BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 409 links that logically connect these successive topics? Analyze the second lecture. What is its relation to the first? What is its final purpose? What do you think of the part given to woman in the social order? What use is made of "books" in the argument? Do you accept the statements regarding Shakespeare's heroes and heroines? Is it not odd that Ruskin does not produce George Eliot among his witnesses? What is Ruskin's plan for the education of women? Do you agree with him that women should not undertake the study of theology? How does the essayist differentiate the girl's nature from the boy's — woman's work from man's? The Queen of the Air is suggested as the next volume for study. Mrs. Hufford's analysis of the work will be found very helpful in keeping the relations of the various parts. distinct. Notice the beautiful descriptive paragraphs so numerous in these essays; study the diction closely, the marvelous significance of words, the startling effectiveness of phrase. Notice also the didactic element, the sermonizing quality, in the work. The three essays taken from Unto this Last and the six letters from Fors Clavigera should be read as illustrating Ruskin's views upon economic problems. The Crown of Wild Olive should be read by every young man; Ethics of the Dust by every young woman. Selections, at least, from Modern Painters and Stones of Venice must be read by all who would know of Ruskin as the great word artist of our language and be familiar with his famous interpretations of nature and art. His wonderful descriptive power, his splendor of diction, his impetuous eloquence, are to be found in these works as nowhere else. The authoritative Life of Ruskin is that by W. G. Collingwood (2 vols.) The Ruskin in the English Brief BibliMen of Letters Series is by Frederick Harrison. ography. Critical studies are numerous; the following are most helpful: John Ruskin, His Life and Teaching, by J. R. Mather; The Work of John Ruskin, by Charles Waldstein; and John Ruskin, Social Reformer, by J. A. Hobson. John Ruskin (personal reminiscences), by M. H. Spielmann, and the chapter on Ruskin in Frederick Harrison's Tennyson, Ruskin, and Other Literary Estimates, are recent and valuable. A beautifully illustrated article upon Ruskin as an Artist, by M. H. Spielmann, in Scribner's Magazine for December, 1898, will be especially interesting. Critical articles of some value were published by Julia Wedgewood, in the Contemporary Review, March, 1900; by W. C. Brownell, in Scribner's Magazine, April, 1900; and by W. P. P. Longfellow, in the Forum, May, 1900. A bitterly hostile criticism appeared in Blackwood's for March of the same year. Ruskin's picturesque account of his own life in Præterita must not be overlooked. Matthew 1822-88. In the criticism of life and conduct, the essays of Matthew Arnold hold an important place. Son of the famous Arnold of Rugby, a graduate of that school and of Oxford, Matthew Arnold has won distinction as an apostle of Culture, as a means of attaining the ideal type. The tone of his criticism has been purely intellectual, often supercilious, and more likely to awaken prejudice than popularity. The literary quality of his work places him with the best of our prose writers. His style is vivacious, without enthusiasm, terse and luminous. His manner is severely classical, as far as possible removed from the rough impetuosity of Carlyle and the ornate eloquence of Macaulay or Ruskin. An undertone of skepticism and despondency runs through all of Arnold's work; but his impartiality of judgment, his keen, passionless intellect, his almost infallible taste, make his criticism in the highest degree valuable. His Essays in Criticism (1865), including the essay on The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, furnished a model in this field of literary art. Besides this volume and a second series of Essays in Criticism WALTER PATER 411 (1888), Arnold's principal prose works are Culture and Anarchy (1869), Literature and Dogma (1873), and the Discourses in America (1885). Matthew Arnold holds high rank, also, among the Victorian poets; the same qualities characterizing his poetry as characterize his prose, the skepticism and the melancholy giving a tone more impressively pessimistic to the former. His poems are the finest expressions of the purely classic spirit in our literature. The Scholar Gypsy, Thyrsis (like Adonais, an elegy upon the death of a poet in this instance Arthur Hugh Clough), the Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, and the epic of Sohrab and Rustum are the best examples of his verse. Arnold was born at Laleham in Middlesex. He was for a long period Inspector of Schools and actively employed in the improvement of the public school system of England. For ten years (1857-67) he filled the chair of poetry at Oxford. He visited America (1883-84) and lectured in several cities, but was not very sympathetically received. 1839-94. Like Arnolda pronounced classicist in literary taste-Walter Pater stands high among re- Walter cent prose writers. His volume of literary Pater, criticism, entitled Appreciations, with an Essay on Style (1889), suggests a distinct resemblance to the critical methods of Arnold. The Imaginary Portraits (1887) remind us of Landor's Conversations, although entirely original in conception and performance. Pater's most popular work, Marius the Epicurean, is a remarkable portraiture of pagan character. It is the fictitious biography of a Roman youth who, interested in the philosophies of his time, passes through many experiences mentally and spiritually, at last coming in contact with the adherents of the new faith. His other works include studies of The Re naissance, Plato and Platonism, a series of Greek Studies, and a volume of miscellaneous essays. The essayist lived a secluded life largely within the University precincts (he was a fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford), devoting himself to study and the perfection of his exquisite style. VI. MATURITY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL: DICKENS, THACKERAY, GEORGE ELIOT. Among the literary movements of the past century there is none more interesting or more significant than that which had its climax in the art of three great novelists, whose common power in the delineation of life and the portrayal of character may well be taken as the highest expression yet made of the possibilities that lie in the field of prose fiction. The evolution of the modern novel is an impressive proof of our highly developed interest in the problems and struggles of real life. Not only has this form of imaginative composition been employed to portray manners, temperaments, and types; it has become in the hands of thoughtful men and women a valuable instrument for the illustration of ideas upon every conceivable subject, in the fields of sociology, commerce, religion, politics, and even of medicine; until at the close of the old century and the beginning of the new, the novel appears as the chief form of literary expression, its scope bounded only by the fundamental principles of all imaginative art, and with a hold upon the public interest as noteworthy as the wonderful fertility manifested in its production. The history of English fiction is a record of two contending influences: the preference for idealization in the delineation of life, and the preference for a faithful report of close observation and analysis; the former is illustrated in the methods of the roman Tendencies. ticists, the latter in those of the realists. While the terms romanticism and realism are some- The Contimes rather broadly used, especially in the trasted later classification of novelists, the two tendencies indicated are generally clear: the realism of the eighteenth century novelists is one thing; the romanticism of Scott is obviously another. The method of each group is legitimate, and the work of each school is excellent in its own degree. "We are by nature both realists and idealists," says Cross,1 "delighting in the long run about equally in the representation of life somewhat as it is and as it is dreamed to be. There is accordingly no time in which art does not to some extent minister to both instincts of human nature. But in one period the ideal is in the ascendency; in another the real." Maria 1767-1849. At the very beginning of the century there were not wanting experiments in the realistic study of life. Miss Edgeworth was the author of some Edgeworth, admirable Irish tales in which she endeavored to portray the actual condition of the Irish peasantry as she had observed it. Her Castle Rackrent (1800) and The Absentee (1812) are the best examples of her work. Three later novels - Leonora, Patronage, Belinda- represent a serious attempt to reproduce types in fashionable life. These tales were told with a moral purpose in view. 1775-1817. By far the most clever realist of that day was Jane Austen, who, although mockingly referred to Jane as "poor little Jane" by certain critics of Austen, our own time, has nevertheless more than held her own with novel readers even of the present. The life of this gifted woman was most simple and most quiet. Her home was a village rectory in Hamp 1 Wilbur L. Cross, The Development of the English Novel (Macmillan). |