The English stage has been occupied al ly by speare's plays and by translations from Pre-Raphaelitism" (1851) recorded his admiration of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in paintmost exclusive-ing, alleging that the principles on which Rossetti, Hunt, Millais, etc., had proceeded were first enunciated in his works. Among other art critics of the age are Mrs. Jameson (17971860), Sir Charles Eastlake, James Fergusson, Radcliffe, Tyrwhitt, A. W. Crawford, S. C. Hall, and W. M. Rossetti. the French. A few English dramas have, however, been successfully brought out during the age. THE POETIC RENAISSANCE.-ARNOLD, ROSSETTI, MORRIS, SWINBURNE. The best known drama- James Sheri- Bulwer-Lytton ("Richelieu" and "Lady of Lyons"); Dion [See "Anglo-Saxon Age:" Germany-Epic Poetry of the Minnesänger.] A conspicuous departure from the general tone of Victorian poetry has been made in later years by a so-called Renaissance group of poets, who have taken their themes and models from the Greek and medieval past. The earliest representative of this movement is Matthew Arnold (b. 1822), who in 1849 published a volume of poems on classic subjects and in the classic manner. This was followed, in 1852, 1853, 1855, and 1867, by similar productions. In the collection of poems of 1853 appeared his well-known Persian tale, "Sohrab and Rustum," which has been characterized by Andrew Lang as approaching more nearly "to the spirit and manner of Homer than does anything else in our English literature. The strong, plain, blank verse is almost a substitute for the hexameter. The story is told with Homer's pellucid simplicity, with his deep and clear-sighted sympa thy with all conditions of men, with his delight in Nature as man's friend and lifelong compan ion. The spirit of the narrative, too, is Homeric. . . . The similes are, in spirit, directly borrowed from Homer." Arnold attempted to reproduce Greek tragedy in his "Mérope" Boucicault Laying of the second Atlantic Cable, with successful results, 1866. Passage of a new Reform Bill, by which the right of franchise was greatly extend ed, 1867. (1858), but in this respect has been surpassed by the later effort of Swinburne. The revival of the mediæval past was begun by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in painting. By his original lyrics and ballads, as well as his skilful translations of "Dante and his Circle," Rossetti revived the spirit of early Italian poetry and aroused a new ardor for romanticism which may be said to have culminated with Morris and Swinburne. William Morris (b. 1834) is the professed disciple of Chaucer, and next to Tennyson the most popular of living English poets. His most admired works, "The Life and Death of Jason (1865) and "The Earthly Paradise" (18681870), are narratives of Greek myths and mediæval legends in the style and manner of Chaucer; and the plan of the latter may be compared with that of "The Canterbury Tales." The youngest and most impetuous of this poetic group, Algernon Charles Swinburne (b. 1839), continued the work of revival by taking his inspiration and models from the Elizabethan drama. His first volume, consisting of two plays, "The Queen-mother" and "Rosamond," appeared in 1861, but did not create for him. any poetic reputation. His next work was the great classic tragedy, "Atalanta in Calydon (1864), the finest reproduction of the Greek for the extendrama in modern literature. Swinburne's two historical plays, "Chastelard" and "Bothwell," founded on incidents in the life of Mary Stuart, are his most masterly productions. The latter has been characterized by E. C. Stedman as "a prodigious work in every way-possibly the longest five-act drama ever written, and at least longer than any whose power and interest have. not given out before the close. The time has Education Bill, sion of the public-school system, 1870. Death of Sir Disraeli cre ated Earl of Beaconsfield in 1876. not yet come to determine its place in English literature; but I agree with those who declare that Swinburne, by this massive and heroic composition, has placed himself in the front line of our poets-that no one can be thought his superior in true dramatic power." Swinburne's minor pieces display his almost unparal leled rhythmic power. His "Poems and Ballads" of 1866 met with severe criticism, and led to a kind of literary warfare. In his dramatic fervor and portrayal of rollicking sensuous beauty he stands directly opposed to Tennyson and his School, and is regarded by many as the precursor of a succeeding literary age. PREVALENCE OF GERMAN INFLUENCE. The Victorian Age is an age of German influence, just as the Elizabethan was one of Italian, and the Age of Dryden and the Restoration one of French influence. That introduction of German thought which began in the early years of the nineteenth century under Coleridge has been continued by all subsequent English thinkers- notably Thomas Carlyle, whose thorough knowledge of the language, literature, and philosophy of that country, as well as his peculiar Teutonic temperament, has rendered him a most skilful interpreter of its mind. Carlyle's genius was more German than English; he called himself "a bemired aurochs or urns of the German woods." Goethe was his intellectual god. "Knowest thou no prophet," he wrote, in his philosophical work, "Sartor Resartus," "even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age? None to whom the Godlike had revealed itself through all meanest and highest forms of the common; and by him been again prophetically revealed, in whose in spired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? Knowest thou none such? I know him, and name himGoethe." Many of his works treated of German subjects-his translation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," his "Life of Schiller," his "Life of Frederick the Great," and a long series of critical articles on German writers. But the prevalence of German influence is not peculiar to Great Britain; it is also to be met with in France, Italy, the whole of Europe, and in the U. S. of America. "From 1780 to 1830," says Monsieur Taine, "Germany has produced all the ideas of our historic age, and for half a century still, perhaps for a whole century, our great work will be to think them out again. The thoughts which have been born and have blossomed in a country, never fail to propagate themselves in neighboring countries, and to be engrafted there for a season. That which is happening to us has happened twenty times. already in the world; the growth of the mind. has always been the same, and we may, with some assurance, foresee for the future what we observe in the past. . . . Thus at the Renaissance appeared the artistic and poetic genius, which, born in Italy and carried into Spain, was there extinguished after a century and a half in the universal extinction, and which, with other characteristics transplanted into France and England, ended after a hundred years in the refinements of mannerists and the follies of sectarians, having produced the Reformation, confirmed free thought, and founded science. Thus with Dryden in England, and with Malherbe in France, was born the oratorical and classical spirit, which, having produced the lit Treaty of Berlin, 1878, by which the island of Cyprus was ceded to Great Britain. According to the official returns of 1879, the popula tion of the British Empire numbered 298,748,000, and its States and possessions covered 9,031,000 English square miles. erature of the seventeenth century and the philosophy of the eighteenth, dried up under the successors of Voltaire and Pope, and died after two hundred years, having polished Europe and raised the French Revolution. Thus at the end of the last century arose the philosophic German genius, which, having engendered a new metaphysics, theology, poetry, literature, linguistic science, an exegesis, erudition, descends now into the sciences and continues its evolution. No more original spirit, more universal, more fertile in consequences of every scope and species, more capable of transforming and reforming everything, has appeared for three hundred years. It is of the same order as that of the Renaissance and of the Classical Age. It, like them, connects itself with the great works of contemporary intelligence, appears in all civilized lands, is propagated with the same inward qualities, but under different forms. It, like them, is one of the epochs of the world's history. It is encountered in the same civilization and in the same races. We may then conjecture, without too much rashness, that it will have a like duration and destiny. We thus succeed in fixing with some precision our place in the endless stream of events and things. We know that we are almost in the midst of one of the partial currents which compose it. We can perceive the form of mind which directs it, and seek beforehand the ideas to which it conducts us." |