The Victorian Age in Literature

The Victorian Age in Literature

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Title: The Victorian Age in Literature
Author: G. K. Chesterton
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Language: English
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HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
No. 61

Editors:
THE RT. HON. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.
PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, LITT.D., LL.D., F.B.A.
PROF. SIR J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.
PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.
A complete classified list of the volumes of The Home University
Library already published to be found at the back of this book.

THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE
BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
LONDON THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LTD.
COPYRIGHT, 1913,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTION 7
I THE VICTORIAN COMPROMISE AND ITS ENEMIES 12

II THE GREAT VICTORIAN NOVELISTS 90
III THE GREAT VICTORIAN POETS 156
IV THE BREAK-UP OF THE COMPROMISE 204
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 253
INDEX 255
The Editors wish to explain that this book is not put forward as an
authoritative history of Victorian literature. It is a free and personal
statement of views and impressions about the significance of Victorian
literature made by Mr. Chesterton at the Editors' express invitation.

THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE

INTRODUCTION
A section of a long and splendid literature can be most conveniently
treated in one of two ways. It can be divided as one cuts a currant cake
or a Gruyère cheese, taking the currants (or the holes) as they come. Or
it can be divided as one cuts wood--along the grain: if one thinks that
there is a grain. But the two are never the same: the names never come
in the same order in actual time as they come in any serious study of a
spirit or a tendency. The critic who wishes to move onward with the
life of an epoch, must be always running backwards and forwards
among its mere dates; just as a branch bends back and forth continually;
yet the grain in the branch runs true like an unbroken river.
Mere chronological order, indeed, is almost as arbitrary as alphabetical
order. To deal with Darwin, Dickens, Browning, in the sequence of the
birthday book would be to forge about as real a chain as the "Tacitus,
Tolstoy, Tupper" of a biographical dictionary. It might lend itself more,
perhaps, to accuracy: and it might satisfy that school of critics who

hold that every artist should be treated as a solitary craftsman,
indifferent to the commonwealth and unconcerned about moral things.
To write on that principle in the present case, however, would involve
all those delicate difficulties, known to politicians, which beset the
public defence of a doctrine which one heartily disbelieves. It is quite
needless here to go into the old "art for art's sake"--business, or explain
at length why individual artists cannot be reviewed without reference to
their traditions and creeds. It is enough to say that with other creeds
they would have been, for literary purposes, other individuals. Their
views do not, of course, make the brains in their heads any more than
the ink in their pens. But it is equally evident that mere brain-power,
without attributes or aims, a wheel revolving in the void, would be a
subject about as entertaining as ink. The moment we differentiate the
minds, we must differentiate by doctrines and moral sentiments. A
mere sympathy for democratic merry-making and mourning will not
make a man a writer like Dickens. But without that sympathy Dickens
would not be a writer like Dickens; and probably not a writer at all. A
mere conviction that Catholic thought is the clearest as well as the best
disciplined, will not make a man a writer like Newman. But without
that conviction Newman would not be a writer like Newman; and
probably not a writer at all. It is useless for the æsthete (or any other
anarchist) to urge the isolated individuality of the artist, apart from his
attitude to his age. His attitude to his age is his individuality: men are
never individual when alone.
It only remains for me, therefore, to take the more delicate and
entangled task; and deal with the great Victorians, not only by dates
and names, but rather by schools and streams of thought. It is a task for
which