in a way, of which Andrew Marvell is perhaps the best other example in English lyric, romantic grace, feeling, and music to a classical and austere precision of style, combining nobility of thought with grace of expression, and presenting the most characteristically modern ideas of his own particular day with an almost perfect freedom from the jargon of that day, and in a key always suggesting the great masters, the great thinkers, the great poets of the past. To those who are in sympathy with his own way of thinking he must always possess an extraordinary attraction; perhaps he is not least, though he may be more discriminatingly, admired by those who are very much out of sympathy with him on not a few points of subject, but who are one with him in the Humanities – in the sense and the love of the great things in literature.

The natural and logical line of development, however, from the originators of the Romantic movement through Keats and Tennyson did not lie through Matthew Arnold; and the time was not yet ripe – it can perhaps hardly be said to be ripe yet – for a reaction in his sense. He was, as has been said, a branch from Wordsworth, only slightly influenced by Tennyson himself, than whom indeed he was not so very much younger. The direct male line of descent lay in another direction; and its next most important stage was determined by the same causes which almost at the middle of the century or a little before brought about Præ-Raphaelitism in art. Both of these were closely connected with the set of events called the Oxford Movement, about which much has been written, but of which the far-reaching significance, not merely in religion but in literature, politics, art, and almost things in general, has never yet been fully estimated. As far as literature is concerned, and this special part of literature with which we are here dealing, this movement had partly shown and partly shaped the direction of the best minds towards the Middle Ages, which had been begun by Percy's Reliques in a vague and blind sort of way, and which had been strengthened, directed, but still not altogether fashioned according to knowledge, by Scott and Coleridge.

This movement which dominates the whole English poetry of the later half of the century with the exception of that produced by a few survivors of the older time, and to which no successor of equal brilliancy and fertility has yet made its appearance, is popularly represented by three writers, two of whom, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Swinburne, are fortunately still alive, and therefore fall out of our province. Rossetti, the eldest of the three, a great influence on both, and as it happens an example unique in all history of combined excellence in poetry and painting, has passed away for some years, and will give us quite sufficient text for explaining the development and illustrating its results without outstripping the limits traced in the preface to this book; while his sister, and a distinguished junior member of the school, also dead, Mr. Arthur O'Shaughnessy, may profitably be brought in to complete the illustration.

Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was born in London on 12th May 1828. He was the son of an Italian poet and critic of eminence, who, like so many of his countrymen of literary tastes during the early part of the century, had fallen into the Carbonaro movement, and who had to fly first to Malta and then to England. Here he married Miss Polidori, whose mother was an Englishwoman; and his four children – the two exquisite poets below dealt with, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a competent critic, and Maria Francesca, the eldest daughter, who wrote an excellent introduction to Dante – all made contributions, and two of them great contributions, to English literature. The father himself, who was Professor of Italian at King's College, London, was an enthusiastic though rather a fantastic Dantist, and somewhat of a visionary generally, with wild notions about mediæval secret societies; but a man of the greatest honesty and honour, and a brilliant contrast to the various patriot-charlatans, from Ugo Foscolo downwards, who brought discredit on the Italian name in his time in England. These particulars, of a kind seldom given in this book, are not otiose; for they have much to do with the singular personality of our English Rossetti himself.

He was educated at King's College School; but his leanings towards art were so strong that at the age of fifteen he began the study of it, leaving school to draw at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. His art career and the formation of the P.R.B. (Præ-Raphaelite Brotherhood) unfortunately fall outside our sphere. It is enough to say that for some twenty years Rossetti, if he was known at all (and he was never known very widely nor did he ever seek notoriety) was known as a painter only, though many who only knew his poems later conceived the most passionate admiration for his painting. Yet he wrote almost as early as he painted, contributing to the famous Præ-Raphaelite magazine, the Germ, in 1850, to the remarkable Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, which also saw the early work of Mr. Morris, in 1856, and publishing some translations from The Early Italian Poets in 1861. He had married the year before this last date and was about to publish Poems which he had been writing from an early age. But his wife died in 1862, and in a fit of despair he buried his MSS. in her coffin. They were years afterwards exhumed and the Poems appeared in 1870. Eleven years later another volume of Ballads and Sonnets was published, and Rossetti, whose health in the interval had been much shattered, and who had unfortunately sought refuge from insomnia in chloral, died next year in April 1882. The last years of his life were not happy, and he was most unnecessarily affected by attacks on the first arrangement of his Poems.

