 Part 1 Chapter 8 of A Brief History of English and American Literature. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Kalinda. A Brief History of English and American Literature by Henry A. Beers. Part 1 Chapter 8. From the Death of Scott to the Present Time. 1832 to 1886. The literature of the past fifty years is too close to our eyes to enable the critic to pronounce a final judgment, or the literary historian to get a true perspective. Many of the principal writers of the time are still living, and many others have been dead but a few years. This concluding chapter therefore will be devoted to the consideration of the few who stand forth incontestably as the leaders of literary thought, and who seem likely under all future changes of fashion and taste to remain representative of their generation. As regards form, the most striking fact in the history of the period under review is the immense preponderance in its imaginative literature of prose fiction of the novel of real life. The novel has become to the solitary reader of today what the stage play was to the audience of Elizabeth's reign, or the periodical essay, like the Tapplers and the Spectators, to the clubs and breakfast tables of Queen Anne's. And if its criticism of life is less concentrated and more brilliant than the drama gives, it is far more searching and minute. No period has ever left in its literary records so complete a picture of its whole society as the period which is just closing. At any other time than the present, the names of authors like Charlotte Bronte, Charles Kingsley, and Charles Reed, names which are here merely mentioned in passing, besides many others which want of space for bids as even to mention, would be of capital importance. As it is, we must limit our review to the three acknowledged masters of modern English fiction, Charles Dickens, 1812-1870, William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863, and George Elliott, Mary Ann Evans, 1819-1880. It is sometimes helpful to reduce a great writer to his lowest terms, in order to see what the prevailing bent of his genius is. This lowest term may often be found in his early work, before experience of the world has overlaid his original impulse with foreign accretions. Dickens was much more than a humorist, Thackeray, than a satirist, and George Elliott, than a moralist, but they had their starting points respectively in humor, in burlesque, and in strong ethical and religious feeling. Dickens began with a broadly comic series of papers, contributed to the old magazine and the Evening Chronicle, and reprinted in book form in 1836 as, The success of these suggested to a firm of publishers the preparation of a number of similar sketches, of the misadventures of Cockney Sportman, to accompany plates by the comic draftsman, Mr. R. Seymour. This suggestion resulted in the Pickwick papers, published in monthly installments in 1836-1837. The series grew under Dickens' hand into a continuous, though rather loosely strong narrative, of the doings of a set of characters conceived with such exuberant and novel humor, that it took the public by storm, and raised its author at once to fame. Pickwick is by no means Dickens' best, but it is his most characteristic and most popular book. At the time that he wrote these early sketches, he was a reporter for the Morning Chronicle. His naturally acute powers of observation had been trained in this pursuit to the utmost efficiency, and there always continued to be, about his descriptive writing, a reportorial and newspaper air. He had the eye for effect, the sharp fidelity to detail, the instinct for rapidly seizing upon and exaggerating the salient point, which are developed by the requirements of modern journalism. Dickens knew London as no one else has ever known it, and in particular, he knew its hideous and grotesque recesses, with the strange developments of human nature that abide there, slums like Tom Allelones in Bleak House, the riverside haunts of rogue riderhood in our mutual friend, as well as the old inns like the White Heart and the dusky perlews of the law. As a man, his favorite occupation was walking the streets where, as a child, he had picked up the most valuable part of his education. His tramps about London, often after nightfall, sometimes extended to fifteen miles in a day. He knew, too, the shifts of poverty. His father, some traits of whom are preserved in Mr. Maccabre, was imprisoned for debt in the Marshall C. prison, where his wife took lodging with him, while Charles, then a boy of ten, was employed at six shillings a week to cover blacking-pots in Warner's blacking warehouse. The hardships and loneliness of this part of his life are told under a thin disguise in Dickens' masterpiece David Copperfield, the most autobiographical of his novels. From these young experiences, he gained that insight into the lives of the lower classes and that sympathy with children and with the poor, which shine out in his pathetic sketches of little Nell in the old Curiosity shop, of Paul Dombey, of poor Joe in Bleak House, of the Marchioness and a hundred other figures. In Oliver Twist, contributed during 1837-1838 to Bentley's Miscellany, a monthly magazine of which Dickens was editor, he produced his first regular novel. In this story of the criminal classes, the author showed a tragic power which he had not hitherto exhibited. Thenceforward, his career was a series of dazzling successes. It is impossible here to particularize his numerous novels, sketches, short tales, and Christmas stories, the latter a fashion which he inaugurated and which has produced a whole literature in itself. In Nicholas Nicolby, 1839, Master Humphrey's Clock, 1840, Martin Chuselwit, 1844, Dombey and Son, 1848, David Copperfield, 1850, and Bleak House, 1853, there is no falling off in strength. The last named was, in some respects, and especially in the skillful construction of the plot, his best novel. In some of his latest books, as Great Expectations, 1861, and Our Mutual Friend, 1865, there are signs of a decline. This showed itself in an unnatural exaggeration of characters and motives and a painful straining after humorous effects, faults indeed from which Dickens was never wholly free. There was a histrionic side to him which came out in his fondness for private theatricals, in which he exhibited remarkable talent, and in the dramatic action which he introduced into the delightful public readings from his works that he gave before vast audiences all over the United Kingdom and in his two visits to America. It is not surprising either to learn that upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and farce. His own serious writing was always dangerously close to the melodramatic and his humor to the farcical. There was much false art, bad taste, and even vulgarity in Dickens. He was never quite a gentleman and never succeeded well in drawing gentlemen or ladies. In the region of low comedy, he is easily the most original, the most inexhaustible, the most wonderful of modern humorists. Creations such as Mrs. Nickelby, Mr. McAuber, Sam Weller, Sarri Gamp, take rank with Falstaff and Dogberry, while many others like Dick Swivler, Stiggins, Chad Band, Mrs. Jellybee, and Julia Mills are almost equally good. In the innumerable swarm of minor characters with which he has enriched our comic literature, there is no indistinctness. Indeed, the objection that has been made to him is that his characters are too distinct, that he puts labels on them, that they are often mere personifications of a single trick of speech or manner, which becomes tedious and unnatural by repetition. Thus, grandfather Smallweed is always settling down into his cushion and having to be shaken up. Mr. Jellybee is always sitting with his head against the wall. Pegaty is always bursting her buttons off, et cetera, et cetera. As Dickens humorous characters tend perpetually to run into caricatures and grotesques, so his sentiment from the same excess slops over too frequently into gush, and into a too deliberate and protracted attack upon the pity. A favorite humorous device in his style is a stately and roundabout way