The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race. Even if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the goal. In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama. -- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu against Linnaeus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more; and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.
The history of the German stage remains to about the second decennium of the 18th century one of the most melancholy, as it is in its way one of the most instructive, chapters of theatrical history. Ignored by the world of letters, the actors in return deliberately sought to emancipate their art from all dependence upon literary material. Improvisation reigned supreme, not only in farce, where _Hans Wurst_, with the aid of Italian examples, never ceased to charm his public, but in the serious drama likewise (in which, however, he also played his part) in those _Haupt- und Staatsactionen_ (high-matter-of-state-dramas), the plots of which were taken from the old stores of the English comedians, from the religious drama and its sources, and from the profane history of all times. The hero of this period is "Magister" J. Velthen (or Veltheim), who at the head of a company of players for a time entered the service of the Saxon court, and, by reproducing comedies of Molière and other writers, sought to restrain the licence which he had himself carried beyond all earlier precedent, but who had to fall back into the old ways and the old life. His career exhibits the climax of the efforts of the art of acting to stand alone; after his death (c. 1693) chaos ensues. The strolling companies, which now included actresses, continued to foster the popular love of the stage, and even under its most degraded form to uphold its national character against the rivalry of the opera, and that of the Italian _commedia dell' arte_. From the latter was borrowed Harlequin, with whom _Hans Wurst_ was blended, and who became a standing figure in every kind of popular play.[281] He established his sway more especially at Vienna, where from about 1712 the first permanent German theatre was maintained. But for the actors in general there was little permanence, and amidst miseries of all sorts, and under the growing ban of clerical intolerance, the popular stage seemed destined to hopeless decay. A certain vitality of growth seems, under clerical guidance, to have characterized the plays of the people in Bavaria and parts of Austria. Entry: P
LYTTON, EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON, BULWER-LYTTON, 1ST BARON (1803-1873), English novelist and politician, the youngest son of General William Earle Bulwer of Heydon Hall and Wood Dalling, Norfolk, was born in London on the 25th of May 1803. He had two brothers, William (1790-1877) and Henry (1801-1872), afterwards Lord Dalling (q.v.). Bulwer's father died when the boy was four years old. His mother, Elizabeth Barbara, daughter of Richard Warburton Lytton of Knebworth, Hertfordshire, after her husband's death settled in London. Bulwer, who was delicate and neurotic, gave evidence of precocious talent and was sent to various boarding schools, where he was always discontented, until in the establishment of a Mr Wallington at Ealing he found in his master a sympathetic and admiring listener. Mr Wallington induced him to publish, at the age of fifteen, an immature volume entitled _Ishmael and other Poems_. About this time Bulwer fell in love, and became extremely morbid under enforced separation from the young lady, who was induced by her father to marry another man. She died about the time that Bulwer went to Cambridge, and he declared that her loss affected all his after-life. In 1822 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, but removed shortly afterwards to Trinity Hall, and in 1825 won the Chancellor's medal for English verse with a poem on "Sculpture." In the following year he took his B.A. degree and printed for private circulation a small volume of poems, _Weeds and Wild Flowers_, in which the influence of Byron was easily traceable. In 1827 he published _O'Neill, or the Rebel_, a romance, in heroic couplets, of patriotic struggle in Ireland, and in 1831 a metrical satire, _The Siamese Twins_. These juvenilia he afterwards ignored. Entry: LYTTON
_17th-Century Drama._--We have already seen how the medieval theatre was formed, and how in the second half of the 16th century it met with a formidable rival in the classical drama of Jodelle and Garnier. In 1588 mysteries had been prohibited, and with the prohibition of the mysteries the Confraternity of the Passion lost the principal part of its reason for existence. The other bodies and societies of amateur actors had already perished, and at length the Hôtel de Bourgogne itself, the home of the confraternity, had been handed over to a regular troop of actors, while companies of strollers, whose life has been vividly depicted in the _Roman comique_ of Scarron and the _Capitaine Fracasse_ of Théophile Gautier, wandered all about the provinces. The old farce was for a time maintained