newspapers was in effect an enfranchisement. Moreover, we too readily forget the numerous causes, trivial as they seem to us now, which less than a century ago exposed newspapers and authors and publishers to the risk of prosecution, and which, down to a far later date, brought less definite but no less real penalties on all who dared to think unpopular thoughts. Leigh Hunt was imprisoned from 1813 to 1815 for criticisms of the Prince Regent, whose chief fault was that they were scandalously true; and if these criticisms were injudicious, it might be pleaded in excuse that they were provoked by panegyrics which were scandalously false. The trial of Richard Carlile for "blasphemous libel" in publishing the works of Thomas Paine took place in 1819; and the sentence against Thomas Pooley, which roused the indignation of Mill and of Buckle, was pronounced in 1857. Later still, Huxley found it necessary to devote a considerable portion of his life to an effort to secure for himself and others unfettered liberty of thought. In the part of the field where he fought the battle has been won; but it would be rash to conclude that the evil has ceased to exist. Intolerance can be practised in the name of science as well as in that of religion, and recent trials have come perilously near to disputing the mature and sane man's right even to die except secundum artem. It is, however, certain that in this direction progress has been great and rapid.

What have been and what will be the effects upon literature of a political, social and intellectual development and enfranchisement such as this, are questions which have never been fully investigated. That these effects must be profound and farreaching is obvious. The mere multiplication of the number of readers is a fact of great significance. More important still is the change in their social position, their ambitions, their training, their character. In the middle of the eighteenth century Johnson fought his desperate way-reduced at one time to living upon 4d. a day from the system of patronage to that of direct dependence upon a reading public. Carlyle, in the middle of the nineteenth century, saw in this fact the birth of the Hero as Man of Letters: "Much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own bargain in the market-place; but the inspired wisdom of

a Heroic Soul never till then, in that naked manner." And he proclaimed, as the greatest task before mankind, the problem of organising the chaotic profession of letters. The problem is still unsolved, the profession is still chaotic; and while the public has grown far wider and the dependence of the men of letters upon it has become more and more direct, the price of the Heroic Soul is as uncertain as ever. The problem which was too great and too complicated for the intellect of Carlyle remains too great and too complicated for his successors.

Can this state of things fail to exercise the profoundest influence? Even in literature the souls are few which serenely dwell apart, and it may be questioned whether we should desire them to be many. Shakespeare himself was not of the number. The majority of writers must always be influenced by a conscious or an unconscious consideration of the character of their audience; and though there is danger in the influence, there can be no danger comparable to that which attaches to the cutting of literature adrift from life and from reality. It is such freaks as the "metaphysical" element in poetry, or the fantastic romance satirised by Cervantes, which stand permanently condemned in critical judgment. Their practitioners suppose that they are addressing a band of the elect, and are apt to value themselves in proportion as they leave the common earth behind; but what has saved them, in so far as they have found salvation, has been their failure to attain their end.

But if there is good there is unquestionably evil as well in the present state of matters. Johnson thought that even in his time there lurked a risk to literature in the multiplicity of books. If so, the danger has vastly grown. In the introduction of slang, in roughness of style, in crudity of thought, sometimes in a certain vulgarity of tone, we seem to see the influence of modern conditions. Walt Whitman would have been impossible in an aristocracy, and Mr Rudyard Kipling must have undergone many changes. We are by no means destitute of examples of repose and dignity; but no one would single these out as characteristic qualities of recent literature. The great predominance of the novel, which is certainly connected with the character and

circumstances of the mass of readers, is not a matter for unmingled satisfaction.

Probably, however, the most serious danger arises from the absurd disproportion which may frequently be noticed between the quality of the work done and the magnitude of the reward reaped. Carlyle, the foremost man of letters of his time, was fain at forty-five to earn by lecturing, a task he loathed, the money necessary to make ends meet and to save himself from exile. Had he not possessed a private fortune Darwin could never have devoted himself to science. Browning for many years made nothing by his writings, and Matthew Arnold throughout his life made very little. Although Tennyson became the most popular poet of his day, he was compelled for ten years to suspend relations with Emily Sellwood, because he could not afford to marry. So low at the beginning of the period was the repute of poetry, the finest flower of literature, that Murray, the most liberal and the most enterprising of publishers, made it his rule "to refuse all original works of this kind'." Chateaubriand, a few years later, declared the only popular English poet to be "a political verse-writer, who was a working blacksmith"; and in 1841 John Sterling wrote to Emerson that there was not one man then living whose verse would pay the expense of publication. Sterling was wrong: then, or soon afterwards, Martin Tupper was drawing from £500 to £800 a year for Proverbial Philosophy, and the price which the English public ultimately paid to the author of this "inspired wisdom" was something like £10,000. Unfortunately there is no sign of improvement. The author of a new Proverbial Philosophy is as likely now as he was sixty years ago to receive £10,000, and the author of a new Paracelsus to receive nothing whatsoever. It is just as likely now as it was then that a new Richard Feverel will be neglected, and a new Heir of Redclyffe hailed as one of the greatest books ever written.

