beyond it, and provides for future needs, at the same time leading on towards the better day. Browning says: "'Tis in the advance of individual minds That the slow crowd should ground their expectation And this advance he shows, like Wordsworth, can only be carried on by each one striving to do his duty in the present. Mrs. Browning, the poetess of the nineteenth century, again teaches, in her great poem "Aurora Leigh," that there is hope for the world's future in God's love, while we do our part-form the noblest conceptions of the very highest ideal, and then work humbly for its realisation: "And work all silently 6 And simply,' he returned, as God does all : Distort our nature never for our work, Nor count our right hands stronger for being hoofs. No perfect manners without Christian souls; The Christ Himself had been no lawgiver, Unless He had given the life, too, with the law.'" Among the living poets there are younger men, not yet risen perhaps to the full height of their powers, of whom the history of English Literature will speak hereafter. When the times need them, these will come forward and do their work, as faithfully and lastingly as our heroes of the past. CHAPTER XXIII. SOME PROSE WRITERS OF THE EARLIER YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. WE have seen the influence of the French Revolution over the poetry of the earlier years of the nineteenth century, and how out of the ideas it spread and the lessons it taught have come some of the deeper truths, which are the nourishment of the best work of the present day. We must now see how our great prose writers, those whose writings have laid the deepest hold upon the minds and hearts of their fellow-men, have been as faithful as the poets in seeking to work out the new truth, and to make it a living power in action. When we speak of new truth, we mean truth new to the world of the eighteenth century; for, as we have seen before, all the noble ideas contained in the first aims of the French Revolution had long lain in the very heart of Christianity, unsuspected even by its followers. As we begin the nineteenth century, the first change we notice in our prose writers is the influence of the revival of literature which was taking place in Germany. The breaking-up of the French influence there was followed by a reaction of strong feeling, and this showed itself often in the exaggerated form of a morbid, sickly sentimentality. Something of this passed into English literature and tinged it for a while, but it was extinguished in the atmosphere of healthy English common-sense. The other influence from Germany we have already noticed, in the love for the free imagination of the old German ballads and legends. This took a more lasting hold on English literature, and found expression in one of our greatest English romance writers, Sir Walter Scott. We include him among the prose writers, because by far the larger number of his romances are in prose, and though some are metrical, the difference is one of outward form rather than of substance. Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh on the same day as Napoleon I., the 15th of August, 1771. When he was three years old he became lame, and, being unable to run about like other children, amused himself in reading fairy-stories, old Scotch ballads, histories, and legends of the past. His imagination was constantly in exercise, and he lived in a very world of romance. If he saw an old castle or battle-field, he at once filled it with all the living characters of the old world; and delighted his companions with stories of barons and knights and ladies of the days of chivalry. He was brought up as a lawyer, but took little interest in his profession. He translated German ballads; and in 1805 he published a metrical romance of his own, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." This was followed in 1808 by "Marmion, a tale of Flodden Field;" in 1810 by "The Lady of the Lake;" and then two years afterwards by Rokeby." These metrical romances were necessarily short, and by the nature of their construction gave little scope for description or delineation of character, and Scott now felt his powers in both of these; so in 1814 he published a prose romance, "Waverley," a story of the last attempt of the Stuarts to regain the throne of England. It gave a bright picture of the life in Scotland at that time, conceived with the power and vividness of true genius, and drawn with the skill of a practised artist. It had a great success, though it was published anonymously. "Waverley was the first of a series of twenty-eight romances, called the "Waverley Novels," each of them illustrating human life in bygone times of special interest: such as the time of the Crusades in "Ivanhoe" and the "Talisman," the reign of Queen Elizabeth in "Kenilworth," the days of the Covenanters in "Old Mortality," and of the civil war in " Woodstock." These romances carried the imagination into the life of the past, and quickened its power, while they enlarged the range of sympathy, or the imagination of the heart, by enabling men and women of the nineteenth century to enter into the feelings of persons living in ages remote from the present and under very different conditions. Walter Scott's own life had much of the heroic in it; and he fought his battle among nineteenth century realities as bravely, and with as fine a sense of honour, as any knight in his own romances of the days of chivalry. His writings brought him in considerable wealth, and he had great delight in spending a part of this in building for himself a mansion at Abbotsford in the old Gothic style; but the expense of this was greater than he had calculated. Then he became involved in the business transactions of his publisher; and at last the publishing house failed, and Sir Walter Scott became responsible for his share of the debts. He would not, however, allow himself to be made a bankrupt, and thus freed from his liabilities, but he determined to pay his creditors, if possible, everything in full. He went into a small lodging in Edinburgh, and set to work to earn money enough to pay the whole debt. This was in 1825; five years afterwards, in 1830, he had paid a considerable portion of the amount, and still he struggled on bravely; but he was becoming weakened by intense strain, and before the close of the year he was attacked by apoplexy. He fought against ill-health and failing power a little longer, until his physicians ordered him to travel abroad, and to give up all mental work. He went on the Continent, but as he was coming down the Rhine he was seized with paralysis. He recovered sufficiently to be able to return to his much-loved Abbotsford, and there, with his family around him, and his favourite dogs at his feet, he died, on the 21st of September, 1831. Sir Walter Scott once said "that he had taught many ladies and gentlemen to write romances as well, or nearly as well, as himself." Even in his own lifetime, and afterwards, he had many followers, who wrote stories of the past, and gratified the taste for romance literature with its free play of the imagination. At the same time, the love of simplicity and reality, which we have noticed as one of the features of the Revolution era, found expression in prose as well as in poetry. Whilst Scott was writing his metrical and prose romances of the past, Jane Austen, the daughter of a clergyman, was writing, in a quiet country parsonage at Steventon, stories of every-day life in the present, and winning sympathy for just the nineteenth century men and women she saw in the common world around her. She showed in her stories, as Wordsworth did in the "Lyrical Ballads," that it is not the outside show and pomp of life which is the source of its poetry. Even the petty doings of a country town have in them the same elements as a great drama, only it requires a delicate and discerning eye to see them. Jane Austen had just this fine perception of the poetry and humour in "the daily round and common task;" and, like Wordsworth again, she made her readers feel that "the humblest flower that blows" may give "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." As we pass on into the deepening earnestness of the time, we find the love of truth and simplicity joined with some serious purpose in all the best imaginative literature of the century. Our three greatest novelists, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and George Eliot, though no longer living, scarcely yet belong to history, but we may notice how they carried on the work of the time. In all the writings of Dickens we find that wide, largehearted sympathy with humanity, and care for the individual, |