of excellence, and render us less fastidious. We write
and speak more, and therefore we write and speak
worse, at least in style and manner, tlian the great
authors and orators of the past. Not to speak of
the host of smaller men whose poor thoughts clothe
themselves on the platform and through the press in
poorer words, no one can read the speeches of even
our foremost statesmen, or the novels, poems, essays,
articles that pour forth with such rapidity from the
pens of our most notable writers, witiiout being con-
strained to admit that, in comparison with the great
orators and autliors of the past, we have fallen on
degenerate times. ' They had more time to write,'
says Mr. Mill, ' and they wrote chiefly for a select
class. To us, who write in a hurry for people who
read in a hurry, the attempt to give an equal degree
of finish would be loss of time.' But it will be no
loss of time for those to wliom, by reason either of
their special vocation in life, or of their general
position and exigencies as educated men, the capa-
city to speak and write well will in future years be
an invaluable endowment — it will be no loss to
them to become familiar by patient study with
those unapproachable models of the art of expres-
sion which are supplied to us by the literature of
ancient times.
VICTORlAN LITERATURE.
VICTORIAN literature commences at the close of that brilliant period which boasts the great names of Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Cole- ridge, and Landor. It was therefore born to a glorious heritage, and it would have been no wonder had such a splendour eclipsed it entirely. But while it would be impossible to mention so many names of the first order in the literature of the present age, there is no doubt as to the greater living interest it possesses for us. Literature is affected powerfully by, as it in return affects powerfully, the period to which it belongs. Elizabethan literature is that of an age when the human spirit, awakened by religion and adventure to a consciousness of its dignity and free- dom, sought new ideals, and breathed a larger air. The literature of Queen Anne's reign, again, is that of a time when life and religion had become artifi- cial, form taking the place of reality, and scepticism that of faith — a time lacking that earnestness which is the prime condition of true greatness of life, of which literature and art are the ideal expression. The literature, again, which immediately preceded that of our era, was moulded to a large degree by those profound influences which found political and social expression in the French Revolution. Burke, Southey, Wordsworth, and its other great writers, were, each in his own way, so affected, and their works cannot be intelligently studied without bear- ing this in mind. Literature is no mere spinning of intellectual or fanciful cobwebs, but a real, substan- tial structure, having its foundations deep down in the life of an epoch. Yet while this must always be remembered, the genius of a literature is a some- thing belonging to and springing from itself, and not received from without as an inheritance. It must, in a word, have a character of its own. Vic- torian literature has some of those marked features which go to make up character. Self-consciousness is one and perhaps the most marked. What a con- trast it presents in this respect to that of the Eliza- betlian era ! Men were then so young and fresh in spirit that they lost themselves, as it were, in the creations of their genius. The critics of to-day laboriously endeavour to trace the man Shakespeare in his works with more or less success. The greatest poem of our era, ' In Memoriam,' is introspective throughout. Autobiography is the most popular form of our literature. The inner mind and char- acter of an author, as much as his works, are de- manded as public property. A Mill and a Carlyle are laid before us in the inmost recesses of their being, open to the scrutiny of a generation — curious, certainly, but perhaps also earnest and reverent before true worth and greatness. This introspective, self-conscious character of the age is fatal to the growth of the higliest form of creative genius in literature, viz. the Dramatic, which is the outcome or expression of a certain zest in life quite unknown to the introspective spirit of our time. Hamlet, it is true, is the very embodiment of the introspective character, but he is always Hamlet, an ideal creation, and not a mere personi- fication of a certain order of cjualities to which a name has been given by the poet. Hamlet lives and acts as a man, if not always as a gentleman accord- ing- to Mr. R. L. Stevenson's notions of one.^ The cliaracters of modern drama are, on the other hand, so many phases of the poet's mind duly labelled. They are like the gods of the heathen, ' the work of men's hands,' and ' they that make them are like unto them.' It was recently well said by a critic, ' The widest expansion of mental cultivation does not ensure any commensurate growth of creative genius.' Victorian ^ See Siriliiier's Magazine for June 1888.
