Hamilton Wright Mabie

“ He lacked humor, he bore no yoke in his youth, his father was a matter-of-fact and eccentric tyrant, and the boy of genius lost his way in a world which nobody helped him to understand. When one reads the story of his brief and confused career, of the shabby and immoral things he did, it must be remembered that he discovered how to fly, but nobody taught him how to walk. He was always a splendid, wayward child, to whom visions were more real than facts. ”

“ The first two cantos of this poem appeared in 1812, and their success was instantaneous.
The life of a personality like Byron is so full of incident, so colored with romance and adventure, that to tell it in detail requires a great deal of space. Everything that he did was interesting; everywhere he went he left the impress of his genius. Women loved him, and men imitated him. Byron was the fashion, and the poet was renowned the world over. ”

“ Among the throng of poets who made lasting contributions to English literature during the nineteenth century, six may be regarded as most representative.
Byron died ninety-one years ago; but, although there has been a great change in the way poets look at life and in their way of writing verse, he holds his place as one of the greater poets, not only in reputation, but in popular regard; and for two reasons,—he was one of the born singers to whom men will always stop to listen, and he was also a poet of revolt. He is not read in this country as Browning and Kipling are read ”

“ Keats cared for none of these things: he was in love with beauty. One must go back to Spenser to find an Englishman of his sensitiveness to beauty, and he was much simpler than Spenser, whose moral idealism expressed itself in a refined symbolism. Keats was the son of a stable keeper, went to school for a few years, and was conspicuous chiefly for his pugnacious disposition. The impression that he was a weak, sentimental boy and man is without foundation. ”

“ His stormy nature and his tempestuous career add an element of personal interest to the claims of his poetry upon the attention of reading people today, and he is one of those men of genius about whom it is difficult to be judicial: those who like his work become his partizans, those who dislike him charge him with insincerity and immorality. ”

“ It was in this house, surrounded by all the beauties of Venice, that the poet breathed his last on December 12, 1889.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
From a portrait painted at Rome in 1859 by Field Talfourd.
Browning was often a very effective artist; but he was often very indifferent to form, and there are long productions of his which are intensely interesting but are not in any proper sense poetry. Time will separate the experiments in psychology from the achievements in art, and there will remain a body of poetry which appeals powerfully to men and women of intellectual interests and habits ”

“ FAMOUS ENGLISH POETS
JOHN KEATS Monograph Number Two in The Mentor Reading Course
No one man ever published a worse first volume nor a better last volume of poetry than did John Keats. And no poet was so severely criticized at the beginning nor more highly praised at the end of his life. ”

“ One reason, aside from insufficient or incompetent instruction in the schools, for the so often complained of illiteracy, so to speak, of students, is probably to be found in the mass of stories which the Carnegie and other libraries feed to them, and which they skim through at the double quick, getting no permanent impression. ”

“ Nature in all her forms was his delight. He liked to walk by himself in the fields, and to talk with the poorer people, those nearest to the soil. He was simple, kindly, and much loved by those who knew him.
In 1843 Wordsworth succeeded Robert Southey as poet laureate of England, and was recognized as the greatest living English poet. He held this honor only seven years, as he died at Rydal Mount, his home in England, on April 23, 1850.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION
ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 1. No. 44. ”

“ He believed that the world would come out all right in the end, that good would win.
Robert Browning was born on May 7, 1812, at Camberwell, near London. His father, who worked in the Bank of England, was also named Robert Browning. The Brownings were of sturdy stock; but the poet’s mother was delicate. At the age of twelve he had written a volume of poems called “Incondita”; but his parents could find no one who would publish it.
Browning’s early education was rather scant; but he made up for this by a great deal of miscellaneous reading in his father’s library. ”

“ The son of the poet.
TENNYSON’S BEAUTIFUL HOME
Aldworth, at Haslemere, Surrey, England.
It is too soon to assign their permanent places to Tennyson and Browning; but there is little doubt of their survival among the singers whom the world will not forget. Both were fortunately born and well educated, though in different ways; both were happily situated in life; both had ample time in which to give full and rounded expression to their genius. Fame did not come early to either; but it discovered Tennyson in middle life, and for three or four decades it invested him with immense authority. ”

“ In the same year Tennyson married Emily Sellwood, and was appointed poet laureate to succeed Wordsworth. His first official poem in this position was the “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington” in 1852. Two years later “The Charge of the Light Brigade” electrified the world. “Maud” appeared in 1855, and then four years later began the publication of the famous “Idylls of the King,” poems in blank verse telling of King Arthur and his court. From that time on Tennyson wrote many poems and dramas. ”

“ Such poems as “Prospice,” “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came,” are not only impressive poetry, but have the note of the bugle in them.
MRS. BROWNING’S TOMB IN FLORENCE, ITALY
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was herself a poet of exceptional genius; she was born in 1806, married to Robert Browning in 1846, and died in 1861.
SUPPLEMENTARY READING.—“Life of Wordsworth,” Professor Knight; “Wordsworth,” F. W. H. Myers (English Men of Letters Series) ; “Life of Shelley,” Medwin; “Shelley,” J. Addington Symonds (English Men of Letters Series) ”