Victorian Literature — Chapter IV: The Critics. Part 2

During the last twenty years of the century, economic study has taken increasingly the direction of elaborate investigation of the circumstances of industrial life.

On the one hand, a school of economic historians,--Arnold Toynbee, with a brilliant _aperÁu_ on "The Industrial Revolution," Thorold Rogers in his monumental "History of Agriculture and Prices," Dr Cunningham, in the "Growth of English History and Commerce," and Professor W. J.

Ashley in "Economic History and Theory," have greatly extended our knowledge of past industry.

On the other, we have the colossal work undertaken at his own expense by Mr Charles Booth, assisted by a group of zealous students--including H. Llewellyn Smith, D. F.

Schloss, and Miss Clara Collet, now all filling official posts at the Labor Department of the Board of Trade; and Miss Beatrice Potter (now Mrs Sidney Webb)--a complete survey of London life, statistical, economic, industrial, and social.

The nine volumes of this "Life and Labor of the People," already issued, constitute one of the most important statistical works ever undertaken by a private person.

Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb wrote together another valuable contribution to economic science in "The History of Trade Unionism" (1894).

But political economy is merely a branch of the larger science of sociology, and for the first general treatment of the whole science, since Comte, we turn to the most characteristic philosopher of the century.

=Herbert Spencer (1820- )= was born at Derby, where his father was a teacher of mathematics.

From his father and uncle, the latter a Congregational minister, he received his early education.

Articled at seventeen years of age to a civil engineer, he followed that profession with some success for seven or eight years, when he gradually drifted into literature--a series of letters by him "On the Proper Sphere of Government" appearing in the _Nonconformist_ for 1842. A few years later, he wrote for the _Westminster Review_, at the house of the editor of which magazine he met George Eliot in 1851, and began the most famous friendship of his life.

It was also in 1851 that he published his first work, "Social Statics," and four years later his "Principles of Psychology."

In 1861 he published his work on "Education," and the following year his "First Principles."

Between that time and 1896 he has slowly built up a system of synthetic philosophy, in a dozen bulky volumes, which has secured him a very large following not only in England, but throughout the Continent and America.

His "Descriptive Sociology" is the production of many writers, who have worked under his direction, collecting facts from travellers and scientists all over the world.

To have placed Psychology and Ethics on a scientific basis in harmony with the discoveries of the century is a truly great achievement.

Many years have now passed away since Herbert Spencer claimed the whole domain of knowledge as his own, and undertook to revise, in accordance with the latest lights, the whole sphere of philosophy.

What must have seemed intolerable presumption in 1860 became in 1896 a completed task.

In universality of knowledge he rivals Aristotle and Bacon at a time when the sphere of learning is immensely larger than in their epochs.

It is not within the province of this survey of literature to go through the twelve large volumes of his works in detail.

We would rather point out that, to the unphilosophical reader, who would willingly know something of Spencer's literary powers, the "Study of Sociology," which he wrote for the "International Scientific Series," and the treatise on "Education" are books which all who read must enjoy.

To him, with Mill, belongs the glory of restoring to Great Britain the old supremacy in philosophy given to her by Bacon, continued by Locke, Hume, and Berkeley, but temporarily interrupted by Kant and Hegel.

Another writer who has attempted to combine psychology with physiology is =Alexander Bain (1818- )=, who was for many years Professor of Logic in the University of Aberdeen, and twice Lord Rector.

Bain assisted Mill in the preparation of his "Logic," and has himself written a treatise on that science, also lengthy works on "The Senses and the Intellect," and "The Emotions and the Will."

Perhaps his work on "Mental and Moral Science" is his best-known contribution to student literature.

Although he is the author of books on grammar and composition, Professor Bain's style is always oppressively heavy and unattractive.

As Spencer and Bain combined psychology with physiology, so it was the effort of Boole and De Morgan to extend the scope of logic by an ingenious application of mathematics.

