with the clergyman-novelist Charles Kingsley which led to Newman's famous
'Apologia pro Vita Sua' (Apology for My Life), one of the secondary
literary masterpieces of the century. His services to the Catholic Church
were recognized in 1879 by his appointment as a Cardinal. More than one of
the influences thus hastily surveyed combine in creating the moral, social,
and intellectual strenuousness which is one of the main marks of the
literature of the period. More conspicuously than ever before the majority
of the great writers, not least the poets and novelists, were impelled not
merely by the emotional or dramatic creative impulse but by the sense of a
message for their age which should broaden the vision and elevate the
ideals of the masses of their fellows. The literature of the period,
therefore, lacks the disinterested and joyous spontaneity of, for example,
the Elizabethan period, and its mood is far more complex than that of the
partly socially-minded pseudo-classicists.

While all the new influences were manifesting themselves in Victorian
literature they did not, of course, supersede the great general inherited
tendencies. This literature is in the main romantic. On the social side
this should be evident; the Victorian social humanitarianism is merely the
developed form of the eighteenth century romantic democratic impulse. On
the esthetic side the romantic traits are also present, though not so
aggressively as in the previous period; with romantic vigor the Victorian
literature often combines exquisite classical finish; indeed, it is so
eclectic and composite that all the definite older terms take on new and
less sharply contrasting meanings when applied to it.

So long a period naturally falls into sub-divisions; during its middle part
in particular, progress and triumphant romanticism, not yet largely
attacked by scientific scepticism, had created a prevailing atmosphere of
somewhat passive sentiment and optimism both in society and in literature