Victorian Literature — Chapter IV: The Critics. Part 3

=Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881)= wrote his "Life of Dr Arnold" in 1844. A son of Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich, he was born at Alderley, in Cheshire.

From Rugby he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he had an exceptionally distinguished career.

In 1851 he became a canon of Canterbury, and his picturesque "Memorials of Canterbury" were the outcome of residence in that city.

In 1863 he was made Dean of Westminster, notwithstanding the opposition of the High Church party, to whom the theological views expressed in his numerous works were distasteful.

Of these writings, "Sinai and Palestine," "Lectures on the Eastern Church," and "Lectures on the Jewish Church," are the best known.

As Dean of Westminster Dr Stanley became an active leader of the Broad Church movement.

Although not a contributor to "Essays and Reviews" his services to the movement were incalculable.

He invited Max Müller to lecture in the Abbey, befriended Père Hyacinthe, and gave sympathy to Bishop Colenso.

His speeches in the Lower House of Convocation, particularly one in which he proposed the suppression of the Athanasian Creed in the services of the Church, made him many enemies; but few ecclesiastics have been so beloved by both sovereign and people.

One recalls the pleasant, active little man, so proud of his Abbey Church, with a deep sigh that he should be no more.

His life was written by his successor, Dean Bradley.

Of the contributors to "Essays and Reviews," the manifesto of the Broad Church party, which appeared in 1860, Frederick Temple must be mentioned, because his contribution, "The Education of the World," led to a frantic effort to prevent his receiving the bishopric of Exeter, an effort which was unsuccessful.

In 1885 Dr Temple was made Bishop of London, and in 1896 Archbishop of Canterbury.

Other distinguished writers in "Essays and Reviews" were Dr Jowett and Mr Mark Pattison.

=Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893)=, master of Balliol, who wrote the essay on "The Interpretation of Scripture," achieved his greatest successes by his brilliant translations of Plato, Thucydides, and "The Politics" of Aristotle.

His Plato drew from John Bright, who was little inclined to appreciate the great thoughts of the Athenian philosopher, an expression of admiration for the classic English of the Oxford professor.

Jowett's life was written by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell.

=Mark Pattison (1813-1884)=, whose contribution to "Essays and Reviews" was on "The Tendencies of Religious Thought in England," assisted Newman and Pusey in the early days of the Tractarian movement, but finally went over to the Liberalism which they so much dreaded.

In 1861 he was elected Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford.

Pattison was a profound scholar.

Few men have led lives so absorbed in books.

The results of his learning are apparent in his interesting "Life of Isaac Casaubon," which he had hoped to follow by a life of Scaliger.

But men like Jowett and Pattison have been the arm-chair representatives of a movement which found one of its most active supporters in =John Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872)=.

Maurice was the son of a Unitarian minister, and was born at Normanstone, near Lowestoft.

For a time he was editor of the _Athenæum_, but joined the Anglican Church in 1831, and accepted a curacy near Leamington.

A treatise entitled "Subscription no Bondage," which defined his position in the Church, excited much attention, as did also his tracts on the "Kingdom of Christ."

In conjunction with Kingsley and Hughes he published pamphlets called "Politics for the People," and organised the Christian socialist and co-operative movement of 1850. Like Kingsley, Maurice may be labelled a Broad Churchman, not so much on doctrinal grounds as for the breadth of his sympathies.

It was social rather than theological problems to which he attached importance.

Kingsley, indeed, described himself to correspondents as a Broad Churchman, a High Churchman, and an Evangelical, as the mood seemed to take him.

Bishop Colenso is a good type of the more militant theologians.

=John William Colenso (1814-1883)= first came before the public as the author of mathematical text-books.

At this time he was vicar of Forncett St Mary, in Norfolk, but in 1853 he was made Bishop of Natal.

In South Africa he was a zealous advocate of the rights of the natives against the oppression of the Boers and Cape Town officials; but in a measure his influence was weakened by the publication of his work on Biblical criticism, "The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined," which was condemned by both Houses of Convocation as heretical.