of telling a trivial incident, as where, for example, Mr. Roker muttered certain unpleasant invocations concerning his own eyes, limbs, and circulating fluids, or where the drunken man who is singing comic songs in the fleet received from Mr. Smangle a gentle intimation through the medium of the water jug that his audience were not musically disposed. This manner was original with Dickens, though he may have taken a hint of it from the mock heroic language of Jonathan Wilde, but has practiced by a thousand imitators ever since. It has gradually become a burden. It would not be the whole truth to say that the difference between the humor of Thackeray and Dickens is the same as between that of Shakespeare and Ben Johnson. Yet it is true that the humors of Ben Johnson have an analogy with the extremer instances of Dickens' character sketches in this respect. Namely, that they are both studies of the eccentric, the abnormal, the whimsical, rather than of the typical and universal, studies of manners rather than of whole characters. And it is easily conceivable that, at no distant day, the oddities of Captain Cuddle, Deportment Turvey Drop, Mark Tapley, and Newman Noggs will seem as far-fetched and impossible as those of Captain Otter, Festidious Brisk, and Sir Amorous Lafoul. When Dickens was looking about for someone to take Seymour's place as illustrator of Pickwick, Thackeray applied for the job, but without success. He was then a young man of 25 and still hesitating between art and literature. He had begun to draw caricatures with his pencil when a schoolboy at the charter house, and to scribble them with his pen when a student at Cambridge, editing the snob, a weekly undergraduate paper, and parodying the prize poem Timbuktu of his contemporary at the university, Alfred Tennyson. Then he went abroad to study art, passing a season at Weimar, where he met Goethe, and filled the albums of the young Saxon ladies with caricatures, afterward living in the Latin Quarter at Paris, a bohemian existence, studying art in a desultory way, and seeing men and cities. Accumulating portfolios full of sketches, but laying up stores of material to be used afterward to greater advantage when he should settle upon his true medium of expression. By 1837, having lost his fortune of 500 pounds a year in speculation and gambling, he began to contribute to Frasiers, and thereafter to the new monthly, Crickshanks Comic Almanac, Punch, and other periodicals, Clever Brlesque's Art Criticisms by Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Yellow Plush Papers, and all manner of skits, satirical character sketches, and humorous tales, like The Great Hogarty Diamond, and The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Some of these were collected in the Paris sketchbook 1840 and the Irish sketchbook 1843, but Thackeray was slow in winning recognition, and it was not until the publication of his first great novel, Vanity Fair, in monthly parts during 1846 to 1848 that he achieved anything like the general reputation which Dickens had reached at a bound. Vanity Fair described itself on its title page as a novel without a hero. It was also a novel without a plot, in the sense in which Bleak House or Nicholas Nicolby had a plot, and in that respect it set the fashion for the latest school of realistic fiction, being a transcript of life without necessary beginning or end. Indeed one of the pleasantest things to a reader of Thackeray is the way which his characters have of reappearing as old acquaintances in his different books. Just as in real life people drop out of mind and then turn up again in other years and places. Vanity Fair's Thackeray's masterpiece, but it is not the best introduction to his writings. There are no illusions in it, and to a young reader fresh from Scott's romances or Dickens' sympathetic extravagances it will seem hard and repellent. But men who, like Thackeray, have seen life and tasted its bitterness and felt its hollowness know how to prize it. Thackeray does not merely expose the can't, the emptiness, the self-seeking, the false pretenses, flunky-ism and snobbery, the mean admiration of mean things in the great world of London society. His keen, unsparing vision detects the base alloy in the purest natures. There are no heroes in his books, no perfect characters. Even his good women, such as Helen and Laura Pandenas, are capable of cruel injustice toward less fortunate sisters like Little Fanny. An Amelia Sedley is led by blind feminine instinct to snub and tyrannize over poor Dauban. The shabby miseries of life, the numbing and belittling influences of failure and poverty upon the most generous natures, are the tragic themes which Thackeray handles by preference. He has been called a cynic, and the sadness of his humor and his kindly spirit are incompatible with cynicism. Charlotte Bronte said that fielding was the vulture and Thackeray the eagle. The comparison would have been truer if made between swift and Thackeray. Swift was a cynic, his pen was driven by hate, but Thackeray is by love, and it was not in bitterness but in sadness that the latter laid bare the wickedness of the world. He was himself a thorough man of the world and he had that dislike for a display of feeling which characterizes the modern Englishman. But behind his satiric mask he concealed the manliest tenderness and a reverence for everything in human nature that is good and true. Thackeray's other great novels are Pendennis, 1849, Henry Esmond, 1852, and The Newcombs, 1855, the last of which contains his most lovable character, the pathetic and immortal figure of Colonel Newcomb, a creation worthy to stand and in its sublime weakness by the side of Don Quixote. It was alleged against Thackeray that he made all his good characters like Major Dobbin and Amelia Sedley and Colonel Newcomb intellectually feeble and his brilliant characters like Becky Sharp and Lord Stain and Blanche Emery morally bad. This is not entirely true but the other complaint that his women are inferior to his men is true in a general way. Somewhat inferior to his other novels are The Virginians, 1858, and The Adventures of Philip, 1862. All of these were stories of contemporary life except Henry Esmond and its sequel The Virginians which, though not precisely historical fictions, introduced historical figures such as Washington and the Earl of Peterborough. Their period of action was the 18th century and the dialogue was a cunning imitation of the language of that time. Thackeray was strongly attracted by the 18th century. History teachers were Addison, Swift, Steele, Gay, Johnson, Richardson, Goldsmith Fielding, Smollett and Stern and his special master and model was Fielding. He projected a history of the century and his studies in this kind took shape in his two charming series of lectures on the English humorists and the four Georges. These he delivered in England and in America to which country he, like Dickens, made two several visits. Thackeray's genius was perhaps less astonishing than Dickens. Less fertile, spontaneous and inventive, but his art is sounder and his delineation of character more truthful. After one has formed a taste for his books Dickens' sentiment will seem overdone and much of his humor will have the air of buffoonery. Thackeray had the advantage in another particular. He described the life of the upper classes and Dickens of the lower. It may be true that the latter offers richer material to the novelist in the play of elementary passions and in strong native developments of character. It is true also that Thackeray approached society rather to satirize it than to set forth its agreeableness. Yet after all it is the great world which he describes that world upon which the broadening and refining processes of a high civilization have done their utmost and which consequently must possess an intellectual interest superior to anything in the life of London thieves, travelling showmen and coaches. Thackeray is the equal of the gift as a satirist of Dickens as a humorist and of Scott as a novelist. The one element lacking in him and which Scott had in high degree is the poetic imagination. I