Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left at the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they entreated; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them.
Essay on Clive
JOHN RUSKIN (1819–1900)
1. His Life. Ruskin was born in London, of Scottish parentage, and was educated privately before he went to Oxford. During his boyhood he often traveled with his father, whose business activities involved journeys both in England and abroad. After leaving the university Ruskin, who did not need to earn a living, settled down to a literary career. He was not long in developing advanced notions on art, politics, economics, and other subjects. In art he was in particular devoted to the cause of the landscape-painter Turner, and in social and economic theories he was an advocate of an advanced form of socialism. To the present generation his ideas appear innocuous, or even inevitable, but by the public of his own day they were received with shocked dismay. At first the only notice he received was in the jeers of his adversaries; but gradually his fame spread as he freely expounded his opinions in lectures and pamphlets, as well as in his longer books. In 1869 he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford. Illness, however, which was aggravated by hard work and mental worries, led him to resign (1879) after a few years; and though shortly afterward (1883) he resumed the post, it had at last to be abandoned. He retired to Brantwood, on Coniston Water, in the Lake District, where he lived till his death, his later years being clouded by disease and despair.
2. His Works. Ruskin’s works are of immense volume and complexity. They were often issued in a haphazard fashion, and this makes it all the more difficult to follow the order of their publication. For a start he plunged into what turned out to be the longest of his books, Modern Painters, the first volume of which was issued in 1843 and the fifth and last in 1860. This work, beginning as a thesis in defense of the painting of Turner, develops Ruskin’s opinions on many other subjects. The first volume was not long in attracting notice, chiefly owing to its sumptuous style, which was of a kind unknown in English for centuries. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) is a shorter and more popular work, which once again expounds his views on artistic matters. The Stones of Venice (1851–53), in four volumes, is considered to be his masterpiece both in thought and style. It is less diffuse than Modern Painters; there is a little more plan in the immense array of discursive matter; and the luxuriance of the style is somewhat curtailed. His other writings are of a miscellaneous kind, and comprise The Two Paths (1859), a course of lectures; Unto this Last (1860), a series of articles on political economy which began to appear in The Cornhill Magazine, but were stopped owing to their hostile reception; Munera Pulveris (1862), also an unfinished series of articles on political economy, published in Fraser’s Magazine, and also withdrawn owing to their advanced views; The Crown of Wild Olive (1864), a series of addresses; Sesame and Lilies (1865), a course of three lectures, which is now the most popular of his shorter works; and Præterita, which first began to appear in 1855, and which is a kind of autobiography.
3. His Style. Ruskin himself often deplored the fact that people read him more for his style than for his creed. His views, which he argued with power and sincerity, must in time give way to others; many of them are now self-evident, so rapid sometimes is the progress of the human intellect; but his prose style, an art as delicate and beautiful as any of those he spent his life in supporting, will long remain a delectable study. For its like we must return to the prose of Milton and Clarendon, and refine and sweeten the manner of these early masters to reproduce the effect that Ruskin achieves. In its less ornate passages Ruskin’s diction is marked by a sweet and unforced simplicity; but his pages abound in purple passages, which are marked by sentences of immense length, carefully punctuated, by a gorgeous march of image and epithet, and by a sumptuous rhythm that sometimes grows into actual blank verse capable of scansion. In his later books Ruskin to a certain extent eschewed his grandiose manner, and wrote the language of the Bible, modernized and made supple; but to the very end he was always able to rise to the lyrical mood and fill a page with a strong and sonorous sentence.
The paragraph given below, it will be noticed, is one sentence. Observe the minute care given to the punctuation, the aptness of epithet, and the rhythm, which in several places is so regular that the matter can be scanned like poetry.
Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in gray swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands: and then, farther north still, to see the earth heave into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into irregular and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, and chilled by ice-drift, and tormented by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests fall from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, deathlike, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight.
The Stones of Venice
OTHER WRITERS OF MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
1. John Addington Symonds (1840–93) was among the foremost of the literary critics who flourished after the middle of the century. He was the son of a Bristol physician, and was educated at Harrow and Oxford. A tendency to consumption checked whatever desire he had to study the law, and much of his life was spent abroad.
A large proportion of his work was contributed to periodicals, and was collected and issued in volume form. The best collection is Studies of the Greek Poets (1873). His longest work is The Renaissance in Italy (1875–86), in which he contests Ruskin’s views on art. In style he is often ornate and even florid, and in treatment he can be diffuse to tediousness; but as a critic he is shrewd and well informed.
