Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/656

 644 ENGLAND (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) a national character, as " The Mermaid of Gal- loway," " She's gane to dwall in Heaven," and "My Nannie, O." William Motherwell was successful both in martial pieces, as "The Sword Chant of Thorstein Raudi "and " The Battle Flag of Sigurd," and in plaintive strains, as the ballad of " Jeanie Morrison." Many of the poems of "Walter Savage Landor are at- tempts to reproduce the genius of ancient Greek poetry, and though they have fine and highly intellectual passages, they seem foreign to England and not akin to modern times. His "Gebir"and "Count Julian," however, contain passages excelled by no other poet. He has a surer reputation for his remarkable prose works, the chief of which is a series of "Imaginary Conversations," than which no better English prose has ever been written. Among the minor poets of this period are Henry Kirke White, Grahame, Bowles, Bloom- field, Hamilton, Lloyd, Lovell, Dyer, Cary, Wolfe, who deserves special mention for his short poem on the " Burial of Sir John Moore," Montgomery, Hartley Coleridge, Heber, Keble, Milman, Croly, Moir, James and Horace Smith, Pollok, Procter, Elliott, Clare, Barton, Ster- ling, Bailey, Bayly, Moxon, Hervey, Milnes, Swain, Mackay, Aird, Bowring, Praed, Ten- nant, Herbert, Moultrie, Maginn, Anster, Bar- ham, the author of the " Ingoldsby Legends," Trench, A. A. Watts, Aytoun, Tupper, Thomas Davis, Mahoney, Allingham, Barnes, Robert Bulwer Lytton (Owen Meredith), Heraud, Matthew and Edwin Arnold, W. 0. Bennett, Alexander Smith, Sydney Dobell, Patmore, De Vere, Home, Faber, Buchanan, Swinburne, D. G. Rossetti, and Gerald Massey. The most popular English poetess in the first quarter of this century was Mrs. Hemans, among whose numerous productions are some that are me- lodious in expression and touching, in senti- ment. The most eminent English poetess of the age, or indeed of any age, was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who died in 1861. Her longest work, "Aurora Leigh," is a narrative poem, or rather a versified novel, whose char- acters and incidents illustrate modern English life and manners. A series of love poems called "Sonnets from the Portuguese" convey perhaps the best impression of her graceful, tender, and yet powerful genius. The drama- tist Joanna Baillie wrote also ballads and met- rical legends. Caroline Bowles (Mrs. Southey) displayed in many of her slight pieces remark- able elevation and simplicity of feeling. Mary Howitt excels in ballad poetry, and in writings marked by innocent mirth and playful fancy, designed for the young. In contrast with her easy simplicity are the elaborate and impas- sioned poems of Mrs. Norton, who has been called the Byron of modern poetesses. L. E. Landon checked the diffuseness and efflorescent excess of her early productions, which are dis- tinguished at once for vivacity and melancholy, and gave concentration of thought and style to the verses written not long before her mys- terious death. Her " Ethel Churchill " gives her a place also among novelists. Other poet- esses of the time are Mrs. Blackwood, Lady Flora Hastings, Harriet Drury, Camilla Toul- min (Mrs. Crosland), Mrs. Ogilvy, Frances Browne, Christina Rossetti, Jean Ingelow, Mrs. Mulock-Craik, and Eliza Cook. Miss Adelaide Procter, who died in 1864, wrote many lyric poems of singular beauty and refinement. Of living poets, Tennyson, Browning, and Morris are the most eminent. The most successful dramatic pieces of this epoch have been those of Joanna Baillie, remarkable for their unity of idea and intellectual completeness, the " Ber- tram " of Maturin, the happily constructed tra- gedies of Ivnowles, the " Lady of Lyons " and "Richelieu" of Edward Bulwer Lytton,. the " Julian " and " Rienzi " of Miss Mitford, the " Ion " of Talfourd, the " Fazio " of Milman, the comedies of the younger Colman, the plays of Mrs. Inchbald, the "Road to Ruin" of Thomas Holcroft, the " Honeymoon " of John Tobin, and various plays of O'Keefe, Reynolds, Morton, Poole, Planche, Marston, Jerrold, Buckstone, Brooks, Tom Taylor, Boucicault, Gilbert, Holliday, Robertson, and H. J. Byron. The " Remorse " of Coleridge, the " Bride's Tragedy" of Beddoes, the "Tragedy of Gali- leo " of Samuel Brown, the " Athelwold " of William Smith, the "Philip van Artevelde" of Henry Taylor, the " Legend of Florence " of Leigh Hunt, and the " Strafford," " Blot in the 'Scutcheon," &c., of Robert Browning, are rather dramatic poems than acting plays. The novel begins with this century to take a fore- most place. In the latter part of the 18th century the circulating libraries abounded with the worthless productions of the so-called Mi- nerva press. The works of Charlotte Smith murk the beginning of the transition from the sentimental to the true in popular fictions. A new energy and dignity was given to them by the political tales of Holcroft and Godwin, and especially by Godwin's " Caleb Williams ;" and the romantic fictions of Mrs. Radcliffe, the novels of the sisters Porter, of Dr. John Moore, of Mrs. Inchbald, and the " Monk " of Matthew Gregory Lewis, were at least improvements on frippery love plots. The Arabian tale of " Vathek," by William Beckford, was greatly admired for its imaginative power and literary finish, and the "Canterbury Tales" of Sophia and Harriet Lee are remarkable among English fictions for tenderness and feeling. The delineations of character and society by Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Opie, and Miss Austen preceded the works of Sir Walter Scott, whose example has given to the novel nearly the same importance in con- temporary literature which the drama had in the Elizabethan era. His prodigious familiari- ty with Scotch characters, anecdotes, tradi- tions, and superstitions, the delight which he took in displays of sense, humor, or sentiment, in every strong and original symptom of char- acter, prove how broad a foundation his fic- tions had in actual life. The popularity of the