The leader for many years of the "Hegelian" school of philosophy at Oxford, which has long held the field against Mill on the one hand and Spencer on the other, was =Thomas Hill Green (1838-1882)=, who was appointed Whyte Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1877, and who published the same year a series of articles in the _Contemporary Review_, on "Mr Herbert Spencer and Mr G. H.

Lewes: their Application of the Doctrine of Evolution to Thought."

He was preparing for publication his "Prolegomena to Ethics" at the time of his death, and the work was finally edited by Professor A. C.

Bradley, who has himself written a treatise on logic, and whose Hegelian work, entitled "Ethical Studies," is of the highest interest.

Green was a moral force in Oxford, quite apart from his philosophical speculation, as the following extract from one of his lectures will indicate:--"I confess to hoping for a time when the phrase, 'the education of a gentleman,' will have lost its meaning, because the sort of education which alone makes the gentleman in any true sense will be within the reach of all.

As it was the aspiration of Moses that all the Lord's people should be prophets, so with all seriousness and reverence we may hope and pray for a condition of English society in which all honest citizens will recognize themselves and be recognized by each other as gentlemen."

=George Henry Lewes (1817-1878)=, whose name is frequently joined with that of Spencer by his association of biology with ethics and psychology, was the son of Charles Lee Lewes, the actor, and was one of the most versatile writers of our times.

His first important work was the "Biographical History of Philosophy," originally published in 1845 in Knight's Shilling Library, but amplified without improvement into two substantial volumes in 1867. Lewes's distaste for the ordinary metaphysics, and the severity of his criticism on Hegel, have rendered this work the _bête noir_ of all transcendental students; but it remains the one English "History of Philosophy" of any pretension.

More unqualified praise may be given to the "Life of Goethe," which Lewes published in 1855. Perhaps no other man then living could have shown himself competent to deal with Goethe's many-sidedness--to discuss "Faust" and "Tasso," "Hermann und Dorothea" at one moment, the poet's biological and botanical discoveries the next, and to estimate at their true worth the speculations on colours, which Goethe held to be more calculated than his poems to secure him immortality.

The book remains the standard life of the great Weimar sage in this country, and is popular in Germany, in spite of a vast Goethe literature which has been published since its appearance.

In addition to these great works Lewes wrote two novels, one of which, "Ranthorpe," Charlotte Brontë praised enthusiastically.

He edited the _Fortnightly Review_, and also initiated a craze for aquaria, by his "Seaside Studies;" he endeavoured, indeed, to popularise many of the sciences, particularly physiology.

His last years were devoted to philosophical questions, and his "Problems of Life and Mind" were published in fragments, the concluding volume, under George Eliot's editorship, after his death.

The earliest writer of the era to popularise science was =Sir David Brewster (1781-1868)=, an eminent physicist, in whose _Edinburgh Cyclopædia_ Carlyle commenced his literary career.

His "Life of Newton," "Martyrs of Science," and "More Worlds than One" are still widely read.

=Michael Faraday (1791-1867)=, another famous physicist, is still better remembered by our own generation, principally for his popular lectures at the Royal Institution, where he was superintendent of the laboratory for forty-eight years.

He was a blacksmith's son, and was originally apprenticed to a bookbinder.

After his discovery of magneto-electricity, he had, he told Tyndall, a hard struggle to decide whether he should make wealth or science the pursuit of his life.

Tyndall calculates that Faraday could easily have realised £150,000; but he declared for science and died a poor man.

=John Tyndall (1820-1893)=, who once said that it was his great ambition to play the part of Schiller to this Goethe, succeeded Faraday at the Royal Institution, and wrote about him eloquently in his "Faraday as a Discoverer."

Tyndall was born at Leighlin Bridge, Carlow, Ireland, in 1820. His father was a member of the Irish constabulary.

