A Brief Survey of English and American Literature (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII 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. 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 fife of Macaulay, Thackeray, Darwin, and George Eliot is distinctly intellectual; that of Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, and Stevenson, imaginative and spiritual. It must be remembered, however, that the greater the writer, the harder it is to classify him. Seeming Decline of Romanticism.-- At the time of the death of Scott (1832), the great romantic impulse seemed to have spent itself. Byron, Shelley, and Keats were dead. Coleridge's "shaping spirit of imag...