have no brains above my eyes he said. I describe what I see. Hence there is wanting in his creations that final charm which Shakespeare's have. For what the eyes see is not all. The great woman who wrote under the pen name of George was a humorist too. She had a rich deep humor of her own and a wit that crystallized into sayings which are not epigrams only because their wisdom strikes more than their smartness. But humor was not as with Thackeray and Dickens her point of view. A country girl, the daughter of a land agent and surveyor at Nunniton in Warwickshire, her early letters and journals exhibit a Calvinistic gravity and moral severity. Later when her truth to her convictions led her to renounce life, she carried into positivism the same religious earnestness and wrote the one English hymn of the religion of humanity. Oh, let me join the choir invisible, etc. Her first published work was a translation of Strauss's Leibnizu 1846. In 1851 she went to London and became one of the editors of the Radical Organ the Westminster Review. Here she formed a connection a marriage in all but the name with George Henry Luz who was like herself a free thinker and who published among other things a biographical history of philosophy. Luz had also written fiction and it was at his suggestion that his wife undertook story writing. Her scenes of clerical life were contributed to Blackwood's magazine for 1857 and published in book form in the following year. Adam Bede followed in 1859. The Mill on the Floss in 1860 Silas Marner in 1861 Romula in 1863 Felix Holt in 1866 and Middlemarch in 1872. All of these except Romula are tales of provincial and largely of domestic life in the Midland Countries. Romula is a historical novel the scene of which is Florence in the 15th century the Florence of Machiavelli and of Savonarola. George Eliot's method was very different from that of the Americans. She did not crowd her canvas with the swarming life of cities. Her figures are comparatively few and they are selected from the middle class families of rural parishes or small towns amid that atmosphere of fine old leisure whose disappearance she lamented. Her drama is a still life drama intensely and profoundly inward. Character is the stuff that she works in and she deals with it more subtly than Thackeray. With him the tragedy is produced by the pressure of society and its false standards upon the individual with her by the malign influence of individuals upon one another. She watches the stealthy convergence of human fates the intersection at various angles of the planes of the character the power that the lower nature has to thwart, stupefy or corrupt the higher which has become entangled with it in the mesh of destiny. At the bottom of every one of her stories is the conscience of the intellect. In this respect she resembles Hawthorne though she is not like him a romancer but a realist. There is a melancholy philosophy in her books most of which are tales of failure or frustration. The middle on the floss contains a large element of autobiography and its heroine Maggie Tulliver is perhaps her idealized self. Her aspirations after a fuller and nobler existence are condemned to struggle against the resistance of a narrow provincial environment and the pressure of untoward fates. She is tempted to seek an escape even through a desperate throwing off of moral obligations and is driven back to her duty only to die by a sudden stroke of destiny. Life is a bad business wrote George Eliot in a letter to a friend and we must make the most of it. Adam Bede is in construction the most perfect of her novels and Silas Marner of her shorter stories. Her analytic habit gained more and more upon her as she wrote. Middlemerch, in some respects her greatest book lacks the unity of her earlier novels and the story tends to become subordinate to the working out of character stories and social problems. The philosophic speculations which she shared with her husband were seemingly unfavorable to her artistic growth a circumstance which becomes apparent in her last novel, Daniel Deronda 1877 Finally in the impressions of Theophrastus Such 1879 she abandoned narrative altogether and recurred to that type of character books which we have met as a flourishing department of literature in the 17th century represented by such works as Earl's microcosmography and Fuller's holy and profane state. The moral of George Eliot's writings is not obtruded she never made the artistic mistake of writing a novel of purpose or what the Germans called a tendence roman as Dickens did for example when he attacked imprisonment for debt in Pickwick the poor laws in Oliver Twist the court of chancery in Bleakhouse and the circumlocution office in Little Dorot Next to the novel the essay has been the most overflowing literary form used by the writers of this generation a form characteristic it may be of an age which lectures not creates It is not the essay of Bacon nor yet of Addison nor of Lamb but attempts a complete treatment indeed many longish books like Carlile's Heroes and Hero Worship and Ruskin's Modern Painters are in spirit rather literary essays than formal treatises The most popular essayist and historian of his time was Thomas Babington McCauley 1800 to 1859 an active and versatile man who once splendid success in many fields of labour he was prominent in public life as one of the leading orators and writers of the Whig party he sat many times in the House of Commons as member for Cowan for Leeds and for Edinburgh and took a distinguished part in the debates on the reform bill of 1832 he held office in several Whig governments and during his four years service in British India as member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta he did valuable work in promoting education in that province and in codifying the Indian Penal Law after his return to England and especially after the publication of his history of England from the accession of James II honours and appointments of all kinds were showered upon him in 1857 he was raised to the peerage as Baron McCauley of Rothley McCauley's equipment as a writer on historical and biographical subjects was in some points unique his reading was prodigious and his memory so tenacious that it was said that he never forgot anything that he had read he could repeat the whole of Paradise Lost by heart and thought it probable that he could rewrite Sir Charles Grandison from memory in his books in his speeches in the House of Commons and in private conversation for he was an eager and fluent talker running on often for hours at a stretch he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions by citation after citation of dates names, facts of all kinds and passages quoted verbatim from his multifarious reading the first of McCauley's writings to attract general notice was his article on Milton printed in the August number of the Edinburgh Review for 1825 the editor, Lord Geoffrey in acknowledging the receipt of the manuscript wrote to his new contributor the more I think the less I can conceive where you picked up that style that celebrated style about which so much has since been written was an index to the mental character of its owner McCauley was of a confident, sanguine impetuous nature he had great common sense and he saw what he saw quickly and clearly but he did not see very far below the surface he wrote with the conviction of an advocate and the easy omniscience of a man whose learning is really nothing more than general information raised to a very high power rather than with the subtle penetration of an original or truly philosophic intellect like collages or dequincies he always had at hand explanations of events or of characters which were admirably easy and simple too simple indeed for the complicated phenomena which they professed to explain his style was clear, animated showy and even its faults were of an exciting kind it was his habit to give frequency to his writing by putting things concretely thus instead of saying in general terms as Hume or Gibbon might have done that the Normans and Saxons began to mingle about 1200 he says the great grandsons of