of the lungs in 1845. His works have been published in a collective form within the last few years.1

The deep and strong nature of Keble is reflected in The Christian Year,2 which has gone through innumerable editions. The expression is often negligent, the imagery sometimes tawdry; but the unbroken logical thread pervading every hymn, and the intense devotional feeling in many,' commend them alike to the thinking and to the pious. Keble sometimes expressed himself with singular force and exactness on Catholic doctrines which he was not supposed to hold. In, for instance, the Lyra Innocentium he thus wrote of the privileges of Mary :

Henceforth, Whom thousand worlds adore,
He calls thee Mother evermore ;

Angel nor Saint His face may see,
Apart from what He took of thee.

How may we choose but name thy name,

Echoing below their high acclaim

In holy creeds, since earthly song and prayer

Must keep faint chime with the dread anthems there?

From the long roll of minor poets, the publication of whose works falls within the first half of the century, I select a few names.

3

21. Hogg, the 'Ettrick Shepherd,' wrote The Queen's Wake (1813), which, says Mr. Chambers, 'consists of a collection of tales and ballads supposed to be sung to Mary Queen of Scots by the native bards of Scotland, assembled at a royal wake at Holyrood.' Mrs. Hemans published in 1828 Records of Women, and afterwards National Lyrics, Scenes and Hymns of Life, and other works. Much feeling, and a tender music, characterise her best pieces; e.g., "The Homes of England,' 'The Treasures of the Deep,' 'The Lost Pleiad,' 'The Better Land,' 'He never smiled again,' &c. Miss Landon, once so widely known as L. E. L., is the authoress of 'The Improvisatrice,' and a multitude of other lyrics now seldom read. James and Horace Smith were the authors of the Rejected Addresses (1812), a collection of parodies of the style of the principal living poets. Those on Crabbe, Byron, and Southey are especially teiling. A copious didactic vein is exhibited in the moral poems of James Montgomery, author of Greenland (1819), The Pelican Island, and other poems. Robert Pollok's Course of Time (1827), however feeble and faulty as a poem, was so exactly adapted to the level of culture in the religious classes of Scotland that it obtained an extraordinary popularity, having passed through more than twenty editions. It consists of ten books of blank verse: the subjects handled are much the same as those met with in Young's Night Thoughts. Kirke White's few poems were for a time made famous through the publication of his Remains by Southey, soon after his death in 1806. The small posthumous volume of poems by Bishop Heber contains, besides his Oxford prize poem of Palestine,' several good hymns and lyrics, and the fine lines on Europe,' hailing the uprising of the Spanish people in 1808 against the French invader.

6

The Pleasures of Memory, by Rogers, appeared as far back as 1792; it is in the heroic couplet. Italy, a descriptive poem of reflexion, not

1 On Canning and Frere, see Crit. Sect. ch. II. § 8.

3 Ibid. art. 181.

6 Ibid. art. 179.

4 Ibid. art. 203.

7 Ibid. art. 192.

2 Extract Book, art. 200.

5 Ibid. art. 186.

8 Ibid. art. 171.

without merit, in blank verse, first came out in 1822. The Rev. Charles Wolfe was the author of the fine elegy on Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna in 1809.

22. The artist Haydon, complaining of the presumptuous tone of the art-criticism volunteered by Leigh Hunt, said that he was a man endowed with a smattering of everything and mastery of nothing.' There is much truth in the remark; this brilliant 'old boy,' the friend of Shelley and of Byron, could impart neither enough wit to his magazines, nor enough charm to his poems, to make them live. There was something both of Hood and Lamb in him; but he seems to have lacked the power and fibre of the one, the tenderness and profound humour of the other. Among his poems A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, and the Story of Rimini, deserve special mention. His various magazines, the Examiner, the Indicator, the Liberal, &c., were, financially, all failures; yet they contain the fruits of much keen observation and many clever criticisms, all written in a spirit of what is called advanced Liberalism. The character of Leigh Hunt, as Mr. Skimpole,' was drawn with cruel satire by his protégé Charles Dickens in his story of Bleak House. Hunt died in his seventy-sixth year in 1859. His Autobiography, published a few months before his death, is a lively and instructive record of the experi ences of a struggling life.

