Английская литература (представители) — страница 6

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who lives through the age of Queen Anne and of the Georges who follow, and it shows a remarkable knowledge of the literature and life of the eighteenth century. In many ways, Thackeray is closer to the Age of Reason than to his own times. But his book for children-The Rose and the King-is one of the best-loved of all Victorian fantasies, and a certain tenderness that Thackeray hides in such works as Vanity Fair appears in The Neivcomes, with its portrait of the gentle childlike old Colonel. His deathbed scene should be contrasted with Little Nell's:' He, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of the Master.' Capable of tenderness, but never of sentimentality, Thackeray is in many ways the superior of Dickens, but he lacks

that strange, mad glamour that Dickens shares with Shakespeare. Meanwhile, in the isolation of a Yorkshire vicarage, three sisters, none of them destined to live long, were writing novels and poems. Charlotte Bronte (1816-55), who admired Thackeray, dedicated her most un-Thackerayan novel, Jane Eyre, to him. Here, in this story of the governess who falls in love with her master, himself married to a madwoman, we have a passion not to be found in either Thackeray or Dickens, a genuine love-story of great realism, full of sharp observation and not without wit. This story, with its frank love-scenes, was something of a bombshell. Charlotte Bronte's The Professor, later re-written-with some quite radical changes-as Villette, tells of her own experiences as a teacher in Brussels, and

Shir ley is concerned with industrial Yorkshire, jane Eyre, one of the really significant Victorian novels, remains her masterpiece. Emily Bronte (1818-48) had, if anything, a more remarkable talent than her sister. Her poems are vital and original, and her novel Wuthering Heights is the very heart and soul of the romantic spirit, with its story of wild passion set against the Yorkshire moors. Anne Bronte (1820-49), with her Agnes Grey and The Tenant ofWildfellHall, is perhaps best remembered now because of her sisters: her talent is smaller than theirs. Other novelists included Mrs. Gaskell (1810-65), Charles Kingsley (1819-75), Charles Reade (1814-84), and Wilkie Collins (1825-89). The first three are much concerned with social reform. Mrs. Gaskell, most read for Cranford, a

study of life in a small provincial town, also wrote Mary Barton and ILuth, full of pity for the down-trodden dwellers in factory towns, the working-class exploited by profit-seeking capitalists. Kingsley preaches a kind of Christian Communism in Alton Eocke and Yeast, but turns to the Elizabethan past in Westward Ho! and to the world of the Vikings in Henward the Wake. The Water Rabies, a story of a little chimney sweep -who runs away from his master and, falling into a river, learns of the under-water world, is a charming fantasy still read. Reade attacked such social abuses as the state of the prisons and the lunatic asylums in It is Never Too Late to Mend and Hard Cash, but his story of the late Middle Ages, The Cloister and the Hearth, keeps his name alive. Wilkie Collins

is, at present, enjoying a revival of interest with his Woman in White and The Moonstone. He is the first great British writer of mystery-stories, and to a gift of maintaining suspense, terror, and a credible plot he adds a clear prose-style which is quite individual. Anthony Trollope (1815-88) invented a county called Barset and a town called Barchester, and, in novel after novel (The Warden, Earchester Towers, Dr. Thorne, Framlej Parsonage, The Small House at Allington, and The Last Chronicle of Barsef) he paints life in a provincial cathedral town atmosphere, with humour and without passion. His work is a little too lacking in warmth for some people, but he has still many devotees. Trollope, who worked in the General Post Office and was busy there, was only able to write by

forcing on himself a mechanical routine-so many pages per day, no rest between finishing one book and starting another. This perhaps explains a lack of inspiration in his novels; but, in good, plain, undistinguished prose, he builds up his own world, and this world has a remote charm. Shaw had many things to say, all of them important, but he should not be regarded as a mere preacher who used the stage as a platform. Being an Irishman like Wilde and Sheridan, he had a native gift of eloquence and wit, and - much helped by his interest in music - a sharp ear for the tones and rhythms of contemporary speech. For the ' well-made ' play he had little use: he constructed his dramas on rules of his own, some of them most irregular, but he knew that, whatever tricks he played, his