those who had fought under William and the great grandsons of those who had fought under Harold began to draw near to each other Macaulay was a great scene painter who neglected delicate truths of detail for exaggerated distemper effects he used the rhetorical machinery of climax and hyperbole for all that it was worth and he made points as in his essay on bacon by creating antithesis in his history of England he inaugurated the picturesque method of historical writing the book was as fascinating as any novel Macaulay, like Scott had the historic imagination though his method of turning history into romance was very different from Scott's among his essays the best are those which like the ones on Lord Clive, Warren Hastings and Frederick the Great deal with historical subjects or those which deal with literary subjects under their public historic relations such as the essays on Addison, Bunyan and the comic dramatists of the restoration I have never written a page of criticism on poetry or the fine arts wrote Macaulay which I would not burn if I had the power nevertheless his own Lays of Ancient Rome 1842 are good stirring verse of the emphatic and declamatory kind though their quality may be rather rhetorical than poetic our critical time has not foreborn to criticize itself and perhaps the writer who impressed himself most strongly upon his generation was the one who railed most desperately against the spirit of the age Thomas Carlisle 1795 to 1881 was occupied between 1822 and 1830 chiefly in imparting to the British public a knowledge of German literature he published among other things A Life of Shiller, a translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and two volumes of translations of the German romancers Teek, Hoffmann, Richter and Fuch and contributed to the Edinburgh and foreign review articles on Goethe, Werner, Novales Richter, German playwrights the Nebelungen lead etc his own diction became more and more tinctured with Germanisms there was something gothic in his taste which was attracted by the lawless the grotesque and the whimsical in the writings of John Paul Richter the favourite among English humorists was Stern who has a share of these same qualities he spoke disparagingly of the sensuous literature of the Greeks and preferred the Norse to the Hellenic mythology even in his admirable critical essays on Burns on Richter, on Scott Diderot and Voltaire which are free from his later mannerisms written in English and not in Carlisle's his sense of spirit is always more lively than his sense of form he finally became so impatient of art as to maintain, half seriously the paradox that Shakespeare would have done better to write in prose in three of these early essays on The Sign of the Times 1829 on History 1830 and on Characteristics 1831 are to be found the germs of all his later writings the first of these was an arraignment of the mechanical spirit of the age in every province of thought he discovered too great a reliance upon systems, institutions machinery instead of upon men thus in religion we have Bible societies machines for converting the heathen in defective Raphaels and Angeloes and Mozart we have royal academies of painting, sculpture, music in like manner he complains government is a machine its duties and faults are not those of a father but of an active parish constable against the police theory as distinguished from the paternal theory of government Carlisle protested with ever shriller iteration in Chartism 1839 Past and Present 1843 and Latter-day Pamphlets 1850 he denounced this laissez-faire idea the business of government he repeated is to govern but this view makes it its business to refrain from governing he fought most fiercely against the conclusions of political economy the dismal science which he said affirmed that men were guided exclusively by their stomachs he protested too against the utilitarians followers of Bentham and Mill with their greatest happiness principle which reduced virtue to a profit and loss account Carlisle took issue with modern liberalism he ridiculed the self-gratulation of the time all the talk about progress of the species unexampled prosperity etc but he was reactionary without being conservative he studied the French Revolution and he saw the fateful, irresistible approach of democracy he had no faith in government by counting noses and he hated talking parliaments but neither did he put trust in an aristocracy that spent its time in preserving the game what he wanted was a great individual ruler a real king or hero and this doctrine he set forth afterward most fully in hero worship 1841 and illustrated in his lives of representative heroes such as his Cromwell's Letters and Speeches 1845 and his history of Frederick the Great 1858 to 1865 Cromwell and Frederick were well enough but as Carlisle grew older his admiration for mere force grew and his latest hero was none other than that infamous Dr. Francia, the South American dictator whose career of bloody and crafty crime horrified the civilized world the Essay on History was a protest against the scientific view of history which attempts to explain away and account for the wonderful Wonder, he wrote in Sartor Risartus is the basis of all worship he defined history as the essence of innumerable biographies Mr. Carlisle, said the Italian priest Mazini, comprehends only the individual the nationality of Italy is, in his eyes the glory of having produced Dante and Christopher Columbus this trait comes out in his greatest book, The French Revolution 1837 which is a mighty tragedy enacted by a few leading characters Mirabeau, Danton, Napoleon he loved to emphasize the superiority of history over fiction as dramatic material the third of the three essays mentioned was a Jeremiah on the morbid self-consciousness of the age which shows itself in religion and philosophy as skepticism and introspective metaphysics and in literature as sentimentalism and view-hunting but Carlisle's epic-making book was Sartor Risartus the tailor-retailer published in Frazier's magazine for 1833-1834 and first reprinted in book form in America this was a satire upon sham's conventions, the disguises which overlie the most spiritual realities of the soul it purported to be the life and clothes philosophy of a certain Diogenes Teufelstrich professor de Allerei Wissenschaft of things in general in the University of Weissnichtwo Society, said Carlisle is founded upon cloth following the suggestions of Lear's speech to the naked Bedlam beggar thou art the thing itself an accommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art and borrowing also perhaps an ironical hint from a paragraph in Swift's Tale of a Tub a sect was established who held the universe to be a large suit of clothes if certain urmines or furs be placed in a certain position we style them a judge and so an apt conjunction of Lawn and Black Satin we entitle a bishop in Sartor Risartus Carlisle let himself go it was willful, uncouth amorphous titanic there was something monstrous it was not English, said the reviewers it was not sense it was disfigured by obscurity and mysticism nevertheless even the thin-witted and the dry-witted had to acknowledge the powerful beauty of many chapters and passages rich with humor eloquence, poetry departed tenderness or passionate scorn Carlisle was a voracious reader and the plunder of whole literature just strewn over his pages he flung about the resources of the language with the giant strength and made new words at every turn the concreteness and the swarming fertility of his mind are evidenced by his enormous vocabulary computed greatly to exceed Shakespeare's or any other single writers in the English tongue his style lacks the crowning grace of simplicity and repose it astonishes but it also fatigues Carlisle's influence has consisted more in his attitude than in any special truth which he has preached it has been the influence of a moralist, of a practical rather than a speculative philosopher the end of man he wrote is an action, not a thought he has not been able to persuade the time that it is going wrong but his criticisms have been wholesomely corrective