His services to many branches of science were great; but he concerns us here not so much by his treatises on electricity, sound, light, and heat, or by his discoveries in diamagnetism, as by his "Lectures on Science for Unscientific People," which, Huxley said, was the most scientific book he had ever read, and which has yet the transcendent merit of giving enjoyment as well as instruction, even to the readers of three-volume novels.

In 1856 Tyndall made a journey to Switzerland, in company with Professor Huxley, and the friends afterwards wrote a treatise "On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers."

Geological treatises may be said to have given the fullest play to the literary side of science.

The work of Robert Bentley and Sir Joseph Hooker in botany, of Michael Foster, St George Mivart, and Francis Maitland Balfour in biology, is, it may be, equal or superior to that of the bulk of the writers whose achievements we have chronicled; but it is not a part of literature.

Burdon Sanderson, Balfour Stewart, and a host of other men, have done incalculable service in the Victorian era--service, it is to be feared, which scarcely obtains as generous recognition as the cheap generalisations of smaller men; but scientific text-books, however important, are scarcely within the scope of these chapters.

Geology, on the other hand, is, as it were, a conglomerate of the sciences, and lends itself readily to the most eloquent literary expression.

Few writers have been more widely read than =Hugh Miller (1802-1856)=, a Cromarty stone-mason, whose first enthusiasm for study of the rocks arose from following his trade, but whose life was mainly devoted to journalism, and to editing _The Witness_.

His "Old Red Sandstone," "Footprints of the Creator," and "The Testimony of the Rocks" were effective in kindling a taste for natural science.

The special study which Miller gave to the Red Sandstone rocks was extended by =Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871)= to the Silurian System, and his work entitled "Siluria" has passed through many editions.

Scotland seems to have been the nursery of geologists, for Miller and Murchison, Lyell and the brothers Geikie, were all born north of the Tweed.

=Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875)= was born at Kinnordy, in Forfarshire, and educated at Midhurst, and at Exeter College, Oxford.

Called to the bar, he went the Western Circuit for two years, but, when attending some of Dr Buckland's lectures, he became attached to geology.

His "Principles of Geology," first published in 1830, caused a revolution in the science.

Never before had there been presented such a connected illustration of the influences which had caused the earth's changes in the unresting distribution of land and water areas.

Much of Lyell's great work reads like a fairy tale; much might have been thought the fruit of an imaginative rather than of a scientific mind.

Lyell's smaller book, the "Student's Elements of Geology," was injured in literary merit by the progressive study of the science of which he had been the second father.

The constant addition of fresh knowledge, and his conversion to Darwin's views, necessitated the continual rewriting of parts and further revision by other hands after the author's death.

"The Antiquity of Man" (in defence of Darwin's theory) is of more value from a literary standpoint.

Before the beginning of the reign =William Buckland (1784-1856)=, Dean of Westminster, by whose lectures Lyell had so much profited, had written his famous Bridgewater Treatise on "Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology."

His son, =Frank Buckland (1826-1880)=, wrote clever and readable books on "Natural History," and had genuine enthusiasm for the study of animal life; but he was charged with having vulgarised the studies in which he took so keen an interest.

The most distinguished living geologist is Sir Archibald Geikie, who is now director-general of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom.

His "Text Book," which was first published in 1882, is a model of lucid writing, and his essays are among the most pleasant literary products of the age.

His brother, James Geikie, has written an important work on glaciation, entitled "The Great Ice Age."

But the scientific literature of the past sixty years might almost be said to be summarised in the work of =Charles Darwin (1809-1882)=.

A

funeral in Westminster Abbey, amid the mourning of many nations, closed the career of one whose life-work had often been greeted with scorn.

"Our century is Darwin's century," said a leading German newspaper (_Allgemeine Zeitung_) at his death, and the statement is no exaggeration.

Those who witnessed the long stream of prelates and nobles who filed through the Abbey at his funeral, the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr Tait) and the present Prime Minister (Lord Salisbury) among the number, could not but recall the reception of the great investigator's theory twenty years before.

Bishop Wilberforce in particular denounced it in the _Quarterly Review_ as "a flimsy speculation."

Darwin's antecedents were of a nature such as, on the principle of heredity, a great man should possess.

His paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a poet, whose "Botanic Garden" may still be read with interest.

His maternal grandfather was Josiah Wedgwood, the famous potter.

Darwin was the son of a doctor of Shrewsbury, and was educated at the Grammar School of that city and at Christ's College, Cambridge.

Here his natural history studies were sympathetically directed by Professor Henslow, the botanist, by whose recommendation he was selected to accompany the _Beagle_ on its expedition to survey the South American coast.

The results of his travels were embodied in his first important work, "Journals of Researches during a Voyage round the World," which was published in 1839, and was republished under the title of "A Naturalist's Voyage round the World."

In the same year he married his cousin, Miss Wedgwood, and, after a few years of London life, took up his residence in a pleasant country house at Down, near Beckenham, in Kent.

Here he pursued his remarkable investigations until his death, surrounded by his accomplished children, and finding, as he told a friend, his highest emotional gratification in the joys of family life and a love of animate nature.

Two of his sons, George Howard Darwin and Francis Darwin, have done good work in science, the one in geology and astronomy, the other in botany.

Darwin himself wrote also on the "Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs," revolutionising the popular view concerning these remarkable phenomena.

Discovering that reef-building polyps cannot live at depths of more than twenty fathoms, he found it necessary to explain the presence of rocks built by them which rise from more than 2000 feet below the surface of the sea.

This he did on the hypothesis of a gradual subsidence of the sea-floor whilst the polyps are at work.

This view has since been generally accepted by geologists, although somewhat modified by Dr John Murray's observation in the _Challenger_ expedition, that the reefs are not always of solid coral, and that they may in many cases have been formed on the cones of extinct volcanoes.

Darwin had pondered for many years over the theory which was to make him famous before he decided to bring his conclusions before the public.

After considerable observation of every form of animal and vegetable life and experiments in selective breeding he concluded that the species of plants and animals now on the earth were not created in their present form, but had been evolved by unbroken descent with modification of structure from cruder forms, the remains of many of which are constantly discovered in the older rocks.

He discovered in 1858 that =Alfred Russel Wallace (1822- )= had independently arrived at the same conclusions, and so it was agreed that their views should be jointly laid before the Linnæan Society.

In 1859 the "Origin of Species" was published, and it was followed by a number of works bearing upon the same subject, the most notable of all being the "Descent of Man."

Darwin's work on "Earth Worms," perhaps the most purely literary of all his writings, appeared the year before his death.

It is not the province of a sketch of Victorian literature to discuss the many important bearings of the Darwinian hypothesis.

Received with unbounded contempt by literary men so eminent as Carlyle and Ruskin, it was accepted only with qualification by men of science like Agassiz, Carpenter, and Owen; but an overwhelming majority of scientific men in England, America, and above all in Continental countries, have declared in its favour.

The theory has received popular interpretation in Germany from Haeckel, and in England from Huxley, although in this connection we must not forget =George John Romanes (1848-1894)=, the author of "Animal Intelligence" and "Mental Evolution in Animals," Grant Allen, and Edward Clodd.

=Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)=, one of the greatest of our men of science, was of interest not only on account of his vast scientific attainments, but for his profound acquaintance with metaphysics, as illustrated in his "Life of Hume," his wide culture, and his exquisite literary style.

He was born and educated at Ealing, in Middlesex, where his father was a schoolmaster.

He studied medicine at the Charing Cross Hospital, then entered the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon, and went in the _Rattlesnake_ to survey the Barrier Reef of Australia.

The papers which he sent to the Royal and Linnæan Societies gave him fame.

After his return he devoted himself to original research; but work of that sort brings no recompense in money, and Huxley's means were narrow.

In 1854, however, he obtained the chairs of Natural History and Palæontology at the School of Mines, and to this he afterwards added the appointment of Inspector of Fisheries.

The "blue ribbon" of science, the Presidency of the Royal Society, was conferred on him in 1883. Huxley wrote much on biological problems, and by the publication of his "Physiography" gave a new name to the science which has extended the scope of the old Physical Geography: but his chief interest for us here is in his "Lay Sermons," "Addresses and Reviews," his "Critiques and Addresses," and his "American Addresses," all of which may take rank among the finest prose of our age.

As an interesting contrast to the work of Darwin and Huxley, and all that it has implied to modern literature, one may refer once again to the movement inspired by Cardinal Newman.

His most prominent associates for many years, neither of whom, however, left the Church of England for the Church of Rome, were Pusey and Keble.

=Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882)= was practically the founder of the modern High Church movement in the Anglican community.

A writer of "Tracts for the Times," he was, after Newman had "gone over to Rome," the recognized head of the movement, and his followers were frequently called "Puseyites."

A demoralization of the party seemed inevitable on Newman's secession, but the publication of Dr Pusey's "Letter to Keble" gave it fresh life.

In 1866 his "Eirenicon," a proposal for the reunion of Christendom, drew a reply from Cardinal Newman, with whom, however, he maintained the profoundest friendship to the end.

=John Keble (1792-1866)=, who was born at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, was a man of far higher gifts.

Educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he obtained a fellowship at Oriel.

For some years he was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, a position for which he had qualified himself by the publication of the "Christian Year," a volume of religious poems for every Sunday and church festival, many of which have been admitted into the hymnology of all the Christian sects.

Perhaps truer poetry is to be found in his "Lyra Innocentium," a series of poems on children, for there the human element is more marked.

Keble also wrote a "Life of Bishop Wilson," and published several volumes of sermons.

The movement of Liberal theology, to which men like Keble gave the name of "national apostasy," was headed in its earlier developments by Archbishop Whately and Dr Arnold of Rugby, and more recently by the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice and Dean Stanley.

=Richard Whately (1787-1863)=, who was at Oriel with Keble, had published his once popular "Logic" and "Rhetoric" before the commencement of the reign of Victoria, and in 1831 had been made Archbishop of Dublin, a position which he held till his death, in 1863, winning all hearts by his kindness and liberality, by his generous tolerance and zeal for progress.

His "Logic" is chiefly of importance for the impetus it gave to the study of that science.

His "Christian Evidences" gained in its day a wider audience.

=Thomas Arnold (1795-1842)= was born at East Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, and was educated at Winchester, and with Keble at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

After ordination he removed to Laleham-on-Thames, where he prepared young men for the universities.

When, in 1827, the head-mastership of Rugby became vacant, Arnold was elected on the strength of a recommendation by Dr Hawkins, to the effect that he "would change the face of education all through the public schools of England."

The prophecy was fulfilled.

He was the first to introduce modern languages and modern history and mathematics into the regular school course.

At the same time he always insisted on the value of the classics as a basis of education, and himself prepared an edition of "Thucydides," and wrote a "History of Rome" in its earlier periods, which is at least eminently interesting.

His services to his country as an educational reformer were even greater on the moral side.

Dr Arnold was a purifying influence to men of the higher classes, to a degree which is inexplicable to the present generation.

For a time he was unpopular, and his school suffered, through his advocacy of church reform and his association with political Liberalism; but the success of his pupils at the universities had caused a reaction in his favour at the time of his death, which occurred all too early, for he was only forty-seven.

Of his many distinguished pupils, perhaps the best known are Tom Hughes and Dean Stanley.

=Thomas Hughes (1823-1896)=, who in 1882 was made a county-court judge, wrote many books, but only one of them entitles him to be remembered to-day.

In a moment of happy inspiration, he wrote the finest boy's book in the language.

"Tom Brown's School Days" was published in 1857. It is a picture of life at Rugby, under Dr Arnold's healthy, manly guidance.