Studies in Literature

Studies in Literature

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Literature, by John Morley
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Studies in Literature
Author: John Morley
Release Date: April 12, 2004 [EBook #12001]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES
IN LITERATURE ***

Produced by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

STUDIES IN LITERATURE
BY
JOHN MORLEY
1907

NOTE.
The contents of the present collection have all been in print before,

either in the Nineteenth Century and _Fortnightly Review_, or in some
other shape. I have to thank the proprietors of the two periodicals
named for sanctioning the reproduction of my articles here.
J.M.
October 1890.

CONTENTS.
WORDSWORTH APHORISMS MAINE ON POPULAR
GOVERNMENT A FEW WORDS ON FRENCH MODELS ON THE
STUDY OF LITERATURE VICTOR HUGO'S _NINETY-THREE_
ON THE RING AND THE BOOK MEMORIALS OF A MAN OF
LETTERS VALEDICTORY

WORDSWORTH.[1]
[Footnote 1: Originally published as an Introduction to the new edition
of Wordsworth's Complete Poetical Works (1888).]
The poet whose works are contained in the present volume was born in
the little town of Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7, 1770. He
died at Rydal Mount, in the neighbouring county of Westmoreland, on
April 23, 1850. In this long span of mortal years, events of vast and
enduring moment shook the world. A handful of scattered and
dependent colonies in the northern continent of America made
themselves into one of the most powerful and beneficent of states. The
ancient monarchy of France, and all the old ordering of which the
monarchy had been the keystone, was overthrown, and it was not until
after many a violent shock of arms, after terrible slaughter of men, after
strange diplomatic combinations, after many social convulsions, after
many portentous mutations of empire, that Europe once more settled
down for a season into established order and system. In England almost
alone, after the loss of her great possessions across the Atlantic Ocean,
the fabric of the State stood fast and firm. Yet here, too, in these eighty
years, an old order slowly gave place to new. The restoration of peace,
after a war conducted with extraordinary tenacity and fortitude, led to a
still more wonderful display of ingenuity, industry, and enterprise, in
the more fruitful field of commerce and of manufactures. Wealth, in

spite of occasional vicissitudes, increased with amazing rapidity. The
population of England and Wales grew from being seven and a half
millions in 1770, to nearly eighteen millions in 1850. Political power
was partially transferred from a territorial aristocracy to the middle and
trading classes. Laws were made at once more equal and more humane.
During all the tumult of the great war which for so many years bathed
Europe in fire, through all the throes and agitations in which peace
brought forth the new time, Wordsworth for half a century (1799-1850)
dwelt sequestered in unbroken composure and steadfastness in his
chosen home amid the mountains and lakes of his native region,
working out his own ideal of the high office of the Poet.
The interpretation of life in books and the development of imagination
underwent changes of its own. Most of the great lights of the eighteenth
century were still burning, though burning low, when Wordsworth
came into the world. Pope, indeed, had been dead for six and twenty
years, and all the rest of the Queen Anne men had gone. But Gray only
died in 1771, and Goldsmith in 1774. Ten years later Johnson's pious
and manly heart ceased to beat. Voltaire and Rousseau, those two
diverse oracles of their age, both died in 1778. Hume had passed away
two years before. Cowper was forty years older than Wordsworth, but
Cowper's most delightful work was not produced until 1783. Crabbe,
who anticipated Wordsworth's choice of themes from rural life, while
treating them with a sterner realism, was virtually his contemporary,
having been born in 1754, and dying in 1832. The two great names of
his own date were Scott and Coleridge, the first born in 1771, and the
second a year afterwards. Then a generation later came another new
and illustrious group. Byron was born in 1788, Shelley in 1792, and
Keats in 1795. Wordsworth was destined to see one more orb of the
first purity and brilliance rise to its place in the poetic firmament.
Tennyson's earliest volume of poems was published in 1830, and _In
Memoriam_, one of his two masterpieces, in 1830. Any one who
realises for how much these famous names will always stand in the