Classic mainly translations of his Idyllica Heroica, written in Latin many years before. His prose and verse alike are masterly in serene and austere art, but frigid, passionless, lacking the magic of spontaneity, and too far aloof from modern feeling An Isolated to be popular. His mind dwelt upon the heights. with heroic characters, occupied with impressive I thought and noble imagery. Within his chosen limits his art is exceedingly beautiful, especially in the delicacy and transparent purity with which he pictures the loveliness of small things: Poet I never pluck the rose; the violet's head Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold. The Hellenics stand alone in English poetry; their chaste simplicity is like that of the pictures on Greek vases. The clear flawless beauty of such art as Iphigenia and Agamemnon is unsurpassed. Scattered prodigally through prose and verse are polished epigrams and lyrical gems, finished with the delicate grace of an ancient cameo. "Some of his shorter poems," says Lowell, "are perfect as crystals." Here is a quatrain written on his seventy-fifth birthday: I strove with none, for none was worth my strife, I warmed both hands before the fire of life, Landor is known chiefly as a prose-poet in the monumental series of colloquies, the Imaginarg Conversations, which are astonishing in the extent and minuteness of the knowledge displayed, and equally astonishing for the uniform nobility of expression. All the world of history and literature seems to be gathered in this assemblage, as large and varied almost as Shakespeare's troupe of great characters: Plato and Diogenes in an exchange of wit and wisdom, in which Plato is worsted by the cynic; Cæsar discussing politics and farming with Lucullus at his Appennine villa; Sidney and Lord Brooke in fine talk of Imaginary Conversations, 1824-1853 poetry under the elms of Penshurst; Henry VIII brutally taunting poor Anne Boleyn; Washington and Franklin exchanging views upon British oratory; Dr. Johnson and Horne Tooke arguing spelling reform; Calvin and Melanchthon probing the doctrine of predestination. The length and diffuseness of these dialogues, the scrupulous austerity of style, and the necessary draft upon the reader's own knowledge forbid a wide popularity, but to the competent reader they afford a perennial charm. Landor's masterpiece, however, is Pericles and Aspasia, which gives in the form of letters a vivid picture of the life of Athens in her golden age; a book that with reason is regarded by some critics as "the purest creation of sustained art in English prose.' A Prose In the vast reading public, guided by unstable and unreasoned tastes, there is always a saving remnant, with finer critical discernment, to whom the best in literature generally owes its Landor's survival. Landor appeals to this minority, to Milton's "fit audience, though few." In the preface to his early poem Gebir he said that he would be "fully content" with the applause of ten men of taste and genius, and he never descended from that standard. "I shall dine late," he wrote prophetically, "but the dining-room will be well lighted, the guests few and select." To be among the guests at that banquet is a rare privilege. PROGRAM OF WORK CLASS STUDY. BYRON: She Walks in Beauty; Fare Thee Well; Stanzas to Augusta; To Thomas Moore; The Prisoner of Chillon; The Isles of Greece; The Ave Maria (Don Juan 111); Maid of Athens; On Completing his Thirty-sixth Year; Childe Harold: canto iii, sts. 85-87, 92-96, Lake Geneva; 21-30, Waterloo; canto iv, sts. 42-47, Italy; 1-4, 11-13, 18, Venice; 78-79, 139– 145, Rome; 178-186, The Ocean; Don Juan, canto iii, sts. 88-100. SHELLEY: Hymn to Intellectual Beauty; To a Skylark; The Cloud; Ode to the West Wind; Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples; To Night; To Wordsworth; Arethusa; One word is too often profaned; When the lamp is shattered; Life of Life! (Prometheus Unbound); The Indian Serenade; Epipsychidion (from "The day is come" to the end); Adonais. KEATS: Endymion, bk. 1, 1-62; Hymn to Pan (Endymion, bk. 1); Eve of St. Agnes; To a Nightingale; On a Grecian Urn; To Autumn; Lines on the Mermaid Tavern; La Belle Dame sans Merci; Hyperion, 1-51; Sonnets: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer; When I have fears; The Grasshopper and the Cricket; Bright Star! CAMPBELL: Ye Mariners of England; Battle of the Baltic; Lord Ullin's Daughter. PRAED: The Vicar; A Letter of Advice; The Belle of the Ball-Room. HOOD: The Bridge of Sighs; Song of the Shirt; Fair Ines; Ruth; A Parental Ode to My Son. PROCTER: The Sea; A Repose; A Petition to Time. MOORE: Lesbia hath a beaming eye; The time I've lost in wooing; Dear Harp of my Country; Oft in the Stilly Night; From Lalla Rookh (Ward, Bronson); Twopenny Post-Bag, Letter v; The Last Rose of Summer. LANDOR: Rose Aylmer; A Fiesolan Idyl; Dirce; To Age; Mild is the parting year; Iphigenia and Agamemnon; Conversations: Esop and Rhodope (Manly), Dr. Johnson and Horne Tooke (Garnett), Leofric and Godiva, Lord Brooke and Sir Philip Sidney; Pericles and Aspasia (ad libitum). BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. For general works of literary history and criticism, see Bibliography for Chapter XVI. Nichol's Byron (E. M. L.); Noel's Byron (G. W.); Elze's Byron; Henley's Letters of Byron; Trelawney's Recollections of Shelley and Byron; Arnold's Selections (G. T. S.); Arnold's Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Macaulay's Essays; Morley's Critical Miscellanies; Swinburne's Essays and Studies; Lang's Letters to Dead Authors; Taine, bk. Iv; Dowden's Life of Shelley; Symonds's Shelley (E. M. L.); Sharp's Shelley (G. W.); Brooke's Selections (G. T. S.); Essays and Letters (Camelot Series); Arnold's Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Browning's Essay on Shelley; Francis Thompson's Shelley; Gosse's Questions at Issue; Yeats's Ideas of Good and Evil; Colvin's Keats (E. M. L.); Rossetti's Keats (G. W.); Hancock's Keats; Colvin's Letters of Keats; Arnold's Essays in Criticism, Second Series; Lowell's Among My Books, Second Series; Watson's Excursions in Criticism; Forster's Landor; Col vin's Landor (E. M. L.); Colvin's Selections, Verse and Prose (G. T. S.); Stedman's Victorian Poets; Scudder's Men and Letters; Lowell's Later Literary Essays; Dowden's Studies in Literature. Cambridge, vol. XII, chs. ii, iii, iv, ix. TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH 1. A summary of Byron's personal qualities. 2. The truth and affectation in Byron's description of himself (Childe Harold, canto i, sts. 4-11; canto iii, sts. 1-6). 3. Give the substance of Byron's satire on Wordsworth, Southey, and Jeffrey in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 195-248 and 430-451. 4. What qualities in his poetry insure his permanent fame? 5. Relations with his sister (Epistle to Augusta, Stanzas to Augusta). 6. Shelley's quarrel with his family. 7. What are the strongest effects produced by Shelley's poetry? 8. Compare Shelley's To Night with Collins's Ode to Evening. 9. Does the "meanest flower that blows" have the same meaning for Shelley as for Wordsworth? 10. Discuss Shelley's portrait of himself in Adonais, sts. 31-34. 11. Shelley as a poet of the sky. 12. Give an outline of the life of Keats. 13. Influence of the painter Haydon upon Keats. 14. Indicate the pictures in the ode To Autumn. 15. Annotate the Ode to a Nightingale. 16. Justify, if possible, Arnold's critical summary: "Keats is with Shakespeare.” 17. Make a collection of Keats's beautiful phrases. 18. An account of Landor's education. 19. Landor at Llanthony Abbey. 20. Comparative merits of the two methods of expression, the condensed and naked classic style and the diffuse and ornamental romantic style (consult Colvin's Preface to G. T. Selections from Landor, XX-XXI). A Wonderful CHAPTER XVIII THE VICTORIAN AGE 1837-1901 THE beginning of the reign of Victoria in 1837 marks an important epoch in the history of civilization. The eminent scientist, Alfred Russell Wallace, called the nineteenth century "The Wonderful Century," estimating the progress in discovery and invention during that period to be greater than that of "the whole preceding epoch of human history." Nearly all of this advancement was made in the sixty-four years of Victoria's reign. Not only were the material arts of life revolutionized, but even the fundamental processes of thought were transformed. The leading elements of this wonderful development must be understood in order to interpret the literature of the period, which in extent, variety, and richness is equaled only by that of the Elizabethan age. Political One of the chief results of the social ferment caused by the French Revolution was the essential triumph of democracy. By successive reforms, beginning with the Reform Bill of 1832, the right of the common people to share in government was fully established. The importance of the individual man was recognized, and the sovereignty of an exclusive aristocracy gradually gave way to the representative government of democracy. The King of England to-day has less power than the President of the United States. |