In No doubt whatever that his book contains a much truer picture of the "regal realities" of King Arthur's times than do the writings of Sir Thomas Malory and of Tennyson. Headlong Hall, written earlier than Nightmare Abbey and The Misfortunes of Elphin, and Crotchet Castle, written much later than they, are just as jovial, just as pointedly sharp in their attack upon fads and crazes, and just as superbly interesting as the books to which we have given more attention. Early nineteenth-century literature in America. America at the beginning of the nineteenth century there was at least one man who was giving his life exclusively to literature, Charles Brockden Brown. By 1802 Brown had produced seven romances, after the manner of the contemporary school of terror in England. Wieland; or The Transformation and Ormond; or The Secret Witness are titles of two of them, and are sufficient by title to suggest the nature of their contents. Before 1820 Washington Irving had written his Knickerbocker History of New York and the Sketch-Book, the latter containing Rip Van Winkle, The Spectre Bridegroom, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Irving "is not an American Goldsmith; he is an Anglo-Saxon Irving." Neither was James Fenimore Cooper an American Scott; he was an Anglo-Saxon Cooper. Cooper's The Spy, The Pilot, and most of the LeatherStocking Tales were published before 1837, the date ending this period. They hardly need describing to an American boy, nor to many English boys, for that matter. The New York editor, William Cullen Bryant, published most of his best poems before 1825, Thanatopsis and To a Water Fowl being published in The North American Review in 1817 and 1818, respectively. By 1837 Poe had published his earlier poems and a few of his short-stories, Berenice, probably the first short-story almost perfectly employing the modern technique, being printed in 1835. Edward Coate Pinkney's A Health, so well known for its lines beginning I fill this cup to one made up of loveliness alone, was written during this period. Pinkney and Poe were both Southern poets. It will be seen that the literature of the United States was thus far produced in either New York or the South. In the last year of this period, however, the literary geography was changed, and New England became prominent. In 1837 appeared the first series of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, and in that same year Emerson delivered the declaration of American intellectual independence in his stirring Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard University on The American Scholar. Nothing of any great value had come from New England previous to that year, unless we except Old Ironsides and The Last Leaf, by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Unquestionably Cooper, Hawthorne, and Poe are worthy of comparison with their contemporaries in the Old World, Hawthorne being one of the greatest novelists of any country or time; but we can merely mention them in a book devoted chiefly to the literature of England. QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Discuss the general characteristics of the nineteenth-century life and thought. 2. Give the dates marking off the periods of its literature. 3. What features especially characterize the first period? 4. Who were the great poets of the first period of the nineteenth century, and who its great novelists? 5. Discuss the effects of the French Revolution upon English poets. 6. How would you distinguish the poetic work of Coleridge from that of Wordsworth, and how that of Scott from both of them? 7. How distinguish the work of Byron from that of Shelley, and that of Keats from each of the other two? 8. What poem by Shelley do you like best? What makes you like it better than others by him? 9. Memorize Keats's The Human Seasons; also the stanzas of The Eve of Saint Agnes which you like best. 10. What were the chief influences molding the work of Shelley? of Keats? 11. Why could not the pictures in Keats's La Belle Dame Sans Merci be painted? 12. Compare the work of Jane Austen with that of Sir Walter Scott. 13. Ivanhoe: (a) Compare the first chapter with the opening chapter of Waverley; with the opening chapter of Quentin Durward. (b) Draw a plan of the lists from the description in Chapter VII. (c) Of Chapters XII, XIII, and XXIX, which do you think the best? Give your reasons. (d) Find as many passages as you can illustrating the differences between Saxon and Norman. (e) Point out some differences between conversation in fiction and conversation in actual life. (f) In landscape description do you think Scott is better in his novels or in his poems? (g) What is the most picturesque incident in Ivanhoe? 14. Commit to memory one of the poems of Thomas Campbell, preferably one of his patriotic poems. 15. Which of the essays of Charles Lamb is your favorite? Why? 16. Name the other essayists of the period; also three of the lesser novelists. 17. Who were the leading writers in America before 1837? What have you already read of their writings? READING LIST FOR THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH, SCOTT, POETRY Christabel and Other Poems. Edited by Hannaford Bennett. Ode on Intimations of Immortality, The Solitary Reaper, Ode to Duty. edited by Clara L. Thomson. The Lady of the Lake. Edited by L. DuPont Syle. SHELLEY, KEATS, In The Cloud, To a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind. Poems by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, edited by James Webber Linn. Isabella, The Eve of Saint Agnes, Ode on a Grecian Urn, La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In Poems, edited by Arlo Bates. LAMB, DE QUINCEY, cellaneous Essays. "Winston's Illustrated Handy A Dissertation upon Roast Pig, Dream Children. Joan of Arc, The English Mail-Coach. Edited by J. M. Hart. DICKENS, JANE AUSTEN, SCOTT, MARRYAT, JANE PORTER, NOVEL Pickwick Papers. "Everyman's Library." (See next Pride and Prejudice. Winston's "Illustrated Handy Waverley, Ivanhoe, Quentin Durward, Rob Roy, The BULWER LYTTON, The Last Days of Pompeii, Rienzi. "Everyman's PEACOCK, Library." The Misfortunes of Elphin, with Introduction by George Saintsbury. BIOGRAPHY SOUTHEY, Life of Nelson. Edited by Frederick H. Law. HELPFUL BOOKS ON THE PERIOD A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, George Saintsbury. (The Macmillan Company.) The French Revolution and English Literature, Edward Dowden. (Scrib ner's.) English Poetry from Blake to Browning, W. Macneale Dixon. (Methuen & Co.) The Age of Wordsworth, C. H. Herford. (George Bell & Sons.) The French Revolution and the English Poets, A. E. Hancock. (Henry Holt & Co.) Shelley, Godwin, and Their Circle, H. N. Brailsford. (Henry Holt & Co.) History of English Literature and of the English Language, pages 435 to 520, George L. Craik. (Griffin, Bohn, & Co.) See also Bibliography on The Novel, in Chapter IX, page 378. |