Then followed the two years of travel, which had their fruit in the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812). The hero of the poem is a romantic youth, and is very clearly Byron himself. He is very grand and terrible, and sinister with the stain of a dark and awful past. He visits some of the popular beauty-spots of the Continent, which he describes in Spenserian stanzas of moderate skill and attractiveness. The poem is diffuse, but sometimes it can be terse and energetic; the style is halfheartedly old-fashioned, in deference to the stanza. Byron is to do much better things, but already he shows a real appreciation of nature, and considerable dexterity in the handling of his meter.
Childe Harold brought its author a dower of fame, which in the next few years he was to squander to the uttermost. In the intervals of society functions he produced poetic tales in astonishing profusion: The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos in 1813, The Corsair and Lara in 1814, The Siege of Corinth and Parisina in 1815. These tales deal with the romantic scenes of the East; they almost uniformly reproduce the young Byronic hero of Childe Harold; and to a great extent they are mannered and stagy. Written in the couplet form, the verse is founded on that of the metrical tales of Scott, whom Byron was not long in supplanting in popular favor, although the masculine fervor of Scott’s poems is lacking from his work. In sentiment his lines are often sickly enough, yet they sometimes have a vehemence that might be mistaken for passion, and a tawdriness that imitates real beauty.
In 1816 Byron was hounded out of England, and his wanderings are chronicled in the third (1816) and fourth (1817) cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. In meter and general scheme the poem is unaltered, but in spirit and style the new parts are very different from the first two cantos. The descriptions are firmer and terser, and are often graced with a fine simplicity; the old-fashioned mannerisms are entirely discarded; and the tone all through is deeper and more sincere. There is apparent an undercurrent of bitter pessimism that is only natural under the circumstances, though he dwells too lengthily upon his misfortunes. The following stanza is a fair specimen of this later and simpler style:
During these years on the Continent he was not idle. Some of his longer poems are The Prisoner of Chillon (1816) and Mazeppa (1819), the last of his metrical tales. He also composed a large number of lyrics, most of them only mediocre in quality; and he added several great satirical poems, the most notable of which are Beppo (1818), The Vision of Judgment (1822), directed mainly against Southey, and, the longest of all, Don Juan.
In range, in vigor, and in effectiveness Don Juan ranks as one of the greatest of satirical poems. It was issued in portions during the years 1819–24, just as Byron composed it. It is a kind of picaresque novel cast into verse. The hero, like that of the picaresque novel, has many wanderings and adventures, the narration of which might go on interminably. At the time of its publication it was denounced by a shocked world as vile and immoral, and to a great extent it deserves the censure. In it Byron expresses the wrath that consumes him, and all the human race comes under the lash. The strength and flexibility of the satire are beyond question, and are freely revealed in bitter mockery, in caustic comment, and in burning rage. The stanzas, written in ottava rima, are as keen and supple as a tempered steel blade. The style is a kind of sublimated, half-colloquial prose, showing a disdainful abrogation of the finer poetical trappings; but in places it rises into passages of rare and lovely tenderness. When affliction came upon him, in the words of Lear he had vowed a vow:
But sometimes the poet prevails over the satirist, and the mocking laughter is stifled with the sound of bitter weeping.
The first extract given below shows Byron in his bitter and cynical mood; the tone of the second and third is far removed from such asperity:
3. His Drama. Byron’s dramas are all blank-verse tragedies that were composed during the later stages of his career, when he was in Italy. The chief are Manfred (1817), Marino Faliero (1820), The Two Foscari and Cain (1821), and The Deformed Transformed (1824). In nearly all we have a hero of the Byronic type. In Cain, for example, we have the outcast who defies the censure of the world; in The Deformed Transformed there are thinly screened references to Byron’s own deformity. In this fashion he showed that he had little of the real dramatic faculty, for he could portray no character with any zeal unless it resembled himself. The blank verse has power and dignity, but it lacks the higher poetic inspiration.
4. Features of his Poetry. (a) For a man of his egotistical temper Byron’s lyrical gift is disappointingly meager. He wrote many tuneful and readable lyrics, such as She walks in Beauty and To Thyrza. His favorite theme draws on variations of the following mood:
In such lyrics he is merely sentimental, and the reader cannot avoid thinking that he is posturing before the world. When he attempts more elevated themes, as he does in The Isles of Greece, he is little better than a poetical tub-thumper. Of the genuine passionate lyric there is little trace in his poems.
