Studies in Early Victorian Literature | Page 6

in an age so redundant of novels, the historical
novel is out of fashion? Partly, no doubt, our romancers shun
comparison with the mighty Wizard of the North; partly, the analytic
genius of our time so greatly exceeds its synthetic genius; and mainly,
the range of our historical learning inclines us to restore the past by
exact scholarship and not by fiction without authority. George Eliot
was so anxious to have her local colour accurate that she ended by
becoming somewhat fatiguing. Some day, no doubt, the genius of
romance will return to this inexhaustible field with enthusiasm equal to
Scott's, with a knowledge far more accurate than his, and a spirit quite
purged from political and social bias.
From the death of Scott in 1832 until 1894 are sixty-two years; and if
we divide this period into equal parts at the year 1863 (it was the year
of Thackeray's death), we shall be struck with the fact that the purely
literary product of the first period of thirty-one years (1832-1863) is
superior to the purely literary product of the second period of thirty-one
years (1863-1894). The former period gives us all that was best of
Tennyson, the Brownings, Carlyle, Thackeray, Dickens, Bulwer, the
Brontës, Mrs. Gaskell, Trollope, George Eliot, Kingsley, Disraeli, Dr.
Arnold, Thirlwall, Grote, Hallam, Milman, Macaulay, Mill, Froude,
Layard, Kinglake, Ruskin. The second period gave us in the main,
Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, G. H. Lewes, Maine, Leslie Stephen, John
Morley, Matthew Arnold, Lecky, Freeman, Stubbs, Bryce, Green,
Gardiner, Symonds, Rossetti, Morris, Swinburne. Poetry, romance, the
critical, imaginative, and pictorial power, dominate the former period:
philosophy, science, politics, history are the real inspiration of the latter
period.

The era since the death of Scott is essentially a scientific age, a
sociologic age; and this is peculiarly visible in the second half of this
era of sixty-two years. About the middle of the period we see how the
scientific and sociologic interest begins to over-shadow, if not to oust,
the literary, poetic, and romantic interest. Darwin's _Origin of Species_
was published in 1859; and its effect on thought became marked within
the next few years. In 1862, Herbert Spencer commenced to issue his
great encyclopaedic work, Synthetic Philosophy, still, we trust, to be
completed after more than thirty years of devoted toil. Darwin's later
books appeared about the same period, as did a large body of scientific
works in popular form by Huxley, Tyndall, Wallace, Lewes, Lubbock,
Tylor, and Clifford. It is only needful here to refer to such scientific
works as directly reacted on general literature. About the same time the
later speculations of Comte began to attract public attention in England,
and the Positive Polity was translated in 1875. Between the years
1860-1875, there grew up in England an absorbing interest in Social
Philosophy, and a conviction that the idea of invariable law offered a
solution of the progress of society. Evolution as an idea was in the air,
and it was applied to Man as much as to Nature. It is no part of our
present purpose to trace its growth from the scientific aspect. It is
enough to note how it acted and reacted on general literature.
Poetry began to hover round the problem of Evolution. It wrapped it in
mystery, denounced it with fine indignation, and took it for the text of
some rather prosaic homilies. Criticism fell into the prevailing theory:
so did history, and even romance. Philosophy and Science are not the
best foster-mothers of Poetry and Romance. Philosophy and Science
grew more solemn than ever; and Poetry and Romance lost something
of their wilder fancy and their light heart. Literature grew less
spontaneous, more correct, more learned, and, it may be, more
absorbed in its practical purpose of modifying social life.
The old notion of literature being a business apart from affairs, of men
of letters being an order, of an absorption in books being ample work
for a life--all this is far from the rule. At least twenty members of the
present and late Governments have been copious writers; Mr.
Gladstone and at least three or four of his late colleagues are quite in

the front rank of living authors--nay, several of them began their career
as literary men. It would be difficult to name an important writer of the
Victorian Age who has not at times flung himself with ardour into the
great social, political, or religious battles of his time. Thackeray,
Trollope, Green, Symonds, are possible exceptions--examples of
bookmen who passed their lives with books, and who never wrote to
promote "a cause." But all the rest have entered on the "burning
questions" of their age, and most of them with the main part of their
force. As a consequence "learning," as it was understood by Casaubon,
Scaliger, Bentley, Johnson,