The Portland daily press., 1894-01-16
MR.. BELLoWs's LECTURE.
characteristics of the Literature of the
Nineteenth Century.

Mr.. Bellows began his series of "Talks
on Modern Literature" yesterday after
noon by saying that he wished to show
how all:the great movements of the time,
scientific, artistic, moral and religious,
found their reflection in the literature of
the period AS the,whole Renaissance, as
Ruskin says, is in Browning's poem
1.-THE Bishop Orders His Tom b." so the
spirit of the age is in the novels OF
lola. Tolstoi, Howells, the poetry of
Tennyson, Arnold and Watson, and the
drama of Ibsen. The eighteenth century,
in the neat and epigrammatic verse of
Pope. An extract from William Watson S
remarkables poem, Wordsworth's grave.
felicitously indicated the genius of
Johnson. Goldsmith, Collins, Gray,
Burns and the twin stars Col eridge and
Wordsworth. If we would see the change
i'll every department of thought contrast
Greek statue with the work of a
modern culptor. Browning's "Old
Pictures in Florence" presents the per-
lection of the classic with the in COM
peteness of modern art and yet finds
music Wagner tried to unite all the arts
poetry, drama. music-and appealed to
the intellect quite as much as to the
merely musical sense. In the drama,
Sophocles in the Antigone, Shakespeare in
Hamlet and Ibsen his plays represent
fhroa do1 a.; re
and feeling, and the latest writer deals
with problems of.heredity psychology and
morbid spiritual anatomy. Some Of the
leading characteristics of the literature
of the century are first the love of style
for the sake of style, which results in
perfection of form as in the poetry of
Tennyson, and the stories of French
writer's like Coppee and Maupassant. A
part of Watson's poem on Autumn was
read to illustrate this perfection of work
manship. This love of form leads to the
principle Of Art for arts sake" which
in the hands of writers like Oscar Wilde
and Mallock produces basely immoral
works because SO subtle in their mixing
up of good and evil. The difference be-
tween the Elizabethan and Victorian
literature was illustrated by reading
songs of Shakespeare and Of Christina
Rossetti. Then, the scientific tendency
shows itself in the dissecting room style
of lola calmly exhibiting the moral
sores and diseases Of humanity.
Coppee uses was the same method in
his sketch of "A Dramatic Funeral
and Mr.. Howells in his clever faying
alive of his wea k and vain women, like
Mrs. Vervain in A Foregone Conclusion, !"
or Miss Jewett in her most delicate
pictures of New England life, are really
using the same scientific methods.
The literature of the century abounds
in analytical studies of the soul. some
times of rather morbid personalities like
the brilliant artist Marie Bashkirtseff or
the subtle and over-rehectiv Amiel,
in whose journals the soul is turned in
sideou for our wonder and ratification.
Hardy,s "Tessn deals with the great
problem of heredity and in Tolstoi's ire
mendous pic ture of the death of Ivan
Hitch, we have the most marvellous
portrayal ever made of the human spirit
facing the great fact of death.
The religious novel, as Robert ELS
mere" David Grieve an John Ward, leads
us to grapple with the great problems of
theology, in a very different fashion
from the way in which they were pre-
sented in the old moral tale" We here
find human beings .battling with the
mysteries OF the universe, and sas in
David Grieve, bringing out of sorrow and
loss higher wisdom. And in the novels
of Miss Phelps, we have new and very
different method of dealing with the
nature and character of the immortal life
from that which was once considered
proper so that heaven has lost much of
It's old merely Scriptnral character, and
has come to seem real and homeEke to
our thought. k