of its self-conceit in a democratic age he has insisted upon the undemocratic virtues of obedience, silence and reverence Ehrfurt reverence the text of the address to the students of Edinburgh University in 1866 is the last word of his philosophy in 1830 Alfred Tennyson born 1809 a young graduate of Cambridge published a thin duodesimo of 154 pages entitled Poems Chiefly Lyrical the pieces in this little volume like The Sleeping Beauty Ode to Memory and recollections of the Arabian Nights were full of color, fragrance, melody but they had a dream-like character and were without definite theme resembling an artist's studies or exercises in music a few touches of the brush a few sweet chords, but no aria a number of them Clarabel, Lillian Adeline, Isabel, Mariana Madeline were sketches of women not character portraits like browning's men and women but impressions of temperament of delicately differentiated types of feminine beauty and Mariana expanded from a hint of the forsaken maid in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure Mariana at the moded Grange the poet showed an art then peculiar but since grown familiar of heightening the central feeling by landscape accessories the level waste, the stagnant sluices the neglected garden the poplar reinforced by their monotonous sympathy the loneliness, the hopeless waiting and weariness of life in the one human figure of the poem in Mariana, the ode to memory and the dying swan it was the fens of Cambridge and of his native Lincolnshire that furnished Tennyson scenery stretched wide and wild the waste enormous marsh where from the frequent bridge like emblems of infinity a second collection published in 1833 exhibited a greater scope and variety but was still in this earlier manner the studies of feminine types were continued in Margaret, Fatima, Eleanor Mariana in the south and a dream of fair women suggested by Chaucer's Legend of Good Women in the Lady of Chalotte the poet first touched the Arthurian legends the subject is the same as that of Elaine in the Idols of the King the treatment is shadowy and even allegorical in Anone and the Lodiceeders he handled Homeric subjects but in a romantic fashion which contrasts markedly with the style of his later pieces Ulysses and Tithonus these last have the true classic severity and are among the noblest specimens of weighty and sonorous blank verse in modern poetry in general Tennyson's art is unclassical with its composite not stature-esque so much as picturesque he is a great painter and the critics complain that in passages calling for movement and action a battle, a tournament or the like his figures stand still as in a tableau and they contrast such passages unfavorably with scenes of the same kind in Scott and with Browning's spirited ballad how we brought the good news from Ghent to Iques in the Palace of Art those elaborate pictorial effects were combined in the Lodiceeders with that expressive treatment of landscape noted in Mariana the Lodice land in which it seemed always afternoon reflecting and promoting the enchanted indolence of the heroes two of the pieces in this 1833 volume the May Queen and the Miller's Daughter were Tennyson's first poems of the affections and as ballads of simple rustic life they anticipated his more perfect idols in blank verse such as Dora, the Brook Edwin Morris and the Gardner's Daughter the songs in the Miller's Daughter had a more spontaneous lyrical movement than anything that he had yet published and foretoken the lovely songs which interlude the divisions of the princess the famous bugle song the no less famous cradle song and the rest in 1833 Tennyson's friend Arthur Hallam died and the effect of this great sorrow upon the poet was to deepen and strengthen the character of his genius it turned his mind in upon itself and set it brooding over questions which his poetry had so far left untouched the meaning of life and death the uses of adversity the future of the race the immortality of the soul and the dealings of God with mankind thou madeest death and lo thy foot is on the skull which thou hast made his elegy on Hallam in memoriam was not published till 1850 he kept it by him all those years adding section after section gathering up into it whatever reflections crystallized about its central theme it is his most intellectual and most individual work a great song of sorrow and consolation in 1842 he published a third collection of poems among which were Loxley Hall displaying a new strength of passion Ulysses suggested by a passage in Dante pieces of a speculative cast like The Two Voices and The Vision of Sin the song Break, Break, Break which pre-looted in memoriam and lastly some additional gropings toward the subject of the aetherian romance such as Sir Galahad, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere and Mort d'Arture the last was in blank verse and as afterward incorporated in the passing of Arthur forms one of the best passages in the Idols of the King the princess, a medley published in 1849 represents the eclectic character of Tennyson's art a medieval tale with an admixture of modern sentiment and with the very modern problem of women's sphere for its theme the first four Idols of the King 1859 with those since added constitute when taken together an epic poem on the old story of King Arthur Tennyson went to Mallory's Mort d'Arture for his material but the outline of the first idol Enid was taken from Lady Charlotte Guest's translation of the Welsh Mabinogion in the Idol of Guinevere Tennyson's genius reached its high watermark the interview between Arthur and his fallen queen is marked by a moral sublimity and a tragic intensity which moved the soul as nobly as any scene in modern literature here at least the art is pure and not decorated the effect is produced by the simplest means and all is just natural and grand Maud a love novel inverse published in 1855 and considerably enlarged in 1856 had great sweetness and beauty particularly in its lyrical portions but it was uneven in execution imperfect in design and marred by lapses into mockishness and excesses in language since 1860 Tennyson has added little of permanent value to his work his dramatic experiments like Queen Mary are not on the whole successful though it would be unjust to deny dramatic power to the poet who has written upon one hand Guinevere and the passing of Arthur and upon the other the homely, dialectic monologue of the northern farmer when we tire of Tennyson's smooth perfection of an art that is over exquisite and a beauty that is well-nigh too beautiful and crave a rougher touch and a meaning that will not yield itself too readily we turned to the thorny pages of his great contemporary Robert Browning born 1812 Dr. Holm says that Tennyson is white meat and Browning is dark meat a masculine taste that is inferred is shown in a preference for the gamey or flavor Browning makes us think his poems are puzzles and furnished business for Browning societies there are no Tennyson societies because Tennyson is his own interpreter intellect in a poet may display itself quite as properly in the construction of his poem as in its content we value a building for its architecture and not entirely for the amount of timber in it Browning's thought never wears so thin as Tennyson sometimes does in his latest verse where the trick of his style goes on of itself with nothing behind it Tennyson at his worst is weak Browning when not at his best is horse hoarseness in itself is no sign of strength in Browning however the failure is in art, not in thought he chooses his subjects from abnormal character types such as are presented for example in Caliban upon Setibos the Grammarians funeral My Last Duchess and Mr. Sludge the Medium these are all psychological studies in which the poet gets into the inner consciousness of a monster, a pedant a criminal and a quack and gives their point of view they are dramatic soliloquies with self-identification with each of his creations in turn remains incomplete his curious analytic observation his way of looking at the soul from outside gives a doubleness to the monologues in his dramatic lyrics 1845 