1854), an admirable biographer-witness his lives of Scott, 1836--8, Burns, 1828, and Napoleon, 1829. Previous to his assumption of the editorship of the Quarterly, Lockhart had been one of the chief writers in Blackwood's Magazine (established in 1817), a periodical which may fairly claim to be the ancestor of all the shoal of modern monthlies. Galt, Mrs. Hemans, Michael Scott, and some other writers already mentioned contributed to its pages. But the soul of 'Maga,' as it was familiarly termed, was the famous author of the Isle of Palms, 1812, the City of the Plague, 1816, and the Christopher North' of the Noctes Ambrosianæ (1822–35), John Wilson (1785-1854), a writer of strange eloquence and dominant power. In mentioning these works of Professor Wilson, it may be noted that some of the writers named above are also celebrated by works other than those contributed to the foregoing periodicals. Sydney Smith, one of the keenest and frankest of English wits, wrote an admirable book on the Catholics, entitled Peter Plymley's Letters, 1808. Brougham, a Hercules of versatility, was the author of a long list of political, biographical, and scientific works, and Gifford edited some of the Elizabethan playwrights. Lockhart and Wilson both wrote novels of Scottish life and manners. 130. The Dramatic Writers.-The most illustrious names in this branch of literature during the period under review are those of Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), J. Sheridan Knowles (1784-1862), and Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854). Only two of Miss Baillie's plays on the passions, De Montfort and Hatred, were produced on the stage-a fact which points to their suitability for the cabinet rather than the footlights. On the contrary, Virginius, 1820, The Hunchback, 1832, The Wife, 1833, The Lovechase, 1837, and others by Knowles still hold the boards. Of the plays of Talfourd, Ion, a tragedy upon the Greek models, is the best. Reference has already been made to the Remorse of Coleridge. Mrs. Cowley ('Anna Maria') is the author of a sprightly comedy, the Belle's Stratagem; Miss Mitford and Miss Edgeworth both produced plays; and Monk Lewis was a fertile dramatist, whose Rolla is his best remembered work. One play of John Tobin (1770-1804), the Honeymoon, 1805, must not be forgotten. But the dramatic growths of this chapter are barren as compared with some of those which precede it-a circumstance as significant as it is regrettable. CHAPTER VIII. THE MODERN AGE. [DECEASED AUTHORS.] 1835-1875. 181. SUMMARY OF THE PERIOD.-132. THE POETS: HOOD.-133. MRS. BROWNING. -134. OTHER POETS: MISS PROCTER, AYTOUN, SMITH, CLOUGH.-135. THE NOVELISTS: LYTTON, DICKENS, THACKERAY, LEVER, MRS. NICHOLLS, MRS. GASKELL, ETC.-136. THE HISTORIANS: MACAULAY, G. C. LEWIS, GROTE, ALISON, MILMAN, BUCKLE.-137. THE PHILOSOPHERS: HAMILTON, J. 8. MILL.-138. THE THEOLOGIANS.—139. THE SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.-140. OTHER PROSE WRITERS: DE QUINCEY.-141. THE DRAMATIC WRITERS. 131. Summary of the Period.-Upon the threshold of these, our concluding chapters, it will perhaps be judicious at the outset to direct the reader's attention to the limitation of their range expressed by the words placed in brackets under the title. Most of the distinguished writers of this fast-waning century have already gone over to the great majority, although some, we hasten to add, still remain with us. Dealing, for divers reasons-of which it is sufficient to indicate the poverty of biographical material and the difficulties of contemporary criticism-with 'deceased' authors only, it will be obvious that the sketch of the 'Modern Age' comprised in these chapters must of necessity be inadequate and imperfect. And, even with regard to deceased authors, it is not always possible to separate the measured utterance of just criticism from that' full voice which circles round the grave,' or to select only those estimates which are unbiassed by community of opinion or uncoloured by personal enthusiasm. In the systematic labours of intelligent German and French critics, who, it has often been observed, regard our contemporaries with something of the eyes with which they will be regarded by our descendants, we might perhaps trace out the germs of the judgment which is ultimately to be passed upon the Wordsworths and Shelleys, the Smolletts and Fieldings of our day. But an investigation such as this would involve is wholly beyond the province of the present work; and, in the succeeding pages, we shall confine ourselves to reproducing the , views and opinions of native critics, at the same time taking a somewhat larger license of quotation than we have permitted ourselves when dealing with remoter periods. The consideration of the works of two of the greatest poets of the Victorian age, Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, is reserved for our concluding chapter, for we rejoice to recall that it is only during the last decade that their names have been among those of which this volume treats. So, too, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Christina, his sister; while William Morris and Coventry Patmore have still more recently passed from us. The poets, therefore, who fall within the scope of the present chapter are but few, the chief among them being Thomas Hood and Mrs. Browning. In the department of prose fiction-a department in which this age rivals the great masterpieces of the eighteenth century-the losses have been more considerable. Although in 1875 the British Novelist was still represented by more than one eminent writer and a host of minor authors, we had no longer the keen satire and polished style of Thackeray, the exuberant vivacity and sentiment of Dickens, the scholarly versatility of Lytton, or the dashing narrative of Lever. Nor had we the fervid imagination of Charlotte Brontë, or the delightful domestic painting of Elizabeth Gaskell. In History, too, our wealth had been great, and our losses also great. Macaulay, Grote, Cornewall Lewis, Alison, Milman, Buckle, had already gone from among us, and come, therefore, within the range of this chapter. In two of these cases the loss was heightened by the fact that death cut short the cherished labour of the author's life. The great Histories of Macaulay and Buckle are fragments, though fragments from which, as from the ruined arc of some uncompleted Cyclopean wall, the extent of the ground it was intended to enclose may still be conjectured. In the ranks of the Philosophers a great breach had been made by the disappearance of one of the foremost of modern teachers, John Stuart Mill. But we must abridge a catalogue which would grow too long. The names of Hamilton and Maurice-of Whewell, Murchison and Herschel-of Hugh Miller, of Mrs. Somerville— of De Quincey and Mrs. Jameson, are but a few of those deceased authors who are included in these forty years of the 'Modern Age.' 132. The Poets: Hood.