2. Walter Horatio Pater (1839–94) was, both as a stylist and as a literary critic, superior to Symonds. Born in London, he was educated at Canterbury and Oxford, becoming finally a Fellow of Brasenose. He devoted himself to art and literature, producing some remarkable volumes on these subjects.
His first essays appeared in book-form as Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1878), and were concerned chiefly with art; Marius the Epicurean (1885) is a remarkable philosophical novel, and is the best example of his distinguished style; Imaginary Portraits (1887) deals with artists; and Appreciations (1889) is on literary themes, and is prefaced by an important essay on style.
Pater’s individual style is among the most notable of the latter part of the century. It is the creation of immense application and forethought; every word is conned, every sentence proved, and every rhythm appraised, until we have the perfection of finished workmanship. It is never cheap, but firm and equable, with the strength and massiveness of bronze. Its very perfections are a burden, especially in his novel; it tends to become frigid and lifeless, and the subtle dallyings with refinements of meaning thin it down to mere euphuism. In the novel the action is chilled, and the characters frozen until they resemble rather a group of statuary than a collection of human beings.
3. James Anthony Froude (1818–94) was born near Totnes, where his father was archdeacon. After three years at Westminster School he proceeded to Oxford, where he was not long in feeling the effects of the High Church movement led by Newman. From this he afterward broke away, and was elected to a fellowship at Exeter College. He toiled ardently at literary work, contributing freely to The Westminster Review and other magazines. In 1860 he became editor of Fraser’s Magazine.
Froude was a man of strong opinions, to which he gave free expression both by voice and pen, and his career was often marked with controversy. His handling of the life of Carlyle provoked much angry comment. In the course of time his true merits came to be valued adequately, and after being appointed to several Government commissions he was elected (1892) Regius Professor of History at Oxford.
Froude’s miscellaneous work was published in four volumes called Short Studies on Great Subjects (1867–83). His History of England (1856–69) was issued in twelve volumes. In period it covers the time of the Reformation, and in method it follows the lead of Carlyle in its great detail and picturesque description. In its general attitude it is an indirect, and therefore an unfair, attack upon the High Church views of Newman. The work, nevertheless, is composed with much vigor, and is in the main accurate, though slightly lax in detail. Other books are The English in Ireland (1871–74), Cæsar (1879), Oceana (1886), and an Irish novel, The Two Chiefs of Dunboy (1889). His biography of Carlyle was issued during the period 1882–84.
4. The Historians. The nineteenth century produced many historical writers, of whom only a very few can find a place here.
(a) Alexander Kinglake (1809–91) was born near Taunton, and educated at Eton and Cambridge. He was called to the Bar, and practiced with some success, but in 1856 he retired to devote himself to literature. He saw much of the world, and watched the progress of the war in the Crimea. In 1857 he became Member of Parliament for Bridgwater.
His History of the Crimean War (1863–87) is enormously bulky and full of detail. In attitude it is too favorable to the British commander, Lord Raglan, and in style it is tawdry; at its best, however, it is a picturesque narrative. His other work of note is Eothen (1844), a clever account of Eastern travel.
(b) John Richard Green (1837–83) was born and educated at Oxford, and became a curate in the East End of London. He was delicate in health, and was compelled to retire from his charge in 1869. His last years were spent in writing his historical works.
Of these works the best is A Short History of the English People (1874), which at once took rank as one of the few popular text-books which are also literature. It is devoted to the history of the people and not to wars and high politics. It is told with a terse simplicity that is quite admirable. The Making of England (1882) and The Conquest of England (1883) are the only two other works he lived to finish.
(c) Edward Augustus Freeman (1823–92) was celebrated as the chief opponent of Froude. He was educated privately, and then at Oxford, where he became a Fellow of Trinity College and Regius Professor of Modern History (1884). He wrote many historical works, the most valuable of which are The History of the Norman Conquest (1867–79) and The Reign of William Rufus (1882). Freeman specialized in certain periods of English history, which he treated laboriously and at great length. This, as well as his arid style, makes his history unattractive to read, but he did much solid and enthusiastic work for the benefit of his students and successors.
5. The Scientists. The nineteenth century beheld the exposition of scientific themes raised to the level of a literary art.
(a) Hugh Miller (1802–56) was a natural genius, self-taught and self-inspired. He was born at Cromarty, in the north of Scotland, and became a stonemason, in which capacity he studied geology. In 1835 he became an accountant in a bank. He wrote much for the periodical press, and his writing attracted considerable notice. Latterly he suffered from mental disorder, and in the end committed suicide.
