THE VICTORIAN AGE

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 7, 8 July 1922, Page 15

THE VICTORIAN AGE

ENGLAND'S GLORY

PASSING

CREAT MEN OF LITERATURE

(WOK 00R OWN CORRESPONBEHT,)

LONDON, 12th May.

' "The Victorian Age" was the subject of Dean Inge's Rede Lecture at Cambridge, and of that era he made a vigorous defence, styling it "the most wonderful century in human history." He hinted that Great Britain had seen its best days, and was now on the decline. So far as internal affairs were concerned, he was inclined to , agree with Lecky, the historian, that- no country was better governed than England between 1832 and 1867.

"The House of Commons," he said, "enjoyed that immense prestige which has been completely lost since the old Queen's death. The debates were read with semi-religious fervour by every citizen over his breakfast, and a prominent politician was treated with even more exaggerated reverence, than our worthy grandfathers paid to bishops." Its prosperity and security were due to temporary causes which could never recur. In the nineteenth century, England was the most fortunately situated country, geographically, in the world. An Atlantic stage of world-commerce began, in which England was in the most favourable position. The Pacific stage, which was now beginning, must inevitably give the primacy to America. "Henceforth we shall have to compete with other nations on unprivileged conditions/ said the Dean. "It is useless to lament the inevitable, but it is foolish to shut our eyes- to it. The Victorian Age was the culminating point of our prosperity." VICTORIAN HEADS. The Dean holds Tennyson to be the grandest and most fully representative iigure in all Victorian literature. "Let those who are disposed to' follow the present evil fashion of disparaging the great Victorians make a collection of their, heads in photographs and engravings," he continued, "and compare them with those of their own little favourites. Let them set up in a' row portraits of Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Gladstone, Manning, Newman, Martineau, Lord Lawrence, Burne Jones, and, if they like, a dozen lesser luminaries, and ask themselves candidly whether men of this stature are any longer among us." A generation which would not buy a novel unless it contained some scabrous story and revelled in the "realism" of the man with a muck-rake, naturally had no use for the Idylls of the King and called Arthur the blameless prig. It was not a happy time for religious thinkers unless they made themselves quite independent of organised Christianity. Intolerance was very bitter, and only the secular arm stopped a whole series of ecclesiastic prosecutions, which would have made the ministry of the Church of England impossible1 except for fools, liars, and bigots. Real hatred was shown against the scientific leaders. A CATARACT OF INK. Of the novel, Dean Inge said, the palmiest day was in the 'fifties, compared with which we were now in the trough of the wave. The main cause of the decay, he believed, was the pernicious habit of writing hastily for money. "If vye take the trouble to consult Mr. Mudie's catalogue of fiction, we shall learn to our amazement, that there are several writers, whose names we have never heard, who have to their discredit over a hundred works of fiction apiece. They obviously turn out several books a year, just as a shoemaker manufactures so many pairs of boots. The great novelists have generally written rapidly, rather too rapidly; but such a cataract of ink as these heroes of the circulating library spil], is absolutely inconsistent with even second-rate work." The age, he added, was to a certain extent vulgarised by the amazing success of the industrial revolution. Theoretical socialism reached its zenith, but there was also an outburst of romantic imperialism—a mild attack of the epidemic which afterwards enticedGermany into the Great War. . Along with the fusion of social classes came parasitism at both ends of the scale, and symptoms of race deterioration. . THIRTY YEARS HENCE. "I, have no doubt," said the Dean, "that the Elizabethan and the Victorian ages will appear to the historians of the future as the twin peaks in which English civilisation culminated. The twentieth century will doubtless be full of interest, and may even, develop 6ome elements of greatness. But, as regards the fortunes of this country, the signs are that our work on a grand scale, with the whole world as our stage, is probably nearing its end. Europe has sacrificed its last fifty years of primacy by an insane and suicidal struggle. America has emerged as the tertius gaudens. Where shall we be thirty years hence!" LOOKING FORWARD. Reflecting upon the comparison made by the Dean of St. Paul's, The Times says: "We and our contemporaries come badly out of the comparison; but we have at least this consolation—namely, that, if there are few or no men now living who can be pitted against the illustrious names cited by the Dean, the deaconal stall, which was dignified'in Victorian daye by Milman and Church, has hardly a less worthy occupant now in Dr. Inge It may be doubted whether any living prophet commands a wider public. No one can afford to depreciate the Victorians; but the vety luxuriance of their genius is bound to cast an atmosphere of inferiority over the attainments and difficulties of their descendants; and if their successors are sometimes inclined to bo slightly impatient towards them, that impatience need not be taken too seriously. It may be due in paH to a clearer perception of the causes, 'temporary causes,' as the dean calls them, which gave the Victorians their opportunity, and made their achievements to a certain extent eeem almost inevitable. Worthy of all honour as the Victorians are, it is our business to look less back on them than towards the future. ; . . We should refuse, if we have faith in ourselves, to be prematurely depressed on the ground that we have no poet to match with Tennyson, no Parliamentarian to rank with Gladstone, no paintei to stand beside Burne Jones. We have rot; but as the history of England did not come to an end after the death of Elizabeth, all is not yet lost, because we have changed greatly since Queen Victoria died in 1901." The Morning Post maintains that postVictorian literature is not just the heap of dirty novels to which Dr. Inge points, but its finest things cannot rival the immense humaneness of Dickens, or the generosity of Meredith's sympathies, or the intense and glowing love of rightdoing that animated Ruskin when fully inspired. . . . "The great Victorians could have only the greatness of their own time, no*- that of ours. And have we any? Dr. Inge thinks not, and thinks that none will come. But it must have looked pretty black in Spain just before Cervantes came. We need not yet despair of ourselves, nor yet pooh-pooh the Victorians. ■ Tho path of the Mugwump is still open to all, as.well as those paths of denunciation and scorn along which the pro-Victorians and anti-Vic-twiuaie trip it »o f.__tlyA