Byron, Sheridan Knowles, Joanna Baillie.

23. During the present century the stage, considered as a field for literary energy, has greatly declined even below the point at which it' stood a hundred years ago. Why this is so, it would not be easy to explain; but there is no doubt as to the fact that the dramas written by men of genius within the last sixty years have generally proved ill-adapted for the stage, while the authors of the successful plays have not been men of genius. The Doom of Devergoil and Auchindrane by Scott, the tragedy of Remorse by Coleridge, that of The Cenci by Shelley, Godwin's play of Antonio, and Miss Edgeworth's Comic Dramas, were all dramatic failures: either they were originally unsuited for the modern stage, or, when produced upon it, obtained little or no success. On the other hand, the Virginius, the Hunchback, the Wife, &c., &c., of Sheridan Knowles, the farces of O'Keefe, and the comedies of Morton and Reynolds, being, it would seem, better adapted to the temper, taste, and capacity of the playgoing public than the works of greater men, brought success and popularity to their authors. The Manfred of Lord Byron, published as a 'dramatic poem' (1817), was no more intended for the stage than Goethe's Faust, by which it was evidently suggested. Of Cain, and Heaven and Earth,

1 Extract Book, art. 201.

2 Ibid. art. 193.

published as 'mysteries,' the same may be said. On the other hand, the tragedies of Sardanapalus and Marino Faliero were designed to be acting plays. The plays of Joanna Baillie, intended to be illustrative of the stronger passions of the mind, appeared between 1798 and 1836. Two or three of them only were brought on the stage, and were but coldly received, being deficient in those various and vivid hues of reality which assimilate a drama to the experience of life.

The melodrama of The Lady of Lyons, the historical play of Richelieu, and the comedy of Money, all by Lord Lytton, have been successful on the stage, the two former eminently so.

Prose Writers, 1800-1850.

24. Only the briefest summary can here be given of what has been done in the principal departments of prose writing during this period. In Prose Fiction, besides the Waverley novels, which have been already noticed, must be specified Jane Austen's admirable tales of common life-Pride and Prejudice,1 Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, &c., which their beautiful and too short-lived authoress commenced as a sort of protest against the romantic and extravagant nonsense of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels; and Miss Edgeworth's 2 hardly less admirable stories of Irish life and character.

Sir Edward Lytton-Bulwer, afterwards Lord Lytton, then a youthful aristocrat of rare gifts and much self-assertion, produced in 1827 the clever novel of Pelham, soon to be followed by Devereux, Eugene Aram, Ernest Maltravers, Alice, or the Mysteries, and many others. With The Caxtons (1849), followed by My Novel and What will he do with it? (1858), Lord Lytton commenced a series of a new kind, in which criticism of characters and opinions was the chief feature. Lockhart, the author of the Spanish Ballads, poems of much force and sweetness, wrote the novels, Matthew Wald, Reginald Dalton, and Valerius. His name has already occurred as the biographer of his father-in-law, Sir Walter Scott.

In Oratory, though this period falls far below that which preceded it, we may name the speeches of Canning, Shiel, O'Connell, and Sir Robert Peel.3

In political writing and pamphleteering, the chief names are -William Cobbett, with his strong sense and English heartiness, author of the Weekly Political Register-Scott (whose political squib, the Letters of Malachi Malagrowther, had the

1 See Crit. Sect. ch. II. § 5, and Extract Book, art. 184.
2 Extract Book, art. 174.

3 Ibid. art. 198.

effect of arresting the progress of a measure upon which the ministry had resolved)-Southey-and Sydney Smith.

Cobbett, a son of the people, was a thorough master of English style. Except Rural Rides, a charming descriptive account of the scenery of Sussex and the Surrey Hills, he wrote all his works to serve humane and practical ends. In the History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland (1824-7), he lashed with indignant vehemence what he deemed the hypocrisy of those modern Anglican representatives of the despoilers of the ancient Church, who, to justify the original confiscation, and their own profiting by it, must needs blacken the morals, and disparage the condition, of our Catholic ancestors. He also wrote an English Grammar, an admirable little manual on Cottage Economy, Advice to Young Men,1 The Poor Man's Friend,' &c.