When Colenso came to England in 1874 he was inhibited from preaching in the dioceses of London, Lincoln, and Oxford.

At Oxford, however, his sermon was read from the pulpit of Balliol while the Bishop sat below, and the same device was pursued at Mr Stopford Brooke's Church in London.

Dean Stanley invited him to the Abbey pulpit, claiming freedom from the jurisdiction of Dr Jackson, the then Bishop of London; but Colenso declined to increase the ill-feeling which had been excited.

Another distinguished member of the Broad Church party, =Edwin Abbott (1838- )=, was head-master of the City of London School from 1865 to 1889. He has published several educational works.

His religious influence has developed itself through "Philochristus; Memoirs of a Disciple of our Lord," and "Onesimus; Memoirs of a Disciple of St Paul," also by a volume of sermons, "Through Nature to Christ," which is perhaps the best evidence of the development of the Broad Church movement.

Dr Whately, one of its founders, argued for the miracles as indicative of the Divine origin of Christianity; Dr Abbott esteems the insistence on miracles as a bar to belief.

Perhaps the purest and most inspiring of all the eloquent teachers belonging to this party was =Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853)= of Brighton, whose sermons have been widely read, especially in America, and whose lectures are as helpful and bracing as any written in our time.

Robertson's remarkable career of only thirty-seven years has been made known to us by the beautiful life which was written by Mr Stopford Brooke.

=Stopford Augustus Brooke (1832- )= was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College.

At first he was a Church of England clergyman and a Queen's Chaplain, but seceded in 1880 on account of his inability to believe in many supernatural phases of Christian teaching.

His "Primer of English Literature," "History of Early English Poetry," "Theology in the English Poets," and "Life of Milton" have the ring of the genuine, and, indeed, of the great, critic.

Outside the pale of the Anglican community, but powerful factors in that same Broad Church movement which has been charged with "stretching the old formula to meet the new facts," one recalls the names of Lynch and Martineau.

=Thomas Toke Lynch (1818-1871)= was born at Dunmow, in Essex, and held for many years the ministry of a small Congregational Church, first in Grafton Street and afterwards in the Hampstead Road, London.

He died in comparative obscurity; but the poems in his "Rivulet," once condemned as heretical, have found their way into most hymnologies.

=James Martineau (1805- )= was born at Norwich, and was originally educated for the profession of civil engineer, but turned to theological studies, and was for some time the minister of a Presbyterian Church in Dublin.

Then, during a residence in Liverpool, he became a supporter of the philosophy of Bentham and the elder Mill, but finally abandoned that position for Kantian metaphysics.

Thenceforth he was to be a great power on behalf of the Theistic and Unitarian position, and he turned vigorously upon the materialistic beliefs which he had abandoned, and was, it may be added, somewhat too harsh to his sister Harriet when, later in life, she adopted them.

His "Endeavour after the Christian Life" and "Hours of Thought on Sacred Things" are two of his best known works, although a more philosophical interest attaches to his "Study of Spinoza" and his "Types of Ethical Theory."

I have dwelt at some length on the work of the High Church and Broad Church parties during the reign, because with these bodies it has been a period of great literary achievement, and it can scarcely be claimed that Evangelicanism, however earnest, zealous, and numerically powerful, has added much of enduring worth to religious literature.

=Richard William Church (1815-1890)=, Dean of St Paul's, who wrote so eloquently on Dante and St Anselm, belonged to the Liberal High Church school, as did also =Henry Parry Liddon (1829-1890)=, a canon of the same cathedral, whose Bampton lectures "On the Divinity of Jesus Christ" marked him out as one of the most eloquent of modern preachers.

One of the greatest scholars in the English Church, =Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828-1889)=, Bishop of Durham, who replied to the author of "Supernatural Religion," belonged to the same party.

Midway between the Broad Church and the Evangelical schools we find =Frederick William Farrar (1831- )=, Dean of Canterbury, who, as head-master of Marlborough College, wrote stories of boy life.