These poems had a certain advantage in being presented to a public already acquainted with the work of Mr. Morris and Mr. Swinburne; but Rossetti was not merely older than his two friends, he was also to some extent their master. At the same time the influences which acted on him were naturally diverse from those which, independently of his own influence, acted on them. For the French and English mediæval inspirations of Mr. Morris, for the classical and general study of Mr. Swinburne, he had his ancestral Italians almost for sole teachers; and for their varied interests he had his own art of painting for a continual companion, reminder, and model. Yet the mediæval impulse is almost equally strong on all three, and its intensity shows that it was the real dominant of the moment in English poetry. The opening poem of Rossetti's first book, "The Blessed Damozel," which is understood to have been written very early, though afterwards wrought up by touches both of his love for his wife while living and of his regret for her when dead, is almost a typical example of the whole style and school, though it is individualised by the strong pictorial element rarely absent from his work. The "Blessed Damozel" herself, who "leaned out From the gold Bar of Heaven," is a figure from the Paradiso, divested of the excessive abstraction of that part of Dante, and clothed partly in the gayer colours and more fleshly personality of English and French mediævalism, partly in a mystical halo which is peculiar to these nineteenth century re-creations of mediæval thought and feeling. The poem is of extreme beauty, and ornate as is its language in parts there are touches, such as the poet's reflection

To one it is ten years of years,

which utter the simplest truth and tenderness; while others, such as the enumeration of the Virgin's handmaidens (over which at the time the hoofs of earless critics danced) —

With her five handmaidens, whose namesAre five sweet symphonies —Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,Margaret and Rosalys —

are consummate triumphs of the word-music brought by Tennyson into English poetry. Indeed this couplet of names might be made a sort of text to expound the great appeal to the ear of this kind of poetry, which any one who is deaf to the exceptional and golden harmony of the arrangement need never hope to appreciate. It is perfectly easy to change the order in many ways without affecting the verse; there is absolutely none of these combinations which approaches the actual one in beauty of sound and suggestion.

"Love's Nocturn" which follows is more of the early Italian school pure and simple; and "Troy Town," a ballad with burdens, is one of a class of poem much affected by Rossetti and ever since, which has produced some admirable work, but is perhaps a little open to the charge of too deliberate archaism. It is at any rate far inferior to his own "Sister Helen." But "The Burden of Nineveh" which follows is in a quite different style, and besides its intrinsic excellence is noteworthy as showing how very far Rossetti was from being limited in his choice of manners. But to go through the whole contents of this very remarkable volume would be impossible, and we can only particularise the great sonnet-sequence "The House of Life" (which was attacked for want of decency with as little intelligence as "The Blessed Damozel" had been attacked for want of sense), and a set "for pictures." The first, somewhat thorny and obscure in language, is of extreme poetical and philosophical beauty. The latter, beautiful enough, may be said to lend themselves a little to the attacks of those critics who charged Rossetti with, in the Aristotelian phrase, "shifting his ground to another kind" or (to vary the words) of taking the quotation ut pictura poesis in too literal a sense. Some songs, especially "Penumbra" and "The Woodspurge," of intense sweetness and sadness, were also included; and the simple directness of "Jenny" showed, like "Nineveh," capacities in the poet not easily to be inferred from the bulk of his poems.

