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Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1751-1816, politician and dramatist; two of his plays, "The Rivals" and "The School for Scandal," still keep the stage. Dugald Stewart, 1753-1828, Scottish metaphysician and political economist; author of "The Philosophy of the Human Mind." George Crabbe, 1754-1832, English poet; author of "The Parish Register," "The Village," and "Tales in Verse."

"Junius," unknown author of political controversial letters which for bitterness of invective and satirical severity have never been equaled in all literature. These letters appeared in the London "Public Advertiser," beginning in 1769, and continuing for about three years. They have been variously attributed to Burke, Lyttelton, and Sir Philip Francis; but in each case upon conjecture that has little substantial argument to support it.

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V

LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

THE

HE literature of our own times, the work of writers some of whom are living, and many of whom flourished but a generation ago, furnishes a study that is naturally more attractive to us than is that of the literature of earlier centuries. With the modern diffusion of intelligence among the many, has come a greater demand for reading, and books have been multiplied to meet it. American literature has come into being, and grown with the growth of our country. The editor has thought well, therefore, to devote the larger share of the pages of this book to an exhibition of contemporary letters, and especially to make a very full presentation of the writings of American authors.

Time is the test of a classic, and time has allowed authoritative judgments to be passed upon the works of earlier English writers; but it is, in the nature of things, impossible to prefigure what the criticism of the twentieth century will say of the literature of the nineteenth, or to set down now anything more than an outline of its broader characteristics. In a general way, then, it may be said that in this century the literature of our language is marked by radical newness of thought and feeling in all its departments.. Its history has been generalized out of the ruts of mere chronicle, its poetry has been liberated from tradition in subject and in form, its fiction has become introspective and reflective, the modern essayist has appeared, and the influence and spirit of science have been over all. This may be the most plainly seen in the

department of history. Gibbon's great work, from which selection was made in earlier pages, bears evidence of laborious and discriminating research. It is carefully planned and highly organized. It is, beyond dispute, a great piece of classic English prose. But it can not be regarded as contributing anything to the philosophy of history. In the more than a thousand years covered by the "Decline and Fall," Gibbon tells us much of what happened, and when and how events took place; but he scarcely attempts to explain to us the "why" of their happening. Yet this period abounded in events of decisive influence upon all later times. Gibbon really affords us no explanation of the great fact that gives his work its name. The historic spirit of our own time essays to grasp underlying causes beneath events, as is disclosed even in titles, such as "The Credibility of Early Roman History," ""The Intellectual Development of Europe," "History of European Morals," "History of the English People," etc.

In science itself men's views have steadily been widening since Newton proved that the forces which keep the planets in their orbits are identical with those familiar to us every day upon the surface of the earth. Later, Lyell showed that just such physical processes as are now going on around us would, in ages past, have brought about the changes in inorganic nature which distinguish one geological "epoch" from another. In more recent years Darwin and Wallace have shown that the living forms about us are derived, through long ages and by successive slight modifications, from others, fewer in number and simpler in organization. This great progress in science has necessarily affected all departments of thought and of the literature which is its expression.

We, to whom freedom of inquiry and of life, the achievements of science and the consequent broadening of men's views, are commonplaces, can hardly imagine

how profoundly thought was stimulated and activities were awakened by the events and consequences of the American Revolution and of the later Revolution in France. These upheavals were accompanied and followed by a universal. excitation of feeling, and the English literature of the early part of our century show's clearly that the intellectual energies of thinking men were deeply aroused. This is particularly to be seen in the poetry of that time, which is of a higher order than any that had appeared since Milton. It needs only to point to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, and Byron to make manifest how true this is. Shelley, Keats, and Campbell were other poets of the same epoch. How far the product of these minds surpassed in spirit and in style the verse of the previous age may be seen from the merest comparison; their excellence was such that one critic has ventured even further in the extreme assertion that "any comparison of the Elizabethan poetry with that of the nineteenth century would show a predilection for the mere name or dress of antiquity."

The English prose of the early part of our century was chiefly of two kinds, the novels and romances, in which field Scott was easily preeminent; and the remarkable essays which were published in the Reviews, then first established. These essays took the form of literary criticism and of speculation in social and political philosophy, and the principal writers in this department were Lamb, De Quincey, and Macaulay. Landor's best work was done in the first half of this century, as was that of Carlyle, though both of them lived and wrote much later.

Coming nearer to our own day, we find the romances of Scott succeeded by the novels of Dickens, Thackeray, and "George Eliot; " the verse of the Lake Poets by that of Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Swinburne, and Edwin Arnold; history reviving in Macaulay, Froude, Freeman, Buckle, and Green; and science opening new pages to us

in the works of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, and many others.

Ninety years ago it could hardly be said that such a thing as American literature had existence. Jonathan Edwards had discoursed profoundly upon free-will and necessity, and Jefferson upon affairs; yet with the exception of Franklin, our country had not then produced any writer who could, in strictness, be called a "man of letters." But as the century nears its close, we are able to say that there is no department of literature to which American volumes have not been added, and these of the highest worth. Bancroft, Hildreth, Prescott, and Motley in history; Fiske, Emerson, and Draper in philosophy; Dana, Gray, and Agassiz in science; Irving, Hawthorne, Cooper, and Howells in fiction; and Bryant, Poe, Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Lowell in song, - have created a literature that is American.

To this growth of a literature of our own, changes of conditions constantly going on about us, and therefore but little noticed, have greatly contributed. Every town has its newspaper and its public library; every village its common-school; every fireside its books and periodical literature. Paper-making is the chief industry of many thriving factory towns; invention has cheapened printing; in all large cities the publishing business is an important interest. Illiteracy has almost wholly disappeared. Everybody reads, and authorship thus finds both incentive and reward. With the exception of the region lying within a radius of five hundred miles of London, no other part of the world contains so many "consumers" of literature as does our own country.

The reading and study of the texts which have been. selected for the later pages of this volume must afford some view of the literature of our own times, and tend to create an appetite for whatever in it is best.

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