men and women 1855 dramatist persona 1864 and other collections of the kind the words are the words of Caliban or Mr. Sludge but the voice is the voice of Robert Browning his first complete poem Paracelsus 1835 aimed to give the true inwardness of the career of the famous 16th century doctor whose name became a synonym with Charlotten his second, Sordello 1840 traced the struggles of an Italian poet who lived before Dante and could not reconcile his life with his art Paracelsus was hard but Sordello was incomprehensible Mr. Browning has denied that he has ever perversely crabbed or obscure every great artist must be allowed to say things in his own way and obscurity has its artistic uses as the Gothic builders knew but there are two kinds of obscurity in literature one is inseparable from the subtlety and difficulty of the thought or the compression and pregnant indirectness of the phrase instances of this occur in the clear deeps of Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe the other comes from a vice of style a willfully enigmatic and unnatural way of expressing thought both kinds of obscurity exist in Browning he is a deep and subtle thinker but he is also a very eccentric writer abrupt harsh disjointed it has been well said that the reader of Browning learns a new dialect but one need not grudge the labor that is rewarded with an intellectual pleasure so peculiar and so stimulating the odd grotesque the expression made by his poetry arises in part from his desire to use the artistic values of ugliness as well as of obscurity to avoid the shallow prettiness that comes from blinking the disagreeable truth not to leave the saltiness out of the sea whenever he emerges into clearness as he does in hundreds of places he is a poet of great qualities there are a fire and a swing in his cavalier tunes and in pieces like the glove and the lost leader the humor in such ballads as the Pied Piper of Hamlin and the soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister which appealed to the most conservative reader he seldom deals directly in the pathetic but now and then as in Evelyn Hope the last ride together or the incident of the French camp a tenderness comes over the strong verse as sheaths a film the mother eagles eye when her bruised eaglet breathes perhaps the most astonishing example of Browning's mental vigor is the huge composition entitled and the book 1868 a narrative poem in 21,000 lines in which the same story is repeated eleven times in eleven different ways it is the story of a criminal trial which occurred at Rome about 1700 the trial of one Count Guido for the murder of his young wife first the poet tells the tale himself then he tells what one half of the world says and what the other then he gives the deposition of the dying girl the testimony of witnesses the speech made by the Count in his own defence the arguments of council, etc and finally the judgment of the Pope so wonderful are Browning's resources in Causaustry and so cunningly does he ravell the intricate motives at play in this tragedy and lay bare the secrets of the heart that the interest increases at each repetition of the tale he studied the middle age carefully not for its picturesque externals its feudalisms, chivalries and the like but because he founded a rich quarry of spiritual monstrosities strange outcroppings of fanaticism superstition and moral and mental distortion of all shapes it furnished him especially with a great variety of ecclesiastical types such as are painted in Fra Lippo Lippi Bishop Bluegram's Apology and the bishop orders his tomb in St. Praxit's church Browning's dramatic instinct has always attracted him to the stage the tragedy, Stratford, 1837 was written from a creedie and put on at Covent Garden Theatre but without pronounced success he's written many fine dramatic poems like Pip of Passes Columbo's Birthday and In a Balcony and at least two good acting plays Loria and a Blot in the Sketching the last named has recently been given to the American public with Lawrence Barrett's careful and intelligent presentation of the leading role the tragedy is somewhat strained and fantastic but it is notwithstanding very effective on the stage it gives one an unwanted thrill to listen to a play by a living English writer which is really literature one gets a faint idea of what it must have been to assist at the first night of Hamlet End of Chapter 8 Recording by Kalinda in Lunaburg, Germany on February 22nd, 2009 Part 1, Chapter 9 A Brief History of English and American Literature This Slibervox recording is in the public domain Recording by Kalinda A Brief History of English and American Literature by Henry A. Beers Part 1, Chapter 9 Theological and Religious Literature in Great Britain by John Fletcher Hearst Miracle plays rude dramatic representations of the chief events in Scripture history were used for popular instruction before the invention of printing In England they began as early as the 12th century Moral plays or moralities were of the same origin though dating from the 15th century These were somewhat more refined than the Miracle plays and usually set forth the excellence of the virtues such as truth, mercy and the like Both Miracle and Moral plays were under the conduct of the clergy John Bale 1495-1563 was Bishop of Ossary and wrote much for popular reform He was the author of 19 Miracle plays Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury 1581-1648 wrote a deistical work De Relegione Gentilium the first of that school of writers which later appeared in Bowlingbroke John Spottiswood 1565-1639 Archbishop of St. Andrews and afterward Chancellor of Scotland wrote a voluminous history of the Church of Scotland George Sandus 1577-1643 distinguished also as one of the earliest literary characters in America wrote metrical versions of several of the poetical books of the Bible and also a tragedy called Christ's Passion John Knox 1505-1572 the great Scotch reformer and polemic the preacher and spokesman of the Scotch reformation wrote First Blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regimen of women 1558 and the history of the reformation of religion within the realm of Scotland published after his death John Jewel 1522-1571 wrote in Latin his Apologia Ecclesia Anglicane William Whittingham 1524-1589 who succeeded Knox as pastor of the English Church at Geneva aided in making the Geneva version of the Bible and also cooperated in the Sternhold and Hopkins translation of the Psalms John Fox 1517-1587 was the author of the Book of Martyrs whose full title was Acts and Monuments of These Ladder and Parallelist Days Touching Matters of the Church an abridgment of the work has had a very wide circulation John Elmer 1521-1594 wrote in Knox's First Blast of the trumpet in a work called and harbor for faithful and true subjects Nicholas Sanders 1527-1580 a Roman Catholic professor of Oxford wrote The Rock of the Church a defense of the primacy of Peter and the bishops of Rome Robert Parsons 1546-1610 a Jesuit wrote several works in advocacy of Roman Catholicism and some political tracts John Reynolds 1549-1607 a learned Hebraist of Oxford wrote many ecclesiastical works in Latin and English he was a chief promoter of King James's version of the Bible Miles Smith died 1624 Thomas Billson 1536-1616 John Boyce 1560-1643 and George Abbott 1562-1633 Archbishop of Canterbury were all co-workers on the King James translation of the scriptures next in importance to the English Bible in its effect upon literature stands the English prayer book which is the rich mosaic of many minds it came through the primer of the 14th century and contained the more fundamental and familiar portions of the Book of Common Prayer such as the Ten Commandments the Lord's Prayer the Litany and the Apostles Creed this compilation differed in form and somewhat in content as of England and was partly in Latin and partly in English in 1542 an attempt was made to produce a common form for all England and to have it entirely in English the committee of Convocation who had the work in charge were prevented from making it complete through the refusal of Henry VIII to