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THE VICTORIAN AGE
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS
The Victorian epoch was exceedingly productive of literary work of a high quality,
but, except in the novel, the amount of actual innovation is by no means great. Writers were
as a rule content to work upon former models, and the improvements they did achieve were
often dubious and unimportant.
1. Poetry,
a) The lyrical output is very large and varied, as a glance through the works of
the poets already mentioned will show. In form there is little of fresh interest.
Tennyson was content to follow the methods of Keats, though Browning's
complicated forms and Swinburne's long musical lines were more freely used
by them than by any previous writers.
b) In descriptive and narrative poetry there is a greater advance to chronicle.
In subject – for example, in the poems of Browning and Morris – there is great
variety, embracing many climes and periods; in method there is much
diversity, ranging from the cultured elegance of Tennyson's English
landscapes to the bold impressionism of the poems of Whitman. The PreRaphaelite school, also, united several features which had not been seen
before in combination. These were a fondness for medieval themes treated in
an unconventional manner, a richly coloured pictorial effect, and a studied and
melodious simplicity. The works of Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne provide
many examples of this development of poetry. On the whole we can say that
the Victorians were strongest on the descriptive side of poetry, which agreed
with the more meditative habits of the period, as contrasted with the warmer
and more lyrical emotions of the previous age. There were many attempts at
purely narrative poetry, with interesting results. Tennyson thought of reviving
the epic, but in him the epical impulse was not sufficiently strong, and his
great narrative poem was produced as smaller fragments which he called
idylls. Browning's Ring and the Book is curious, for it can be called a
psychological epic – a narrative in which emotion removes action from the
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chief place. In this class of poetry The Earthly Paradise of William Morris is a
return to the old romantic tale as we find it in the works of Chaucer.
2. Drama. Several of the major poets of the period wrote tragedy on the lines of the
accepted models. Few of these attained to real distinction; they were rather the
conscientious efforts of men who were striving to succeed in the impossible task of really
reviving the poetical drama. Of them all, Swinburne's tragedies, especially those concerned
with Mary Queen of Scots, possess the greatest warmth and energy; and Browning's earlier
plays, before he overdeveloped his style, have sincerity and sometimes real dramatic
power. As for comedy, it was almost wholly neglected as a purely literary form.
A development to be noticed is the popularity of the dramatic monologue. In
Ulysses, Tithonus, and other pieces Tennyson achieved some of his most successful
results; and Browning's host of monologues, wide in range and striking in detail, are
perhaps his greatest contribution to literature. The method common to this kind of
monologue was to take some character and make him reveal his inmost self in his own
words.
3. Prose,
a) By the middle of the nineteenth century the novel, as a species of literature,
had thrust itself into the first rank. We shall therefore consider it first. In the
novels of Thackeray and Dickens the various qualities of the domestic novel
are gathered together and carried a stage forward. Dickens was a social
reformer, and yet did much to idealize the England of his day, and to depict
the life of the lower and middle classes with imagination and humour. As a
satirist
and an observer of
manners Thackeray easily excels
his
contemporaries. With the Bronte sisters the romantic impulse was fully felt in
the novel, to which they gave new intensity of passion, greater depth of
intuitive sympathy, and a profound interest in the struggles of the individual
soul. In this they were followed by George Eliot, who showed a closeness of
application to the mental, processes of her characters that was carried further
in the work of Meredith, and has led to the 'psychological' novels of the
present day. In Esmond the historical novel made an advance. Here
Thackeray was not content to master the history of the period he described;
he sought to reproduce also the language and atmosphere. This is an
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extremely difficult thing to achieve, and is possible only in novels dealing with
a limited period of time, but Thackeray scored a remarkable success.
b) The development of the short story, as a separate species of literature, will
be touched upon in the next chapter.