In Journalism, the present period witnessed the growth of a great and vital change, whereby the most influential portion of a newspaper is no longer, as it was in the days of Junius, the columns containing the letters of well-informed correspondents, but the leading articles representing the opinions of the newspaper itself.

In prose satire, the inexhaustible yet kindly wit of Sydney Smith has furnished us with some incomparable productions; witness Peter Plymley's Letters, his articles on Christianity in Hindostan, and his letter to the Times on Pennsylvanian repudiation.

Theodore Hook, a man of keen and ready wit, and a brilliant talker, born in London in the same year with Byron, through princely favour was advanced in 1813 to the treasurership of the Mauritius. He left the business to a deputy; a deficit appeared in his accounts; he was sued, lost his office, and had to return to England. At the Cape, when questioned as to the motive of his giving up his appointment, he replied ambiguously that it was something wrong in the chest.'

For many years he carried on the John Bull newspaper with great success as a Tory organ. He also became rather distinguished as a writer of fiction, through his Sayings and Doings (1824-8), Gilbert Gurney (1835), and Jack Brag (1837).

In History, we have the Greek histories of Mitford, Thirlwall, and Grote, the unfinished Roman history of Arnold, (1840-3), the English histories of Lingard, Mackintosh (1831), and Hallam, and the work similarly named (though History of the Revolution and of the reign of William III.' would be an exacter title) by Lord Macaulay. Lord Mahon, afterwards Earl Stanhope, published in 1837 a useful History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to 1783. Mr. Hallam's View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (1818) gave a stimulus to historical research, in more than one field which for ages been, whether arrogantly or ignorantly, overlooked.

had

3 See Crit. Sect. ch. II. § 11.

In Biography-out of a countless array of works-may be particularised the lives of Scott, Wilberforce, and Arnold, compiled respectively by Lockhart, the brothers Archdeacon Wilberforce and the Bishop of Oxford, and Dr. Stanley (1844). Among other works subsidiary to history may be singled out Cardinal Newman's Church of the Fathers, containing brilliantly written sketches of St. Anthony and St. Gregory Nazianzen; and Mr. Hope's admirable Historical Essay on Architecture. Both works were published, the latter posthumously, in 1840. As to accounts of Voyages and Travels, their name is legion; yet perhaps none of their authors has achieved a literary distinction comparable to that which was conferred on Lamartine by his Voyage en Orient.

In Theology, we have the works of Robert Hall, Richard Cecil, and Rowland Hill, representing the Dissenting and Low Church sections; those of Arnold, Whately, and Hampden, representing what are sometimes called Broad Church, or Liberal, opinions; those of Froude, Pusey, Davison, Keble, Sewell, &c., representing various sections of the great High Church party; and lastly, on the Catholic side, those of Milner, Dr. Doyle-the incomparable 'J.K.L.'-Wiseman, and Newman. In Philosophy, we have the metaphysical fragments of Coleridge, the ethical philosophy of Bentham, the logic of Whately and Mill, and the political economy of the two last-mentioned writers, and also of Ricardo and Harriet Martineau.

An excellent contribution was made to the history of philosophy, when Sir James Mackintosh published (1831) his Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy. Among the essay-writers must be singled out Charles Lamb, author of the Essays of Elia (1823), and Francis Jeffrey,1 who, as editor of the Edinburgh Review, long wielded the critical baton with honest, but not always judicious, severity. In other departments of thought and theory, e.g., Criticism, we have the literary criticism of Hazlitt and Thackeray, and the art-criticism of Mr. Ruskin.

2

Charles Lamb, a Londoner of Londoners, born in the Temple, the son of a lawyer's confidential servant, entered Christ's Hospital in 1782, and stayed there for seven years. One of his school-fellows was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and thus began a close friendship which lasted for life. His boyish years were thus spent between the Temple and Christ's Hospital, with occasional excursions to the old country-house of Blakesware, in Hertfordshire, where his grandmother held

1 Extract Book, art. 182.

2 This notice on Lamb is contributed by W. T. Arnold.