or revived by Tabarin, a remarkable figure in dramatic history, of whom but little is known. The great dramatic author of the first quarter of the 17th century was Alexandre Hardy (1569-1631), who surpassed even Heywood in fecundity, and very nearly approached the portentous productiveness of Lope de Vega. Seven hundred is put down as the modest total of Hardy's pieces, but not much more than a twentieth of these exist in print. From these latter we can judge Hardy. They are hardly up to the level of the worst specimens of the contemporary Elizabethan theatre, to which, however, they bear a certain resemblance. Marston's _Insatiate Countess_ and the worst parts of Chapman's _Bussy d'Ambois_ may give English readers some notion of them. Yet Hardy was not totally devoid of merit. He imitated and adapted Spanish literature, which was at this time to France what Italian was in the century before and English in the century after, in the most indiscriminate manner. But he had a considerable command of grandiloquent and melodramatic expression, a sound theory if not a sound practice of tragic writing, and that peculiar knowledge of theatrical art and of the taste of the theatrical public which since his time has been the special possession of the French playwright. It is instructive to compare the influence of his irregular and faulty genius with that of the regular and precise Malherbe. From Hardy to Rotrou is, in point of literary interest, a great step, and from Rotrou to Corneille a greater. Yet the theory of Hardy only wanted the genius of Rotrou and Corneille to produce the latter. Jean de Rotrou (1610-1650) has been called the French Marlowe, and there is a curious likeness and yet a curious contrast between the two poets. The best parts of Rotrou's two best plays, _Venceslas_ and _St Genest_, are quite beyond comparison in respect of anything that preceded them, and the central speech of the last-named play will rank with anything in French dramatic poetry. Contemporary with Rotrou were other dramatic writers of considerable dramatic importance, most of them distinguished by the faults of the Spanish school, its declamatory rodomontade, its conceits, and its occasionally preposterous action. Jean de Schélandre (d. 1635) has left us a remarkable work in _Tyr et Sidon_, which exemplifies in practice, as its almost more remarkable preface by François Ogier defends in principle, the English-Spanish model. Théophile de Viau in _Pyrame et Thisbé_ and in _Pasiphaé_ produced a singular mixture of the classicism of Garnier and the extravagancies of Hardy. Scudéry in _l'Amour tyrannique_ and other plays achieved a considerable success. The _Marianne_ of Tristan (1601-1655) and the _Sophonisbe_ of Jean de Mairet (1604-1686) are the chief pieces of their authors. Mairet resembles Marston in something more than his choice of subject. Another dramatic writer of some eminence is Pierre du Ryer (1606-1648). But the fertility of France at this moment in dramatic authors was immense; nearly 100 are enumerated in the first quarter of the century. The early plays of Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) showed all the faults of his contemporaries combined with merits to which none of them except Rotrou, and Rotrou himself only in part, could lay claim. His first play was _Mélite_, a comedy, and in _Clitandre_, a tragedy, he soon produced what may perhaps be not inconveniently taken as the typical piece of the school of Hardy. A full account of Corneille may be found elsewhere. It is sufficient to say here that his importance in French literature is quite as great in the way of influence and example as in the way of intellectual excellence. The _Cid_ and the _Menteur_ are respectively the first examples of French tragedy and comedy which can be called modern. But this influence and example did not at first find many imitators. Corneille was a member of Richelieu's band of five poets. Of the other four Rotrou alone deserves the title; the remaining three, the prolific abbé de Boisrobert, Guillaume Colletet (whose most valuable work, a MS. _Lives of Poets_, was never printed, and burnt by the Communards in 1871), and Claude de Lestoile (1597-1651), are as dramatists worthy of no notice, nor were they soon followed by others more worthy. Yet before many years had passed the examples which Corneille had set in tragedy and in comedy were followed up by unquestionably the greatest comic writer, and by one who long held the position of the greatest tragic writer of France. Beginning with mere farces of the Italian type, and passing from these to comedies still of an Italian character, it was in _Les Précieuses ridicules_, acted in 1659, that Molière (1622-1673), in the words of a spectator, hit at last on "la bonne comédie." The next fifteen years comprise the whole of his best known work, the finest expression beyond doubt of a certain class of comedy that any literature has produced. The tragic masterpieces of Racine (1639-1699) were not far from coinciding with the comic masterpieces of Molière, for, with the exception of the remarkable aftergrowth of _Esther_ and _Athalie_, they were produced chiefly between 1667 and 1677. Both Racine and Molière fall into the class of writers who require separate mention. Here we can only remark that both to a certain extent committed and encouraged a fault which distinguished much subsequent French dramatic literature. This was the too great individualizing of one point in a character, and the making the man or woman nothing but a blunderer, a lover, a coxcomb, a tyrant and the like. The very titles of French plays show this influence--they are _Le Grondeur_, _Le Joueur_, &c. The complexity of human character is ignored. This fault distinguishes both Molière and Racine from writers of the very highest order; and in especial it distinguishes the comedy of Molière and the tragedy of Racine from the comedy and tragedy of Shakespeare. In all probability this and other defects of the French drama (which are not wholly apparent in the work of Molière and Corneille, are shown in their most favourable light in those of Racine, and appear in all their deformity in the successors of the latter) arise from the rigid adoption of the Aristotelian theory of the drama with its unities and other restrictions, especially as transmitted by Horace through Boileau. This adoption was very much due to the influence of the French Academy, which was founded unofficially by Conrart in 1629, which received official standing six years later, and which continued the tradition of Malherbe in attempting constantly to school and correct, as the phrase went, the somewhat disorderly instincts of the early French stage. Even the Cid was formally censured for irregularity by it. But it is fair to say that François Hédélin, abbé d'Aubignac (1604-1676), whose _Pratique du théâtre_ is the most wooden of the critical treatises of the time, was not an academician. It is difficult to say whether the subordination of all other classes of composition to the drama, which has ever since been characteristic of French literature, was or was not due to the predilection of Richelieu, the main protector if not exactly the founder of the Academy, for the theatre. Among the immediate successors and later contemporaries of the three great dramatists we do not find any who deserve high rank as tragedians, though there are some whose comedies are more than respectable. It is at least significant that the restrictions imposed by the academic theory on the comic drama were far less severe than those which tragedy had to undergo. The latter was practically confined, in respect of sources of attraction, to the dexterous manipulation of the unities; the interest of a plot attenuated as much as possible, and intended to produce, instead of pity a mild sympathy, and instead of terror a mild alarm (for the purists decided against Corneille that "admiration was not a tragic passion"); and lastly the composition of long tirades of smooth but monotonous verses, arranged in couplets tipped with delicately careful rhymes. Only Thomas Corneille (1625-1709), the inheritor of an older tradition and of a great name, deserves to be excepted from the condemnation to be passed on the lesser tragedians of this period. He was unfortunate in possessing his brother's name, and in being, like him, too voluminous in his compositions; but _Camma_, _Ariane_, _Le Comte d'Essex_, are not tragedies to be despised. On the other hand, the names of Jean de Campistron (1656-1723) and Nicolas Pradon (1632-1698) mainly serve to point injurious comparisons; Joseph François Duché (1668-1704) and Antoine La Fosse (1653-1708) are of still less importance, and Quinault's tragedies are chiefly remarkable because he had the good sense to give up writing them and to take to opera. The general excellence of French comedy, on the other hand, was sufficiently vindicated. Besides the splendid sum of Molière's work, the two great tragedians had each, in _Le Menteur_ and _Les Plaideurs_, set a capital example to their successors, which was fairly followed. David Augustin de Brueys (1640-1723) and Jean Palaprat (1650-1721) brought out once more the ever new _Advocat Patelin_ besides the capital _Grondeur_ already referred to. Quinault and Campistron wrote fair comedies. Florent Carton Dancourt (1661-1726), Charles Rivière Dufresny (c. 1654-1724), Edmond Boursault (1638-1701), were all comic writers of considerable merit. But the chief comic dramatist of the latter period of the 17th century was Jean François Regnard (1655-1709), whose _Joueur_ and _Légataire_ are comedies almost of the first rank. Entry: D