(b) His satirical power is gigantic. In the expression of his scorn, a kind of sublime and reckless arrogance, he has the touch of the master. Yet in spite of his genius he has several defects. In the first place, his motive is to a very large extent personal, and so his scorn becomes one-sided. It is, however, a sign of the essential bigness of his mind that he hardly ever becomes mean and spiteful. Secondly, he lacks the deep vision of the supreme satirist, like Cervantes, who behind the shadows of the crimes and follies of men can see the pity of it all. In the third place, he is often deliberately outrageous. When he found how easily and deeply he could shock a certain class of people he went out of his way to shock them, and succeeded only too well. No doubt this satisfied Byron’s injured feelings, but it is a rather cheap and juvenile proceeding, and detracts from the solid value of his work.
(c) He treats nature in a rather lordly fashion, more as a humble helper in his poems than as a light and inspiration. In his later poems he agreeably modified this attitude; and his passion for the sea never paled.
(d) His style has been sufficiently revealed in the extracts we have given. He could modulate it with great skill to the purpose in hand. Dignified in his dramas, melodious in his songs, vigorous in his narratives, and stinging in his satires, he is hardly ever dull, seldom obscure, and always the master of his medium.
(e) A word is necessary regarding the fluctuations of his reputation. In his earlier manhood he was reckoned among the great poets; he lived to hear himself denounced, and his poetry belittled. After his death Victorian morality held up hands in horror over his iniquity, and his real merits were steadily decried. Since those days his reputation has been climbing back to take a stable position high above the second-rate poets. In some European countries he still ranks second to none among English poets. He broke down the labored insularity of the English, and he gave to non-English readers a clear and forcible example of what the English language can accomplish.
1. His Life. Shelley was born in Sussex, the heir to a baronetcy and a great fortune. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but from a very early age showed great eccentricity of character. He frequented graveyards, studied alchemy, and read books of dreadful import. While he was at the university he wrote several extraordinary pamphlets, one of which, The Necessity of Atheism, caused him to be expelled from Oxford. He had already developed extreme notions on religion, politics, and morality generally, a violence that was entirely theoretical, for by nature he was among the most unselfish and amiable of mankind. His opinions, as well as an early and unhappy marriage which he contracted, brought about a painful quarrel with his relatives. This was finally composed by the poet’s father, Sir Timothy Shelley, who settled an annuity upon his son. The poet immediately took to the life that suited him best, ardently devoting himself to his writing, and wandering where the spirit led him. In 1816 his first wife committed suicide; and Shelley, having married the daughter of William Godwin, settled in Italy, the land he loved the best. The intoxication of Rome’s blue sky and the delicious unrestraint of his Italian existence set his genius blossoming into the rarest beauty. In the full flower of it he was drowned, when he was only thirty years old, in a sudden squall that overtook his yacht in the Gulf of Spezzia. His body—a fit consummation—was burned on the beach where it was found, and his ashes were laid beside those of Keats in the Roman cemetery that he had nobly hymned. It is impossible to estimate the loss to literature that was caused by his early extinction. The crudeness of his earlier opinions was passing away, his vision was gaining immeasurably in clearness and intensity, and his singing-robes seemed to be developing almost into seraph’s wings. In his case the grave can indeed claim a victory.
2. His Poetry. His earliest effort of any note is Queen Mab (1813). The poem is clearly immature; it is lengthy, and contains much of Shelley’s cruder atheism. It is written in the irregular unrhymed meter that was made popular by Southey. The beginning is worth quoting, for already it reveals a touch of the airy music that was to distinguish his later work:
Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude (1816) followed. It is a kind of spiritual autobiography. The chief character is a wild youth who retires into the wilderness and stays there under highly romantic circumstances. The poem is too long and formless, and in places the expression becomes so wild as to be only a foamy gabble of words. It is written in blank verse that shows Shelley’s growing skill as a poet. After this came Laon and Cynthia (1817), afterward called The Revolt of Islam. It has the fault of its immediate predecessor—lack of grip and coherence; but it is richer in descriptive passages, and has many outbursts of rapturous energy.