He succeeded Kingsley as a Canon of Westminster, and excited much attention by his sermons on the doctrine of eternal punishment.

His lives of Christ and of St Paul have been widely read.

=John Charles Ryle (1816- )=, Bishop of Liverpool, has been perhaps the most famous literary exponent of the Evangelical position.

"Shall we know one another in Heaven" and "Bible Inspiration" were characteristic books from his pen.

=John Saul Howson (1816-1885)=, Dean of Chester, who, in conjunction with the Rev. W.

J.

Conybeare, wrote an able work on "The Life and Epistles of St Paul," was also a Low Churchman.

The most distinguished Nonconformist minister of the Victorian period, and the man whose sermons found most readers, was =Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)=, with whom eloquence and earnestness were combined with the possession of a simple English style, which he derived from a study of the Puritan fathers.

In "John Ploughman's Talk" (1868) Spurgeon put forth much homely wisdom in a quaint and humorous garb.

I have said well nigh enough concerning speculative writers and theologians, but it is necessary to mention here =Henry Longueville Mansel (1820-1871)=, who succeeded Milman as Dean of St Paul's. Mansel was a vigorous defender of the Anglican position.

"The Limits of Religious Thought" was the title of one of his books; "Metaphysics, or the Philosophy of Consciousness, Phenomenal and Real" was another, but he crossed swords with many disputants, with F. D.

Maurice, with J. S.

Mill, and indeed he was ever a fighter, subtle and skilful.

Another theologian, =Cardinal Manning (1808-1892)=, was a disputant on behalf of Roman Catholicism, he having left the Anglican Church in 1851. His many books and sermons are to-day only of interest to the theological student.

His life was written in 1896, and caused much controversy through its exceeding candour and indiscretion.

Philosophy has had notable students also in Ferrier, Caird, and Clifford.

=James Frederick Ferrier (1808-1864)= who was a nephew of Susan Ferrier the author of "Marriage," was professor of moral philosophy at St Andrews.

He wrote "Lectures in Greek Philosophy" and other works.

=Edward Caird (1835- )= is master of Balliol and he has written "Philosophy of Kant," "Essays on Literature and Philosophy," and "The Evolution of Religion."

=William Kingdon Clifford (1845-1879)= belonged to the opposite camp.

He obtained an early reputation as a mathematician and became professor of applied mathematics in University College, London, in 1871. His powerful contributions to the literary side of science were contained in "Seeing and Thinking" and "Lectures and Essays," the latter volume being edited after his death by his friends Mr Leslie Stephen and Sir Frederick Pollock.

The three most notable books that we have seen from the anti-theological side, apart from Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma," are "The Creed of Christendom," "Phases of Faith," and "Supernatural Religion," although to these may perhaps be added translations of the Lives of Christ, of Strauss, and of Renan.

The "Creed of Christendom" was the work of =William Rathbone Greg (1809-1881)=, who wrote also "Enigmas of Life" (1872), and "Rocks Ahead" (1874).

"Phases of Faith" was the work of =Francis William Newman (1805-1897)=, a younger brother of Cardinal Newman, but at the opposite pole of religious conviction.

He has written many books, the most successful being one on "The Soul" (1849).

Another on "Theism" (1858), was inspired by the same theistic, but non-Christian impulse.

"Phases of Faith" (1858), was his most successful work.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" is Walter Richard Cassels, who has also published a reply to Bishop Lightfoot's strictures upon his larger work--a work now all but forgotten, but which created a considerable sensation at the time of its appearance.

The age has been, particularly in its later developments, an age of good critics of literature.

Criticism unhappily rarely lasts much beyond its own decade.

Even Mr Matthew Arnold lives now only by his poetry, and the many good things that he said about books are being steadily forgotten.

Arnold was a great critic, and so also was =Walter Pater (1839-1894)=, whose "Marius the Epicurean" and "Imaginary Portraits" should have ranked him with writers of imagination were it not that criticism was his dominant faculty.

Pater has been described as "the most rhythmical of English prose writers," and his "Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry," and his "Appreciations" give him a very high place among the writers of our time.

=Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834-1894)= was another great critic, who wrote at least one work of imagination.

"Marmorne" is a very pretty story of life in France.

With every aspect of French life Mr Hamerton was well acquainted, as he lived in that country for very many years.

He wrote regularly upon art topics, and edited an art magazine, _The Portfolio_; but it is by his volume of essays entitled "The Intellectual Life" that he will be most kindly remembered for many a year to come.

Certain writers whom I must mention are entitled to a place both as critics and as poets.

Mr W. E.

Henley, Mr F. W.

H.

Myers, William Bell Scott, and William Allingham for example.

=William Ernest Henley (1849- )= has written plays in conjunction with R. L.

Stevenson, and his "Book of Verses" and "Song of the Sword" entitle him to very high rank among the poets of the day.

But he is also a critic of exceptional vigour and force, and since Matthew Arnold there has been no volume of criticism so full of discrimination and sound judgment as "Views and Reviews."

Ill health has compelled Mr Henley to waste much of his undoubted talent.

He is at present editing fine library editions of Burns and Byron.

=Frederic William Henry Myers (1843- )= wrote "Saint Paul," a poem of considerable reputation, but his critical essays are more widely known.

They were published in two volumes, "Classical" and "Modern," and are full of delightful ideas delightfully expressed.

His biography of Wordsworth is a daintily fanciful memoir, abounding in good criticism.

Mr Myers's brother Ernest is also a poet, and so also was =William Bell Scott (1811-1890)=.

He was, it is true, a poet of a narrow range, but a critic of great energy and industry.

Bell Scott became best known by his "Autobiography," published after his death.

In it he discussed Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite movement with sufficient frankness.

=William Allingham (1824-1889)= wrote many poems and ballads full of the Celtic spirit, and of Ireland, which he loved as the land of his birth.

Allingham was for a time editor of _Fraser's Magazine_, and he contributed regularly to the chief literary periodicals of his day.

Literary critics of importance to-day are Edward Dowden, Richard Garnett, George Saintsbury, Edmund Gosse, Leslie Stephen, and Andrew Lang--all of whom are happily living and writing.

=Edward Dowden (1843- )=, who is an Irishman, and a professor of Trinity College, Dublin, has a genius for accuracy and is a master of detail.

For textual criticism of Wordsworth and Shelley he has no superior.

He has an immense knowledge of the literature of many languages, and holds without dispute the first place among living students of German literature in this country.

His knowledge of English literature is profound, and in "Shakspere, his Mind and Art," and "Studies in Literature," he has said some singularly illuminating things about books.

With his "Life of Shelley" one observes a certain deterioration; Professor Dowden, with all his profound love of literature, has scarcely the qualities which would find attraction in the curiously impulsive character of the poet Shelley.

Dowden was happier when writing about Southey, and he is still more at home with great impersonal literary figures like Shakspere and Goethe.

=Richard Garnett (1835- )=,--better known to the world to-day as Dr Garnett--has also written on Shelley, not merely with sympathy but with partisanship.

Dr Garnett, who is honourably associated with the British Museum Library, is a most acute critic, a biographer of Carlyle and Emerson, a translator from the Greek and German, and, like Professor Dowden, a poet.

=George Saintsbury (1845- )=, who is Professor of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, has been an industrious critic for many years, and his knowledge of French literature in particular is profound.

His acquaintance with English literature in the seventeenth century has, however, considerably vitiated his style.

It is not easy to tolerate the phraseology of the seventeenth century in modern books.

This defect of style is regrettably noticeable in two volumes of literary history which Professor Saintsbury has published, one dealing with the seventeenth and the other with the nineteenth century.

It is in certain brief biographies of Sir Walter Scott and others that Professor Saintsbury is most excellent; but his wide knowledge and his genuine grasp of the most salient characteristics of good literature are indisputable qualities which rank him high among the bookmen of his day.

=Edmund Gosse (1849- )= is not less distinguished than the writers I have named.

