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Paracelsus is so much the most important of the works of this period that it demands separate notice. Although several characters appear in the course of it the method is fundamentally that of monologue. The whole interest is concentrated on the fortunes and spiritual development of Paracelsus; but in this instance they are followed through a life. The poem may be described as a poetical treatise on the necessity of a union of love with knowledge and of feeling with thought. But though loaded with reflexion it never, like Browning’s later works, ceases to be poetical, and it must be ranked very nearly at the head of its author’s writings. The intellectual theory of the universe which underlies all Browning’s poetry is never afterwards as fairly stated, nor are the difficulties as fully faced, as in Paracelsus. It has the advantage therefore, not only as poetry but also as philosophy, over the works written after The Ring and the Book.
Boldness of design then, and an even excessive opulence of intellect, were from the first the characteristics of Browning. He did not acquire them, they were his birthright. Carlyle stood out from among his contemporaries by virtue of conquests won through toil and pain, Browning entered into his inheritance at once and without effort. The one might have said, like the chief captain, “With a great sum obtained I this freedom;” and the other might have answered, with St. Paul, “But I was free born.” Yet the advantage was not all on one side. Carlyle had the deeper sympathy with the difficulties of the time, and laborious as was his way upwards he had far more power over his own generation than Browning. The latter was for many years one of the least popular of poets, and what influence he possessed operated slowly and unseen. It was men of less vigorous intellect who stamped their character upon this early part of the period.
CHAPTER III
The view presented in the last chapter is that even Tennyson in his early works displays the qualities to be expected in a time of lowered energy, and gradually, by native force, rises superior to its limits. If this view be sound we should expect the characteristics in question to be much more prominent in lesser men. And this we find to be the case. Besides Tennyson himself and his brothers, the principal poets who had begun to write before 1830, and who may be taken as representative of the early years of the period, were: Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Mrs. Hemans, Elizabeth Moulton Barrett, Thomas Hood, Henry Taylor, and William Motherwell. We may include also Winthrop Mackworth Praed, for, though his poems were not collected and published till long afterwards, a number of them were written before this date. The Poems of Hartley Coleridge came a little later; and in the last year of the decade then beginning Philip James Bailey won by the long and ambitious poem of Festus, a great reputation which has for many years been fading away.
These writers are unusually hard to classify, because of the absence of any dominant note or of any absorbing interest. The two women first named, Mrs. Hemans and ‘L. E. L.,’ belong rather to the preceding period, though they overlap this. Both are sentimentalists, and time has taken from their work the charm it once possessed. Mrs. Hemans is now unduly depreciated, but the difference between the most favourable and the least favourable critic can only be with regard to the degree of weakness charged against her. L. E. Landon (1802-1838), who became by marriage Mrs. Maclean, was in her own day even more popular than Mrs. Hemans, but she has since been much more completely forgotten. Even the mystery of her death, which was believed by many to be due to foul play, but which in all probability occurred through misadventure, has failed to keep alive the interest in her. Yet, though her verse is of little value, she is one of the best examples of the tendencies of the time. She followed Byron as far as her talents and the restraints of her sex would allow. Her longer poems are on the whole poor; some of her shorter pieces are very readable, but they are chargeable with the fault of an excess of rhetoric. Such as she was in poetry, her work was mostly done before 1830. After that date she wrote some mediocre prose stories, but was comparatively inactive in verse.
Charles Tennyson Turner
(1808-1879).
Both of Tennyson’s brothers, Charles and Frederick, were, like himself, poets. It has but recently become known that Frederick as well as Charles had a share in the Poems by Two Brothers. Except for this the eldest brother’s publications were of much later date; but Charles Tennyson, afterwards Charles Tennyson Turner, followed up the joint venture with another of his own, a slim volume of Sonnets and Fugitive Pieces, published in 1830. This attracted the attention of Coleridge, who bestowed warm but discriminating praise upon the sonnets. Both as to fame, and probably as to his own productiveness, Charles Tennyson Turner was crushed, as it were, under his greater brother. He wrote little more, though he carefully revised and in some respects decidedly improved his sonnets. It is by virtue of them that he takes his place among English poets. They are graceful and sweet, but the substance is not always worthy of the form. They reveal everywhere the interests and the pursuits of the Vicar of Grasby, and they are honourable to his peaceful piety. It is evident that both Charles and Frederick Tennyson, and especially the latter, might have been disposed to adapt to themselves the humorous complaint of the second Duke of Wellington, and exclaim, ‘What can a man do with such a brother?’ Though the eldest of the three, Mr. Frederick Tennyson belongs by the date of his publications rather to the period after than to the period before 1870.
Of the other writers, Praed, accomplished and exceedingly clever, but never impelled to do anything really great, may be regarded as a victim of the prevalent want of purpose. So may Hood, in respect of that section of his works which naturally goes along with those of Praed. Hood, it is true, was too great a man to be dismissed as merely a writer of the transition; yet, just because of his greatness, his history shows better than that of any other man how earnestness was discouraged and triviality fostered. Seldom have so great poetic gifts been so squandered—with no dishonour to Hood—on mere puns. The poet, as an early critic pointed out, was a man of essentially serious mind; but he had to earn bread for himself and his children, and as jesting paid, while serious poetry did not, he was compelled to jest.
Thomas Hood
(1799-1845).
Thomas Hood inherited from a consumptive family a feeble constitution, and the latter part of his life was a gallant but painful struggle against disease. His literary life began in 1821, when he was made ‘a sort of sub-editor’ of the London Magazine. Lycus the Centaur, a boldly imaginative piece for so young a man, appeared in 1822. The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, a fine specimen of graceful fancy deservedly ranked high by himself, and the powerful and terrible Eugene Aram’s Dream, were likewise early pieces. The latter may be contrasted for its treatment of crime with Bulwer Lytton’s well-known novel on the story of the same murderer. The advantage in imaginative force and insight, as well as in moral wholesomeness, is all on the side of Hood.
These pieces prove that the vein of serious poetry was present from the first in Hood. The vein of jest and pun was equally natural to him. Jokes of all kinds, practical and other, enlivened and sometimes distracted his own household. This liking for fun inspired the Odes and Addresses to Great People, written in conjunction with John Hamilton Reynolds, the Whims and Oddities, and the succession of Comic Annuals, the first of which appeared in 1830. The presence of such a light and playful element in a great man’s work is by no means to be regretted; but in Hood’s case, unfortunately, there was for many years little else. Hood was blameless, for he had to live. With characteristic modesty he seems for a time to have been persuaded that the public were right, and that nature meant him for a professional jester. It was fortunate that he lived to change this opinion, for much of his finest poetry belongs to his closing years.
Perhaps the most original fruit of Hood’s genius is Miss Kilmansegg, which conceals under a grotesque exterior deep feeling and effective satire. It has been sometimes ranked as Hood’s greatest work; and if comparison be made with his longer pieces only, or if we look principally to the uniqueness of the poem, the judgment will hardly be disputed; but probably the popular instinct which has seized upon The Song of the Shirt and The