All the revolution in thought which we associate with the name of Darwin hangs upon the chance that the man who wrought it possessed a private fortune! Nothing else is required to prove how clamant is the need to reduce the present chaos to order. 1 Smiles's Memoir of John Murray, ii. 374.

And yet, as Carlyle again insists (and he spoke from experience), there might be far worse evils than poverty in the lot of the man of letters. Worse infinitely was the sceptical and negative spirit of the eighteenth century; for literature in all ages must live by its ideas, or die from the want of them. And for the evils which democracy brings in its train will not compensation be found in the volume of life? If the results are not yet fully satisfactory, the reason may be that we have not yet learnt how to manage the forces which produce them. The poetry of Walt Whitman in America, the novels of Zola in France, and in England the sordid stories of the London streets, seem to be the work of men intellectually and artistically overburdened with their subject. But Dickens is a hopeful example of what may be done, and in the future men greater than he may make a yet greater use of their inexhaustible material. It is no light thing that the millions have now a place and an influence in literature, where a century ago only the thousands, and earlier still hardly more than hundreds had it. Here, no doubt, lies the task of the present and of the immediate future for literature as well as for politics. Goethe, with his usual insight, saw that only half the man could be developed unless he threw himself into the stream of life:

"Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille,

Sich ein Character in dem Strom der Welt."

Character is necessary no less than talent for the highest literature; and the stream of that life in which it must be fashioned flows now in the democratic channel.

In all this democratic movement we have entered upon the inheritance of the Revolution; but we have done so in an altered spirit. It is no longer the Revolution regarded as a "sacred manifestation," but the Revolution seen under the critical microscope. Principles which enthusiasts a hundred years ago regarded as self-evident, and their opponents as manifestly false, have proved to be eminently in need of interpretation. We have to ask how liberty can be reconciled with order, how far fraternity is consistent with the stern law of universal competition, what remains of equality when we have allowed for the infinite diversity

of faculties and of needs. Questions such as these form the substance not merely of systematic political philosophy, but of the work of "seers" like Carlyle and of poets like Tennyson.

But if literature has relations with politics, it has relations still more intimate and vital with the conceptions which underlie religion and philosophy. In order to understand the Victorian age we must ask here again what are the points of resemblance and of difference between it and the preceding generation; which of the fundamental ideas of religion and philosophy lived on into it; which of them were rejected, reversed, changed or developed.

In respect of religion, the relation of the Victorian age to the era of the Revolution is extremely interesting and curious. On a superficial view, it presents an aspect wholly different from that presented by politics; more closely considered, it is seen to be explainable by the same principles. The science of politics lends itself to compromise. Hence the extreme views inherited from the previous age blend and run together in a kind of amalgam which partakes of the character of both. compromise is far less easy in ideas than it is in practical life; experience teaches rather that the tendency of a purely logical development is always towards extremes. On this principle we can explain what at first sight is so puzzling-the co-existence throughout the Victorian era of a powerful school of rationalism, the inheritor of the deistic spirit of the eighteenth century, with that Catholic reaction which manifested itself early in the nineteenth century, and whose influence is not yet exhausted.

The opposition of these two schools gives its supreme interest to the English literature of the nineteenth century; all else will be found in the long run to be subordinate. It is not the only case in history in which such an opposition has existed, nor is it the only case in which momentous questions have depended upon the result of the conflict. The most profoundly thoughtful of the recent historians of Greece has been struck with just such a contrast and conflict in the latter part of the sixth century B.C., and has depicted it in a few masterly paragraphs. Having told the story of the great struggle against the Persian monarchy, he proceeds: "We have now to see how another danger was