THE VICTORIAN AGE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 924, 17 September 1910, Page 9

THE VICTORIAN AGE.

Under, the auspices of ,tho University Extension Delegacy, a vacation course, for foreign students was opened at Oxford recently, when tho inaugural address'was delivered by the Vice-Chan-, cellor (Dr. ,T. Herbert, AYarren). . . Ill,reviewing the literary;forces of the nineteenth century the. Vice-Chancellor said he had seen George Eliot, and had talked iairly often with Browning and' with Ruskin,. and to have had'acquaintance with Meredith and Tennyson, and could, at any rato speak with the .adtant-age of contemporary knowledge of them, and of many others of the': chief literary. figures of the Victorian age. ' It was exceedingly: difficult, probably it was:really impossible, for an-English-man' to know liow England appeared to a guest from a. foreign land. The first thing to note was that England was, and. always had been, at one and the same time extraordinarily cosmopolitan and extraordinarily national. Anothei characteristic wiis openness to tho reception of foreign ideas. ./■ There was probably no . country which hnd-' been, more willing to .-receive,'-and .which .had. as a fact been more nffcotc'd by. importations from other countrie:-: than England. This again might''bn noted in the literature of tho Victorian uge.

. Yet with all this' openness to foreign inlluenci!, with this free tradu m tliought and form, wont tho most inteuso and characteristic nationality and tho most strong and sturdy individuality. They lived in days when Collectivism was gaining everywhere over individualism, and even England had felt tho inilucncc. Tho Strength of England, so they thought, was independence and freedom. Her weakness was want of order, and organisation. Ho noticed they were to liavo special lectures ou Browning and Tennyson. Ho would not attempt to anticipate them. Ho would only indicato in general terms how those writers illustrated what he had been saying. ...

' : The age just before, tho Victorian was European in its interests. It shared in tho great' European movement. This might be seen in Sholloy and in the ■early,-Wordsworth;, it might bo seen , pre-eminently in Byron. At- the close of the Napoleonic wars the. nations exhausted fell apart,. and fell back upon themselves and; their own development. Iliis .was especially the case with England.' 1 v .' . ■ '. .- . Tht, defect of Dickens and the defect pf..Thackeray, as representatives of the. Victorian ago was their partial and limited character. . There were 'Beveral novelists whom perhaps they would hardly have time to study_ who were (jminently. English and eminently: Victorian. Such were Charles lleade ana Anthony- Trollope. and Mrs; Oliphant, a feminine;-Anthony Trollope. Thoroughly to understand the Vict-orian ago they should read Kingsley,. ..especially '."Yeast" and' "Alt-oil Locke," .and above all Miss Charlotte Yonge. .But-the great central novelist of; the .Victorian age, the'most characteristic and iepratentative, was George Eliot.. ... . . 1 ■-Meredith, who., died ;only . the' other day, had;a place apart.- He was a literary paradox.' ..He belonged by date tothe '.Victorian era, by tradition and predilection to the very .early. Victorian or ';cven 'pre-Victoriar.. period. /Yet; ho' did hot; affect or: influence,. his time until ;tlie. last . five . and twenty , years of tiie Victorian era. '.-' . y .Turmng to poetry,' Dr. Warren; said' tliero was one poet .who might be: said, whatever faults critics ''might: find in' him,' to. bo .perfectly and. completely re■presentative' of the Vict-orian agorrho meant Tennyson. . -They must not forget: or omit the other poets. They, too, -were. Victorian.;: - They flowered out of and' adorned their time. They _ reflected and; represented it-. The. .optimism _of England, its strength, its industry,' its sympathy with other lands, its spon-; ta-nciiy, its' mixture of . doubt and faith, of '.conimbn senso . and * of philosophy; these, they would, find- in Browning.y .y . The . pessimism; of .'England, .its - selfcriticism,' its" belief that things were,bet-; tcr managed abroad,; its doubts and despondencies,' these'.they would find in .Matthew Arnold. ;Bptli;;\vore. scholars, and had that" love of .the classics': which... was ' so-, great and ;so-good; an 'English' tradition. '- ' Both : . Browning;.ahd Arnold were.. English 'in' their interest .in • religion and Christianity;"-. But the real reipresentatiye English poet- of tho i Vic-toriah;ago::W-as,Teniiysoii;;:by birth,/by training, by temper,' by -career., he had the -best' English culture, and.be added tb it for -himself.-. ' Sympathetic ' with .other ; lands,- he'remained: a patriotic .Englishman. .Ho;had, too, what neither )Arnokr. ndr :Bro>y'niiig/ had',.;; sympathy, with;' the/gteat scientific /movement of his age, and, in politics ho had what they, iiad , not,.; the; Imperial side.' -. Hq was' the. v,oice of the Victorian.age; the, Virgil of the British Empire. " y. . ; .;Tho. Victorian era w r as,. above: all,- an era of emaiicipation and' expansion, ;of' the, removal -of- fetters andyiiiiitatidns,'. .the destruction of of privilege, of prescription, arid of prejudice.; Natu- - rally the explosive and expansive, forces /.which-' wrought l the- destruction' peemcd I to niake their, fiercest effort first, when, the Conflicting obstacles'were still closest: ;and /strongest':,. The first reforms, wore : I'ut, having* gained [way, '-fcliey 'still' .continued their'expaji-, .■sivo' pressurb, and; cortain regions/were; -6till conscidusof .it. y.'

v :^;ll^: :\y■^'" ; par ,ture too . thai each,';. generation , spent ..itself as it arrived,, and as it spent jitself became satisfied' and stationary. !.Somet ; liing. :of.. this .'process . they might. ;'see, iir some'of- tlio writers-as: well as the. statesmen of this, period. From 1830 .'to: 1875 or /thereafter;'was an age of j'growtlx: 'and optimism; Then followed ian..; age- of afrestation,. pessimism, ..de-- : spondericy.. -This njas- the period" when ; 'Matthew- Arnold's/poems,. written some :timo iearlieri but little known, began to gain ' vogue, Tt -waV the - period when /Swinburne's /earlier•'' and pessimistic ;poenis'caught; on, when .Morris's "Earthly: Paradise" appeared,.with its prefaceabout: "the idle singer .' of an empty day,".,tho period when George.. Meredith and 'Edward.. Fitzgerald-wore discovered. "Omar" wa-s,;the correlative to; "In Memoriam." ;., , '■' ■. ~ > ;,. - '

. Tennyson and' Browning both 1 - lived "through .'this period.; TennysOnj' in more senses than' one, entirely; survived' it,' and- • when ■ died- twenty' years'.' later, yet another 'change had: taken place, and a new expansion and optimism of a more, limited, earthly sort, began. The most conspicuous' and '. characteristic 'figure,? perhaps,, of this age was Rudy ard . Kipling,' with his; romance -of realism,.', his;.ilmperiali patriotism, hia. fine energy, 'his belief'in the destiny ofrman,' and man's power to mould it. '

A'living poet who linked the/ two pe'riods;.together, 'a.; very English poet,' was; Robert Bridges,' a scholar ,'and-4 patriot; in. the' lino of / Chaucer - and Spenser and Milton, but it tlio same time . thoroughly moderin: . They ''.jvere, goirig . to , Eton', >arid he advited them'to read Bridges's Eton' Ode. The real. the'real Eton, not'the smart; .successful school of to-day, but the .'foundation of. the saintly English King./:/;./. ■ '. \ ;. / ;'