But themost significant change which took place at the outset of the nineteenth century was the linking of that age to the forgotten inheritance of England's past. The eighteenth century had been practical, self-centred, self-sufficient; if it sought an example at all outside of itself, its were turned toward Greece and Rome. The Middle Ages were to it a. period of barbarism. unworthy the attention of serious men. Thus Addison went to Rimini, and, though he knew that the :Malatesta had been lords there of old, while he notes a Roman inscription "still legible, though wrongly transcribed by Grute•." and dis cusses the learned Frabetti's ingenious conjec ture on Trajan's pillar, had not a word to say of the story of Francesca, which to modern minds is the chief interest of the place. The reversion to a realizing sense of continuity in English his tory and letters is the work mainly of two men --Scott in life and Charles Lamb in literature. The work of the former becomes of great signifi cance under this aspect: it was he who, by his rendering life and "the spacious times of great Elizabeth" vivid and actual, made it possible for Carlyle and 'Ruskin to analyze mod ern life by the method of contrast ; it is not too much to say that he paved the way for that im portant and far-reaching movement by which the Oxford Tractarians changed the religious atti tude of England and turned men's faces toward Catholic antiquity. His other great achievement was his triumphant mastery of a kind of litera ture which had been unsuccessfully attempted for two thousand years—the historical novel. Lamb's work was the revival of the older English litera ture, neglected since the Restoration. The atti tude which made it possible for Pepys to call the 11 idsummer Y ight's Dream. most. insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life," which allowed Dryden to win applause by a frigid re casting of The Tempest. and which culminated in the honest declaration of (1eorge 111. that he found most of Shakespeare ''very poor stuff," was reversed by Lamb's discerning enthusiasm for the glories of Elizabethan literature. which came upon his generation with all the freshness of a new discovery. In this work lie was ably assisted by Ilazliit and Leigh Hunt. of whom the former bad a critical faculty even surer and wider. if not n ore delicate. than Lamb's own. The in flu•nce of these men on the prose style of their successors, in the direction of flexibility and grace, ivas exceedingly valuable. espe cially. of later owes a great debt to ono of them. which he frankly acknowledges with his "though we are mighty fine fellow's nowadays, we cannot write like Ilazlitt." Another kind of pro,. was written abort the same by De Lander. It had less consequence, though Rusk in n amliticently exemplified it in a style which, at its best. only the by the multiplicity of his other interests to set it in the very highest place. This was the ornate and highly colored prose which in the earlier English we associate with Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne—full of 'purple patches' and sonorous Latinisms, and with a majesty and a melody that make the organ its nearest type in music. Living all through the heyday of the romantic triumph, Landor remained (in his poetry. at times of rare excellence, even more obviously than in his prose) calmly classical, "striving with none, for none was worth his strife," handing down a tradition which was worthily continued by Matthew Arnold, and hon ored in his old age by a singer in many ways so far from the classical temper as Swinburne.
The great reviews and magazines which came into existence early in the nineteenth century had an important effect upon its literary progress. The Edinburgh Review was founded in 1802 to uphold the principles of the Whig Party, by Sydney Smith, Brougham. and Jeffrey, and the last-named soon became its editor. Its unspar ing personal criticisms of contemporary authors caused an immense sensation, and evoked Byron's scathing retort entitled English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. The Quarterly Review \vas estab
lished in 1S09 as the Tory organ: the truculent Gifford was its first editor, and Southey, Scott, and Lamb among its contributors. Somewhat later came B/ackirood's Magazine, for which Wil son wrote his Noctes Ambrosianw and Lockhart his trenchant criticisms. There was also the London Magazine, to which Lamb contributed his Essays of Elia and Dc Quincey his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and for which Carlyle, Hazlitt. and Leigh Hunt also wrote. All these great periodicals exerted a powerful influence upon literature, especially in the development of the art of criticism, which has become almost an independent branch of letters.
The first force of the philanthropic outburst, the. realization of the brotherhood of man, which Wordsworth and Shelley in their different ways had expressed, had partly spent itself, as Europe settled (10 \VD after the revolutionary period of Sturm nod Prang to a reaction in favor of orderly and settled life, comparable to that which was noted above as following the violent strug gles of the Reformation and the Rebellion. One author of the second quarter of the century typi ties better than any other the mood of placid self-satisfaction with things as they were—Ma caulay. His spirit of cheerful optimism. his ealm assurance that the existing British Consti tution was the most wonderful product of the human intellect, and everything for the best in an othuirably ordered world. represents fully the characteristic temper of the England of his younger days. Out of this complacency the an t ion had to lie roused by a rude shock. The voice as of one crying in the wilderness, the trumpet iones which startled this easy-going England, were those of Thomas Carlyle. It is difficult to realize how electrical was the shock of his sud den onslaught, how the impetuous torrent of this rough eloquence ea rried away n11 the thoughtful younger men of the day. As Byron a generation earlier had intide a picturesque melancholy the fashion, so Carlyle set his eontemporaries to social questions, insisting that thiT should realize the crying need for many and sweeping reforms in the slate of society which they had fancied sn perfect. With the acceptanee of his gospel begins a new epoch in English let ters, connecting them for the first time chAely and indissolubly with the life and the progress of the race. Addison had indeed written with a moral purpose, thinking to soften and re fine the manners of London society; but Carlyle went much further than this, and set. in motion springs which have never ceased to act. If we wish to bring home to ourselves how far we have traveled under this powerful impulse, we have only to try to imagine Sir Walter Scott read ing, one need not go so far as to say the novels of Mrs. liumpltry Ward, but even those of George Eliot. The eccentricities of Carlyle's style, which caught the ear for the moment and have tempted many a young writer into unhappy efforts at imitation, have passed away; but his spirit lived after him in the earnest crusade against immemorial abuses which enlisted best energies of widely differing minds. England was at last awake. On every side were the stir rings of new life—ill politics with the Reform Bill and the Anti-Corn-Law League, and the teachings of the Owenites, for the first time called socialism; among religious teachers with the Broad Church movement of :Maurice and Kingsley, and the Oxford Tractarian School, both of them full of social suggestion; with the bold searching into the depths of the human heart by Tennyson and Browning. Thackeray cried out against shams in the very spirit of Surto,• Resortus, and Ruskin's fiery heart could never rest while there was a wrong to redress, a man or a woman to raise to a higher plane of think ing and living.