The Old Red Sandstone (1841) contains much patient observation of geological fact, and is still regarded as a valuable contribution to the subject; The Testimony of the Rocks (1857) appeared after his death. He wrote a little fiction of mediocre quality, published as Tales and Sketches (1863). Miller’s style is unforced and often impressive, and for sincerity, piety, and homely wisdom his books leave little to be desired.
(b) Charles Darwin (1809–82) is one of the greatest names in modern science. He was born at Shrewsbury, where he received his early education, passing later to Cambridge. In 1831 he became naturalist in The Beagle, a man-of-war that went around the world on a scientific mission. This lucky chance determined his career as a scientist. The remainder of his life was laboriously uneventful, being devoted almost wholly to biological and allied studies.
His chief works are The Voyage of the Beagle (1836), a mine of accurate and interesting facts; The Origin of Species (1859), which is to modern science what The Wealth of Nations is to modern economics—the foundation of belief; and The Descent of Man (1871). We cannot discuss his theories of evolution, but as general literature his books possess a living interest owing to their rich array of garnered evidence and their masterly gifts of exposition and argument.
(c) Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) was one of the ablest and most energetic of Darwin’s supporters. He was born at Ealing, and became a surgeon in the Navy. His first post was on Nelson’s Victory. Like Darwin, he traveled abroad on a warship, The Rattlesnake, and during these four years (1846–50) he saw and learned much. Retiring from the Navy, he took enthusiastically to scientific research, and became President of the Royal Society and a prominent public figure in the heated discussions concerning the theories that were then so new and disturbing.
Huxley produced no work in the same class as The Origin of Species. His work consisted of lectures and addresses, which were issued in volume form as Man’s Place in Nature (1863), Lay Sermons and Addresses (1870), and American Lectures (1877).
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
The Victorian epoch was exceedingly productive of literary work of a high quality, but the amount of actual innovation is by no means great. Writers were as a rule content to work upon former models, and the improvements they did achieve were often dubious and unimportant.
1. Poetry. (a) The lyrical output is very large and varied, as a glance through the works of the poets already mentioned will show. In form there is little of fresh interest. Tennyson was content to follow the methods of Keats, though Browning’s complicated forms and Swinburne’s long musical lines were more freely used by them than by any previous writers.
(b) In descriptive and narrative poetry there is a greater advance to chronicle. In subject—for example, in the poems of Browning and Morris—there is great variety, embracing many climes and periods; in method there is much diversity, ranging from the cultured elegance of Tennyson’s English landscapes to the wild impressionism of Whitman in America. The Pre-Raphaelite school, also, united several features which had not been seen before in combination. These were a fondness for medieval themes treated in an unconventional manner, a richly colored pictorial effect, and a studied and melodious simplicity. The works of Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne provide many examples of this development of poetry. On the whole we can say that the Victorians were strongest on the descriptive side of poetry, which agreed with the more meditative habits of the period, as contrasted with the warmer and more lyrical emotions of the previous age.
There were many attempts at purely narrative poetry, with interesting results. Tennyson thought of reviving the epic, but in him the epical impulse was not sufficiently strong, and his great narrative poem was produced as smaller fragments which he called idylls. Browning’s Ring and the Book is curious, for it can be called a psychological epic—a narrative in which emotion removes action from the chief place. In this class of poetry The Earthly Paradise of William Morris is a return to the old romantic tale as we find it in the works of Chaucer.
2. Drama. Nearly all the major poets of the period wrote tragedy on the lines of the accepted models. Few of these attained to real distinction; they were rather the conscientious efforts of men who were striving to succeed in the impossible task of really reviving the poetical drama. Of them all, Swinburne’s tragedies, especially those concerned with Mary Queen of Scots, possess the greatest warmth and energy; and Browning’s earlier plays, before he over-developed his style, have sincerity and sometimes real dramatic power. As for comedy, it was almost wholly neglected as a purely literary form.
A development to be noticed is the popularity of the dramatic monologue. In Ulysses, Tithonus, and other pieces Tennyson achieved some of his most successful results; and Browning’s host of monologues, wide in range and striking in detail, are perhaps his greatest contribution to literature. The method common to this kind of monologue was to take some character and make him reveal his inmost self in his own words.
3. Prose. (a) By the middle of the nineteenth century the novel, as a species of literature, had thrust itself into the first rank. We shall therefore consider it first.