Then Shelley left for Italy. The first fruits of his new life were apparent in Prometheus Unbound (1819). This wonderful production is a combination of the lyric and the drama. The story is that of Prometheus, who defied the gods and suffered for his presumption. There is a small proportion of narrative in blank verse, but the chief feature of the poem is the series of lyrics that both sustain and embellish the action. As a whole the poem has a sweep, a soar, and an unearthly vitality that sometimes staggers the imagination. It is peopled with spirits and demigods, and its scenes are cast in the inaccessible spaces of sky, mountain, and sea.
In The Cenci (1819) Shelley started to write formal drama. In this play he seems deliberately to have set upon himself the restraints that he defied in Prometheus Unbound. The plot is not of the sky and the sea; it is a grim and sordid family affair; in style it is neither fervent nor ornate, but bleak and austere. Yet behind this reticence of manner there is a deep and smoldering intensity of passion and enormous adequacy of tragic purpose. Many of the poet’s admirers look upon it as his masterpiece; and there can be little doubt that, with the exception possibly of the Venice Preserved of Otway, it is the most powerful tragedy since the days of Shakespeare. The last words of the play, when the heroine goes to her doom, are almost heart-breaking in their simplicity:
The poems of this period are extraordinary in their number and quality. Among the longer ones are Julian and Maddalo (1818) and The Masque of Anarchy (1819). The latter, inspired by the news of the massacre of Peterloo, expresses Shelley’s revolutionary political views, and is very severe on Lord Castlereagh. The beginning of the poem is startling enough:
In The Witch of Atlas (1820) and Epipsychidion (1821) Shelley rises further and further into the ether of poetical imagination, until he becomes almost impossible of comprehension. Adonais (1821) is a lament for the death of Keats. In plan the poem is crazily constructed, but it glows with some of the most splendid of Shelley’s conceptions:
With the longer poems went a brilliant cascade of shorter lyrical pieces. To name them is to mention some of the sweetest English lyrics. The constantly quoted Skylark and Cloud are among them; so are some exquisite songs, such as Lines to an Indian Air, Music, when soft voices die, On a Faded Violet, To Night, and the longer occasional pieces—for example, Lines written among the Euganean Hills, and the Letter to Maria Gisborne. Of his many beautiful odes, the most remarkable is To the West Wind. The stanzas have the elemental rush of the wind itself, and the conclusion, where Shelley sees a parallel to himself, is the most remarkable of all:
3. His Prose. Shelley began his literary career with two boyish romances, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne. These books were written when he was still at school, and are almost laughably bad in style and story. The only other prose work that is worth mention is his short essay The Defence of Poetry. The work is soundly written, and is a strong exposition of the Romantic point of view. His published letters show him to have been a man of considerable common sense, and not merely the crazy theorist of popular imagination. His prose style is somewhat heavy, but always clear and readable.
4. Features of his Poetry. (a) His lyrical power is equal to the highest to be found in any language. It is now recognized to be one of the supreme gifts in literature, like the dramatic genius of Shakespeare. This gift is shown at its best when it expresses the highest emotional ecstasy, as in the lyrics of Prometheus Unbound. It is a sign of his great genius that, in spite of the passion that pervades his lyrics, he is seldom shrill and tuneless. He can also express a mood of blessed cheerfulness, a sane and delectable joy. To the Spirit of Delight he says:
He can also express the keenest note of depression and despair, as in the lyric O World! O Life! O Time!
(b) In his choice of subject he differs from such a poet as Burns, who is almost the only other poet who challenges him as master of the lyric. Shelley lacks the homely appeal of Burns; he loves to roam through space and infinity. In his own words he
He rejoices in nature, but nature of a spiritual kind, which he peoples with phantoms and airy beings:
(c) His descriptive power at once strikes the imagination. The effect is instantaneous. His fancy played among wild and elemental things, but it gave them form and substance, as well as a radiant loveliness. His favorite device for this purpose is personification, of which the following is an excellent example:
We add another extract to show his almost unearthly skill in visualizing the wilder aspects of nature. Note the extreme simplicity and ease of the style:
(d) His style is perfectly attuned to his purpose. Like all the finest lyrical styles, it is simple, flexible, and passionate. Sometimes, as in The Cenci, it rises to a commanding simplicity. The extracts already given sufficiently show this.