continue the approval which he had given to the appointment of the committee however under Edward VI a commission headed by Archbishop Cranmer carried their work through and accepted and its use made compulsory by Parliament it was published in 1549 as the first prayer book of Edward VI three years later the second prayer book of Edward VI was issued it being a revision of the first also under the shaping hand of Cranmer the prayer book received its final revision and substantially its present form in the reign of Elizabeth in 1559 although in 1662 there was added to the morning and evening prayer and thanksgivings upon several occasions gathering thus through three centuries the choice treasures of confession and devotion of the strong and reverent English nation it has been a large element in the literary training not only of communicants in the Anglican, the Episcopal and the Methodist Churches but in a measure also of those who have received their religious instruction and have worshiped in other branches of the Protestant Church the work of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster in 1853 to 1649 particularly the confession of faith and the shorter catechism became as specimens of strong and pure English potent factors in the intellectual and literary discipline of the Presbyterians in all parts of the world the modern Psalms and hymns or the simplified and popularized forms of the earlier and medieval worship have had vastly to do with the daily thought and education of the people into whose lives they have brought not only increase of lofty devotion but also a positive and stimulative culture for most of these collections was that made by Thomas Sternhold John Hopkins and others and known as the Salter of Sternhold and Hopkins published in 1562 Francis Rouse made a version in 1645 which after revision was adopted in 1649 and largely used by the Scotch Church a new version was that by Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady in 1696 and has since been called the Salter of Tate and Brady the first English hymn book adapted for public worship was that of Isaac Watts appearing about 1709 although several minor collections and individual productions had preceded Watts among which should be mentioned those of Joseph Stennett John Mason and the fine hymns of Bishop Ken and Joseph Addison a little later the prolific and spiritual Charles Wesley aided by the somewhat stricter taste of the celebrated brother John began his wonderful series of published hymns which together with those of Watts have since formed the larger portion of the Protestant hymnody of the world others of the 18th century who have made contributions to the sacred lyrics of the church are John Byram 1691 to 1763 Philip Dodridge 1702 to 1751 Joseph Hart 1712 to 1768 Anne Steele 1778 Benjamin Bedham 1717 to 1795 John Sinek 1717 to 1755 Thomas Oliver 1725 to 1799 Joseph Grig 1728 to 1768 Augustus M. Toplady 1740 to 1778 and Edward Peronet died 1792 Approaching our own time the ranks of our hymn writers is Montgomery 1771 to 1854 whose Christian Psalmist was published in 1825 Thomas Kelly of Dublin 1769 to 1855 Harriet Ober 1773 to 1832 Reginald Haber 1783 to 1826 Sir Robert Grant 1785 to 1838 Josiah Condor 1789 to 1855 Charlotte Elliott 1771 Sir John Bowring 1792 to 1872 Henry Francis Light 1793 to 1847 John Cable 1792 to 1866 whose Christian year came out in 1827 John H. Newman 1801 to 1890 Sarah Flower Adams 1805 to 1849 and Horatius Bonar 1808 to 1869 Richard Mant 1776 to 1848 Henry Alford 1810 to 1871 F. W. Faber 1815 to 1863 John Mason Neal 1818 to 1866 Miss Catherine Winkworth born 1829 and some others have given many beautiful and stirring translations from the Latin and German hymns of the ancient and medieval periods Theological writers of the middle of the 17th century are numerous. Chief of those belonging to the Anglican Church may be named Joseph Hall Bishop of Norwich 1574 to 1656 whose Episcopacy by Divine Right was replied to in Smectimnus the joint production of Five Descenting Divines Stephen Marshall Edward Callamy Thomas Young Matthew Newcomer and William Spurston James Usher 1580 to 1656 a man of vast literary learning and most known by his sacred chronology published after his death Thomas Fuller and Jeremy Taylor mentioned in a previous chapter John Cosin 1594 to 1672 who wrote chiefly devotional treatises William Chillingworth 1602 to 1664 whose Religion of Protestants has had a wide circulation John Pearson 1612 to 1686 whose Exposition of the Creed became a standard Ralph Cudworth 1617 to 1688 whose Intellectual System of the Universe dealt a stunning blow to the atheism of his day and Isaac Barrow 1630 to 1677 the Learn Advice Chancellor of Cambridge Witt, Mathematician and Theologian all in one who left a rich legacy in his sermons of the non-conforming authors deserving notice Richard Baxter 1615 to 1691 is the most voluminous if not also the most luminous controversy engaged his pen almost constantly but his most permanent works were his Call to the Unconverted and the Saints' Everlasting Rest John Owens 1616 to 1683 was a leading Puritan writer and under Cromwell was Vice Chancellor of Oxford University His commentary on the Epistles of the Hebrews and his book on the Holy Spirit are still in use and highly prized His pen was strong rather than elegant John Bunyan's Immortal Algorie throws a halo on Universal Literature John Howe 1630 to 1705 John Baxter Now 1630 to 1705 the chief author among the Puritans wrote many strong works among which of special note are The Living Temple and The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit He was Cromwell's Chaplain The spiritual writings of Samuel Rutherford 1600 to 1661 The Scotch Divine The Annotations on the Psalms by Henry Ainsworth died 1662 An Independent of Holland for Conscience's sake The Expository Writings of Thomas Manton 1620 to 1677 The Synopsis of Matthew Poole 1624 to 1679 later abridged into his celebrated Annotations upon the Bible The Sermons of Stephen Charnock 1628 to 1680 particularly the one on the Divine Attributes and an Alarm to Unconverted Sinners by Joseph Alaney 1633 to 1688 which has had an immense circulation form a galaxy in the theological firmament of the time of Milton A later group of theological writers in the latter part of the 17th century contains the commanding figures of Simon Patrick 1626 to 1707 bishop and author of a commentary on the Old Testament John Flavill 1627 to 1691 and his works on practical piety John Tillitson 1630 to 1694 the Anglican Archbishop whose eloquent sermons are still held in high repute Robert South 1633 to 1716 the Great Pulpit Orator whose discourses are an ornament to the English tongue Edward Stillingfleet 1635 to 1699 from whose prolific pen came several valuable treatises one of which was the Antiquities of the British Churches and William Beverage 1637 to 1708 whose private thoughts upon religion is still of esteem. To those we may add Thomas Ken 1637 to 1710 the good bishop now best known as the author of Praise God from whom all blessings flow Benjamin Keach 1640 to 1704 a Baptist preacher of much note and author of Gospel Mysteries Opened which, like his other writings, is marred by an excessive use of figures Gilbert Burnett 1643 to 1709 the writer and bishop who mingled freely in the political affairs of the day and wrote much on a variety of subjects, one being a history of the Reformation of the Church of England William Wall 1646 to 1728 the prominent defender of infant baptism Humphrey Prido 1648 to 1724 who wrote The Connection of the Old and New Testaments and Matthew Henry 1662 to 1714 still valued for his quaint and suggestive commentary on the scriptures Here, too, belong George Fox 1624 to 1690 and Robert Barclay 1648 to 1690 the heroic founder and the learned champion of the Society of Friends the former's journal and the latter's Apology for the True Christian Divinity being worthy of special note William Penn 1644 to 1718 more eminent as the chief colonizer of Pennsylvania also wrote many powerful works in advocacy of Quaker teachings and William Sewell 1650 to 1726 History of the Quakers is a notable