He would be widely known as a writer of charming verse were he not actively engaged in literary criticism.

The son of a famous naturalist, Mr Gosse is the author of many admirably written books about the literature of the past and the present.

What Carlyle so largely did for German literature by introducing it to English readers Mr Gosse has done for Scandinavian literature.

In conjunction with Mr William Archer--a dramatic critic of singular insight--he has translated Ibsen, whose influence has been as marked during the past ten years as the influence of German writers was marked during the previous thirty.

Mr Gosse's best biography is his "Life of Gray."

A critic of remarkable learning is =Leslie Stephen (1832- )=, whose "Hours in a Library" and "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century" are books which have profoundly impressed the age.

Mr Leslie Stephen has written a large number of biographies, all of them characterised by singular accuracy, by remarkable graces of style, and by genuine insight.

He was the first editor of the _Dictionary of National Biography_, a work which has proved invaluable to students of our later literature.

=Andrew Lang (1844- )= is the last of the critics I have named, and not the least active.

He has shone in many branches of literary work.

His "Ballads and Lyrics of Old France," "Ballades in Blue China," and numerous other verses, have gained him considerable reputation as a poet.

His translations of Homer and Theocritus are by many counted the finest translations that our literature has seen.

Some have contended that his musical prose rendering of the Odyssey is incomparably superior to all the efforts of Pope, of Cowper, and of the many other poets who have attempted to render Homer in verse.

Mr Lang is an authority on folk-lore; he has joined issue with Professor Max Müller on many points which are of keen interest to those who are attracted towards the science of language and the study of comparative religion.

As a writer of fairy-tales, and as the editor of books of fairy-stories, Mr Lang has endeared himself to thousands belonging to the younger generation.

But all this is but dimly and inefficiently to appraise Mr Lang's marvellous versatility.

He has written fiction, history, and, above all, biography, his biographical work including a Life of Sir Stafford Northcote and a Life of John Gibson Lockhart, Scott's son-in-law.

Biography has generally been written by literary critics, and one requires no apology in any case for ranking the biographers among the critics.

=John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)= himself was a notable example.

He was editor of the _Quarterly Review_, and an industrious writer for many years; but he is best known to us by his "Life of Sir Walter Scott," which was published--it is worthy of note--in 1837, the year of the Queen's accession.

Lockhart's "Scott" is beyond question the most important biography of the reign.

The longest is that of Milton by Professor Masson.

=David Masson (1822- )= has held a chair of literature in University College, London, and later at Edinburgh.

Few men know English literature better than he.

His name will always be associated with his monumental "Life of Milton," a solid, accurate, exhaustive book; but he has written pleasantly on "British Novelists and their Styles" and "Drummond of Hawthornden," besides sundry other books.

Many of our poets have had capable biographers.

Professor Knight of St Andrews has devoted himself for many years to Wordsworth, and has written his biography besides editing his collected works.

The late James Dykes Campbell (1835-1894) wrote a biography of Coleridge distinguished by remarkable thoroughness.

Professor W. J.

Courthope has proved himself Pope's best biographer and editor, and is giving us a good "History of English Poetry," which at present reaches only to the Reformation.

Mr Churton Collins, one of the most thorough of our critics, has written on Swift, as has also Sir Henry Craik; and Swift's life in Ireland has been gracefully sketched by Mr Richard Ashe King, a novelist whose "Love the Debt" and "The Wearing of the Green" have commanded a large audience.

Swift has been a favourite subject with the biographers.

A life of him was the task upon which =John Forster (1812-1876)= was engaged at the time of his death.

Forster was an untiring biographer, and he benefited literature as well by his death as by his life, in that he bequeathed his fine library of books and manuscripts to the nation.

John Forster wrote a Life of Walter Savage Landor, another of Goldsmith, and another of Charles Dickens, against which it was urged that he had introduced too much of his own personality.

Perhaps Forster's best work was his "Life of Sir John Eliot," an expansion of a biography of that patriot which he had contributed to his "Statesmen of the Commonwealth."