(e) Shelley’s limitations are almost as plain as his great abilities. His continual rhapsodizings tend to become tedious and baffling; in his narrative he is diffuse and argumentative; he lacks humor; and his political poetry is often violent and unreasonable.
(f) His Reputation. During his lifetime Shelley’s opinions obscured his powers as a poet. Even to Scott, who with all his Tory prejudices was liberal enough in his views on literature, he was simply “that atheist Shelley.” After his death his reputation rose rapidly, and by the middle of the nineteenth century his position was assured. By the curious alternation that seems to affect popular taste, his fame since that time has paled a little; but no fluctuations in taste can ever remove him from his place among the great.
1. His Life. Keats was born in London, the son of the well-to-do keeper of a livery stable. He was educated at a private school at Enfield, and at the age of fifteen was apprenticed to a surgeon. In 1814 he transferred his residence to London, and followed part of the regular course of instruction prescribed for medical students. Already, however, his poetical bent was becoming apparent. Surgery lost its slight attraction, and the career of a poet became a bright possibility when he made the acquaintance of Leigh Hunt (1815), the famous Radical journalist and poet, whose collisions with the Government had caused much commotion and his own imprisonment. Keats was soon intimate with the Radical brotherhood that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and thus he became known to Shelley and others. In 1817 he published his first volume of verse, but it attracted little notice, in spite of the championship of Hunt. By this time the family tendency to consumption became painfully manifest in him, and he spent his time in searching for places, including the Isle of Wight and the suburbs of London, where his affliction might be remedied. While he was staying in London he became acquainted with Fanny Brawne, and afterward was engaged to her for a time. His malady, however, became worse, and the mental and physical distress caused by his complaint, added to despair regarding the success of his love-affair, produced a frantic state of mind painfully reflected in his letters to the young lady. These letters were foolishly printed (1879), long after the poet’s death.
His second volume of verse, published in 1818, was brutally assailed by The Quarterly Review and (to a lesser degree) by Blackwood’s Magazine. These Tory journals probably struck at him because of his friendship with the radical Leigh Hunt. Keats bore the attack with apparent serenity, and always protested that he minded it little; but there can be little doubt that it affected his health to some degree. In 1820 he was compelled to seek warmer skies, and died in Rome early in the next year, at the age of twenty-five.
2. His Poetry. When he was about seventeen years old Keats became acquainted with the works of Spenser, and this proved to be the turning-point in his life. The mannerisms of the Elizabethan immediately captivated him, and he resolved to imitate him. His earliest attempt at verse is his Imitation of Spenser (1813), written when he was eighteen. This and some other short pieces were published together in his Poems (1817), his first volume of verse. This book contains little of any outstanding merit. The different poems, which include the pieces On Death, To Hope, and Sleep and Poetry, follow the methods of Shenstone, Gray, and Byron. Of a different quality was his next volume, which bore the title of Endymion (1818). Probably based partly on Drayton’s Man in the Moon and Fletcher’s Faithful Shepherdess, this remarkable poem of Endymion professes to tell the story of the lovely youth who was kissed by the moon-goddess on the summit of Mount Latmos. Keats develops this simple myth into an intricate and flowery tale of over four thousand lines. The work is clearly immature, and flawed with many weaknesses both of taste and of construction, but many of the passages are most beautiful, and the poem shows the tender budding of the Keatsian style—a rich and suggestive beauty obtained by a richly ornamented diction. The first line is often quoted, and it contains the theory that Keats followed in a subconscious fashion during most of his poetical career:
The crudeness of the work laid it temptingly open to attack, and, as we have noticed, the hostile reviews found it an easy prey.
Keats’s health was already failing, but the amount of poetry he wrote is marvelous both in magnitude and in quality. His third and last volume, published just before he left England, contains a collection of poems of the first rank, which were written approximately in the order that follows.
Isabella, or The Pot of Basil (1818), is a version of a tale from Boccaccio, and deals with the murder of a lady’s lover by her two wicked brothers. The poem, which is written in ottava rima, marks a decided advance in Keats’s work. The slips of taste are fewer; the style is richer and deeper in tone; and the conclusion, though it is sentimentally treated, is not wanting in pathos.