Disappointment in more senses than one awaited Goethe on his return to Weimar. He came back from Italy with a new philosophy of life, a philosophy at once classic and pagan, and with very definite ideas of what constituted literary excellence. But Germany had not advanced; in 1788 his countrymen were still under the influence of that _Sturm und Drang_ from which the poet had fled. The times seemed to him more out of joint than ever, and he withdrew into himself. Even his relations to the old friends were changed. Frau von Stein had not known of his flight to Italy until she received a letter from Rome; but he looked forward to her welcome on his return. The months of absence, however, the change he had undergone, and doubtless those lighter loves of which the _Römische Elegien_ bear evidence, weakened the Weimar memories; if he left Weimar as Frau von Stein's lover he returned only as her friend; and she naturally resented the change. Goethe, meanwhile, satisfied to continue the freer customs to which he had adapted himself in Rome, found a new mistress in Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), the least interesting of all the women who attracted him. But Christiane gradually filled up a gap in the poet's life; she gave him, quietly, unobtrusively, without making demands on him, the comforts of a home. She was not accepted by court society; it did not matter to her that even Goethe's intimate friends ignored her; and she, who had suited the poet's whim when he desired to shut himself off from all that might dim the recollection of Italy, became with the years an indispensable helpmate to him. On the birth in 1789 of his son, Goethe had some thought of legalizing his relations with Christiane, but this intention was not realized until 1806, when the invasion of Weimar by the French made him fear for both life and property. Entry: GOETHE
In the year of Queen Victoria's accession most of the great writers of the early part of the century, whom we may denominate as "late Georgian," were silent. Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Lamb, Sheridan, Hazlitt, Mackintosh, Crabbe and Cobbett were gone. Wordsworth, Southey, Campbell, Moore, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, De Quincey, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, Brougham, Samuel Rogers were still living, but the vital portion of their work was already done. The principal authors who belong equally to the Georgian and Victorian eras are Landor, Bulwer, Marryat, Hallam, Milman and Disraeli; none of whom, with the exception of the last, approaches the first rank in either. The significant work of Tennyson, the Brownings, Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Trollope, the Kingsleys, Spencer, Mill, Darwin, Ruskin, Grote, Macaulay, Freeman, Froude, Lecky, Buckle, Green, Maine, Borrow, FitzGerald, Arnold, Rossetti, Swinburne, Meredith, Hardy, Stevenson, Morris, Newman, Pater, Jefferies--the work of these writers may be termed conclusively Victorian; it gives the era a stamp of its own and distinguishes it as the most varied in intellectual riches in the whole course of our literature. Circumstances have seldom in the world been more favourable to a great outburst of literary energy. The nation was secure and prosperous to an unexampled degree, conscious of the will and the power to expand still further. The canons of taste were still aristocratic. Books were made and unmade according to a regular standard. Literature was the one form of art which the English understood, in which they had always excelled since 1579, and in which their originality was supreme. To the native genius for poetry was now added the advantage of materials for a prose which in lucidity and versatility should surpass even that of Goldsmith and Hazlitt. The diversity of form and content of this great literature was commensurate with the development of human knowledge and power which marked its age. In this and some other respects it resembles the extraordinary contemporary development in French literature which began under the reign of Louis Philippe. The one signally disconcerting thing about the great Victorian writers is their amazing prolixity. Not content with two or three long books, they write whole literatures. A score of volumes, each as long as the Bible or Shakespeare, barely represents the output of such authors as Carlyle, Ruskin, Froude, Dickens, Thackeray, Newman, Spencer or Trollope. They obtained vast quantities of new readers, for the middle class was beginning to read with avidity; but the quality of brevity, the knowledge when to stop, and with it the older classic conciseness and the nobler Hellenic idea of a perfect measure--these things were as though they had not been. Meanwhile, the old schools were broken up and the foolscap addressed to the old masters. Singers, entertainers, critics and historians abound. Every man may say what is in him in the phrases that he likes best, and the sole motto that compels is "every style is permissible except the style that is tiresome." The old models are strangely discredited, and the only conventions which hold are those concerning the subjects which English delicacy held to be tabooed. These conventions were inordinately strict, and were held to include all the unrestrained, illicit impulses of love and all the more violent aberrations from the Christian code of faith and ethics. Infidel speculation and the liaisons of lawless love (which had begun to form the staple of the new French fiction--hence regarded by respectable English critics of the time as profoundly vitiated and scandalous) had no recognized existence and were totally ignored in literature