contribution to the literature of that much misunderstood and persecuted people Among those who graced the first half of the 18th century we find the Irish man of letters Charles Leslie 1650 to 1722 who gave among others a celebrated treatise on a short and easy method with deists Francis Adderbury 1662 to 1732 Bishop of Rochester whose sermons still survive William Walliston 1659 to 1724 known as the author of the Religion of Nature a plea for truth Samuel Clark 1675 to 1729 the philosophical writer of the demonstration of being and attributes of God Matthew Tyndall 1657 to 1733 the leading deist of his day whose chief work was Christianity as Old as Creation Robert Woodrow 1679 to 1734 a scotch preacher who wrote a history of the sufferings of the Church of Scotland and Thomas Wilson 1663 to 1755 Bishop of Soder and Mann for 57 years and the author of many useful works on the scriptures and Christianity Bishop Joseph Butler 1692 to 1752 appeared as the champion of Christianity and successfully answered the deistical tendency of Tyndall and others by his analogy of religion natural and revealed to the constitution and course of nature which though obscure in style is still in high repute for its massive thought and mighty logic Thomas Stackhouse 1680 to 1752 and his history of the Bible John Bambton 1689 to 1751 whose estate still speaks at Oxford in defense of the Christianity in the annual Lectures on Divinity Daniel Waterland 1683 to 1740 in his defense of the Divinity of Christ and Joseph Bingham 1668 to 1723 in his learned treatise on the antiquities of the Christian Church are also in the front rank of this period. Daniel Neill 1678 to 1743 in his history of the Puritans John Leland 1691 to 1766 the Dublin preacher in his view of the deistical writers and Philip Dodridge 1702 to 1751 in his family exposer and his briefer and more famous rise and progress of religion in the soul furnished valuable contributions to theological literature the latter half of the 18th century was prolific of letters noteworthy among those who wrote on religious themes are the following Nathaniel Lardner 1684 to 1768 who wrote the credibility of the gospel history William Law 1687 to 1761 whose serious call to a holy life and Christian perfection are still powerful works Richard Chaliner 1691 to 1781 a Roman Catholic author of many practical and devotional works and of a version of the Bible much prized in his own church Albin Butler 1700 to 1773 who compiled the lives of the saints William Warburton 1698 to 1779 in his divine legation of Moses Cruden 1701 to 1770 the Scotch author of the famous Concordance to the Holy Scriptures and Lord George Littleton 1708 to 1773 the author of Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of Saint Paul in the same category belong Robert Louth 1710 to 1787 whose book on Hebrew poetry is still consulted James Hervey 1713 to 1758 whose meditations became very popular Hugh Blair 1770 to 1800 the Scotchman whose sermons for many years rivaled his lectures on rhetoric and popularity Joseph Priestley 1733 to 1804 illustrious in the annals of chemical discovery who wrote Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion and is one of the most distinguished Sosinian writers and William Pally 1743 to 1805 whose natural theology and Jorge Pauline are still in the works During this period also came the great impulse to the literature of the common people through the tireless pen of John Wesley 1703 to 1791 whose sermons and notes on the New Testament have had a powerful influence wherever the Wesleyan revival has spread James McKnight 1721 to 1800 the scholarly commentator and harmonist John Fletcher 1729 to 1785 the sweet soul defender of Methodism and author of Czechs to Antinomianism Bishop Richard Watson 1737 to 1816 the learned apologist Augustus M. Toplady 1740 to 1778 the hymnist and polemic Joseph Milner 1744 to 1797 the church historian Thomas Koch 1747 to 1814 in his commentary on the Old and New Testaments and Andrew Fuller 1764 to 1815 were authors of marked force and ability Belonging to the first quarter of the 19th century the leading theological productions are The Immateriality and Immortality of the Soul by Samuel Drew 1765 to 1833 the translation of the book of Job by John Mason Good 1764 to 1827 the popular commentaries on the Bible by Thomas Scott 1747 to 1821 Adam Clark 1762 to 1832 and Joseph Benson 1748 to 1821 the sermons of Robert Hall 1764 to 1831 the great Baptist preacher the introduction to the literary history of the Bible by James Townley died 1833 the missionary narratives of Henry Martin 1781 to 1812 William Ward 1769 to 1822 1776 to 1839 and the pathetic story of the Dairyman's Daughter by leg Richmond 1772 to 1827 a little later in this century the first ranks of theological scholarship included the Wordsworths Christopher 1774 to 1846 the brother of the poet and his two sons Charles 1806 to 1892 and Christopher Jr. 1809 to 1885 Tracts for the Times Stiling themselves Anglo-Catholics whose leaders were Edward B. Pusey 1800 to 1882 John H. Newman 1801 to 1890 John Kevel 1792 to 1866 Richard H. Frude and others began in 1833 and for several years continued to be published reaching 90 in number Their main purpose was a discussion and defense of the character and work of the established church but a large result was that the people of the leading spirits with about 200 clergymen and the same number of prominent laymen became Roman Catholics This high church series of writings was followed in 1860 by essays and reviews a volume containing seven articles whose authors were Frederick Temple born 1821 Roland Williams 1817 to 1870 Baden Powell 1796 to 1860 John H. Newman Mark Patterson 1813 to 1884 and Benjamin Jowett 1817 to 1893 The purpose of these men was to liberalize the thought of the church they accomplished this result and with it the overthrow of the faith of some Thomas Chalmers 1780 to 1847 the great scotch preacher left much fruit of his pen the most celebrated being astronomical discourses books are A Practical View of Christianity by William Wilberforce 1759 to 1833 Hore Homiletique by Charles Simeon 1759 to 1836 The Lives of Knox and Melville by Thomas McCree 1772 to 1835 Hore Mosaic by George Stanley Faber 1773 to 1854 The Scripture Testimony to the Messiah 1851 Theological Institutes by the Wesleyan Theologian Richard Watson 1781 to 1833 The Histories of the Jews and of Christianity by Henry Hart Millman 1791 to 1868 The Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature by John Kitto 1804 to 1854 Mammon by John Harris 1804 to 1856 The Theological Essays by John Frederick Denison Maurice 1805 to 1872 Missions The Chief End of the Christian Church by Alexander Duff 1806 to 1878 The Sermons of Frederick William Robertson 1816 to 1853 and The Life and Epistles of Paul by William J. Connebert 1815 to 1857 and John S. Hausen 1816 to 1885 The latter half of the present century by many strong and profound theological publications of which we may name as worthy of particular notice The Introduction to the Study of Holy Scriptures by Thomas Hartwell Horne 1780 to 1862 Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte by Richard Watley 1787 to 1863 Apologia por vita sua of John H. Newman 1801 to 1890 The Typology of Scripture by Patrick Fairburn 1892 The Eclipse of Faith by Henry Rogers 1806 to 1877 The Notes on the Parables and Miracles by Richard Chevonyk's Trench 1807 to 1886 The Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost by Henry Edward Manning 1808 to 1892 The Series of the Lectures on the Scriptures by John Gumming 1810 to 1881 The Greek New Testament by Samuel Pridot Regales 1813 to 1875 The Historical Works of Arthur Penron Stanley 1815 to 1881 Hypatia or Old Foes with a New Face by Charles Kingsley 1819 to 1875 Ece Homo by John Robert Sealy 1834 to 1895 The Sermons of Charles Haddon Spurgeon 1834 to 1892 and Natural Law in the Spiritual World The Brilliant Venture of the Beloved and Lamented Henry Drummond 1851 to 1897 whose Greatest Thing in the World bids Fair to Become a Christian Classic End of Part 1, Chapter 9 Recording by Kalinda in Lüneburg, Germany on March 6, 2009