c) In the case of the essay we have to note the expansion of the literary type
into the treatise-in-little. This method was made popular by Macaulay, and
continued by Carlyle, Symonds, Pater, and many others. Of the miscellaneous
essayists, both Dickens, in some parts of The Uncommercial Traveller, and
Thackeray, in The Roundabout Papers, successfully practised the shorter
Addisonian type; and this again was enlarged and made more pretentious by
Ruskin, Pater, and Stevenson.
d) The lecture becomes a prominent literary species for a time. Carlyle,
Thackeray, Dickens, and many others both in England and America published
lectures in Oxford. Earlier critics like Hazlitt and Coleridge had done so; but,
almost for the first time, Ruskin gave a distinct style and manner to the
lecture.
e) The historians are strongly represented. Carlyle and Macaulay, in spite of
their great industry and real care for history, have now fallen behind in the
race as historians, and survive chiefly as stylists.The new method that arose
was typified in the solid and valuable work of William Stubbs (1825-1901),
Edward A. Freeman (1823-92), and Samuel R. Gardiner (1829-1902). These
historians avoided die charms of literary style, concentrated upon some
aspect of history, and, basing their results upon patient research into original
authorities, produced valuable additions to human knowledge.
f) We have already noticed that in this period the scientific treatise attained to
literary rank. We may mention as early examples of this type Sir Thomas
Browne's curious treatise on Urne Buriall, Burton's The Anatomy of
Melancholy, and the graceful essays of Berkeley.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE
With such an amount of writing as characterizes this age it is quite certain that both
in prose and poetry a wide range of style will be observable.
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1. Poetry. In the case of poetry the more ornate style was represented in Tennyson,
who developed artistic schemes of vowel-music, alliteration, and other devices in a manner
quite unprecedented. The Pre-Raphaelites carried the method still further. In diction they
were simpler than Tennyson, but their vocabulary was more archaic and their mass of detail
more highly coloured. The style of Browning was to a certain extent a protest against this
aureate diction. He substituted for it simplicity and a heady speed, especially in his earlier
lyrics; his more mature obscurity was merely an effect of his eager imagination and reckless
impetuosity. Matthew Arnold, in addition, was too classical in style to care for
overdeveloped picturesqueness, and wrote with a studied simplicity. On the whole,
however, we can say that the average poetical style of this period, as a natural reaction
against the simpler methods of the period immediately preceding, was ornate rather than
simple.
2. Prose. With regard to prose, the greater proportion by far is written in the middle
style, the established medium in journalism, in all manner of miscellaneous work, and in the
majority of the novels. Outside this mass of middle prose, the style of Ruskin stands highest
in the scale of ornateness; of a like kind are the scholarly elegance of Pater and the
mannered dictions of Meredith and Stevenson. The style of Carlyle and that of Macaulay
are both peculiar brands of the middle style, Macaulay's being hard, clear, and racy, and
Carlyle s gruff and tempestuous, with an occasional passage of soothing beauty.
Of the simpler writers there is a large number, among whom many novelists find a
place. We have space here to refer only to the easy-going journalistic manner of Dickens
and to the subacid flavour of the prose of Thackeray.
We add a specimen of Stevenson's prose style. This style, which in its' mannered
precision is typical of many modern prose styles, is noteworthy on account of its careful
selection of epithet, its clear-cut expressiveness, and its delicate rhythm.
But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper; he could sit
at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the Bench with a steady
hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the
low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less
formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford
a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence. In the playing-fields, and
amongst his own companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at his father's
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table (when the time came for him to join these revels) he turned pale and sickened in
silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered, he had toleration for only one: David
Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord Glenalmond was tall and emaciated, with long
features and long delicate hands. He was often compared with the statue of Forbes of
Culloden in the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty, preserved some of
the fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with any of his fellow-guests, his appearance, as of
an artist and an aristocrat stranded in rude company, rivetted the boy's attention; and as
curiosity and interest are the things in the world that are the most immediately and certainly
rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted by the boy Weir of Hermiston.
SOURCE
 ALBERT, Edward: History of English Literature. Revised by J. A. Stone. 5th Edition
Oxford University Press, England - 1979. pp. 426 - 431
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