Like fire are the notes of the trumpets that flash through the darkness of sound. As the swing of the sea churned yellow that sways to the wind as it swells, Is the lift and relapse of the wave of the chargers that clash with their bells; And the clang of the sharp shrill brass through the burst of the wave as it shocks Rings clear as the clear wind's cry through the roar of the surge on the rocks: And the heads of the steeds in their headgear of war and their corseleted breasts, Gleam broad as the brows of the billows that brighten the storm with their crests, Gleam broad as their bosoms that heave to the ship-wrecking wind as they rise, Filled full of the terror and thunder of water that slays as it dies. And the foam of their mouths as the sea's when the jaws of its gulf are as graves, And the ridge of their necks as the wind-shaken mane on the ridges of waves; And the whole plain reels and resounds as the fields of the sea by night, When the stroke of the wind falls darkling, and death is the sea-farer's light. Swinburne owes much to Greek. He also owes much to French, especially to Victor Hugo. He was much influenced by Shelley, whom he resembled in some Summary literary qualities, in speed and lightness of style and command of lyric form. He had also Shelley's devotion to liberty and hatred of tyrants. It was partly owing to his denunciations of those in high places that he was not made poet laureate. Some of his poems, too, like some Elizabethan poetry, returned to sensualism and pagan ideals. In spite of all this, he stands with Browning and with Tennyson as one of the first poets of his age. A poet of importance, though of minor influence, is Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). His poetry has the calm and philosophy of Wordsworth's, but hardly Matthew its inspiration. At his best he has a digni- Arnold fied, meditative beauty, an austere sweetness. His most representative poems are his Scholar Gipsy and Thyrsis. He wrote also one poem sometimes studied in schools, Sohrab and Rustum, in which the feeling is perhaps too far calmed into classical repose. The most singing and emotional of any of his poems, one might say the most poetic, is the Forsaken Merman, a poem in which he followed rather the impulse of his heart than his theories of poetry. Arnold wrote, besides his poetry, a good deal of literary criticism. His ideas are less important than the stimulus that one gets from them. His limitation was his overrefinement. He is too timid about "vulgarity" to develop strength. He suffers from the attitude called in England "donnish," that of the university man who shrinks from the crude originality of life outside university traditions. A man so limited will never offend in taste. Neither will he stir the hearts of men. QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW I. Show how their What did the Pre-Raphaelite painters aim at? Read several of Rossetti's other poems, including if possible 497. II. How do the Middle Ages as pictured by the Pre-Raphaelites differ from that pictured by Scott, from that shown in Tennyson's Idylls? Show by reference to the poems of Rossetti and Morris that their Upon what subjects did Morris write in his Earthly Paradise? What is the subject of Sigurd the Volsung? Read a passage from Morris's prose tales? What did Morris set out to do in the world of applied art and practical craftsmanship? Compare his work with Ruskin's. Which inspired the other? What evidence of Morris's work in furniture, in wall-paper, in printing, in carpets? What were Morris's social and political ideas? Show the relation of his ideas to Ruskin's. Which was the man who carried ideas into action? What error in the idea of both that the world could return to medieval ways. III. Explain why Fitzgerald is more famous than most translators. In what is Swinburne unequalled among English poets? What faults must be set against this merit? Compare Swinburne with Shelley and Arnold with Wordsworth. Faults and CHAPTER XIII RECENT FICTION In the last years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth there has been written a great deal of fiction. Yet little of it has been great fiction. Never before, it is true, has the art of novel writing been so thoroughly understood. Yet, strange to say, there are few novels that, no matter how they may be hailed as "great," do not finally slip out of sight. Possibly the reason is that modern fiction tends to be clever rather than great, to interest rather than to move deeply. The strange thing is that authors in comparison with whom Scott was childish in technical skill are incapable of constructing novels with the life of Scott's. The standard of construction has been raised partly by the natural development of the art, partly by imitation of foreign writers. The French have High helped much. Just as they helped England Mediocrity to form a prose style at once clear, simple, and poetic, so they have taught important lessons in plot and construction. Dumas, Hugo, Balzac, De Maupassant, Zola, Flaubert, and Daudet have all helped. While modern English fiction has few great peaks, it is a high tableland. We may say that the present period is to fiction what the Elizabethan age would have been to drama if Shakspere and Marlowe and Jonson had been removed, a wonderfully high level. Perhaps its Shakspere died in infancy, perhaps he is still in school, perhaps he is yet to be born. While the principles of composing fiction are understood, they have not been settled rigidly. There are no eighteenth-century "laws." In fact, it is an age of free experiment. It is an age therefore of promise and of possibilities. It is an age as yet of no determined attitude toward life. In the middle of the Victorian period there was, as has been said, a pause in the advance No Big of ideas of humanity and idealism. The Convictions world, contented with the nobility of its ideals, stopped to admire them. It was also spoiled by material prosperity. It "waxed fat" and forgot about ideals. The development of the commercial ideal in the middle of the nine teenth century the ambition that led a man to wish to be a "captain of industry" or leader of "big business," that made him want to achieve visible and material things put ideals in the background. It became for a time hard for men to understand the significance of the New Testament story of the Temptation in the Wilderness, to see that one might turn one's back upon riches and power to achieve mastery of things of the spirit. Men failed to see clearly that it is useless to "do things" unless one sees clearly what one should do and why. Life threatened to become like a ship without a captain, a crew whose members asked only that the engines run smoothly, no matter to what port! This spirit led to corruption, to triviality in politics. Whatever succeeded was right. And it is rebellion against this spirit that is now showing itself in movements toward social and political reform. The return to a shallow eighteenth-century contentment, shown in the saying, "This world as it is, is good enough for me," is giving way not to discontent (for discontent merely grumbles), but to efforts to make things better. It is such ideas that stimulate great literature. There has been of late years a stirring of new social theory, an awakening of civic ideals and a questioning of accepted dogmas that promises much. The attainment of woman's suffrage is one striking sign of new ideas. A feature of the last half century has been the growth of the short story. Short stories have been told ever The Short since primitive men first gathered around a camp-fire. The modern short story, however, is a developed form of art. The first English short stories in prose occurred as "episodes," inserted tales |