designed for general reading. The second or Goody-two-Shoes convention remained strictly in force until the penultimate decade of the 19th century, and was acquiesced in or at least submitted to by practically all the greatest writers of the Victorian age. The great poets and novelists of that day easily out-topped their fellows. Society had no difficulty in responding to the summons of its literary leaders. Nor was their fame partial, social or sectional. The great novelists of early Victorian days were aristocratic and democratic at once. Their popularity was universal within the limits of the language and beyond it. The greatest of men were men of imagination rather than men of ideas, but such sociological and moral ideas as they derived from their environment were poured helter-skelter into their novels, which took the form of huge pantechnicon magazines. Another distinctive feature of the Victorian novel is the position it enabled women to attain in literature, a position attained by them in creative work neither before nor since. Entry: VI
Each country also possesses an organization for the government of cycle racing; and although these unions, one object of which--usually the main one--is the encouragement of cycle racing and cycle legislation, boast an enormous membership, their membership is often composed of clubs and not individuals. Among the most important are the National Cyclists' Union of England and the Union Vélocipédique of France. These bodies are also bound together by the International Cyclists' Association, which is devoted mainly to the promotion of racing and legislation connected with it all over the world. The National Cyclists' Union, originally the Bicycle Union, which was the parent body of all, formed in February 1878, was the first to put up danger-boards, and also was early instrumental, alone and with the C.T.C., in framing or suggesting laws for the proper government and regulation of cycle traffic, notably in establishing its position as a vehicle in securing universal rights, in endeavouring, again in conjunction with the C.T.C., to increase facilities for the carriage of cycles on the railways, in securing the opening of parks, and in promoting many other equally praiseworthy objects. For a number of years, however, it has been more prominent as the ruling race-governing body. But cycle racing has fallen upon evil days. At one time cycle racing attracted a large number of spectators, but gradually it lost the public favour, or rather was ignored by the public because it became mainly an advertisement for cycle makers. The presence of the man, directly or indirectly, in the employ of, or aided by a maker, and the consequent mixing up of trade and sport, lowered racing not only in the public estimation, but in that of all genuine amateurs. There have always been a few amateurs who have raced for the love of the sport, but the greater number of prominent racing men have raced for the benefit of a firm, so much so that, at one time, an entire section of racing men were classed as "makers' amateurs." They did not confine themselves to the race track, but appropriated the public roads until they became a danger and a nuisance, and road-racing finally was abolished, though record rides, as they are called, are still indulged in, being winked at by the police and by the cycling authorities. The makers' amateurs at least rode to win and to make the best time possible. But the scandal was so great that a system of licensing riders was adopted by the N.C.U., and if this did not effectively kill the sport, the introduction of waiting races did. There probably is considerable skill in riding two-thirds of a race as slowly as possible, and only hurrying the last part of the last lap, but it does not amuse the public, who want to see a fast race as well as a close finish. The introduction of pacing by multicycles and motors next took from cycle racing what interest was left. A motor race, in which the machines are run at top speed, is more exciting than the spectacle of a motor being driven at a rate which the cyclist can follow with the protection of a wind-shield. In America this system of proving what cyclists can do with racing machines was carried so far that in 1899 a board track was laid down on the Long Island railway for about 2 m. between the metals, and a cyclist named Murphy, followed a train, and protected by enormous wind-shields, succeeded in covering a mile in less than a minute in the autumn of 1900. Other cyclists have devoted themselves, at the instigation of makers, to the riding of 100 m. a day every day for a year. It would be difficult to say what advantage there is in these trials and contests. They are not convincing records, and only prove that some people are willing to take great personal risks for the benefit of their employers. E. Hale, during 1899-1900, covered 32,496 m. in 313 days. For many years also long-distance races, mostly of six days' duration, have been promoted on covered tracks, and though condemned by all cycling organizations, they find a great deal of pecuniary support. Entry: CYCLING