VIII. THE VICTORIAN AGE. 1830 to the Present Time. REIGNS OF WILLIAM IV. AND QUEEN VICTORIA. No era in the history of the English nation has been more prolific of great writers in nearly all departments of literature than has this. With the opening of the Victorian Age there was a general change in the modes of thought and a general forward movement in favor of education, not only in England, but also in the United States. No epoch in history shows greater enlightenment. The first public grant in favor of education in England was made in 1833, and since that time these grants have been regularly made, and the intelligence of the English people has been greatly advanced. The number of readers has also correspondingly increased, and with them the number of thinkers and authors. The character of the literature has also in a measure changed, and has become more reflective and scientific than that of the preceding or poetic age. The chief poets of the age are Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, and Miss Ingelow. Among the chief prose-writers are the historians Macaulay and Froude, the novelists Thackeray, Dickens, and George Eliot, and the essayist Carlyle. 19. ALFRED TENNYSON, Born 1810-1892. ALFRED TENNYSON, who became poet-laureate on the death of Wordsworth in 1850, is the great representative English poet of the Victorian Age. Tennyson was the son of a Lincolnshire clergyman. He was born in the year 1810. Three brothers-Frederick, Charles, and Alfred-all were poets, but the youngest of the three, Alfred, was the only one destined to become famous as the representative literary man of his age. The first effort that brought him to the notice of the public was a poem with which he won the Chancellor's Medal in 1829, while yet an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, his theme being Timbuctoo. A year later a Cornhill publisher announced Tennyson's first volume, entitled Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson, in which appeared such gems as "Claribel" and "Mariana in the Moated Grange." But the reception with which the volume met was not encouraging. Nothing daunted, the poet again came before the public in 1833, when, in addition to some of his former poems, he presented such favorites as “The Miller's Daughter," "The Lotus-Eaters," and The Queen of the May." But again the critics were severe and unkind, and during the next nine years the poet seemed to preserve silence. In 1842, however, he issued two new volumes of poems, in which were such admirable productions as "Locksley Hall," "The Gardener's Daughter," "Lady Clara Vere de Vere," and "Godiva." In 1847, Tennyson published an epic poem in blank verse entitled The Princess: a Medley, which has been characterized by critics as graceful and exquisite. In 1850 the poet presented a new volume to the public, entitled In Memoriam, a collection of one hundred and twenty-nine poems; and in 1855 another volume, entitled Maud, and Other Poems. In 1858, Tennyson published one of his best and most extended poems, entitled Idyls of the King, which celebrates the adventures of the mythical King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. To this volume. was added another of a similar character in 1869, entitled The Holy Grail; and in 1864, between the times of publishing the two poems here mentioned, he issued a volume entitled Enoch Arden, and Other Poems. Tennyson's best poems are "Locksley Hall," In Memoriam, The Princess, and Idyls of the King. At the present time the poet, who is a man of studious and industrious habits, is still living at Petersfield, Hampshire, England. CRITICISM BY TAINE. TENNYSON is a born poet; that is, a builder of airy palaces and imaginary castles. But the individual passion and absorbing preoccupations which generally guide the hands of such men are wanting to him: he found in himself no plan of a new edifice; he has built after all the rest; he has simply chosen amongst all forms the most elegant, ornate, exquisite. Of their beauties he has taken but the flower. At most, now and then, he has here and there amused himself by designing some genuinely English and modern cottage. If in this choice of architecture, adopted or restored, we look for a trace of him, we shall find it, here and there, in some more finely sculptured frieze, in some more delicate and graceful sculptured rosework; but we only find it marked and sensible in the purity and elevation. of the moral emotion which we carry away with us when we quit his gallery of art. CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. NOTE. This poem is by many regarded as Tennyson's most famous production. It has for its basis the heroic action of a brigade in the battle of Balaklava. As a lyric it is unsurpassed in any language. I. HALF a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of death Rode the Six Hundred. Rode the Six Hundred. II. "Forward, the Light Brigade !" Some one had blundered: Theirs but to do and die; Into the valley of death Rode the Six Hundred. ANALYSIS.--1-4. Is the sentence periodic or loose! 2. Parse onward. 3. Name the figure in this line. 5. Supply the ellipsis. 6. Name the object of said. 8. Who were the Six Hundred? 11. What figure in the line? 5 10 15 ANALYSIS.-21. Name the subjects of volleyed and thundered. 22. Stormed at, etc. What does the phrase modify? What figure in the line? 23. Name modifiers of rode. 24. jaws of Death. What figure? 25. Point out the figure in this line. 26. Name the modifiers of Rode. 27. What is the meaning of sabre? What figure in the line? 28. What is the antecedent of they? 29, 30. Subring, etc.; Charging, etc. What do these phrases modify! 30, 31. while, etc. What does the clause modify? 31. Point out the figure. 33 Parse Right. Name the antecedent of they. 36 Shattered and sundered. What do these words modify? 38. Not the Six Hundred. Explain. |