Rossetti's second volume, while it added only too little to the bulk of his work – for much of it consisted of a revised issue of "The House of Life" – added greatly to its enjoyment. But it produced no new kind, unless certain extensions of the ballad-scheme into narrative poems of considerable length – "Rose-Mary," "The White Ship," and "The King's Tragedy" – be counted as such. "Rose-Mary" in particular exhibits the merits and defects of the poet in almost the clearest possible light, and it may be safely said that no English poet, not the very greatest, need have been ashamed of such a stanza as this, where there is no affectation worth speaking of, where the eternal and immortal commonplaces of poetry are touched to newness as only a master touches, and where the turn of the phrase and verse is impeccable and supreme: —

And lo! on the ground Rose-Mary lay,With a cold brow like the snows ere May,With a cold breast like the earth till Spring —With such a smile as the June days bringWhen the year grows warm for harvesting.

Here, as elsewhere, it has seemed better to postpone most of the necessary general criticism of schools and groups till the concluding chapter, but in this particular respect the paucity of individuals which our scheme leaves (though Miss Rossetti and Mr. O'Shaughnessy will give valuable assistance presently), may make a few words desirable, even if they be partly repetition and partly anticipation. We find in Rossetti a strong influence of pictorial on poetic art; an overpowering tendency to revert to the forms and figures, the sense and sentiment of the past, especially the mediæval past; and a further tendency to a mysticism which is very often, if not always, poetic in character, as indeed mysticism generally if not always is. We find in point of form a distinct preference for lyric over other kinds, a fancy for archaic language and schemes of verse, a further fancy for elaborate and ornate language (which does not, however, exclude perfect simplicity when the poet chooses), and above all, a predilection for attempting and a faculty for achieving effects of verbal music by cunning adjustment of vowel and consonant sound which, though it had been anticipated partially, and as it were accidentally in the seventeenth century, and had been after the Romantic revival displayed admirably by Coleridge and Keats, and brought to a high pitch by Tennyson, was even further elaborated and polished by the present school. Indeed, they may be said to have absolutely finished this poetical appeal as a distinct and deliberate one. All poets have always attempted, and all poets always will attempt, and when they are great, achieve these enchanting effects of mere sound. But for some considerable time it will not be possible (indeed it will be quite impossible until the structure, the intonation, the phrase of English have taken such turns as will develop physical possibilities as different from those of our language as ours are from those of the seventeenth century) for any poets to get distinctly great effects in the same way. It is proof enough of this that, except the masters, no poet for many years now has achieved a great effect by this means, and that the most promising of the newer school, whether they may or may not have found a substitute, are abandoning it.

Rossetti's younger, but very little younger, sister, Christina Georgina, was born in 1830, sat to her brother early for the charming picture of "The Girlhood of Mary Virgin," and is said also to figure in his illustration of the weeping queens in Tennyson's Morte D' Arthur. But she lived an exceedingly quiet life, mainly occupied in attention to her mother and in devotion; for she had been brought up, and all her life remained, a member of the Church of England. Her religious feelings more and more coloured her poetical work, which was produced at intervals from 1861 till close upon her death in the winter of 1894-95. It was not hastily written, and latterly formed mainly the embellishment of certain prose books of religious reflection or excerpt. But it was always of an exquisite quality. Its first expression in book form was Goblin Market, and other Poems (1861), which, as well as her next volume, The Prince's Progress (1866), was illustrated by her brother's pencil. A rather considerable time then passed without anything of importance (a book called Sing-Song excepted), till in 1881 A Pageant, and other Poems was added. A collection of all these was issued nine years later, but with this the gleanings from the devotional works above mentioned (the chief of which were Time Flies and The Face of the Deep) have still to be united.

