Part 2 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] As, for example, _The Battle of Blenheim_, _The Inchcape Rock_ and _The Cataract of Lodore_.

[2] ”The Nelson Memorial,” by J. K. Laughton, 1896. ”The Life of Nelson.

The embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain,” by Captain A. T.

Mahan, 1897.

[3] ”Select Poems of Wordsworth,” by Matthew Arnold. ”Golden Treasury Series.”

[4] Charles Kingsley's ”Two Years Ago” appeared the same year--in 1857.

[5] Reprinted in 1875 in ”Essays and Studies.”

[6] See ”Poems and Prose Remains” by Arthur Hugh Clough, with a Selection from his Letters, and a Memoir, edited by his wife. 2 vols., 1888.

[7] All over the country the peasants chanted a ballad of which the burden is still remembered. MACAULAY, History, Vol. II., p. 371.

CHAPTER II

The Novelists

Any comparison of the novels of the Victorian Era, with the novels of the Georgian Period, must be very much to the disadvantage of the former. The great epoch of English fiction began with Goldsmith and Richardson, and ended with Sir Walter Scott. It was an epoch which gave us ”The Vicar of Wakefield,” ”Clarissa,” ”Tom Jones,” ”Pride and Prejudice,” ”Humphrey Clinker,” and ”Tristram Shandy.” That fiction had a naturalness and spontaneity to which the novels of the Victorian Era can lay no claim. The novels of the period with which we are concerned aspire to regenerate mankind. d.i.c.kens, indeed, started off with but little literary equipment save sundry eighteenth century novels. He had read Smollett, and Fielding, and Sterne, diligently. But the influence of these humourists--so marked in ”Pickwick”--became qualified in his succeeding books by the strenuous spirit of the times.

It is alike interesting in itself and convenient for my purpose that the most popular novelist of the Victorian era should have published his first great book in 1837. d.i.c.kens awoke then to abundant fame, and his popularity has never waned for an instant during the sixty succeeding years. To-day he may be more or less decried by ”literary” people, but his audience has multiplied twofold. He has added to it the countless thousands whom the School Board has given to the reading world.

=Charles d.i.c.kens (1812-1870)= was born at Landport, Portsea, his father being an improvident clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth.

d.i.c.kens senior has been immortalized for us by the not too pleasing portrait of ”Micawber.” After infinite struggle and penury, d.i.c.kens became a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_. Under the signature of ”Boz” he wrote ”Sketches” for the _Monthly Magazine_ in 1834. ”Pickwick”

appeared from April 1836 to November 1837, and alike in parts and in book form took the world by storm. It was succeeded by ”Oliver Twist”

(1838), ”Nicholas Nickleby” (1839), ”The Old Curiosity Shop” (1840), and ”Barnaby Rudge” (1841). From this time forth d.i.c.kens was the most popular writer that our literature has seen. Within twelve years after his death some four millions of his books were sold in England, and there is no reason to believe that this popularity has in any way abated, although George Eliot foretold that much of d.i.c.kens's humour would be meaningless to the next generation, that is to say, to the generation which is now with us. It is the fas.h.i.+on to call d.i.c.kens the novelist of the half-educated, to charge him with lack of reflectiveness, with incapacity for serious reasoning. His humour has been described as insincere, his pathos as exaggerated. Much of this indictment may with equal justice be made against Richardson and even against Jane Austen, who surely antic.i.p.ated d.i.c.kens by the creation of the Rev. William Collins.

If d.i.c.kens had been a learned University Professor he would not have possessed the equipment most needful for the artist who was to portray to us in an imperishable manner the London which is now fast disappearing. The people who censure d.i.c.kens are those for whom he has served a purpose and is of no further use. They are a mere drop in the ocean of readers. It is not easy to-day to gauge his precise position.

The exhaustion of many of his copyrights has given up his work to a host of rival publishers. There are probably thousands of men and women now, as there were in the fifties and sixties, who have been stimulated by him, and who have found in his writings the aid to a cheery optimism which has made life more tolerable amid adverse conditions. Mrs Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, tells us how keenly d.i.c.kens's capacity for stirring the heart was felt even in the home of the rival novelist.

Thackeray's youngest daughter, then a child, looked up from the book she was reading to ask the question, ”Papa, why do you not write books like 'Nicholas Nickleby'”? Thackeray himself shared the general enthusiasm.

”David Copperfield!” he writes to a correspondent, ”By Jingo! It is beautiful! It is charming! Bravo d.i.c.kens! It has some of his very brightest touches--those inimitable d.i.c.kens touches which make such a great man of him. And the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of good.... It has put me on my mettle and made me feel that I must do something; that I have fame and name and family to support.”

If d.i.c.kens is still beloved by the mult.i.tude, the name of =William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)= has entirely eclipsed his in the minds of a certain literary section of the community. Thackeray stands to them for culture, d.i.c.kens for illiteracy. Thackeray had indeed a more polished intellect; he had also a more restrained style. Thackeray was born at Calcutta. His father, who was an Indian civil servant, died when the boy was only five years old. He was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1831 he went to Weimar. He studied long at Paris with a view to becoming an artist, and when ”Pickwick”

wanted an ill.u.s.trator to continue the work of Seymour who had committed suicide, Thackeray applied to d.i.c.kens, but Hablot Browne was chosen, and Thackeray was disappointed--happily for the world, which lost an indifferent artist to gain a great author. Thackeray in 1837--the year which saw the publication of ”Pickwick” as a volume--joined the staff of _Fraser's Magazine_. In that journal appeared in succession ”The History of Samuel t.i.tmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond,” ”The Yellowplush Papers,” and ”The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon.” In 1847 ”Vanity Fair” was begun in numbers, and not till then did its author secure real renown.

”Pendennis” was published in 1850, and ”Esmond” in 1852. ”The Newcomes”

(1854) is in some measure a sequel to ”Pendennis,” as ”The Virginians”

(1858) is in some measure a sequel to ”Esmond.” These are the five works by Thackeray which everyone must read. In 1857 Thackeray unsuccessfully contested Oxford. In 1859 he undertook the editors.h.i.+p of the new _Cornhill Magazine_ which flourished in his hands. These were the halcyon days of magazine editors. On Macaulay's death in 1859, Thackeray talked of purchasing the historian's vacant house. A friend remarked upon his prosperity. ”To make money one must edit a magazine,” was the answer. He did not buy Macaulay's house, but built himself one at Palace Green, and here he died the day before Christmas-day 1863. His daughter, Anne Thackeray, who became Mrs Richmond Ritchie, has written ”Old Kensington” and other stories of singular charm.

The twenty-six volumes of Thackeray's works make a veritable nursery of style for the modern literary aspirant. But it is, as has been said, upon his five great novels that his future fame must rest. They are as permanent a picture of life among the well-to-do cla.s.ses as those d.i.c.kens has given us of life among the poor.