-Some of the drollest and most mirthprovoking verse of this century, and some of the most touching and pathetic poetry ever written, proceeded from the pen of the author of the Song of the Shirt (which first appeared in Punch in 1843) and the Dream of Eugene Aram, 1829. Thomas Hood (1799-1845) was at once an engaging writer and a genial and lovable man. His chief works, in chronological order, are Odes and Addresses to Great People; Whims and Oddities, 1826; National Tales, 1827; the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, and other Poems, 1828; the Comic Annual, 1830-42; Tynley Hall, a novel, 1834; Up the Rhine, 1840; Poems, 1846; Poems of Wit and Humour, 1847. In most of Hood's works, even in his puns and levities, there is a "spirit of good" directed to some kindly or philanthropic object. He had serious and mournful jests, which were the more effective from their strange and unexpected combinations. Those who came to laugh at folly remained to sympathise with want and suffering. Tho "various pen" of Hood, said Douglas Jerrold, "touched alike the springs of laughter and the sources of tears." Charles Lamb said Hood carried two faces under his namesake, a tragic one and a comic.' * 133. Mrs. Browning.-But the greatest name among the poets of the present chapter is that of a woman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 †-1861). Delicate health as a child, aggravated by the mental shock caused by the sudden death of her brother from drowning, condemned Miss Barrett to a darkened room and the life of an invalid. Yet in this solitude she ranged through all literature, and thence sent forth the splendid emotional poetry, quivering with that humanity and impatience of wrong which are marked characteristics of her powerful genius. One of her earliest works was an Essay on Mind (in heroics) and other poems, written in 1826. She was an accomplished linguist and familiar with the Greek and Latin classics —especially the former, her keen appreciation of which appears in the lines entitled Wine of Cyprus, addressed to her friend, the blind Hellenist, Hugh Stuart Boyd: 'Oh, our Eschylus, the thunderous, How he drove the bolted breath Through the cloud, to wedge it ponderous In the gnarled oak beneath! Oh, our Sophocles, the royal, Who was born to monarch's place, And who made the whole world loyal, Our Euripides, the human, With his droppings of warm tears, And our Pindar's shining goals!- Of the wine that's meant for souls.' t Chambers's Cyclop. of Eng. Lit., ii. 578; r. also the charming Memorials of Thomas Hood, by his Son and Daughter, 1860. † Mrs. Browning was born March 6, 1806 (not 1809), at Coxhoe Hall, Co. Durham. Cf. R. Browning's Note in Vol. I. of Mrs. Browning's Works, ed. 1889-90. Her next work (1833)-'an early failure' she terms it-was the afterwards re-written translation of Prometheus Bound; while in 1838 appeared Seraphim, and other Poems. The Cry of the Children, printed in Blackwood (1843), made a great stir, and added interest to the first collected edition of Poems (1844), which contained much new verse. Among this was Lady Geraldine's Courtship, with its well-known allusion to ROBERT BROWNING, whom she married in 1846. After her marriage Mrs. Browning settled in Italy, and, as a result of the Italian Revolutions of 1848 and 1849, published her Casa Guidi Windows, 1851, followed in 1860 by another work as earnestly espousing the Italian cause, Poems before Congress. Previous to this had appeared her masterpiece, Aurora Leigh, 1857, a blank verse poem abounding in autobiography, into which, we are told in the preface, 'her highest convictions upon Life and Art had entered.' This Mr. Ruskin considered the greatest poem of the century. 134. Other Poets.-Disregarding chronological order for the moment, we mention the only other of the poets belonging to this chapter who can be at all compared with Mrs. Browning, Adelaide Ann Procter (1825-64), the daughter of Barry Cornwall' (B. W. Procter), and the author of Legends and Lyrics, 1858; Second Series, 1860. Miss Procter's poems have an individual beauty and original grace of fancy which fully entitle them to a distinct place in English poetry. David Macbeth Moir (1798-1851), William Edmonstoune Aytoun (1813–1865), and Alexander Smith (1830-67), were Scotch poets. Moir, the ‘Delta' of Blackwood's Magazine, was the author of many delicate and beautiful pieces. He also wrote the Life of Mansie Wauch, Tailor in Dalkeith, 1828, a very humorous work, and a series of excellent Lectures on the Poetical Literature of the Last Half-Century, 1851. Aytoun, who succeeded Moir as Professor of Literature and Belles Lettres in the University of Edinburgh, was for some years editor of Blackwood, and was the author of some spirited ballads entitled Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, 1849; also of Firmilian, a Spasmodic Tragedy, by T. Percy Jones,' 1854, in which some modern forms of poetry are satirised; Bothwell, a Poem, 1856, &c. To Aytoun also we owe many of the parodies in the 'Bon Gaultier' Book of Ballads, in which his colleague was Sir Theodore Martin, the gifted translator of Goethe, Horace, Catullus, and the Vita Nuova of Dante. Alexander Smith's works are respectively entitled Poems, 1853; City Poems, 1857; and Edwin of Deira, 1861. He was also the author of a couple of novels, and of Dreamthorp, 1863, |