diction. He emphasized especially the function of the imagination, which he explained and defended according to the principles of German idealism. He laid much stress upon a distinction between "reason" and "understanding," the "reason" being a peculiarly high power of the mind to grasp truth which cannot be explained by the common "understanding." Carlyle spoke of Coleridge's ideas as "philosophical moonshine," and there may be truth in the remark as far as abstract philosophical speculation is concerned; yet Coleridge's criticisms of particular pieces of literature, such as his comments on Shakespeare, are highly appreciative and illuminating. Indeed his present rank as a critic is very high, perhaps among the world's great five or six.

The Critical Reviews. This period was also the period of the great critical reviews: The Edinburgh Review, The Quarterly Review, and Blackwood's Magazine. The most influential contributors were Francis Jeffrey and Professor John Wilson. They were acknowledged authorities. Their criticism was keen and penetrating, but often bitterly dogmatic, the result of mere personal opinion and prejudice. It was against Jeffrey in particular that Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers was directed.

Appreciative Criticism. William Hazlitt (1784-1859) and Charles Lamb (1775-1834) were more sympathetic critics. They made criticism "a kind of romance in the world of books." Lamb was an especially sympathetic critic, a lifelong friend of Coleridge, a defender of Wordsworth and the new poetic school, an enthusiastic admirer of the older romantic literature of the Elizabethan time. His Specimens of Early English Dramatists, with critical comments, displays a wide and discriminating reading in Shakespeare's contemporaries. It did much to revive the

fame of the lesser dramatists, whom the classicists had almost entirely neglected.

Lamb as a Critic of Life. But Lamb was quite as much a critic of life as a critic of literature. He lived year in and year out in London, a close and sympathetic observer of men and manners. Moreover, he saw everything in the light of the quaint humor of his own character and in the light of the touching pathos of his own simple, heroic life. His keen sympathy and quaint style have made him one of the most charming of English essayists. His Essays of Elia and Last Essays of Elia are his most popular books. Among the individual essays, Old China, A Dissertation on Roast Pig, and Dream Children illustrate very well the delicacy of his dreamy imagination, the quaintness of his humor, and the sincerity of his pathos.

Thomas De Quincey. — In Thomas De Quincey (17851859) the romantic element is even more pronounced. He was one of the earliest converts to the ideas of Wordsworth and Coleridge, and lived neighbor to Wordsworth for twenty years at Grasmere. There he read a prodigious number of books, ate vast quantities of opium, and dreamed the most glorious and most terrible dreams. His Confessions of an Opium Eater is an extended autobiography from his earliest recollections down to the time when he became an absolute slave of the opium habit (1819). Susperia de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths), a sequel to The Opium Eater, tells of the wandering of his mind when under the spell of the drug. It is a gloomy and terrible series of dreams, of which Lavana and Our Ladies of Sorrow is the most widely known. The English Mail Coach is also a dream product. It relates that, when De Quincey was riding one night on the top of His Majesty's mail, the coach collided with a frail carriage containing a pair of lovers. The horror and anguish

of the catastrophe, especially the vision of the girl in terror of death, entered into his dreams, appearing again and again in unexpected and weird dream combinations.

De Quincey's Critical Works. The most important of De Quincey's critical works are On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823), Murder Considered as a Fine Art (1827), and Literary Reminiscences. The Reminiscences contain appreciations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Shelley, Keats, and other literary figures of the Romantic School, many of whom De Quincey knew personally and in some cases intimately.

De Quincey's Style - De Quincey's style is luxuriant and full of romantic coloring-highly imaginative prose. The range of his vocabulary was exceeded only by that of Shakespeare and Milton, and he used that vocabulary with the finest precision. His style is richly figurative, and moves along with a stately rhythm which gives it many of the emotional qualities of verse. The diffuseness of his writing, however, is often irritating to the reader who is impatient of digressions. De Quincey often stops for incidental, even trivial remarks, and is sometimes led far afield by his wayward fancy. It has been well said of him: "He illustrates both the defects and the virtues of the romantic temper; its virtues in the enkindled splendor of his fancy and the impassioned sweep of his style; its defects in his extravagance, his unevenness, his failure to exercise adequate self-criticism."

SUGGESTIONS FOR READING 1

Gray: Elegy in a Country Church Yard.

Burns: Poems.

Carlyle Essay on Burns.

1 All these readings may be found in the Pocket Series of English Classics published by The Macmillan Company.

U

Coleridge: The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Christabel. Wordsworth: Shorter Poems.

Byron Childe Harold, Books III and IV.

Shelley and Keats: Selections from Shelley and Keats.

Lamb: "Old China," "A Dissertation on Roast Pig," and "Dream Children" in Essays of Elia.

De Quincey: The English Mail Coach.

Scott: Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth.

CHAPTER XIII

THE VICTORIAN ERA

Characteristics of the Victorian Era. We have seen that, in the age of classicism, the emphasis in literature was placed upon reason and common sense. The primary appeal was to the intellect. Imagination and emotion had an incidental place. In the Romantic period the reverse was true. Imagination and emotion were emphasized. Reason and common sense often gave way to extravagance and excess. In the Victorian Era both influences are strong, and run side by side throughout the century, each modifying and restraining the excess of the other. The literature of reason is less rigid and formal; the literature of the imagination, less extravagant and unreal. It is difficult to say which group is of greatest importance: Macaulay, Thackeray, Darwin, and George Eliot; or Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, and Stevenson. Nor is it always easy to classify authors, for the two streams of influence often came together, particularly in the greatest men. The case is not so easy with George Eliot and Alfred Tennyson as with Macaulay and Stevenson. George Eliot is not a thoroughgoing realist in spite of her own professions. (See Part I, p. 16.) Alfred Tennyson's romanticism was much modified by the investigations of science; he accepted without hesitation the principles of Evolution. Yet the prevailing attitude toward life of Macaulay, Thackeray, Darwin, and George Eliot is distinctly intellectual; that of Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, and Stevenson, imaginative and