BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY 349 concerned? Is it wise to attempt utterly to conceal identity in fiction? May it not add to the interest in most cases to indulge the reader in a growing suspicion of the truth? Note the stages in the identification of the Black Knight. How is the effect of climax heightened when the Knight reveals himself among the outlaws? Another interesting line of study on the characters is to note the counter-play of influence. Chapter xxxiv. is good material for such examination. The working of character on character is well brought out in the scene between Prince John, De Bracy, and Fitzurse. Note also the ruling motives displayed by each person in the story, for example, in Bois-Guilbert, in Isaac, in Cedric, and in Athelstane. Now it is easy enough to depict a "ruling motive," but it is not so easy to blend and harmonize it with the infinite variety of tendencies and motives that enter into human nature and give to the individual a complete and consistent personality of his own. It is neither caricature nor allegory that the novelist created, but living men and women. How far in this respect do you think our novelist has succeeded? In this connection it would be well to compile a "List of Characters in Ivanhoe," to consider the distinctness and individuality of portraiture. Suppose you number the characters in the next novel you happen to read and make comparisons in this regard with Scott. When in addition to the characters of this romance we take into our count those of equal merit presented in his other novels, we arrive, perhaps, at a fairer estimate of the real genius of this Wizard of the North than in any other way. Such is the line of study suggested for the reader of Ivanhoe. A similar course may be followed with other novels, as the student's interest may direct. A novel really worth reading is worth studying. In no other way will its artistic value be felt. The Life of Scott by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, is the authoritative biography. The Journal of Sir Brief BibliWalter Scott covers the period of his later life. ography. The General Preface to the edition of the Waverley Novels (1829) is full of interesting autobiography concerning his youth. Sir Walter Scott in the English Men of Letters Series, by R. H. Hutton, is the best short biography. The Life of Scott in the Great Writers Series, by C. D. Yonge, contains an extended bibliography. Recollections of Sir Walter Scott, by R. P. Gillis, and Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott, by James Hogg, are of lighter character. Abbotsford, by Washington Irving, is a pleasant sketch of the novelist in his home. Scott (in Encyclopædia Britannica), by William Minto, and Scott (in Chambers's Encyclopædia), by Andrew Lang, are authoritative and concise. Robin Hood, by Ritson, and The Old English Ballads in any standard collection, such as Percy's Reliques, or vol. v. of Child's English and Scottish Ballads, will furnish interesting material on the outlaws of Sherwood Forest. The Waverley Dictionary, by May Rogers, contains an alphabetical arrangement of all the characters in the Waverley Novels, with a descriptive analysis of each character. III. THE REVOLUTIONARY POETS: BYRON, SHELLEY. Born in the period of social upheaval which closed the century, passing in boyhood through those ence of the years of strife and turmoil which accompanied The Influ Time. the Revolution, two great English poets, Byron and Shelley, appear at the beginning of the nineteenth century as the real representatives of that epoch in English verse. The older poets had early lost the glow of their first enthusiasm and had gradually settled into the conservatism of established institutions; but Byron and Shelley were thoroughly inflamed with the spirit of revolt, a spirit which lent ardor to their verse and not infrequently broke forth in the experiences of their strenuous, troubled lives. George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in London April 19, 1788. His ancestry was not auspicious. HARROW AND CAMBRIDGE 351 John, his father, was a libertine, and went by the nickname of "Mad Jack." The poet's un- Lord Byron, cle, William, was known as "the wicked 1788-1824. lord;" and his grandfather had committed murder. Byron's mother, Catherine Gordon, a native of the Highlands, and excessively proud of her descent from James I., was an impulsive, hysterical woman, whose influence over her young son was anything but helpful. Her property had been squandered by her husband, who had deserted her and was living in France when their child was born. During the poet's boyhood mother and son lived at Aberdeen, until in 1798 Byron came to his inheritance and took possession of the ancestral estate of Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. In the following summer young Byron entered a school in London. His mother accompanied him, her presence proving disastrous to the happiness of both. In her moods of affection and anger she was equally unreasoning and extravagant. From petting she would fly into fits of passionate abuse. Byron was early conscious of his mother's weak and irresponsible character; once when a school fellow exclaimed impatiently, "Your mother's a fool," the boy replied quietly and rather to his comrade's surprise, “I know it." The effects of such an ancestry and such influences upon the moral development of Byron could not have been insignificant. Harrow and The years 1801-5 were spent at the famous public school of Harrow, where the young lord came under the wholesome discipline of a wise and Cambridge. excellent master, whom he later described as "the best, the kindest (yet strict, too) friend I ever had." Byron was not a hard student, but he read eagerly, learned a little German, and more French; Italian he seems to have mastered. At Harrow and at Cambridge, whither he went in 1805, he was passionately fond of athletics, in spite of the clubfoot, in regard to which he was morbidly sensitive. His handsome, melancholy face, his aristocratic, haughty spirit, his reckless daring, his genius, and his dissipation had made Byron a conspicuous and not unattractive figure at the University when, in 1807, he published his first volume of verse, entitled Hours of Idleness. There was nothing of particular promise in these early poems faithfully cast in the mould of Pope's heroic couplets; nor were they of sufficient importance, perhaps, to justify the sharp criticism of the Edinburgh reviewers, who vigorously assailed the book on its appearance. The point of their criticism was fair enough. The young poet's affectation of misanthropy was especially disagreeable. What was to be thought of a boy who expressed himself cynically in lines like these: "Weary of love, of life, devoured with spleen, or who offered, as an epitaph upon a favorite dog, this: English "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise. In the spring of 1809 Byron took his seat in the House of Lords. It was a mere formality, necessary to the recognition of his hereditary privileges. Byron's real emergence into public life came with the appearance of his satirical poem, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which was published a few days after the formal assumption of his parliamentary rights. The poem was at first anonymous; then a second edition followed with the author's name. In his own words, the young poet woke to find himself famous. The attack upon Jeffrey and Brougham was generally enjoyed and especially relished by those who THE METRICAL ROMANCES 353 had suffered from their often brutal criticism. Byron paid his respects to his contemporaries in this satire, ridiculing Scott, whose Lay of the Last Minstrel had appeared in 1805 and Marmion in 1808; Wordsworth he characterized as "an idiot" who "Both by precept and example shows That prose is verse and verse is only prose." In June of the same year (1809) Byron left England upon an extended tour which lasted Travels. about two years and fed the imagination of the poet with romance and adventure. Byron's travels extended as far as the Orient; the story of the journey is told in the long poem, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and some experiences furnished material for the later work, Don Juan. In 1811, at news of his mother's illness, he returned to England, but just too late to see her alive. The Met Romances. The first two cantos of Lord Byron's most important work, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, appeared in 1812. In spite of the faults and affecta- rical tions which mar all of his more prominent compositions, this poem ranks among the great productions of English verse; and its place was speedily recognized. There is wonderful virility in the poetry of Byron at his best, an energy and passion that are irresistible; his verse is fluent and melodious, his descriptive passages vivid and brilliant. The popular success of these cantos was repeated in the series of briefer romances which followed. Within three years, with astonishing rapidity, he published The Giaour (pronounced Jour), The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, The Siege of Corinth, and Parisina. The extravagance of early romanticism, the romanticism of "Monk" Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe, found an echo in these melodramatic tales. Against the dark background of the |