Read the text and answer the questions.

CHAPTER XI

THE VICTORIAN AGE (1850-1900)

THE MODERN PERIOD OF PROGRESS AND UNREST

When Victoria became queen, in 1837, English literature seemed to have entered upon a period of lean years, in marked contrast with the poetic fruitfulness of the romantic age which we have just studied. Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and Scott had passed away, and it seemed as if there were no writers in England to fill their places. Wordsworth had written, in 1835,

Like clouds that rake, the mountain summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!

In these lines is reflected the sorrowful spirit of a literary man of the early nineteenth century who remembered the glory that had passed away from the earth. But the leanness of these first years is more apparent than real. Keats and Shelley were dead, it is true, but already there had appeared three disciples of these poets who were destined to be far more widely, read than were their masters. Tennyson had been publishing poetry since 1827, his first poems appearing almost simultaneously with the last work of Byron, Shelley, and Keats; but it was not until 1842, with the publication of his collected poems, in two volumes, that England recognized in him one of her great literary leaders. So also Elizabeth Barrett had been writing since 1820, but not till twenty years later did her poems become deservedly popular; and Browning had published his _Pauline_ in 1833, but it was not until 1846, when he published the last of the series called _Bells and Pomegranates_, that the reading public began to appreciate his power and originality. Moreover, even as romanticism seemed passing away, a group of great prose writers--Dickens, Thackeray, Carlyle, and Ruskin--had already begun to proclaim the literary glory of a new age, which now seems to rank only just below the Elizabethan and the Romantic periods.

1. Who were the three "disciples"?
2. Can you name something that Browning wrote?
3. What about Tennyson and Barrett?
4. What era did these writers come after?
5. Who lamented the old days?
6. What did he say?
7. What sort of literature did Keats write?
8. Did Tennyson's work coincide with some of those of the old authors?
9. Was he famous already at that point?
10. Were there more well-known poetry writers than prose writers at this point?
11. Who impressed with his innovativeness?
12. What were two of the greatest periods of literature?
13. What was this age named after?
14. Who wrote something about sounds and fruits?

Numbered answers:
1. Tennyson, Browning, and Barrett
2. Pauline
3. unknown
4. Romantic age
5. Wordsworth
6. "Like clouds that rake, the mountain summits, Or waves that own no curbing hand, How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land!"
7. Poetry
8. Yes
9. No
10. No
11. Browning
12. Elizabethan and Romantic
13. A queen.
14. Browning