The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

III.—The Reaction in France

Herein we have the culmination of the reactionary movement. Certain authors are grouped together as labouring for the re-establishment of the fallen power of authority; and by the principle of authority is to be understood "the principle which assumes the life of the individual and of the nation to be based upon reverence for inherited tradition." Further, "the principle of authority in general stood or fell with the authority of the Church. When that was undermined, it drew all other authorities with it in its fall."

After a study of the Revolution in its quality as a religious movement, and the story of the Concordat, our author traces the genesis of this extreme phase of the reaction. Its promoters were all of noble birth and bound by close ties to the old royal families; their aim was political rather than religious; "they craved for religion as a panacea for lawlessness." Their ruling idea was the principle of externality, as opposed to that of inward, personal feeling and private investigation; it was the principle of theocracy, as opposed to the sovereignty of the people; it was the principle of power, as opposed to the principles of human rights and liberties.

Chateaubriand's famous book, "Le Génie du Christianisme," devoid of real feeling, attempts to vindicate authority by means of an appeal to sentiment, as if taking for granted that a reasoned faith was now impossible. His point of view is romantic, and therefore, religiously, false; his reasoning is of the "how beautiful!" style.

But the principle was enthroned by Count Joseph de Maistre, a very different man. The minister of the King of Sardinia at the court of Russia, he gained the emperor's confidence by his strong and pure character, his royalist principles, and his talents. His more important works, "Du Pape," "De l'Eglise Gallicane," and "Soirées de St. Pétersbourg," are the most uncompromising defence of political and religious autocracy. The fundamental idea of his works is that "there is no human society without government, no government without sovereignty, and no sovereignty without infallibility." Beside De Maistre stands Bonald, a man of the same views, but without the other's daring and versatile wit. Chateaubriand's prose epic "Les Martyrs," the mystically sensual writings of Madame Krüdener, and the lyric poetry of Lamartine and Victor Hugo further popularised the reaction, which reached its breaking point in Lamennais.

It was at this moment, April, 1824, that the news came of Byron's death in Greece. The illusion dissolved; the reaction came to an end. The principle of authority fell, never to rise again; and the Immanuelistic school was succeeded by the Satanic.

IV.—Naturalism in England

The distinguishing character which our author discovers in the English poets is a love of Nature, of the country and the sea, of domestic animals and vegetation. This Naturalism, common to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, Keats, Moore, Shelley and Byron, becomes, when transferred to social interests, revolutionary; the English poet is a Radical. Literary questions interest him not; he is at heart a politician.

The political background of English intellectual life at this period is painted forcibly and in the darkest tones. It was "dark with terror produced in the middle classes by the excesses of the liberty movement in France, dark with the tyrannic lusts of proud Tories and the Church's oppressions, dark with the spilt blood of Irish Catholics and English artisans." In the midst of all this misery, Wordsworth and Coleridge recalled the English mind to the love of real Nature and to the love of liberty. Wordsworth's conviction was that in town life and its distractions men had forgotten Nature, and had been punished for it; constant social intercourse had dissipated their talents and impaired their susceptibility to simple and pure impressions. His naturalism is antagonistic to all official creeds; it is akin to the old Greek conception of Nature, and is impregnated with pantheism.

The separate studies which follow, dealing with the natural Romanticism of Coleridge, Southey's Oriental Romanticism, the Lake school's conception of Liberty, the Historic Naturalism of Scott, the sensuous poetry of Keats, the poetry of Irish opposition and revolt, Thomas Campbell's poetry of freedom, the Republican Humanism of Landor, Shelley's Radical Naturalism, and like subjects, are of the highest importance to every English reader who would understand the time in which he lives. But Byron's is the heroic figure in this act. "Byron's genius takes possession of him, and makes him great and victorious in his argument, directing his aim with absolute certainty to the vital points." Byron's whole being burned with the profoundest compassion for the immeasurable sufferings of humanity. It was liberty that he worshipped, and he died for liberty.