The Eve of St. Agnes (1818) has for a plot the merest incident dealing with the elopement of two lovers. The tale is so sumptuously adorned with the silks and jewels of poetical imagination that it is almost lost in the decoration. This is sometimes considered his masterpiece; it is certainly the most typical of his poems. The richness of fancy and pictorial effect mark the summit of the poet’s art. It is somewhat hectic and overloaded, but its faults are quite venial. We add one of its exquisite Spenserian stanzas:
Hyperion (1818) is of a different type. For this poem Keats adopts blank verse, and for theme he goes to the primeval warfare between early deities, such as Saturn and Thea, and younger divinities, such as Apollo and Minerva. The poem remains unfinished, owing, it is stated, to the poet’s discouragement over the reception of Endymion. It is doubtful if Keats could ever have finished it. The scale of the story is so gigantic, and the style is pitched at such an altitude of sublimity that Keats appears to have been lacking in mere physical fitness to carry it to a conclusion. In the fragment that we have an observant reader can see that the poet’s grip is loosening, and his breath failing, before the effort ceases entirely. Keats, with his usual insight, appropriately writes the poem in a style of bleak and almost terrible simplicity. The opening lines are among the best:
Next was written The Eve of St. Mark (1819), which also remains unfinished. The tale shows how far even Keats can improve upon himself. It is adorned with brilliant descriptive passages, and the strokes are more dashing than usual. The earlier languor and sentimentality are almost eliminated:
The story of Lamia (1819) is taken from Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, and tells of a beautiful enchantress. It is the weakest of all the longer poems, and the lapses are more numerous. The language becomes mannered and overdone:
In this passage we observe the strength of Keats running to seed. Phrases like “plead yourself” and “labyrinth you” go beyond the limits of poetical license; and the whole passage in conception resembles the conceits of the Caroline poets rather than the finer and stronger flights of imagination of which Keats was so thoroughly capable.
Together with the longer poems are many shorter pieces of supreme beauty. The great odes—To a Nightingale, On a Grecian Urn, To Autumn—were nearly all written in 1819. Among the other shorter poems La Belle Dame sans Merci, a kind of lyrical ballad, is considered to be one of the choicest in the language.
In 1819 Keats collaborated in a drama, Otho the Great, and began another, King Stephen, which he did not complete. Neither effort is of much consequence. The Cap and Bells, a longish fairy-tale which also is unfinished, is much below the level of his usual work.
3. Features of his Poetry. (a) His style should be considered first, for Keats is above all a stylist. The typical Keatsian poetry is, one imagines, the ideal of what is popularly considered to be “poetry”: it is gorgeously attractive, with its melodic beauty and sensuous passion; soft and caressing, like velvet; and richly colored and odorous. At its very best the spell of it works like a divine enchantment; but at even a little less than the best it becomes unctuous, sickly, and stuffily uncomfortable. There can be little doubt that Keats’s physical malady shows itself in his writings. With all their genius, they are the work of an unhealthy brain. His heroes are languid and neurotic creatures, and his style is attuned to their swoons and faintings. A stanza from Isabella will illustrate what has already been exemplified in the verse we have quoted from The Eve of St. Agnes:
(b) His descriptive and romantic quality is of the highest. He modeled his work upon that of Spenser, but before he had finished he almost bettered his model. In beauty and splendor he is nearly unrivaled. He ranges among classical and medieval subjects, and distills from them the essence of their beauty. For example, he knew no Greek, but he could reproduce the full charm of the Greek seaboard:
(c) Keats’s lyrical faculty is limited. When brooding over his woes he can utter a complaint on the true lyrical note. Hence we obtain such results as his wonderful last sonnet and La Belle Dame sans Merci, which is a lyric thinly disguised as a ballad. He was perhaps physically unable to experience the healthier joys of Burns, and so was incapable of expressing them.
(d) His Influence. A single glance at the table at the head of this chapter will show how piteously short was his poetical career; but, short as it was, his labor created a larger school than that of any of his contemporaries. His tradition was carried on by Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites, and to this day his influence is strong in English poetry.
