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We have followed literary custom rather than individual judgment in studying Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot as the typical Victorian novelists. On Dickens, as the most original genius of the age, most people are agreed; but the rank of the other two is open to question. There are critics besides Swinburne who regard Charlotte Brontë as a greater genius than George Eliot; and many uncritical readers find more pleasure or profit in the Barchester novels of Anthony Trollope than in anything written by Thackeray. It may even be that the three or four leading novels of the age were none of them written by the novelists in question; but it is still essential to know their works if only for these reasons: that they greatly influenced other story-tellers of the period, and that they furnish us a standard by which to judge all modern fiction.
To treat the many Victorian novelists adequately would in itself require a volume. We shall note here only a few leading figures, naming in each case a novel or two which may serve as an invitation to a better acquaintance with their authors.
[Illustration: CHARLOTTE BRONTË]
The Brontë sisters, Charlotte and Emily, made a tremendous sensation in England when, from their retirement, they sent out certain works of such passionate intensity that readers who had long been familiar with novels were startled into renewed attention. Reading these works now we recognize the genius of the writers, but we recognize also a morbid, unwholesome quality, which is a reflection not of English life but of the personal and unhappy temperament of two girls who looked on life first as a gorgeous romance and then as a gloomy tragedy.
Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) was perhaps the more gifted of the two sisters, and her best-known works are Jane Eyre and Villette. The date of the latter novel (1853) was made noteworthy by the masterpiece of another woman novelist, Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), who was the exact opposite of the Brontë sisters,--serene, well-balanced, and with a fund of delicious humor. All these qualities and more appeared in Cranford (1853), a series of sketches of country life (first contributed to Dickens's Household Words) which together form one of the most charming stories produced during the Victorian era. The same author wrote a few other novels and an admirable Life of Charlotte Brontë.
[Sidenote: CHARLES READE]
Charles Reade (1814-1884) was a follower of Dickens in his earlier novels, such as Peg Woffington; but he made one notable departure when he wrote The Cloister and the Hearth (1861). This is a story of student life and vagabond life in Europe, in the stirring times that followed the invention of printing. The action moves rapidly; many different characters appear; the scene shifts from Holland across Europe to Italy, and back again; adventures of a startling kind meet the hero at every stage of his foot journey. It is a stirring tale, remarkably well told; so much will every uncritical reader gladly acknowledge. Moreover, there are critics who, after studying The Cloister and the Hearth, rank it with the best historical novels in all literature.
[Illustration: MRS. ELIZABETH GASKELL From the portrait by George Richmond, R.A.]
[Sidenote: TROLLOPE]
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) began as a follower of Thackeray, but in the immense range of his characters and incidents he soon outstripped his master. Perhaps his best work is Barchester Towers (1857), one of a series of novels which picture with marvelous fidelity the life of a cathedral town in England.
Another novelist who followed Thackeray, and then changed his allegiance to Dickens, was Bulwer Lytton (1803-1873). He was essentially an imitator, a follower of the market, and before Thackeray and Dickens were famous he had followed almost every important English novelist from Mrs. Radcliffe to Walter Scott. Two of his historical novels, Rienzi and The Last Days of Pompeii, may be mildly recommended. The rest are of the popular and somewhat trashy kind; critics jeer at them, and the public buys them in large numbers.
One of the most charming books of the Victorian age was produced by Richard Blackmore (1825-1900). He wrote several novels, some of them of excellent quality, but they were all overshadowed by his beautiful old romance of Lorna Doone (1869). It is hard to overpraise such a story, wholesome and sweet as a breath from the moors, and the critic's praise will be unnecessary if the reader only opens the book. It should be read, with Cranford, if one reads nothing else of Victorian fiction.
[Illustration: RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE]
Two other notable romances of a vanished age came from the hand of Charles Kingsley (1819-1875). He produced many works in poetry and prose, but his fame now rests upon Hypatia, Westward Ho! and a few stories for children. Hypatia (1853) is an interesting novel dealing with the conflict of pagan and Christian ideals in the early centuries. Westward Ho! (1855) is a stirring narrative of seafaring and adventure in the days of Elizabeth. It has been described as a "stunning" boys' book, and it would prove an absorbing story for any reader who likes adventure were it not marred by one serious fault. The author's personal beliefs and his desire to glorify certain Elizabethan adventurers lead him to pronounce judgment of a somewhat wholesale kind. He treats one religious party of the period to a golden halo, and the other to a lash of scorpions; and this is apt to alienate many readers who else would gladly follow Sir Amyas Leigh on his gallant ventures in the New World or on the Spanish Main. Kingsley had a rare talent for writing for children (his heart never grew old), and his Heroes and Water Babies are still widely read as bedtime stories.
Of the later Victorian novelists, chief among them being Meredith, Hardy and Stevenson, little may be said here, as they are much too near us to judge of their true place in the long perspective of English literature. Meredith, with the analytical temper and the disconnected style of Browning, is for mature readers, not for young people. Hardy has decided power, but is too hopelessly pessimistic for anybody's comfort,--except in his earlier works, which have a romantic charm that brightens the obscurity of his later philosophy.
[Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON From a photograph]
[Sidenote: STEVENSON]
In Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) we have the spirit of romance personified. His novels, such as Kidnapped and David Balfour, are stories of adventure written in a very attractive style; but he is more widely known, among young people at least, by his charming Child's Garden of Verses and his Treasure Island (1883). This last is a kind of dime-novel of pirates and buried treasure. If one is to read stories of that kind, there is no better place to begin than with this masterpiece of Stevenson. Other works by the same versatile author are the novels, Master of Ballantrae, Weir of Hermiston and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; various collections of essays, such as Virginibus Puerisque and Familiar Studies of Men and Books; and some rather thin sketches of journeying called An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey.
The cheery spirit of Stevenson, who bravely fought a losing battle with disease, is evident in everything he wrote; and it was the author's spirit, quite as much as his romantic tales or fine prose style, that won for him a large and enthusiastic following. Of all the later Victorians he seems, at the present time, to have the widest circle of cultivated readers and to exercise the strongest influence on our writers of fiction.
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