There are those who seriously maintain Miss Rossetti's claim to the highest rank among English poetesses, urging that she excels Mrs. Browning, her only possible competitor, in freedom from blemishes of form and from the liability to fall into silliness and maudlin gush, at least as much as she falls short of her in variety and in power of shaping a poem of considerable bulk. But without attempting a too rigid classification we may certainly say that Miss Rossetti has no superior among Englishwomen who have had the gift of poetry. In the title-piece of her first book the merely quaint side of Præ-Raphaelitism perhaps appears rather too strongly, though very agreeably to some. But "Dreamland," "Winter Rain," "An End," "Echo," the exquisite song for music "When I am dead, my dearest," and the wonderful devotional pieces called "The Three Enemies" and "Sleep at Sea," with many charming sonnets, adorned a volume which, on the whole, showed more of the tendencies of the school than any which had yet appeared. For it was less exclusively mediæval than Mr. Morris' Defence of Guinevere, and very much more varied as well as more mature than Mr. Swinburne's Queen Mother and Rosamond. The Prince's Progress showed a great advance on Goblin Market in dignity and freedom from mannerism, and the minor poems in general rivalled those in the earlier collection, though the poetess perhaps never quite equalled "Sleep at Sea." The contents of A Pageant, and other Poems were at once more serious and lighter than those of the two former books (for Miss Rossetti, like her brother, had a strong touch of humour), while the Collected Poems added some excellent pieces. But the note of the whole had been struck, as is usually the case with good poets who do not publish too early, at the very first.

The most distinguished members, with the exception of Mr. and Miss Rossetti, of this school are still alive; and, as it did not become fashionable until about five-and-twenty years ago, even the junior members of it have in but few cases been sent to that majority of which alone we treat. Mr. John Addington Symonds, an important writer of prose, began early and never abandoned the practice of verse, but his accomplishment in it was never more than an accomplishment. Mr. Philip Bourke Marston, son of Dr. Westland Marston, the dramatist, was highly reputed as a poet by his friends, but friendship and compassion (he was blind) had perhaps more to do with this reputation than strict criticism. The remarkable talents of Mr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, which could never be mistaken by any one who knew him, and of which some memorials remain in verse, were mainly lost to English poetry by the fact of his passing the last twenty years of his life as a Jesuit priest. But the most characteristic figure now passed away was Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844-81). He was an official of the British Museum, and published three volumes of poetry —The Epic of Women (1870), Lays of France (1872), and Music and Moonlight (1874) – which were completed in the year of his death by a posthumous volume entitled Songs of a Worker. Of these the Lays of France are merely paraphrases of Marie: great part of the Songs of a Worker is occupied with mere translation of modern French verses – poor work for a poet at all times. But The Epic of Women and Music and Moonlight contain stuff which it is not extravagant to call extraordinary.

It was never widely popular, for O'Shaughnessy pushed the fancy of the Præ-Raphaelites for a dreamy remoteness to its very furthest, and the charge (usually an uncritical one, but usually also explaining with a certain justice a poet's unpopularity) of "lack of human interest" was brought against him. Sometimes, too, either of deliberate conviction or through corrupt following of others, he indulged in expressions of opinion about matters on which the poet is not called upon to express any, in a manner which was always unnecessary and sometimes offensive. But judged as a poet he has the unum necessarium, the individual note of song. Like Keats, he was not quite individual – there are echoes, especially of Edgar Poe, in him. But the genuine and authentic contribution is sufficient, and is of the most unmistakable kind. In the first book "Exile," "A Neglected Heart," "Bisclavaret," "The Fountain of Tears," "Barcarolle," make a new mixture of the fair and strange in meaning, a new valuation of the eternal possibilities of language in sound. Music and Moonlight– O'Shaughnessy was one of the few poets who have been devoted to music – is almost more remote, and even less popularly beautiful; but the opening "Ode," some of the lyrics in the title poem (such as "Once in a hundred years"), the song "Has summer come without the rose," and not a few others, renew for those who can receive it the strange attraction, the attraction most happily hinted by the very title of this book itself, which O'Shaughnessy could exercise. That there was not a little that is morbid in him – as perhaps in the school generally – sane criticism cannot deny. But though it is as unwise as it is unsafe to prefer morbidness for itself or to give it too great way, there are undoubted charms in it, and O'Shaughnessy could give poetical form to these as few others could. Two of his own lines —