1. Robert Southey (1774–1843). Southey was born at Bristol, educated at Westminster School and at Oxford, and settled down to lead the laborious life of a man of letters. He produced a great mass of work, much of which is of considerable merit, and he ranked as one of the leading writers of his age. Most of his work was written at Greta Hall, near Keswick, where he lived most of his life. He was made Poet Laureate in 1813. His reputation, especially as a poet, has not been maintained.
His poems, which are of great bulk, include Joan of Arc (1798), Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), The Curse of Kehama (1810), and Roderick the Goth (1814); they are pretentious in style and subject, but are now almost forgotten. Some shorter pieces, such as The Holly-tree, The Battle of Blenheim, and The Inchcape Rock, are still in favor, and deservedly so.
His numerous prose works include The History of Brazil (1810–19) and The Peninsular War (1822–33). The slightest of them all, The Life of Nelson (1813), is the only one now freely read. It shows Southey’s easy yet scholarly style at its best.
2. Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864). Landor had a long life, for he was born five years after Wordsworth, and lived to see the full yield of the Victorian era. Of an ancient family, he was born in Warwickshire, and was educated at Rugby and Oxford. Later he was fired with republican ideas, abandoned his projected career in the British Army, and supported the revolutionaries in Spain. In temper he was impulsive to the point of mania; and his life is marked by a succession of violent quarrels with his friends and enemies. The middle years of his life were passed in Italy. He returned to England in 1838, and lived in Bath until 1858. In this year his pugnacity involved him in an action for damages, in which as defendant he cut a lamentable figure. Poor and dishonored, he forsook England, and settled again in Florence, where he died.
His Gebir (1798) is a kind of epic poem written in blank verse. It is “classical” in its stiff and formal style; but it has a stately beauty and much powerful natural description. Count Julian (1812), a tragedy, has much the same qualities, good and bad, as Gebir. His shorter pieces, especially the eight-line lyric Rose Aylmer, have more ease and passion, and are gracefully expressed.
His bulkiest prose work is his Imaginary Conversations, which was published at intervals from 1824 to 1846. The volumes record imaginary dialogues between all kinds of people on a great variety of subjects. They have Landor’s chief defect, a stony lifelessness; but in style they are stately, strong, and scholarly, with frequent passages of noble description. All his life he continued to issue essays and pamphlets. A collection of them, called Dry Sticks (1858), as has been noticed, brought upon his head the weight of the law. Landor professed to despise popularity; he was moody, crotchety, and often deliberately perverse. Posterity has repaid him by consigning him to an oblivion that only the devotion of a small but eminent band of admirers keeps from being absolute.
3. Thomas Moore (1779–1852). Moore was born in Dublin, took his degree at Trinity College, and studied law in the same city. He too was imbued with revolutionary notions, and attempted to apply them to Ireland, but with no success. He obtained a valuable appointment in the Bermudas, the duties of which were discharged by a deputy, who in this case proved faithless and caused Moore financial loss. Moore was a friend of Byron and a prominent literary figure of the time. Most of his life was passed as a successful man of letters.
His poems were highly successful during his lifetime, but after his death there was a reaction against them. His Irish Melodies are set to the traditional musical airs of Ireland. They are graceful, and adapt themselves admirably to the tunes. Moore, however, lacked the depth and far-ranging strength of Burns, and so he failed to do for Ireland what the Ayrshire poet did for Scotland: he did not raise the national sentiment of Ireland into one of the precious things of literature. His Lalla Rookh (1817) is an Oriental romance, written in the Scott-Byron manner then so popular. The poem had an immense success, which has now almost totally faded. It contains an abundance of florid description, but as poetry it is hardly second-rate. Moore’s political satires, such as The Twopenny Postbag (1813), The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), and Fables for the Holy Alliance (1823), are keen and lively, and show his Irish wit at its very best.
His prose works include his Life of Byron (1830), which has taken its place as the standard biography of that poet. It is an able and scholarly piece of work, and is written with much knowledge and sympathy.
4. Thomas Campbell (1777–1844). Campbell was born in Glasgow, of a poor but ancient family. After studying at Glasgow University he became tutor to a private family; but his Pleasures of Hope (1799) brought him fame, and he adopted the career of a poet. He visited the Continent, and saw much of the turmoil that there reigned. Returning, he settled in London, where he was editor of The New Monthly Magazine from 1820 to 1830.
