Modern English Prose Writers Author:Frank Preston Stearns General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1897 Original Publisher: G. P. Putnam's sons Subjects: English prose literature History / General Literary Collections / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism ... more »/ Women Authors Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CARLYLE Grand, rough old Martin Luther Bloomed fables, flowers on furze, The better the uncouther, -- Do roses stick like burrs ? Brown1ng. SO he might have said, " Grand, rough old Thomas Carlyle "; who was a kind of Luther to his generation of Anglo-Saxons, breaking through old traditions and venerable, musty stupidities to a new reformation, moral and intellectual, -- such as was greatly needed in the time he lived. Of intellectual life in England in Carlyle's early manhood there was very little. Philosophy, which is always the corner-stone of mental activity was nearly dead, or at best dragging out an invalid existence. Of sentimental poetry there was perhaps too much; but of sensible, refreshing, and invigorating prose, little enough. The arts of painting and sculpture, which have never flourished extensively in Great Britain, had not been at so low an ebb for centuries. The taste in architecture was never so conventional, insipid, and meaningless. Byron and Wordsworth had introduced a few fresh ideas, butonly a few, and those were neither resented nor accepted by the British public. There was no fresh thought, either in the form of German spiritual belief, or keen ironical French disbelief. Great Britain shut up for twenty years from the continent by the wars of Napoleon, had learned little of the great change...« less