subordinate, they are never uninteresting; and if she has not quite the fascination of a great story-teller, like Scott or Dickens, she does possess a fair degree of skill in construction. The chief limitation on the general effect of many of her novels lies in her strong tendency to infuse into them a subjective element by means of her moral and philosophical reflections on the life that she is portraying. This same habit has been already noted in Thackeray, though in somewhat different form. In George Eliot, this tendency toward abstract thought instead of concrete portrayal is in peculiar contrast with her really great dramatic power. She portrays her characters without any infusion into them of her own personality, and then delivers her philosophical sermon as a thing almost apart. She was at the same time a great thinker and a great creator of character, and she was not quite able to keep her abstract thinking separate from her portrayal. In the main, her criticism of human life is both serious and conscientious, and falls short of the very greatest work only because she felt impelled to preach as well as to portray. Her novels are at least not marred by prejudice or by any satiric or merely didactic purpose; and even her occasional moral dissertations are in harmony with her portrayal. She has of late been unduly depreciated; but it is safe to say that her fame will eventually recover its own. Nothing can permanently obscure the fact that her novels are great works of art true, beautiful, and profound pictures of human life. In the creation of lifelike character, she has hardly had any superior since Shakespeare.

With these three great novelists as chief examples of the voluminous fiction of the age, we must be here content. The briefest possible glance at the rest Minor of the field will serve the simple purpose of Novelists illustrating the range and variety of work that was produced. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was a ver

satile novelist, sensitive to changes of literary fashion He began as early as 1827 with novels of the "dandy" type. His taste was for romantic sentiment and for effects of criminal and supernatural terror. The influence of Scott turned him toward the historical novel, and here he produced some of his best works, like The Last Days of Pompeii and Harold. Still later, Thackeray turned him in the direction of realism. His last phase was again romantic, but in the fashion of the new age. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) has some affinities with BulwerLytton, especially in his cleverness, versatility, brilliancy, and superficiality. His most effective novels are pictures of political and fashionable life in his own day. They are romantic, cynical, witty, imaginative - the work of a brilliant man of the world rather than of a really great novelist. Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) was a sort of lesser Thackeray. He dealt in realistic fashion with a wide range of English life - clerical, political, commercial, and rural. His work is that of an industrious and competent literary craftsman, never rising very high and never falling very low. Charles Reade (1814-1884) reminds us rather of Dickens. Led by the age to the choice of realistic subjects, his personal impulse was to deal with them in a romantic manner. His best work, The Cloister and the Hearth, is a historical novel. Charlotte Brontë (1816– 1855) suggests comparison with George Eliot, but the comparison is one of contrast. In a way quite her own, she presented real life in its romantic aspects. Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) wrote some effective novels of purpose, with democratic leanings, and some still better historical novels. Robert Louis Stevenson (1845-1894) brought back the atmosphere of true romance into English fiction. Sometimes it is the romance of pure adventure, as in Treasure Island, sometimes the deeper romance of the human spirit, as in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It represents

a reaction from the realistic and scientific temper of the age. These are by no means all of the really important novelists of the time. They are simply the best or the most typical. These among the dead, together with George Meredith and others still among the living, are convincing illustrations of the fulness, richness, and power of the novel during the Victorian Period.

Matthew
Arnold

CHAPTER XVII

THE AGE OF TENNYSON - POETRY (1832-1892)

Of the four poets who must be selected from the larger company to represent the poetry of the present age, Matthew Arnold was much the youngest and began his poetical career at considerably the latest date. That career, however, was almost entirely confined to the earlier part of his life, and was practically ended nearly a quarter of a century before the latest of the others had ceased to write. Arnold was born in 1822, and was a son of Dr. Thomas Arnold, the famous head master of Rugby. After finishing his preliminary education at Rugby, he entered Balliol College, Oxford, and later became a fellow of Oriel College. The religious controversies which were stirring the University in his time united with the general tendencies of the age to unsettle Arnold's faith; and the note of spiritual conflict is heard through much of his poetry as well as through his later prose. During the greater part of his life, he held the responsible position of an inspector of schools; and from 1857 to 1867 he was professor of poetry at Oxford. His first volume of poems was published in 1848, and his poetical period continued to the time of his Oxford professorship. After that time, he was almost exclusively a writer of prose until his death in 1888. It will thus appear that his prose work was the product of his later life, while his poetry was the outcome of his younger manhood, before the chilling influences of the age had entirely silenced his poetic voice. The quality of his prose and its indication of the character of the man, we have