Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

James II; it is saturated with the joy of open air and adventure; and John Ridd, its hero, is imperishable. The book, in short, should be read by everybody. It has become the standard guide-book to Devonshire, and, as somebody has said, is as good as Devonshire cream.

William Black (1841-1898) was a copious novelist. "A Princess of Thule" 1873, with its pictures of Hebridean sunsets and

[graphic][merged small]

scenery, its quaint Gaelic English, and its exquisite heroine is probably his best book. To the student of literature "Judith Shakespeare" 1884, inasmuch as it has Shakespeare himself as one of the characters, is apt to be more interesting.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), along with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, about 1850 founded what is known

as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, their intention being to restore to painting some of the religious intensity of the early Italian artists. This purpose, however, found a finer and truer expression in Rossetti's poetry than in his pictures. His life indeed may be said to have been devoted equally to painting and poetry. In 1870 he published a volume called " Poems "; in 1874 " Dante and His Circle," a book of translations remarkable for their fidelity to the original; and in 1881 "Ballads and Sonnets." These volumes contain much imaginative writing of a high order. For example:

"From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:

One thing then learnt remains to me,-
The woodspurge has a cup of three.

"Our mother rose from where she sat:
Her needles, as she laid them down,
Met lightly, and her silken gown
Settled; no other noise than that."

"From the fixed place of Heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce
Through all the worlds."

William Morris (1834-1896) was, like Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite, and like him did not confine his efforts to literature. As a political reformer he did much to further the comfort and secure the rights of workingmen; as an artist he exercised a large influence upon the decoration of houses; his work as a designer of furniture, most familiar in America through the Morris-chair, was beneficent; and as a printer he restored to British and American typography some of the distinction which characterized the work of the earliest and best days of the art. His most famous poem is "The Earthly Paradise," a collection of pieces in which twelve classic legends are alternated with twelve mediæval tales, the whole being bound together by an introduction and a series of little masterpieces called "Poems of the Months." Equally fine is his epic "Sigurd the Volsung." He also produced translations of "The Æneid," "The Odyssey," and "Beowulf." In prose he wrote extensively, his work including controversy, translations, and romance.

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909) was descended from an admiral and an earl, passed his youth in splendor on the Isle of

Wight, was at Eton from twelve to seventeen, and spent his years 1856-1860 at Oxford. In the latter year he published "The Queen Mother" and "Rosamond," two plays on the Shakespearean model.

[graphic][merged small]

In 1861 he visited Italy, where the most important sight he saw was Walter Savage Landor. Four years later the publication of " Atalanta in Calydon," a tragedy of great power and beauty written on the

Greek model, placed him in the foremost files of fame. "Chastelard," the first of three plays dealing with Mary Stuart, appeared 1866, and in the same year " Poems and Ballads " made half London howl and all London read. Some of the verses in this volume vie with Shelley's in the way they sing themselves. One critic calls them fairy cobwebs of song spun out of rainbow film and moonshot mist. At all events, they won for him the ear of the world and the intimate friendship of Rossetti, Morris, Meredith, Burne-Jones, Whistler, and Watts Dunton. Meanwhile the Italians were fighting for freedom and Swinburne's passion for liberty led him to write in their behalf " A Song of Italy " 1870 and "Songs before Sunrise " 1877. The latter has been called a terrible hymnal of revolution. "Bothwell" 1874 and " Mary Stuart " 1881 completed his great Stuart trilogy. In "Erectheus" 1876 he once more essayed to write a tragedy on Greek models and succeeded in producing perhaps the most wonderful of his poems. In 1879 he settled at The Pines, Putney Hill, in order to be with Theodore Watts Dunton, and here the two dwelt for thirty years in perfect amity. Their favorite pastimes came to be walking and swimming. His next poem, by some thought to be his best, was "Tristram of Lyonesse " 1882, which he thus inscribed: "To my best friend, Theodore Watts, I dedicate in this book the best I have to give him." In addition to the works already mentioned Swinburne published ten volumes of verse and four plays, "Marino Faliero" 1885, "Locrine" 1887, "The Sisters" 1892, and "Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards " 1899. His prose works are also voluminous. They deal mostly with themes of literary criticism. Somebody says they are all air and fire, passionately kind and angry, utterly poetical, and of incalculable value as interpretations of poetry. Indeed, as Tennyson said, Swinburne was a reed through which all things blew into poetry. Though he lacked the conciseness, the directness, and the brevity that characterize the greatest artists, he has left a mass of great verse. His place among the masters of English song is secure. How secure it is may be faintly guessed from a few of his lines and stanzas:

"Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers."
-Laus Veneris.

"The wind's wet wings and fingers drip with rain."

"Earth is not spoilt for a single shower,
But the rain had ruined the ungrown corn."
-The Triumph of Time.

"If love were what the rose is,

And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields, or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is

And I were like the leaf."

-A Match. "In the teeth of the hard glad weather, In the blown wet face of the sea."'

66

[ocr errors]

-A Song in Time of Order. 1852. 'No thorns go so deep as a rose's."

-Dolores.

"And a bird overhead sang Follow,
And a bird to the right sang Here;
And the arch of the leaves was hollow,
And the meaning of May was clear."
-An Interlude.

"When the hounds of Spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain;
And the brown bright nightingale amorous
Is half assuaged for Itylus,

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces,
The tongueless vigil and all the pain."

-Atalanta in Calydon.

"Before the beginning of years

There came to the making of man

Time, with a gift of tears,

Grief, with a glass that ran;

Pleasure with pain for leaven;
Summer with flowers that fell;
Remembrance fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from Hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light;

And life, the shadow of death.

-Ibid.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Who wrote the best English poetry between the death of Shelley and

the publication of Tennyson's first work?

2. Who wrote "The Last Days of Pompeii"?

3. What was known as the Tractarian Movement?

4. Name three of the best English writers of light verse.

« ZurückWeiter »