In the novels of Thackeray and Dickens the various qualities of the domestic novel are gathered together and carried a stage forward. Dickens did much to idealize the England of his day, and to depict the life of the lower and middle classes with imagination and humor. As a satirist and an observer of manners Thackeray easily excels his contemporaries. The other novelists were to a great extent gleaners in the spacious field that was reaped by the two greater writers. Charlotte Brontë supplied a somber passion that colored the drabness of her life; Trollope specialized with his parsons; Collins wrote mystery stories. Of the rest, George Eliot showed a closeness of application to the mental process of her characters that was carried further in the work of Meredith, and has led to the “psychological” novels of the present day.
In Esmond the historical novel made an advance. Here Thackeray was not content to master the history of the period he described; he sought to reproduce also the language and atmosphere. This is an extremely difficult thing to achieve, and is possible only in novels dealing with a limited period of time, but Thackeray scored a remarkable success.
(b) The development of the Short story, as a separate species of literature, will be touched upon in the next chapter.
(c) In the case of the essay we have to note the expansion of the literary type into the treatise-in-little. This method was made popular by Macaulay, and continued by Carlyle, Symonds, Pater, and many others. Of the miscellaneous essayists, both Dickens, in some parts of The Uncommercial Traveller, and Thackeray, in The Roundabout Papers, successfully practiced the shorter Addisonian type; and this again was enlarged and made more pretentious by Ruskin, Pater, and Stevenson.
(d) The lecture becomes a prominent literary species for a time. Carlyle, Thackeray, Dickens, and many others both in England and America published lectures in book-form. Earlier critics like Hazlitt and Coleridge had done so; but, almost for the first time, Ruskin gave a distinct style and manner to the lecture.
(e) The historians are strongly represented. Carlyle and Macaulay, in spite of their great industry and real care for history, have now fallen behind in the race as historians, and survive chiefly as stylists. The new method that arose was typified in the solid and valuable work of William Stubbs (1825–1901), Edward A. Freeman (1823–92), and Samuel R. Gardiner (1829–1902). These historians avoided the charms of literary style, concentrated upon some aspect of history, and, basing their results upon patient research into original authorities, produced valuable additions to human knowledge.
(f) We have already noticed that in this period the scientific treatise attained to literary rank. We may mention as early examples of this type Sir Thomas Browne’s curious treatise on Urne Buriall, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, and the graceful essays of Berkeley.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE
With such an amount of writing as characterizes this age it is quite certain that both in prose and poetry a wide range of style will be observable.
1. Poetry. In the case of poetry the more ornate style was represented in Tennyson, who developed artistic schemes of vowel-music, alliteration, and other devices in a manner quite unprecedented. The Pre-Raphaelites carried the method still further. In diction they were simpler than Tennyson, but their vocabulary was more archaic and their mass of detail more highly colored. The style of Browning was to a certain extent a protest against this aureate diction. He substituted for it simplicity and a heady speed, especially in his earlier lyrics; his more mature obscurity was merely an effect of his eager imagination and reckless impetuosity. Matthew Arnold, in addition, was too classical in style to care for over-developed picturesqueness, and wrote with a studied simplicity. On the whole, however, we can say that the average poetical style of this period, as a natural reaction against the simpler methods of the period immediately preceding, was ornate rather than simple.
2. Prose. With regard to prose, the greater proportion by far is written in the middle style, the established medium in journalism, in all manner of miscellaneous work, and in the majority of the novels. Outside this mass of middle prose, the style of Ruskin stands highest in the scale of ornateness; of a like kind are the scholarly elegance of Pater and the mannered dictions of Meredith and Stevenson. The style of Carlyle and that of Macaulay are each a peculiar brand of the middle style, Macaulay’s being hard, clear, and racy, and Carlyle’s gruff and tempestuous, with an occasional passage of soothing beauty.
Of the simpler writers there is a large number, among whom many novelists find a place. We have space here to refer only to the easygoing journalistic manner of Dickens and to the sub-acid flavor of the prose of Thackeray.
We add a specimen of Stevenson’s prose style. This style, which in its mannered precision is typical of many modern prose styles, is noteworthy on account of its careful selection of epithet, its clear-cut expressiveness, and its delicate rhythm.
But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the Bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence. In the playing-fields, and amongst his own companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at his father’s table (when the time came for him to join these revels) he turned pale and sickened in silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered, he had toleration for only one: David Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord Glenalmond was tall and emaciated, with long features and long delicate hands. He was often compared with the statue of Forbes of Culloden in the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty, preserved some of the fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with any of his fellow-guests, his appearance, as of an artist and an aristocrat stranded in rude company, rivetted the boy’s attention; and as curiosity and interest are the things in the world that are the most immediately and certainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted to the boy.