His longer poems are quite numerous, and begin with the Pleasures of Hope, which consists of a series of descriptions of nature in heroic couplets, written in a style that suggests Goldsmith. Other longer poems include Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), a longish tale of Pennsylvania, written in Spenserian stanzas, and The Pilgrim of Glencoe (1842). Campbell, however, is chiefly remembered for his stirring songs, some of which were written during his early Continental tour and were published in newspapers. His most successful are Ye Mariners of England and The Battle of the Baltic, which are spirited without containing the bluster and boasting that so often disfigure the patriotic song.
5. Samuel Rogers (1763–1855). Rogers was born in London, the son of a rich banker. He soon became a partner in his father’s firm, and for the rest of his life his financial success was assured. His chief interest lay in art and poetry, which he cultivated in an earnest fashion. He was a generous patron of the man of letters, and was acquainted with most of the literary people of the time. His breakfasts were famous.
His Pleasures of Memory (1792) is a reversion to the typical eighteenth-century manner, and as such is interesting. He could compose polished verses, but he was little of the poet. Other works are Columbus (1812), Jacqueline (1814), a tale in the Byronic manner, and Italy (1822).
Rogers was a careful and fastidious writer, but his excellence does not go much further. His name is a prominent one in the literary annals of the time, but his wealth rather than his merit accounts for this.
6. Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), unlike Rogers, was not a wealthy amateur who could trifle for years with mediocre production; he was of the arena, taking and giving hard knocks in both political and literary scuffles. He was born in Middlesex, educated at Christ’s Hospital, and while still in his teens became a journalist, and remained a journalist all his life. His Radical journal The Examiner (1808) was strongly critical of the Government, and Hunt’s aptitude for abuse landed him in prison for two years. His captivity, as he gleefully records, made a hero of him; and most of the literary men who prided themselves upon their Liberalism—among them being Wordsworth, Byron, Moore, Keats, and Shelley—sought his friendship. Hunt had a powerful influence on Keats, and published some of the latter’s shorter poems in The Examiner. He tried various other journalistic ventures, but none of them had the success of The Examiner; his attempted collaboration in journalism with Byron was a lamentable failure. He died, like Wordsworth and others, a respectable pensioner of the Government he had once so strongly condemned.
He much fancied himself as a poet, and popular taste confirmed him in his delusion. The best of his longer poems is Rimini (1811), an Italian tale in verse. The poem is of interest because its flowing couplets were the model for Keats’s Endymion. Hunt’s shorter pieces—for example, Abou Ben Adhem—are often graceful, but their poetical value is not very high.
His prose includes an enormous amount of journalistic matter, which was occasionally collected and issued in book form. Such was his Men, Women, and Books (1847). His Autobiography (1850) contains much interesting biographical and literary gossip. He is an agreeable essayist, fluent and easygoing; his critical opinions are solid and sensible, though often half-informed. He wrote a novel, Sir Ralph Esher (1832), and a very readable book on London called The Town (1848). Hunt is not a genius, but he is a useful and amiable second-rate writer.
7. James Hogg (1770–1835). Hogg became known to the world as “the Ettrick Shepherd,” for he was born of a shepherd’s family in the valley of the Ettrick, in Selkirkshire. He was a man of much natural ability, and from his infancy was an eager listener to the songs and ballads of his district. He was introduced to Walter Scott (1802) while the latter was collecting the Border minstrelsy, and by Scott he was supported both as a literary man and as a farmer. Many of his admirers assisted him in the acquisition of a sheep-farm, but Hogg proved to be a poor farmer. He was known to most of the members of the Scottish literary circle, but his shiftless and unmanageable disposition alienated most of his friends. He died in his native district.
Hogg had little education and very little sense of discrimination, so that much of his poetry is very poor indeed. Sometimes, however, his native talent prevails, and he writes such poems as Kilmeny and When the Kye comes Hame. The latter is a lyric resembling those of Burns in its humor and simple appeal. In Kilmeny (in The Queen’s Wake) he achieves what is commonly held to be the true Celtic note: the eerie description of elves and the gloaming, and murmuring and musical echoes of things half seen and half understood. Some of his books are The Forest Minstrel (1801), The Queen’s Wake (1813), and The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818), the last being a prose tale.
8. Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849). Elliott was born at Masborough, in Yorkshire, and worked as an iron-founder. The struggles of the poor, oppressed by the Corn Laws, were early borne in upon him, and his poetical gift was used in a fierce challenge to the existing system. Like Crabbe, he devoted himself to the cause of the poor; and it is a tribute to his merit as a poet that, in spite of his bristling assertiveness, he produced some work of real value. He became known as the “Corn Law Rhymer,” and he lived to see the abolition of the laws that he had always attacked.
His best book is Corn Law Rhymes (1830), which includes the powerful and somber Battle-song. This poem is a kind of anthem for the poor, and breathes a spirit of fierce unrest.
9. Felicia Hemans (1793–1835). Mrs. Hemans’s maiden name was Browne, and she was born at Liverpool. Later she removed to Wales, where a large part of her life was spent. At the age of fifteen she began to write poetry, and persisted in the habit all her life. She married somewhat unhappily, but she lived to be a highly popular poetess, and produced a large amount of work. She died in Dublin.
Nobody can call Mrs. Hemans a great poetess, but her verses are facile and fairly melodious, and she can give simple themes a simple setting. One can respect the genuine quality of her emotions, and the zeal with which she expressed them. Some of her better lyrics—for example, The Stately Homes of England, The Graves of a Household, and The Pilgrim Fathers—are in their limited fashion well done.
10. Thomas Hood (1799–1845). Hood was a native of London, and became a partner in a book-selling firm. He took to a literary career, and contributed to many periodicals, including The London Magazine. For a time he edited The New Monthly Magazine, but he was much troubled by illness, and died prematurely.
Hood first gained notoriety with some humorous poems, published under the title of Whims and Oddities (1826). To modern taste the humor is rather cheap, for it consists largely of verbal quibblings, such as the free use of the pun. It seemed to be acceptable to the public of the time, for the book had much success. Other volumes in the same vein were The Comic Annual, Up the Rhine (1839), and Whimsicalities (1843). Hood, in spite of his smartness, could not keep free of vulgarity, and his wit often jars. As a kind of tragic relief Hood sometimes produced poems of a tearful intensity, such as The Death-bed and The Bridge of Sighs. One could believe that his grief was genuine if he did not dwell so much upon it. His Song of the Shirt, first published in Punch in 1845, is rather a versified political pamphlet than a real poem, but it is powerful verse, and one can forgive much on account of the motive, which was to help the sweated sempstress. His Dream of Eugene Aram (1829) was an attempt at the horrible, and was long a bravura piece for aspiring elocutionists. It is a middling specimen of poetical rhetoric.
11. John Clare (1793–1864) was a true peasant poet, and in his day he had a great popularity. After his death his works fell into neglect, but recently (1920) a reissue of his poems, some of them new to the public, has recalled attention to the considerable value of much that he wrote. He was born near Peterborough, his father being a cripple and a pauper. At the age of thirteen he saved sufficient money to buy a copy of The Seasons, which fired his poetic ability. His Collection of Original Trifles (1817) attracted notice, and his Poems (1820) was much praised. The patronage of rich admirers put him above poverty, but a tendency to insanity developed, and, like Christopher Smart, he died in a madhouse.
Clare’s poems are seen at their best when they deal with simple rustic themes, and then they are quite charming. He rejoices in the ways of animals and insects. He is not a great poet, but there are many poets with flaunting credentials who have less claims to consideration than he.
12. James Smith (1775–1837) and Horace Smith (1779–1849), two brothers, collaborated in the production of a work that was one of the “hits” of the period. This book was Rejected Addresses (1812). When the Drury Lane Theatre was burned down and rebuilt the management offered a prize for the best poem to be recited on the opening night. The Smiths hit on the idea of making parodies of the notable poets of the time and pretending that they were the rejected poems of the writers mentioned. The result is the classical collection of parodies in English. Scott, Wordsworth, and other well-known authors are imitated, usually with much cleverness. The Wordsworth poem is recited by Nancy Lake, a girl of eight, who is drawn upon the stage in a perambulator: