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SIR MARTIN ARCHER SHEE, 1770-1850, a native of Ireland, removed to London and became a member and finally President of the Royal Academy. Shee was a portrait painter, but did not rise to the first rank in his art. Besides his paintings he published several poetical and miscellaneous works, also of inferior value. Two of them are entitled Rhymes on Art, and Elements of Art. Alasco is a tragedy, which was not put upon the stage. His two novels are Harry Calverly, and Old Court. Shee seems to have been a good speaker and a person of pleasing address.

School-Books.

The writers of school-books, though not so numerous as within the last twenty years, showed symptoms of growing activity. A few only of them can be mentioned.

THOMAS KERCHEver Arnold, 1800-1853, is noted as the author of an extensive and popular series of school-books, nearly fifty in number, chiefly manuals for teaching foreign languages, Latin, Greek, French, and German.

WILLIAM MAVOR, LL.D., 1758-1837, originally a schoolmaster, afterwards a clergyman, was a most industrious producer of books, mostly school-books and compilations. His publications run through a period of fifty-six years, and include Spelling-Books, Grammars, Histories, etc. His most extensive and best-known compilations are Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries, 25 vols.; Modern Traveller, 4 vols.; British Tourist, 6 vols.

SAMUEL MAUNDER, 1790-1849, was a useful and laborious compiler, the brother-inlaw and co-laborer of Pinnock, Maunder's compilations, or Treasuries, are very numerous Biographical Treasury; Treasury of Knowledge; Treasury of History,

etc.

MRS. MARKHAM, wrote a large number of school-histories, which have had an extensive popularity. Historical Conversations for Young People; History of England; History of France, etc.

MRS JANE MARCET is celebrated for her numerous elementary text-books, under the form of Conversations. Probably no English school-books have been more generally popular. Her Conversations on Chemistry was first published in 1810. It has been followed by Conversations on Natural Philosophy, on Political Economy, on Botany, on Intellectual Philosophy, on Mineralogy, on Vegetable Physiology, on Land and Water, on Language, on Grammar, on History of England, etc. She has also written a large number of still more juvenile books: Mother's First Book, Stories for Children, Game of Grammar, Willy's Stories for Children, etc.

BENJAMIN H. SMART, for a long time teacher of Grammar and Elocution in London, wrote numerous works in exposition and defence of his methods: Thought and Language; Introduction to Grammar on its True Basis; Accidence of Grammar; Principles of Grammar, Manual of Rhetoric and Logic; Practice of Elocution, with an Outline Course of Literature; Theory of Elocution; Practical Logic; Beginnings of a New School of Metaphysics, etc.

Journalists.

No inconsiderable part of the literature of this period was produced by those whose main business was that of journalism. The writers of

this class are especially prolific in works that come under the head of Miscellaneous. Among those writers, the following may be named:

LAMAN BLANCHARD, 1803-1845, an English journalist, was associated for a time with Bulwer in editing the New Monthly Magazine. Blanchard was a brilliant writer, and he contributed numerous articles, prose and verse, to all the leading English periodicals. He committed suicide in a fit of insanity. Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer edited a collection of these writings, entitled Essays and Sketches, in 3 vols., with a memoir of the author.

MICHAEL L. QUIN, 1796-1843, an Irishman, was at different times editor of the Dublin Review, and the Monthly Review, and a contributor to the Morning Chronicle and the Morning Herald. He published A Visit to Spain; A Steam Voyage down the Danube; Steam Voyages on the Moselle, the Elbe, and the Lakes of Italy; Trade and Banking in England; The Autobiography of Don Augustin Iturbide: Memoirs of Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, translated from the Spanish; Laborde's Petra, translated from the French; Nourmahal. an Oriental Romance.

FREDERICK W. N. B. BAYLEY, 1807-1852, was chiefly known as editor of the Illustrated London News. Other works: Four Years' Residence in the West Indies; Tales of the Late Revolution; Wake of Ecstasy, a Poem; New Tale of a Tub, in verse; Little Red Riding Hood; Blue Beard.

GEORGE SEARLE PHILLIPS, 1817, many of whose works were published under the pseudonym of January Searle, has been editor or assistant editor of numerous papers both in England and in America, and has contributed largely to the press in all its forms. The best known of his separate works are: An Elucidation of the Bhagavat Gita; a Sketch of Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer;" The Gypsies of the Dane's Dyke.

CHARLES ROGER DOD, 1793-1855, was connected with the newspaper press of London for thirty seven years, and for twenty-three years of that time with the Times. He superintended the reports of Parliamentary Debates, and also wrote for that paper the biographies of the distinguished men who died during that time. His separate publications are: The Parliamentary Companion; Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage. EDWARD BAINES, 1774-1848, was long known as proprietor and editor of the Leed's Mercury. Mr. Baines wrote A History of the Wars of the French Revolution, A History of the Reign of George the Third, A History of the County Palatine and Duchy of Lancaster. EDWARD BAINES, 1800, son of the preceding, was connected with his father in the management of the Leed's Mercury, and succeeded to the proprietorship. He has written a Life of his father, and A History of the Cotton Manufacture; A History of the Woollen Manufacture; and A Visit to the Vaudois of Piedmont. He is a Member of Parliament for Leeds, and a liberal in politics.- THOMAS BAINES, 1802 ———, also a son of Edward B., was for many years editor of the Liverpool Times. He wrote Scenery and Events in South Africa, and History of the Commerce of Liverpool.

CHAPTER XVI.

TENNYSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

THE last period of our book begins with 1850, and continues to the present time. After the death of Wordsworth, in 1850, the undisputed chief of English letters was Alfred Tennyson, Poet-Laureate. Tennyson began to be distinguished about the time that Victoria became Queen, and his career as a poet is intimately associated with the reign of that great and good sovereign.

The writers of this period are divided into seven sections: 1. The Poets, beginning with Tennyson; 2. The Novelists, beginning with Dickens; 3. Writers on Literature and Politics, beginning with Carlyle; 4. Writers on Philosophy and Science, beginning with Sir William Hamilton; 5. Writers on History, Biography, Antiquities, and Travel, beginning with Macaulay; 6. Writers on Theology and Religion, beginning with John Henry Newman; 7. Miscellaneous Writers, beginning with the Howitts.

I. THE POETS.

Tennyson.

Alfred Tennyson, 1810, Poet-Laureate, is one of the few thus honored who have really deserved the distinction.

Like Wordsworth, Tennyson rose by slow degrees into

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full and complete recognition; and nothing is more noteworthy in his career than the calm deliberation and design with which every part of his career as an author has been planned. His works bear, to a less degree than those of any known author, the mark of chance or of haste; they are, on the contrary, the legitimate fruits of the highest order of genius united with the most patient toil.

Career. Tennyson was born at Somersby, Lincolnshire. His life has been an uneventful one, passed for a time in study at Cambridge, with young Hallam, whose early death furnished the text for In Memoriam ; then in studious retirement at Farringford House, Isle of Wight; and, since 1869, at Petersfield in Hampshire.

Tennyson is one of four brothers, sons of a clergyman of the Church of England, who have all manifested poetic ability. Indeed, his elder brother Charles was at first considered to be superior to Alfred. The two published in 1827, anonymously, a small volume entitled Poems by Two Brothers. Alfred Tennyson was then only seventeen. Two years later, in 1829, he gained at the University the Chancellor's prize by his poem of Timbuctoo.

First Volume. -In 1830 Tennyson published his first independent volume, under the title: Poems, chiefly Lyrical. Unpretending as this little volume was, it established at once the fame of the new poet, for it contained, along with weaker pieces, some of his most graceful productions, bearing the impress of an original and finished style. Tennyson published a new edition, with many alterations, omissions, and additions, in 1832. Then, for many years, the poet seemed to be dormant.

The Princess.· At length, in 1847, appeared The Princess. This fairy stranger was not wholly welcome, at least to the reviewers. The grim, doughty veterans of The Edinburgh and The Quarterly were puzzled by its apparent fantastic incongruity, and almost shut their eyes to the depth of underlying thought. Twenty years have elapsed since then, and The Princess is now recognized in its true character, as the profound and artistic handling of a great living question.

In Memoriam. - Whatever disappointment was occasioned to the poet's admirers by The Princess, was more than compensated for by In Memoriam, in 1849. This elegy, unquestionably Tennyson's masterpiece, appeared anonymously, but every reader and critic recognized at once by whom and for whom it had been written. It also explained the author's long silence since 1832. In that beautiful allegory of In Memoriam beginning with the lines:

On that last night, before I went

From out the walls where I was bred,

Tennyson has symbolized, in the shape of a retrospective dream, his despair at the death of his friend and the temptation which he felt, and overcame, to abandon everything to idle, selfish grief. The maidens symbolize the muses with whom he had been dwelling, and whom he thought to desert; but for this he was reproved by the spirit

of his friend. This friend, it is almost superfluous to add, was Arthur Henry Hallam, the son of the historian, and a young man of great promise. He died at Vienna in 1833.

Character of the Poem.-In Memoriam is the growth of years of grief and self-communing; it is the quintessence of sorrow, crystallized into the most poetic form, and generalized for all mankind. The poet has struck every chord of woe in the human heart; he has a message for every mourner, a word of sympathy for every Job-like doubter. There is not, in any language, a poem that has a nobler mission, and fulfils that mission more nobly, than In Memoriam. It is not the selfish wailing of a man over the loss of his friend; it is the lamentation of the poet Jeremiah over all human misery.

Maud. In singular contrast to In Memoriam came Tennyson's next poemMaud. This very contrast, perhaps, was one of the reasons why Maud was received so coldly by the reviewers. They could not understand how the English Jeremiah should descend to write a love-song, and, blinded by prejudice, they pronounced poor Maud a failure. As in the case of The Princess, they again failed to see that Maud was not merely a beauty, but a type of the nineteenth century.

Idylls of the King. — But all the doubts and dismal prognostications of the quarterlies were dispelled, in less than four years, by The Idylls of the King. The very same journal - The Athenæum - that had pronounced Maud "unworthy of its author," spoke of The Idylls as "his best and most artistic work." The success of The Idylls was paralleled only by that of In Memoriam. In some respects it is perhaps a more popular book. Still, future ages, we think, will judge Tennyson chiefly by In Memoriam.

His later works, such as Enoch Arden, are rich in beautiful Tennysonian passages, but deficient in freshness.

Estimate of Him. - Tennyson's qualities as a poet may be best ascertained, perhaps, by comparing him with others of this century. He has not the vigor, or the broad, creative imagination of Byron; but he has all the depth of Wordsworth, and all the subtlety of Shelley, without the former's vagueness or the latter's eccentricity. Tennyson is essentially a lyric poet of the impassioned but reflective order; he is the child of the present generation in all its culture, its refinement, its tendency to doubt, its love of artistic form.

Style.-Tennyson's style is the most finished since the days of Shakespeare and Milton. At times, indeed, it seems almost too faultless, and makes the reader wish for a little of Browning's ruggedness. In the choice of words, especially of predicates, and in the adaptation of old or almost obsolete words to new uses, Tennyson has not his equal in modern English literature. Whether we read The Lady of Shallot, a Locksley Hall, or The Vision of Art, or In Memoriam, or The Idylls of the King, we find everywhere the most exquisite adjustment of word to thought, the rarest suggestiveness of imagery, and the most perfect freedom and variety of construction. In style, certainly, Tennyson is the first model after Milton.

Robert Browning.

ROBERT BROWNING, 1812, stands conspicuous among the poets of his day, being inferior to Tennyson only.

Career. — Mr. Browning was educated at the London University. He was married in 1845 to the poetess Elizabeth Barrett, since which time he has lived on the continent, and chiefly at Florence, in Italy.

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