they remain standard authorities. Hallam was the father of the Arthur Henry Hallam (died 1833) whose death is the theme of Tennyson's" In Memoriam." Reginald Heber (1783-1826), Bishop of Calcutta, wrote several familiar hymns. Of these the best known are "By cool Siloam's shady rill "; " Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty "; and "From Greenland's icy mountains." Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was so ignorant of mathematics that he did not know the multiplication table, but so fond of books that he communicated his enthusiasm to countless readers of his prose. As a reward for calling the Prince Regent "a fat Adonis of fifty" he spent two years in jail; as a reward for his inability to add and subtract he was caricatured by Dickens in "Bleak House as Horace Skimpole. His name lives to-day chiefly as the author of " Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel," a poem with which every boy and girl should be on speaking terms. Thomas Moore 1779-1852) was the most successful Irishman of letters of the nineteenth century. In his teens he won the friendship of Robert Emmet and developed the talent for versification and the taste for music which he was afterward to combine to such advantage. At twenty-two his social talents and the publication of his translation of Anacreon made him the lion of the best London society. Though Moorish rather than Greek, these verses were not ungraceful. They were followed 1801 by "Juvenalia," the character of which is sufficiently shown by one poem: In a Lady's Book. Here is one page reserved for me, In 1803 Moore went to America, returning 1804 and 1806 publishing a volume of "Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems" as the result of his sojourn in the new world. They contain a good deal of stuff like the following translation from Martial: The most agreeable thing about this volume, however, is the fashion in which the author, in bad heroic verse modelled on Pope, abuses the United States. "Upon Columbia's rising brow," he says, "the showy smile of young presumption plays. Her bloom is poisoned and her heart decays. She's old in youth, she's blasted in her prime. She is characterized by all youth's transgression and all age's chill. Her people, poor of heart and prodigal of words, born to be slaves, and struggling to be lords, pant only for license, while they spurn control. Only brutes call that soil their home. Bears and Yankees, democrats and frogs, form one dull chaos, devoid of soul, in which all the vices of the old world are combined with all the grossness of the new." Jeffrey in "The Edinburgh Review" castigated these outbursts so severely that Moore challenged him to a duel, but happily nothing was shed but ink. The year 1807 witnessed something better. In conjunction with Sir John Stevenson, who adapted to them the music of familiar Irish airs, Moore in that year published the first number of his "Irish Melodies." These delighted the Irish without offending the English, at once attained a popularity which has proved permanent, and netted the author in all about 13,000 guineas. Some of them are still sung wherever the English language is spoken. Among these are: "Go where glory waits thee "; "Oh! breathe not his name "; " When he who adores thee has left but the name of his faults and his sorrows behind "; " The harp that once through Tara's halls "; "Let Erin remember the days of old "; " Believe me, if all those endearing young charms"; "Love's Young Dream"; "Nora Creina "; " She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps "; "O the Shamrock!"; "The Last Rose of Summer"; "The Young May Moon is Beaming, Love"; "The Time I've Lost in Wooing "; "I Saw from the Beach "; " Dear Harp of my Country "; and " Sweet Innisfallen." Among the unforgettable phrases which enrich these lovely poems are: ""Tis the last rose of summer Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone." "My only books Were woman's looks, And folly's all they've taught me.” "You may break, you may shatter, the vase if you will, "National Airs," published 1815, were much inferior to "Irish Melodies," but contained "Oft in the Stilly Night," one of Moore's most perfect lyrics. Moore in 1813 amused himself by lampooning the Prince Regent in "The Two-penny Post-Bag." In 1817, influenced by the success of Byron's Oriental tales, he published "Lalla Rookh," which brought him 3000 pounds and caused some critics to hail him as a rival of Scott and Byron. In 1827 he published a readable "Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan " and in 1830 his "Life of Byron." The latter has probably been more read and more abused than any other biography extant. Among his occasional poems are a good many clever light verses of the same character as this: "Of all speculations the market holds forth, And then sell him at that which he sets on himself." On the whole it must be said of Moore as a man that in him sincerity and rectitude formed the basis of a character at once lovable and loving; as a writer of songs he has had no equal and only two superiorsRobert Burns and William Shakespeare. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. The modern poet, Masefield, is compared to Crabbe. Read some of the poetry of each and discuss this comparison. 2. What aspect of romanticism is especially illustrated in the poetry of William Blake? 3. For what is Sir Humphry Davy famous? 4. Name some of the poems of Thomas Campbell. 5. Name four great essayists of the early nineteenth century. 6. Upon what rests the fame of Leigh Hunt, Charles Wolfe, and Robert Southey? 7. Who wrote "The Last Rose of Summer"? 8. Tell the class something of the quarrel between Southey and Byron. 9. Was the early nineteenth century an age of prose or poetry? 10. Write a five-hundred-word composition from any point of view that appeals to you upon the English literature produced between the years 1780-1830. Suggested Readings.-Any part of Crabbe's "The Village" will be found interesting; William Blake's "Tiger," "Infant Sorrow," and "The Introduction to Songs of Innocence are of an exquisite beauty; turn to an encyclopædia of poetry and read the poems selected from the work of Rogers, Campbell, Wolfe, Southey, Landor, Hunt, and Moore. De Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," and Hazlitt's The Fight" will give you an understanding of the style of these two masters of English. essay on Leigh Hunt ~Leigh Hunt CHAPTER XXXVI THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) "A kingly, a most royal soul."-Longfellow. "Hail, ye hills and heaths of Ecclefechan! 66 Hail, ye banks and braes of Craigenputtock! Jane his wife was born in Craigenputtock. She, a pearl where eye detect no speck can, These your glories be, O Craigenputtock." SCOTLAND, during the 150 years between 1750 and 1900, produced four writers who demand the attention of all students of literature. These are Robert Burns (1759-1796), greatest of peasant poets; Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), prince of romantic novelists; Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), discoverer of German literature, stylist, essayist, historian, moralist; and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), master artist. Of these Carlyle in some respects was the greatest. Certainly he was the most emphatic. Somebody has said of him, with a grain of truth, that he divided mankind into two classes, the fools and the wise, the wise being the Carlyles, the Welshes, the Aitkens, and Edward Irving, the fools all the rest of the human race. He was born at Ecclefechan. His remote ancestors were tough border fighters. When asked if any of them had been hanged, he is said to have replied that some of them no doubt deserved to be. His grandfather was a carpenter. His uncles and father were known as the five fighting masons, "pithy, bitter-speaking bodies and awful fighters." His father he considered one of the most interesting men he had known, of great natural endowment, gifted with the power of making word pictures, emphatic beyond all men yet in anger not needing the aid of oaths to smite the heart, scrupulously truthful, intolerant of clatter, afraid of no man, fearful of God, a man who could not be freely loved but who commanded respect. Let me write |