An Early Analysis of "The Victorian Age" in Literature

Author(s): Jackson I. Cope

Source: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 71, No. 1 (Jan., 1956), pp. 14-17
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3043710 .
Accessed: 11/06/2014 08:06

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Modern Language Notes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.128 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 08:06:49 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 nothing . . . L. likes, above all, people that can amuse him; and I fancy
that his and Hs humour better agree than his and mine."

Finally Lloyd revertsback to his position of self-righteousness,

remindingWordsworththat he himselfhad been guilty of similar
error: "Your conduct in speaking of Coleridge's failings to Mr
Montague,3failingsof which you never could have known,had he
not been yourguest,mightbear the same construction that you have
put upon my action,but wd. it not be veryunfair,knowingas I do
the aggravationswhichled to thatconduct,to put such a construction
upon it? " He tellsWordsworth,then,thathe is willingto let bygones
be bygones,beforeclosingwithprotestations of respectand affection.
however,he adds: " I oughtperhapsto mentionthat
In a postscript,
the circumstancerelatedfromyourbrotherhappened20 yearsago-
but I am notmuchproneto believein changeof characteror feelings."
That he was not willingto let bygonesbe bygonesis obvious,for
Lloyd proceedsto give Talfourdthe anecdotein extenso,insistingon
the truthof it: "an anecdote,to tell which therewas so stronga
temptationfromits beingso illustratively
characteristic."The same
mightbe said of his wholeletter.
University of Oregon PAUL M. ZALL

An Early Analysisof
" The VictorianAge " in Literature
The late G. M. Young suggestedthat in the fifties"the word
Victorianwas coinedto registera new self-consciousness,"1 and cited
Edwin Paxton Hood's economicessay The Age and its Architects
(1852) as containingthe earliestuse of the adjectiveknownto him.
Anotherinvestigatorhas pointedout thecasual use of " Victorian" in
a journal entryfor 1862.2 These are the only appearancesof the
wordto have beenbroughtto publicattentionas ante-datingEdmund
I See Letters, "Middle
Years," p. 44': "William spoke out and told M [on-
tague] the nature of C's habits (nothing in fact which everybody in whose
house he has been for two davs has [notl seen of thP:eiQclvPQ)
..
1 ".Portrait of an Age," in Early Victorian England (London, 1934), ii,
488-
Young erroneously dated Hood's book 1851. However, the preface bears the
yet earlier date of March 7, 1850.
2 J. M. Purcell, "Victorian and Arride," MLN, L (1935), 328.

14 Modern Language Notes

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.128 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 08:06:49 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ClarenceStedman'sVictorianPoets, an Americaninvestigation which
appearedin 1875,.and in whichStedmanjustly claimedthat "upon
a surveyof the last fortyyears,I saw thatwhat I termthe Victorian
period is nearly at an end, and that no consecutiveand synthetic
examinationof its schools and leaders had yet been made." 3 But
if there had been no thoroughsurvey,yet what was probablythe
earliest application of the adjective to literaturehad appeared in
GeorgeLillie Craik's analysis of "The Victorian Age " which was
writtenfourteenyearsbeforeStedman'sstudy,and whichmusthave
gone far toward standardizingthe term by explainingits organic
applicabilityto contemporary literature.
Craik, a popularizingscholar who numberedamong his London
acquaintances Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, Forster and Charles Knight,
had writtenSketchesof the History of Literatureand Learning in
England during 1844-5. Completingthis surveywith the major
Romantics,Craik found their achievementconstituting" the most
remarkableperiod in the historyof our poetical literatureafterthe
age of Spenser and Shakespeare" (VI, 202). There was little
comfortfor the futurein this judgmentsince he added that such
literaryfloweringsalways have been followedby long periods of
artistic debilitation. In 1849 Craik became professorof English
literatureand historyat Queen's College,Belfast,and in 1861 utilised
his experiencein this post to revise and expand his earlier manual
intoA CompendiousHistoryof English Literatureand of theEnglish
Language. It was in this work that he surveyedthe literatureof
what he called "The VictorianAge."
"It sometimeshappens," Craik asserts,"that a new spirit . . .
throughoutalmostthe entirerealm of opinion,so suddenlyawakens
. . . in a country,that we mightalmost be temptedto suppose the
populationto have been changed to a man. ... Such a general
breakingup of old ways of thinkingand feelingverynotablymarked
the completionof about the firstthirdof the presentcentury.. . ."
The most "conspicuous" manifestationof the altering character
of nations "is a change in the governmentby the substitution
whetherof a new dynastyor evenof onlya newindividualsovereign"
(547). Unlike the expulsion of the Bourbons,the successionof
3 Preface, p. xiv.
4 George L. Craik, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the
English Language (London, 1861), ii, 546-547. All subsequent page references
are to volume two. Craik's History was reissued in at least five editions
within ten years of its publication.