Weir of Hermiston
TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
| Date | Poetry | Drama | Prose | ||||
| Lyrical | Narrative-Descriptive | Tragedy | Comedy | Novel | Essay | Miscellaneous | |
| Carlyle | Macaulay | ||||||
| Tennyson[225] | |||||||
| Tennyson[226] | Carlyle[227] | ||||||
| Browning[228] | |||||||
| Dickens[229] | Macaulay | ||||||
| 1840 | E.B. Browning | E.B. Browning | |||||
| Browning[230] | Thackeray[231] | Ruskin[232] | |||||
| Browning[233] | Borrow | ||||||
| Clough | |||||||
| M. Arnold | M. Arnold | C. Brontë | |||||
| 1850 | Kingsley | ||||||
| Borrow | |||||||
| C. Reade | |||||||
| C. Reade | |||||||
| Trollope | |||||||
| Collins | |||||||
| W. Morris | W. Morris | G. Eliot | |||||
| 1860 | Fitzgerald | Meredith[234] | |||||
| C. G. Rossetti | Thackeray | ||||||
| Swinburne | Swinburne[235] | ||||||
| Froude | Froude | ||||||
| 1870 | Besant | ||||||
| D. G. Rossetti | D. G. Rossetti | ||||||
| Butler | |||||||
| Symonds | |||||||
| Tennyson[236] | Symonds | ||||||
| 1880 | Stevenson | ||||||
| Stevenson | |||||||
| 1890 | |||||||
EXERCISES
1. The following are brief extracts from dramatic monologues by Tennyson, Browning, and William Morris. Compare them with regard to subject, point of view, and style. How far does each reflect the character of the author?
2. In the following extracts point out the features of subject and style that are characteristic of their respective authors. In each case say how far the style suits the subject.
(1) Day has bent downwards. Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field labour; the village artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. Still summer-eventide everywhere! The great sun hangs flaming on the utmost Northwest; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will erelong be at their ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on long-shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the Earth.
Carlyle, The French Revolution
(2) Monmouth was startled by finding that a broad and profound trench lay between him and the camp which he had hoped to surprise. The insurgents halted on the edge of the rhine and fired. Part of the royal infantry on the opposite bank returned the fire. During three-quarters of an hour the roar of the musketry was incessant. The Somersetshire peasants behaved themselves as if they had been veteran soldiers, save only that they levelled their pieces too high.
Macaulay, The History of England
(3) We may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, Shakespeare’s peculiar joy, would open on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. Go out, in the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom—paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness—look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, “He maketh grass to grow up on the mountains.”
Ruskin, Modern Painters
3. The two extracts given below are typical of the Pre-Raphaelite school. Point out the features in style and subject common to both. Write a brief appreciation of this style of poetry.
4. From a consideration of the specimens given below, and of other examples that occur to you, write a brief essay on the Victorian lyric.
5. Compare the novels of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, the chief women novelists of the middle of the nineteenth century.
6. Trace the development of the historical novel from the death of Scott to the death of Stevenson.
7. Write a brief account of the drama of this period.
8. Who are the principal prose stylists of the period? Write a note on the style of each, quoting whenever you can.
9. “The characteristic of the novel, as it was reconstituted towards the middle of the century, was the preference for strictly ordinary life.” (Saintsbury.) Examine this statement.
10. “Prose style in our day is a complex matter.” (Craik.) Expand this statement, pointing out the wide range of style necessary to meet modern requirements.
11. “Men of genius may be divided into regular and irregular.” Bagehot, who makes this remark, calls Dickens an irregular genius. Suggest some of his reasons for doing so.
12. “Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning represent respectively the pure, ornate, and grotesque in poetry.” (Bagehot.) What justification is there for such a statement?
13. “Tennyson’s poetry undoubtedly represents the ideas and tastes, the inherited predilections, the prevailing currents of thought, of Englishmen belonging to his class and generation.” (Sir A. Lyall.) Write a brief essay on this statement.
14. “Thackeray’s manner was mainly realistic.” (Trollope.) How far was Thackeray a realist? How far did he describe persons and actions as they really were? Quote examples from his novels. Compare him in this respect with Dickens.
15. “The novel has supplanted the sermon, the essay, and the play in the place which each at different times held as the popular form of literature.” (Saintsbury.) Expand and comment upon this quotation.
16. In what respects did the spread of popular education affect the literary production of the period?