VOL. rxXI, Januafry1956 15

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.128 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 08:06:49 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Victoriato the throneof GeorgeIV was " unconnected withanything
in the precedingsocial conditionof the country." Still, the change
had markedsocial effectbecause it "put an end to the long domi-
nation of Toryismin England," and broughtabout parliamentary
reform" with all that thence ensued" (547). " Victorian" is a
thoroughlyfunctionaladjectiveto apply to the new literaturesince
" whateverbeliefs and opinions become prevalentamong a people
will, of course,color the national literatureduringthe time of their
predominance.Literatureis the artisticexpressionin wordsof what-
evermen thinkand feel. . . . It takes an impulsefromits age, and
it also gives an impulse to its age . . . althoughliteraturemakes
reallythe chiefnutrimentand life of civilization,it is a conditionof
all literaturethat would aspire to be immediatelyT influentialthat it
should sympathizeto a considerabledegreewith the reigningspirit
of its age " (547-8). In the observationson " The VictorianAge "
whichfollow,Craik illustratesthis sociologicaltheoryof literaturein
action. He findsthe most notabledifference betweenthe early-and
mid-century literaryatmospheres to be " the differentrelativepositions
at the two dates of Prose and Verse. In the Georgianera Verse was
in the ascendant; in the Victorianera the supremacyhas passed to
Prose" (553). This providesa good index to the nation's vigor,
since "probably all the verse ages would be found to have been of
higherglow than the prose ones" (553). At any rate, readersold
enoughto rememberthe years of Scott and Shelleywill know that
theirswas " an age in which the national heart beat more strongly
than it does at presentin regardto otherthingsas well as this. Its
receptionof the great poems that succeededone anotherso rapidly
fromthe firstappearanceof Scott till the death of Byronwas like
its receptionof the successionof greatvictoriesthat,everthickening,
and almostunbrokenby a single defeat,filledup the greaterpart of
the ten yearsfromTrafalgarto Waterloo. . ." (553). The modern
wars, even the Crimean, when contrastedwith the struggle for
existencein the earlieryears,exhibita difference " as greatas between
catchinga pickpocketat yourhandkerchief and feelinga knifeat your
throat" (554). But the emotionaldecline froman age of poetry
into an age of prose is not the only literarymirrorof the contrast
betweenVictoria's" pettywars" and " thegreatwar withNapoleon."
Owingto the rapid spread of education,the modernage boastsmore
"poetical writers" than any earlier era (555-6). But when Craik
turns to the few really eminentpoets on the Victorian scene-he

16 Modern Language Notes

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.128 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 08:06:49 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
names Tennyson,the Brownings,and Hood-he finds that their
standingis secured" onlyby brieflyricalpieces,"and that " onlyone
greatpoem in the ordinarysense of the expression,Mrs. Browning's
Aurora Leigh, has achievedan extensivepopularity.. . . It is like
the successionof wars in whichwe have been engagedalmostwithout
intermissionever since the year 1815 . . . they have mostlybeen
undistinguished bygreatbattles. No victoriesof Talavera,ofVittoria,
of Leipsic, of Waterloo. The ordinaryobservationsof man, if not
history,ignores such wars" (557). It was a conclusionominous
for Victorianpoetry.
Anothercharacteristic of " Victorian" literaturecontrasting
it with
that of the Romanticsis "its much greaterimpatienceof all old
bonds, and the far strongerdegree in which it is possessed and
animated by the sheer impulse of innovation" (562). Although
Craik cautiouslybut firmlyelaborateshis distrustof this literary
revolutionism, he findsin it a comparatively innocuousmanifestation
of the total impactof that "' parliamentary reform" whichcame with
Victoria's rule. " [In literature]it is not as in a commonwealth,
whereusually so many materialinterestsmust be rudelydisturbed,
so muchof shelterand solid supportshakenor laid in ruins,by even
the most necessaryreformation"(563). For all their innovations,
Victorian artists have mastered unprecedented" elaboratenessof
finish"; but it is the veneerwhichtheyhave polished: " Even where
the faultlessnessis as completein Tennysonas it is in Shelley,the
spontaneousness, or semblanceof spontaneousness, whichcharmsus in
Shelleyis wanting" (566). At thecloseofthefirstphaseof Victoria's
reign, Craik made her name the functionalsymbolof a literature
reflecting and shaped by a national mood of " relaxationwhichthe
spirit of a people requiresafterhaving been for a certaintime on
the wing" (554). HIaving predicteda literarydecline from the
Romanticpinnacle,this sociologicalcriticbecamethe firstto discover
it in " The VictorianAge."

lVashington University JACKSON I. COPE

VOL. LXXI, January 1956 17

This content downloaded from 62.122.73.128 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 08:06:49 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions