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A HISTORY
OF
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE




cr)Y''L-L




A HISTORY'
OF
EIG..HTEENTH CIENTURY


LITERATURE
(i66o-I 780)
BY
EDMUND,,GOSSE, M.A.
CLARK LECTURER IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AT TRINITY COLLEGE
CAMBRIDGE
TJUntron
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
J889


All rightis rese;rved




k


Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.




;4~ ii
PREFACE
To call a sketch of English authorship between I660
and I780 a history of Eighteenth Century Literature
is, on the face of it, to be guilty of a misnomer.
Eighteenth Century Literature should include everything
between the death of Dryden and the birth of Sir Henry
Taylor, and nothing else. At the same time, no other
name has occurred to us by which, without confusion
or affectation, those literary developments might be
concisely described which came to their climax in the
early part of the eighteenth century, and seem to be
related to what we are in the habit of considering the
characteristic features of that age in social, intellectual,
and artistic matters. To call this the Augustan period
would be to narrow it most unduly; to call it the classical
period would be to introduce a series of ideas incongruous as well as inexact.  No newly discovered nickname would please all readers at this time of day, and we
must be content with a title so patently imperfect as that
which we have chosen. The dates on the title-page may
at least guard the writer against any misconception of
the purpose which he set before himself to fulfil.




vi


PREFACE


In dealing with a section of literary history which has
been mapped out so minutely as the greater part of
Eighteenth Century Literature, the first problem which
presents itself to a critic in attempting to form a general
survey of the whole, is that of proportion. The vast
landmarks of the preceding century, the colossal Shakespeares and Bacons and Miltons, are absent here; the
general level of merit is much higher, while the solitary
altitudes are more numerous but considerably less commanding. The first and by far the most arduous duty of
the writer was to make a rough plan of his work, selecting
and excluding names, determining the relative value of
each, and deciding what proportion of the space at his
command could be spared for the individual figures. This
was done with very great care, and it was when this
skeleton was being filled up that the necessity of such a
plan became obvious.  It was then that the attraction of
those fascinating minor figures in which the eighteenth
century was so singularly rich made itself felt. It was
difficult indeed to pass such names as those of Temple
and Arbuthnot and Anstey without loitering longer in
their company than the proportions of the plan permitted.
But to keep to the plan the writer conceived to be the
central feature of his work, and he forced himself to
resist the temptation. For the relative prominence given
to the various names, therefore, he must take the responsibility, and the critical taste of the reader will decide
whether, in the main, the proportions are correctly designed. But those who have made special fragments of
the century, or special figures in it, their main study, will
recollect, if they glance into these pages, that the first




PREFACE


Vii


duty of a general critic of literature is to resist the
attraction of personal favourites.
In every case I have attempted to set forward my own
view of the literary character of each figure, founded on
personal study.  Hence, in a few cases, it may be discovered that the verdicts in this volume differ in some
degree from those commonly held. A few names which
are habitually found chronicled are here omitted, and still
fewer, which are new to a general sketch, are included.
I am conscious that certain writers receive here more
prominence than has hitherto been given to them, while
others receive less.  But, on the whole, I have striven to
be conservative in taste.  Where   my judgment has
differed on important questions from that of preceding
critics, I have been slow to suppose that I could be right
and they wrong.   But it was absolutely essential that
such an outline of literary history, if it was to have any
stimulating quality at all, should be pervaded by the
results of a personal impression; and if any reader is
offended at an opinion which appears to him heretical,
let him acquit me, while he rejects it, of any intention to
startle him with a paradox.
The pages have been somewhat copiously starred with
dates, for which interruptions of comfort in reading I
must offer an apology,  I have the impression that dates,
if reasonably treated, present a great assistance to the
comparative student, and really should prevent, instead of
causing, interruption.  Moreover, almost the only contribution to actual fact which I could hope to offer in such
a critical volume as this was a running bibliography, the
accurate chronicling of the original dates and forms of




Viii


PREFACE


publication being one of the few departments of eighteenth
century literature which have, except in certain provinces,
been neglected.  It is not very important, perhaps, but I
may add that in almost every case of a well-known book
I have made a point of referring to the actual first issue.
Among my thousands of dates, though I have carefully
revised them, some must be wrong. Any corrections of
fact will be very gratefully received by myself or the
publishers.
In the final chapter I have stated my theory with
regard to the mode in which the philosophical, theological, and political writing of the period should be examined.
But I may explain here that it has been my object, while
giving a rough sketch of the tenets of each didactic
specialist, to leave the discussion of those tenets to critics
of the specialist's own profession, and to treat his publications mainly from the point of view of style.


TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
November I888.




CONTENTS
CHAP.                                           PAGE
I. POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION..    I
II. DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION...        38
III. PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION...    73
IV. POPE......      105
V. SWIFT AND THE DEISTS...    40
VI. DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS....   176
VII. THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY..207
VIII. THE NOVELISTS......  242
IX. JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS...273
X. THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE....3IO
XI. THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE....  344
XII. CONCLUSION.......  375
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......  401
INDEX......      405








CHAPTER I


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION
WHEN the romantic fervour of the age of Elizabeth had completely
exhausted itself, towards the middle of the seventeenth century,
the poetical field in England was again left fallow, as it had been
left in the early part of the sixteenth century, at the decline of the
medieval period.  The great poets had spoken in rapturous
accents, with a noble and irregular music, and their followers,
unable to repeat their sublimity, had exaggerated their irregularity
into licence. This rapid decline from the Elizabethan elevation
of style was hastened by the general subsidence, throughout
Europe, of the fervour of the Renaissance. The form of English
poetry was degraded, not merely by its own impetus, but by the
nature of the literary changes then being made in France, in
Spain, and in Italy.  Imaginative literature was undergoing a
complete transformation in all parts of Europe. At the moment
of deepest decadence it had reached very much the same position
which it had reached, at various moments, in the complete decline
of medieyalism.  In England, for instance, the relation of a
writer like Phineas Fletcher to Spenser was almost exactly analogous to that of Hawes to Chaucer.  But when it came to the
question of revival, it was plain that renovation could not lie any
longer on the side of what was fervid, spontaneous, and fantastic.
In this direction there was nothing new to be attained, and the
tendency had to be rather in the mediaeval than in the Renaissance
E.L. III              e                    B




2


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


direction, more towards the classic regularity of the great fourteenth
century writers than towards the exquisite audacities of the end
of the sixteenth century.
The change, then, was one in the direction of repression and
revision.  It was made in the pursuit of regular form, reasonable thought, and a subdued and chastened ornament. Although
the results of the change appear anything but attractive to ourselves, and although the direct and positive gain to English poetry
seems very small to us now, the relief from irregularity and licence
was eagerly welcomed. The most obvious phenomenon connected
with the change in poetry was the gradual substitution, in nondramatic verse, for the thousand-and-one odd metrical forms of
the lyrists, of a single normal instrument in versification, namely,
the neatly-balanced and unbroken heroic couplet, containing five
beats in each line. It was true that this form, as well as almost
all others to be found in English poetry, had been known to
the Elizabethans, but it had possessed no special attraction for
them, and not one of them had made habitual use of it. But
throughout the period with which we deal in this volume, this
heroic couplet was the normal and habitual form in which poetry,
except on the stage, moved in its serious moments. There were,
of course, many exceptions, and about 1725 a very vigorous effort
was made, but with only partial success, to substitute blank verse
for it. These exceptions will be noted as we proceed, but it is
proper here to insist that the employment of the heroic couplet,
and the polishing of that couplet, are the most prominent facts
connected with the art of poetry during the classic period in this
country.
This alteration of form was introduced by one writer, who
lived to see it universally adopted. The life of this poet, Edmund
Waller (I605-I687), covers the entire period of transformation.
When he was a youth the romantic manner was the only one in
practice; long before he died the classic manner was unchallenged.
The precise and regular taste made fashionable by Waller found
a special propriety in resuming a vehicle of expression which had




I


WALLER


3


been, it would seem, invented by Chaucer for use in The Canterbury Tales, about I385. The heroic couplet had been employed
by its author with extraordinary art, and almost without irregularity.
But it was an instrument upon which none but Chaucer seemed
to know how to play, and within a quarter of a century after his
death it was completely laid aside. When the couplet came into use
again, in the Elizabethan age, the form was greatly modified, and
the polished distich, as Chaucer had devised it, was lost in a flowing easy measure, kept in hand merely by the recurrent tinkle of
the rhyme. Chaucer's artful cesura was exaggerated into what
the French call an enjambement, and what is called in English an
"overflow"; "the sense," as Milton says in describing this
peculiarity, "being variously drawn out from one verse into
another." In the hands of the best romantic poets of Elizabeth
and James, this loose and elastic treatment of the couplet had led
to very charming effects; but when inspiration passed away, this
laxity of form gave the poetasters occasion for every species of
weakness and flaccidity. Waller, without apparently any ambition
to restore the couplet as Chaucer had left it, nor on the other
hand any suggestion from France, where the Alexandrine was not
yet subjected to a like reform, revised and strengthened this form
of verse, and gave it the character which it retained for no less
than one hundred and fifty years.  For that space of time the
couplet took the same almost universal position as the vehicle for
expression in verse that the rhyme royal had taken in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. In this case, as in that, the popularity of
the form survived the power of the poets to extract new effects
out of so conventional an instrument.
Waller, to whom is due the singular distinction of being the
coryphaeus of this long procession of the commonplace, was a
very wealthy landlord of Buckinghamshire. He entered Parliament at an early age, held completely aloof from the active literary
life of his contemporaries, and seemed interested in anything
rather than in poetry. His earliest verses, dated apparently in
I623, possess the formal character, the precise prosody without




4


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


irregularity or overflow, which we find in the ordinary verse of
Dryden, Pope, and Darwin. To so great an extent is this true,
that a passage of Waller's earliest heroics, if compared at the same
time with a typical passage from one of his coevals, such as Carew
or Crashaw, and with one from Darwin's Botanic Garden of 1789,
would be recognised at once as bearing a closer relation to the
latter than to the former. In other words, we hold in Waller's
earliest occasional pieces the key to the prosody of the eighteenth
century, to what Mr. Ruskin has very happily called "the symmetrical clauses of Pope's logical metre." For many years Waller
was entirely unsupported in this innovation, and his persistence
in setting his face against the fashion of his own age is very
curious. About I632 he began to court Lady Dorothy Sidney
in a cycle of poems, under the name of Sacharissa, and some of
these lyrics were, and still remain, justly popular.  They are
remarkable for grace, and for a curious felicity in diction; in them
he escapes from his self-imposed chain of the couplet. Waller
plotted to reinstate the king, and in i644 was heavily fined and
banished to France.
Before this, however, he had obtained his first disciple. The
critics of the succeeding age saw a direct relation between Waller
and Sir John Denham (I6I5-I668), which has, until lately, been
again obscured.  Dryden said, in I664, "The excellence and
dignity of rhyme were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it;
but this sweetness of his lyric poesy was afterwards followed in the
epic by Sir John Denham in his Cooper's Hill."  This last-mentioned work, Denham's sole important contribution to literature,
is not what we now call an epic; it is a topographical poem, and
the earliest of its class to possess a distinctly national interest. It
was published in 1642, before Waller had printed anything, but
it contains a direct allusion to him as " the first of poets," showing,
as the adoption of the unbroken distich also did, that the author
had perceived and had accepted the reform suggested by Waller.
It is not lengthy, nor very animated, and there is little in its form
or matter to account for the extraordinary reputation which it has




I


COWLEY


5


enjoyed. It is a soliloquy of the author's, who, resting on the brow
of Cooper's Hill, addresses the Thames rolling at his feet, and
enumerates the stately attractions of the great city through which
the river is about to flow. Four lines of this address, added in the
second edition, are among the most famous of English quotations:
"O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull,
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."
Denham was an architect by profession, and succeeded Inigo
Jones as the king's surveyor-general, to be succeeded in his turn
by Sir Christopher Wren. The latter part of his life was clouded
by insanity. Denham is not a poet of importance, but he supplies
a link betweenWaller and Dryden. Sidney Godolphin (I6Io-I643),
another very early disciple of Waller's, died too young to exert
much influence.
A much more versatile and more attractive writer than Denham was Abraham Cowley (I6I8-I667), but he was not nearly
so consistent an adherent of the new school. On one side of his
poetical character, indeed, Cowley represents nothing more than
the extreme decline of the earlier romantic poetry. He attributed
his own start in life to the fact that before he was twelve he
had read the works of Spenser through, and his early writings, the
precocity of which is extraordinary, are imitations of the great
Elizabethans.  Before he was twenty he had published two
volumes of poetry and a play, all three of which had enjoyed
great success. During the early years of the civil war he was
engaged in writing the collection of cold and elaborate loveenigmas, which he called The Mistress-pieces in which feeling
and thought, expression and metrical form, are all tortured in
concert. After the battle of Naseby, Cowley, who, like most of the
men of letters, was a royalist, followed the queen to Paris, and
there came under the influence of Waller. The Mistress appeared
in 1647, and was immediately accepted and approved by the members of the new school, although it hardly belonged to their camp.




6


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


It was his want of colour, his intellectual ingenuity, and his temperate prosaic spirit, which recommended Cowley to the new classic
poets. He wrote but little in the heroic measure-his sacred
epic, The Davideis, and one very noble elegy on Crashaw, being
his principal essays in that form. Cowley rarely speaks so simply
and sincerely as in these stanzas from the poem on the death of
Mr. William Hervey:
" He was my friend, the truest friend on earth:
A strong and mighty influence join'd our birth.
Nor did we envy the most sounding name
By friendship given of old to fame.
None but his brethren he, and sisters knew,
Whom the kind youth preferr'd to me;
And even in that we did agree,
For much above myself I lov'd them too.
" Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unwearied have we spent the nights?
'Till the Ledsean stars so famed for love,
Wonder'd at us from above.
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, in wine;
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, eloquence, and poetry;
Arts which I loved, for they, my friend, were thine.
" Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,
Have ye not seen us walking every day?
Was there a tree about which did not know
The love betwixt us two?
Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade;
Or your sad branches thicker join,
And into darksome shades combine;
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid.
"Henceforth no learned youths beneath you sing,
'Till all the tuneful birds to your boughs they bring;
No tuneful birds play with their wonted cheer,
And call the learned youths to hear;
No whistling winds through the glad branches fly,
But all with sad solemnity
Mute and unmoved be,
Mute as the grave wherein my friend does lie."




I


COWLEY'S ODES)


7


In 1656 Cowley presented the public with a collection of
Pindarique Odes-pompous lyrics in what the French call zers
libres-that is to say, lines of irregular length disposed on a
whimsical system, which had lately received the approval of Corneille, and was, long after Cowley's death, to be raised by Racine
into momentary dignity in the choral portions of Esther and
Atlalie.  At that day the elaborate plan on which the odes of
Pindar were built up was not understood, and Cowley's idea was
that they were formed irregularly and spontaneously, more on a
musical than a metrical system. As an example of the vicious
Pindaric manner invented by Cowley, of his strange passion for
conceit, and of his occasional felicity, the opening strophes of
"The Muse" may here be given. It contains what is perhaps
the most beautiful line Cowley has left behind him:
"Go, the rich chariot instantly prepare;
The Queen, my Muse, will take the air;
Unruly Fancy with strong Judgment trace,
Put in nimble-footed Wit,
Smooth-pac'd Eloquence join with it,
Sound Memory with young Invention place,
Harness all the winged race.
Let the postilion Nature, mount, and let
The coachman Art be set.
And let the airy footmen running all beside,
Make a long row of goodly Pride.
Figures, Conceits, Raptures, and Sentences,
In a well-worded Dress.
And innocent Loves, and pleasant Truths, and useful Lies,
In all their gaudy liveries.
Mount, glorious Queen, thy travelling throne,
And bid it to put on;
For long, though cheerful, is the way,
And life, alas, allows but one ill winter's day.
Where never foot of man, or hoof of beast
The passage prest.
Where never fish did fly,
And with short silver wings cut the low liquid sky.
Where bird with painted oars did ne'er
Row through the trackless ocean of the air.




8


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


Where never yet did pry
The busy morning's curious eye,
The wheels of thy bold coach pass quick and free;
And all's an open road to thee.
Whatever God did say,
Is all thy plain and smooth, uninterrupted way.
Nay, ev'n beyond His works thy voyages are known,
Thou hast thousand worlds too of thine own.
Thou speak'st, great Queen, in the same style as He,
And a new world leaps forth when Thou say'st, Let it be."
This uncouth and mistaken form of ode was unchallenged for
some fifty years, when Congreve attempted a diversion in favour
of regularity; no successful stand, however, was made against it
until Gray began to write. This so-called "Pindarique ode" was
for fifty or sixty years not only the universal medium for congratulatory lyrics and tumid occasional pieces, but it was for a long
time almost the only variety allowed to the cultivators of the
heroic couplet. Dryden succeeded in putting a noble organ music
into it, but there can scarcely be mentioned one other ode than his
second On Saint Cecilia's Day, which is a perfectly successful poem.
The forgotten lyrists of the Restoration found it a particularly
convenient instrument in their bound and inflexible fingers, and
even the tuneless Shadwell could turn off Pindarique odes. But
almost without exception those "majestic strains" are miserably
flat.  Concerning the value of Cowley's own verse criticism
strangely differs. He had a very high ideal of the poetic vocation.
He is wonderfully felicitous sometimes in the structure of single
lines, and those who are able to appreciate poetry of the class
of which France has produced so much, the purely rhetorical
and intellectual, will extend their approval to entire stanzas, and
sometimes to entire poems. But it must be confessed that to the
modern reader most of his "Song" is what, in another sense, he
said that Pindar's was-" unnavigable."
Another precursor of the classic school in poetry was Sir
William  Davenant (I606-I668), an uninspired but exceedingly
active professional writer. He was mainly a writer of plays,




I


DAVENANT


9


which will be mentioned in the next chapter, but he also produced an epic which attracted a great deal of notice. Davenant,
whose parents were intimate friends of Shakespeare, was that
poet's godson.  His youth was spent in the house of Fulke
Greville-Lord Brooke-the old Elizabethan worthy, until Brooke
was murdered in 1628. Davenant succeeded Ben Jonson as poet
laureate in I637, and in 1638 collected his scattered verses into a
volume called Madagascar.  Up to this time he had been entirely
identified with the old romantic school, but in 1650 we find him in
Paris with Waller and Cowley, and converted to the new prosody
of the former. He published in that year the first (and only)
volume of an epic poem, called Gondibert, on a Lombard story.
This poem is mainly interesting because of the extraordinary
influence which it exercised over the early style of Dryden,
who was slow in quite escaping from the fascination of it. Gondibert is Davenant's best production, but it is very obscure and
ill-constructed.  Its merit consists in the grace of some of the
episodes, and in the sententious vigour of single lines. It is written
in the four-line heroic stanza, with alternate rhymes, which Gray
made so popular in the following century. Davenant's essays in
the heroic distich show that late in life he learned Waller's lesson
with remarkable adroitness. He was a clever man of letters, but
scarcely a poet.
The great writer of the period, the greatest poet in English
literature between Milton and Wordsworth, was John Dryden
(I63I-I700). In comparison with this stately figure, those precursors of the classical school whom we have just mentioned pass
into insignificance. Even Waller, though nothing can shake his
importance as the founder of the school, is intellectually a dwarf
by the side of Dryden. It should, however, be clearly perceived
that the change from the romantic to the classical manner in
English poetry, the rejection of the overflow in favour of the distich,
had been carried out to the full before Dryden came to the front
and stamped his own powerful character on the movement.
Waller was writing excellent couplets before Dryden was born,




IO


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CITAP.


but it was part of Dryden's greatness not so much to introduce
phases of thought as to adopt and illuminate them when they had
once become national. For this reason, perhaps, he was not
happy until all question of transition was over. He did not take
up poetry in earnest till all intelligent Englishmen had decided
what kind of poetry it was they wanted.  And then Dryden,
confident of his audience, made the distich of Waller an instrument
on which to play his boldest music.
Dryden, the nephew of a local baronet, was born near Oundle,
in Northamptonshire, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge,
where his famous portrait still adorns the hall. His early life is
exceedingly obscure, and we possess very few contributions from
it, either in prose or verse. In I659, at the age of twenty-eight,
he took part in the publication of a thin volume of three elegies
on Oliver Cromwell. There are two simultaneous editions of this,
one by itself, which is excessively rare, and the other in combination with Waller, with whom it is very interesting to find Dryden
thus early identified, and Thomas Sprat (I636-I713), an imitator
of Cowley, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester. At this time
Gondibert was in fashion, and Dryden's stanzas are closely
modelled on those of Davenant.   The next year brought the
Restoration, when every bush was vocal, and Dryden presented
his share of tribute in his Astrcla Redux.  Here Waller was his
model more than Davenant, but still there was little promise of
high attainment. Dryden, as was afterwards remarked, was but
"faintly distinguished in his thirtieth year."  In i66I, in his
Coronation Panegyric, his heroics are, for the first time, on a level
with those of Waller and Davenant; and the writer has removed
from his style a turbid affectation of wit which stuck to it from
the bad models of his childhood. This and other short exercises
bring us down to the year i666, when Dryden published his first
long piece, the historical poem  of Annus Mirabilis, closely
modelled upon Gondibert. It will easily be seen, however, from
such a stanza as the following, that Dryden already was a far
greater master of metre than Davenant had ever been:




I


DRYDEN


II


"The ghosts of traitors from the bridge descend,
With bold fanatic spectres to rejoice;
About the fire into a dance they bend,
And sing their sabbath notes with feeble voice."
There can be no sense, however, in which Annus Mirabilis can
be called a good poem. It is confused, violent, and affected, full
of crudities of style and thought, and its fine passages, brilliant as
they are, are mere purple patches. The theme was twofold-the
progress of our naval war with Holland, and that of the great fire
of London.
The character of Dryden's work now changed completely, and
the change was coincident with the close of the first period of the
classic epoch in England. Within a few months Cowley, Denham, and Davenant died, Waller was silent, Dryden turned his
attention exclusively to the drama, and the only non-dramatic
poetry produced was that of Milton, a magnificent survival
from the romantic age. Late in I663 Dryden had married the
eldest daughter of the Earl of Berkshire, a woman who proved to
be silly and peevish; they were not destined to enjoy much happiness together. The personal life of Dryden, however, is very
vague to us, and the trustworthy anecdotes preserved about him
are singularly few. We know, however, that he stepped at once
into the honours and into the consideration enjoyed by his lately
deceased forerunners, that he was now in general parlance "Mr.
Dryden the poet," and that in I670 he was made laureate and
historiographer-royal. He was gradually absorbed by the writing
of plays, of which an account will be given in the next chapter,
and about 1667 he entered into an agreement to supply the
players of the king's theatre with three plays a year, on exceedingly
favourable terms. Dryden was not able to keep his part of the
contract, but he wrote enough to bring him in a large theatrical
income, and this was a period of high prosperity with him. He
was also intimate with the great literary nobles of the court, and
sunned himself in their favour almost without an interval, until,
in i675, he had the misfortune to quarrel with the malignant Earl




12


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CIIAP.


of Rochester. For fourteen years, however, after the publication
of Annus Mirabilis, Dryden has to be treated exclusively as a
dramatist. The peculiar character of his plays, however, was not
without influence on his style as a poet. In the heroic plays,
which were written in rhyme, he had an opportunity of increasing
the volume and polishing the structure of his couplets, and in
this way of preparing for his future and purely poetical triumphs.
His plays, moreover, contained songs, which are valuable guides
to the critic in estimating Dryden's progress as a metrist.  " I feed
a flame within," in the Maiden Queen of I668, and "After the
pangs of a desperate lover," and "Celimena, of my heart," both
in An Evening's Love (I67I), are the best instances of Dryden's
early songs:
"I feed a flame within, which so torments me,
That it both pains my heart, and yet contents me:
'Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
That I had rather die, than once remove it.
"Yet he, for whom I grieve, shall never know it;
My tongue does not betray, nor my eyes show it.
Not a sigh, nor a tear, my pain discloses,
But they fall silently, like dew on roses.
"Thus, to prevent my love from being cruel,
My heart's the sacrifice, as 'tis the fuel:
And while I suffer this to give him quiet,
My faith rewards my love, though he deny it."
In these, and still more in later and better examples, he shows
that he possessed a genuine lyric grace, the existence of which we
should otherwise scarcely have suspected. His songs are entirely
unlike those of the earlier English dramatists, and remind us
rather, in their grace and courtly turns of thought, of the kind of
poetry introduced into France by Voiture and his friends.
These fourteen years of Dryden's exclusive attachment to
drama mark a very low spot indeed in English poetical literature.
Dryden himself had reached his fiftieth yearwithoutwriting anything
which was really admirable in any very supreme sense, or which, if




I


DRYDEN


13


he had died before I680, could have secured his name a high place
in human memory. What is of greatest importance to poetical
students is to observe what progress Dryden made in the new
prosody, and how by means of it he drew out those qualities which
had been too much neglected in the verse of the previous ageease, intelligibility, and flexibility. The heroic plays were not
wholly useless, if they merely trained the English ear, so long
accustomed to discord, to enjoy such harmonious periods as these,
in which we see Dryden at his best in 1670:
"Ethereal music did her death prepare,
Like joyful sounds of spousals in the air;
A radiant light did her crowned temples gild,
And all the place with fragrant scents was filled;
The balmy mist came thickening to the ground,
And sacred silence covered all around.
But when (its work performed) the cloud withdrew,
And day restored us to each other's view,
I sought her head, to bring it on my spear,In vain I sought it, for it was not there;
No part remained, but, from afar, our sight
Discovered in the air long tracts of light;
Of charming notes we heard the last resounds,
And music dying in remoter sounds."
Dryden's command over versification, moreover, is shown in
the prologues and epilogues which he produced not merely for his
own plays, but for those of others. His study of the drama of
the Elizabethans presently led him to a certain change of opinion.
While continuing to hold the couplet to be the proper vehicle for
pure poetry, he began to be dissatisfied with rhyme on the stage.
Mr. Saintsbury thinks that a tendency to overflow in the verse of
the rhymed tragedy of Azureng-Zebe (1676), shows that Dryden was
recurring to the form of Shakespeare.  Whether this be so or not,
in All for Love (1678) we find him returning to blank verse, in
direct rivalry with the exquisite cadences of Antony and Cleopatra.
From this time forth Dryden drew a careful distinction between
the couplet, which was to be used for serious poetry of all non



i4


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


dramatic kinds, and blank verse, which, in spite of what Milton
had said, was to be restricted to the theatre. His own dramatic
blank verse, from this time onward, was more severe than any
which had been used, except by Milton, since Ben Jonson.
It was not characteristic of Dryden to invent forms of writing
or to introduce fresh material to public consideration. He was
never an innovator, since an innovator stands outside contemporary
feeling, that he may direct it. This Dryden had no inclination to
attempt; he always represented the public and was led by it, his
function being, when the town had accepted a certain form or a
certain taste, to bring his superlative gifts to the task of making that
taste or form as classical and splendid as possible. Hence, when, at
the age of fifty, he suddenly achieved the highest distinction in a
field new to him, the field of satire, it came very naturally from
the fact that the public had within two or three years past become
strongly interested anew in that species of poetic work. We shall
speak later on of those satires of Marvell and Oldham which led
the way for Dryden. He so far surpassed those his forerunners,
and made the style so completely his own, that we need not delay
here for their consideration.  It is valuable, however, to note that
these less brilliant writers selected the form of political satire for
Dryden, that the Scriptural tissue thrown as a light veil over the
story was suggested by an anonymous tract, called Naboth's
Vineyard, in I679, and that the very name of Achitophel had
been nailed upon Shaftesbury before the great poet stirred a
hand. It is highly characteristic of Dryden that he should remain
in watchful inaction until all the tools were forged which he
needed, and that when he moved it was to produce a work of
finished magnificence. When he did speak, it was as a master,
and his wonderful fourfold group of satires forms the most faultless
section of his work.
The four famous Tory satires were published in quick succession, within the course of twelve months.  The first part of
Absalom and Achitophiel appeared in November i68i, when
Shaftesbury (Achitophel) was in the Tower; The MAedal appeared




I


DRYDEN'S SATIRES


I5


in March 1682, after the bill of high treason against him, a bill
which Dryden's poem was intended to support, had been thrown
out by the grand jury; MacFlecknoe, which was specially directed
against the Whig bard, Shadwell, is dated October 1682; and
the ensuing month saw the publication of the second part of
Absalom and Achitophel, written after the arrest of Monmouth
(Absalom) at Stafford. The first of these four poems is the most
important, and the longest too, and of the last only two hundred
lines are certainly from Dryden's pen, the remainder being written
under the poet's supervision by Nahum Tate.  In the original
Absalom and Achitophel there is but a thin strain of narrative or
allegory, the story of the critical state of English affairs at the
moment being told under a Hebrew disguise. The poem really
consists of a series of satirical portraits, cut and polished like
jewels, and flashing malignant light from all their facets. The
sketch of Absalom is indulgent enough, for the secret love of the
king to Monmouth was well known, but none of the other Whig
leaders were spared,-Shaftesbury himself,
"A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay ";
Zimri (Buckingham), whose death-piece was to be so magnificently
added by Pope; Shimei (Slingsby Bethel), whose
"business was, by writing, to persuade
That kings were useless, and a clog to trade";
and Corah (Titus Oates), who proved his "saint-like " grace by
" A church vermilion and a Moses' face,"all these were drawn at full length, with a precision never
approached by any of the popular "character"-makers of the
preceding half-century, and in verse the like of which had never
been heard in England for vigorous alternation of thrust and
parry. The heroic couplet had become by this time, in Dryden's
hands, a rapier of polished and tempered steel.




POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


The success of Absalom and Achitophel surpassed anything of
the kind which had been witnessed since the Restoration. It was
a comparatively short work, containing little over a thousand lines,
and the air was darkened by pamphlets of a like size, imitations,
parodies, replies, encouragements. None of these possessed any
real merit, or gave more than momentary satisfaction or annoyance
to Dryden.    His next satire, The Medal, is less often read at
present, although it is much shorter, and shows no less ability.
Dr. Johnson's criticism of it still holds good.  " It is now [I780]
not much read, nor perhaps generally understood; yet, a slight
acquaintance with the history of the period removes all obscurity;
and though we cannot sympathise with the fervour of politics
which it contains, the poetry has claims to popularity widely
independent of the temporary nature of the subject."        There
were, however, none of Dryden's brilliant portraits in this diatribe
against the political career of Shaftesbury, and this gave the poem
a certain monotony.   The most stirring passage in the Medal is
that in which the poet satirises the instability of public opinion:
"Almighty crowd! thou shortenest all dispute;
Power is thy essence, wit thy attribute!
Nor faith nor reason make thee at a stay;
Thou leap'st o'er all eternal truths in thy pindaric way!
Athens, no doubt, did righteously decide,
When Phocion and when Socrates were tried;
As righteously they did those dooms repent;
Still they were wise, whatever way they went:
Crowds err not, though to both extremes they run;
To kill the father and recall the son.
Some think the fools were most as times went then,
But now the world's o'erstocked with prudent men.
The common cry is even religion's test,The Turk's is at Constantinople best,
Idols in India, Popery at Rome,
And our own worship only true at home;
And true but for the time, 'tis hard to know
How long we please it shall continue so;
This side to-day, and that to-morrow burns;
So all are God-Almighties in their turns."




I


DRYDEN'S " MACFLECKNOE "


17


AfacFlecknoe, on the other hand, a masterpiece in only 217 verses,
has remained one of the best known and most read of all Dryden's
works. Flecknoe, a scribbling priest whose name had become
synonymous with poetaster, had lately died, and Dryden represents
him as nominating Shadwell to succeed him on the throne of
dulness. The paternal address closes with some lines which, in
addition to their irresistible comic force, are valuable as supplying us with early criticism of those exercises of conceited wit in
verse on which the Spectator was afterwards so severe:
" 'This is thy province, this thy wondrous way,
New humours to invent for each new play:
This is that boasted bias of thy mind,
By which one way to dullness 'tis inclined;
Which makes thy writings lean on one side still,
And, in all changes, that way bends thy will.
Nor let thy mountain-belly make pretence
Of likeness; thine's a tympany of sense.
A tun of man in thy large bulk is writ,
But sure thou'rt but a kilderkin of wit.
Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;
Thy tragic muse gives smiles, thy comic sleep.
With whate'er gall thou set'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satires never bite;
In thy felonious heart though venom lies,
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.
Thy genius call thee not to purchase fame
In keen iambics, but mild anagram.
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command,
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways;
Or, if thou would'st thy different talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.'
He said:-but his last words were scarcely heard;
For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepared,
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking he left his drugget robe behind,
Borne upwards by a subterranean wind.
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part,
With double portion of his father's art."


1II


C




POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


There is no doubt that Dryden's terrible couplets punished his
antagonist like the scientific blows of a prize-fighter's fists. In
spite of his activity, his energy, his veritable talent, Shadwell
never recovered his position, and never will recover it. After two
hundred years we need not trouble to pity the victim, but may
allow ourselves to taste the exquisite intellectual pleasure which
is offered us by Dryden's wit and sparkling malignity. He returned
to the attack a month later in that section of the second Absalom
and Achitfophel which is certainly his, and which presents us with
the ne plus ultra of his satirical vigour. He must have felt that
he could not exceed these portraits of Pheleg, Ben-Jochanan,
Doeg (Elkanah Settle), and Shadwell once more in Og, and he
withdrew with his customary tact from the field of satire.
He was, indeed, occupied with totally different interests. This
new study of all public matters seems to have led to his giving an
attention to the question of religion such as he had never given
before. As far as Dryden had attached himself to any religious
section of English feeling hitherto, it rather bears in the direction
of Hobbism, or a mild, indifferent scepticism. The fierce conflict
now raging between three acrimonious parties-the Catholics, the
Anglicans, and the Dissenters-drove him to make a choice
among the three; and though his ultimate, and, I believe, conscientious, bias was toward the positivism of Rome, he got no
further at first than satisfaction with the balance preserved by the
Church of England.   This passing mood is revealed in the
didactic and argumentative poem, Religio Laici, published in
November I682. He did not rest there, but soon after the accession of James II. went openly to mass. Macaulay and others
have greatly exaggerated the worldly advantages which ensued to
Dryden from this change of belief. We may perhaps admit, with
Mr. Christie, that his conversion "was in great measure a movement of calculated expediency," without holding that Dryden
acted against any religious conviction. His theological principles
were at no time very exacting, but there seems no reason to
suppose that they were not genuinely under Roman direction,




I


DRYDEN'S "HIND AND PANTHER"


I9


although a personal reason may have been needed to stir the
poet's inertia.  He certainly never recanted when recantation
might have restored him to wealth and influence. In April 1687
he published his very brilliant and extraordinary poem, The Hind
anrd te Panther, in which allegory the hind stood for the Church of
Rome and the panther for the Church of England. The opening
lines of this poem may be taken as exhibiting Dryden's epic manner
at its best, the melody of the verse being beyond all praise:
"A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged;
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged;
Without unspotted, innocent within,
She found no danger, for she knew no sin.
Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds,
And Scythian shafts; and many-winged wounds
Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly,
And doomed to death, though fated not to die."
The Dissenters are treated with great severity, especially in
the opening canto of the poem.   The Independents are "the
bloody Bear," the Quakers "the quaking Hare," the Hobbists
"the buffoon Ape," and the Anabaptists "the baptist Boar."
Worst of all, the Presbyterian Wolf appears "with belly gaunt
and famished face." The argument proceeds with greater amenity
in the later parts, and the final canto is adorned with the story of
the Swallows, told by the Panther, and that of the Doves, told by
the Hind, which unite to form a very beautiful episode in a poem
which is otherwise full of cleverness, but not particularly well
constructed or interesting to a modern reader.
It was during the brief reign of James II. that Dryden first
began to cultivate the Pindaric ode of Cowley, in which he
achieved some successes, and notably the beautiful Elegy on Anne
Killigrew in i686.  In 1684 he began his interesting Miscellany
of occasional poems by himself and others; and in connection
with this volume and that of 1685 he turned his attention to
verse-translation.  Thus Dryden was in several ways preparing
himself for the noble enforced activity of his old age, and for the




20


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


troubles which were soon to oblige him to drive hard a professional
quill. In 1687 he produced his first Song for St. Cecilia's Day,
which, though less celebrated than the second one, contains some
of Dryden's best-known lines, especially the
" From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony,
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man."
The Revolution of I688 surprised Dryden as much as it did
his royal master. The poet had quaintly deplored the difficulty
which those birds of paradise, the British Muses, had experienced
in extracting their hire and gain from James; "yet something to
their share he threw." Under the new Protestant monarch the
Muse's fleece became absolutely dry. The Revolution made it
needful that all who held office should take oaths in the reformed
religion, and thus Dryden found himself no longer historiographer
and poet laureate, besides losing his place in the Customs. Neither
his honour nor his conviction would permit him to recant, and
if it had not been for the generous fidelity of Lord Dorset he
might have sunk into penury. Dorset, however, came forward
with prompt pecuniary help, until the poet, now approaching the
age of sixty, could buckle himself to unaccustomed feats of professional energy.  With the year i688 began the most active
period of Dryden's career. His work in the drama and in prose
will occupy us in the two following chapters. His contributions
to pure poetry for some time took the form almost exclusively of
translations-hack-work, indeed, but accomplished with superb
energy and skill.
Dryden, who felt the pulse of the age with surprising exactitude, saw that great successes were open to any one who should
gracefully and vigorously paraphrase the ancient classics. The
study of Latin and Greek had rapidly declined as the century
descended, and real scholarship was now a very rare thing. Comparatively few men and scarcely any women could any longer read




I


CREECH


2!


Virgil and Homer with pleasure in the original, and yet, at the
same time, with the new ambition for correctness, for classic grace,
there had arisen a general desire to know in what manner the
famous poets of antiquity had expressed themselves.        Dryden
determined to educate and indulge this taste. A new epoch in
translating had been inaugurated in I682 by an elegant version
of Lucretius in heroic verse, from  the hand of an Oxford poet,
Thomas Creech (I659-I700). As the reader may be inclined to
compare the manner of Creech with that of Dryden, the version
made by the former of the famous address to Epicurus with which
the Third Book begins is here given:
"Thee, who hast light from midst thick darkness brought,
And life's advantages and pleasures taught,
Thee, chiefest glory of the Grecian state,
I strictly trace; willing to imitate,
Not contradict; for how can larks oppose
The vigorous swans? they are unequal foes;
Or how can tender kids with feeble force
Contend in racing with the noble horse?
Thou, Parent of Philosophy, hast shown
The way to truth with precepts of thine own.
For as from sweetest flowers the labouring bee
Extracts her precious juice; Great Soul, from thee
We all our golden sentences derive,
Golden, and fit eternally to live.
For when I hear thy mighty reasons prove
This world was made without the Powers above,
All fears and terrors waste, and fly apace.
Thro' parted heavens I see the mighty space,
The rise of things, the gods, the happy seats,
Which storm or violent tempest never beats,
Nor snow invades, but with the purest air,
And gaudy light diffus'd, look gay and fair:
There bounteous Nature makes supplies for ease,
There Minds enjoy an undisturbed peace."
Dryden, who always required a precedent, determined to surpass Creech, and he pushed on with indomitable spirit, although
in failing health.  In i685 he tried his hand at certain fragments




22


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


of Theocritus, Lucretius, Horace, and Homer. In I693 he gave a
first instalment of his labours and those of some younger friends
to the world in the shape of a folio volume of the works of Juvenal
and Persius.  Of these, five satires of Juvenal and the whole of
Persius were his own.  The third volume of his Miscellanies
contained something from Ovid and less from Homer. He then
immediately set to work on a vast undertaking-a version of all
Virgil, printing the Third Georgic first as a specimen. In January I694 Evelyn met Dryden, and reported that the poet "now
intended to write no more plays, being intent on his translation of
Virgil."  This huge enterprise occupied him almost exclusively
for three years, and was published in July 1697. In order to
secure quiet, Dryden retired into Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire, and Buckinghamshire, several country-seats contesting for
the honour of being the birthplace of this celebrated work. Dryden's touch was not delicate enough to reproduce Virgil's best
effects, but on the whole it may be securely said that no more
satisfactory translation, as English poetry, has ever been produced.
Dryden's next act was the composition, late in 1697, of the
famous second song for St. Cecilia's Day, known as Alexander's
Feast. The final years of his active and arduous life were occupied in writing paraphrases or adaptations to the English style of
his day of various stories by Chaucer, Boccaccio, and Ovid. In
I699 he wrote to his beautiful cousin, Mrs. Stewart of Cotterstock, " I am still drudging on; always a poet and never a good
one. I pass my time sometimes with Ovid, and sometimes with
our old English poet, Chaucer; translating such stories as best
please my fancy; and intend, besides them, to add somewhat of
my own; so that it is not impossible but ere the summer be
passed, I may come down to you with a volume in my hand, like
a dog out of the water with a duck in his mouth." When this
volume appeared in 1700 (November 1699), it was a great folio
of 12,000 verses, entitled Fables, Ancient and Miodern.  This, the
last of Dryden's books, has been the favourite with all generations of his admirers. At the extremity of a premature old age,




I


DRYDEN'S FABLES


23


for his body was worn out at the approach of seventy, his genius
burned more brightly, and with a younger glow, than it had ever
done before. This incomparable volume contains among many
other jewels, "Theodore and Honoria," "Palamon and Arcite,"
and "Cymon and Iphigenia," the best known of all Dryden's
narrative poems. In the noble dedication of the second of these
tales to the Duchess of Ormond we have an example of Dryden's
most polished and magnificent style in elaborate personal compliment. This fine poem closes thus musically:
" Blest be the power, which has at once restored
The hopes of lost succession to your lord;
Joy to the first and last of each degree,
Virtue to courts, and what I longed to see,
To you the Graces, and the Muse to me.
O daughter of the rose, whose cheeks unite
The differing titles of the red and white;
Who heaven's alternate beauty well display,
The blush of morning, and the milky way;
Whose face is paradise, but fenced from sin;
For God in either eye has placed a cherubin.
All is your lord's alone; even absent, he
Employs the care of chaste Penelope.
For him you waste in tears your widowed hours;
For him your curious needle paints the flowers:
Such works of old imperial dames were taught;
Such, for Ascanius, fair Elissa wrought.
The soft recesses of your hours improve
The three fair pledges of your happy love:
All other parts of pious duty done,
You owe your Ormond nothing but a son;
To fill in future times his father's place,
And wear the garter of his mother's race."
Dryden scarcely survived this his last success.    On the ist of
May I700 he died in his house in London, and received a
splendid public funeral in Westminster Abbey.
Dryden is the most stalwart poetical figure which will be
dealt with in the course of the present volume.   In other words,
he is the strongest poet of the age of prose, the most vigorous




24


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


verse-man between Milton and Wordsworth.  It is needful, however, that we should comprehend his limitations of style, and not
demand from him what his age and temper of mind declined to
allow him to produce.  The exquisite freshness and variety of
the best romantic poetry, with its spontaneous and evanescent
beauties, are not to be sought for from  Dryden.  He never
forgets that, as Matthew Arnold has said, he is the puissant and
glorious founder of our excellent and indispensable eighteenth
century-that is to say, of an age of prose and reason. His
native genius constantly clashed in criticism with his acquired
taste, and hence his wavering adherence to unfashionable masters
of verse, to Chaucer, to Chapman, to Milton. He attempted to
extract what he thought was best from these and other romantic
poets, and to adapt it to an Anglo-classic taste. His genius was
so energetic and his skill so amazing that he partly contrived to
do this, but the odour of romance had evaporated. Hence it cannot be denied that the most mysterious and indescribable charm
of poetic writing, that charm which is exhaled from the best poetry
like a perfume, is wanting, or singularly rare, in Dryden in spite
of his acknowledged supremacy as a poet. When this is admitted
the reader is placed in a position to do justice to Dryden's genius.
The right way to measure Dryden is to compare him with
the other great poet of the period of prose and reason, Pope.
We notice, in the first place, that the former has at his command
a distinctly richer and deeper music than the latter. We may
say that the muse of Dryden has a contralto and that of Pope a
soprano voice. This greater depth of tone, or inferior lightness,
whichever we choose to call it, was no doubt a survival from the
poetry of the first half of the seventeenth century. We have
but to study the blank-verse plays of Dryden to see how much
he preserved, in his chastened way, of the melody of Fletcher's
line. But there was more than this. Dryden was greatly Pope's
superior as a craftsman in verse. It is true that though he performed wonders in polishing the heroic couplet, he left something in this direction to be performed by his successor. But




I


DRYDEN'S LYRICS


Pope excelled only in the couplet, whereas Dryden was master of
blank-verse also, and of a greater variety of lyrical measures than
is generally supposed. The least successful of his operas contains such bursts of natural song as" Old father Ocean calls my tide;
Come away! come away!
The barks upon the billows ride,
The master will not stay;
The merry boatswain from his side
His whistle takes, to check and chide
The lingering lads' delay:
And all the crew aloud has cried,
Come away!"
such delicate dactylic melodies as"From the low palace of old father Ocean,
Come we in pity your cares to deplore;
Sea-racing dolphins are trained for our motion,
Moony tides swelling to roll us ashore,"each as dissimilar as possible from the ordinary conception of
Dryden's manner as a metrist.   This variety of instrument must
not be left out of consideration, especially as, until the time of
Gray, it was -scarcely shared, to any appreciable extent, by another
English poet. Nor must it be forgotten that he attained what
Waller had seen was needful for the restoration of the structure
of English verse, but what no one until Dryden had succeeded
in obtaining, full mastery over the balance of iambic verse, so
that the poet could rule the line, and not the line carry him
whither it would.    This energetic harmony in the couplet is
admirably described by Gray, in his introduction of the car of
Dryden, drawn by "two coursers of etherial race, with necks in
thunder crowned, and long-resounding pace."
At the extremity of his life, Dryden wrote of himself as one
"who has done my best to improve the language, and especially
the poetry," of his native country.  It was the opinion of Dr.
Johnson and the critics of the eighteenth century that he had




26


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


done this to such an extent that he found English brick and
left it marble. This is, of course, an exaggeration; but he purified the national style to a very marked extent, freed it of uncouth
and superfluous ornament, and drew the parts of language into
harmonious relation with one another. His fluency, his sustained
power, the cogency and lucidity of his logic, polished the surface
of narrative and didactic poetry, which, until he came, had been
rocky and irregular. He taught the poets to be explicit, where
they had been vexatiously allusive; to be perspicuous and
vivacious, where they had been dull and crabbed; to pursue the
theme which was under their examination, instead of flying off
to the consideration of a dozen foreign beauties. More than this
it is difficult to say, partly because the great transformation in
English prosody, upon which these lessons were founded, was
adopted but not invented by Dryden, and partly because it is
not correct to consider his purely poetical career without criticising at the same time his contributions to drama and to prose.
There is no great gulf fixed between these sections of his work,
as there usually is between the verse and prose of a poet.
Dryden's social and satirical poems-that is to say, the most
characteristic part of his purely poetical work-do not differ in
kind but only in form from his prose treatises of similar nature.
We may therefore wait for two succeeding chapters before finally
summing up Dryden's position as a man of letters.
The period of forty years, during which the supremacy of
Dryden lasted, is poorer than any other in our literature in poetry
of the second or third order. If Dryden could be removed, the nondramatic poetry of the age would be seen to be almost non-existent,
and when it was not insignificant, it owed its success in almost
every case to qualities which were not, properly speaking, poetical.
This was peculiarly true of a writer who achieved unbounded
popularity in the early years of the Restoration, Samuel Butler
(I612-I680).  This royalist had served various Presbyterian
gentlemen during the Commonwealth, and had secreted in
silence an obdurate hatred of the Puritan creed and manners. In




" HUDIBRAS "


27


the course of an obscure and penurious existence he had read
much and had observed intently, goaded into wit by the gadfly of
a wounded and rancorous vanity.     When the king came back,
Butler was at liberty to pour out the vials of his spleen, and in
1663 he published Hudibras, a long and voluble lampoon, in
which the typical Puritan is described as a hunched-back monster,
a pedantic, stubborn, and frowsy country-justice. This absurd
and extraordinary portrait was drawn in some thousands of
rattling octosyllabic verses, full of wit, and bright with bewildering
audacities of rhyme. This elaborate squib pleased Charles II.
and his court to an almost indecent extent, and Butler was
encouraged to produce continuations of the poem in 1664 and in
1678. He expected to be the recipient of the royal bounty, but
was disappointed. Butler left a great mass of MSS. in prose and
verse behind him.    These, or a portion of them, were published as his Genuine Remains, in two volumes, in I759. From
this collection we take a characteristic fragment, probably a chip
from the block of Hzdibras:.
"This reverend brother, like a goat,
Did wear a tail upon his throat,
The fringe and tassel of a face,
That gives it a becoming grace,
But let in such a curious frame,
As if 'twere wrought in filograin;
And cut so ev'n, as if 't had been
Drawn with a pen upon his chin.
No topiary hedge of quickset
Was e'er so neatly cut, or thick set;
That made beholders more admire
Than china-plate that's made of wire;
But being wrought so regular
In ev'ry part, and ev'ry hair,
Who would believe, it should be portal
To unconforming-inward mortal?
And yet it was, and did dissent
No less from its own government,
Than from the Church's, and detest
That, which it held forth, and profest;




28


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


Did equally abominate
Conformity in Church and State;
And, like an hypocritic brother,
Profest one thing, and did another;
As all things, where th' are most profest,
Are found to be regarded least."
The temper and extremely limited talent of Butler made it
hard to help him. In society he was as surly as his own mockknight, and the solitary accomplishment which he possessed was
that of weaving brilliant rhymes together in the privacy of his
own chambers.   His poverty, however, was much exaggerated,
and it is now believed that Oldham was ill-informed when he said
of Butler that "of all his gains in verse he could not save enough
to purchase flannel and a grave."
Another writer, far loftier than Butler in genius and character,
belongs to the Restoration by only one side of his production.
Andrew Marvell (I62I-I678), the last of the great lyrical poets of
the romantic age, became distinguished as a satirist after the
Restoration. His exquisite garden-poems, distinguished for their
rich imagery and their loyal study of nature, were composed, it is believed, between I650 and 1652, at Nunappleton, where Marvell was
tutor to Mary Fairfax. These lovely verses do not belong in time
or in character to the period we are now considering; but on the
return of the Stuarts, Marvell appeared in a totally different light.
He had been recommended to Bradshaw as assistant-secretary
by Milton, and afterwards Cromwell had made him joint-secretary
with that illustrious poet. He was therefore a staunch Puritan,
and after the Restoration he stoutly attacked tyranny and crime
in Church and State. The literary form which he adopted for
these attacks was the satire in heroic couplets.  Satire had
scarcely been cultivated in English since the extremely rough
and shapeless diatribes of Donne, Hall, and Marston had appeared
in the beginning of the century.  Cleveland, in the preceding
generation, and Wild, had suggested its resuscitation, but Marvell
was the first to write regular satires in the Latin way.  His pieces
in this kind, the most important of which are Last Instructions to




I


MARVELL


29


a Painter (I669), and The Character of Holland (I672), have considerable vigour of versification, and prove that Marvell had
learned the secret of the distich. The second of these pieces
opens with this humorous and extravagant strain of hatred and
contempt for the Dutch. Marvell never could forgive or forget
the burning of the ships in the Medway:
"Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but th' off-scouring of the British sand,
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heav'd the lead,
Or what by the Ocean's slow alluvion fell
Of shipwreck'd cockle and the muscle-shell:
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fish'd the land to shore;
And div'd as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if 't had been of ambergreece;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away;
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll,
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.
How did they rivet, with gigantic piles,
Thorough the centre their new-catchd miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound
Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their wat'ry Babel far more high
To reach the sea, than those to scale the sky!
Yet still his claim the injur'd ocean laid,
And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played:
As if on purpose it on land had come
To show them what's their mare libetnzm.
A daily deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coyl.
The fish ofttimes the burgher dispossest,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest,
Or, as they over the new level rang'd
For pickled herring, pickled heeren chang'd.
Nature, it seem'd, asham'd of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake."




30


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


Unfortunately, the indignation of the writer, which equals that of
Juvenal, knows no bound of discretion, and the coarseness of
these pieces is beyond credence. Dryden's satires show that the
greater poet had studied with interest the angry manifestoes of
the Puritan member for Hull.
A further advance in the direction of Dryden's masterpieces is
marked by the satires of John Oldham (1653-1683). He was an
usher in a country school, where he was sought out when he was
about five-and-twenty by a party of noble wits, who had been
struck by some of his unprinted verses. These noblemen, however, did little to encourage his fortunes, and he sank into great
poverty. Oldham seems to have been of a sincerely independent
spirit, and to have boasted with truth that in a venal age he was
"Lord of myself, accountable to none,
But to my conscience and my God alone."
The Earl of Kingston, who took a genuine interest in him,
endeavoured to induce him to accept a post in his service, but
Oldham refused.  He was, however, staying at the earl's seat as
a guest when he died of smallpox in the thirty-first year of his age.
He had published a very successful Satire upon the Jesuits in i680,
and in 1684 his 2Remains appeared, with an exquisite elegy on this
"Marcellus of our Tongue," by Dryden. The satires of Oldham
are distressing to read; the author has no belief in the better part
of human nature; he is cynical and bitter to the extreme, and he
strikes, not for a party, like Marvell, but wildly, against the world.
Oldham is the Ajax among our satirists, and his own contemporaries, not easily moved by personal characteristics, were touched by
his strange cold frenzy, his honourable isolation, and his early death.
Dryden seems to have been genuinely distressed at the fate of a
young man whose personal acquaintance he had but lately formed,
and whose work had a character particularly attractive to him.
Oldham's versification is better than that of Marvell, in his satires,
but still rugged; as Dryden observed, his prosody needed mellowing.
Neither Marvell nor Oldham understood that coolness of irony,




I


MULGRAVE


'I


that polished banter, which gave to Dryden his extraordinary
influence as a satirist.
A few years before the Revolution, two peers distinguished
themselves above their meaner contemporaries by producing
certain critical pamphlets in verse, which were of a kind new
in English, and which have preserved a niche for their authors in
the history of literature. Of these two writers the one who most
nearly deserves the title of poet is John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, and afterwards Duke of Buckinghamshire (1649-1721),
celebrated in Absalom and Achitofhpel as "sharp-judging Adriel,
the muses' friend, Himself a muse." Mulgrave circulated in 1679
an Essay on Satire, and published in 1682 an Essay on Poetry,
both in heroic verse. These pieces were anonymous, and they
were so cleverly versified that the town insisted on thinking that
Dryden was their author. In consequence of the following passage in the Essay on Satire, the Earl of Rochester had Dryden
cruelly beaten by a troop of hired bravos, in a narrow street off
Covent Garden, on a winter's night in 1679:
"Last enter Rochester, of sprightly wit,
Yet not for converse safe, or business fit;
Mean in each action, lewd in every limb,
Manners themselves are mischievous in him;
A gloss he gives to ev'ry foul design,
And we must own his very vices shine;
But of this odd ill-nature to mankind
Himself alone the ill effects will find:
So envious hags in vain their witchcraft try,
Yet for intended mischief justly die."
Mulgrave's Essay on Poetry contains some terse and effective
lines, one or two of which have passed into current use.  He lays
down sensible rules for practitioners in the various departments of
poetic art, but he was not very successful himself in the composition of odes, tragedies, and epistles.  Wentworth Dillon, Earl of
Roscommon (1634-1685) was a man who spent the greater part of
his life in France, and was steeped in the erudition of the French
Jesuits. About I670 he wrote a short critical poem, called an Essay




32


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CIAP.


on Translated Verse, which he was persuaded to print in I68o. It
is in heroic couplets, but towards the close Roscommon expresses
himself strongly in favour of the "Roman majesty" of blank
verse, and gives a sort ofprecis of the sixth book of Paradise Lost
in that measure. In 1684 he published a paraphrase of Horace's
Art of Poetry in blank verse, and Roscommon is remarkable as
the only writer between Milton and the end of the century who
discarded rhyme in serious non-dramatic verse.
A word must be said here about the songs which continued to
be written almost to the very end of the century, and sometimes
with extraordinary charm. Dryden's contributions to this class
of poetry have already been mentioned. The Cavalier lyrists of
the age of Charles I. bequeathed not a little of their skill to the
best of their successors, at least until the Revolution.    The
finest songs of the Restoration are those of a very infamous
person, John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (I647-I680), but Aphra
Behn, Sedley, Lord Dorset (I637-1706), and Etheredge all wrote
well-turned verses of this class with considerable charm    and
grace.   These are examples from     Mrs. Behn and Rochester
respectively:
" Love in fantastic triumph sat,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed,
For whom fresh pains he did create,
And strange tyrannic power he showed;
From thy bright eyes he took his fires,
Which round about in sport he hurled;
But 'twas from mine he took desires
Enough to undo the amorous world.
"From me he took his sighs and tears,
From thee his pride and cruelty,
From me his languishment and fears,
And every killing dart from thee;
Thus thou, and I, the god have armed,
And set him up a deity,
But my poor heart alone is harmed,
While thine the victor is, and free."




I


GARTH


33


"My dear Mistress has a heart
Soft as those kind looks she gave me;
When, with love's resistless art,
And her eyes, she did enslave me;
But her constancy's so weak,
She's so wild and apt to wander,
That my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder.
" Melting joys about her move,
Killing pleasures, wounding blisses,
She can dress her eyes in love,
And her lips can arm with kisses;
Angels listen when she speaks,
She's my delight, all mankind's wonder,
But my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder."
All through the seventeenth century the lamp of Doric song
was kept alight in Scotland by one interesting family, the Sempills
of Beltrees, who passed it on from father to son. Francis Sempill,
who died about 1683, was the author of the original version of
Auld Langsyne, which he opens thus:
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never thought upon?
The flames of love extinguished,
And freely past and gone?
Is thy kind heart now grown sae cauld,
In that loving breast o' thine,
That thou can'st never ance reflect
On auld langsyne?"
It is instructive to compare this with Burns's celebrated adaptation
of the same theme.
Towards the close of the century there came forward two interesting writers with a notice of whom we may close this branch
of our inquiry.   Sir Samuel Garth (I660-I719) was a resident
fellow of a Cambridge college, until, in mature life, he became
a physician, and was called up to London to administer that
newly-founded dispensary in the College of Physicians in which


III


D




34


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


gratuitous advice was given    to the poor.     The apothecaries
viciously attacked the pious work of charity, and Garth held their
meanness up to ridicule in a mock-heroic poem, The Dispensary
(I699), which passed through a great number of editions. It was
through the zeal of Garth that Dryden received due honour in
burial; and he was prominent in founding the Kit-Kat Club. In
17I5 his topographical poem of Claremont appeared, in direct
emulation of Denham's Cooper's Hill. The fun has all faded out
of The Dispensary, and Garth is no longer in the least degree
attractive.  But his didactic verse is the best between Dryden
and Pope, though we see beginning in it the degradation of the
overmannered style of the eighteenth century.      In the fourth
canto of the Dispensary Garth sums up, with all his characteristic
good nature, and more vivacity than usual, the condition of
English poetry at the close of the seventeenth century:
" Mortal, how dar'st thou with such lies address
My awful seat, and trouble my recess?
In Essex marshy hundreds is a cell,
Where lazy fogs, and drizzling vapours dwell:
Thither raw damps on drooping wings repair,
And shiv'ring quartans shake the sickly air.
There, when fatigu'd, some silent hours I pass,
And substitute physicians in my place;
Then dare not, for the future, once rehearse
The dissonance of such unequal verse;
But in your lines let energy be found,
And learn to rise in sense, and sink in sound.
Harsh words, tho' pertinent, uncouth appear,
None please the fancy, who offend the ear;
In sense and numbers if you wou'd excel,
Read Wycherley, consider Dryden well;
In one, what vigorous turns of fancy shine,
In th' other, syrens warble in each line;
If Dorset's sprightly muse but touch the lyre,
The smiles and Graces melt in soft desire,
And little Loves confess their amorous fire.
The Tiber now no courtly Gallus sees,
But smiling Thames enjoys his Normanbys;




I


LADY WINCHELSEA


35


And gentle Isis claims the ivy crown,
To bind th' immortal brows of Addison;
As tuneful Congreve tries his rural strains,
Pan quits the woods, the list'ning fauns the plains;
And Philomel, in notes like his, complains;
And Britain, since Pausanias was writ,
Knows Spartan virtue, and Athenian wit,
When Stepney paints the godlike acts of kings,
Or, what Apollo dictates, Prior sings:
The banks of Rhine a pleased attention show,
And silver Sequana forgets to flow."
Of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchelsea (I660-I720), it is
impossible to say whether she was the last of the old or the first
of the new romantic school. At a period when the study of external nature was completely excluded from      poetry, Lady Winchelsea introduced into her verses novel images taken directly
from  rustic life as she saw it round about her.     Her Nocturnal
Reverie has been highly praised by Wordsworth, and is a singularly beautiful description of the sights and sounds that attend a
summer night in the country:
"In such a night, when passing clouds give place,
Or thinly veil the heavens' mysterious face,
When in some river, overhung with green,
The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen,
When freshened grass now bears itself upright,
And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite,
Whence spring the woodbine, and the bramble-rose,
And where the sleepy cowslip sheltered grows,
Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes,
Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes,
Where scattered glow-worms,-but in twilight fine,Shew trivial beauties, watch their hour to shine,
While Salisbury stands the test of every light,
In perfect charms and perfect beauty bright;
When odours, which declined repelling day,
Through temperate air uninterrupted stray;
When darkened groves their softest shadows wear,
And falling waters we distinctly hear;
When through the gloom more venerable shows
Some ancient fabric awful in repose;




36


POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


While sunburned hills their swarthy looks conceal,
And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale;
When the loosed horse now, as his pasture leads,
Comes slowly grazing thro' the adjoining meads,
Whose stealing pace and lengthened shade we fear,
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
When curlews cry beneath the village walls,
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;
Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep,
Which but endures, whilst tyrant Man doth sleep."
Lady Winchelsea's temper was so foreign to the taste of her
own age that she achieved no success among her contemporaries,
although Swift admired her, and from   a line of hers, "We faint
beneath the aromatic pain," Pope borrowed one of his most celebrated phrases. Her poems, not all of which have seen the light,
consist of odes and miscellaneous lyrics, besides several dramatic
pieces; the original MSS. are in the possession of the present
writer.
As the seventeenth century approached its close, the poetry
of England was invaded more and more completely by a Latinism
which repulsed and finally silenced all that was not in sympathy
with it, and gave an exaggerated importance to all that was. To
attribute this tendency to the popularity of those translations of
the Latin poets published by Dryden, or to the precepts of the
Aristotelian critics of France, is to evade the difficulty. These
writings were welcomed, and therefore exercised influence, because
the public ear was ready to receive them. The rules of Rapin
and Le Bossu did not create a taste-they only justified and
fortified it. Every section of poetry responded to the change of
manner. The very study of nature was contracted into channels
as close as had sufficed to give Horace and Juvenal their satiric
picturesqueness of detail. The desire of finding such channels is
perhaps the most definite symptom we can point to as leading to
such a condition of things. The extreme facility of Renaissance
invention had wearied the mind of Europe, and an appetite for




I               LATIN TASTE IN POETRY                  37
individual inspiration gave way to a passion for regularity and
intellectual discipline, until only such terrestrial forms of poetical
fancy gave satisfaction as Rome rather than Greece or Italy had
nourished. The taste for poetry, in the abstract, as a species of
literature, retained its hold on the public even when the art had
been despoiled of all its lyric and idyllic charms, of half its colour
and its music, and of much of its variety. In order to adapt it
to these new conditions, there was a curious relapse to the most
primitive instincts of men; and as though the age of Hesiod had
returned, readers looked to verse for instruction in those common
things of life that had been resigned to prose, in the practice of
medicine, in the cultivation of an orchard, in the theories of
metaphysics, in the conduct of the politics of Europe. Dryden
alone had retained to the last some reverberations of the great
romantic music of Elizabeth.  When he died the Latinists were
absolutely paramount, and the poets of the next quarter of a
century knew no Apollo but Horace.




CHAPTER II


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION
THE drama took a place in English literature during the last
third of the seventeenth century relatively more prominent than it
has ever taken since. Certain sections of society were passionately
addicted to theatrical amusement, and their appetites had been
whetted by eighteen years of enforced privation. All theatres had
been closed by ordinance of the Lords and Commons on the 2d
September 1642, and in I647, for fear of a relapse, this order had
been stringently repeated. On the 2ist of May 1656 Davenant
obtained permission to rig up a semi-private stage in Rutland
House, but it was not until August i660 that Killigrew and he
secured each a patent to open a public theatre in London. This
vacuum of eighteen years sufficed to mark a condition which it did
not cause, namely, the complete decline and fall of the exhausted
Jacobean drama. In 1642 only one dramatist of the old school,
Shirley, was still alive, and of his plays all the most important had
already been acted. It was no serious attack on literature to exclude
from the boards the plays of such men as Brome and Jasper
Mayne. The poets of the old school soon grew tired of writing
for an imaginary stage, and their successors were found unprejudiced when the time came for resuming the real drama.
In response to the universal demand for theatrical amusements
at the Restoration, various playwrights instantly came forward. But
these men had seen no stage plays in England for nearly twenty




CHAP. II


JOHN WILSON


39


years, and they did not know what to supply.  The names of the
earliest purveyors of Restoration drama are remembered only by
students, with one exception; without exception their efforts are
beneath critical attention.  Sir William Davenant alone requires
notice, not on account of his merit, but from the fact that he was
first in the field. He had been a writer of bad dramas more than
thirty years before, and his Siege of RJodes (I656), a'clumsy piece
which he called an opera, was the first of a series of plays which
he brought out at his own theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. In
writing his Restoration comedies he had the wit to steal from the
French, and his last and best play, The AMan's the Master, performed just before his death in i668, is taken almost bodily from
Scarron.
While the new Cavalier society, released from the intolerable
oppression of Puritanism, was looking around it for a stage on
which it could see its own face grimacing in the concave mirror
of convention, a solitary effort was made to revive the old
romantic comedy, as Ben Jonson had instituted it. The first
dramatist of talent after the Restoration was John Wilson (1622?1696?).  Of this writer's career very little is known.  He was a
lawyer of independent means, most of whose life was spent in
Ireland.  In I662 he produced, and in the next year published,
a comedy of Th/e Cheats, which surpassed in talent anything in
dramatic form which had been brought forward in England for
twenty years.  It was in prose, ably but somewhat pedantically
written, with the fantastic humours of a magician detailed in the
elaborate manner of Ben Jonson.      A passage from the third
act may be quoted as an example of Wilson's curious belated
Euphuism:
" AMopus. This is that which we call our Magistrium Elixir, or Rosycrucian
Pantarva. The father of it is the sun, the mother of it the moon, its brothers
and sisters the rest of the planets; the wind carries it in its belly, and the
nurse thereof is the earth.
Jolly. Pray, sir, proceed; and disclose this son of gold.
JAopus. Hermetically, I shall. It is situated in the centre of the earth,
and yet falls neither within centre nor circumference; small, and yet great;




40


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


earthy, and yet watery; airy, and yet very fire; invisible, yet easily found;
soft as down, yet hard above measure; far off, and yet near at hand. That
that is inferior, is as that which is superior; and that which is superior is as
that which is inferior. Separate the combustible from the incombustible, the
earth from the fire, the fluid from the viscous, the hot from the cold, the moist
from the dry, the hard from the soft, the subtile from the thick —sweetly, and
with a great deal of judgment, per minimaa, in the caverns of the earth-and
thou shalt see it ascend to heaven, and descend to earth, and receive the powers
of superiors and inferiors.  Comprehend this, and be happy! Thou hast
discovered the balsam of sulphur, the uzltidum radicale of metals, the sanctuary of nature; and there is little or nothing between thee and the mountain
of diamonds, and all the spirits of astromancy, geomancy, and coschinomancy
are at your command.
Jolly. Pray, sir, how call you that? That last again!
llopits. Coschinomancy, sir; that is to say, the most mysterious art of
sieve and sheers."
Wilson proceeded to prove how apt a pupil of Ben Jonson
he was by bringing out a Roman tragedy, in very stately
and correct blank verse, modelled      on Sejanus; and another
comedy of character, The Projectors, which was performed in 1664.
Wilson then retired from authorship, only to appear once more
as a dramatist, with a tragi-comedy in I690.        His work was
swept aside by the theatrical wave from France, although it was
full of ability, and closer to the best manner of Jonson than that
of any of Ben's acknowledged " sons " of the preceding generation.
But it possessed neither the sparkle nor the lightness requisite for
the stage of Charles II., and Wilson failed where more than one
frothier poet succeeded.
After this distinct false start, and after several amateur hands
had tried their prentice skill on the new-found drama, it passed into
the care of the literary profession.    The distinction between
literature and the manufacture of plays was not yet conceived,
and the Restoration drama owes its importance to the fact that
it was the serious occupation of men of letters. Except Marvell
and Oldham, every leading writer of the imagination, until the
close of the century, was in some degree a constructor of plays.
The faults of the drama of the Restoration are conspicuous, but




II


DRYDEN


41


it was at least professional. Composition for the stage was the
most lucrative and the most fashionable of all modes of writing,
and it was not an unimportant circumstance that the greatest
man of letters of the age was also, without exception, its most
persistent playwright.  Schools of drama were founded, and
others took their place. One dramatist only, Dryden, kept the
stage all the while, down to I700. The career of Dryden as a
dramatist includes the careers of all his stage companions, only
Farquhar being a little later in his main successes. There were
several writers who excelled Dryden in single departments of
dramatic talent, but on the whole he is the greatest figure here as
elsewhere in the literature of the epoch; and it may be well to
glance at the character of his work, to its close, before examining
that of any of the subsidiary men who were his fellows.
Dryden had no spontaneous attraction to the stage. He set
to work to write plays, after he was thirty, because he was poor,
and because this was a ready way to a competence. He took a
Spanish plot from a French source, and he produced, in 1663
(not printed till I669), his comedy of Th/e Wild Gallant, a vulgar
and unfortunate composition. This was followed in I664 by The
Rival-Ladies, a dull tragi-comedy in blank verse, solely remarkable
for the preface, in which, among other things, Dryden recommends
the use of rhyme in heroic plays.  Etheredge, as we shall see
later on, immediately acted on this suggestion, and Dryden's
third and fourth plays, The Indian Queen and The Indian
Empneror, were examples, bolder than Etheredge's, of the adoption
of a new form in English literature-the rhymed serious drama.
Dryden's argument in favour of a fashion which he imported
from France is worth noting.  He said that rhyme, as "that
which most regulates the fancy, and gives the judgment its busiest
employment, is like to bring forth the richest and clearest
thoughts." The English plays written since the reign of Charles I.
had been turbid and irregular; Dryden thought the buskin of
dramatic rhyme might give dignity and propriety to the licentious
step of the tragedian. The experiment was almost universally




42


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CIIAP.


accepted for fourteen years, until, in 1678, Dryden himself led
the fashion in a return to blank verse, upon which dramatic
rhyme suddenly languished. There can be no doubt that the
temporary fashion, artificial as it was, had a favourable influence
upon versification. The two Mexican tragedies in the first of
which Sir Robert Howard (I626-I698) had a share, were
eminently successful, and The Indian Enperor, in its stilted kind,
has a genuine merit.  It is true that in such plays as these
Dryden laid himself open to the taunt of the Duke of Buckingham,
that he looked at his own fancy for inspiration, while Jonson and
Fletcher had looked at nature; but in the best examples there
was introduced into English literature something of the stately
grace of Corneille. In 1667 Dryden achieved an eminent success
with The Maiden Queen, the only play of his which has been
revived in recent times. The comic scenes, which are as sprightly
as a galop, were interpreted by a new actress, an orange-girl
named Nell Gwyn, who brought down the house, and the king's
box with it. This earliest period of Dryden's dramatic activity,
not all the productions of which can even be named here, closed
with a loose and dull comedy, called An Evening's Love, travestied
from the French in I668.
The poet was arrested by the complete failure of this piece,
which even contemporary critics allowed had "a foolish plot, and
was very profane." Eager to restore his reputation, he took great
pains in writing his next drama, the tragedy of Tyrannic Love.
This play has the fault of almost all Restoration tragedy, namely,
that in its scenes "Declamation roars while Passion sleeps"; but
it is a particularly careful piece of poetical composition, full of
those nervous verses and those affecting apophthegms in which
Dryden excels. Although it is, perhaps, his best heroic play, it errs
on the side of rant and bombast to such a degree that the poet felt
obliged to apologise for this in the prologue, and to pretend that
"Poets, like lovers, should be bold and dare,
Nor spoil their business with an over-care."
In the double tragedy of Aznanzor and Almahide, commonly




II             "THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA "                       43
called The Conquest of Granada (1672), these tendencies were
pushed to a still greater excess, and common sense sank confounded at Dryden's brazen rant. The ringing hyperboles in
which the unconquerable Almanzor vaunts his own prowess were
very popular at first, but this absurdity did not escape the satire
of the Duke of Buckingham, whose Drawcansir is now better
remembered than his prototype. Dryden's huge play, with its endless clang of hurtling rhymes, has supplied the language with more
proverbial expressions than any other drama of its author's. The
peculiar effect of the dramatic record of stupendous passions
in regular ringing couplets, the effect which, when heightened
by the figure and voice of Betterton, was apt to overwhelm an
audience with admiration and pity, may be better understood
through an example than through pages of descriptive criticism.
The genre was bad, and it was to prove ephemeral; but in the
hands of such a master as Dryden it was not possible that it
should produce no happy results, if only by accident:
"Ahlanzor. Love is that madness which all lovers have;
But yet 'tis sweet and pleasing so to rave:
'Tis an enchantment, where the reason's bound;
But Paradise is in the enchanted ground;
A palace, void of envy, cares and strife,
Where gentle hours delude so much of life.
To take those charms away, and set me free,
Is but to send me into misery;
And prudence, of whose cure so much you boast,
Restores those pains which that sweet folly lost.
Lyndaraxa. I would not, like philosophers, remove,
But show you a more pleasing shape of love.
You a sad, sullen, froward love did see;
I'll show him kind, and full of gaiety.
In short, Almanzor, it shall be my care
To show you love; for you but saw despair.
Almtanzor. I, in the shape of love, despair did see;
You, in his shape, would show inconstancy.
Lyndaraxa. There's no such thing as constancy you call;
Faith ties not hearts; 'tis inclination all,
Some wit deformed, or beauty much decayed,
First constancy in love a virtue made.




44


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CIHAP.


From friendship they that landmark did remove,
And falsely placed it on the bounds of love.
Let the effects of change be only tried;
Court me, in jest, and call me Almahide;
But this is only counsel I impart,
For I, perhaps, should not receive your heart.
Almanzor. Fair though you are
As summer mornings, and your eyes more bright
Than stars that twinkle in a winter's night;
Though you have eloquence to warm and move
Cold age and praying hermits, into love;
Though Almahide with scorn rewards my care,Yet, than to change, 'tis nobler to despair.
My love's my soul; and that from fate is free;
'Tis that unchanged and deathless part of me.
Lyndaraxa. The fate of constancy your love persue,
Still to be faithful to what's false to you.
[Turnsfo om him, and goes off angrily.
Almanzor. Ye gods, why are not hearts first paired above,
But some still interfere in others' love?
Ere each for each by certain marks are known,
You mould them up in haste, and drop them down;
And, while we seek what carelessly you sort,
You sit in state, and make our pains your sport."
The success of The Rehearsal, however, whose poisoned arrows
found out every crack in the harness of the heroic plays, seems to
have checked for the moment Dryden's production of tragedies.
His next dramas were his now no longer readable comedies of
Marriage a la Mode ( 672), and the still worse Assignation, in I673.
It is needless, in this place, to follow him to still lower depths.
In I676 he returned to more serious writing, and composed
an interesting tragedy in rhyme on a living Indian potentate, the
Sultan Aureng-Zebe.     Mr. Saintsbury has noticed that in this
play there is "a great tendency towards enjambement; and as soon
as this tendency gets the upper hand, a recurrence to blank verse
is, in English dramatic writing, tolerably certain." Accordingly
the poet admits in the prologue that he
"Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme ";




II


DRYDEN'S LATEST ILAYS


45


and in his next play, Allfor Love, or the World wrell Lost (1678),
he returns to blank verse. This tragedy is not merely an avowed
imitation of the style of Shakespeare-it is almost an adaptation of
Antony and Cleopatra. For this reason it may be recommended
to the student as offering a good opportunity for comparing the
tragical manner of the Restoration with that of Elizabeth. This
may be done with no injustice to Dryden, since A/lfor Love
abounds in passages of high poetic beauty. Omitting various
efforts of minor importance, we reach the latest play of Dryden's
central period, the comedy of The Spanish Friar (i68i), an
amusing story of popular prejudice. This merry attack on the
Papists continued to be overrated for at least a century.  It
can now scarcely be admitted that it ranks as the best of Dryden's
comedies.
Occupied with other work, and work that he performed better,
Dryden did not return to the stage until he was an old man. Yet
his latest plays are far from being his worst. There are passages
in his tragedy of Don Sebastian which are at leas.t as good as anything of the kind which he ever wrote. In Amnphitryon he had to
compete with rivals no less eminent than Plautus and Moliere,
yet his version of the ancient story is not immeasurably below
theirs.  Cleomenes, the tragedy of the last of the Spartans, bears
the mark upon it of an old man's weakness and weariness, yet
contains some noble passages. It is only in his last play, the
tragi-comedy of Love Triumphant, that we are forced to admit
that the natural force of the playwright is wholly abated. When
he died, in I700, Dryden had just been helping Vanbrugh to
recast Beaumont and Fletcher's Pilgrim. The piece was acted
for his benefit; but before it could be printed he was dead.
Dryden was engaged, wholly or in part, on twenty-eight (or possibly on thirty) distinct dramatic pieces.
Nothing but need would have spurred Dryden on to the composition of plays-at all events, to that of comic plays. But he
had immense literary skill and adroitness, and he concentrated
these qualities on the production of comedies on the Spanish plan,




46


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


where very coarse intrigue and boisterous repartee were combined
with stuff almost too serious for such a setting. Reminiscences of
Fletcher and Jonson remained with him all through his dramatic
career; but though he imitated the French tragedians, he seems
never to have recognised the might of French comedy. For
Moliere, who was nine years his senior, he felt no such veneration
as he was ready to express for Corneille, and he never fell under
the charm of the new French school. It is Dryden's earliest
competitor, Sir George Etheredge, to whom the praise is due of
having introduced modern comedy into England. This writer,
to whose originality justice has only lately been done, was an idle
and dissolute person of quality, whose indolence contrasted with
Dryden's workmanlike assiduity. He was born in 1634, spent his
youth in Paris, and seems to have remained there at the Restoration, since we hear nothing of him in London until his Comical
Revenge was acted in I664. This tragi-comedy was the first play
the serious portion of which was written in rhymed heroics. This
is interesting; but it is of still greater importance to note that the
comic scenes were written by a man who had evidently seen and
understood Moliere's first great comedies. There was here no
busy Spanish intrigue, no extravagant Jonsonian humours; but the
mirror was held up to the real, everyday existence of the fop of
the period. The success of this play was unprecedented; and four
years later Etheredge produced a better comedy, She Would if She
Could; in I676 he followed this by a still greater success, The
Man of Mode. Etheredge wrote no more. He entered the diplomatic service, and went to Constantinople and to Stockholm. In
1685 he was sent as ambassador to Ratisbon, where he stayed
till the Revolution turned him out of office. He died about I691.
The style of Etheredge, in comparison with the rough quality
of his predecessors, may be described as having the smoothness
of silk, the fragility of porcelain. He produces his effects by brief
and graphic touches; light washes of colour leave the picture
bright and sunny. Congreve, Goldsmith, and Sheridan are his
natural descendants, and his happiest scenes are not unworthy to




II


ETHEREDGE


47


be classed with the best of theirs.   He did not attempt to condemn or correct the manners of his time, and his plays are marred
by a deplorable laxity of tone, which soon drove them from the
boards when public decency became reawakened. But no one
has reflected so accurately as he the motley groups of fashionable
London in the reign of Charles II., and some of his figures will
always live in literature.  His Man of Mode, in particular, with all
its faults, is one of the leading English comedies. Its Dorimant
is the very type of the impudent lady-killer; and its Sir Fopling
Flutter the conscientious beau in his meridian:
" Young Bellair. See! Sir Fopling is dancing!
Sir Fopling. Prithee, Dorimant, why hast thou not a glass hung up here?
A room is the dullest thing without one.
Young Bellair. Here is company to entertain you.
Sir Fopling. But I mean in case of being alone. In a glass a man may
entertain himself,Dorimant. The shadow of himself indeed.
Sir Fopling. Correct the errors of his motion and his dress.
Medley. I find, Sir Fopling, in your solitude you remember the saying of
the wise man, and study yourself!
Sir Fopling. 'Tis the best diversion in our retirement.  Dorimant, thou
art a pretty fellow, and wearest thy clothes well, but I never saw thee have a
handsome cravat. Were they made up like mine, they'd give another air to
thy face. Prithee let me send my man to dress thee one day. By heavens,
an Englishman cannot tie a ribband.
Dorimant. They are somewhat clumsy-fisted.
Sir Fopling. I have brought over the prettiest fellow that ever spread a
toilet; he served me some time under Merille, the greatest genie in the world
for a valet de chambre.
Dorimant. What, he who formerly belonged to the Duke of Candolle?
Sir Fopling. The very same-and got him his immortal reputation.
Dorimant. You've a very fine brandenburgh on, Sir Fopling!
Sir Fopling. It serves to wrap me up after the fatigue of a ball.
Medley. I see you often in it, with your periwig tied up.
Sir Fopling. We should not always be in a set dress; 'tis more en cavalier
to appear now and then in a deshabille."
In Etheredge the curtain rises for the first time on the frivolous world of the eighteenth century-Strephon bending on one
knee to Cloe, who fans the pink blush on her painted cheek,




48


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


while Momus peeps, with a grimace, through the curtains behind
them.
The next dramatist who came to the front was Thomas Shadwell (I640-I692), the son of a royalist gentleman of Norfolk. He,
like Etheredge, returned to London from wandering on the
Continent, but he had not profited as Etheredge had by his
French experience. To his first play, the comedy of The Sullen
Lovers (1668), Shadwell prefixed an essay in which he announced
his passionate admiration for Ben Jonson, and his intention to
imitate him, "who never wrote comedy without seven or eight
considerable Humours."    He  himself introduces a morose
melancholy man, an airy young gentleman, a foolish positive
knight, a conceited poet, a familiar loving coxcomb, and an
impudent cowardly hector, while the other personages are merely
used to connect the " humours " of these six odd creatures. The
play, notwithstanding, has merit, and enjoyed considerable
success. Shadwell was encouraged to cultivate the stage, and he
produced seventeen long plays, the latest, The Volunteers, being
posthumous. Shadwell would have passed without much notice
among the second-rate writers of his time, if he had not drawn
down upon himself the anger of Dryden. As it is, he lives for all
time as a black and ridiculous object seen in relief against the
blaze of Dryden's wit. The great poet and he had been friends,
and had satirised Elkanah Settle in concert in I674. But Shadwell had become a Whig, and had taunted Dryden in a very
coarse and malignant lampoon. Dryden retorted, in 1682, with
his immortal satire MiacFlecknoe. A poetaster named Flecknoe,
who had been the butt of all the wits, had lately died, and Dryden
represents him as pondering upon his deathbed over the question
who should succeed him on the throne of Nonsense. Flecknoe cries
at last:  "Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years;
Shadwell alone of all my sons is he
Who stands confirmed in full stupidity;
The rest to some faint meaning make pretence,
But Shadwell never deviates into sense."




II


SHADWELL


49


Dull was hardly the true epithet for Shadwell; but he was certainly heavy.   He laboured at composition, and produced The
Virtuoso, it is said, after a prolonged agony of five years.  Shadwell's ambition to be ever representing "some natural humour
not represented before," his coarseness, his total want of distinction and elevation, have justly deprived him of a high place in
literature. But, in spite of Dryden, he was no fool; his comedy
of Epsosm l[ells (1676), to name no other, may still be read with
pleasure and amusement; and his works are particularly full of
matter attractive to antiquaries. There is a rough comicality
about such a scene as the following, between a county justice in
London and an impudent town lady of fortune:
" Clodpate. Come, madam, plain dealing is a jewel. But can you prefer an
idle scandalous London life before a pretty innocent housewifely life in the
country, to look to your family, and visit your neighbours.
Lucia. To see my ducks and geese fed, and cram my own chickens.
Clodpate. Ay.
Lucia. To have my closet stink like a pothecary's shop with drugs and
medicines, to administer to my sick neighbours; and spoil the next quack's
practice with the recipe book that belongs to the family.
Clodpate. Very well.
Lucia. And then to have one approved green salve, and dress sore legs
with it; and all this to deserve the name of as good a neighbourly body as ever
came into Sussex.
Clodpate. Very good.
Lucia. Never to hear a fiddle, but such as sounds worse than the tongs
and key, or a gridiron; never to read better poetry than John Hopkins', or
Robert Wisdom's vile metre; nor hear better singing than a company of
peasants praising God with doleful untuneable hoarse voices, that are only fit
to be heard under the gallows.
Clodpate. However you make bold with the country, be not profane. Is
not this better than anything in that stinking town?
Lucia. Stinking town! I had rather be Countess of Puddledock, than
Queen of Sussex.
Clodpate. Oh foh-but ah, the excellent fresh air upon the Downs.
Lucia. So there's fresh air in a wilderness, if one could be content with
bears and wolves for her companions. But, Sir, in short, I am resolved to
live at London, and at, or very near the court too.
Clodpate. S'death, the Court? I shall not only be cuckolded, but lose all
III                                               E




DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHtAP.


my true country interest; Madam, I beg your pardon, I shall take my leave;
I am not cut out for a Londoner, or a courtier; fare you well, good Madam,
though I like your person pretty well, I like not your conditions, I'd not marry
a London cherubin."
At the Revolution, when Dryden would not take the oaths,
and was therefore deprived of the office of poet laureate, he had
the signal annoyance of seeing the laurel placed on the brows of
Shadwell. Over this appointment it has been customary to make
merry, but it would be difficult to point to a Whig of greater
ability to whom it might more fitly have been accorded. Shadwell was extremely stout, and gloried in his supposed resemblance
in this matter to Ben Jonson. Dryden would not let the poor
man enjoy even this small satisfaction.  He assured Shadwell
that though he was -big in body, that did not prevent him from
carrying but a kilderkin of wit in his tun of flesh.
Sir Charles Sedley (1639-I722) is introduced into Dryden's
Essay of Dram;atic Poesy, under the title of Lisideius, as one
who encouraged and defended the imitation of French comedy
in English. Sedley was one of those men who attract the notice
of their contemporaries by their personal magnetism, and who
leave reputations greater than their writings justify.  He was
famous for his urbanity, his "prevailing gentle art," and not less
for his wit and judgment. He is remembered in history by his
excuse for his conduct at the Revolution, "that as James II. had
made his daughter a countess, he could do no less than endeavour
to make the king's daughter a queen." He long outlived all these
scandals and turmoils, and died the latest of the early wits of the
Restoration.  His first comedy, the A/ulberry Garden (I668), has
something of the lightness of Etheredge, and his Bellamira (1687)
reflects the savage wit of Wycherley. But Sedley, who produced
six plays in all, is no original figure in our drama.
We have now closed the list of the first generation of those
who accompanied Dryden in the foundation of a classic or regular
drama in England. The second, or central group in the drama
of the Restoration contains three leading names, namely, those of




II


WYCHERLEY


5I


Wycherley, Otway, and Lee, with the subsidiary figures of Mrs.
Behn, Settle, Crown, and Buckingham. These are the dramatists
who made their appearance, almost simultaneously, early in the
seventies, and we proceed to consider them, as before, in chronological order. Mrs. Ayfara or Aphra Behn (I640-I689), whose
maiden name was Johnson, took to the trade of literature at the
age of thirty, after a youth of singular adventure spent in Guyana
and in Holland. She made her debut with a tragi-comedy, The
Forc'd Marriage, in I67I, and wrote or revised no less than
nineteen plays in all.  This was only a small portion of her
literary work, and in professional energy she exceeded all her
male contemporaries, except Dryden. She wrote too fast to write
well, and she pandered to the bad taste and bad morals of her
age by seasoning her dialogue with such indelicacies as that age
required.  "The stage how loosely doth Astraea tread," as Pope
remarked, Astrzea being the pseudonym she adopted. Mrs. Behn's
most successful play was her comedy, or brace of comedies, The
Rover (I677, I68I). Her efforts in serious drama were wretched,
but, her lamentable coarseness set aside, she had a certain
gift in broad comedy.   She is notable as the first Englishwoman who lived by her pen. During her lifetime Mrs. Behn
had no female competitor, but during the last decade of the
century many women came forward as playwrights. Of these
the most successful was Mary Pix, to whom ten published plays
are attributed.
Long after the death of William Wycherley (I640-1715) it was
reported that he had been wont to say that each of his plays was
written much earlier than it was acted or printed. In fact he
represented himself as writing his Love in a Wood in I659,
although it was not produced until i672, and his other pieces in
the same relative order. If this could be substantiated, it would
give to Wycherley, as the inventor of modern English comedy, the
precedence over Etheredge.  It is difficult to avoid the suspicion
that this fact supplies us with the origin of the rumour. Either
Wycherley in his old age, or his admirers after his death, were




52


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


anxious to claim for him an honour which the dates of his pieces
belied.   He imitates the AMisanthrope of Moliere, moreover, in
one of these plays, which, if the fabulous date could be accepted,
must have been written before that comedy appeared. Wycherley,
who was a Catholic, was brought up in the west of France, and
imbibed a sort of military French manner, a swaggering gaiety,
that he preserved through life.  He was sent to Oxford for a little
while, and then passed into the court of Charles II., and into a
regiment of guards.   While he was sunning himself in the royal
favour, he brought out at the King's Theatre two indifferent
comedies, and then two others, the Country Tlife (I675) and the
Plain Dealer (1677), which have held their place as standard pieces
in the drama which is read but not acted. The fine gentlemen
and ladies who meet to pull their neighbours to pieces in Olivia's
drawing-room   in the latter play express their observations with
amazing impudence and wit:
" Novel. As I was saying, madam, I have been treated to-day with all the
ceremony and kindness imaginable at my lady Autumn's. But the nauseous
old woman at the upper end of her table —
Olivia. Revives the old Grecian custom, of serving in a death's head with
their banquets.
Novel. Ha! ha! fine, just, i' faith, nay, and new. 'Tis like eating with
the ghost in the Libertine: she would frighten a man from her dinner with her
hollow invitation, and spoil one's stomach —
Olivia. To meat or women. I detest her hollow cherry cheeks: she looks
like an old coach new painted; affecting an unseemly smugness, whilst she is
ready to drop in pieces.
Eliza. You hate detraction, I see, cousin.
[Apartl to Olivia.
Novel. But the silly old fury, whilst she affects to look like a woman of this
age, talks —
Olivia. Like one of the last; and as passionately as an old courtier who
has outlived his office.
Novel. Yes, madam; but pray let me give you her character. Then she
never counts her age by the years, but ---
Olivia. By the masques she has lived to see.
Novel. Nay then, madam, then I see you think a little harmless railing
too great a pleasure for any but yourself; and therefore I've done.
Olivia. Nay, faith, you shall tell me who you had there at dinner.




II


WYCHERLEY


53


Novel. If you would hear me, madam.
Olivia. Most patiently; speak, sir.
Novel. Then, we had her daughter —
Olivia. Ay, her daughter; the very disgrace to good clothes, which she
always wears but to heighten her deformity, not mend it: for she is still most
splendidly, gallantly ugly, and looks like an ill piece of daubery in a rich
frame.
Novel. So! But have you done with her, madam? and can you spare her
to me a little now?
Olivia. Ay, ay, sir.
Novel. Then, she is like —
Olivia.-She is, you'd say, like a city bride; the greater fortune, but not
the greater beauty, for her dress.
Novel. Well: yet have you done, madam? Then sheOlivia. Then she bestows as unfortunately on her face all the graces in
fashion, as the languishing eye, the hanging or pouting lip. But as the fool
is never more provoking than when he aims at wit, the ill-favoured of our sex
are never more nauseous than when they would be beauties, adding to their
natural deformity the artificial ugliness of affectation.
Eliza. So, cousin, I find one may have a collection of all one's acquaintance's pictures as well at your house as at Mr. Lely's. Only the difference is,
there we find 'em much handsomer than they are, and like; here much uglier,
and like: and you are the first of the profession of picture-drawing I ever
knew without flattery."
The indelicacy of Wycherley's two brilliant comedies has excluded them from the boards for nearly two centuries, except in
an extremely modified    form.   But they contain very vigorous
writing, much genuine wit, and sound satire of the fools and
rogues whom the author saw about him. Evelyn promised him
immortality in a well-turned triplet:
" As long as men are false, and women vain,
While gold continues to be virtue's bane,
In pointed satire Wycherley shall reign."
His style is virile and his wit pungent, but Wycherley has a
rough hand in comparison with the velvet touch of Congreve, and
a painful cynicism in comparison with Farquhar's good-nature.
His gallant adventures, his quarrel with the king, his correspondence in old age with the boyish pope, and his selfish marriage
eleven days before his death, have supplied plenty of material for




54


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


the collectors of anecdotes. The Squire, Jerry Blackacre, in the
Plain Dealer, is the ancestor of Tony Lumpkin, and Mr. Pinchwife, in his other comedy, has had many diverting successors.
Wycherley was not a poet; as Lord Lansdowne indulgently put it,
"he is no master of numbers, but a diamond is not less a
diamond for not being polished." The modern reader will be
apt to think him clouded as well as rough.
The depressing effect of the intellectual atmosphere of the
Restoration is obvious in the cases of poets whose natural gifts
were of a serious and sentimental class. There can be no doubt
that both Otway and Lee were intended by nature to be tragic
writers of a much higher order than contemporary habits of mind
and taste permitted them to become. As it is, we owe to one of
these men the two best serious plays written in English between
the time of Ford and that of Shelley. Thomas Otway (I65II685) was the only son of a Sussex clergyman. He was educated,
in the company of men above his own station in life, at Christ
Church College, Oxford. In the long vacation of 1671 he came
up to town, and made a very unsuccessful appearance for a single
night on the boards of the Duke's Theatre, in one of Mrs. Behn's
pieces. He went back to college, but could not forget the stage,
and in 1675 contrived to get an heroic tragedy of A/cibiades
accepted by Betterton.  To act in this play, Mrs. Barry, who had
made a unsuccessful debut in 1674, was re-engaged, and the part
of Druxilla in it opened the celebrated series of her successes as a
tragic actress. Alcibiades was a poor play, but it was followed in
I676 by Don Carlos, one of the best of the declamatory tragedies
in rhyme. In this, as in all Otway's plays, the Bettertons and
their troupe took the principal parts. The poet fell violently and
hopelessly in love with Mrs. Barry, and in 1677 he enlisted in
order to sever his acquaintance with her; but after a campaign
in Flanders, he returned to the Duke's Theatre, and to his infatuation. This first portion of Otway's career closes with the
performance of certain comedies which are below the level even
of the age.




II


OTWAY


55


In I680, the decline and death of his rival, the Earl of
Rochester, having, it is believed, given a fresh zest to his life,
Otway began to write with great vigour.    His Orphan marks
the return to blank verse, and it is, moreover, the first domestic
tragedy-that is to say, the first in which royal personages do not
hold the leading parts-which had been produced since the days
of Elizabeth.  It contains the extremely painful story of the result
of the love of the same pure and beautiful girl by two brothers,
and its legitimately tragical interest is carried so far into the
province of anguish that it has ceased to be presentable to a
public audience. In this play we find what had seemed a lost
quality in English drama since the Commonwealth-tenderness.
Over the character of Monimia, the Orphan, probably more tears
have been shed than over that of any other stage heroine. Passing
by the experiment in which Otway endeavoured to transfer the
passion of Romeo and of Juliet to a Latin scene, we come to his
second great play, the best tragedy of the Restoration, the
Venice Preserved of 1682.  Here, with a touch still more masculine and direct than in Yhe Orphan, Otway employs genuine
human passion in the room of the bombastic declamation of the
tragedies of his contemporaries, and achieves a success which has
never been questioned.   The tragedy woven around the sullen
wrath of Jaffier and the reasonable sweetness of Belvidera ranks
only just below the masterpieces of Shakespeare:
"Jaffier. Is this the Roman virtue? this the blood
That boasts its purity with Cato's daughter?
Would she have e'er betrayed her Brutus?
Belvidera.                        No!
For Brutus trusted her: wer't thou so kind,
What would not Belvidera suffer for thee:
Jaffier. I shall undo myself, and tell thee all.
Belvidera. Look not upon me, as I am a woman,
But as a bone, thy wife, thy friend; who long
Has had admission to thy heart, and there
Studied the virtues of thy gallant nature;
Thy constancy, thy courage, and thy tru.h,
Have been my daily lesson: I have learnt them,




6 -


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


Am bold as thou, can suffer or despise
The worst of fates for thee; and with thee share them.
Jaffier. Oh Thou divinest Power! look down and hear
My prayers! instruct me to reward this virtue!
Yet think a little, e'er thou tempt me further:
Think I've a tale to tell, will shake thy nature,
Melt all this boasted constancy thou talk'st of
Into vile tears and despicable sorrows:
Then if thou should'st betray me!
Belvidera. Shall I swear?
Jaffier. No: do not swear; I would not violate
Thy tender nature with so rude a bond:
But as thou hop'st to see me live my days,
And love thee long, lock this within thy breast;
I've bound myself by all the strictest sacraments,
Divine and human —
Belvidera.               Speak!
Jaffier.                      To kill thy fatherBelvidera. My father!
Jaffier.          Nay, the throats of the whole Senate
Shall bleed, my Belvidera: he amongst us
That spares his father, brother, or his friend,
So damned: how rich and beauteous will the face
Of ruin look, when these wide streets run blood;
I and the glorious partners of my fortune
Shouting, and striding o'er the prostrate dead;
Still to new waste; whilst thou, far off in safety
Smiling, shalt see the wonders of our daring;
And when night comes, with praise and love receive me."
The author of this play, in fact, seems a sort of prose Shakespeare,
a Shakespeare with the romantic charm precipitated.      The verse,
indeed, is strong and good, but the spirit of the drama is domestic
and mundane; there are no flights into the spiritual heavens.
The imagination of the dramatist is lucid, rapid, and direct; there
is the utmost clearness of statement and reflection; but, although
this masterpiece of genius is not obscured, it is certainly toned
down by a universal tinge or haze of the commonplace. Otway
wrote one more play-a comedy.         But he was broken in spirits
and resolve, and fell, at the accession of James II., into complete
destitution.  He spent his last days in a spunging-house on




II


LEE


57


Tower Hill; venturing out at the point of starvation, he was
given some money by a gentleman of whom he begged, and then
died at a baker's shop, being too weak to swallow the first mouthful
of bread.  He was just thirty-four years of age.
The career of Nathaniel Lee (I655-1692) was as wretched as
that of Otway, which in more than one respect it closely resembled.
Lee also was a clergyman's son; he was educated at Trinity
College, Cambridge, but he came up to London to try to be
an actor before he was twenty. Like Otway, he utterly failed on
the boards. His first play, Nero, came out at the King's Theatre,
for which Lee's early dramas were all written, at the same time
as Otway's first venture at the Duke's. The impassioned, or
rather stilted, fervour of his verse gave satisfaction, and in the
next year, I676, the young poet, still not yet of age, produced a
Gloriana and a Sophlonisba, both in heroics. These three Roman
plays, all in rhyme, possess a certain bombastic merit as poetry,
but can only have been saved from failure upon the boards by the
admirable acting of Hart and Mohun.    Blank verse having once
more passed into fashion, Lee came forward with a Rival Ladies
(1677) and a AMithridates (1678), which showed a considerable
advance in dramatic skill, and that peculiar intensity and excitement in expression which was the charm and the danger of Lee's
curious style. The former of these tragedies enjoyed a prodigious
success.  Here is a fragment of a speech in Afit/hridates:
"Away, then! part, for ever part, Semandra!
Let me alone sustain those ravenous fates
Which, like two famished tigers, are gone out,
And leave us in the wind. Death, come upon me!
Night, and the bloodiest deed of darkness, end me!
But oh! for thee, for thee,-if thou must die,
I beg of heaven this last, this only favour,
To give thy life a painless dissolution.
Oh! may those ravished beauties fall to earth
Gently, as withered roses leave their stalks!
May Death be mild to thee, as Love was cruel! "
This remains within the limits laid down for dramatic poetry.




DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CITAP.


But Lee's brain was not long under his control, and his fine
frenzies overpowered him. In spite of his undoubted ability and
his increasing experience, he did not contrive to write one really
good play, except, perhaps, Lucius Junius Brutus (I68I). After
producing eleven tragedies, two of them in conjunction with
Dryden, Lee, whose intellect had several times threatened to give
way, became a raving maniac, and had to be shut up in Bedlam
in I684. After several years' confinement he seemed to be cured,
and being set free, produced in I689 his only attempt at a
comedy-The Princess of C/eve. His last tragedy, The Massacre
of Paris (I690), outdid all its predecessors in shrill rant of blank
and rhymed verse, and Lee presently went mad once more. He
escaped from his keepers out into the streets one night, and perished in some miserable way, at the age of thirty-seven. Lee came
very near being a master of sounding blank verse. He was solitary
among the dramatists of the age in taking Milton for his model,
and even when he is most turgid and most unnatural, there is
often a Miltonic swell in his verse which preserves it from complete absurdity.  He has often been compared to the early
Elizabethans, and he may be called a vulgar Marlowe. His heroic
language is often spoiled in its most gorgeous passages by an
incidental meanness of expression, as in the famous line where
Brutus says to his son" I'll tug with Teraminta for thy heart."
Lee marks a certain crisis in tragedy. He shrieked so loud
that succeeding playwrights gave up the idea of out-screaming so
bombastic a writer, and the tendency of tragedy in future was to
become sentimental and reflective.
John Crown (1640?-I705?), a writer of mean talent but
extraordinary persistence, was a rival of Lee in tragedy and of
Dryden in comedy. He was the son of an independent minister
in Nova Scotia, and was called, from his prim appearance, " Starch
Johnny Crown." We know very little of his life, although, from
the appearance of his Juliana in 1671 to that of his Caligula in




II


CROWN


59


I698, he was constantly before the public as a professional writer.
Of the eighteen plays which he printed, the best, beyond question,
is the comedy of Sir Courtly INice (1685), adapted at the command of Charles II. from two old Spanish plays. Crown was
slow in composition, and, to the author's extreme disappointment,
the comedy was only finished in time to be the first new piece
acted before James II. In this play, which enjoyed a prolonged
success, the humours of the town were amusingly satirised; but
Crown as a rule is a dull writer, artificially stirred now and then
for a moment into a coarse kind of stage animation. A still more
grotesque figure is the Doeg of the second Absalom and Achitophel,
Elkanah Settle (I648-I724). This absurd creature lives embalmed
in the anger of Dryden, but he had a moment of not illegitimate
success. He was a young Oxford man, who started as a Whig
with a measure of public encouragement.  After a somewhat
promising tragedy of Cambyses in 1670 (printed 1672), he startled
Dryden and his compeers out of their decorum by producing in
I673 a tremendous heroic play of The Empress of Morocco, on a
story which somewhat recalls that of Hazmlet.  This play was
smoothly rhymed, and not constructed without ingenuity.  In
rant it outraved what Lee himself was to achieve. For a moment
Settle was at the top of the fashion, but he had neither talent nor
principle, and he soon sank into contempt. Of Settle's fifteen
plays, the latest was brought out in 7Io0. Dryden said of him:
"The height of his ambition is, we know,
But to be master of a puppet-show."
Settle fell lower even than this, for he became a mechanic at a
puppet-show, and his last public appearances were made within a
green dragon of his own invention.  The first edition of The
Empress of Morocco is much sought after on account of the
sculptures or engravings of scenes in the theatre; it was the earliest
illustrated drama in the English language.
The brief success of the heroic plays was proved and summed
up by the popularity of the satire upon them, the brilliant




60


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


Rehearsal, brought out anonymously in I672.       The principal
author of this delightful composite parody was George Villiers,
second Duke of Buckingham (1627-1688), of whom it was said
that "he inherited from his father the greatest title, and from his
mother the greatest estate of any subject in England." Dryden,
whom he attacked, painted a severe but just and witty portrait of
him in his Zimri, who
" in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."
The laugh was turned, but not until it had echoed through
London at Dryden's expense.       The Rehearsal was begun in
ridicule of Sir Robert Howard; a certain number of touches were
added from a foolish playwright of the name of Stapylton; but
it was the series of Dryden's heroic plays in rhyme which were
mainly attacked. The hero, Bayes, was a study of Davenant in
the first place, but when that poet died the Duke easily altered
the portrait to resemble Dryden.  It would seem  that he worked
at the satire, adding ludicrous touches, for eight or ten years.
Two critical friends meet Bayes, and ask him to explain the plot
of his last play; he declines to satisfy them, but recommends them
to come and see his new play in rehearsal. They do this, and
find it to consist of an olio of all the most ridiculous points
which had ornamented all the heroic plays of the last ten years.
In the following extract, from the third act, Sir William Davenant
is mainly burlesqued:
"ENTER ParthSenoje.
Smith. Sure, Mr. Bayes, we have lost some jest here, that they laugh at
us so.
Bayes. Why did you not observe? I-e first resolves to go out of town,
and then, as he is pulling on his boots, falls in love. Ha, ha, ha.
Smith. 0, I did not observe: that, indeed, is a very good jest.
Bayes. Here, now, you shall see a combat betwixt love and honour. An
ancient author has made a whole play on't; but I have despatch'd it all in
this scene.
Volscizis. How has my passion made me Cupid's scoff!
This hasty boot is on, the other off,




II


" THE REHEARSAL "


6I


And sullen lies, with amorous design
To quit loud fame, and make that Beauty mine.
My legs, the emblem of my various thought,
Show to what sad distraction I am brought.
Sometimes, with stubborn honour, like this boot.
My mind is guarded, and resolv'd to do't:
Sometimes, again, that very mind, by love
Disarmed, like this other leg does prove.
Jo/nson. What pains Mr. Bayes takes to act this speech himself!
Smith. Ay, the fool, I see, is mightily transported with it.
Voiscius. Shall I to honour or to love give way?
Go on, cries honour; tender love says, nay:
Honour, aloud, commands, Pluck both boots on;
But softer love does whisper, Put on none.
What shall I do? what conduct shall I find
To lead me through this twilight of my mind?
For as bright day with black approach of night
Contending, makes a doubtful puzzling light;
So does my honour and my love together
Puzzle me so, I can resolve for neither.
[Exit with one boot on, and the other off."
The parody is sometimes so close that the reader hardly knows
it from  the original; and to read the sparkling pages of Tle
Rehearsal is to study the most searching criticism  extant on the
rhymed tragedies.   It is indeed not a little unfortunate for those
plays that the parody was a work of real genius, and has practically
outlived all the pieces which it was intended to satirise. It was the
parent of the various burlesque dramas of the eighteenth century,
including the wittiest of them  all, The Critic.  It is, of course,
entirely incorrect to say that The Rehearsal destroyed or checked
the vogue of the heroic plays. Its success was really a symptom
of their excessive popularity.  Ten years later the Duke put his
name to the adaptation of a play of Beaumont and Fletcher, but
took no further part in dramatic writing.    It should be added
that Butler is believed to have had a hand in composing The
Rehearsal.
The interval of twenty years between the appearance of the
large group of dramatists just described and that of the Orange




62


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


school was marked by the arrival of only one new talent of importance-that of Thomas Southerne (1659-1746), a native of
Dublin.  Ile took his first play, the tragedy of The Loyal Brother
(I682), to Dryden, and asked him to write a prologue to it. For
this service the fee had hitherto been five guineas, but Dryden
seized this opportunity of beginning to charge ten guineas: " Not
out of disrespect to you, young man, but the players have had my
goods too cheap." Southerne was a very smart man of business,
and he was the first dramatist in England who contrived to make
a fortune out of play-writing. He became justly distinguished as a
tragic poet.  He rebelled against the rant and fustian of the heroic
playwrights, and modelled himself upon Otway, whose tenderness
is successfully reflected in his scenes, though with some exaggeration.  His blank verse runs easily, and owes something to a
respectful study of Shakespeare; but we recognise that it is in the
process of fossilising into the dead dramatic verse of the succeeding century.  Southerne's best plays were produced when the
Orange dramatists had completely come to the front, and he
answers as a tragic writer to Congreve as a comic one, but with
less talent.  The natal Marriage (1694) and Oroonoko (I696) are
sentimental tragedies, based on the method of Otway's Oiphan,
and cunningly devised to wring tears from distressed and sympathetic audiences. The last scene of Oroonoko, a long-drawn agony
in melting verses, is a typical specimen of Southerne's powers,
which were indubitable, though not of the highest order. Here is
a fragment of it:
" Oroonoko. It is not always granted to the great
To be most happy: if the angry Powers
Repent their favours, let them take them back:
The hopes of Empire, which they gave my youth,
By making me a Prince, I here resign.
Let 'em quench in me all those glorious fires,
Which kindled at their beams: that lust of fame,
That fervour of ambition, restless still,
And burning with the sacred thirst of sway,
Which they inspir'd, to qualify my fate,
And make me fit to govern under them,




II


SOUTHERNE


63


Let them extinguish, I submit myself
To their high pleasure, and devoted bow
Yet lower, to continue still a slave;
Hopeless of liberty: and if I could
Live after it, would give up honour too,
To satisfy their vengeance, to avert
This only curse, the curse of losing thee.
Imoinda. If heaven could be appeas'd, these cruel men
Are not to be entreated, or believ'd:
0! think on that, and be no more deceiv'd.
Oroonoko. What can we do?
Imoinda. Can I do anything?
Oroonoko. But we were born to suffer.
Imoinda. Suffer both,
Both die, and so prevent them,
Oroonoko. By thy death!
O! let me hunt my travel'd thoughts again;
Range the wide waste of desolate despair;
Start any hope. Alas! I lose myself,
'Tis pathless, dark, and barren all to me.
Thou art my only guide, my light of life
And thou are leaving me; send out thy beams
Upon the wing; let them fly all around,
Discover every way: Is there a dawn,
A glimmering of comfort? the great God,
That rises on the world, must shine on us."
His comedies are very weak, and strained beyond the custom
of the age with cynical indecency. Southerne lived on until long
after all the other seventeenth-century dramatists were dead, and
survived to receive the homage of Gray.
The name of the Orange dramatists has been given to the group
of playwrights who made their appearance at the very close of the
century, and who were divided by more than thirty years from the
Restoration. Considerable confusion has been caused by neglecting dates in this matter, by not observing that a chasm lies between the contemporaries of Dryden's youth and those friends of
his old age. ~ The Orange dramatists of most importance are Congreve, Cibber, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar-all in the main purely
comic writers.   It may generally be said, that although no im



64


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


provement of manners or morals was at first observable in these
dramatists, their language was much more polished than that of
their predecessors. They exchanged mere coarseness of boisterous intrigue for wit and the development of an intricate plot, and
they responded to the appeal which had been made by Etheredge,
but apparently made in vain, a quarter of a century earlier, for
lighter and more brilliant dialogue.
William Congreve (I670-I729) is the most shining figure in
literature which the drama of the last half of the seventeenth
century presents to us. Voltaire said of him that "he raised the
glory of comedy to a greater height than any English writer before
or since," and within certain obvious limitations this is still true.
There have been comedies better than his, and those of the class
in which alone he attempted to excel-that is to say, the nonpoetic comedy which holds the mirror up to contemporary
manners. But there is no body of comedy left to us by any
English writer so brilliantly supported, so sparkling, so distinguished. Some injustice has been done to the memory of Congreve by a passage in lThe English Humourists, where Thackeray,
in one of his most imaginative moods, dismisses the great Mr.
Congreve as one whose laughing skull lies silent among the ashes
and broken wine-jars underneath some desert heap of lava, not
to be stirred by modern readers. The student should read this
page to admire its author but not to understand its subject.
There is no sense in which Congreve can be said to be extinct, or
to fear extinction, so long as wit and lucidity and exquisite literary
art are appreciated. The main quality of Congreve, and that
by which he still holds a place among the great writers of the
century, is his wit; in this he is unapproached in modern drama,
even in France, where Moliere, who excels him in the other
branches of dramatic ability, is for once inferior to Congreve.
The wittiest of the playwrights of the modern world may not be
seriously compared to a skull at Pompeii. While so much
must be said in his defence, it has to be added that he neglected
other necessary parts of the dramatic scheme in the cultivation of




II


CONGREVE


65


wit. His action is left to wait, cap in hand, on the leisure of
his dialogue, and when the former is resumed, the poet has often
the air of forgetting whither he intended to proceed with it. His
plots are difficult to recollect, and not always very natural in their
development. His characters are clearly defined, and often very
original; but his conception of them is cynical to a degree
which excuses the disfavour into which his comedies have fallen.
Congreve is less coarse than Wycherley and Shadwell, but he is
scarcely less immoral; and to many readers the varnish of refinement is no extenuation of the ethical result.  The drama of
Congreve combines, to a singular degree, the very finest literary
art with the extreme of what is debased in morals and superficial
in sentiment.
Congreve occupied the stage for only six years in his early
youth.  He was but three-and-twenty when his Old Bachelor
(I693) appeared, and it had been written two years earlier. It
showed a precocious knowledge of the ways of the world, such as
was perfectly astounding; the author had written it, by intuition,
among the yew-trees of a secluded Berkshire garden. Both
Dryden and Southerne touched it up, recommended it, and
secured for it a favourable hearing. It was exceedingly successful,
and Congreve became the "splendid Phcebus Apollo of the Mall.'
In the Old Bachelor we may trace careful study of the style of
Wycherley. There is a certain violence, a certain tendency to
pantomime, that are wanting in Congreve's second and much more
careful comedy, The Double Dealer (I694), which, perhaps for
this very reason, found less favour at first with the public. The
critics and poets, on the other hand, overwhelmed Congreve with
caresses on this occasion, and Dryden, in the best known of his
dedicatory addresses, said:
" Heav'n, that but once was prodigal before,
To Shakespeare gave as much, she could not give him more."
Such extravagance of praise was excusable, for Congreve was now
treading in the very steps of Moliere, and that with a fancy and a
delicacy of style which were all his own. He proceeded further


III


F




66


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


still in Lovefor Love (1695), his masterpiece, and the most brilliant
pure comedy of manners in the English language. The principal
personages of this play are drawn with a masterly hand,-Valentine,
the scholar-lover, the fine gentleman who half disdains himself for
being a man of sense and wit; Tattle, the type of fatuous vanity;
Foresight, the pantaloon astrologer; the frivolous and joyous sisters,
Frail and Foresight; Ben, in whom we see the earliest example
of the stage-sailor; the dignified and passionate Angelica-these
crowd the most vivid and the most attractive scene that the
multifarious stage of the Restoration has to offer to us.      The
ravings of Valentine in his pretended madness give excellent
examples of Congreve's daring and coruscating wit:
" Foresight. This frenzy is very low now, Mr. Scandal.
Scandal. I believe it is a spring-tide.
Foresi,,ht. Very likely, truly; you understand these matters;-Mr. Scandal,
I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things which he has
uttered-his sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical.
Valentine. Oh, why would Angelica be absent from my eyes so long?
Jeremy. She's here, sir.
Mrs. Foresighzt. Now, sister!
Airs. Frail. 0 Lord, what must I say?
Scandal. Humour him, madam, by all means.
Valentine. Where is she? oh, I see her;-she comes like riches, health,
and liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and abandoned wretch. Oh
welcome, welcome!
Mrs. Frail. How d'ye, sir? Can I serve you?
Valentine. Hark ye-I have a secret to tell you-Endymion and the moon
shall meet us upon Mount Latmos, and we'll be married in the dead of nightbut say not a word. Ilymen shall put his torch into a dark lantern, that it
may be secret; and Juno shall give her peacock poppy-water, that he may fold
his ogling tail, and Argus's hundred eyes be shut, ha! Nobody shall know
but Jeremy.
Mrs. Frail. No, no, we'll keep it secret, it shall be done presently.
Valentine. The sooner the better. -Jeremy, come hither- closer-that none
may overhear us —Jeremy, I can tell you news; Angelica is turned nun, and I
am turning friar, and yet we'll marry one another in spite of the pope. Get
me a cowl and beads, that I may play my part; for she'll meet me two hours
hence in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we won't
see one another's faces."




II


"C THE MOURNING BRIDE "


67


In 1697 Congreve produced his solitary tragedy, Tlhe Mourning Bride. He was too good a poet and too experienced a
master of stage effect, to write a play that should not please, and
this piece enjoyed an extraordinary success. It has not lacked
admirers in recent times, and its first line, " Music has charms to
soothe the savage breast," is on every one's lips. In comparison
with the other English tragedies of the Orange period it has a
merit analagous to that of Crebillon's tragedies in France, and
suggests that if Congreve had persisted in tragedy he might have
enjoyed the success which attended that writer, who was but two
years his junior.  But 7The iourning Bride wants the highest
poetic merit; it is monotonous and mechanical; its blank verse,
though learned, lacks variety, and its revival in the future is hardly
to be expected.  Congreve closed his brief and splendid career
as a dramatist with his comedy of The VWay of the IForld (1700).
This play is scarcely inferior, if inferior at all, to Loze for Love,
but it failed to please the public. It has even more wit and less
action than Congreve's other comedies, and the town thought its
satire ill-natured. Moreover, it immediately followed the brilliant
attack made by Jeremy Collier (I650-I726), the non-juror, upon
the immorality and profaneness of the English stage. This attack
was vehemently resented by Congreve and others, but Dryden
bowed to it, and there is no doubt that it:met with an instant
response from the conscience of the English middle-classes.
Among those favourites of the town whom Collier had the
intrepidity to attack, the one who was most open to censure was
Captain John Vanbrugh (I672-I726). This very clever and original
writer had, indeed, erred by an extraordinary licence, and owes to
his coarseness the obscurity into which his plays have fallen. He
had, however, great merits; an architect by profession, he carries
the art of building into his drama, and constructs his plays with
an admirable solidity. Where Congreve is volatile and sparkling,
Vanbrugh does not attempt to compete with him, but reserves
himself for carefully studied effects, for passages where every
touch is marked by the precision and weight of the author's style.




68


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


He is perhaps more like Moliere than any other English
dramatist; he is like him in the abundance of his stage-knowledge, and in the skill he shows in rapid and entertaining changes
of situation. At the same time he is English to a fault, saturated
with the brutality of the fox-hunting squire of the period. This
very coarseness of fibre, added to Vanbrugh's great sincerity as a
writer, gives his best scenes a wonderful air of reality.  The
persons of Congreve's stage are too uniformly brilliant for credence;
we are conscious that he is writing, to a great extent, with an ideal
before him, and aided by his imagination. Vanbrugh, who is no
poet, but a somewhat heavy observer, dowered with occasional
flashes of adroitness, presents us only with what he has seen, and
often transcribes that with an astonishing fidelity. Vanbrugh
made his debut in I697 with two comedies, The Relapse and The
Provoked Wife, and became famous and prosperous at once.   In
those days poetical promise was promptly rewarded, and for the
merit of his comedies Vanbrugh was made Clarencieux King-atArms. He produced ten comedies in all, his later works showing
signs of indolence and carelessness.  An exception, however,
must be made in favour of The Confederacy (I705), a most diverting piece, and perhaps, on the whole, its author's best. It is not
easy to find a specimen of Vanbrugh's rattling and bustling scene
which is sufficiently condensed for quotation. But here is a page
from the last-mentioned play in which the two rogues fall out.
Brass is pretending to be Dick's valet-de-chambre, but when he
finds that Dick has struck a vein of special good luck, he feels
himself obliged to come to fresh terms:
" Brass. Look you, sir, some folks we mistrust, because we don't know 'em:
others we mistrust because we do know 'em. And for one of these reasons I
desire there may be a bargain before-hand; if not [raising his voice] look ye,
Dick Amlet —
Dick. Soft, my dear friend and companion. The dog will ruin me [aside].
Say, what is't will content thee?
Brass. 0 ho.
Dick. But how can'st thou be such a barbarian?
Brass. I learnt it at Algier.




IT


VANBRUGH


69


Dick. Come, make thy Turkish demand then.
Brass. You know you gave me a bank-bill this morning to receive for you.
Dick. I did so, of fifty pounds, 'tis thine. So, now thou art satisfied; all's
fixed.
Brass. It is not indeed. There's a diamond necklace you robbed your
mother of e'en now.
Dick. Ah, you Jew.
Brass. No words.
Dick. My dear Brass!
Brass. I insist.
Dick. My old friend.
Brass. Dick Amlet [raising his voice] I insist.
Dick. Ah the cormorant-Well, 'tis thine. But thou'lt never thrive with't.
Brass. When I find it begins to do me mischief, I'll give it you again. But
I must have a wedding-suit.
Dick. Well.
Brass. Some good lace.
Dick. Thou shalt.
Brass. A stock of linen.
Dick. Enough.
Brass. Not yet-a silver sword.
Dick. Well thou shalt have that too. Now thou hast everything.
Brass. Gad forgive me, I forgot a ring of remembrance. I would not
forget all these favours for the world; a sparkling diamond will be always
playing in my eye, and put me in mind of 'em.
Dick. This unconscionable rogue [aside]! Well, I'll bespeak one for thee.
Brass. Brilliant.
Dick. It shall.  But if the thing don't succeed after all?
Brass. I'm a man of honour, and restore. And so the treaty being finished
I strike my flag of defiance, and fall into my respects again.
[ Taking off his hat."
Vanbrugh left the stage to become the royal architect, and
was knighted towards the end of his life. He showed great bitterness in his controversy with Collier, but he could not refute the
Puritan's plain statement that all the men of figure in Vanbrugh's plays were professed libertines, and that, nevertheless, he
allowed them all to pass off without censure or disappointment.
That this charge is true is the fatal objection to all Restoration
comedy.
Colley Cibber (I67I-I757) is commonly identified with the




70


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


dramatic life of the eighteenth century, but his best comedies
belong to the seventeenth, and he preceded Vanbrugh in his
appeal to the public. He was the son of a Danish sculptor,
employed during the youth of the dramatist in beautifying the
rooms of Chatsworth. In I689 Colley Cibber became an actor,
and, under the patronage of Congreve, rose early to distinction.
His first comedy, Love's Last SAJft (I696), was imitated or
continued by Vanbrugh, in his own first play, The Relapse, and
this increased Cibber's reputation. In I697 he published Woman's
Wit, a piece of inferior merit; but achieved again a popular success with Love makes a Man, a very sprightly comedy or long
farce, in I698. The Careless Husband (I705) aimed at a higher
sort of writing, and ranks as the best of Cibber's works. At least
thirty dramatic pieces are attributed to him. Cibber's plays are
lighter than thistledown, and mark the rupture between dramatic
writing and literature. But they are praiseworthy for their comparative innocence, and for the absence of such cynicism as
Collier denounced.
The last great dramatist of the Restoration, the man in whom
the flame that Marlowe had kindled was extinguished, George
Farquhar (1678-I707), is very far from being the least sympathetic
of the series. He was gallant, handsome, and unfortunate, he
died in his prime of youth, and all that is recorded of him does
credit to his manly gaiety and his courage under disappointment.
He was the son of an Irish clergyman of good family, was
educated at Trinity College, and went very early on to the Dublin
stage. By forgetting to change his sword for a foil, he nearly
killed a brother-actor while playing in Dryden's Indian Emperor,
and the shock gave him a distaste to acting. He entered the
army, distinguished himself, and rose to the rank of captain.
About 1697 he came to London, and in 1698 brought out his
first comedy, Love and a Bottle, sprightly with the humours of
military life, in which Farquhar excels.  Much better in every
way, however, was The Constant Cozule (I 700), where the character
of a certain Sir Harry Wildair, "an airy gentleman affecting




II


FARQUHAR


7I


humourous gaity and freedom in his behaviour," gave so much
pleasure to the audience at the Theatre-Royal, that in I70I the
poet brought out a second part, to which he gave this hero's name.
Farquhar was a smart and handsome fellow, whose empire over
the hearts of the ladies was unbounded. One girl, wholly without
a dowry, fell in love with him, and secured his hand under the representation that she was wealthy. Farquhar had quitted the army
in order to marry her, and was reduced to poverty by her subterfuge, but he had the sweetness of temper never to reproach her.
His last and best comedies were The Recrui/ing Officer (I7o6), and
The Beaux' Stratagem (I707), the latter composed upon his deathbed.   It was understood that the hero of the Recruiting Officer,
Captain Plume, was Farquhar's portrait of himself:
" PhFime. A dog, to abuse two such pretty fellows as you! Look'ee, gentlemen, I love a pretty fellow: I come among you as an officer to list soldiers, not
as a kidnapper, to steal slaves.
Pezarzain. Mind that, Tummas.
Plume. I desire no man to go with me but as I went myself: I went a
volunteer, as you, or you, may do; for a little time carried a musket, and now
I command a company.
Appletree. Mind that, Costar. A sweet gentleman!
Plume. 'Tis true, gentlemen, I might take an advantage of you; the
queen's money was in your pockets, my serjeant was ready to take his oath
you were listed; but I scorn to do a base thing; you are both of you at your
liberty.
Pearmain. Thank you, noble captain. Ecod, I can't find in my heart to
leave him, he talks so finely.
Appletree. Ay, Costar, would he always hold in this mind.
Pl/tume. Come, my lads, one thing more I'll tell you: you're both young
tight fellows, and the army is the place to make you men for ever: every man
has his lot, and you have yours. What think you now of a purse full of
French gold out of a monsieur's pocket, after you have dashed out his brains
with the butt of your firelock, eh?
Pearmain. Wauns! I'll have it, captain-give me a shilling, I'll follow
you to the end of the world."
Farquhar possessed a lovable, easy character, full of hasty faults
and generous virtues, and he curiously resembled what Fielding
was in the ensuing generation.




72


DRAMA AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP. II


In a discourse upon comedy which he printed in his miscellany called Loze and Business (I702), Farquhar hit off a happy
definition. " Comedy," he said, " is no more at present than a wellframed tale handsomely told as an agreeable vehicle for counsel
or reproof." He meant, no doubt, that of his own drama the
motto should be castigat ridendo mores, but his natural cheerfulness would break out. His flighty beaux and swaggering cavalry
officers too frequently forget to counsel or reprove, but Farquhar
succeeds in being always wholesome, even when he cannot persuade himself to be decent. His scenes breathe of the open air,
while Congreve's have a heated atmosphere of musk. There is
something hopeful and encouraging in finding the crowded and
unsatisfactory drama of the Restoration closing, not in inanity and
corruption, but in this gay world of Farquhar's, this market-place
of life, bright with scarlet tunics and white aprons, loud with drum
and bugle, and ringing with peals of laughter and impudent
snatches of ballad-music. It is Sergeant Kite, one of Farquhar's
heroes, to whom we owe the song of 'Over the hills and far
away." Farquhar was the last writer who dared to bring the
animal riot of the senses face to face with a decent audience,
and the best we can say of his morals is that it is more wholesome
to laugh with Ariosto in the sunshine than to snigger with Aretine
in the shadow.  Better than either is to walk in the light of
Moliere or of Goldsmith.




CHAPTER III


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION
THE prose of the last forty years of the seventeenth century is not
one of the most attractive sections of literature to the common
reader.  It is eminently pedestrian in character, unimaginative,
level, neutral.  It has neither the disordered beauties of the age
that preceded it, nor the limpid graces of that which followed it.
It is tentative and transitional; and its experiments, like its
changes, are in the direction of common sense and conventionality. There is, moreover, a peculiarity about its history which
has, doubtless, served to consign it to comparative neglect
Neither of its two greatest names, neither Dryden nor Temple,
though both of them men of genius and. influence, and one of
them a master of English, has left a single volume in prose which
is in household use; while its best-known book, if we set aside
The Pilgrim's Progress, is Locke's Human Understanding-a work
particularly unengaging in its mere style and delivery. English
prose between I660 and 1700 is exhibited in a great variety of
examples, many of them-nay, the majority of them-unimportant
to any but an antiquarian reader, and displaying a talent so
uniform, that it is not very easy to define the orders of merit. We
meet nothing here like the genius with which Hooker or Swift,
Bacon or Fielding, towers above all minor contemporaries.
The period, however, is misjudged if we regard its merits as
negative merely. It had extraordinary positive qualities  It is




74


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


notable as the age in which educated Englishmen in the mass
began to use their native tongue more or less as we use it now.
The interminable sentences which had preserved the awkward
forms of the sixteenth century, the affected and excessive use of
imagery, the abuse of parenthesis; all these vices of style, which
are as marked in Milton as in Ascham and Elyot, fell off from
English prose-writing about i660, and left it a little cold and bare,
but terse, sensible, and modern. The change is as distinct as
the change from romantic to classical in verse, but the causes of
the former are not so easy to explain as those of the latter. Contact with France did much-the neglect of Latin perhaps did
more-to strip our prose of needless ornament, while simplifying
and defining our grammar. The reform here indicated set in
somewhat rapidly, and then, a generation of writers having accepted
it to a certain extent, it proceeded very little further for another
half century. This arrested modernity will be presently exemplified in the very typical case of Dryden.
It would be to force criticism to pretend to be able to trace
a distinct line between the old and new prose, such as may be
pretty accurately drawn between the old and new poetry.  The
two schools blend into one another, and the writers are not, at
first, even consistent in their practice. It is convenient to take
the date of the Restoration as that at which the prose of our
period opens. That date excludes the last of the old prose school,
such as Hobbes, Fuller, Harrington, Henry More, and Sir
Matthew Hale, who lived beyond it, but who are properly found
to be mainly in sympathy with the past.  It excludes writers
whose production goes on long after that date, such as Izaak
Walton and Sir T. Browne, and even writers whose production
mainly belongs to a later period, such as Dr. Walter Charleton,
the scholastic essayist (I619-1707), when their style shows no
influence of a later taste.  Arbitrary as this division appears to
be, it is found to inconvenience us but little. There is only one
great author whom it is difficult to relegate decisively to the one
class or to the other, namely, Clarendon; and his historical posi



III


WILKINS


75


tion has seemed to demand that he should be considered as a
product of the earlier age.
The first man in England to write commonly in the new kind
of prose was John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester (I614-1672).     His
great activity after the Restoration, when he became one of the
founders of the Royal Society, the main protector of the Nonconformists in the Church of England, and a zealous bishop, may
be taken to show that his mind naturally welcomed the new order
of things. But his two most interesting books were published
long before that date-the That the Moon may be a World, in
I638, and That the Earlt may be a Planet, in 1640.    In the first
of these curious astronomical treatises he undertakes to prove, in
fourteen propositions, that the moon is a habitable world:
"'Twas the fancy of some of the Jews, and more especially of Rabbi
Simeon, that the moon was nothing else but a contracted sun, and that both
those planets at their first creation, were equal both in light and quantity.
For, because God did then call them both great lights, therefore they inferred
that they must be both equal in bigness. But a while after (as the tradition
goes) the ambitious moon put up her complaint to God against the sun,
showing that it was not fit there should be two such great lights in the
heavens; a monarchy would best become the place of order and harmony.
Upon this, God commanded her to contract herself into a narrower compass;
but she being much discontented hereat, replies, What! because I have
spoken that which is reason and equity, must I therefore be diminished?
This sentence could not choose but much trouble her; and for this reason was
she in great distress and grief for a long space. But that her sorrow might be
some way pacified, God bid her be of good cheer, because her privileges and
charter would be greater than the sun's. He should appear in the day time
only, she both in the day and night. But her melancholy being not satisfied
with this, she replied again, that that alas was no benefit; for in the day time,
she should be either not seen, or not noted. Wherefore God, to comfort her
up, promised, that His people the Israelites should celebrate all their feasts
and holy days by a computation of her months; but this being not able to
content her, she has looked very melancholy ever since; however, she hath
still reserved much light of her own."
Wilkins was in strong sympathy with Galileo, who was at that
time still alive.  In 1641 he published his fMercury, a proposition
for communicating at great distances by a sort of telegraphy.




76


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


Wilkins recurs again and again in his writings to the dream of
mechanical flying, by which he is best remembered.     In his
M~ercury he says:
" Amongst all possible conveyances through the air, imagination itself cannot conceive any one more useful than the invention of a flying chariot, which
I have mentioned elsewhere. By this means a man may have as free a passage
as a bird, which is not hindered either by the highest walls or the deepest
rivers and trenches or the most watchful sentinels."
The mathematical, scientific, and theological writings of
Wilkins were very numerous.   But the three little books mentioned above are all that the reader is now likely to meet with.
The subjects on which the bishop wrote do not attract us, and his
knowledge is trebly superannuated. But his style deserves great
praise. His sentences are short, pointed, and exact. He has little
or nothing of the redundant languor of his contemporaries; and
justice has never yet been done to him as a pioneer in English
prose. The praise given to Tillotson belongs properly to Wilkins,
for Tillotson lived a generation later, and learned to write English
from his study of the Bishop of Chester, whom he enthusiastically
admired. The curious reader will find much in the style of
Wilkins to remind him of that of Bishop Berkeley.
John Pearson (1612-1686), who succeeded Wilkins as Bishop
of Chester, wrote an Exposition of the Creed (1659), which has
always been considered a sound English classic. It was a series
of sermons which he had preached while he was incumbent of the
London parish of St. Clement's, Eastcheap. Pearson's style is
clear and uniform, rising on rare occasions to positive felicity.
The paucity of Pearson's work contrasts with the excessive fecundity of his most distinguished Nonconformist contemporary, Richard
Baxter (I615-I69I), who published no less than one hundred and
sixty-eight treatises, some of them under facetious and even unseemly titles. Jeffries told him that he had written " books enough
to load a cart, every one as full of sedition (I might say treason)
as an egg is full of meat." Baxter's most popular books were the
Saints' Everlasting Rest (i650), and A  Call to the Unconzerted




III


COWLEY'S PROSE


77


(I657).   The autobiography of this pious, useful, boisterous
heresiarch, which appeared posthumously in I696, is pleasant
reading. A third theologian of this period is Ralph Cudworth
(I6I7-I688), the anti-Hobbist and Christian metaphysician.  He
published, in 1678, a candid and erudite refutation of what then
passed for atheism, entitled The True Intellectual System of the
Universe. The reception of this book, which was too liberal in
tone for the fanatics of the age, disgusted him with publicity, and
his other works until long after his death remained unpublished.
Cudworth's Intellectual System is a huge folio of 999 pages.  It is
called "Part I.," but he completed no more of it.  He was successively Master of Clare, and of Christ's College, Cambridge,
during nearly half a century.
Towards the close of his life the poet Abraham Cowley came
forward with a tract on the Advancement of Learning ( 66I), a
Discourse concerning Oliver Cromwell (166i), and a collection of
eleven Essays.  This small cluster of prose-writings places him
very high among the authors of his time, and while the verse
of Cowley has declined in critical estimation, his prose has
steadily risen.  His style, which owes something to a very intelligent study of Bacon, has a grace and a sweet enthusiasm
unusual in writing of the Restoration period. Dr. Johnson excellently remarked that "no author ever kept his verse and his
prose at a greater distance from each other." The latter is never
tortured, never fantastical, never rhetorical.  It is full of delicate
reverie, commonly expressed in an unaffected yearning after solitude
in nature, and it displays the writer not merely as a very clever,
but as a very winning and estimable man. In the eleventh of his
Montaigne-like essays, "Of Myself," he gives us some precious
reminiscences of the earliest motives of his intellectual life:
" I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first
with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there: for I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was
wont to lie in my mother's parlour (I know not 1b what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was wont to




78


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


lie Spenser's works. This I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted
with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses,
which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do
with all this), and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the
numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years
old, and was thus made a poet as irremediably as a child is made an eunuch.
With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to
the University; but was soon torn from thence by that violent public storm
which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant,
even from the princely cedars to me the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune
as could have befallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the
family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best
princesses in the world."
An interesting little prose work, the preface to his Poems of
1656, reveals Cowley to us before he had learned to write in
this modern manner.     Sprat tells us that his letters were excellent, and that "they always expressed the native tenderness
and innocent gaiety of his mind," with "a native clearness and
shortness, a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of farniliarity."  It is greatly to be deplored that these letters, of which
a large collection once existed, were never printed, and now
seem to be hopelessly lost.  Cowley's Essays should be read by
every student of English prose.
John Evelyn (I620-I706) was a man of fortune and a traveller,
proficient in all the arts and graceful sciences, and energetic in
the pursuit of knowledge. He was early drawn into authorship
by his love of letters, and by his desire to communicate his views
to the learned world.    He wrote with great care, and Waller
commended his prose in terms which he usually confined to the
best verse of the new school.      Of Evelyn's treatises the first
which is now remembered is the fifteenth in order of publication,
namely, Sylva, a most valuable report on the condition of timber
in the English dominions, 1664. In the same year he published
a discourse on Architecture, eventually dedicated to Sir Christopher
Wren, and a work on Gardening, dedicated to Cowley.       He had
published a handbook to Engraving, called Sculptzra, in 1662,
and to these he added one on Painting, in 1668.   Iis Naz,zation




III


EVELYN


79


and Commerce followed in 1674, and his Terra, on the arts of
cultivation, in I675. He published twenty-seven volumes in all;
the last of them, Acetaria (i699), was scarcely worthy of so
serious a savant, the subject of it being salads. The vast work
on horticulture, entitled Elysiumm  Britanniczum, on which he
worked for forty years, was still unfinished when he died, and has
never been published.  The literary fame of this dignified and
indefatigable man really rests, however, upon a work which he
would very probably have disdained to publish, his Diary or
running autobiography, kept through fifty-six years-I64I-I697.
This remained in manuscript in the Evelyn library at Wotton
until 1818, when it was edited in three large volumes.
The encyclopaedic knowledge of Evelyn, and his prodigality
in the arrangement and communication of it, justly secured for
him the admiration and even the astonishment of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries.  His learning was really extensive, and
his taste was so finely trained as to be second to that of no man
in England. Whether he discoursed of the decay of oak-trees
or of the Arundel marbles, of the making of cider or of the
heresy of the Jesuits, there were very few of his listeners, and
often none at all, who could assail his erudition. It is difficult
to say why, with all this panoply of attainment, he never touched
the highest things. The best we can say of him is that he
reaches a high average among the prose-writers of his time, and
that he is actuated by their most happy instincts, lucidity, candour,
the affectionate study of nature. As an example of Evelyn's more
familiar style an extract from the Philosojphical Transactions of the
Royal Society may suffice. The winter of 1683 had been excessively severe, and Evelyn was requested to record his observations of the damage done to his own trees at Sayes Court by the
cold. He writes on the i4th April 1684:
"As for exotics, I fear my cork trees will hardly recover, but the spring is
yet so very backward, even in this warm and dry spot of mine, that I cannot
pronounce anything positively, especially of such whose bark is very thick and
rugged, such as is the cork, enzina, and divers of the resinous trees. The




80


PROSE AFTER TilE RESTORATION


CIIAP.


constantinopolitan, or horse-chestnut, is twigged with buds, and ready to explain
its leaf. My cedars. I think, are lost; the ilex and scarlet oak, not so; the
arbutus, doubtful; and so are bays, but some will escape, and most of them
repullulate and spring afresh, if cut down near the earth at the latter end of
the month.  The Scotch fir spruce, and white Spanish, which last used to
suffer in the tender buds by the spring frost, have received no damage this
winter; I cannot say the same of the pine which bears the greater cone, but
other Norways and pinasters are fresh; laurel is only discoloured, and some
of the woody branches mortified, which being cut to the quick will soon put
forth again, it being a succulent plant. Amongst our shrubs, rosemary is
entirely lost; and, to my great sorrow, because I had not only beautiful
hedges of it, but sufficient to afford me flowers for the making a very con
siderable quantity of the Queen of Hungary's celebrated water: so universal,
I fear, is the destruction of this excellent plant, not only over England, but
our neighbour countries more southward, that we must raise our next hopes
from the seed. Halimus, or sea purselain, of which I had a pretty hedge, is
also perished; and so another of French furzes; the cypress are all of them
scorched, and some to death, especially such as were kept shorn in pyramids,
but amongst great numbers there will divers escape, after they are well
chastised, that is, with a tough hazel or other wand to beat off their dead and
dusty leaves, which growing much closer than other shrubs, hinder the air
and dews from refreshing the interior parts. This discipline I use to all my
tonsile shrubs with good success, as oft as winter parches them."
Yet simple and charming and easy as Evelyn is, we turn to Cowley
for a superior simplicity, to Temple for a brighter charm, to Pepys
for a more unstudied and congenial ease.
Another of the many Restoration writers of posthumous fame
is Colonel Algernon Sydney (1622-1683), one of the most eminent
martyrs of the Republic, a "'Lucan, by his death approved." Sydney,
who was the younger brother of Waller's Sacharissa, and Sir Philip
Sydney's grand-nephew, was brought up to be a soldier in the
king's army.   While a youth, however, he was converted to the
most rigid republicanism, became one of Charles I.'s judges, though
he did not sign the warrant, and went so far as to protest against
Oliver and even    Richard   Cromwell as tyrants.     His life was
spent in poverty and exile, until in 1677 he was unwillingly pardoned to please his dying father, the Earl of Leicester. His
contumacy, however, was obstinate, and in 1683 the government




III


BOYLE


was glad to include him in the Russell plot, and to murder him
without a trace of evidence. His writings are Discourses concerning Gozernment, written at Frascati in I663, but first published
in 1698, and letters and memoirs respectively printed in 1742
and I751. In I884 a treatise on Love was first published from
Algernon Sydney's manuscript. Sydney is very diffuse; but the
alteration which had come over prose may well be noted by
comparing his republican discourses with the totally unreadable
reams on the same subject which Harrington had produced in the
preceding generation.
Several writers of very high distinction in the world of science
must be passed over with almost unbecoming brevity by the
historian of style.  Among these none could be more distinguished than Robert Boyle (I627-I69I), who enjoyed in the reign
of Charles II. the same European reputation which Bacon had
possessed in that of James I. He wrote on so many subjects,
and some of them so trifling, that Swift made fun of him in his
Medlitation on a Broomstick, and his "New Philosophy," his
trimming system of natural religion, has gone the way of all
intellectual makeshifts. But in the field of physics he was on
safer ground, and some of his chemical and pneumatical discoveries have proved of lasting value. His style is wearisome
and without elevation. Cudworth, who urged him to translate
his voluminous treatises into Latin and destroy the originals,
may possibly have been ironical as well as pedantic in so advising.  The amiable and indefatigable botanist, John Ray
(I628-I705), and the zoologist, Francis Willughby (1635-I672),
whose famous busts guard the doorway of Trinity College
Library, were men of the same stamp.  All these savants, the
glory of the new-born Royal Society, wrote in Latin more readily
than in English, thought little about their style, and expressed
themselves most felicitously when they were describing gardens,
the graceful fashion of the day demanding frequent homage to
the flower-plots which were then so abundantly laid out. It may
be safely said, for instance, that the only page now known to the
III                                       G




82


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


general reader in all the long-winded writings of Robert Boyle,
is that famous passage in which he speaks of seeing tulips and
roses bloom together:
"It is so uncommon a thing to see tulips last till roses come to be blown,
that the seeing them in this garden grow together, as it deserves my notice, so
methinks it should suggest to me some reflection or other on it. And perhaps
it may not be an improper one to compare the difference betwixt these two
kinds of flowers to the disparity which I have often observed betwixt the fates
of those young ladies that are only very handsome, and those that have a
less degree of beauty, recompensed by the accession of wit, discretion, and
virtue: for tulips, whilst they are fresh, do indeed, by the lustre and vividness
of their colours, more delight the eye than roses; but then they do not alone
quickly fade, but, as soon as they have lost that freshness and gaudiness that
solely endeared them, they degenerate into things not only undesirable, but
distasteful, whereas roses, besides the moderate beauty they disclose to the eye
-which is sufficient to please, though not to charm it —do not only keep their
colour longer than tulips, but, when that decays, retain a perfumed odour, and
divers useful qualities and virtues that survive the spring, and recommend them
all the year. Thus those unadvised young ladies, that, because nature has
given them beauty enough, despise all other qualities, and even that regular
diet which is ordinarily requisite to make beauty itself lasting, not only are
wont to decay betimes, but, as soon as they have lost that youthful freshness that
alone endeared them, quickly pass from being objects of wonder and love, to
be so of pity, if not of scorn; whereas those that were as solicitous to enrich
their minds as to adorn their faces, may not only with a mediocrity of beauty
be very desirable whilst that lasts, but, notwithstanding the recess of that and
youth, may, by the fragrancy of their reputation, and those virtues and ornaments of the mind that time does but improve, be always sufficiently endeared
to those that have merit enough to discern and value such excellences, and
whose esteem and friendship is alone worth their being concerned for. In a
word, they prove the happiest as well as they are the wisest ladies, that, whilst
they possess the desirable qualities that youth is wont to give, neglect not the
acquisition of those that age cannot take away."
After passing so many talents in review, we reach at last a
genius. John Bunyan, the tinker or brazier of Elstow (I628 -i688), is in several respects the most original figure of his time.
Merely as a writer, it is extraordinary that, with his utter indifference to literature, he should have contrived to write so remarkably
well.  As we all know, after a passionate and self-accusing child



III


BUNYAN


83


hood, he became a soldier, and, as on the whole seems probable,
in spite of Macaulay, on the royalist side. He returned to his village after a year's fighting, married, and, about the age of twentyfour, was convicted of sin and left the Church of England to
communicate with the Baptists.    His own account of his conversion, with the evidence it gives of an inborn conscientiousness of
almost morbid delicacy, and with the picturesqueness that comes
of entire sincerity of expression, is one of the most valuable
documents of the period. Even the ringing of bells grew to seem
an ungodly pursuit to this strenuous young Puritan:
" Now you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in ringing,
but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such practice was but
vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my mind hankered, wherefore I would go to the steeple-house and look on, though I durst not ring; but
I thought this did not become religion neither; yet [ forced myself, and would
look on still. But quickly after, I began to think, 'How, if one of the bells
should fall?' Then I chose to stand under a main beam hat lay overthwart
the steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I
thought again, should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and
then rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me
stand in the steeple-door; and now, thought I, I am sure enough; for if a bell
should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved
notwithstanding. So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would
not go any further than the steeple-door; but then it came into my head,
' How, if the steeple itself should fall?' And this thought-it may, for ought
I know, when I stood and looked on-did continually so shake my mind, that
I durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee, for
fear the steeple should fall upon my head.
Another thing was my dancing; I was a full year before I could quite leave
that. But all this while, when I thought I kept that or this commandment, or
did by word or deed anything I thought was good, I had great peace in my
conscience; and would think with myself, God cannot choose but be now
pleased with me; yea, to relate it in my own way, I thought no man in
England could please God better than I. But, poor wretch as I was, I was
all this while ignorant of Jesus Christ, and going about to establish my own
righteousness; and had perished therein, had not God in His mercy shewed me
more of my state by nature."
Bunyan very soon became the most popular preacher in England,
and in the winter of I660 had to be shut up in Bedford Gaol,




84


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CHAP.


his intrepidity or obstinacy giving the magistrates no alternative.
His captivity, which lasted with intervals until 1672, was a very
light and sometimes even nominal one, and gave him full
opportunity for reading and composing. He had written several
theological tracts before his imprisonment, and in gaol he wrote
Grace Abounding, which appeared in i666, and the first and
infinitely better part of Pilgrim's Progress; he did not print the
latter until 1678. In 1684 appeared the second part, and in 1682
The Holy War.   The didactic story of The Lfe and Death of
Mr. Badman, i680, closes the list of Bunyan's principal works.
The end of his career was prosperous and happy. He became
by far the most influential of all the nonconformists, and the
government, weary with opposing him, or else appreciating his
innocent zeal, left him absolutely undisturbed to preach and
evangelise. He lost his life by a forced ride through summer
rain undertaken to reconcile a father with his son. It may help
the conception of this sturdy and original figure to say that, in
the age of universal shaved faces and periwigs, Bunyan wore his
own red hair and a full moustache. His tall and bony figure
and rough features belied the extreme mildness and affability of
his manners.
When The Pilgrim's Progress was first read to Bunyan's evangelical friends, their opinions were much divided as to whether it
ought to be printed or no. A theological work so romantic, so
entertaining, nay so humorous as this, was original to the length
of being shocking. But when, at last, after some fifteen years,
the author plucked up confidence to print it, it was seized by the
people with such love and lasting enthusiasm as no other religious
book in the language, except the Bible, has awakened. It was,
as we all know, an allegory of the journey of the soul of a converted sinner from death to immortality, from darkness to light.
Its pictures were drawn partly from Bunyan's daily experience of
English rustic life, partly from his recollections of a gorgeous and
terrible vision. But the core of it all, the truth on which the
allegory rested, was the experience that his own soul and the souls




III


"THE HOLY WAR"


S5


of his Christian friends had gone through. No doubt, the habit
of fervent extempore preaching had given Bunyan freedom and
rapidity of expression, and had taught him to make his sentences
short, picturesque, and pointed. The style of Pzlgrim's Progress
is the very perfection of what the style of such a book should behomely and yet distinguished, exquisitely simple, yet tuned to
music at all its finer moments. The allegory is successful above
all other allegories in literature. The abstractions which people
it, even when they are mentioned only in one or two lines, never
fail to live and stand out vividly as human beings.
Admirers of The Holy [Var have tried to assert as much for
that longer and more laborious work.  But popular taste has
rightly determined that there should be a thousand readers of the
first story to ten of the second. There are very fine passages in
The Holy WVar, the opening, especially all the first siege of Mansoul, is superbly conceived and executed.  But the personages
which are introduced are too incongruous, the intrigues of Shaddei
and the resistance of Diabolus are too incredible, the contest is
too one-sided from the first, to interest us as we are interested in
the human adventures of Christian. Bunyan seems powerless to
close The Holy War, and before he is able to persuade himself
to drop the threads, the whole skein of the allegory is hopelessly
entangled.  Air. Badman is a third work of a totally different
character. This is a contc, save for its theme, in the French style
of the next generation. A realistic story of life misspent in a little
country town is told in a dialogue between a Mr. Wiseman and a
Mr. Attentive. The hero is a man who "went to school with the
Devil, from his childhood to the end of his life." In some ways
this neglected book appears to the present writer to possess greater
importance than The Holy War. It is absolutely original as an
attempt at realistic fiction, and it leads through Defoe on to
Fielding and the great school of English novels. It is intensely
interesting, and as a story, epoch-making. It opens the series of
character-romances in England in the same way as The Roman
Bourgeois of Furetiere was doing, at the very same time, in France.




86


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CHAP.


It is hardly necessary to return to The Pilgrim's Progress to say
that that book does a great deal more than this; it is the matchless and inimitable crystallisation into imaginative art of the whole
system of Puritan Protestantism.
The finest professed prose writer of the last forty years of the
century is confessedly Sir William Temple (I628-I699), who has
nevertheless left no single book which the general reader knows
even by name. For all that has been written about him he is still
"' one of those men whom the world has agreed to praise highly
without knowing much" of their claims to reputation. He was
the most supple diplomatist of his time, he cultivated a famous
orchard, he started the Phalaris controversy, and Swift was his
amanuensis; perhaps most reading men have never cared to know
much more about Sir William Temple than that. The writings of
Temple are inconsiderable in extent, and essentially miscellaneous.
When we have mentioned his essay on The Advancement of Trade
in Ireland (I673), which is sadly wanting in the larger elements of
political science, and his Observations upon the United Provinces
(I672), which show that he could describe what he had seen
tersely and picturesquely, his principal literary pretensions are
concentrated within one volume, the second of his Miscellanea
(1692), comprising four essays, " Of Ancient and Modern Learning," "Of the Gardens of Epicurus," "Of Heroic Virtue," and
"Of Poetry."   To form an estimate of the style of Temple it is
needless to go further.
Two short passages will give an idea of his quality. This is
how the essay " Of Poetry" opens:
" The two common shrines to which most men offer up the application of
their thoughts and their lives, are profit and pleasure; and by their devotions
to either of these, they are vulgarly distinguished into two sects, and called
either busy or idle men.
"Whether these terms differ in meaning, or only in sound, I know very
well may be disputed, and with appearance enough, since the covetous man
takes perhaps as much pleasure in his gains as the voluptuous does in his
luxury, and would not pursue his business, unless he were pleased with it, nor
would care for the increase of his fortunes, unless he thereby proposed that of




III


TEMPLE


87


his pleasures too, in one kind or other; so that pleasure may be said to be his
end, whether he will allow to find it in his pursuit or no."
It closes thus:
" I know very well that many, who pretend to be wise by the forms of
being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music as toys and trifles too
light for the use or entertainment of serious men: but whoever find themselves
wholly insensible to these charms, would, I think, do well to keep their own
counsel, for fear of reproaching their own temper, and bringing the goodness
of their natures, if not of their understandings, into question: it may be
thought at least an ill sign, if not an ill constitution, since some of the fathers
went so far, as to esteem the love of music a sign of predestination, as a thing
divine, and reserved for the felicities of heaven itself. While this world lasts,
I doubt not but the pleasure and requests of these two entertainments will do
so too; and happy those that content themselves with these, or any other so
easy and so innocent, and do not trouble the world, or other men, because they
cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts them!
" When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like
a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it
quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over."
The essays "Of Gardens" and "Of Poetry" are pleasanter
than their companions, because less patronising. It is the fault
of Temple's discourses that they are too much like popular
lectures by a very ignorant man who presumes upon his genteel
appearance and elegant delivery.      There are no productions
which must be read more exclusively for their manner and not
for their matter.  Temple tells us nothing very agreeably, and
then, while we are applauding, he dares to assert that there is no
more for us to know. He was not a scholar, nor a critic, nor a
geographer, nor even a botanist, and yet scholarship, criticism,
geography, and botany are the themes of his four principal essays.
His discourse on learning, by a man who could not construe a
page of Greek, set Bentley lashing his sides, and woke a din in
which the clear falsetto of Temple was entirely drowned.
Nevertheless, Temple is eminently readable.    We forgive his
parental condescension, his patent ignorance, in the delight and
surprise of his modern tone.  When he babbles of his oranges and
his figs, and says he must leave the flowers to the ladies; when he




88


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CIHAP.


talks of a friend of his who has a gamekeeper who is a Rosicrucian,
and a laundress who is firm in the philosophy of Epicurus; when
he laughs and sparkles over his runic nonsense and his Phalaris
forgeries like some fine blue-stocking in a Congreve comedy-we
feel that English prose has come to the birth, and that here is a
man at last who can write about Nothing like a gentleman. If
we must not say that Addison'was taught by Temple, at least it
was Temple who taught the public to be ready for Addison. All
this absence of peculiarity, these modern felicities, these lucid
sentences without parenthesis, form a shadow of the eighteenth
century thrown before, and make the contemporary Clarendons
and Charletons seem like old-fashioned squires who have come
into the pump-room in boots. We must laugh, with Macaulay,
at the empty pretension of what Temple imparts; but when the
laugh is over, we should examine his obsolete essays with care
to discover what charm of novelty it was, what intuition of the
future, what study of the French, that gave his style so accomplished an individuality; and we shall probably come to the
conclusion that the tradition of the last century did not err very
wildly in considering him the first prose-writer of his age.
Of four theologians who now meet us in our brief survey,
but little can be said within such limits as ours. George Fox
(I624-I690), the great Quaker, put a strange impressiveness into
his Journal (I694). The folios of John Flavel (I627-I691) have
readers still among the poor.  Isaac Barrow (I630-I677) and
John Tillotson (I630-I694) were divines of far higher pretensions.
The latter began his literary career rather unfortunately in I664,
with a trimming sermon in the preface of which he called
the venerable Hobbes "a dabbler," yet Tillotson was not an
illiberal man. In 1689 his treatise Against the Eternity of Hell
Torments went near to break up his primrose path to the primacy.
He grew more genial ever as he rose, and his prelatical apron
fluttered so high that at last its fringes covered, so his enemies
declared, the Socinians themselves.  He was so popular when
he died that his widow received 2500 guineas, the largest sum




III


HALIFAX


89


then ever yet paid for an English book, for the copyright of
his manuscript sermons. Dryden thought highly of Tillotson's
style, and a compliment of his has given the archbishop far too
exalted a place in our literary handbooks. Barrow, whose works
Tillotson collected and edited, has more vigour and solidity, and
was an admirably logical controversialist. Tillotson has the ease
of a fluent improvisator; Barrow's sentences fall on the ear with the
weight of hammered thought and carefully modulated expression.
Few will turn to the works of either of them again for literary
pleasure or improvement, and it would only be affectation to treat
them as living forces in literature.  Barrow (of whom his first
biographer quaintly says, that "though he obtained the Mastership
of Trinity College, yet that had no bad influence on his morals")
was the most eccentric of divines. He used to preach for so long
a time, that the organ had to strike up to blow him down, and
his dress was so uncouth that when he appeared in a strange
pulpit, half the congregation would fly the church.  He was,
however, esteemed to be easily the deepest and widest scholar
of his time.
An admirable writer who had no thought of securing distinction in the world of letters was George Savile, Marquis of Halifax
(I630-I695). He was a politician who had a difficult path to pursue
across an ocean of battling factions, and who employed his literary
skill, usually anonymously, to trim the boat as well as he might.
He has been called the founder of the political pamphlet, but
this title should perhaps, in justice, be claimed for Sir Roger
L'Estrange (I616-I704). Halifax is as simple and as vernacular
as Temple, and he has almost as much grace. His " Character
of a Trimmer" is the best known of his essays, and is a piece of
brilliant writing which can never become obsolete. Another and
more fantastic example of the wit of Halifax is his "Anatomy of
an Equivalent." From an admirably sprightly and judicious chain
of little essays in Advice to a Daujghter, we find, under the head
of "Diversions," this excellent example of the manner of the
Marquis:




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CHAP.


" Some ladies are bespoken for merry meetings, as Bessus was for duels.
They are engaged in a circle of idleness, where they turn round for the whole
year, without the interruption of a serious hour. They all know the players'
names, and are intimately acquainted with all the booths in Bartholomew Fair.
No soldier is more obedient to the sound of his captain's trumpet, than they
are to that which summoneth them to a puppet play or a Monster. The spring
that bringeth out flies, and fools, maketh them inhabitants in Hyde Park; in
the winter they are an incumbrance to the play house, and the ballast of the
drawing room. The streets all this while are so weary of these daily faces,
that men's eyes are overlaid with them. The sight is glutted with fine things,
as the stomach with sweet ones; and when a fair lady will give too much of
herself to the world, she groweth luscious, and oppresses instead of pleasing.
The Jolly Ladies do so continually seek diversion, that in a little time they
grow into a jest, yet are unwilling to remember, that if they were seldomer
seen, they would not be so often laughed at. Besides, they make themselves
cheap, than which there cannot be an unkinder word bestowed upon your sex.
" To play sometimes, to entertain company, or to divert yourself, is not
to be disallowed; but to do it so often as to be called a gamester, is to be
avoided, next to the things that are most criminal. It hath consequences of
several kinds not to be endured; it will engage you into a habit of idleness and
ill hours, draw you into ill-mixed company, make you neglect your civilities
abroad, and your business at home, and impose into your acquaintance such
as will do you no credit."
A modern reprint of the political tracts of Halifax would be
welcome, and would do much to give popularity to one who is
at present little but a name to all except professional students
of history.
In prose as in other branches of literature, however, the
greatest name throughout the last forty years of the century is that
of John Dryden. If he is never quite so exquisite as Temple, or
even perhaps as Evelyn, at their best, it is that he had much
more to say than they have, and less need to study his manner
of saying it.  He is the manliest, the most straightforward, the
most authoritative prose-writer of the age, and, in his long career
of more than thirty years, he surveyed and laid out the whole
estate of modern    English prose.     He was not born with a
style.  His speech came to him      slowly, laboriously, and it was
by slow degrees that he threw off the cumbersome robes of his forerunners. Mr. Matthew Arnold has said that " the needful qualities




III


DRYDEN'S PROSE


9I


for a fit prose are regularity, uniformity, precision, balance "; these
are the very qualities which we meet with in Dryden, and to a
like extent in no one before him, when once we have proceeded
far enough in his career. It is easy, moreover, to trace his progress, for his prose-works are mainly prefixed or appended to his
better known poetical or dramatic productions, and thus more
exactly dated than the miscellanies of most of his contemporaries.
The earliest of Dryden's prose treatises is the preface to the
Rival-Ladies (1664), a short and not very graceful defence of the
use of dramatic rhyme, containing, among other things, a valuable
statement of the component parts of the new school of English
poetry. An essay on the Historical Poem introduces Ann/s Mirabilis (i667), but for many years the critical prefaces of Dryden
were affixed only to his plays, of which but few are unprovided in
this way. The best known of all his critical writings, the admirable Essay on Dramatic Poetry, was an exception, being separately
published in 1667. It is a comparison between French classical
drama and the old romantic drama of England, carried on in dialogue, under feigned names, by Sedley, Howard, Dorset, and the
author.  Dryden, whose talents had developed but slowly, was
now, at thirty-five, just attaining his intellectual manhood. We
see him, in this famous piece, not yet entirely at his ease in the
construction of his sentences and far less equipped in knowledge
and taste than he afterwards became, but already a great force in
prose. Such criticism was an absolute novelty in English. The
Essay was attacked, and to the second, or i668, edition of The
Indian Eilperor he contributed a "Defence," which is really a
supplement to the independent work and should be read with it.
In I671, in a preface longer than usual, that to An Evcning's
Love, he defended his own practice in comedy, and we feel his
hand to be now much lighter, his touch in controversy surer and
sharper. The "Essay on Heroic Plays," prefixed to the Conquest
bf Granada (1672), is one of the few writings of the period which
we may sincerely wish had been longer; the poet fears he has
been tedious in his apology for his strange experiment, but the




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CHlAP.


fact is that he has been tantalisingly brief; at the close of the same
play he gives us, however, a "Defence of the Epilogue," in which
he is not a little tart in analysing the irregularities of the Elizabethans. Shakespeare himself does not come off unscathed:
" Shakespeare, who many times has written better than any poet, in any
language, is yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the subject, that he writes in many places, below-the
dullest writer of ours, or of any precedent age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such heights of thought to so low expressions, as he often
does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears, almost everywhere, two
faces: and you have scarce began to admire the one, ere you despise the
other. Neither is the luxuriance of Fletcher (which his friends have taxed in
him), a less fault than the carelessness of Shakespeare.  He does not well
always, and, when he does, he is a true Englishman; he knows not when to
give over.  If he wakes in one scene he commonly slumbers in another:
and if he pleases you in the first three acts, he is frequently so tired with his
labour, that he goes heavily in the fourth, and sinks under his burden in the
fifth.
"For Ben Jonson, the most judicious of poets, he always writes properly; and as the character required: and I will not contest farther with my
friends who call that wit. It being very certain, that even folly itself, well
represented, is wit in a larger signification: and that there is fancy, as well as
judgment in it; though not so much or noble: because all poetry being imitation, that of folly is a lower exercise of fancy, though perhaps as difficult as
the other; for 'tis a kind of looking downward in the poet; and representing that part of mankind which is below him. In these low characters of
vice and folly, lay the excellence of that inimitable writer; who, when at any
time, he aimed at wit, in the stricter sense, that is sharpness of conceit, was
forced either to borrow from the ancients, as, to my knowledge, he did very
much from Plautus: or, when he trusted himself alone, often fell into meanness of expression."
The Asszination (I673) possesses a long dedication to Sedley, in
the noblest spirit of panegyric, a little masterpiece in this obsolete
species of writing.  Not to linger too tediously over these short
essays, we must pass by the "Apology for Poetic License" (The
StateofInnocence, 1674), the Montaigne-like dedication to AurengZebe ( 676), and even the celebrated preface to A/llfor Loze (I 678),
in which Dryden rebels against those classical punctilios which he
had so long held himself bound to obey. We must note, however,




III


DRYDEN'S PROSEI


93


that by this time Dryden is master of every artifice of a sound
prose style.
Dryden reached the zenith of his powers as a prose-writer a
little after his supremacy as a poet was finally acknowledged. He
quitted the peaceful fields of literary criticism in two pamphlets of
surpassing vigour, the "Epistle to the Whigs" (prefixed to /The
Afedal), 1682, and The Vindication of the Duke of Guise (1683). Of
these the first displays him as having followed Halifax into political pamphleteering, the latter is sheer polemic. In the first occurs
that happy taunt, " If God has not blessed you with the talent of
rhyming, make use of my poor stock, and welcome; let your
verses run upon my feet; and for the utmost refuge of notorious
blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own
lines upon me, and in utter despair of your own satire, make me
satirise myself."  The second contains the famous pious wish
that Shadwell, being "only born for drinking, would let both
poetry and prose alone."  The Vindication was published separately, and was more like a book than any prose-writing which
Dryden had hitherto produced.  In I684 he translated Louis
Maimbourg's laborious History of the League, and added a postscript of fifty pages of his own. He wrote or translated other
bulky works of a semi-historical, semi-controversial character, and
produced, almost to the day of his death, miscellaneous writings
far too numerous to be here named in detail. Last, but not
least, among them comes the noble preface to the Fables of I700.
It is almost entirely as a critic that Dryden has left his mark
upon English prose.  His brief prefaces introduced into our
literature an element which it had lacked before, although Hobbes
had made one or two efforts in the same direction. Dryden is
the earliest of our literary critics, and where his knowledge is not
defective he remains still one of the most sympathetic. He owed
much to the French in the manner of his analysis, and something
in particular to Corneille, who had prefixed prose "examens " to
his plays.  But Dryden is far more systematic than the French
critics of his day, and his gradual revolt against Gallic taste gave




94


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CHAP.


him a strength and independence of judgment such as were not
to be found in Paris. His delivery is very genial and agreeable,
and he has nothing of the unpleasant dictatorial manner of
Temple, besides having much more thorough mastery over his
subject. He is apparently inconsistent, because of his candour,
and because his intellect and taste were developing all through
his long career.  Sir Walter Scott, who praised Dryden so
judiciously, was obliged to lament that "his studies were partial,
temporary, and irregular," and this is true. Erudition, in the pedantic sense, was never his forte, but his praise is that he treated
literature as a living plant, with a past and a future, not as a mere
desert of dead logs.  He released us on the one hand from
ignorance and indifferentism, and on the other hand from an
empirical philosophy of letters. He is not only a fine dramatist
and a very lofty poet, but a great pioneer in prose criticism also.
At the close of the century there appeared a philosopher who
was destined to revolutionise the entire world of thought, and to
exercise on the ensuing age an absolutely tyrannous influence.
With no other aid than what Descartes could give him, Locke
thrust aside the whole burden of metaphysical speculation which
had come down to him, and, with a pure enthusiasm for truth,
examined anew every branch of speculation, every foundation of
belief. He was not so much desirous to build up a new structure
of theory, as to remove all obstacles from about his feet, and to
settle his ideas upon a solid basis of fact.  He swept away a
whole world of the philosophy of the previous age; but the theory
which he mainly attacked, or most prominently, was that of the
existence of innate ideas, as in itself the source of all philosophic
error. That he was not wholly consistent in his attack, or that
he left work for his successors, and particularly for Hume to do,
does not affect Locke's position as a sceptical and reconstructive
genius of the very highest order in philosophy, and as a thinker
whose name was paramount through Europe for light and liberty
until the full development of German thought a century later.
Yet although John Iocke (1632-1704) is so very imposing




TII


LOCKE


95


a figure in the history of intelligence, he holds but little
place in that of pure literature.  He has been called "perhaps the greatest, but certainly the most characteristic, of
English philosophers"; it might be added, the most innocent
of style. He was a resident lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford,
until in i666 he formed the friendship of Shaftesbury (then
Lord Ashley), with whom he presently began to reside.  He
studied medicine under Sydenham (I624-i689), and was introduced
to public business by Shaftesbury as his secretary. When his patron
fell, in 1673, the post of secretary to the Council of Trade was
secured for Locke. His fortunes rose and subsided with those of
Shaftesbury, and in 1684 he was ejected from his college. He
resided long in Holland, writing his famous Essay at Utrecht.
Early in I690, at an advanced age, he came forward on the first
important occasion as an author with this Essay on the HNuman
Understanding. The Tzco Treatises of Government belong to the
same year, and so does a strictly anonymous Second Letter concerning Toleration. The First Letter, which was in Latin, had appeared
at Gouda, in Holland, in 1689. All the best known and most
highly-valued of Locke's writings, therefore, were given to the
public within a single twelvemonth, and that when he was nearly
sixty years of age. His Thoughts concerning zEducation appeared
in 1693, and his theological treatises a little later.  His last
years, until his health obliged him to retire from business, were
largely absorbed by political and official occupations. He retired
from the Board of Trade in 1700, and four years later passed
peacefully away.
The great Essay, like so many other immortal works, produced
but little effect at first. It annoyed more than it convinced, and
four years passed before a second edition was called for. It
gradually grew in esteem, until in the second quarter of the
eighteenth century it secured for its author the highest encomiums
possible, and in the person of Bishop Berkeley a very illustrious
disciple. It is curious to note that of these two philosophers, so
nearly allied in intellectual matters, the earlier was the least and




96


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CHAP.


the later perhaps the most exquisite writer of English in his
generation. As is well known, Locke's central idea is that all our
knowledge is derived from experience. His biographer, Professor
Fowler, has defined Locke as "the first of modern writers to
attempt at once an independent and a complete treatment of the
phenomena of the human mind, of their mutual relations, of their
causes and limits."   Setting apart the extraordinary merits of
Locke's contributions to thought, as a mere writer he may be said
to exhibit the prose of the Restoration in its most humdrum form.
We have now progressed too far into the new period to expect to
find the faults of the old lumbering and stately prose, nor are
these in the slightest degree the faults of Locke. But his style is
prolix, dull, and without elevation; he expresses himself with
perfect clearness indeed, but without variety or charm of any
kind. He seems to have a contempt for all the arts of literature,
and passes on from sentence to sentence, like a man talking aloud
in his study, and intent only on making the matter in hand
perfectly clear to himself. It is only proper to say that this is not
the universal view, and that it is usual to speak of the homespun
style of Locke as "forcible," "incisive," and even "ingenious."
On this matter the reader must be left to form his own opinion
upon personal study, always remembering that the question is one
not of substance but exclusively of form.   The following passage, which has been selected as a favourable example of Locke's
manner, is taken from    the Third ZLe/er of 7Toeration, issued
in I692:
"Common sense has satisfied all mankind, that it is above their reach to
determine what things, in their own nature indifferent, were fit to be made use
of in religion, and would be acceptable to the superior beings in their worship,
and therefore they have everywhere thought it necessary to derive that knowledge from the immediate will and dictates of the gods themselves, and have
taught that their forms of religion and outward modes of worship were
founded upon relevation: nobody daring to do so absurd and insolent a thing,
as to take upon him to presume with himself, or to prescribe to others by his
own authority, which should in these indifferent and mean things be worthy of
the Deity, and make an acceptable part of his worship. Indeed they all agreed
in the duties of natural religion, and we find them by common consent




III


PEPYS


owning that piety and virtue, clean hands, and a pure heart not polluted with
the breaches of the law of nature, was the best worship of the gods. Reason
discovered to them that a good life was the most acceptable thing to the
Deity; this the common light of nature put past doubt. But for their ceremonies and outward performances, for them they appeal always to a rule
received from the immediate direction of the superior powers themselves,
where they made use of, and had need of revelation."
A certain Mr. Samuel Pepys (I633-I703), who was clerk to the
Navy and finally secretary to the Admiralty during the last years
of the century, left his library to Magdalen College, Cambridge,
where it is preserved intact in a handsome building of the age of
Queen Anne.     Pepys was nearly forgotten, when in 1825 Lord
Braybrooke gave to the world a copious diary, kept from I66o to
I669, nine years and a half, which he had found in shorthand in
the Bibliotheca Pepysiana, and had deciphered.     In 1879 Mr.
Mynors Bright went over the work again, correcting and enlarging
the transcript. Lord Braybrooke's task revealed a new author to
English readers.  This diary, in which Pepys wrote down his
experiences, night by night, with extreme artlessness, is unrivalled
as a storehouse of gossip and character-painting. When it begins,
the author is still young, and freshly come to town to try his
fortunes; before it closes the king has greeted him as "another
Cicero."  It is scarcely literature-that is to say, there is neither
art nor effort at construction; but Pepys has extraordinary picturesqueness and great capacity in describing what he has seen
in the best and briefest words. Evelyn's diary has a coldness, a
dignity, in its ease, that suggest that he conceived that the world
might force it into publication.   Pepys believed himself absolutely safe behind the veil of his cipher, and he made no effort
to paint the lily. How Pepys spent the afternoon and evening
of November 5, i666, may be taken as a typical instance of his
precise and garrulous method:
"After dinner and this discourse I took coach, and at the same time find
my Lord Hinchingbroke and Mr. John Crew and the Doctor going out to
see the ruins of the city; so I took the Doctor into my hackney coach (and
he is a very fine sober gentleman), and so through the city. But, Lord 


III


H




98


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


what pretty and sober observations he made of the city and its desolation;
till anon we came to my house, and there I took them upon Tower Iill to
show them what houses were pulled down there since the fire; and then to
my house, where I treated them with good wine of several sorts, and they
took it mighty respectfully, and a fine company of gentlemen they are; but
above all I was glad to see my Lord Hinchingbroke drink no wine at all.
Here I got them to appoint Wednesday come se'n-night to dine here at my
house, and so we broke up and all took coach again, and I carried the Doctor
to Chancery Lane, and thence I to White Hall, where I staid walking up and
down till night, and then got almost into the play-house, having much mind to
go and see the play at Court this night; but fearing how I should get home,
because of the bonfires and the lateness of the night to get a coach, I did not
stay; but having this evening seen my Lady Jemimah, who is come to town,
and looks very well and fat, and heard how Mr. John Pickering is to be
married this week, and to a fortune with ~5000, and seen a rich necklace of
pearl and two pendants of diamonds, which Sir G. Carteret hath presented
her with since her coming to town, I home by coach, but met not one bonfire
through the whole town in going round by the wall, which is strange, and
speaks the melancholy disposition of the city at present, while never more was
said of, and feared of, and done against the Papists than just at this time.
Home, and there find my wife and her people at cards, and I to my chamber,
and there late, and so to supper and to bed."
A memoir so unaffected, drawn up in an age so brutal, might
have proved very offensive, but Pepys, though full of human
frailty, was a wholesome soul, and undebased by any touch of
cynicism. To the humorist and to the antiquarian his faithful
Dutch picture of life under Charles II. is invaluable. Pepys was
an able administrator in the civil service, and a grave collector of
prints, books, maps, and music.      In his diary he reveals an
emotional side to his character which the world can hardly have
suspected.
What we mainly miss in the writers of the Restoration is the
higher imaginative quality. We find grace, urbanity, distinction,
but we do not find sublimity. An almost unique interest, therefore, attaches to a kind- of spiritual or astronomical romance, in
which the most glowing fancies are wedded to language of exceptional pomp and splendour.      This is The Sacred Theory of
the Earth, published (in Latin in I680, in English in 1684) by




III


THOMAS BURNET


99


Dr. Thomas Burnet (1635-I715), a Yorkshire divine, who had
been brought up under Tillotson at Cambridge, where he spent
the greater part of his life until, at the age of fifty, he was elected
headmaster of the Charterhouse.   It seems a pity that Burnet
wrote no more books in his native language, for his gift of sonorous and balanced phrase was very remarkable.  He was attacked
for the audacity of his speculation, and his last years were disturbed
by charges of scepticism, but he lived just long enough to enjoy
Addison's enthusiastic praise of The Theory in No. 146 of the
Spectator.  As early as I699 Addison had celebrated The Sacred
Theory in a Latin ode.  The plan of Burnet's famous volume,which he tells us was suggested to him during a journey across
"those wild, vast, and undigested heaps of stones and earth," the
Alps,-is an attempt, in all ignorance of geology, to account for
the confused horror of the external face of nature. He thinks
that the world was created smooth, but suffered from successive
cataclysms. His book originally closed with a description of that
universal conflagration which is eventually to melt the planet
again into polished form, but to this he added a fourth part,
describing the Millenium.  The imagination of Burnet is often
thoroughly Miltonic, and he writes like one possessed with glorious and awful vision. To find a parallel in prose to the more
splendid passages of his curious treatise we have to descend to
De Quincey. The pages in the third book, which Addison aptly
describes as "a funeral oration over this globe," have a singularly
majestic cadence, and we may point to Burnet as the founder of
that peculiar magniloquence and amplitude of phrase which
marked the upper stratum of eighteenth-century prose, and came
to their height in the style of Burke:
"The countenance of the heavens will be dark and gloomy; and a veil drawn
over the face of the sun. The earth in a disposition everywhere to break into
open flames. The tops of the mountains smoking; the rivers dry, earthquakes in several places, the sea sunk and retired into its deepest channel,
and roaring, as against some mighty storm. These things will make the day
dead and melancholy; but the night-scenes will have more of horror in them,
when the blazing stars appear, like so many Furies, with their lighted torches,




I00


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


threatening to set all on fire. For I do not doubt but the comets will bear a
part in this tragedy, and have something extraordinary in them, at that time;
either as to number, or bigness, or nearness to the earth. Besides, the air
will be full of flaming meteors, of unusual forms and magnitudes; balls of fire
rolling in the sky, and pointed lightnings darted against the earth; mixed with
claps of thunder, and unusual noises from the clouds. The moon and the
stars will be confused and irregular, both in their light and motions; as if the
whole frame of the heavens was out of order, and all the laws of Nature were
broken or expired."
Compared with the sonorous richness of Thomas Burnet, the
ease and grace of Temple seem frivolous, but of course each is
admirable in its own way.   The Thleory is, however, to be noted as
the sole book of the last forty years of the century which displays
in prose the loftier qualities of imagination.
It is generally stated of Robert South (I633-17I6) that he is
the wittiest of English divines. Steele, writing of him at his death,
exclaimed: " Happy genius, he is the better man for being a wit!"
To the modern reader the acrimony and petulance of the archTory, the man who sat last on the extreme right of the clerical
party, are not wholly pleasing, even now that they are harmless,
yet it is easy to see how effective South's vivacity must have been.
His style is voluble and nervous; he runs while he talks, and
without pausing he snatches, now from one side and now from
the other, missiles, ornaments, objects of every description, all of
which find their proper places in his motley discourse. He never
hesitates to invite virulence, buffoonery, or even downright hateful
falsehood to adorn his attacks upon a brother divine, and, as Stillingfleet said, waits in figurative lanes and argumentative narrow passages ready to bespatter his opponents with dirt amid fits of roguish
laughter.   There is something impish about Dr. South.        As a
favourable example of his serious manner, the following extract
from one of his later sermons may be read with pleasure:
" It is a sad and a poor condition, when there is provision made only for
being, not for comfort; for life, not for refreshment. And therefore in the
spiritual, as well as in the natural life, there are sublimer fruitions, as well as
bare sustenance. For such is the nature of man, that it requires lucid intervals;
and the vigour of the mind would flag and decay, should it always jog on at




III


SPRAT


PIO


the rate of a common enjoyment, without being sometimes quickened and
exalted with the vicissitude of some more refined pleasures.... For as in the
food that we take into our bodies, it is but very little that passes into nutriment, and so is converted into our substance; so in the greatest affluence of
plenty, it is not the mass of the enjoyment, but the elixir or spirit that is
derived through it, that gives the comfort."
South's principal antagonists, Dr. Edward Stillingfleet (I635 -I699) and Dr. William Sherlock (1641-17C7), were men of greater
sedateness, but less ability.  Stillingfleet ended as Bishop of
Worcester; he was a very learned man, but haughty and quarrelsome in disposition. He disputed angrily, not with other divines
only, but with Dryden and with Locke; his miscellaneous theological writings, collected in 17o1, are exceedingly numerous, and
some of them display a real genius for effective polemic. Stillingfleet was so charming in face and figure that he was called " the
beauty of holiness."  Sherlock, who was Dean of St. Paul's for
sixteen years, was, like Stillingfleet, an untiring opponent of the
nonconformists.  Of his most popular book, his Pra'ctical Treatise on Deal/t, no less than thirty editions were called for, and
Prior expressed the contemporary feeling when he called it "a
nation's food."  Addison also yielded conspicuous praise to
Sherlock, who is nevertheless a writer of no great importance.
Macaulay sought to revive the reputation of Thomas Sprat
(I635-1713), Bishop of Rochester, the friend and editor of Cowley.
In early life Sprat published Pindaric odes of a very distressing
nature.  He rose rapidly in church preferment after the Restoration, but never lost his interest in literature and science.  In I667
appeared his Hislory of tle Royal Society.  In i668 he published
Cowley's life, an admirable piece of stately biography, and he is
said to have added some touches to The Rehearsal.       Sprat's
theological writings are few and insignificant, and it is hard not
to allow that his merits as a prose-writer have been praised with
some exaggeration. He is neat, clear, and often dignified, but the
epithets " splendid " and "shining" can scarcely be granted to his
style without demur.




102


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP.


Gilbert Burnet (1643-I715), Bishop of Salisbury, who is by
no means to be confounded with the author of The Theory,
is another writer whose fame has considerably transcended his
merits. G. Burnet, however, for better or for worse, has been
a good deal more talked about than Sprat, and must be less
briefly dismissed.  He was a man born with a genius for success. At the age of twenty-nine he had been offered, and had
refused, a choice of four bishoprics.  In I679 he made a
great reputation by the first volume of his History of the Reformation, still in some sort a standard work.  Next year he made
capital out of the repentant deathbed of the wicked Earl of
Rochester by describing the scene in a pamphlet which enjoyed
an astounding popularity. Again a mitre was pressed upon the
young divine, but he knew how to wait. Meanwhile he was the
most admired preacher in England, and would belabour the pulpit
for two whole hours at a time. Burnet, who did not lack courage,
took Charles II. to task for his public and private offences, and
ivas discharged from  his offices.  He went to Holland and
schemed for the House of Orange, returning in I688 as William
III.'s confidential chaplain. He was promptly made Bishop of
Salisbury, and gave the rest of his life to literature. His famous
Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles dates from 1699, and in I706
he collected his sermons and pamphlets into three thick volumes.
In 1724-I734 his best-known work, The History of My Own Times,
was posthumously issued. This credulous and violent collection
of memoirs brings the reader down to I7I3. Burnet had been an
actor in too many of the political dramas of his time not to possess
information which the student of history would be sorry to miss.
His gossip is direct and convincing, and he has the gift of bringing
a scene plainly before our eyes. Research has made it increasingly
certain that he was a conscientious observer, and that his attitude,
even in describing his enemies, was accurate and candid. But
no one ought to say that Gilbert Burnet is a good writer. He is
dry, flat, and particular in a way which becomes common in the
eighteenth century, but which had not characterised the writers




III


BENTLEY


io3


we have hitherto mentioned. In Burnet, for the first time, we
meet with a writer from whose speech the last glimmering reflection of the old enthusiastic style has disappeared. But it is not
to be denied that he is wonderfully modern, or that his best
character-pieces read very much like leaders in the newspapers of
to-day. He is described as "a son of Anak," full of vigour and
sap, "black-brow'd and bluff, like Homer's Jupiter."
It will perhaps have been observed that, with the solitary
exception of Gilbert Burnet, every one of the authors hitherto
dealt with in this chapter was of mature age at the date of the
Restoration. Between 1645 and 1675 there was opportunity for
plenty of prose-writers to be born, whose work should be a fresh
ornament to the seventeenth century.  But by a very strange
accident these thirty years seemed to add singularly little to
prose literature. Defoe, Arbuthnot, Swift, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, Steele, and Addison were all born during that period, and
all refrained from publishing prose of any importance until the
beginning of the next century. Neither Lewis Atterbury (I656 -1731) nor his more famous brother Francis., Bishop of Rochester
(r662-I73I), each of whom printed sermons, claims more
than a bare mention here. Only one new prose-writer of high
distinction belongs to the last decade of the seventeenth century,
namely, Richard Bentley (I662-I742), the famous Master of
Trinity. He was a very great scholar, a man of eminent good
sense and vigorous intellectual character, and a personality which
set its stamp upon the age.   His youth was passed as the
domestic tutor of Stillingfleet's son, and his prodigious acquirements were obtained in the Dean's excellent library.  When
Stillingfleet was made a bishop, Bentley proceeded to Oxford, and
there published, in I691, his Letter to Dr. /ill, in Latin, a daring
essay in destructive criticism. In I692 he brought out his Boyle
Lectures, and through them obtained the friendship and correspondence of Newton.   Next year he was appointed King's
Librarian. He was now already a famous scholar, on terms of
familiar intimacy with such men as Evelyn, Locke, and Sir




I04


PROSE AFTER THE RESTORATION


CHAP. III


Christopher Wren, too famous, indeed, not to excite the petulance
of mediocrity.  There was much controversy regarding the socalled letters of Phalaris, which Temple had praised in I692 and
Charles Boyle had edited in 1695. Bentley, who knew that he
could prove these letters to be spurious, was led into contemptuous
controversy about them, and the learned world rang with a very
pretty quarrel. Bentley's first essay appeared in I697, and the
rapid exchange of paper bullets went on until i699. Atterbury,
Temple, Garth, Aldrich (even Swift, a little out of date), a host of
wits and scholars, were on the one side, and Bentley alone on the
other. Yet Bentley conquered all along the line of his foes; nor
since 1699 has Phalaris the letter-writer existed. In April 1699
Bentley was made Master of Trinity, and the rest of his careerhis insolent struggle for college supremacy, his irregular progress
as a scholar, his final victory and repose-belong to the following
century. He wrote very little more in English prose, and we are
not here concerned to pursue his fascinating adventures any
further. The vernacular style of Bentley is rough-hewn, colloquial, shot through with fiery threads of humour, the ideal style
for confident and angry polemic. His position as a scholar is
summed up in Professor Jebb's statement that his is " the last
name of first-rate magnitude which occurs above the point at
which Greek and Latin studies begin to diverge."   Bishop
Stillingfleet is reported to have said that Bentley wanted only
modesty to be the most remarkable person in Europe; he was
certainly, in the absence of modesty, the most considerable
English critic of his time.




CHAPTER IV


POPE
AT the head of a list of " departed relations and friends " which
Pope kept, he wrote, "1700 Maji primo obit, semper venerandus,
poetarum princeps, Joannes Dryden," although he only saw that
poet once, and never knew him. It was the literary relationship
that he recognised. King John was dead,-long live King Alexander.  Yet between the death of Dryden and the first public
appearance of Pope there came an interregnum of nine years, during which any man who was strong enough might have seized the
sceptre. But the only pretender was Addison, whose absence of
poetic genius is plainly proved by the fact that though Dryden
had been ready to recognise him, and though Pope was still a
child, he failed, without any lack of will on his own part, to strike
a commanding figure on the empty stage. If Addison had never
come under the influence of Swift and Steele, he would in all
probability never have discovered his true power.  He would
have gone on writing political copies of verses and academic
memoirs on medals, and would have held a very inconspicuous
place in the history of literature.  At thirty-five Addison had
written most of his existing poetry, and was yet, properly speaking,
undistinguished.
Joseph Addison (I672-1719) was the son of a Dean of Lichfield, who had written two good books on Morocco.  He was
educated at the Charterhouse, where he found Steele, and at




Io6


POPE


CHAP.


Queen's College, Oxford, whence he proceeded to Magdalen and
became a fellow. He stayed at Oxford until 1699, cultivating
polite literature in a dilettante way. In 1693 Addison came forward with a fluent address To Mr. Dryden, and began, under
the supervision of that poet, to join the band of young men
who were placing the Latin classics in the hands of those who
read none but English verse. In April 1694 he produced a brief
Account of the Greatest English Poets, in verse; the poets were
Chaucer and Spenser, at whom he sneered, and Cowley, Milton,
Waller, Dryden, and Congreve, whom he praised. In this brief
copy of verses there is room for a compliment to " godlike
Nassau," which showed the author's Whig bias. In I695 Addison published a poem To His Majesty [William III.], in a strain
of grovelling eulogy.  He describes noble Nassau as
" Reeking in blood, and smeared with dust and sweat,
Whilst angry gods conspire to make him great."
Meanwhile Addison had been producing a series of very clever
mock heroic Latin poems, and a serious one on the Peace of Ryswick. These he published at Oxford in I699, and so closed his
academic career with great applause. Montague, the ideal patron,
whose encouragement was to do so much for letters, secured
Addison a pension and sent him abroad. In I70I he wrote to
Montague, now Lord Halifax, a Letter fromnz  tay, which Mr.
Courthope thinks the best of Addison's poems. It is very much
in the manner of Waller. He was then writing his cold tragedy
of Cato, and in I704 he celebrated Marlborough's victory at Blenheim in The Canmpazn, "a gazette in poetry," as Warton called
it; after this he wrote but little verse, except the graceful opera
of Rosamund in 1706. Addison was totally without lyric gift.
He never excelled except in the heroic couplet. As to his versification, it has been considered to mark the transition between
Dryden and Pope; but, in the opinion of the present writer, it
shows a curious absence of all influence from Dryden; and if it
marks any transition at all, it is that between Waller and Pope.




IV


POMFRET


Io7


There is no better example of this to be met with than the lines
on Marlborough's action at Blenheim::'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved,
That in the shock of charging hosts unmoved,
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examined all the dreadful scenes of war;
In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid,
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle how to rage.
So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm."
7The Calmpaign might have been written by Waller himself, who,
it may be remembered, invented the "gazette in rhyme."          In
short, the English verse of Addison is the poetry of a scholar and
a skilful man of letters, not of a poet.
An unfortunate young clergyman, John Pomfret (I667-I703),
possessed more simplicity and a truer poetic instinct than Addison.
His C/zoicc, in praise of a sequestered life, appeared in I699, and
was a mild herald of the return to nature-study.       It was very
popular, and was long admired with exaggeration.        Here is a
specimen of that "old sweet household dream" which Leigh
Hunt liked so well, and helped to resuscitate:
" If Heav'n the grateful liberty would give,
That I might choose my method how to live,
And all those hours propitious Fate should lend,
In blissful ease and satisfaction spend,
Near some fair town I'd have a private seat,
Built uniform; not little, nor too great:
Better, if on a rising ground it stood;
On this side fields, on that a neighb'ring wood.
It should, within, no other things contain,
But what were useful, necessary, plain:
Methinks 'tis nauseous, and I'd ne'er endure
The needless pomp of gaudy furniture.




Io8


POPE


CHAP.


A little garden, grateful to the eye,
And a cool rivulet run murm'ring by;
On whose delicious banks a stately row
Of shady limes, or sycamores should grow;
At th' end of which a silent study plac'd,
Should be with all the noblest authors grac'd."
Pomfret was poor, and when at last, in I703, he obtained a good
living, the Bishop of London refused him induction, on account
of an ambiguous expression in The Choice, and Pomfret died of
smallpox and chagrin. The only other name which has a right to
detain us in this sterile period is that of John Philips (I676-I708),
author, in I70I, of The Splendid S/hiling, an inimitable piece of
mock-heroic blank verse, in the style of Paradise Lost; this parody
still retains its humour. Philips revolted against the heroic couplet, and wrote only in Miltonic blank verse. In 1705 he published
a B/enheimn, and in 1708 a didactic poem on Ciider in two books.
This last work, otherwise more curious than inspired, is remarkable
as introducing exact detail of expression and touches of colour
which were outside the fashion of the day. When Philips saysLet every tree in every garden own
The Red-streak as supreme, whose pulpous fruit,
With gold irradiate, and vermillion, shines
Tempting, not fatal,"
he seems to prophesy of Thomson's Seasons. Philips was studying
to be a doctor when a life was cut short at thirty-three which
promised well for English literature.
The greatest artist in verse, and perhaps the greatest poet, with
whom we have to deal in the present volume, Alexander Pope
(1688-1744), was born in Lombard Street, May 21, i688, the
son of a Catholic linen-draper.  His father retired from business
immediately after the poet's birth to a place called Binfield, near
Wokingham. Pope, with features carved as if in ivory and with
the great melting eyes of an antelope, carried his brilliant head
on a deformed and sickly body. Partly for this reason, and partly
because of his position as a Catholic, the boy had no regular
education.  He was taught by the family priest, went to two




IV                        POPE                        o09
schools in short succession, and then returned home to stay at
the age of twelve. The alleys of Windsor Forest now became his
schoolroom. A neighbour, Sir William Trumbull, seems to have
introduced him in 1705 to the aged dramatist Wycherley. But
before this Pope had begun to write, and to devote himself heart
and soul to literature. In I703, or earlier, he was writing an epic
of Alcanlrr, four books of which survived until late in Pope's
life, and were at last reluctantly destroyed, so the poet told
Spence, by Atterbury's advice.  In the same year, at the age of
fifteen, he translated the first book of the T/ecbais of Statius.
This still exists, and it is an amazing production. Not merely
is it an extraordinary instance of perseverance to find so young
a boy persisting through an arduous task of nearly nine hundred
lines, but the verse is usually good, and often splendid. Unless
Pope touched it up very much in later years, this translation is a
prodigy. The paraphrases from Chaucer belong to 1704 or 1705,
those from Ovid to I707. By this time he was launched into
literary society.
Wycherley, with whose talent and career we are already familiar,
was a very odd companion for a home-bred youth. He was approaching seventy, worn out with a gay life, poor, and deserted
by the polite world. He was perhaps not so stupid as Pope's
biographers have fancied him to be, but quite as disreputable.
Out of the dregs of his brain he was still trying to squeeze some
oozings of poetic fancy, and had in his view the publication of
a " Miscellany" which should redeem his position.  He soon
understood how valuable the critical aid of such a brilliant youth
as Pope might be to him, but if he sent the boy his verses to
patch up it must not be forgotten that he gave Pope timely help
on his road to distinction. He introduced him to William Walsh
( 663-I 708), a Worcestershire squire, small poet and distinguished
critic, to whom Dryden had, as well as he could, bequeathed his
critical, as to Congreve his dramatic, sceptre. Walsh was a more
useful friend than Wycherley. He was one of the few people
whom Pope sincerely respected, and when Walsh died, too soon




IIO


POPE


CHAP.


to enjoy his young protege's earliest triumph, Pope embalmed
him as "criticus sagax, amicus et vir bonus."  He assures us that
Walsh exercised a potent influence on his versification, by telling
him that many English poets had been great, but as yet not one
correct, and urging this ambition of "correctness" upon him.
Pope's first friendship with Wycherley lasted until I7Io; there
was a quarrel of about a year's duration, and then the oddlyassorted pair were passably friendly again until Wycherley died in
r7I5.  But Pope, by that time, was the first poet in England,
nd not a little ashamed of the old broken playwright.
Pope's life, partly owing to the tricks he played with the
Wycherley correspondence, is not very clear in its details until
the beginning of his public literary career. His verses had been
handed by the friends already mentioned to such critics as George
Granville "the polite" (Lord Lansdowne, I667-1735), Congreve,
Halifax, Cromwell, and Garth.   They were felt to be marvellously well-turned, and each polite ingenious reader was glad to
contribute his crumb of praise, or offer his touch of complimentary suggestion.  In I704-so  Pope asserted-in I705 at latest,
he had written his Pastorals, four eclogues on the seasons, in the
manner of Virgil.  In 1706 Tonson offered to publish them, but
from some unknown cause they did not appear until May 1709,
when they closed Tonson's Sixth MViscellany, Ambrose Philips'
Pastorals opening it. It is strange that these bucolic performances
attracted the notice which they undoubtedly did attract.  Walsh
deliberately preferred them to Virgil's earlier eclogues. They are
singularly sweet in versification, it is true, but tame, artificial, and
without a single spark of Theocritean nature:
" Ye gentle Muses, leave your crystal spring,
Let Nymphs and Sylvans cypress garlands bring;
Ye weeping Loves, the stream with myrtles hide,
And break your bows, as when Adonis died;
And with your golden darts, now useless grown,
Inscribe a verse on this relenting stone:
'Let nature change, let heav'n and earth deplore,
Fair Daphne's dead, and love is now no more!'"




IV


" ESSAY ON CRITICISM "


I I I


By the Thames at Windsor white bulls are sacrificed, nymphs
bring turtles to the cave of Pan, and grateful clusters swell with
floods of wine, in spite of the poet's protestation that he would
be severely English and modern.  What was praiseworthy in the
Pastorals was the evidence of painstaking, the strenuous attention
to artistic effect, the determination to be what Walsh called
"correct."  It was not until four years later that the famous pastoral quarrel with Philips took place.
In the meantime Pope, once started, rose to eminence with
incredible rapidity.  In 1709 he wrote, and, after long polishing,
in 1711 published anonymously, his Essay on Criticism, a didactic
poem in something less than four hundred couplets. It opens
with a statement of the rules on which taste is founded, what the
limits of dependence on personal judgment are, and where nature
must be called in to correct them, and what reverence is due to
the rules laid down by the Ancients. It then proceeds to consider what the dangers are which beset the critical path, and to
touch on that idle dispute, then still so much in vogue, as to the
relative merits of the classical and the modern writer. The laws
are laid down by which the critic should regulate his behaviour;
he must be candid, modest, open, and well-bred.  Instances are
then given of critics who, unfortunately, lack these virtues, and
we are told that the man who judges should be free to bear
attack himself.
"But Appius reddens at each word you speak."  Appius was
intended for the bearish old critic John Dennis (I657-I734), who
had written a tragedy of 4Appius and Virginia.  This then is the
first, and a very characteristic instance of Pope's peculiar neatness in satiric allusion. We then pass to the history of criticism,
and the best critics are reviewed in order. In verse, for which
no praise can seem excessive, we are given a portrait of
Aristotle:
" Such once were Critics; such the happy few,
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.
The mighty Stagirite first left the shore,
Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;




112


POPE


CHAP.


He steer'd securely, and discover'd far,
Led by the light of the MAeonian Star.
Poets, a race long unconfin'd, and free,
Still fond and proud of savage liberty,
Receiv'd his laws; and stood convinc'd 'twas fit,
Who conquer'd Nature should preside o'er Wit."
This is perhaps the most beautiful passage in the poem, which
presently closes with a very fine eulogy of Walsh. There are
others scarcely less eloquent, and a number of lines whose
curious felicity has given them currency as commonplaces of
everyday talk. But there are intervals of flatness as well, and on
the whole this is the most uneven of Pope's important works.
As the production of a youth of twenty-one it is, in any case,
among the historic marvels of precocity.
In  I71I one    of Pope's Catholic friends, John    Caryll
(I645?-I736),-a nephew of the man of the same name who
was known as Lord Dartford in the court of the Pretender, and
as a small dramatist who had survived from the first Restoration
period,-interested Pope in a quarrel then proceeding between
Lord Petre and a Miss Arabella Fermor. The former had forcibly
cut off a lock of the hair of the latter, and the affair was taking
the proportions of a blood feud between the families.  Rowe's
recent translation of Boileau's Le Lutrin, perhaps, suggested to
Caryll a similar burlesque on this trivial subject, and he thought
Pope might write something which should make this absurd vendetta explode in laughter.  A happy reminiscence of Martial"Nolueram, Polytime, tuos violare capillos "-struck the poet's
fancy, and he soon threw himself eagerly upon the task. At first
the combatants were flattered, and, with Miss Fermor's permission,
The Rape of the Lock, in two cantos, appeared in Lintot's Miscellany
in I712. It enjoyed great and instant success.  Addison hailed
it as merum sal, and a less conscientious artist than Pope would
have been satisfied. But he felt the framework to be too slight,
even for such a trifle, and he presently re-wrote the poem, introducing a Rosicrucian "machinery," or supernatural action, of
sylphs and gnomes.    Thus, much enlarged, he published the




IV


" THE RAPE OF THE LOCK "


113


poem in five cantos in I714; but Miss Fermor, who was now
married or at the point of marrying, chose to think that by this
renewed publication the young poet was intruding too much into
her affairs.  The Rape of the Lock has lately been attacked with
great severity by a no less eminent critic than Mr. Ieslie Stephen,
and his authority has been quoted by other writers far less competent to pass a judgment.    It seems to me strange that Mr.
Stephen should not perceive the unfairness of breaking such an
exquisite butterfly of art on the wheel of his analysis, and the
inappropriateness on this occasion of grave reproof of Pope's
smartness and want of delicacy.   When we are told, moreover,
that The Rape of the Lock is "wearisome" and "effete,' there is
nothing for it but a direct negation.  As well might Hamlet be
called superficial and Paradise Lost flat.  In its own class and
degree The Rape of the Lock is as perfect as these-as entirely
successful and satisfactory.  Poetic wit was never brighter, verse
never more brilliantly polished, the limited field of burlesque
never more picturesquely filled, than by this little masterpiece
in Dresden china. Its faults, a certain hardness and want of
sympathy, are the faults of the age, and mark little more than a
submission to the prevalent Congreve ideal of polite manners.
Its merits are of the most delicate order, and it was at once
recognised that no poem half so good had been produced in
England since Dryden's address to the Duchess of Ormond,
fourteen years before. Here is the passage where Shock, that "vile
Iceland cur," as Dennis called him, acts as his lady's guardian
genius:
"IHe said: when Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leap'd up, and wak'd his mistress with his tongue.
'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true,
Thy eyes first open'd on a billet-doux;
Wounds, charms, and ardours were no sooner read,
But all the vision vanish'd from thy head.
And now, unveil'd, the toilet stands display'd,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, rob'd in white, the nymph intent adores,
With head uncover'd, the cosmetic powers.


III


I




114


POPE


CHIAP.


A heav'nly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
Th' inferior Priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride.
Unnumber'd treasures ope at once, and here
The various off'rings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transform'd to combs, the speckled, and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms;
The Fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightenings quicken in her eyes.
The busy Sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and those divide the hair,
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown;
And Betty's prais'd for labours not her own."
From this time-that is to say, from    Pope's twenty-sixth yearwe have to think of him as the recognised first poet of his age.
Pope being now launched upon what he called " the dangerous
fate of authors," was to discover without loss of time that "the
life of a wit is a warfare upon earth." His first adversary was the
rugged Dennis, who promptly replied to the sneer about "Appius"
in a pamphlet of coarse abuse, describing his young rival's personal disfigurements, and attacking his poetry with violent though
occasionally just abuse. Pope's acerbity of temper had as yet
hardly made its appearance; as a child he had been an angel of
endurance; and he now sat patient under the torment of Appius.
In December a review of his Essay in the Spectator introduced
him  to Steele as the editor, and to Addison as the writer of the
article, and Pope was courteously invited to contribute to the
new and epoch-making gazette.     On the i4th of May 1712 the




IV


THE " MESSIAH "


I"5


Speclator contained Pope's Messiah, a sacred pastoral in emulation
of the Pollio of Virgil. Technically this is one of the most faultless of Pope's writings. It is evident that he was studying new
effects. This poem is marked by the broken pause and by the
use of alexandrines-features which he had hitherto eschewed.
The Jfessiah/ is a dexterous cento of passages from    Isaiah, foretelling the advent of Christ. Wordsworth has attacked it with
great severity, and it no longer holds its former popularity. When
we examine it in detail we find it full of errors against taste and
judgment. The way to appreciate it is to read it aloud, and so
secure the rhetorical effect which the poet intended. The splendour and fulness of the verse will then bear all objection before
them, and the last eighteen lines, at least, will rouse the pulse like
a blast from a golden trumpet:
"See barb'rous nations at thy gates attend,
Walk' in thy light, and in thy temple bend;
See thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings,
And heap'd with products of Sabmean springs!
For thee Idume's spicy forests blow,
And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow.
See heav'n its sparkling portals wide display,
And break upon thee in a flood of day!
No more the rising sun shall gild the morn,
Nor ev'ning Cynthia fill her silver horn;
But lost, dissolv'd in thy superior rays,
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze
O'erflow thy courts: the light himself shall shine
Reveal'd, and God's eternal day be thine!
The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay,
Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away;
But fix'd his word, his saving power remains;Thy realm for ever lasts, thy own Messiah reigns!"
If we persist in applying to classical and rhetorical poetry
the tests framed to measure romantic and naturalistic poetry, the
result will simply be to exclude ourselves from all possibility of
just appreciation of the former.    To a critic who argues exclusively from Wordsworth's standpoint, and who dares to be con



II6


POPE


CHAP.


sistent, Dryden must be even as Blackmore and Pope no better
than Theobald.
In March I713, at the desire of Lord Lansdowne, Pope
published in folio a pastoral, Windsor Forest, the greater part of
which he declared that he had written as long ago as 1704. Pope
assisted a few weeks later at the first performance of Addison's
Cato, for which he had written a fine prologue.  These two
publications are those in which he displays, and that perhaps
unwillingly, most of a political bias. His position as a politician,
however, was somewhat dubious, for the Cato prologue was all
on the side of the Whigs, while [Windsor Forest was applauded by
the Tories. Pope, in fact, had no knowledge of statecraft, but
possessed a kind of mischievous curiosity which impelled him, as
somebody said, to appear in London whenever anything was going
on, like a porpoise in stormy weather.  Windsor Forest is a very
promiscuous poem; it seems to contain a little of everything. It
is bucolic and anecdotic, political and descriptive, by turns. The
boyish work of sixteen does not amalgamate satisfactorily with
the manly work of twenty-five.  Wordsworth took it under his
protection as containing, alone among the poems of its author,
" new images of external nature."  He was referring doubtless to
the exact and highly-coloured catalogue of birds and fishes; but
it may be contested that this was the nature-painting of a Weenix
or a Hondecoeter, not of a Turner:
"Our plenteous streams a various race supply,
The bright-ey'd perch with fins of Tyrian dye.
The silver eel, in shining volumes roll'd,
The yellow carp, in scales bedropp'd with gold,
Swift trouts, diversified with crimson stains,
And pikes, the tyrants of the wat'ry plains."
This is excellent genre, but Wordsworth might have been shown
a dozen other instances of Pope's genius for "still life." There
is an eloquent recommendation of peace near the end of the
poem, intended to convey commendation of the Tory policy.
Pope declared that he wrote these lines "soon after the ratifica



IV


POPE'S HOMER


II7


tion of the Treaty of Utrecht," an event which took place six
weeks later than they were published.  But this was merely a
slip of memory. In March everybody knew that the peace was
certain.  We may here mention, as closing the first period of
Pope's literary career, that in I715 he was sufficiently ill-advised
to publish a paraphrase of Chaucer's hgouse of Fame, written
when he was twenty-three.  Steele saw in it "a thousand thousand beauties," but posterity has come to consider The Teml/e
of Fame as one of the poorest and least inspired of its author's
productions.
Pope was now twenty-seven, and had published but one work
de longue haleine. He had become celebrated mainly by what we
may call occasional pieces. He was now, however, to come forward with an undertaking of vast proportions.  As early as
November 17I3, Swift, who had made Pope's acquaintance in the
spring of that year, was saying aloud in fashionable places that
"the best poet in England is Mr. Pope, a Papist, who has begun
a translation of Homer into English verse, for which I must have
you all subscribe, for the author shall not begin to print till I have
a thousand guineas for him." This warnmth of friendship with
Swift portended a corresponding coolness with Addison, and it is
perhaps a mistake to suppose that Addison and Pope had ever,
except for a moment about Cato, passed the limits of ceremonious
acquaintance.  In 1714, a year of violent political agitation
caused by the death of Anne, Pope was engaged mainly on
Homer, and taking very little heed of a birch-rod which Ambrose
Philips, for reasons too elaborate to be here dilated on, had hung
up for his chastisement at Button's. It has been argued that the
anger was confined to Philips, but it is difficult to deny that the
whole senate to which Addison gave laws was growing sensibly
frigid toward Pope; while the latter poet himself believed that
Addison was inciting his friend Thomas Tickell (I686-I740), who
was the most gifted of Addison's disciples, to trip him up with a
rival translation of Homer. It is true that in June I715 Pope and
Tickell simultaneously obliged the town with a first Iliad, but if




Ii8


POPE


CIIAP.


Tickell meant to injure Pope he failed egregiously. Indeed, he
immediately withdrew, with a gracious compliment to Pope's far
greater ability.  Pope continued to believe that Addison was
moving behind the mask of Tickell and had translated the book.
Curiously enough, Steele, who had good opportunities of knowing,
and no prejudice thought so too; yet it seems certain that
Tickell did the work he signed. It was under the torture of
these suspicions that Pope seems to have written the famous
portrait of Atticus, the most brilliant individual passage in all his
writings, and indeed in all modern satirical literature.  These
lines were not published until four years after Addison's death
(when they appeared in a shabby miscellany called Cythereia),
and though Pope showed them to such friends as Swift and Lord
Burlington, we may console ourselves by knowing that the legend
that Addison saw them rests on no evidence, and is against probability. We no longer hold the magnificent Atticus in quite such
awe as our fathers did, yet we may fairly be glad to think that he
died unconscious of this terrible impeachment.
Pope, slowly perfecting his labours, lingered until his friends
the Tories were out of office before his first volume of The Iliad
appeared. It did not suffer, however, on this account; the subscription lists were of fabulous length and quality, and the poem
was adroitly dedicated, not to any politician, but to Congreve. It
is estimated that by his entire Homer, spread as it was over eleven
years, Pope made clear nine thousand pounds. He admitted in
after life that, if he was independent, it was "thanks to Homer."
It was allowed that, in spite of Pope's great disadvantages, this
success was thoroughly deserved. He did not know Greek well, to
be sure, which was no trifling disadvantage; but he was less handicapped by this awkward circumstance than a translator of our own
age would be. He did what was perhaps better than making an
accurate version of Homer,-he produced the finest, the largest,
the most conspicuous poem of the age. Pope's Homer, take it
all in all, is not approached by any other single poem of the like
proportions between Paradise Lost and The Excursion.  It is




IV


POPE'S HOMER


Ii9


what English literature has to show of the highest importance in
an epical direction throughout the eighteenth century. On this
subject the reader may be recommended to Mr. Leslie Stephen's
excellent pages, as sympathetic and masterly in this instance as
we have been obliged to conceive them prejudiced and hasty in
their treatment of 'The Rape of the Lock. It is scarcely necessary
to remind that reader that Pope wrote, on this as on almost all
other occasions, entirely in the heroic couplet.
As early as I709 Pope had printed, in Lintot's Miscellany, a
specimen of what he could do as a translator of Homer. This is
the " Episode of Sarpedon." Addison, so Pope declared, was the
first to urge him to complete the house of which this was the
specimen brick. In I714 he printed other passages; the first
volume of The Iliad appeared in I715, and the sixth and last,
with its dedication to Congreve, in 1720. It seemed profitable
to fulfil the original design, and to present the public with the
whole of Homer; but Pope was weary, and could not face the
labour of attacking The Odyssey unaided. He therefore, in 1723,
called in the help of two Cambridge scholars, disciples of his own in
verse, Elijah Fenton (I683-1730) and William Broome (I689-I745),
whom he paid not illiberally for their share of a task which owed
its success to his own name. This Odyssey appeared in 1725, with
a Battle of the ]Frogs and Mice, contributed by Parnell, who did
not live to see it printed. Thus it was Pope's fate "for ten years
to comment and translate," and the Homer very nearly absorbed
his best powers during the central period of his life; yet the result
is such that the student scarcely cares to lament it. Pope explains in a note to The Dunciad that he counts these ten years
from I713 to I725, omitting two years during which, so he pretends, his perfunctory edition of Shakespeare exclusively occupied
him.
Meanwhile, in 1717, a collection of his poetical works was
called for in quarto and folio, and Pope saw himself a classic at
twenty-nine. To this complete edition he added two important
poems which had not seen the light, and which it is believed, from




120


POPE


CHAP.


internal evidence, he had only just written.  These are the Elegy
to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, and the Eloisa to Abelard.
They are unique among Pope's writings as dealing, and that in
the most pathetic and luxuriant style, with the passion of love.
The poet took all possible pains to mystify his commentators as
to the circumstances which led to the composition of these poems.
All we can discern is that they belong to that brief period between
the abandonment of the house at Binfield, where he had lived
since his childhood, and his settlement at Twickenham. In 17I7
Pope was with his parents at Chiswick, and this was the year in
which he pensioned Teresa Blount, apparently to prevent her from
girding at his relations with her sister Martha. These ladies he
had known since I7o6,1 and with Martha Blount his connection
became more and more intimate until his death. It has even
been suspected that they were married. The Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady was a mere study in emotional characterisation.   It
is an expression of impassioned pity for a lady who has destroyed
herself to escape from  the torture of hopeless love.  No poet is
obliged to say why he chooses this or the other subject, but Pope,
being asked by some silly person who the lady was, saw the opening for a mystification, and set his biographers chasing an ignis
fatuus for at least a century.  The Elegy is very short; it only
extends to eighty-two lines; but it contains some of Pope's tenderest and most musical verses. The passage beginning"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
What tho' no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances, and the public show?
What tho' no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face?
I venture to take " the 389th week of the reign of your most serene
Majesty," as a more or less literal statement, but indeed the letter of 1714 may
be a mere mystification.




IV


" ELOISA TO ABELARD '


121


What tho' no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow;
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made,"
is a fine typical example of Pope's entirely serious manner. The
Eloisa to Abelard is a very much longer poem, and here the elegiac
tone is replaced by an ardour and activity of passion. The riot
in the turbulent soul of a woman who loves and has forsworn love,
who is torn between earth and heaven, is given with extraordinary
psychological skill.  It is here that Pope shows most insight into
the workings of the human heart, and sets us fancying for a
moment, that if he had been born half a century earlier he might
have been a dramatist of the same class as Ford. There is no
question, however, that the vehicle which Pope used, the polished
heroic couplet, is particularly unsuited to subjects of this kind,
and gives an artificial air to the most poignant and thrilling passages.  We feel that the Elegy requires some varied lyric measure,
and that the Eloisa would move us more if the story of the distracted and impassioned nun were told in stanzas, or in couplets
less regularly antithetical.  It is only on some such hypothesis
that we can account for the fact that these two poems, melodious
and fervid as they are, and supplied with every refinement of
poetic art, leave us at last a little cold.
Late in I7I7 Pope's father died, and during the confusion
which ensued, or while his new property at Twickenham was
being put in order, he lived for some months at Stanton Harcourt,
where he finished the fifth book of The zi/ad. Then, for the rest
of his life, his home was the little classic villa on the north bank
of the Thames, where he had his famous grotto, his temple of
shells, his five acres of twirled and twisted garden, his sacred
groves, and his barge at the foot of a little lawn as smooth as one
of his own couplets. Here the frail being, too sickly and nervous




122


POPE


CHAP.


to bear the rude shocks of public life, could grow calm and almost
happy in solitude. He says:
"Soon as I enter at my country door
My mind resumes the thread it dropt before;
Thoughts, which at Hyde-Park-Corner I forgot,
Meet and rejoin me in the pensive Grot."
At Twickenham he was to spend a quarter of a century, as an
invalid indeed, but one surrounded by friends and admirers, easily
first in the only world he valued, the world of letters, and regarded
with indulgence and distinction by all that England had to show
of what was brightest and best.
Unfortunately the temperament of the poet forbade that he
should enjoy the legitimate fruits of his retirement. The independence he had now secured, and the unquestioned eminence to
which he had attained, might have lifted him for the rest of his
days above all the minor vexations. But he could only breathe in
an atmosphere of intrigue, and the physical excitement of anger
was the keenest pleasure his nerves could enjoy. At Binfield he
had been tolerably peaceful. At Chiswick the great quarrels of
his life began-that with Edmund Curll, the publisher, "shameless Curll, the caitiff Vaticide"; that with Colley Cibber, the
amiable and voluble comedian; that with Dennis, reawakened by
the caricature of Sir Tremendous in the poor farce of Three Hours
after Marriage, in which three of the wittiest men of the age, Gay,
Pope, and Arbuthnot, combined to be dull and offensive. The
friendship with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (I689-I762), prosecuted about this time with extraordinary sprightliness and effusion,
contained the seeds of a yet more scandalous feud. In 1723
Pope's flirtation with Judith Cowper, afterwards the aunt of the poet
of The Task, ended in disappointment and distress. Everything
pointed to the path of satire as that along which Pope should now
proceed; and Swift, whose influence with Pope was still paramount, was ever urging him to write something worthy a member
of that mysterious Scriblerus Club which had been founded to
crush the race of scribbling dunces. It cannot be said, however,




IV


" TIHE DUNCIAD "


123


that Pope was quick in taking advantage of this suggestion.
While the Homer proceeded it is quite plain that he had energy
for very little else. The first ten years of his life at Twickenham
give us but one important independent poem, namely, the lines to
Addison, published in Tickell's posthumous edition of 1720. Even
these were written, in the earlier time, at Binfield. He was therefore fresh, in 1727, for the composition of a long original work,
and he set to with the gusto of a poet who has long been chained
to the oar of translation. As early as 172o, it seems, Swift had
proposed a general satire to him, and he had sketched a " Progress
of Dulness."  This design had slumbered until in 1726, after
Pope had published his Shakespeare, the errors of that edition
were roughly pointed out in a pamphlet by Lewis Theobald
(I690?-I744), a busy minor playwright of the period, who eventually, in I733, himself published a Shakespeare which was far
more scholarly than Pope's. Pope immediately pounced upon
Theobald (whose name was pronounced Tibbald) as a fit hero for
his satire. He took Swift into his confidence, but Swift, who
liked satire to be rather general than personal, warned him to
"take care that the bad poets do not outwit you."
Gradually the "Progress of Dulness" took the form in which
we know it as 7The Dunncrad. But Pope worked so slowly that one
by one the dunces were dying, and at last it became absolutely
necessary to publish the poem at once, if it were to appear at all.
There is no more thorny tract of literature than the bibliography
of this poem, and we cannot pretend here to give any account of
the metamorphoses of The LDunciad. It is probable that there was
no edition earlier than that of the Owl, published in incomplete
form in May 1728. In April 1729 appeared the edition of the Ass
laden with Books, which contains the dedication to Swift, the notes
and prolegomena, the testimonies of authors, and the indices.
This is called the first complete edition, and for twelve years
The Dlunlcad ended with the couplet:
' Enough! enough! the raptur'd Monarch cries;
And through the Ivory Gate the Vision flies."




124


POPE


CIIAP.


But in I742 The New Dunciad, "as it was found in I741," was
published, and this is what forms the fourth and last book of the
poem as we hold it now. In I743, in a final "complete edition,"
Pope dethroned Theobald, and set up "a more considerable hero,"
Colley Cibber, thereby greatly injuring the structure of his piece; for
though Cibber was a fribble and a light-weight, he was neither dull
nor a dunce, while Theobald might justly claim to be the one and
the other.  Such then is the bare outline of the history of this
extraordinary work.
It is not clearly enough recognised that the central figure of
this magnificent satire is not any Cibber or Theobald of the
moment, but the very deity of Dulness itself incarnate in all the
bad writers of the age. We are told about Welsted, Oldmixon,
Ward, and the rest, because the animalcules of yesterday are lost
beyond recall, and because we must study, while they flash across
the microscope for a moment, the insects of to-day. Every hour
"ductile Dulness new mxeanders takes," but to study them elsewhere than in the present were patent absurdity. This redeems
The Dunciad from that littleness of purpose which would have
soon destroyed a merely personal attack on certain unknown
writers.  The satire was cruel, was perhaps unworthy of its
author's secure and eminent position, but it was exceedingly
successful. It has been said-it was suggested to Pope himself-that he really gave immortality to ridiculous names which
else would naturally disappear for ever. But what is the immortality which he has given to them? When we meet with the name
of Oldmixon, who thinks of the real man, the tiresome old Whig
pamphleteer, with his insipid pastorals and his petulant essays? We
think of a figure created entirely by Pope; we think of the aged
athlete, "in naked majesty," climbing the side of the stranded
lighter, to plunge the deeper into the dreadful sluice of mud. Our
interest is quickened, indeed, but not created by the consciousness
that there was a real Oldmixon, to whom this figment of Pope's
imagination must have given exquisite pain. It appears, however,
that Pope feared that the work, as it originally stood, might seem




IV


" THE DUNCIAD "


125


to posterity to have too local a bearing.       The New     Dunciad
attempts to widen the scope of the satire, to deal with stupidity in
education, in philosophy, in the various application of the powers
of the mind. Here Pope was far less safe than in dealing with
what he thoroughly understood,-literary merit,-and in criticising
scholarship and science he made sad blunders. He drew himself
together, however, at the close, and the last thirty lines of The
Dunciad, in which he foretells a kind of Ragnarok of all intelligence, are among the noblest which he has left:
" In vain, in vain —the all composing hour
Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the power,
She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold
Of night primaeval and of Chaos old!
Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying rainbows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,
The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain;
As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand opprest,
Clos'd one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after art goes out, and all is night.
See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled,
Mountains of casuistry heap'd o'er her head!
Philosophy, that lean'd on Heav'n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of metaphysic begs defence,
And metaphysic calls for aid on sense!
See mystery to mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares morality expires.
For public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos! is restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all."
For several years the anger of the Dunces gave Pope enough




126


POPE


CHAP.


to do, and from 1730 to 1737 he edited, more or less perfunctorily,
a weekly paper, Thle Grub Street Journal, in which he and his
satellites returned the shots which the victims of The Dunciad were
still sullenly firing. During the same period Pope was at work
on those extraordinary devices for getting his own private letters
published, which have done his memory more harm with posterity
than any other of his unfortunate lapses from the path of honesty.
Into this dark and tortuous history we cannot be expected to look
in this slight sketch of his poetical career. His next publication
was the Folurtl Moral Essay (December 1731), but it is convenient
to leave the consideration of this poem for a moment. By this time
a great ethical work, which had occupied Pope's best leisure for
two or three years, was almost ready to be given to the public.
Bolingbroke had formed a friendship with Pope in 1725, and had
laid his scheme of deistical metaphysics before the poet in such a
form as to gain his approval. Pope determined to versify Bolingbroke, but he only fulfilled so much of his scheme as is contained
in the four books of his Essay on Man. Through 1730 and 173I
Pope was deeply engaged in revising and polishing this poem. In
1732-1733 three epistles were published in folio, and a fourth in
1734. They were strictly anonymous at first, and Pope circulated
a report that they were written by a well-known divine.
The Essay on Man was long supposed to be what Dugald
Stewart called it, the "noblest specimen of philosophical poetry
which our language affords." It made Pope famous outside his
native country, and won him the homage of men like Voltaire and
Marmontel. The poet himself took a great pride in this composition, and thought that he had contributed very extensively to
philosophical thought. At the present time it takes a lower place.
The imagery with which the ethical framework is embroidered is
by no means the most brilliant which Pope has produced. There
is so great a confusion and want of connection in the system of
reasoning that De Quincey is almost justified in his harsh judgment
of it as " the realisation of anarchy." The poem contains examples
of Pope's worst faults in the awkward construction of sentences




IV


EPISTLES


127


and the inversion of words in the search for a rhyme. Nor is this
poet's verse itself, in any other work of his maturity, so mechanical
or dull. The Essay on AMan is eloquent and impressive in parts,
but it is executed on a plan which was unfavourable to the development of the author's most characteristic powers. It awakened,
however, a great curiosity, has been more fruitful than any other
of his writings in notes, commentaries, and general discussion,
and won to its author's side the great mainstay of his later years,
William Warburton, whose famous Commentary on the Essay first
appeared in 1743.
From 1733 to I738 Pope was very actively engaged on a
variety of small works, kindred in manner, and all belonging to
the class most congenial to his genius. Ten years earlier Atterbury had tried to persuade him that satire was his true forte, and
the success of The Dunciad now gave him encouragement to
become a didactic satirist. As early as December 1731 he published an epistle to Lord Burlington (Epistle IV.), the first of a
long series of folio pamphlets.  Six weeks later followed the
epistle to Lord Bathurst (Epistle III.), in February 1733 the
epistle to Sir R. Temple (Epistle I), and in February 1735 that
to Martha Blount (Epistle II.). These pieces, with an old address
to Addison on his Medals, form the group called since 1743 Moral
Essays. It has been thought that all this while the poet was
scheming a great philosophical poem, of which, not only these
epistles, but the Essay on M/an, and the satirical imitations to
be presently noticed, should eventually form part. The second
epistle, as it now stands, contains the character of Atossa, which
Pope meant for the Duchess of Marlborough, from whom, nevertheless, he received the sum of,~Iooo, evidently that it might be
suppressed. This is one of those very mysterious incidents, the
general effect of which has been to bring great but perhaps
exaggerated discredit on the good name of Pope. The third
epistle is directed against the abuse of riches, and was written to
gratify " that very lively and amiable old nobleman, the late Lord
Bathurst." It contains the portrait of the Man of Ross, and is




128


POPE


CHAP.


one of the most faultless and attractive of Pope's didactic writings.
The fourth epistle continues the subject of the third, and may be
referred to for those passages on landscape gardening which,
beautiful as they are in themselves, and fine as examples of Pope's
stately poetry, are still more important as showing how free Pope
was from the worst heresies of the eighteenth century in its attitude towards nature. The episode of Villario, describing Lord
Castlemaine's gardens at Wanstead, may be pointed to as an
example of the skill which Pope had now attained in the giving
maximum fulness of effect and complete artistic satisfaction in
the minimum of space and with no apparent effort:
" Behold Villario's ten years' toil complete;
His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet:
The wood supports the plain, the parts unite,
And strength of shade contends with strength of light;
A waving glow the blooming beds display,
Blushing in bright diversities of day,
With silver-quivering rills meandered o'er,Enjoy then, you! Villario can no more;
Tired of the scene pastures and fountains yield,
He finds at last he better likes a field."
The distinction between the Moral Essays and the rest of the
ethical and satirical writings of Pope's third period is an entirely
perfunctory and Warburtonian one, but it has been thought well
to preserve it here on account of its time-honoured place in the
arrangement of the poet's works.   We must therefore return on
our steps to chronicle the publication of one of his miscellaneous
satires, that entitled Satire I, brought out ten days after the First
Moral Essay in February 1733.       This is the earliest of the
Imitations of Horace, undertaken by Pope at Bolingbroke's suggestion, and printed within a fortnight of its composition. It takes
the form of a dialogue between the poet and William Fortescue,
the lawyer, being a paraphrase of the first satire of the second
book of Horace. This poem is a reply to the critics who had
charged Pope with malignity in attack, and it professes that nothing
but a passion for virtue inspires him. It also contains, alas! for




IV


" EPISTLE TO ARBUTHNOT "


I29


virtue, a really monstrous attack on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
for whom his early sweetness had long turned to gall.
Several important poems, of a more or less autobiographical
character, bear date I735.   Of these the first in date as in value
is the celebrated Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, published on the second
day of the year. In this, the most fascinating of Pope's satirical
poems, are brought together various fragments into one design, and
even the character of Atticus is introduced, although it had already
been before the world, in surreptitious form, for twelve years. The
whole satire is a splendid apology and a dauntless fresh attack.
It is difficult to award the palm to any one of its sections, either
to the matchless description with which it opens, to the affecting
account of the author's condition "through that long disease, his
life," to the Atticus passage, or to the appalling chastisement
inflicted, in verse that rings like a whip, on Bufo-Halifax and on
Sporus-Harvey. The last of these shall be here selected:
" Let Sporus tremble-A. What! that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,
As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,
And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.
His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart,


III


IK




I30


POPE


CHAP.


Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a Lady, and now struts a Lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust."
In July appeared the Second Satire, a somewhat unfortunate
discourse on temperance, and in the quarter of the same year
two Satires of Dr. Donne, one of which had been anonymously
printed in 1733. These paraphrases were not successful. Four
more Imitations were presented to the public, separately, but in
rapid succession, in 1737.   Of these later satires we can say
no more than that the perusal of them   reminds the reader of
the justice of Dr. Johnson's remark about "the irreconcilable
dissimilitude between Roman images and English manners." Of
the four the best certainly is the First Epistle of the Second Book,
addressed to the king as Augustus. It was a very delicate and
ambiguous attack on the court, and although it now seems obvious
enough that the poet's eulogies were sarcastic, many stupid readers
on its first appearance took it in all good faith as a panegyric on
the royal party. It is mainly political, as being a manifesto from
the Opposition, but it contains also some very interesting passages
of literary criticism. Next year, in the summer of 1738, Pope published an epilogue to his satires, under the title MDCCXXXVII.
It was finished and brilliant, but the public had become a
little weary of this incessant scolding, and Swift, who was now in
retirement, expressed a very general feeling when he said that he
knew so little of what was passing that he could not fathom the
allusions nor fill out the initial letters. Pope wrote one more
satire, 740o, but wisely did not publish it. It was long afterwards
given to the world by Warton. In I742 he closed his literary
career by the publication of The New Duniad, of which we have
already spoken. But his intellectual forces were unabated, and
to the last he was polishing his old verses and preparing new
editions.
Such a body as his, fretted by such a mind, was not destined




IV


POPE'S GENIUS


131


for old age. But he was spared a slow decay. He lived on in
tolerable ease, balanced between two dear friends of his, who
were savage mutual enemies, Warburton and Bolingbroke, until
the spring of I744. He tried to console himself with literary
interests for the disappointment of finding his contributions to
political warfare politely neglected by his party. He had much
to compose and please him; Martha Blount was now entirely
with him, smoothing the close of an uneasy life, and in literature
his empire was unquestioned. Throughout the month of May he
was visibly dying of dropsy and asthma, and on the 3oth of that
month he passed away very quietly, at the age of fifty-six years and
nine days. He was buried in a vault in Twickenham Church.
The amount of attention which has been paid to Pope since
his death contrasts curiously with the comparative neglect of his
great compeer, Dryden. The reason is, no doubt, that Dryden
veiled his own personality in his works, while Pope, more than any
other English poet, more even than Byron, impressed himself upon
the public in every page he published. Throughout the eighteenth
century he was admired with exaggeration; Warburton called
him "one of the noblest works of God."  Of late years, critics
inspired by Wordsworth and De Quincey have no less unduly
decried him. His fame reached its nadir in the hands of Mr.
Elwin, who undertook to produce a final edition of the most
eminent of our classical writers, although his own sympathies
were exclusively and fanatically romantic.  He was relieved of
his task, which had become as painful to himself as to his readers,
in I88I, when the volumes began to appear with the name of
Mr. W. J. Courthope on the title-page. Mr. Courthope has nobly
redeemed the character of the poet, as far as its radical faults
would permit him to do so, and his work as an editor is of the
first class. It is impossible to deny, and Mr. Courthope does not
seek to deny, that since the publication of the Caryll correspondence Pope stands revealed, beyond any hope of justification, as
an unscrupulous and intriguing trickster.  But this is not the
only side to his nature. He had great natural tenderness, extra



132


POPE


CHAP.


ordinary energy and courage, a passion for pure literature, and a
genius second to none in its own class and period. In a sketch
like this we may be permitted to insist on those splendid qualities
rather than on the faults which he owed, in great measure, to his
physical weakness.
The first thing which strikes us on a rapid survey of Pope's
writings, is their fragmentary nature.  They cannot be called
fugitive, because he expended so much elaboration upon them,
but none the less is it true that the only important work he completed was The Rape of the Lock. Even the Homer he could not
finish without calling in foreign help. To the truncated Dunciad
he gave a false air of completeness by patching on a new piece
which does not match. The Essay on Man, and all the satires,
imitations, and other essays are only disjointed members or scraps
of one vast philosophical work which never saw the light. This
fragmentary character matters less to us, because it is not his
substance or his general effect which we delight in in Pope, but
his details. His best poems are bits of mosaic, which we admire
the most when we pull them to pieces, tessera by tessera, and
analyse their exquisite workmanship. Much has been said, and
very vainly said, about his want of originality, his commonplace,
his triteness. The fact is that an old truth better said than any
one has said it before, is more valuable, is certainly more likely
to remain in men's minds, than a new truth awkwardly said.
The charm of Pope's best passages, when it does not rest upon
his Dutch picturesqueness of touch, is due to the intellectual
pleasure given by his adroit and stimulating manner of producing
his ideas, and by the astonishing exactitude and propriety of his
phrase. When it is all summed up, we may not be much the
wiser, but we are sure to be much the brighter and alerter. Hence
it is an additional merit that his original writings, in which
caustic wit takes so prominent a place, and in which the attention is always kept tensely on the strain, are usually quite short.
It is customary to compare Pope with his great French contemporary or predecessor, Boileau (I636-171 ), whose rival Pope




IV


POPE'S GENIUS


I33


was willing to be considered.  There are certain points of resemblance between them.  Boileau followed La Fontaine, and
completed his work in versification, somewhat as Pope followed
Dryden.  Boileau and Pope each made a very close study of
Horace, and became ever more Horatian as they grew older..Each was the first satirist of his time, and each was excessively
venomous and personal. Each wrote one very clever and notable
mock-heroic poem.   Each lifted up his scourge to smite the
dunces off Parnassus. But the careful study of Boileau will teach
us how much greater the English poet was than the French.
Pope was Boileau with the addition of an ear for verse, of an eye
for colour and form in genre, and of a real imaginative insight
into character. What scarcely rose above talent in Boileau was
genius in Pope. If, on the other hand, we compare Pope with
Dryden, we notice, first of all, the entire absence of that lyrical
gift which was so charming in Dryden. Pope's odes and hymns
have not been chronicled here, for they are scarcely literature at
all. We then notice that, with his superior lightness of intellect,
the younger poet has moulded the heroic couplet more thoroughly
to his purposes than Dryden ever did, first polishing it to the
extreme of mellifluousness, and then teaching it to ring and
sparkle with the utmost rapidity and brilliance. Pope's heroics
are not only the best in the language, but they are so perfect that
it has been impossible, since his day, to use that form-the iambic
distich-without seeming intentionally to compete with Pope.
He has no romance, no spirituality, no mystery, and the highest
regions of poetry he never so much as dreams of; but in the
lower provinces there is perhaps no single writer who showers fine
things about him with such a prodigality of wit, or dazzles us so
much with the mere exercise of his intelligence.
A great deal of other verse was written in the Augustan age,
but not very much that can be admitted to be poetry. If this title
cannot be conceded to the powerful octosyllabics of Swift, still
more resolutely must it be denied to the verses of Defoe and
Steele and Mandeville. But there flourished in the lifetime of




x34


POPE


CHAP.


Pope one or two writers who deserve to be remembered as " Little
Masters " in the art of verse-poets who were far inferior to Pope
in intellect, and who yet possessed certain limited gifts in which
they were original and in which they managed to surpass him.
Of these attendant planets, for they were more than satellites,
the three of greatest importance were Prior, Gay, and Parnell..
Each of these men had a touch of genius in his composition, and
each still holds a certain independence in the world of poetry.
Matthew Prior (1664-1721), except for a brush with Dryden
in his youth, published nothing till he had reached middle age.
His Poems appeared in modest form in I709, and in a sumptuous
folio in I71 8. The longest of them is a didactic epic of Solomon;
this takes the form of three very long sermons, or books, put
in the mouth of the wisest of men.   The poem has distinct
merits; it is perhaps more "correct," in Walsh's sense, than
any other in the language; but it cannot be read. This was
the case in Prior's own day, and he fretted against the neglect
of his masterpiece.  Alma is also didactic, and also in three
books, but here the measure is short and easy, and the poet
mingles so much humour with the draught that we drink it
willingly.  In this poem  Prior consciously follows Butler, to
whom he pays a fine compliment; but his muse is more graceful,
and less wayward.   His occasional pieces prove that he had
more variety and versatility than Butler, and he not unfrequently
obtains an effect which was far above the reach of the author of
Hudibras.  His epigrams are the best we possess in English.  He
tells a story with unrivalled ease. His lyrics are inimitably gay and
audacious. In comparison with Pope's, his epistles and satires are
light and careless, but they often possess a great charm. A single
stanza gives the very flavour of what is best and most unique in
Prior, his gaiety, his unaffected grace, his easy humanity:
"What I speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows
The difference there is betwixt nature and art;
I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose,
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart."




IV


GAY


I35


There is a certain relation between Prior and John Gay
(1685-I732). Each was successful mainly with the lighter lyre.
Gay was perhaps the more important as a man of letters: Prior
the more perfect in the work he did best, namely, his vers de
societ'.  Gay was the friend of all the best writers of his timean amiable, plump, indolent man, who liked to nestle into warm
sinecures in the families of people of quality. Pope used him as
a cat's-paw in his quarrel with Ambrose Philips, and Gay's Szhepherd's Ieek was published in I714 to ridicule pastoral writing.
But, in its gentle way, it was so excellent that it has survived
not as a parody but as veritably the best collection of bucolics
produced in the Augustan era, and none the worse for its humour.
In I715 Gay brought out Trivia, a sprightly poem   on the art of
walking the streets of London.  In I727 appeared the first series
of his famous Fables, in I728 the no less famous Beggar's 0pera,
suggested by Swift's remark, what "an odd, pretty sort of thing a
Newgate pastoral might make," and in I729 another opera, Polly,
which enjoyed the advertisement of political persecution, and
brought "poor inoffensive Gay"     /I200.    During these three
golden years Gay's reputation, for the moment, almost equalled
Pope's. He roused no jealousy, however, and Pope seems to have
loved him best and longest among his immediate contemporaries.
Gay's finest poetical work is his Alexander Pope, his safe Rcturnfrom
Troy, written, in ottava-rivia, on occasion of Pope's completion of
his Iliad, but not published till 1776.  Here is a fragment of it:
"Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!
The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy:
By all this show, I ween, 'tis Lord Mayor's day;
I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy.No, now I see them near! Oh, these are they
Who come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.
Hail to the bard whom long as lost we mourn'd,
From siege, from battle, and from storm return'd!
Of goodly dames, and courteous knights, I view
The silken petticoat, and broider'd vest;
Yea, peers, and mighty dukes, with ribands blue,
(True blue, fair emblem of unstained breast;)




136


POPE


CHAP.


Others I see, as noble, and more true,
By no court-badge distinguish'd from the rest
First see I Methuen, of sincerest mind,
As Arthur brave, as soft as woman-kind.
What lady's that, to whom he gently bends?
Who knows her not? ah! those are Wortley's eyes!
How art thou honour'd, number'd with her friends,
For she distinguishes the good and wise.
The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends.
Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;
Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,
WTith thee, Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.
I see two lovely sisters, hand in hand,
The fair-hair'd Martha and Teresa brown;
Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;
And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.
Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,
For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known:
Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?
Why all the Hamiltons are in her train!"
"'Twas when the seas were roaring " and " Black-eyed Susan"
have placed Gay among British lyrists. He had great humour,
and a genuine love of external nature which links him with the
romantic writers.
The two last-mentioned poets succeeded best in jocose verse;
Thomas Parnell (I679-I718), Archdeacon of Clogher, who also
endeavoured to be merry, was best inspired when he was grave
or even elegiacal.  We know little of his life.  Pope discovered
him, buried in an Ulster parsonage, and stimulated him to write.
Swift brought him up to town, and insisted on presenting him to
Harley. Parnell's best pieces all belong to the period between
17I3, when he came under Pope's influence, and his early death
in I7I8. Yet Parnell cannot be called a disciple of Pope; within
the narrow range of what he did well there was no poetical writer
of his time who showed a greater originality.    The Hermit is a
very perfect piece of sententious narrative work in the heroic
couplet, not easily to be matched for polish, elegance, and




IV


PARNELL


I37


symmetry.   Parnell's remarkable odes, The Night Piece and The
Hymn to Contentment, however, possess more real inspiration.
They form a link between Milton on the one hand and Gray and
Collins on the other, and their employment of the octosyllabic
measure is wonderfully subtle and harmonious.      The Hyrmn
opens thus:
"The silent heart, which grief assails,
Treads soft and lonesome o'er the vales,
Sees daisies open, rivers run,
And seeks, as I have vainly done,
Amusing thought; but learns to know
That solitude's the nurse of woe.
No real happiness is found
In trailing purple o'er the ground;
Or in a soul exalted high,
To range the circuit of the sky,
Converse with stars above, and know
All nature in its forms below;
The rest it seeks, in seeking dies,
And doubts at last, for knowledge, rise."
It would be easy to sustain the thesis that there is more of imagination, in the purely Wordsworthian sense, more of mystery and
spirituality, in Parnell than in any other poet of the time. He
was very diffident, and published nothing; but in 1722 Pope
collected his posthumous pieces into a volume to which he
prefixed a fine dedication, the only fault of which is that it
contains too little about the dead Parnell and too much about
the living Harley to whom, as the muse "shaded his evening
walk with bays," the volume was inscribed..
Among the wits and templars who surrounded Addison many
wrote verses, but few wrote them particularly well.  Three of his
chief friends, however, stand out beyond the rest with some
recognised  claim  to  the  title  of poet.  Ambrose   Philips
(167I-I749) is chiefly remembered on account of his dispute
with Pope about the merit of their rival pastorals. Philips wrote,
from Copenhagen, an Epistle to the Earl of )Dorset, which was
once admired; and, towards the close of his career, he composed




138


POPE


CHAP.


a number of birthday odes to children of quality, in a sevensyllabled measure, which earned him the name of "NambyPamby," but which form, in their infantile, or servile, prettiness,
his main claim to distinction. Thomas Tickell (I686-I740) is a
man of one poem; he composed a really superb elegy, inspired
by deep and genuine feeling, on the death of Addison:
"Can I forget the dismal night, that gave
My soul's best part for ever to the grave!
How silent did his old companions tread,
By mid-night lamps, the mansions of the dead,
Thro' breathing statues, then unheeded things,
Thro' rows of warriors, and thro' walks of kings!
What awe did the slow solemn knell inspire;
The pealing organ, and the pausing choir;
The duties by the lawn-robed prelate payed;
And the last words, that dust to dust conveyed!
While speechless o'er thy closing grave we bend,
Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend,
Oh gone for ever, take this long adieu;
And sleep in peace, next thy loved Montagu!'
William  Somerville (1677-1742) was more interesting as a
man than either Tickell or Philips. He was a fox-hunting Warwickshire squire, who used to come up to town periodically to worship Mr. Addison, and who rather late in life ventured upon verse
of his own.  His chief poem, The Chase (I734), is a didactic epic,
in four books of blank verse, on the art of hunting with the
hounds. He delayed writing it so long that we find his old
Addisonian style tempered by the new and freer manner of
Thomson.     Somerville, in fact, is one of the few transitional
figures of the end of this period.
Dr. Samuel Croxall (i68o?-i752) published anonymously in
1720 The Fair Circassian, a paraphrase of the Canticles.    He
had previously issued two cantos in imitation of the Faery Queen.
Croxall was blamed for the voluptuous warmth of his verses, which
was indeed something extraordinary from the pen of an embryo
canon residentiary. He translated AEsop in 1722. He described




IV


CROXALL


I39


his poetical ambition rather too arrogantly, when he said that his
aim was "to set off the dry and insipid stuff" of the age by
publishing "a whole piece of rich glowing scarlet."  Two stanzas
from his utterly neglected poetry will show how little Croxall
shared the manner of his contemporaries:
" Unlock the tresses of your burnish'd hair,
Loose let your ringlets o'er your shoulders spread;
Thus mix'd, we view them more distinctly fair,
Like trails of golden wire on ivory laid;
So Phcebus o'er the yielding ether streams,
And streaks the silver clouds with brighter beams.
What rosy odours your soft bosom yields,
Heaving and falling gently as you breathe!
Like hills that rise amidst fair fertile fields,
With round smooth tops and flowery vales beneath;
So swell the candid Alps with fleecy snow,
While myrtles bud, and violets bloom below."
The long life of Allan Ramsay (I686-1758), the Edinburgh
wig-maker, projects beyond that of Pope at both ends. He gave
up the outside of the head for the inside by becoming a bookseller and a publisher; from his shop at the sign of the Mercury
he regarded the wits of distant London with almost superstitious
reverence. He wrote a great deal of absolute rubbish, but his
pastoral drama of hlie Gentle Shepherd (I 725) is the best British
specimen of its class, and contains some very beautiful passages
both of dialogue and of description. Most of Ramsay's original
songs were poor, but he preserved the habit of writing in the Doric
dialect, and as an editor and collector of national poetry he did
thoroughly efficient and valuable work.   His two miscellanies,
The Tea-Table and The Evergreen, were not without their direct
usefulness in preparing the Scottish ear for Burns.




CHAPTER V


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS
THREE years before the close of the seventeenth century two
short works were ready for publication, which a mere accident
postponed into the age of Anne.  At the darkest moment of
English literature, when every branch of original writing except
comedy seemed dying or dead, a genius of the very first order
was preparing for the press The Battle of the Books and A Tale
of a Tub.  It is desirable to remember that these works were
complete in I697, although not published until 1704, since the
fact emphasises Swift's precedence of all the other wits of the
reign of Anne. It cannot, indeed, be too strongly insisted upon
that he was the leader of their chorus. In poetry, Pope, though
stimulated and sustained by his sympathy, was quite independent
of Swift; but the masters of prose, the great essayists, did not
begin to flourish till his mighty spirit had breathed upon them.
Swift is the dominant intellectual figure of the first half of the
century, as Johnson of the second, and it is hard to deny that he
is altogether greater than Johnson. He is original in the first
degree. His personal character is such as to illuminate, or else
obscure, every other individual that meets him. Swift's love or
Swift's hatred colours our conception of every important literary
figure of his age. If the saeza indigznatio which he so adroitly
indicated in his own draft of an epitaph has been over-insisted
upon, no one can deny or evade the splendida bills. The mag



CHAP. V


SWIFT


I4I


nificence of Swift's anger, scintillating with wit, glowing with
passion, throws its cometary splendour right across the Augustan
heavens. There was an almost superhuman greatness about his
cruelty, a feline charm in his caresses, a childishness, like the
merriment of a tiger-cub, in his humour; he was irresponsible and
terrible; his ambition threw dice with his reckless waggishness,
till all was lost and won. He was the most unhappy, the most
disappointed man of his age, and yet the greatest and the most
illustrious. He is altogether wonderful and inscrutable, a bundle
of paradoxes, the object of universal curiosity, the repulsion of
the many, the impassioned worship of the few.
Jonathan Swift, "the great Irish patriot," had nothing Irish
about him except the accident of being born in Dublin. His
father was a Herefordshire man, and his mother was a Leicestershire woman. The elder Jonathan Swift was made steward to the
Society of the King's Inns, Dublin, in I666, and there died about
a year afterwards.  Some months later his widow bore him a
posthumous son, on the 3oth of November 1667, and this was the
famous writer. His mother was reduced to great poverty, and
had to be supported by the charity of her husband's brothers,
Godwin and Dryden Swift. As an infant.Swift was stolen by his
nurse and carried to Whitehaven; his mother, enervated by distress, seems to have acquiesced in this exile for three years, during
which time she lodged once more with her relatives in Leicestershire. From i674 to I682 Swift was being educated at Kilkenny,
the most famous of Irish schools, where Congreve was one of his
companions. He was only fourteen when he was removed from
Kilkenny to be entered at Trinity College, Dublin, where he
stayed until the Revolution of I688. His college career was not
distinguished. He tells us that "he was so discouraged and sunk
in his spirits that he neglected his academic studies," and "was
stopped of his degree for dulness and insufficiency." He was
made a B.A. in i686, by specialgrace, which he chose to consider
a humiliating distinction in such a case as his. Circumstances
seem to have made him reckless, and the remainder of his college




142


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


course is marked by penalty after penalty incurred for riotous
behaviour. He read nothing but history and poetry, and probably the crisis of i688 came only just n time to save him from
final expulsion. Destitute and friendless, Swift fled to his only
less destitute mother in Leicestershire.  This lady remembered
that the wealthy and urbane Sir William Temple was her relative,
and to him she applied for patronage with success.
Temple accepted the raw young student to read to him and be
his amanuensis. But Swift's manners were uncouth, and he had
no address which could ingratiate him with the most elegant of
living Englishmen. It seems probable that Temple slowly learned
to value Swift, but at first his patronage of him must have been
merely the observance of a duty claimed by family ties. The
young man's health was very bad, and in I689, after a surfeit of
golden pippins, he began to be a sufferer from the mysterious
disease of his lifetime, which, as modern science has conjectured,
became what is now called a labyrinthine vertigo. After a short
visit to Ireland he returned to Temple's service, and on terms
more honourable and confidential. Presently the king became
aware of his existence, and promised him vague promotion in the
army or in the church. When he took his degree of M.A. at
Oxford in I692 he had reputation enough, reflected from the glory
of Temple, to meet with a warm reception, and now, at the age
of twenty-five, he occasionally versified. His four Pindaric Odes,
unlucky compositions in the worst manner of Cowley, were his
first literary production; with one exception, these did not see
the light till a century later, but they were shown to Dryden,
who was Swift's relative, and were slain in the cradle by
the famous rejoinder, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet,"
or, according to another and more credible report, "a Pindaric
poet." In spite of Swift's eager ambition he seems to have written
little in these early years, and to have had less desire to print. In
the house of Temple he was at the centre of tradition, where
anything new, anything not in strict accordance with Gallic taste,
must have been contemptuously frowned upon. The fact that




V


SWIFT AT MOOR PARK


143


Temple wrote so well and was held to be so fine a literary oracle
must in itself have vexed and paralysed a mail whose instincts lay
in the direction of novel and unlicensed literary forms. In May
1694 he broke the strained cord which bound him to Sir William
Temple's household, and returned to Ireland.  Eight months
later he had taken priest's orders in Dublin, and had obtained the
small living of Kilroot in Downshire. While there he met Miss
Waring (Varina) at Belfast. He soon became disgusted with
solitude at Kilroot, and in May i696 he went back to Temple's
household at Moor Park. Thus a third time the experiment was
tried, and now without further vexation. Swift and his patron had
learned, if not to love, at least to respect and admire each other.
The young clergyman presently resigned his living in favour of a
friend, and continued to reside at Moor Park till Temple died in
I699.
This final residence with Temple coincided with Swift's first
serious development as a writer. The year I696-97, the thirtieth
of Swift's life, seems to be that in which he first waked up to a
consciousness of his original talents. The a/le of a Tub has been
attributed to an earlier date, but upon no trustworthy evidence,
and Swift in I709 asserted that it was written in 1696 and I697.
That The Battle of the Books belongs to the latter year we know,
and the resemblance in style between the two works is so close as
to suggest that there was no interval between their composition.
They seem to be pieces of the self-same mental fabric. To I697
also belong Swift's earliest characteristic verses, and this year of
active production is followed by four of apparent sterility. It
seems therefore desirable to discuss the two remarkable prose
works which have been just mentioned before proceeding any
further with the life of their author, instead of waiting for the date
of their publication, in an anonymous octavo volume, in I704.
They were prepared to issue from the press in the winter of I698,
when Temple's illness and death postponed their publication. It
is uncertain whether Swift wrote or only proposed to write the
other facetious treatises which he announced on the fly-leaf of the




144


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


Tale of a Tub. His own phrase is, " Finding my commonplace
book fill much slower than I had reason to expect, I have chosen
to defer them to another occasion." Probably this means that the
sprightly flow of inspiration in I696-97 dried up for the time being
before he had done more than sketch his GeneralHistory of Ears,
and his Critical Essay upon the Art of Canling.
The very extraordinary treatise called A Tale of a Tub is
allowed to rank among the first of its author's productions. It
displays his finest qualities of imagination and irony when they
were in their freshest and most ebullient condition. Swift himself
is said to have remarked, at the close of his life, "Good God,
what a genius I had when I wrote that book." It is not long,
and it is divided into so many varied sections that it seems
shorter than it is. The reader is carried along so gaily on this
buoyant tide of wit, that he puts the book down with regret to
find it ended, when it seemed but just begun. In this, A Tale of
a Tub forms a surprising contrast to almost all the prose which
had preceded it for half a century, the writers of the Restoration,
even where they are most correct and graceful, being devoid of
this particular sparkle and crispness of phrase. The book is an
allegorical romance, but surrounded by so many digressions, one
outside the other, like the parts of an ivory puzzle-ball, that
scarcely half of it is even nominally narrative. The name is given
from the supposed custom of sailors to throw a tub to a whale to
prevent him from rolling against their ship; the treatise being a
tub for the leviathans of scepticism to sport with, instead of disturbing the orthodox commonwealth.  There is an adroit dedication to Lord Somers, and another to the reader, each supposed
to be written by the publisher; and then follows the famous and
entirely delightful dedication to Prince Posterity, a little masterpiece in Swift's peculiar vein of half humorous, half bitter irony.
Part of this address may be selected as a specimen of the style
of the book:
"To affirm that our age is altogether unlearned, and devoid of writers in
any kind, seems to be an assertion so bold and so false, that I have been some



v


"( A TALE OF A TUB"


I45


time thinking the contrary may almost be proved by uncontrollable demonstration. 'Tis true indeed, that although their numbers be vast, and their
productions numerous in proportion, yet are they hurried so hastily off the
scene, that they escape our memory, and delude our sight. When I first
thought of this address, I had prepared a copious list of titles to present your
Highness as an undisputed argument for what I affirm. The originals were
posted fresh upon all gates and corners of streets; but returning in a few hours
to take a review, they were all torn down, and fresh ones in their places; I
inquired after them among readers and booksellers, but I inquired in vain, the
'memorial of them was lost among men, their place was no more to be found;'
and I was laughed to scorn, for a clown and a pedant, devoid of all taste and
refinement, little versed in the course of present affairs, and that knew nothing
of what had passed in the best companies of court and town. So that I can
only avow in general to your Highness, that we do abound in learning and
wit; but to fix upon particulars, is a task too slippery for my slender abilities.
If I should venture in a windy day, to affirm to your Highness, that there is a
large cloud near the horizon in the form of a bear, another in the zenith with
the head of an ass, a third to the westward with claws like a dragon; and your
Highness should in a few minutes think fit to examine the truth? 'tis certain,
they would be all changed in figure and position, new ones would arise, and
all we could agree upon would be, that clouds there were, but that I was
grossly mistaken in the zoography and topography of them."
Then we have the author's preface, where the satire is more
trenchant, although it is here that Swift quietly regrets that he
has "neither a talent nor an inclination for satire"; A Tale of a Tub
is then introduced, but not until we have been treated to a couple
of disquisitions, one on oratorical machines, and the other on the
humours of Grub Street. With Section II. the genuine business
begins.  We have the father who dies, and leaves legacies under
a will to his three sons, Peter (the Church of Rome), Martin (the
Church of England), and Jack (the Dissenters). The description
of these sons, and how they wilfully misinterpreted their father's
expressed injunctions, was dangerous ground, and Swift sailed very
near the wind. He tried to be discreet in dealing with Martin,
and to let him down very gently, but his whole tone was obviously
irreverent.  As Rivarol says, "L'impiete est une indiscretion,"
and this Swift found to be true.    It was A Tale of a Tub which
shattered his ambition, and kept him in perpetuity out of the


III


L




146


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


House of Peers. The whole world laughed over Section IX.,
but the man who wrote it could hardly be made Bishop of
Hereford.
Interspersed between the fragments of the narrative are certain
digressions which are delightful reading. Section III. contains
the "Digression concerning Critics"; Section V. goes into the
silly dispute regarding the relative merits of the ancients and the
moderns, as slyly as Sir William Temple's secretary could venture
to do; Section IX. is the terrible dissertation on madness, which
displays for the first time that strange passion of Swift's for
depicting the phenomena of agony and disease, as well as his
fondness for mere filth; Section X., somewhat in the tone which
Voltaire afterwards adopted in Candide, propounds a ridiculous
optimism as regards the relation of author to publisher. In later
editions than the first, a supplementary history of Martin is added,
of inferior merit. It is better to consider the work as closing, as
it did in 1704, with the charming little essay in which Swift
pretends that he is trying the "experiment very frequent among
modern authors, which is to write upon nothing; when the
subject is utterly exhausted, to let the pen still move on, by some
called the ghost of wit, delighting to walk after the death of its
body." This fitly closes a desultory narrative, the central body
of which is not very just nor extremely ingenious, but tricked out
with every ornament which fancy, humour, invention, and daring
could suggest.
In A Tale of a Tub the intellectual interest never halts for a
moment. There is infinite variety, and the reader is tantalised
by the prodigality of wit, never fatigued for a moment by its
expression.  In pure style Swift never excelled this his first important essay.  The polemical and humorous parts are direct
and terse beyond anything that had preceded them in English,
and when the author permits himself for a moment to be serious,
he speaks with the tongue of angels. In the midst of the profane
section on the AEolists, there is a page which reaches as far as our
language can reach in the direction of dignity and music; and at




V


" TIE BATTLE OF TIIE BOOKS "


147


all times it may be noted that Swift in this work and in The Bat/le
of the Books is more picturesque than anywhere else. His admirable style became a little less peculiarly and uniquely his own as
he proceeded in life, and as he competed with Addison and
Shaftesbury. Hence Gullizer's Travels, being a little more in the
ordinary language of Swift's later days, strikes us as somewhat less
highly-coloured than these earliest treatises, where he is absolutely
himself.
The Battle of the Books holds an incidental place in the great
Phalaris controversy, although it came somewhat late in the day.
It was written to support Temple, who had been rather hard hit by
Bentley and by William Wotton (i666-I726) in their Reflections
upon Ancient and Modern Learning.  Swift, as in duty bound,
is marshalled in the ranks of the ancients, by Temple's side, and
he makes shift to attack literary pretension in the person of a
spider, whose castle "is all built with my own hands, and the
materials extracted altogether out of my own person." The bee,
the lover of antiquity, is "obliged to Heaven alone for my flights
and my music." With our present views in criticism, it may seem
that the Ancient should have been the spider and the Modern the
bee, and Swift is very possibly laughing at his own allies in his
sleeve. The narrative, which is what was then called a " travesty,"
is supposed to be a " full and true account of the battle fought last
Friday between the ancient and the modern books in St. James's
library," of which Bentley was librarian, and. we are to believe
that the books themselves, being infected with the controversy
raging outside, came to a decisive battle by flying at each other's
heads; "but the manuscript, by the injury of fortune or weather,
being in several places imperfect,"-a trick of composition which
Swift loved to indulge in,-"we cannot learn to which side the
victory fell."
There has been litigation between those upper and lower peaks
of Parnassus, on which the ancients and moderns respectively
reside, and Bentley, a famous warrior among the latter, has vowed
to compass the death of two valiant ancients, Phalaris and tEsop.




148


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


He is baffled, and retires to his library, where the books range
themselves into two ranks, and a new Trojan war breaks out, in
which great advantage is gained to the ancients by the defection
to their side of Temple, the champion of the moderns. Before
the battle is described, the apologue of the Spider and the Bee is
introduced, illustrating allegory by still subtler allegory. When
this is over, AEsop rallies the ancients to the attack; they are
gaining the day too easily when the horrible goddess Criticism, in
a chariot drawn by geese, arrives at St. James's, and rushes into
the fray in the guise of one of Bentley's pamphlets. The battle
now becomes Homeric, and great heroes plunge into the fray on
either hand; Aristotle lets an arrow fly at Bacon, but misses him
and kills Descartes; Homer tramples Davenant in the dirt, and
Virgil spares the life of Dryden, while the book closes with the
exquisitely diverting episode of Bentley and Wotton. In the 1704
edition, The Battle of the Books was followed by the ironical
fragment called The Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, an
exposure of fanaticism which was, to say the least, indiscreet in
the mouth of a young ecclesiastic eagerly ambitious to rise in the
Church of England. Each of these treatises shows a great freedom
from prejudice, a boundless impatience of humbug and pretension,
and a savage touch which is all the more brutal because of the
delicacy, keenness, and power of sympathy, of which the author
shows himself inherently capable upon every page.
With these astonishing productions in his portfolio, Swift went
to Ireland in I699, and after several clerical disappointments,
became chaplain to Lord Berkeley in Dublin.   In 1700 he
received Laracor, and one or two other small livings, upon which
he could barely have supported himself had he not retained his
Castle chaplaincy; in 1701 Esther Johnson, the famous Stella,
joined him in Ireland. For the ladies of Lord Berkeley's family
he conceived a great affection, and it was to amuse them that he
wrote some of his most delightful trifles, the Petition of Frances
Harris, in I700, in verse, and the Meditation upon a Broomstick,
in 1704, in prose. The second of these, a moral meditation in




V


" MEDITATION UPON A BROOMSTICK "


149


the style and manner of that eminent philosopher, the Hon.
Robert Boyle, opens as follows:
"This single stick, which you now behold ingloiiously lying in that
neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest. It was full
of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs. But now, in vain does the busy art
of man pretend to vie with nature, by tieing that withered bundle of twigs to
its sapless trunk. 'Tis now at best but the reverse of what it was, a tree
turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air. 'Tis
now handled by every dirty wench, condemned to do her drudgery, and, by
a capricious kind of fate, destined to make other things clean, and to be nasty
itself. At length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, 'tis either
thrown out of doors, or condemned to the last use of kindling a fire. When I
beheld this, I sighed, and said to myself, Surely mortal man is a broom-stick.
Nature sent him into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving condition,
wearing his own hair on his head, the proper branches of this reasoning vegetable, till the axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs, and left
him a withered trunk. He then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing
himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that
never grew on his head. But now should this our broomstick pretend to
enter the scene, proud of those tirchen spoils it never bore, and all covered
with dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be
apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own
excellencies, and other men's defaults!"
In I70I Swift spent six months in England, and during that
time made his first appearance as an author, at the age of thirtyfour, by the publication of his Contests and -Dissensions in Athens
and Romie.   This pamphlet was called forth by the impeachment
of Lord Somers by the House of Commons; Swift took the side
of the Whig peers very strenuously, and during the lull caused by
the summer recess published this grave and learned catalogue of
instances of factious tyranny by democratic bodies in Greece and
Rome.    He held his satiric pen under close control, and there is
no trace of his peculiar humour until within a page or two of the
close. The pamphlet, which was anonymous, was very successful;
rumour attributed it confidently to Burnet, but the bishop was
prompt in denial, and in I702 Swift was making no secret of the
authorship, which ingratiated him with the Whigs.    He was now
desirous of gaining political influence, but his position was a little




150


SWIFT AND TIE DEISTS


CHAP.


difficult, for he was a Whig and yet at the same time a highchurchman. Going and coming between Laracor and London,
he ceases to contribute much to literature until the year I708;
we find him, however, about I705, and apparently through the
good offices of Congreve, becoming acquainted with Addison and
his little senate at Will's coffee-house.
In the year 1708, at the age of forty-two, Swift turned seriously
to occasional literature as a means of obtaining and exercising
political power. He became the greatest of pamphleteers, taking
up the line opened by Lord Halifax in the preceding generation,
but working it with more vigour and directness. The Sentiments
of a Clhurch of England Man (1708) is something more than a
pamphlet.   It is a treatise, in two sections, on the merits of
political and religious moderation, and, above all, on the error of
advancing opinions merely because those are the opinions of a
certain party, as though a party were an order of friars. The
argument was clear and admirably grave, but there were certain
strictures upon the Dissenters of which the Whig leaders could not
approve.   In An Argumnent against Abolishing Christianity ( 708),
Swift gave the reins again to his humour, and pretended to argue
gravely against the proposal to laicise the revenues of the Church
of England for the purpose of endowing the research of two
hundred elegant young sceptics. Swift was never more spirited
than in this daring attack upon the Deists:
"If Christianity were once abolished, how could the free-thinkers, the
strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another
subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities? What
wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose
genius by continual practice hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish
themselves upon any other subject? We are daily complaining of the great
decline of wit among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the
only topic we have left? Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a wit, or
Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaustible stock of Christianity had not been
at hand to provide them with material? What other subject through all art
or nature could have produced Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him
with readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorns and dis



V


THIE PARTRIDGE PAMPHLETS


I51


tinguishes the writer. For, had a hundred such pens as these been employed
on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and
oblivion."
This sort of irony was perilous stuff, and not a few of the " daggletailed parsons" failed to understand that this compromising champion was fighting upon their side. Without laying aside his irony,
Swift adopted a loftier tone in his Project for the Advancement of
Reliion (i 709). This tract, which was recommended by a charming dedication to Lady Berkeley, is a very powerful indictment of
the age for its open and impudent debauchery, and contains a
proposal that the Government should appoint a sort of proctors,
to subdivide the country between them, and keep guard over the
popular morals. Swift denounces society with an obvious sincerity,
inspired by a fiery indignation against wickedness, but yet, as the
Tatler observed, he writes like a gentleman, and not like a vulgar
fanatic.  He felt, himself, that the wisdom of making the particular
reforms he suggested was questionable, but that some sort of
remedy was called for by the scandal of the times he pronounced
to be absolutely outside discussion. Queen Anne and the Archbishop of York read the tract and were gratified; but nothing was
done, either for morality or for Swift.
In the midst of these grave disquisitions, Swift amused himself
with the celebrated group of squibs or practical jokes upon the
astrologer John Partridge. This man had for thirty years published
prophetic almanacs, of the kind not yet wholly extinct. Swift,
under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, published Predictions
for the year 7o08, which were not vague like those of Partridge,
but gave the exact dates at which various interesting persons,
among others Louis XIV., would die during that year. Bickerstaff
declared himself a sincere astrologer, bent on the exposure of such
frauds as the Merlins of the day. He prophesied, incidentally,
that Partridge would die on the 29th of March, at about eleven
at night. As soon as that date was past, Swift issued another
pamphlet giving An Account of Partrizdge's )ealh in very pathetic
terms.  The poor astrologer hastened to assure the world that he




152


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CIHAP.


was still alive, upon which Swift promptly reproved him in a Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff (I709), and in a black-letter Merlin's
Prophecy. Swift seems to have thrown himself body and soul
into this ludicrous and fantastic controversy, and to have summoned contributions to it from Steele, Congreve, Thomas Yalden
(I67I-I736), and Prior. It raged for two years, and Partridge was
reduced to despair; he lived on, however, until I715. The great
result of this astrological absurdity was the foundation of the
Tatler, produced, as we shall see in the next chapter, under the
pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff. It has been held of late that
the Partridge squibs of Swift are not in good taste, nor very funny.
The present writer can only confess to finding them among the
most laughable productions in the English language, and to thinking such an impostor as John Partridge only too much honoured
by the coruscations of Swift's magnificent facetiousness.
In I708 Swift prepared a volume of Miscellanies for the press,
and then abandoned the project.  We possess, however, a catalogue of the intended contents, and we find them much the same as
those of Morphew's piracy, or half-piracy, in 1 711. That volume
contained the writings we have mentioned, and, in addition, the
Letter on the Sacramental Test, of I708.  This celebrated tract,
like most of Swift's publications, was anonymous, but in this case
the author was particularly anxious to be unknown.  He even
introduced an allusion to himself and affected to be displeased
with it; but the authorship was soon found out, and Swift attributes
to the pages of this pamphlet the growing coldness with which the
Whigs regarded him. Mr. Leslie Stephen has happily summed
up Swift's rather puzzling attitude with regard to this Letter by
saying that "he thought the Whigs scoundrels for not patronising
him, and not the less scoundrels because their conduct was
consistent with their own scoundrelly principles." The rest of the
volume of I708- 711 is made up of verses, short pedestrian pieces,
full of spirit and humour, including, besides what have been
already mentioned, the lampoons against Vanbrugh, the architectdramatist; The Salamander, a satire on Lord Cutts; Bauncs and




v


SWIFT'S POEMS


I53


Philemon, the most ambitious of Swift's early poems, written in
I706, a very elegant and entertaining imitation of Ovid, rigorously
revised by Addison; the compliment to Mlrs. Biddy Floyd, very
gracefully turned; a Grub Street Elegy on Partridge; A Description of a City Shower, a marvellously realistic study, in heroics,
touched with a pencil which might provoke the envy of M. Zola;
and Sid Hanel's Rod, a terrible celebration of the mode in which
Godolphin broke his treasurer's staff "like naughty lad." Several
of the best known of these verses were written for the Tatler. In
these poems Swift has not the same lightness of touch as certain
of his younger contemporaries, but he is splendidly direct, vivid,
and vigorous, his lines fall like well-directed blows of the flail, and
he gives the octosyllabic measure, which he is accustomed to
choose on account of the Hudibrastic opportunities it offers, a
character which is entirely his own.   It is difficult to quote the
most effective passages from Swift's poems, but there is nothing too
malodorous for delicate nerves in this page from the City Shower.
"Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down,
Threatening with deluge this devoted town.
To shops in crowds the daggled females fly,
Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy.
The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach,
Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach.
The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with hasty strides,
While streams run down her oil'd umbrella's sides.
Here various kinds, by various fortunes led,
Commence acquaintance underneath a shed.
Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs.
Box'd in a chair the Beau impatient sits,
While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits,
And ever and anon with frightful din
The leather sounds; he trembles from within.
So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed,
Pregnant with Greeks impatient to be freed,
(Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do,
Instead of paying chairmen, ran them through,)
Laocoon struck the outside with his spear,
And each imprison'd hero quaked for fear."




154


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHIAP.


With the publication of the Miscellanies in  71 I, the first period
of Swift's strictly literary life closes.  He is almost entirely absorbed by politics and by political pamphleteering for the next few
years. Over this interesting section of his biography it is necessary that we should pass very hastily in the present sketch.
Two women, as all the world knows, enjoyed the correspondence and the confidential friendship of Swift.  "Stella" (Esther
Johnson-1684-1727) has been already mentioned. In 1708 he
made the acquaintance of " Vanessa" (Hester Vanhomerigh, pronounced Vanummery —69I-I723). The famousJournal to Stella,
a collection of private documents which throw a marvellous light
on the central portion of Swift's history, was kept from September 2, 1710, to June 6; 1713. The world has scarcely seen another
so intimate revelation of himself by any man of genius. The
result is scarcely literature, but, if it may be said so, something
very artless and familiar, which is, for the nonce, rather better than
literature. It was begun on the occasion of Swift's visit to London
as the confidential solicitor of the Irish bishops, petitioning Queen
Anne for first-fruits, a visit which coincided with the fall of the
Whig ministry of Somers and Godolphin. This period was the
heyday of Swift's personal success as a wire-puller, and during
three years he sent Miss Johnson (Stella) a daily chronicle of
his minutest doings and sayings. As is well known, though the
cause of such reticence is still obscure, Swift was extremely cautious in his relations to women, and caressing as these familiar
entries are, they are nominally addressed not to Stella only, but to
Miss Dingley, her companion, as well. Much of the Journal is
written in what the writer calls a "little language"; a sort of
lovers' whisper, or sentimental shorthand. Mr. Forster was the
first person who dared to give this jargon, the purr of the tiger,
verbatim. Here is a passage which looks more than usually formidable, but which may easily be deciphered:
"I came back just by nightfall, cruel cold weather. I have no smell yet,
but my cold's something better. Nite dee sollahs, I'll take my reeve. I forget
how MD's accounts are. Go, play cards, and be melly, deelest logues, and




v


"JOURNAL TO STELL A"


-55


Rove Pdfr.-Nite michar MD, FW, oo roves Pdfr.-FW, Lele, lele, ME,
AIE, MD, MD, MD, MD, MD, MD, MD, FW, FW, FW, ME, ME, FW,
FW, F    FW,, ME, ME, ME. The six odd Chillings, tell Mrs. B-, are
for her New Year's gift. Lele, lele, lele and lele.'
A study of theJournal to Stella is indispensable to a knowledge of
Swift; it exhibits fantastic and tender facets of his character which
we should hardly suspect but for its existence; and side by side with
these affectionate puerilities are found recorded his gravest thoughts
and wildest ambitions. One of the earliest facts which he has to
announce to Stella is his introduction to Harley, with whom, and
with St. John, he was speedily on terms of intimacy; so that on
the 14th of October he was able to boast, that "I stand with the
new people ten times better than ever I did with the old, and
forty times more caressed."  He was now launched on the support
of the new Tory party. In November 17I1 Swift took up the
editorship of the Examiner, which had been a Whig paper, and
carried it on with extraordinary vehemence and satiric power until
June of the following year. His assistance to Harley's administration was immense, and it was the more valued because Swift
refused all remuneration for his services. The Examiner formed
a fortress in which the ministry stood on their isthmus between
the old Tories and the Whigs. During this time, and through the
years immediately following, Swift seized every opportunity to
clinch public feeling by one of his pungent tracts. Of these an
immense number exist, and form the political section of his
writings. They cannot be enumerated here. The Conduct of the
Allies, published November 171 I, a manifesto from the peace party,
is the best known, and now perhaps the most interesting of these.
It passed through four editions in a week. At this time Swift was
a person of the highest consequence in London society. Bishop
Kennett reports that in 17I3 " Dr. Swift was the principal man [at
Court] of talk and business, and acted as minister of requests."
In May 1712 Swift published a Proposal for correcting the
English Language. This tract bore his name, and was the earliest
of his publications to do so. In April I 7 3 he got the only piece




I56


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


of preferment he ever secured, the Deanery of St. Patrick's, in
Dublin; and the Journal to Stella closes with his setting out to
take possession.  By this time he had gained the affectionate
friendship of Gay, Parnell, Berkeley, and particularly Pope, whose
Iliad he took advantage of his influence with the ministry to commend.   During his political greatness Swift was remarkably
generous to men of letters. He says, in regard to his success in
securing the bishopric of Cloyne for Berkeley (April i2, 1713),
"I think I am bound, in honour and conscience, to use all my
little credit towards helping forward men of worth in the world."
He succeeded in forwarding every one's interest, save only his own.
His greatest disappointment had been the refusal of the see of
Hereford, in I712. But the event that sealed the hopelessness
of his ambition was the death of Queen Anne; on ist August
1714 "the party with which Swift had identified himself, in
whose success all his hopes and ambitions were bound up, was
not so much ruined as annihilated." In September Arbuthnot
described Swift as " like a man knocked down, though you may
behold him still with a stern countenance aiming a blow at his
adversaries." Defiance, however, was now worse than useless,
and Swift returned to Dublin in despair.
With the interesting and even romantic events of the next ten
years we have nothing to do, for the Dean of St. Patrick's refrained
almost entirely from literature.  He threw in his lot with the Irish;
and having on his first arrival been almost universally shunned
and disliked, he ended by being the most popular of patriots.
His Irish pamphleteering threw a shadow before in his able and
impassioned Proposalfor the Universal Use of Irish/ Manufactures
(1720); a treatise which brought on its printer a Government prosecution, and, according to Lord Orrery, first turned the tide of
Irish popularity in Swift's favour. The Proposal is not in Swift's
most earnest vein, but it is full of happy turns of irony and paradox, and shows that his wit had not rusted in his long retirement.
Of much greater literary importance is the extraordinary series of
polemical pamphlets known as the Drapier's Letters (I724), in




V


THE "DRAPIER'S LETTERS "


I57


which Swift rises to his highest level as a pure controversialist.
The history of these wonderful productions must be given with
some minuteness. In 1722 a William Wood, "hardwareman and
bankrupt," had secured a patent for supplying Ireland with copper
coin to the figure of 1io8,ooo. The Irish Houses of Parliament
appealed, for it was understood that Wood had carried out his
contract in a grossly fraudulent manner; but in the face of violent
local opposition Walpole determined to carry out the scheme.
Dublin was already in a dangerous ferment when Swift, in July
1724, addressed an anonymous letter on the subject "to the shopkeepers, tradesmen, farmers, and common people of Ireland,"
signed "M. B., Drapier" (or draper). M. B. professed to be a
shrewd Dublin draper, who anticipated personal ruin if Englishmen were allowed to come to his shop and buy his goods in return
for sacks full of Wood's brazen rubbish. This first letter produced
a great effect; but meanwhile a report of Privy Council recommended the new coinage. On the 4th of August the Drapier
produced a second letter, to " Mr. Harding, the Printer "; and a
third, to the "nobility and gentry of Ireland," on the 25th of
August. Waxing more and more excited, on the I3th of October
the Drapier addressed a fourth letter "to the whole people of
Ireland."  Lord Carteret was now sent over from England, and
his first act was to offer a reward of f300 for the discovery of
the author of the Fourth Letter. The printer was indicted, and
Swift thereupon, changing his tactics, was silent for awhile.
Events forced from him a fifth letter on the I4th of December,
addressed to Lord Molesworth. What is known as the sixth
letter, and signed by Swift, was written to Lord Middleton in
October 1724, but not printed until 1735.  There are other
Drapier's Letters, but of a later date than the first four. It will
be easily admitted that of all political pamphlets in the English
language, extracted from their author by the passion of the
moment, these on Wood's pence are the most brilliant, and possess, as literature, the most durable interest. They have been
much attacked, however, on the score of candour and logic.




I58


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


Swift's arguments are violent and faulty; he exasperated his
antagonists by his deliberate and yet tumultuous misrepresentations. But there is no doubt that he was in downright earnest, that
his anger burned white hot, and that he had persuaded himself
that the danger was so great and so imminent that he should
stick at absolutely no step to prevent it. In the Drapier's Letters
he talks about the currency in terms so impassioned that we cannot reasonably doubt that he would lightly have committed
perjury or even murder if the crime would have given Wood's
scheme its final quietus. There is a good deal of monotony
about his diatribe; he says, over and over again, in much the
same words, "I must confess I look upon it as my duty, so far
as God hath enabled me, and as long as I keep within the bonds
of truth, of duty, and of decency," but within these bounds he
could not keep, " to warn my fellow-subjects, as they value their
king, their country, and all that ought or can be dear to them,
never to admit this pernicious coin, no, not so much as one single
halfpenny"; and driven at last to despair by the obstinacy of the
Government, he cries out, " If authority shall see fit to forbid all
writings or discourses upon this subject, except such as are in
favour of Mr. Wood, I will obey as it becomes me; only, when I
am in danger of bursting, I will go and whisper among the reeds,
-not any reflexion upon the wisdom of my countrymen,-but
only these few words: Beeware of Wood's Halfpence."  To the
same series belongs the brilliant squib, Wood's Execution (I724),
in which Swift let off some of the bubbling humour which did
not befit the Drapier's Letters. In connection with these Irish
pamphlets should be read two tracts of Swift's later years, the
Vindication of Lord Carteret (1730), and the Examination of
Certain Abuses ( 732), the former a typical example of the author's
irony, and the second of his humour. The Examination would
rank among the first short examples of purely entertaining literature in the language, if it were not stained with the horrible and
gratuitous obscenity which grew on Swift as he became old and
reckless. Swift's courageous importunity in I724 made him the




V


" GULLIVER'S TRAVELS" 


I59


idol of the Dublin citizens, and Walpole shrunk from the task
of arresting him in the midst of a bodyguard of the whole
population of Ireland. He took no pleasure in this popularity,
and when it was at its height talked of dying there "in a rage,
like a poisoned rat in a hole."  What pleasure in life he
could still receive, he seems to have found in his acquaintance with the London wits, and, in particular, with Pope and
Arbuthnot. His next and perhaps greatest work sprang out of
this pleasant intimacy.
The famous Martinus Scriblerus Club, in which Pope, Swift,
and Arbuthnot took the leading parts, was formed, at Pope's
suggestion, for the purpose of satirising broadly all literary incompetence.  During the latest period of Pope's career the
projects of Scriblerus were constantly present to the mind of that
poet, and "the great and wonderful work of The Dunciad " is the
most celebrated of his fragmentary contributions to the labours of
the club. Swift, on the other hand, was to exert himself on the
creation of a satirical romance, and the first intimation which the
world received of this production was a mysterious series of
allusions in Pope's feiemoirs of Scriblerus, in which the four parts
of Martin's Travels were rudely sketched. They were to form
"very extraordinary voyages, into very extraordinary nations,"
and to "manifest the most distinguishing marks of a philosopher,
a politician, and a legislator."  It has been thought that the
second part, which is certainly the most genial, was the earliest
written; for Vanessa speaks of it in 1722. The whole work,
under the title of Gulliver's Travels, appeared in the winter of
1726-27. It was anonymous, or rather pseudonymous, for it was
supposed to be a relation, by a simple ship's captain of Nottinghamshire, one Lemuel Gulliver, of his adventures in strange lands, and
to be edited, for the entertainment of young noblemen, by the
cousin of the traveller, Richard Sympson. This editor protested.
that he had done nothing with the unvarnished narrative, except
"strike out innumerable passages relating to the winds and
tides," and suchlike marine technicalities. To increase the sem



i6o


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CIIAP.


blance of genuine geographical pretension, maps of the various
countries were inserted, and a portrait of Gulliver.
Critical ingenuity has laboured to discover the sources of the
peculiar form taken by this celebrated romance.  The author
presented the world with one obvious suggestion by stating, in a
mock prefatory epistle, that he was the cousin of William
Dampier, the famous navigator of the preceding generation. But
Gulliver's Travels owes most of its external shape to the Vera
Historia of Lucian, itself a travesty of lost works on geography.
The French poet Cyrano de Bergerac (I620-I655) had written a
Voyage a la lune and a Histoire comizqe tdes ettats empires du So/eil,
from which Fontenelle had borrowed some hints. Several slight
points which Swift used he is said to have taken from a tract by
Francis Goodwin, Bishop of Llandaff. There can be no doubt,
moreover, that the particular narrative manner of Defoe, whose
Robinson Crusoe had appeared in I719, produced an effect upon
Swift. All these critical speculations, however, are rather curious
than essential. Swift, always among the most original of writers,
is nowhere more thoroughly himself than in his enchanting
romance of Lemuel Gulliver. Whether we read it, as children
do, for the story, or as historians, for the political allusions, or as
men of the world, for the satire and philosophy, we have to
acknowledge that it is one of the wonderful and unique books
of the world's literature.
From internal evidence, it is highly probable that the composition of Gulliver's Travels was distributed over a good many
years. In the voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag there is but
little to justify the charges of brutality and cruel violence which
are brought against Swift's later satires.  They belong to the
period of his mental health.  The third section of Gulliver's
Travels is really a miscellany: it has never interested the public
so much as the rest of the book; it deals with speculations with
which, it is supposed, Swift could not deal without help from
Arbuthnot; and it holds no very distinct place among the leading
works of the writer. The floating island, though described with




V


" GULLIVER'S TRAVELS "


I6I


unusual picturesqueness of phrase, baffles the most willing faith.
When he comes to Lagado, Swift flies too modestly beneath the
wing of Rabelais. In Glubbdubdrib the reader soon grows like
the narrator, and finds that the domestic spectres "give him no
emotion at all." Indeed, this portion of Gulliver's Travels would
hardly live, were it not for the pathetic imagination of the Struldbrugs, a people whose peculiarities appeal to the most secret instincts of mankind.  But in all these miscellaneous excursions
there is little or nothing which displays to us the darker side of
Swift's genius. That side is, however, exemplified to excess in the
final part, the Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms. It is
difficult not to believe that this was written during the last illness
of Stella, when Swift was aware that his best companion was
certainly leaving him, and when that remorse which he could not
but feel for his conduct to the woman who had so long loved him
was turning what milk remained in his nature to gall. In the
summer of 1726 the loss of Stella's conversation made him, he
tells us, weary of life, and he fled from Ireland in a horror lest he
should be a witness of her end. Delany tells us that from the
time of her death, and probably from a few months earlier, Swift's
character and temper underwent a change. His vertigo became
chronic, and so did his misanthropy, and it seems probable that
the first literary expression of his rage and despair was the awful
satire of the Yahoos. It was with the horrible satisfaction of
disease that Swift formed a story which would enable him to
describe men as being, though " with some appearance of cunning,
and the strongest disposition to mischief, yet the most unteachable of all brutes," and there is something which suggests a brain
not wholly under control in the very machinery of this part of
the romance.  In Lilliput and in Brobdingnag we are struck by
the ingenious harmony of the whole design, there being no detail
which is not readily credible if we admit the possibility of the
scheme; but among the Houyhnhnms probability is ruthlessly
sacrificed to the wild pleasure the author takes in trampling human
pride in the mire of his sarcasm.  Of the horrible foulness of this


III


M




I62


SWIFT AND TILE DEISTS


CHAP.


satire on the Yahoos enough will have been said when it is
admitted that it banishes from decent households a fourth part of
one of the most brilliant and delightful of English books.
After Stella's death, in January 1728, Swift changed his
manner of life in many ways. He never had written constantly
or professionally; he now made a practice of neglecting literature.
He determined that the lightest things he had written should be
"serious philosophical lucubrations " in comparison with what he
would now busy himself about. In this mood he fell back again
on verse, which he had neglected in middle life, with one or two
exceptions. We may retrace our steps for a moment to consider
the most important of these exceptions, the longest of Swift's
existing poems, Cadenus and Vanessa (I713).  Cadenus is the
Dean himself, Decanus, Vanessa is the enthusiastic and unfortunate Miss Vanhomrigh. The poem, in the mocking mythology
of the period, tells how a wondrous maid was born under the protection of Venus and Pallas, and how this
"Vanessa, in her bloom,
Advanced, like Atalanta's star,
But rarely seen and seen from far."
She meets Cadenus at last, "declined in health, advanced in
years." Cadenus
"could praise, esteem, approve,
But understood not what was love ";
in short, the history of the singular attachment which existed
between those unhappy persons is told with extraordinary fulness
and simplicity, in verse that is charmingly arch and gay; but
Swift confesses that what really occurred at last, what strange
compromise cold friendship made with panting love,
"Must never to Mankind be told,
Nor shall the conscious Muse unfold."
Among the poems of his latest period must be mentioned The
Journal of a Modern Lady (1728); The Lady's Dressing-Room
(r730), a little masterpiece of a very nasty kind; and Strephon




v


" ON THE DEATH OF DR.. SWIFT "


I63


and Cloe (I731), which bears the same hall-mark of the Yahoo.
On the Death of Dr. Szift ( 73 I), in which a maxim      of Rochefoucault is expanded in five hundred lines, is an invaluable record
of the strangely-compacted temper of the writer, and contains
some excellent writing:
" My female friends, whose tender hearts
Have better learn'd to act their parts,
Receive the news in doleful dumps:
'The Dean is dead: (Pray what is trumps?)
Then, Lord have mercy on his soul!
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six Deans, they say, must bear the pall:
(I wish I knew what king to call.)
Madam, your husband will attend
The funeral of so good a friend?
No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight:
And he's engaged to-morrow night:
My Lady Club will take it ill,
If he should fail her at quadrille.
He loved the Dean-(I lead a heart)
But dearest friends, they say, must part.
His time was come: he ran his race;
We hope he's in a better place.'
Why do you grieve that friends should die?
No loss more easy to supply.
One year is past; a different scene!
No further mention of the Dean;
Who now, alas! no more is miss'd,
Than if he never did exist.
Where's now this favourite of Apollo?
Departed:-and his works must follow;
Must undergo the common fate;
His kind of wit is out of date.
Some country Squire to Lintot goes,
Inquires for 'Swift in Verse and Prose.'
Says Lintot, 'I have heard the name;
He died a year ago?'- 'The same.'
He searches all the shop in vain.
'Sir, you may find them in Duck Lane;
I sent them with a load of books,
Last Monday to the pastry-cook's.




I64


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


To fancy they could live a year!
I find you're but a stranger here.
The Dean was famous in his time,
And had a kind of knack at rhyme.
Iis way of writing now is past;
The town has got a better taste;
I keep no antiquated stuff,
But spick and span I have enough.
Pray do but give me leave to show 'em;
Here's Colly Cibber's birth-day poem '"The Beast's Confession (1732) is a very cynical fable; On Poetry,
a Rhalpsody, one of the finest of his poetical pieces, dates from
I733, and contains among many other well-known passages, the
lines about the fleas "with smaller still to bite 'em." Soon after
this Swift's memory and his invention deserted him, but he wrote
couplets and epigrams until very late. The lines On the Death
of Dr. Swift may perhaps be considered as giving, on the whole,
the finest impression of Swift's skill and force as a versifier.  Of
the pieces mentioned above, all are in octosyllabic rhyme.
To the same period preceding his fatal decline belongs the
extraordinary farrago of wilfully inane chatter called The Complete
Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, better known as
Polite Conversation but this, although given to Mrs. Barber for
publication in 1738, appears to have been written nine or ten
years earlier. The Polite Conversation, which pretends to be the
result of patient collecting of good things in society, during forty
years, by one Simon Wagstaffe, leads off with a very diverting
introduction, from which the following passage is taken:
" [This noble art of conversation] is not so easy an acquirement as a few
ignorant pretenders may imagine. A footman can swear; but he cannot
swear like a lord. He can swear as often, but can he swear with equal
delicacy, propriety, and judgment?  No, certainly, unless he be a lad of
superior parts, of good memory, a diligent observer, one who hath a skilful
ear, some knowledge in music, and an exact taste, which hardly fall to the
share of one in a thousand among that fraternity, in as high favour as they
now stand with their ladies. Neither hath one footman in six so fine a genius
as to relish and apply those exalted sentences comprised in this volume which
I offer to the world. It is true I cannot see that the same ill consequences




v


"RULES FOR SERVANTS"


I65


would follow from the waiting-woman, who, if she hath been bred to read
romances, may have some subaltern or second-hand politeness; and if she
constantly attends the tea, and be a good listener:, may, in some years, make a
tolerable figure, which will serve, perhaps, to draw in the young chaplain or
the old steward. But, alas! after all, how can she acquire those hundreds of
graces and motions and airs, the whole military management of the fan, the
contortions of every muscular motion in the face, the risings and fallings, the
quickness and slowness of the voice, with the several turns and cadences the
proper junctions of smiling and frowning, how often and how loud to laugh,
when to jibe and when to flout, with all the other branches of doctrine and
discipline above recited."
A volume of Miscellanies saw the light in I729, which opened
with the Modest Prolosal, a grimly facetious pamphlet recommending that the children of the poor should be killed and distributed
as food. A fragment called Rulesfor Servants, of an ironical kind,
was written before 1738, but published after the Dean's death.
He made his will in I740, leaving his fortune to found a lunatic
asylum in Dublin, "and showed by one satiric touch No nation
needed it so much."    Almost immediately after this, his mental
and physical health was finally submerged. He became furiously
insane, until in 1743 this shocking condition was exchanged for
one of moody stupor; he died without a struggle on the g9th of
October 1745, at the age of nearly seventy-eight.        He was
privately buried in his own cathedral, the citizens of Dublin
vainly desiring to give their patriot a pompous burial. Swift was
a tall powerful man, with a rather dull face, illuminated by very
singular and flashing azure eyes.
In considering Swift purely as a writer, the factor of his health
must always be taken into consideration. At the Tory victory
which closed I 7 1, the highest intellectual honours seemed to be
in Swift's hands, but the intolerable vertigo or some other failure
of the nervous system stepped in between him and his ambition.
It will for ever be a subject of discussion to what extent and in
what exact manner Swift's bodily ailments interfered with his
intellectual powers. Towards the end, when mental decline was
certain, the condition which produced the Yahoos and the Modest




I66


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


Proposal could not be called weakness.   His most revolting
cynicism was the result, apparently, of physical pain which distressed the nerves and distorted the judgment without weakening
the intelligence an iota. Swift's mind, so far as we can observe
its action, remained vigorous behind a veil of suffering until it
was finally and totally eclipsed.  Readers of strong mental
digestion are doubtless to be found who would not lose one scrap
of what the mighty Dean has left. Others, of more feeble race,
will wish that the hideous and monstrous images which crowded
upon his dying imagination had found no expression in literature.
On this point we need hazard no opinion; enough to say that
those images were doubtless the result of disease acting upon a
very bold and not over cleanly fancy, and that the most conscientious Swiftean will hardly class them among his best
creations.
When we consider the fact that Swift's writings are short and
occasional, for the most part, and that he usually adopted such a
trifling form as would suit his favourite motto, vive la bagatelle,
it is impossible not to marvel at the impression of force and
importance which these writings present.  It is useless to regret
that he did not adopt a graver view of the duties of an author.
When he tried to be a serious poet, a serious historian, he
entirely failed. It is almost absurd to think of so formidable a
spirit performing upon the lighter lyre, and yet he scarcely
touched any other instrument to the end of his life. As the poor
lady put it, Dean Swift could write finely on a broomstick, and not
finely merely, but with the most caustic and fatal pungency.
In his various works we find one quality almost always predominant-an imperturbable humour, and from this lambent spirit of
pleasantry nothing human or divine was safe. To fail to observe
the predominance of this humour in Swift's writings is to fail to
appreciate their surface; to give this quality too great importance
in estimating their character is to mistake the exterior for the
actual substance.  Swift is not a writer of the first order by merit
of his humour or causticity, still less by merit of his coarseness




v


ARBUTHNOT


I67


or cynicism; he is a writer of the first order because he moulded
language to be the vehicle of a sincerity that has never been
surpassed. No author in any language is more vehemently in
earnest than Swift, and however unconventional may be the expression of his feelings, however cruel, unclean, and paradoxical,
he rivets our attention and commands our respect because we
feel him to be essentially and passionately a lover of good things.
Under the strangest mask, he is always energising after righteousness. He hates vice so much, that it does not seem merely evil
to him, but hideous and ridiculous.  He is so utterly and
vehemently on the side of purity and liberty and sanity, that he
does not mind seeming dirty and unfair and mad. As for his prose
style, if the student will carefully read and digest the Tale of a
Tub, the Conduct of the Allies, and the Vindication of Lord
Cartere, he will be in possession of the typical materials on
which to found a judgment in this matter. He will find, perhaps,
more brilliant exceptional phrases elsewhere; but in these three
short works Swift's manner as a writer will be exhibited to him,
his humour, his irony, his rapidity and conciseness, his short bright
sentences, "like light dissolved in star-showers," and he will not
need to go further to perceive that this was the greatest original
intellect in pure literature between Dryden and Wordsworth.
Swift is attended, as a planet by a satellite, by the shadowy
reputation of John Arbuthnot (1667-1735).  He was a poor
Scotch youth, who early settled in London, and took up the
medical profession. His first publications were slight scientific
pamphlets, among them an Essay on the fsefulness of Mathemnatical Learning (I700). He rose rapidly as a doctor, and in 1705
was appointed Physician Extraordinary to Queen Anne. At the
age of forty-five Arbuthnot was still without literary distinction or
ambition. In the early part of 1711 he made Swift's acquaintance,
and his nature underwent a transformation.  He assimilated
Swift's peculiar style so rapidly and with such complete success
that in 1712 he published two famous pamphlets which were
attributed to the greater writer, and might still be so attributed but




I68


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


for Swift's positive statement to Stella.  Of these, one is The Art
of Political Lying,; the other, still better known, was issued originally as Law  is a Bottomless Pit, but reprinted as The History of
John Bull. Arbuthnot was a leading member of the Scriblerus
Club, and the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, as they appeared
in I74I, are mainly from his pen. He published a solid disquisition on Ancient Coins in I727.     In I73I were printed his
Epitaph on Colonel Chartres, a piece of splendid invective, and
his Scolding of the Ancients.   Arbuthnot signed nothing, and
allowed his papers to be dispersed without a thought for posterity.
It is yet undetermined whether certain tracts were written by him
or by Swift.   His Miscellanies, posthumously collected in two
volumes in I75i, have many pieces in them which Arbuthnot did
not write, and his son repudiated the whole publication. Arbuthnot was a warm-hearted and generous companion, who enjoyed
the confidence and intimate friendship of the principal men of
letters of his age. Pope addressed to him the finest of his epistles,
and Swift said that "his humanity was equal to his wit." He is
principally remembered by The History of John Bull, designed to
strengthen the peace party by laughing at the fallen Duke of
Marlborough.    It is lively and witty, and would be extremely
original in form if the Tale of a Tub had not preceded it; it
should be added that Arbuthnot has none of Swift's savage
violence. The following passage, in which the genius of Handel
is whimsically complimented, is taken from Arbuthnot's Harmony
in an Uproar:
"Frederick Handel, hold up your hand! Know you are here brought to
answer to the several following high crimes and misdemeanours, committed
upon the wills and understandings, and against the peace, of our sovereign
lord the Mobility of Great Britain, particularly this metropolis. To which
you shall make true and faithful answer-So help you, Music! Swear him
upon the two operas of Ariadne, alias 7ie Cuckoo and the Nzightingale.
" Imprimis, you are charged with having bewitched us for the space of
twenty years past; nor do we know where your enchantments will end if a
timely stop is not put to them, they threatening us with an entire destruction
of liberty, and an absolute tyranny in your person over the whole territories of
the Haymarket.




v


MANDEVILLE


I69


" Secondly, you have most insolently dared to give us good music and sound
harmony, when we wanted and desired bad, to the great encouragement of
your operas, and the ruin of our good allies and confederates, the professors of
bad music.
" Thirdly, you have most feloniously and arrogantly assumed to yourself
an uncontrolled property of pleasing us, whether we would or no; and have
often been so bold as to charm us, when we were positively resolved to be out
of humour.
" Besides these, we can, at convenient time or times, produce andl prove
five hundred and fifteen articles of lesser consequence, which may, on the
whole, at least amount to accumulative treason. How say you, Sir, are you
guilty of the said charge or no?
" Prisoner. Guilty of the whole charge."
In 1705 a young physician, who had been born in Holland,
but early settled in London, Bernard de Mandeville (I670-1733),
published a rough poem    in octosyllabics, entitled The Grumbling,
Hive. In this fable the style of Swift's verses was imitated, but
the manner of the poem was of less importance than the cynical
matter, in which it was striven to show that a hive of prosperous
vicious bees was ruined by becoming virtuous:
"To enjoy the world's conveniences,
Be fam'd in war, yet live in ease,
Without great vices, is a vain
Utopia seated in the brain;
Fraud, luxury, and pride must live,
Whilst we the benefits receive....
Do we not owe the growth of wine
To the dry, shabby, crooked vine,
Which, while its shoots neglected stood,
Choked other plants, and ran to wood,
But blest us with its noble fruit
As soon as it was tied and cut?
So vice is beneficial found
When 'tis by justice lopped and bound."
In 1714 this short piece was reprinted, with a long commentary in
prose, under the title of The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices,
Public Benefits. In this form the book made a great scandal, and
was prosecuted as a nuisance.     Mandeville enlarged his work in




170


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


successive editions, and he published various other treatises of
a similar tendency. He was a paradoxical and truculent writer,
with a bluff style, plenty of humour, a homely kind of common
sense, and a pronounced      taste for vulgarity and vice.    His
favourite butt was Shaftesbury, whose delicate optimism he
detested. Mandeville has much in common with Swift, but never
stands on the high moral ground which Swift took so easily and
genuinely. He is pregnant, however, with acute observation, and
in more than one instance has forestalled modern science in his
speculations as to the primitive conditions of society. Mr. Leslie
Stephen, who has been, of recent critics, the one most indulgent
to Mandeville, says that "he gave up to the coffee-houses a penetration meant for loftier purposes." From Mandeville's picturesque tract on The Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn,
1725, we take this vignette of a Newgate crowd as a specimen of
his style:
"No modern rabble can long subsist without their darling cordial, the
good preservation of sloth, geneva,l that infallible antidote against care and
frugal reflection; which, being repeated, removes all pain of sober thought,
and in a little time cures the tormenting sense of the most pressing necessities.
The traders who send it among the mob on these occasions are commonly the
worst of both sexes, but most of them weather-beaten fellows that have misspent their youth. There stands an old sloven, in a wig actually putrified,
squeezed up in a corner, and recommends a dram of it to the goers-by. There
another in rags, with several bottles in a basket, stirs about with it where the
throng is the thinnest, and tears his throat with crying his commodity; while,
further off, you may see the head of a third, who has ventured into the middle
of the current, and minds his business as he is fluctuating in the irregular
stream. Whilst, higher up, an old decrepit woman sits dreaming with it on a
bulk, and over against her in a soldier's coat, her termagant daughter sells the
sot's-comfort with great dispatch.  The intelligible sounds that are heard
among them are oaths and vile expressions, with wishes of damnation at every
other word, pronounced promiscuously against themselves, or those they speak
to, without the least alteration in the meaning."
The main subject of Mandeville's satire was a writer who had
died in early middle age before that unscrupulous satirist became
1 Gin. Mandeville spells the word "Jeneva."




V


SHAFTESBURY


I7I


an adept in controversy.  It is doubtful whether, under any circumstances, the graceful Shaftesbury would have measured swords
with so rude an opponent. A certain epoch had been marked
by the publication, in I7I1, of Characteristics of Men, Manners,
Opinions, and Tiimes, with a preface signed A. A. C. The author
was Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (I67II713), and this famous book was a collected edition of his various
scattered writings, his "united tracts." The first volume consisted of three treatises, A Letter concerning Enthusiasm, originally
published in 1708; An Essay on the Freedom of IVit and Humour
(1709); and Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author ( 7 io). The second
volume contained reprints of Shaftesbury's first publication, An
Inquiry concerning Virtue (I6991), and The Moralists (1709). The
third volume contained Miscellaneous Reflections, never printed
before. Shaftesbury, who had been brought up at the feet of Locke,
was the most accomplished Englishman of his day, the man with
the widest taste and the most complete culture, while the purity
of his personal character matched well with the charm of his intellect. His early treatises were issued half privately, or were even
piracies, and they did not make any mark until they were collected
as the Characteristics.  In that form they constituted a solid
contribution to the body of English literature, the value of which
is nowadays very much underrated. Shaftesbury was a Platonist
so far as his sceptical tendencies would permit him to be. For
metaphysical philosophy, the teaching of "a sort of moonblind
wits," he had a great contempt; he was a moralist, a sentimentalist,
an optimistical theist. He had a profound sense of the harmony
of the universe, and this conviction elevated the whole order of
his mind.  To it we may attribute his most attractive literary
quality, the serene stateliness of his style at its best.  His influence on the philosophical writers of the succeeding generation
was very remarkable, and it is no small praise to Shaftesbury to
admit that but for him Pope's Essay on Man could never have
been written, although Pope, if Warburton may be believed, was a
1 No copy of this edition appears to be at present known to exist.




172


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


little ashamed of Shaftesbury's ascendancy over him.   As a critic
Shaftesbury's authority was considerable. He had lived during his
youth in the intimacy of some of the leaders of literary and artistic
taste in Europe, and he was ready to pronounce with confidence
on questions of poetic style and the whole art of rhetoric. It was
charged against him that his ideal virtuoso was wholly guided by
the laws of aesthetic taste.  Shaftesbury did not care to refute
such a charge, for he held that "harmony and proportion, in
whatever kind," and therefore in less essential matters, "are
highly assistant to virtue, which is itself no other than the love of
order and beauty in society." He was ready to declare, with
Keats, that " Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty; this is all we know
on earth and all we need to know." Two fragments may exemplify the peculiarities of the style of Shaftesbury. The first is
taken from his Fourth Miscellany; the second is selected, as an
example of his enthusiastic optimism, from the Inquiry concerning Virtue:
"Two of this race having been daintily bred, and in high thoughts of
what they called pleasure and good living, travelled once in quest of game
and rareties, till they came by accident to the sea-side. They saw there, at a
distance from the shore, some floating pieces of wreck, which they took a
fancy to believe some wonderful rich dainty, richer than ambergreese, or the
richest product of the ocean. They could prove it, by their appetite and
longing, to be no less than quintessence of the main, ambrosial substance, the
repast of marine deities, surpassing all that earth afforded. By these rhetorical arguments, after long reasoning with one another in this florid vein, they
proceeded from one extravagance of fancy to another; till they came at last to
this issue. Being unaccustomed to swimming, they would not, it seems, in
prudence, venture so far out of their depth as was necessary to reach their
imagined prize: but being stout drinkers, they thought with themselves, they
might compass to drink all which lay in their way; even the Sea itself; and
that by this method they might shortly bring their goods safe to dry land. To
work therefore they went; and drank till they were both burst. For my own
part, I am fully satisfied that there are more sea-drinkers than one or two, to
be found among the principal personages of mankind: and that if these dogs
of ours were silly curs, many who pass for wise in our own race are little
wiser; and may properly enough be said to have the Sea to drink."




V


SHAFTESBURY


I73


" What tyrant is there, what robber, or open violater of the laws of society,
who has not a companion, or some particular set, either of his own kindred,
or such as he calls friends; with whom he gladly shares his goods; in whose
welfare he delights; and whose joy and satisfaction he makes his own?
What person in the world is there, who receives not some impressions from
the flattery or kindness of such as are familiar with him? 'Tis to this soothing
hope and expectation of friendship, that almost all our actions have some reference. 'Tis this which goes through our whole lives, and mixes itself even
with most of our vices. Of this, vanity, ambition, and luxury, have a share;
and many other disorders of our life partake. Even the unchastest love borrows largely from this source. So that were pleasure to be computed in the
same way as other things commonly are; it might properly be said, that out
of these two branches (viz. community or participation in the pleasures of
others, and belief of meriting well from others) would arise more than ninetenths of whatever is enjoyed in life. And thus in the main sum of happiness,
there is scarce a single article, but what derives itself from social love, and
depends immediately on the natural and kind affections. Now such as causes
are, such must be their effects. And therefore as natural affection or social
love is perfect, or imperfect; so must be the content and happiness depending
on it."
Recent criticism has dealt roughly with what is "flimsy " and
" pretentious" in the philosophy of Shaftesbury.    The student of
pure literature, while lamenting his rhetorical excesses and his
tendency to burst into such bastard blank verse as we find in
The Moralists, should not fail to recognise in him      one of the
most independent and graceful prose-writers of the age of Anne.
He did not live long enough to be influenced by the styles of
Swift or Addison, with whom, as a writer, he has but very slight
affinity. He is a sort of Ruskin of the Augustan age.
A showy figure, which claimed a much higher literary position
than posterity has chosen to relinquish to it, is that of Henry St.
John, Viscount Bolingbroke (i678-I75I):, once so famous for his
eloquence that Pitt declared his speeches the most desirable of
all the lost fragments of literature.  It was after his political misfortunes that Bolingbroke first took to literature as a consolation,
and in I716 wrote his Reflections upon Exile, printed in I735.
The most famous of his early writings is a vindication of his conduct towards the Tory party, in a Letter to Sir Wlilliam Wyndham




174


SWIFT AND THE DEISTS


CHAP.


in I717 (printed 1753). At Fontainebleau he wrote his Letters
on the Study and Use of History (I735), and his Letter on the Use
of Retirement.  From his house in Battersea he published, in
1749, his Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism and his Idea of a
Patriot King, Pope's treatment of which latter work constitutes
one of the famous scandals of the eighteenth century. Mallet
published the complete works of Lord Bolingbroke in 1753-4,
and it was in reference to this edition that Dr. Johnson said of
Bolingbroke, " He was a scoundrel and a coward, a scoundrel for
charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward
because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a
crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his
death." The personal magnetism of Bolingbroke must have been
very great; he dazzled his own generation, where he merely
wearies ours. His boasted style, though unquestionably lucid,
is slipshod and full of platitudes, grandiloquent and yet ineffectual. His Patriot King is his most pleasing effort; it is a study
of an ideal constitutional monarch, intended to justify a sort of
paternal right of kings from the standpoint of the Whigs. But
criticism now merely smiles at the author's impudent assumption
of the airs of a great political philosopher.
At the close of this chapter we may briefly enumerate the
most distinguished names in the curious group of acknowledged
deists who made their appearance at the beginning of the eighteenth
century. The controversy was opened on the orthodox side by
Charles Leslie (I650-I722), an Irish non-juror.  He darted A
Snake in the Grass (I696) against the Quakers; but his most
famous and effective work was his Short and easy Method with the
Deists (I697). Twenty-seven treatises are attributed to his fluent
and truculent pen. Leslie was a Jacobite, and in 1710 he fled
to Bar-le-duc to the Pretender, with whom he resided in extreme
discomfort for eleven years. Dr. Matthew Tindal (I656-I733),
who attacked the High Church party in The Rights of the Christian Church (1706), and Corah and Moses (1727), caused a great
scandal by the publication of his Christianity as o!d as the Creation,




V


TIHE DEISTS


i75


in 1730. Tindal was a Christian, although on the very borders
of infidelity.  A bolder and less scrupulous deist was Janus
Junius Toland (I670-I722); he professed to be a pupil and confidant of Locke, who repudiated the soft impeachment. Toland
was said to be the illegitimate son of an Irish priest, and his life
was spent in the purlieus of Grub Street. Toland, nevertheless,
had great talent; his Christianity not Mysterious (i696) is a very
original and striking tract, which was received with a howl of
indignation. He wrote much more, but nothing so clever as this
his first publication. William Wollaston (1659-1724) produced an
extremely popular work entitled The Religion of Nature delineated
(I722), a contribution to constructive cleism.  Anthony Collins
(I676-1729) defended rationalism against the onslaughts of Leslie,
but brought down such a storm on his head that he escaped to
Holland.  His famous Discourse on Freethinking, which Swift
made fun of, appeared in I7I3. These men were not writers of
a high genius, and their arguments were timid and often fallacious.
But they bear for posterity the charm which is given by persecution, and they prepared the way for bolder and more scientific
thinkers. Of their most distinguished opponents we shall speak
in the next chapter.




CHAPTER VI


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS
WE proceed to enumerate in the present chapter those miscellaneous figures belonging to the Augustan era which have not
been hitherto examined. The oldest of the writers who became
greatly distinguished in the reign of Anne was Daniel Defoe
(i66i?-i73I), whose baptismal name was Daniel Foe. He was a
Londoner, the son of a Nonconformist butcher in the City.  He
was trained to be a dissenting minister, and was well educated,
although, as his enemies never ceased to remind him, "this Man
was no Scholar." At four-and-twenty he went into the hosiery
business in Cornhill, and seven years later he had to fly from his
creditors, owing  7,000ooo.  It is believed that he became a
pamphleteer long before this, but his biographers have discovered
no printed matter indubitably Defoe's earlier than I69I. From
1695 to 1699 he was accountant to the Commissioners of the
Glass Duty, and was in prosperous circumstances.  His first
important tract, the first pamphlet in favour of a Standing Arm.y,
appeared in 1697, when its author was thirty-six; Defoe became
active in supporting William III.'s measures, and published in
the king's interest his Essay on Projects (1698). Hitherto Defoe
had been a pronounced dissenter, but in 1698 he printed an
opportunist pamphlet on Occasional Conformity.  All these exercises, however, amounted to little more than what we should now
call journalism. Defoe's first distinct literary success was made




CHAP. VI


WHIG TRACTS


177


in 1701 with his satire in verse, the  r-ue-born Englishman, in
which he ridiculed the popular suspicion of the Dutch in England. He tells us that 80,ooo copies of this rough poem were
sold in the streets, and the king honoured him for the first time,
on this occasion, with an audience.  The death of William
(March 8, I702) was a very serious blow to the prospects of his
active servant of the pen.
Defoe hailed the advent of Queen Anne with several very
poor poems; he was slow to learn that his talents were not those
of a versifier. At the close of 1702 he returned to the safer paths
of prose with a famous pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters, a satire upon the High Church Tories, whose extreme
tone in private conversation it parodied with daring bluntness.
Defoe ironically recommended that "whoever was found at a
conventicle should be banished the nation, and the preacher be
hanged," and his speech was so plain that while the Highfliers
gasped for breath, the Dissenters, on their side, were too much
frightened to see the irony.  When the truth was perceived,
Defoe was prosecuted, and tried in July 1703; he stood for three
days in the pillory, but Pope was incorrect in saying that "earless
on high stood unabashed Defoe." He was a popular favourite,
and admiring crowds wreathed the instrument of his discomfort
with garlands of flowers. To the "hieroglyphic state-machine"
itself he now addressed a Hymnn. His punishment in the pillory
was succeeded by a long imprisonment in Newgate, and during
this latter his tile-works at Tilbury, which were important to his
livelihood, failed through his absence from business. He was
set free by Harley in the summer of 1704. During his imprisonment he had written A Collection of Casualties and Disasters, a
bold fancy picture of that famous storm which Addison alluded to
in the Campaign, " such as of late o'er pale Britannia past."  This
was undoubtedly issued to a credulous public as veritable history.
It was in prison, too, that he started his influential political newspaper, the Review, which continued to appear twice a week until
February I705, after which it was published three times a week.
III                                       N




178


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


After existing ten years, an extraordinary period for a newspaper
in those days, the Review expired in June 1713.
Defoe's history after his release is a somewhat perplexing one.
He openly pretended to be gagged, and to have promised to
write no more polemic for seven years; but in reality he had
undertaken an agency for the Government, and presently he went
to Scotland, not, it is regretted, so entirely for patriotic purposes
as he pretended. He had become, to put it plainly, a paid
official spy and secret pamphleteer. He even used his debts as
decoys, and as Professor Minto has said, " when he was despatched
on secret missions, departed wiping his eyes at the hardship of
having to flee from his creditors." The fall of Harley did not
deprive Defoe of the Queen's favour; on the contrary, he was
immediately sent to Edinburgh on another private errand.  Into
the history of Defoe's innumerable political writings, one of the
vexed questions of bibliography, it is needless to go here. He
was exceedingly plausible and adroit, but his personal chronicle,
when exposed to the light, has a very unpleasing air of insincerity.
He wished, doubtless, to be a patriot, but he could not resist the
temptation, as he puts it, of bowing in the house of Rimmon;
nor could he conquer his insatiable desire to govern by journalism,
to be putting his oar daily and hourly into every species of public
business. Among less ephemeral writings of the period may be
mentioned The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (I706), afterwards constantly republished with a dreary work of divinity by Drelincourt
(1595-i669), which the ghost of Mrs. Veal had recommended.
This was, it is needless to say, a little piece of realistic romance.
In 1709 Defoe printed his History of the Union, and in 17I5-18
his Family Instructor, a solid didactic work which long enjoyed
a great popularity.
Defoe was nearly sixty before he began the series of books
which have given him the unique place he holds in English
literature. Between I7I9 and 1728 he composed with extraordinary vigour, rapidity, and fulness, at an age at which the
strength of the most ardent writer is usually abated. His un



VI


DEFOE'S NOVELS


179


doubted masterpiece, the first part of Robinson Crusoe, appeared
on the 25th of April 1719; the second followed in August, and
in August 1720 was published the third part, being Crusoe's
" Serious Reflections." It is scarcely necessary to say that Robinson Crusoe is the earliest great English novel, and that in certain
respects it has never been surpassed. Crusoe had been the name
of one of the author's schoolfellows, and it is plain from many
passages in Defoe's works that he had long looked forward to the
possibility of exile in distant seas. The story of a certain Alexander Selkirk or Selcraig, who had been left on shore at Juan
Fernandez, was the ultimate germ round which the amazing
creation of Robinson Crusoe took form.  The book instantly
succeeded, as well it might, and Defoe turned to supply the
new demand caused by a fresh sort of literary merchandise. In
1720 he published three romances of no small importance, Mr.
Duncan Campbell, Memoirs of a Cavalier, and The Life of Captlain
Singleton. Of these, the third, a tale of piracy on the southern seas,
with its pictures of tropical Africa, has been a main favourite with
some lovers of Defoe. In I722 the indefatigable novelist produced
three other notable books, Moll Flanders, The Plague Year, and
Colonel Jack. In 1724 were published:The Fortunate Mistress
(Roxana), perhaps the best of his novels after Robinson Crusoe,
and the Tour through Great Britain.  In 1725 appeared another
romance, The New Voyage round the World, and The Complete
English Tradesman, a rather vulgar handbook to the arts of
mercantile success. In 1726 he printed The Political History of
the Devil, and in 1727-28 The Plan of English Commerce. When
it is said that Mr. William Lee, the most laborious of Defoe
students, attributes to the pen of his hero no less than two
hundred and fifty-four distinct publications, it will not be a matter
for surprise that so few can be mentioned here. Defoe was
prosperous during the period we have just described, and installed
himself in a handsome house at Stoke Newington, in the company
of "three lovely daughters," and two rather scandalous sons. He
probably lived beyond his income, for late in 1729 he absconded,




I8o


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


and hid himself not far from Greenwich. It has been conjectured,
on the other hand, that he may have been insane, and have falsely
supposed that it was needful he should fly. In any case he died
apart from his family, in a respectable lodging in Ropemaker's
Walk, Moorfields, on the 26th of April I731. It is very difficult
to regard the personal character of Defoe with any sympathy. He
was dishonest, and yet always prating about honesty. He was
writing in a Jacobite newspaper with one hand, while accepting
secret money from the Government with the other. He was, as
his latest biographer has to admit, "perhaps the greatest liar that
ever lived." There is something very sordid about his ambitions,
very mean and peddling in his scheme of life. His great genius
alone preserves for him a little of our sympathy, and yet, even
here, it is probably to Defoe's advantage that his best books make
us entirely forget their author.
The secondary novels of Defoe, in this day very little read,
belong to the same class as Robinson Crusoe, and repeat the
manner of that far abler work. When great stress is laid on
what has been aptly called Defoe's "absolute command over the
carpentry and scaffolding of realism," it should not be forgotten
that this realism is seldom antiquarian. The novelist writes of
the seventeenth century as if it were the eighteenth.  He is
reckless with dates, as when we are told that Roxana, a fine lady
of the time of Charles II., was born in I673, and died in the sixtyfifth year of her age, in 1742, that is to say, eighteen or fourteen
years, as we choose to compute it, after the date of the publication
of the volume. Moll Flanders must begin in the year 6 I3, but the
manners are those of 17I3. In all these romances the style is
the same, that of the publicist. Defoe now writes diurnals no
longer; but he sits at home and forges column after column of
minute newspaper incidents. The mode is almost always that of
autobiography, and no very palpable advance in narrative has
been made since Meriton Latroon told his own adventures in
The English Rogue, 1665-1680, of Richard Head (i63o?-I678).
The type is still that of the Spanish Picaroon novel of adventure,




VI


DEFOE'S NOVEILS


I8I


and Defoe moves forward much less decidedly towards the romance
of manners than did his great French contemporary, Lesage, whose
Gil Bias, the English student should remember, had begun to
appear in I7I5. But Defoe's observation of character is blunt
indeed, and totally unimaginative, when. compared with what it
superficially resembles, the insight of Lesage.  In this class of
Defoe's novels Roxana may be mentioned first. It is the history
of a beautiful French refugee, from her cradle in Poictiers to her
grave in Amsterdam; it is also the history of a more sympathetic
figure, Amy, her maid. The heroine's real name is Mdlle. de
Beleau; she receives the name of Roxana half way through the
book, because she happens to perform in a Turkish drama. She
is a handsome and brazen adventuress, and the book is a minute
study of the "splendeurs des courtisanes."  The "miseres" are
the subject of Moll Flanders, a Newgate prostitute and thief, who
is transported to Virginia, but lives to return and die a penitent.
Each book is written, with a coarse morality, to show " ou menent
les mauvais chemins."  Moal Flanders is a sort of English version
of Manon Lescaut, but there is no comparison between them as
works of art and passion; from this point of view Defoe is as
crude as Prevost on this one occasion, was subtle and exquisite.
Captain Singleton is an attempt to conjure with the same staff
that created Robinson Crusoe,; this book has had its enthusiastic
admirers, but they have been few and perhaps paradoxical.
Colonel Jack is more readable; his adventures are indeed not
those which are set forth, as outside a strolling booth, on the titlepage, but they are sufficiently surprising and diverting in their way.
The hero is a pickpocket, and the book is full, even beyond
Defoe's wont, of little peddling details of a kind to be appreciated
by small tradesmen. Like Moll Flanders, Jack is shipped to the
plantations after a long career of crime, is penitent, of course, and
after a world of vicissitudes, winds up as a virtuous and wealthy
Virginian planter. Defoe is even more pitiless to female than
to male obliquity.  The Memoirs of a Cavalier must not be
omitted in this catalogue of Defoe's secondary romances. They




I82


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


pretend to give an historical account of affairs in Germany and
England between 1632 and 1648; the hero is a Shropshire
gentleman, a zealous fighter in the royal cause. It is well known
that of all Defoe's attempts at forged history this was the most
successful in deceiving; a list of illustrious persons, among them
the great Lord Chatham, are mentioned as believing the memoirs
to be genuine and contemporary.        Of the personages which
animate these rough novels of Defoe's, Charles Lamb, the most
humane of critics, confessed that they "can never again hope to
be popular with a much higher class of readers than that of the
servant-maid or the sailor."   Macaulay went further, and was
utterly extravagant in his dispraise of these books.     Yet the
quality in them which he found so particularly nauseous, the
realism, the unvarnished attention to minute fact, is just what
preserves their interest, and may, one of these days, possibly lead
to their revival. Defoe, in these novels, is more like M. Zola
than any other English writer, and it seems probable that a
generation which accepts the author of Au Bonheur des Dames
may open its arms once more to the laureate of the British tradesman. In all these romances Defoe shows little humour and no
pathos, and his study of human nature is exclusively from the
outside. Of the following passages the first is taken from Roxana,
the second from The Political History of the Devil:
"' In less than half an hour I returned, dressed in the habit of a Turkish
princess; the habit I got at Leghorn, when my foreign prince bought me a
Turkish slave, as I have said. The Maltese man-of-war had, it seems, taken
a Turkish vessel going from Constantinople to Alexandria, in which were
some ladies bound for Grand Cairo in Egypt; and, as the ladies were made
slaves, so their fine clothes were thus exposed, and with this Turkish slave I
bought rich clothes too.  The dress was extraordinary fine indeed; I had
bought it as a curiosity, having never seen the like. The robe was a fine
Persian or Indian damask, the ground white, and the flowers blue and gold,
and the train held five yards. The dress under it was a vest of the same,
embroidered with gold, and set with some pearl in the work, and some
turquoise stones. To the vest was a girdle five or six inches wide, after the
Turkish mode; and on both ends, where it joined or hooked, was set with
diamonds for eight inches either way, only they were not true diamonds,-but
nobody knew that but myself.




VI


" ROXANA "


I83


"The turban, or headdress, had a pinnacle on the top, but not above five
inches, with a piece of loose sarcenet hanging from it; and, on the front, just
over the forehead, was a good jewel, which I had added to it.
"This habit, as above, cost me about sixty pistoles in Italy, but cost much
more in the country from whence it came; and little did I think, when I
bought it, that I should put it to such a use as this, though I had dressed myself many times by the help of my little Turk, and afterwards between Amy
and I, only to see how I looked in it. I had sent her up before to get it
ready, and when I came up I had nothing to do but slip it on, and was down
in my drawing-room in a little more than a quarter of an hour. When I came
there, the room was full of company, but I ordered the folding-doors to be shut
for a minute or two, till I had received the compliments of the ladies that
were in the room, and had given them a full view of my dress."
"I happened to be at an eminent place of God's most devout worship the
other day, with a gentleman of my acquaintance, who, I observed, minded very
little the business he ought to have come about. First I saw him busy staring
about him, and bowing this way and that way. Nay! he made two or three
bows and scrapes when he was repeating the responses to the Ten Commandments, and, I assure you, he made it correspond strangely, so that the
harmony was not so broken in upon as you would expect it should. Thus:
Lord-and a bow to a fine lady, just come up to her seat-have mercy upon
us;-Three bows to a throng of ladies that came into the next pew all
together-and incline-then stopped to make a great scrape to my lord,-our
hearts-just then the hearts of all the church were gone off from the subject,
for the response was over, so he huddled up the rest in whisper, for God
A'mighty could hear him well enough, he said, nay as well as if he had spoken
as loud as his neighbours did.
" After we were come home, I asked him what he meant by all this, and
what he thought of it.
"'How could I help it?' said he; 'I must not be rude.'
"'What?' says I, ' rude to who?'
"'Why,' says he, 'there came in so many she-devils, I could not
help it.'
"' 'What?' said I, 'could you not help bowing when you were saying your
prayers?'
"'0, Sir,' says he, 'the ladies would have thought I had slighted them;
I could not avoid it.'
"' Ladies!' said I; 'I thought you called them devils just now?'
"'Ay, ay, devils,' said he, 'little charming devils; but I must not be rude
to them, however.'
"'Very well,' said I, 'then you would be rude to God Almighty, because
you could not be rude to the Devil?' "




I84


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


Defoe lives, and will ever live, by Robinson Crusoe, the most
thrilling boy's book ever written. In 1704 a Scotch buccaneer,
Alexander Selkirk of Largo, sailing with Dampier's fleet in the
Pacific, was left by his own choice on the desolate island of Juan
Fernandez. He stayed there, without seeing a human face, for
four years and four months. When he returned to England he
became a nine days' wonder, and he was " interviewed " by Steele.
Captain Cook, in his Voyage round the World, said, in 1712, that
"it would be no difficult matter to embellish a narrative with
many romantic incidents " taken from Selkirk's adventures. This
is precisely what Defoe did, and Selkirk's story formed much more
than the germ of Robinson Crusoe.  It is the darkest side of
Defoe's character, and one that militates strongly against even the
mere literary value of his books, that he seldom issued them as
works of the imagination, but as narratives actually intended to
deceive the public. He declares that Roxana is "not a story,
but a history," and he asserts of Robinson Crusoe that it is " a just
history of fact, neither is there any appearance of fiction in it."
Nor did he blush to stoop to tricks which were deliberately
fraudulent and clandestine, such as dating the last-mentioned
narrative I704, in order to make his Crusoe seem to have preceded Selkirk. These artifices matter little to the reader, who
now would rather that Defoe should have written fiction than
reported fact, but they throw light on the intellectual character of
the author. Defoe had no ambition; he worked as blindly and
as restlessly as a mole, and his contemporaries, who saw his writing everywhere, knew nothing of the man himself. He did not
wish to win personal distinction; he would have been the first to
tell us that he wrote out of zeal for public morality, and to make
money. By dint of incessant journalistic work he had attained
great skill and fluency in writing, and he had been storing up
details in his capacious memory all his life. When his apoplexy
withdrew him a little from the hurly-burly, he turned his restless
pen to a new sort of trade; and while his hand was still vigorous
there was thrown in his way the matchless collection of facts about




VI


JOHN DENNIS


I85


the solitary man, marooned on the blossoming island, and subduing nature to his wants. The result was that, rather by accident
than art, this prosaic and unimpassioned hack produced one of
the most beautiful of the world's romances, and tried time after
time to repeat his great success, without ever rising again much
above mediocrity. Defoe had extraordinary talents, and he retains a not unimportant niche in the history of literature; but it
can scarcely be denied that his character exhibits, almost to excess, some of the least pleasing qualities of the eighteenth-century
mind and morals.
John Dennis (I657-I734), the critic, was the son of a city saddler.
He was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, but was ejected for
stabbing a fellow-student. He went over to Trinity Hall, where
he proceeded to his M.A. in 1683. He inherited a small fortune,
and after travelling on the Continent, settled in London during
the last decade of the century as the companion of Dryden,
Wycherley, and Congreve. Of his very numerous early productions there may be mentioned, Remarks on Prince Arthur (I696),
The Advancement of Poetry (I 70 ), The Grounds of Criticism (I 704).
These volumes contain much sound sense, and are particularly
notable for their fervent and judicious eulogy of Milton. There
is nothing in them of that jealous, carping tone for which Dennis
afterwards became noted. Dennis fell into reduced circumstances,
and he had the impression that younger authors, Addison and
Steele in particular, slighted him. About 17o0 he began to be
extremely ferocious in attacking the new school, and Pope especially irritated him. In 1711 Dennis published Reflections on an
Essay upon Criticism, in which he called Pope a '"stupid and
impotent hunch-backed toad," which "surprised people sleeping "
that it might "fasten its teeth and its claws" upon them. The
vicious temper of Dennis has become proverbial, but his early
writings in criticism deserve respectful attention. He published
a large number of poems and plays, but these are destitute of all
merit. He outlived his annuities and died in extreme penury, an
object of charity to those whom he had slandered.




i86


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


We have now to speak of the famous friends whose careers
are inextricably woven into one another and into the intellectual
texture of the age of Queen Anne-Steele and Addison.     Richard
Steele (1672-1729) is now believed to have been born in March
1672; that is to say, about six weeks earlier than his great companion. Like Swift, he was an Englishman born in Dublin. One
of the most touching passages in his writings, the i8ist Tatler,
tells us that he lost his father at the age of five, and gives us this
memorable sketch of his mother:
"The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my father,
at which time I was not quite five years of age; but was rather amazed at
what all the house meant, than possessed with a real understanding why
nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went into the room
where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my
battledore in my hand, and fell a beating the coffin, and calling Papa; for, I
know not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there. My
mother catched me in her arms, and, transported beyond all patience of the
silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her embraces; and
told me in a flood of tears, 'Papa could not hear me, and would play with me
no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never
come to us again.' She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and
there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport; which,
methought, struck me with an instinct of sorrow, that, before I was sensible of
what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness
of my heart ever since. The mind in infancy is, methinks, like the body in
embryo, and receives impressions so forcible, that they are as hard to be
removed by reason, as any mark with which a child is born is to be taken away
by any future application. Hence it is, that good nature in me is no merit;
but having been so frequently overwhelmed with her tears before I knew the
cause of any affliction, or could draw defences from my own judgment, I
imbibed commiseration, remorse, and an unmanly gentleness of mind, which
has since insnared me into ten thousand calamities; and from whence I can
reap no advantage, except it be, that, in such a humour as I am now in, I can
the better indulge myself in the softnesses of humanity, and enjoy that sweet
anxiety which arises from the memory of past afflictions."
Steele and Addison were at school together at Charterhouse,
but at Oxford they parted, the former proceeding to Christ Church
and the latter to Magdalen.    In 1695 Steele, who had removed
to Merton, enlisted as a trooper in the Life Guards, and almost




VI


STEELE


I87


immediately afterwards published his first work, a poem called
The Procession, on Queen Mary's funeral. This was dedicated to
Lord Cutts, who sought out the author, and gave him a commission in his own regiment. For the next few years we know
little of Steele except that he became a captain. In 170I he
published iTe Christian Hero, a short manual of religious ethics,
which passed through many editions, but which was very poorly
relished by Steele's fast military associates. " From being thought
no undelightful companion, I was now reckoned a disagreeable
fellow," he tells us. "To enliven his character," he brought out
in the same year his first comedy, The Funeral, printed in 1702,
which was successful. In 1703 he issued another comedy, The
Iying Lover, which was "damned for its piety," and in 1705 The
Tender Husband enjoyed the same fate at Drury Lane. We may
pass on to mention the only other play which Steele produced,
The Conscious Lovers of 1722. Steele's four comedies mark the
return of the comic stage to decency. They are comparable, as
literary productions, not to the plays of the great Orange period,
but to the best of what Cibber and Mrs. Centlivre were bringing
out at the same time. Of them all, The Tender Husband, in its
mild way, is perhaps the most amusing.
Steele became one of the earliest members of the famous KitCat Club, founded by Jacob Tonson (I656-I736). In May 1707
Arthur Maynwaring obtained for him from Harley the appointment of Gazetteer, his duties being to keep the official newspaper
"very innocent and very insipid." In the following September
he married for the second time. His new wife, "my adorable
Molly," was the lady to whom were addressed the very curious and
interesting series of letters which we possess, first printed in I787.
The year 1707 is that in which Steele probably came first into
regular communication with Swift, who had been a friend of
Addison's, certainly since 1705. We may now return to Addison,
whose early poetry has been considered in a previous chapter,
and who had helped Steele in composing The Tender fHusband.
He was henceforth to be engaged in very close companionship




I88


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


with both Steele and Swift.  It was, indeed, the sympathetic
genius of the latter which, applied to the characters of the other
two, seems to have set them both on fire at the somewhat advanced
age of thirty-seven.  When Addison published his Remarks on
Several Parts of Italy he presented a copy of it to Swift with the
words, "to the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and
the greatest genius of his age." The three men were presently
identified in the popular opinion in the publication of a very
remarkable work, Mr. Bickerstaff's Lucubrations.
The name of Isaac Bickerstaff had been borrowed from a
shop-front by Swift as a pseudonym under which to tease Partridge the almanac-maker; and when Steele, on the 2th of April
1709, issued the first number of the Tatler, he also adopted it.
This famous newspaper, printed in one folio sheet of "tobaccopaper," with "scurvy letter," ran to 271 numbers, and abruptly
ceased to appear in January 1711. It enjoyed an unprecedented
success, for, indeed, nothing that approached it had ever before
been issued from the periodical press in England. The division
of its contents was thus arranged by the editor: "All accounts of
gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall be under the article
of White's Chocolate House; poetry under that of Will's
Coffee-House; learning under the title of Grecian; foreign and
domestic news you will have from St. James's Coffee-House;
and what else I shall on any other subject offer shall be dated
from my own apartment." The political news gradually ceased
to appear. It is pretended that Addison himself did not suspect
Steele's authorship of the new paper until the fifth number, and
the eighteenth is certainly the first which came from Addison's
hand. Of the 271 Tatlers, i88 were written by Steele, 42 by
Addison, and 36 by both conjointly. Three were from the pen
of John Hughes (I677-1720), a graceful minor writer, author of
the very successful tragedy of The Siege of Damascus ( 720).
These, at least, are the numbers usually given, but the evidence
on which they are based is slight. It rests mainly upon the indications given by Steele to Tickell when the latter was preparing




VI


THE " SPECTATOR "


189


his edition of Addison's Works. The conjecture may be hazarded
that there were not a few Tal/ers written by Addison which he
was not anxious to claim as his particular property.
In 1710 Swift's relations with Steele began to grow strained.
Swift declares that the latter is "the worst company in the world
till he has a bottle of wine in his head." Addison, however,
remained Steele's firm friend, and less than two months after the
cessation of the Tatler there appeared the first number of a still
more famous common enterprise, the Spectator, on the ist of
March 1711.    It was announced to appear daily, and was to be
composed of the reflections and actions of the members of an imaginary club, formed around "Mr. Spectator."     In this club the
most familiar figure is the Worcestershire Knight, Sir Roger de
Coverley, the peculiar property of Addison. Here is the outline
of one of the lesser figures in the Spectator club traced by the
delicate pencil of Addison:
" Will Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, and descended of the
ancient family of the Wimbles. He is now between forty and fifty; but being
bred to no business and born to no estate, he generally lives with his elder
brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than
any man in the county, and is very famous for finding out a hare. He is
extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle man. He makes
a May-fly to a miracle; and furnishes the whole country with angle-rods. As
he is a good-natured officious fellow, and very much esteemed on account of
his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, and keeps up a good correspondence among all the gentlemen round about him. He carries a tulip-root
in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of
friends that live perhaps in opposite sides of the county. Will is a particular
favourite of all the young heirs, whom he frequently obliges with a net that
he has weaved, or a setting-dog that he has ' made' himself. He now and
then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to their mothers or sisters;
and raises a great deal of mirth among them, by inquiring as often as he meets
them, 'How they wear?' These gentleman-like manufactures and obliging
little humours make Will the darling of the county."
The Spectator continued to appear daily until December    712.
It consisted of 555 numbers, of which Addison wrote 274, Steele
236, Hughes I9, and Pope i (The Messiah, Spectaor 378). Another




I90o


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


contributor was Eustace Budgell (685- 736), Addison's cousin, who
afterwards drowned himself under London Bridge. His essays
were considerably modified by the pen of Addison. The Spectator
enjoyed so very unequivocal a success that it has puzzled historians
to account for its discontinuance. In No. 517 Addison killed
Sir Roger de Coverley, "that nobody else might murder him."
This shows a voluntary intention to stop the publication, which
the Stamp Act itself had not been able to do by force.
On the I3th of April I713 Addison's famous tragedy of Cato,
partly written some twelve years before, was performed amid great
public enthusiasm.  Whigs and Tories united to applaud this
stately and conventional drama, with its prologue by Pope and its
epilogue by Garth. It was deliberately executed in the French
taste, and the author was rewarded by the unmeasured praise of
the foreign critics. Modern readers have grown colder and colder
in their attitude towards this famous tragedy, but there are lines
in it, and a single scene, which still live in literature. Steele,
meanwhile, had started another newspaper. The Guardian began
to appear on the I2th of March 1713. It ran to I76 numbers,
about 82 of which are Steele's; the other contributors were
Addison, Berkeley, Pope, Tickell, Budgell, Hughes, and perhaps
Gay and Parnell. During the publication of the Guardian Steele
and Swift became finally estranged. The former plunged deeper
and deeper into politics, presently left the newspaper to be conducted by Addison and Berkeley, and entered Parliament as
member for Stockbridge.  In September his pamphlet on The
Importance of Dunkirk appeared, and on the ist of October the
Guardian was terminated, to be reissued within a week as the
Englishman. This paper, in 57 numbers, mainly political, was
written entirely by Steele, with help from William Moore. After
publishing one or two polemical tracts Steele was, in March 1714,
ejected from the House of Commons, his troubles being envenomed by the vivacity of Swift's hatred. His next newspapers,
the Lover and the Reader, soon failed. Swift cruelly but pointedly
remarked that Steele was obliging "his party with a very awkward




VI


STEELE AND ADDISON


I9I


Pamphleteer in the room of an excellent Droll," so completely did
he seem in the field of politics to have forgotten his early cunning
of hand. For the moment Addison stood aside from the heat
of party, and was occupied in I7I3 on a work concerning The
Evidences of Christianity. In the autumn of 1714 he added to
the seven volumes of the Spectator an eighth.  Meanwhile the
Tories had fallen, and the Whigs clustered in triumph around the
new king, George I. Addison was immediately appointed Chief
Secretary for Ireland in the new Government.
Steele's turn also had arrived, and he was made Supervisor of
Drury Lane Theatre early in I715.  He was presently elected
M.P. for Boroughbridge, and in April was knighted by the king.
In March x7I5 he brought out at Drury Lane Addison's comedy
of The Drummer, a play adorned by some smartness of dialogue,
but in other respects one of the weakest of its author's productions.
Addison's short-lived greatness in the political world had come to
an end when the Duke of Shrewsbury resigned in August 1715.
In December of that year Addison started his newspaper of the
Freeholder, which lasted, in 55 numbers, until June I7I6. The
essays in this periodical mainly dealt with questions concerning the situation of political affairs at the moment, and Steele,
who thought himself the better politician, compared the voice of
Addison to a lute and his own to a trumpet. The "lute" was
rewarded by a Commissionership for Trade and the Colonies; and
Addison presently married an old flame of his, the Countess of
Warwick. In 1717, with Sunderland's triumph, Addison came
into office again; but we find Steele writing, " I ask no favour of
Mr. Secretary Addison." The latter retired with a pension in
1718. In 17I9 the tension between the two old friends became
very sharp, and amounted almost to a quarrel-a state of things
which the generous heart of Steele bitterly lamented, when, on the
17th of June of that year, Addison died prematurely of dropsy.
His body lay in state in Jerusalem Chamber, and was buried by
lamplight in the Abbey. Tickell bewailed him in an immortal
strain of melody and pathos.




I92


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


Steele survived his friend by ten years, but his literary work
during that time was scrappy and unimportant. He started fresh
newspapers, the Theatre, the Spinster (concerning the woollen
trade, and not maiden ladies), and in 1722 brought out at Drury
Lane his Terentian comedy of The Conscious Lovers. Two other
plays, The School of Action and The Gentleman, begun about this
time, were never finished; their fragmentary scenes first saw the
light in 1809. In 1723, broken in health and with his affairs in
hopeless confusion, Steele left London, never, it is believed, to
return. The rest of his life he spent obscurely, partly at Hereford, partly at Carmarthen. In the latter town he died on the
ist of September 1729.
The time has probably gone by when either Addison or Steele
could be placed at the summit of the literary life of their time.
Swift and Pope, each in his own way, distinctly surpassed them.
Nor, if their essays in periodical form are put out of sight, can
their other writings claim any very lively immortality. But the
Taller and the Spectator hold an extraordinary place in the affections of Englishmen, and form a body of literature which is in its
own way unique. They endeavoured, as Addison put it in the
Ioth Spectator, "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit
with morality," by introducing to the public a kind of reading such
as had never come in its way before. In considering the conduct
of these periodicals it is useless to continue the vague discussion
whether Addison or Steele was the more skilful. If Steele was
a little more ready than his friend to take the initiative, Addison
was a little more capable of arresting the interest of the reader
unaided. The Freeholder has better things in it, no doubt, than
either the Lover or the Reader. The great proof of the power
of these two friends is found in the fact that, although it is comparatively so easy to imitate a discovery, there was no tolerable
successor to the Guardian for nearly forty years, nor could the
Rambler be held to follow the Spectator otherwise than, as Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu said, "a pack-horse would follow a
hunter."




VI


ADDISON'S STYLE


I93


It is difficult in a short summary of facts to give any impression of the influence exercised on the mind and feelings of his
country by Addison. It was out of proportion with the mere
outcome of his literary genius. It was the result of character
almost more than of intellect, of goodness and reasonableness
almost more than of wit.   His qualities of mind, however, if
not of the very loftiest order, were relatively harmonised to an
astonishing degree, so that the general impression of Addison is
of a larger man than the close contemplation of any one side of
his genius reveals him as being. He has all the moral ornaments
of the literary character; as a writer he is urbane, cheerful,
charming, and well-mannered to a degree which has scarcely been
surpassed in the history of the world. H-is wit is as penetrating
as a perfume; his irony presupposes a little circle of the best and
most cultivated listeners; his fancy is so well tempered by judgment and observation that it passes with us for imagination. We
delight in his company so greatly that we do not pause to reflect
that the inventor of Sir Roger de Coverley and Will Honeycomb
had not half of the real comic force of Farquhar or Vanbrugh,
nor so much as that of the flashing wit of Congreve. Human
nature, however, is superior to the rules, and Addison stands
higher than those more original writers by merit of the reasonableness, the good sense, the wholesome humanity that animates
his work. He is classic, while they are always a little way over
on the barbaric side of perfection.
The style of Addison is superior to his matter, and holds
a good many flies in its exquisite amber.  It did not reach
its highest quality until Addison had become acquainted with
A Tale of a Tub, but it grew to be a finer thing, though not a
greater, than the style of Swift.  Addison was excessively
fastidious in his choice of words, laboriously polishing and
balancing his phrases until they represented the finest literary art
at his disposal, until the rhythm was perfect, the sentence as
light and bright as possible, and the air of good breeding at which
he always aimed successfully caught.  He was probably the


III


o




194


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


earliest English author of prose, except, perhaps, Sir Thomas
Browne, who aimed deliberately at beauty of execution, and
treated the pedestrian form with as much respect as though it
had been verse. It does not seem to be known to what extent
Addison was influenced by French models. The great Frenchmen of the preceding generation had been observers, "Spectators,"
like himself: La Rochefoucauld, with his clean and unadorned
simplicity of style; La Bruyere, with his irony and common
sense. The latter, as was sure to be the case, was soon recognised as an intellectual kinsman of Addison's, whose limpid,
graceful style not a little resembles his. Addison was probably
familiar with the Caracteres, which were published in I687,
when he was a lad. Addison's share in completing the development of our language was very considerable; he smoothed down
English phraseology to an almost perilous extent, and Swift, who
admitted that the Spectator was very pretty, thought that Addison's tendency was too feminine.  He vastly enlarged the field
of the English author by directly addressing the women, and was
the first secular writer whose productions formed part of the teaequipage of the virtuous fine lady.
With some modification, what has been said of Addison may
be repeated of Steele, whose fame has been steadily growing
while the exaggerated reputation of Addison has been declining.
The character of Steele, with his chivalry and his derelictions, his
high ideal and his broken resolves, has been a favourite one
with recent biographers, who prefer his rough address to the
excessive and meticulous civility of Addison. It is permissible
to love them both, and to see in each the complement of the
other.  It is proved that writers like Macaulay and even
Thackeray have overcharged the picture of Steele's delinquencies,
and have exaggerated the amount of Addison's patronage of his
friend.  But nothing can explain away Steele's carelessness in
money matters or his inconsistency in questions of moral detail.
He was very quick, warm-hearted, and impulsive, while Addison
had the advantage of a cold and phlegmatic constitution. Against




VI


CLARKE


I95


the many eulogists of the younger man we may place Leigh
Hunt's sentence, " I prefer open-hearted Steele with all his faults
to Addison with all his essays." His style presents less material
for study than that of Addison, because it is itself unstudied.
When Addison was so delicately weighing and polishing his
sentences, Steele was pouring out what he saw or what he felt.
He is very incorrect, sometimes downright ungrammatical. When
he preaches, as he is very apt to do, we fall to nodding in his
face.  But we wake again when he returns to the subject he
knows best, the shifting pictures of human life, with its hopes and
disappointments, its laughter and its tears. When he talks to us
about the beauty of virtuous women, the loneliness of orphan
children, the innocent conversation of old men, any of the single
human topics which literature had so long time thought below
her dignity, we are fascinated and bewitched; his style takes fire,
"the motion doth dilate the flame," and Steele becomes a great
writer. Of his humour Mr. Austin Dobson has well said that " it
has little of practised art or perceptive delicacy; but it is uniformly
kindly, genial, indulgent." The most famous phrase which Steele
has bequeathed to posterity is to be found in the 49th Tatler,
where he nobly says of Lady Elizabeth Hastings that "to love
her is a liberal education."
The professional theologians of the age of Anne possess little
charm for a modern student of literature.  Even Dr. Samuel
Clarke (I675-1729), the most eminent of the divines during his
own age, is now but little read or regarded. He was educated at
Caius College, Cambridge, and was one of the first who embraced the discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, to whom he 'affected,
throughout his career, to stand in the relation of a theological
knight-errant. His publications were very numerous; of especial
interest are the Boyle Lectures, given in I704 and I705, on The
Being and Attributes of God and on The Evidences of Natural
and Revealed RelZ-ion.  In these books he takes up a central
position between orthodoxy and deism, and stands forth as the
representative of what were known as Low Church views. His




I96


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


acceptation of the doctrine of the Trinity was far from sound, and
in 1712 his tract on this subject was arraigned before Convocation. Clarke was plunged into violent controversy; from this
cause, perhaps, he never received the promotion in the Church to
which his gifts entitled him. In 1717 he published a correspondence, on philosophy and religion, which had passed between
himself and Leibnitz (I646-I716). He is a clear, cold writer,
who seems to arrange his ideas in the form of mathematical
diagrams.
Dr. Benjamin Hoadly (I676-I76I) desired to be known as
the " Friend of Clarke," whose works he edited. He was a man
of incomparable ardour and restlessness of mind, an uncompromising Whig of the school of Locke. Hoadly was excessively
unpopular; the poets hated him, and his sympathies for the
dissenters made him distrusted by his own class. He was tainted
with heterodoxy even to a greater extent than Clarke, and was far
more reckless in the statement of his opinions. As a writer, he is
both furious and tiresome, and almost the only purely literary
interest we have in him centres around his friendship for Steele.
In spite of his unpopularity he was early raised to the see of
Bangor, where his famous sermon on ThSe Nature of the Kingdom
of Christ, 17I7, involved him in the noisy and prolonged dispute
known as the Bangorian Controversy. Mr. Leslie Stephen says,
that "in his pachydermatous fashion Hoadly did some service, by
helping to trample down certain relics of the old spirit of bigotry."
In the course of his very long life Hoadly not only rose to be
successively Bishop of Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, but
even outlived the enmity of his literary contemporaries, and
Akenside greets him thus in his last years:
' We attend thy reverend length of days
With benediction and with praise;
We hail thee in the public ways,
Like some great spirit famed in ages old!"
Hoadly, although so tough and rugged, was all his life a cripple,
and used to kneel in the pulpit when he preached.




IV


BERKELEY


197


Thomas Sherlock (1678-I761) was a sort of theological lawyer,
eminent for the clear masculine good sense of his sermons. He is
remembered as the author of a Letter on the earthquakes of 1750,
of which no less than oo00,000 copies were sold. His style in this
treatise is dignified and vigorous.
The most prominent figure in philosophy between Locke and
Hume is George Berkeley (1685-1753), the most acute of English
metaphysicians, and the most polished writer of his age. This
extraordinary man was born in a cottage near Dysert Castle, in
the county of Kilkenny; his parents were Irish people of English
descent. In'1696 he was sent to the Irish Eton, Kilkenny School,
where Congreve and Swift had preceded him. Four years later he
matriculated at Dublin. From 1700 to 17I3 he was a resident of
Trinity College, where, as early as 1705, and apparently without
external influence of any kind, he formed that theory of the nonexistence of matter which was to be the central idea of his future
philosophy. It is probable that Berkeley's mind was early prejudiced against the deists by Dr. Peter Browne (i66o?- 735), the
metaphysical opponent of Toland, as Browne was at that time
Provost of Trinity. In 1707 Berkeley became M.A., and fellow
and tutor of his college. To these offices he presently added
those of Greek lecturer and junior dean. He took orders in
1709, but it was not until twenty years later that he began to
engage in clerical duty. In 1707 he published anonymously two
Latin tracts on mathematics, and was all this time jotting down
the entries in that invaluable Commonjplace Book, which Dr. Campbell Fraser first published in I871. This enables us, as its editor
says, "to watch Berkeley when he was awakening into intellectual
life, in company with Locke and Descartes and Malebranche."
It was from Locke that Berkeley immediately started; his views
of spiritual things being, moreover, strongly tinctured by the study
of Plato. On this basis he built the structure of his phenomenalism-his theory that what we see and touch is only a symbol
of what is spiritual and eternal; that nothing is, but only seems
to be. Berkeley's first attempt to convert the world to a belief




I98


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


in the non-existence of matter is found in the Essay towards a
NVew Theory of Vision, published in 1709. This treatise is intended to show that sight affords us knowledge, which our experience hastens to translate into the language of touch, so that sight
is really foresight, and the action of the eyes has no reality until
it is transformed into a mental condition, an experience of visual
suggestions. His hypothesis is supported, even in this youthful
essay, with great beauty of illustration and charm of delivery, but
the author did not for the present attempt to pass beyond his
proof of the existence of an artificial world of visual ideas. He
followed it, however, in  7Io0, with a Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, of which only a fragment was ever
published. In this Berkeley endeavoured to extend his theory
from the phenomena of sight to those of the whole world of sense.
He complained that the philosophical dust which philosophers
had hitherto raised in the consideration of matter had " blocked
up the way to knowledge." He proposed to clear away materialism altogether, in order that Man might clearly and simply come
into contact with the Eternal Spirit. He believed that the objects
which we think we see around us exist only as a harmonious chain
of appearances founded by a mind, and appealing directly to the
spiritual consciousness.
This abstruse and novel theory of metaphysics was at first
received with ridicule by those who did not take the trouble to
understand it. A man of higher stamp and more philosophical
training, Dr. Samuel Clarke, recognised Berkeley as "an extraordinary genius," but rejected his theory, and oddly enough
thought that he had mistaken his direction in taking up metaphysics. Berkeley spent the next years in further developing his
philosophical views, and published in 1713 his beautiful little
volume of Platonic dialogues, entitled Hylas and Philonous. The
object of this treatise was to establish still further the incorporeal
nature of the Soul, and to prove, by wielding his theory against the
deists, that it was a weapon which could only be used in the
service of revealed religion. In this work Berkeley first displayed




VI


BERKELEY


I99


his wonderful skill as a manipulator of the English language, which
had never been employed for the discussion of philosophical ideas
with anything like so much grace and refinement. He now laid
down with complete courage his axiom that " no idea can exist
out of the mind"; and he thought that the recognition of this
metaphysical fact was "a direct and immediate demonstration of
God's existence, and a short method of crushing scepticism." In
these dialogues Hylas is the objector, and his difficulties are ingeniously solved by Philonous, the champion of the phenomenal
theory of the world. In order to print his dialogues in London,
Berkeley made, in January 1713, his first journey to England, and
arrived just in time to take his place in the brilliant world of
letters that has received its name from Queen Anne. He was
welcomed in London literary society by Steele, who immediately
secured him to write a series of bright essays against the freethinkers in the pages of the Guardian.
Swift immediately perceived the merit of Berkeley, and writes
to Stella on his first meeting that this is a great philosopher-one
whom he will favour as much as he can. Berkeley was received
on terms of equality, too, by Addison, Pope, and Arbuthnot, and
sat in Addison's box at the first performance of Cato. His beauty
of person, his unaffected grace of manner, and an indescribable air
of goodness and candour which emanated from him, combined to
make him a universal favourite. Pope protested that there had
been given "to Berkeley every virtue under heaven"; and the
grim Atterbury confessed that "so much understanding, so much
knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think
had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman."  In the autumn of 1713, by Swift's help, he obtained a
chaplaincy to the Earl of Peterborough, which enabled him to
spend ten months in Sicily, Italy, and France, under auspices of
a peculiarly brilliant kind; and in Paris he met Malebranche.
From I7I6 to 1720 he was again in Italy. Legend asserts that a
heated conversation with Malebranche, on the subject of the nonexistence of matter, led to the death of the Frenchman. Dates,




200


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


however, are against this story, which is picturesque, but foreign to
the gracious character of Berkeley. A NAatural History of Sicily,
which the philosopher is supposed to have written in I719, has
been lost. In 1720 he competed for a prize offered by the French
Academy for a Latin dissertation, De Motu, but the prize was
allotted to Crousaz, the Swiss logician. With this production the
philosophical work of Berkeley's early life closes.
On his return to England he threw himself into the discussion
of social problems, and published in 172I an Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain, which was called forth by the
misery ensuing on the collapse of the South Sea speculation. It
is a plea for stoic simplicity of life. He then went back, after an
absence of eight years, to his college life at Dublin. In May 1724
he was made Dean of Derry, the richest deanery in Ireland; but
it was with no intention of settling in a rich living that he
accepted it. His mind had long been dwelling on the fact that,
as he puts it in his solitary poem,
" Westward the course of Empire takes its way."
He was planning an ideal university in the Bermuda Islands-a
scheme which had been encouraged by the fact that Swift's
Vanessa (Hester Vanhomrigh) had just left him half her considerable fortune, although Berkeley was not aware that she had ever
seen him. The Bermuda project, furthered by Berkeley's pure
passion and irresistible fascination, succeeded to an amazing
degree, and a vote for a public grant of /20,000  to endow the
Bermuda University was actually carried through both Houses of
Parliament. Berkeley meanwhile was idolised in England, and
he carried captive admirers so unlike one another as Voltaire and
Queen Caroline. It was not, however, until late in 1728 that he
succeeded in starting for America; and then not for Bermuda
but for Rhode Island. In January 1729 he landed near Newport, with a newly married wife, and there bought an inland farm
and built a house. The plan for an endowed university never
came to anything, for Walpole took care to wreck it. Berkeley




VI


BERKELEY'S "ALCIPHRON "


201


settled down to the composition of his Al-iphron, which is reported
to have been written in a cave on the shore of Rhode Island. It
is said that Berkeley was one of the early benefactors of Yale
College. This strange philosophic exile in America-a period of
great calm and happiness in his life-closed, after three years, at
the end of I731. He settled, not at Derry, of which he still was
dean, but in London.
As John Stuart Mill has remarked, the leading purpose of
Berkeley as a philosopher was to vanquish the freethinkers. He
pushed this polemical intention a little too far in his next work,
Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, 1732, in which his main attack
is upon Shaftesbury and Mandeville. This is the longest of Berkeley's books, and perhaps the most easy for the outsider to understand; philosophers have condemned it as the least valuable.
The scene of the book is laid in Rhode Island, and the form is that
of the Platonic dialogue, in its most polished and graceful shape.
The dialogues are seven, and there is a slight setting of landscape
to each, with a hint of woods and gardens, and the distant hallo
of the fox-hunter.   Alciphron was abundantly attacked, and the
doctrine of immaterialism proved doubly unwelcome when it was
seen to be used as an argument against atheism, whose genteel
professors the author sneered at as "minute philosophers."
"I can easily comprehend that no man upon earth ought to prize anodynes for the spleen more than a man of fashion and pleasure. An ancient
sage, speaking of one of that character, saith, He is made wretched by disappointments and appetites. And if this was true of the Greeks, who lived
in the sun, and had so much spirit, I am apt to think it still more so of our
modern English.  Something there is in our climate and complexion that
makes idleness nowhere so much its own punishment as in England, where an
uneducated fine gentleman pays for his momentary pleasures with long and
cruel intervals of spleen.... There is a cast of thought in the complexion of
an Englishman, which renders him the most unsuccessful rake in the world.
He is, as Aristotle expresseth it, at variance with himself. He is neither
brute enough to enjoy his appetites, nor man enough to govern them. He
knows and feels that what he pursues is not his true good, his reflection only
serving to show him that misery which his habitual sloth and indolence will
not suffer him to remedy. At length, being grown odious to himself, and




202


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHIAP.


abhorring his own company, he runs into every idle assembly, not from the
hopes of pleasure, but merely to respite the pain of his own mind. Listless
and uneasy at the present, he hath no delight in reflecting on what is past, or
in the prospect of anything to come. This man of pleasure, when after a
wretched scene of vanity and woe his animal nature is worn to the stumps,
wishes for and dreads Death by turns, and is sick of living, without having
ever tried or known the true life of man."
For some time Berkeley was fully engaged in controversy, and
then in the spring of 1734 he returned to Ireland, as Bishop of
Cloyne-a little city which was to be his home for the next
eighteen years. In the palace at Cloyne he presently set up a
distillery of tar-water-a medicine which had long attracted him,
from  its supposed quality of being charged with "pure invisible
fire, the most subtle and elastic of bodies." Finally, in I744, he
published his extraordinary book called Siris, a chain of philosophical reflections and inquiries concerning tar-water. In this
treatise Berkeley originates a phrase often attributed to Cowper,
and describes tar-water as a beverage which "cheers but not
inebriates." A single passage can give but little impression of
the strange crossed warp and woof of the book:
"The balsam or essential oil of vegetables contains a spirit, wherein
consist the specific qualities, the smell and taste of the plant.  Boerhave
holds the native presiding spirit to be neither oil, salt, earth, nor water, but
somewhat too fine and subtle to be caught alone and rendered visible to the
eye. This, when suffered to fly off, for instance, from the oil of rosemary,
leaves it destitute of all flavour. This spark of life, this spirit or soul, if we
may so say, of the vegetable departs without any sensible diminution of the oil
or water wherein it was lodged.
" It should seem that the forms, souls, or principles of vegetable life subsist
in the light or solar emanation, which in respect to the macrocosm is what the
animal spirit is to the microcosm,-the interior tegument, the subtle instrument and vehicle of power. No wonder, then, that the ensprimurn or scintilla
spiritztosa, as it is called, of plants should be a thing so fine and fugacious as
to escape our nicest search. It is evident that nature at the sun's approach
vegetates, and languishes at his recess; this terrestrial globe seeming only a
matrix disposed and prepared to receive life from his light.... The luminous
spark which is the form or life of a plant, from whence its differences and
properties flow, is somewhat extremely volatile."




VI


BERKELEY'S " SIRIS )


203


Siris is a most curious amalgam of hints for the manufacture
and use of the author's panacea, and of magnificent flights into
Platonic regions of pure intellect. Of late Berkeley had been
studying the Greek metaphysicians with especial earnestness, and
in Siris his thought is etherealised and his style kindled by contact with the light and fire of ancient thought. In no other part
of his writings does Berkeley reach the brilliant and audacious
subtlety of the best passages in Siris.
In I752 Berkeley determined to resign Cloyne and to settle in
Oxford; but George II., while desiring him to live where he
pleased, vowed that he should die a bishop. He published one
or two tracts while he was at Oxford, but his stay there was brief;
without positive illness, he grew weaker and weaker. On the I4th
of January I753 he died peacefully, while sleeping on a sofa, and
was buried in Christ Church Cathedral.  He lived just long
enough to be praised by Hume, though it does not appear that
Berkeley became aware of the existence of the young man who
was destined to be our next great philosopher. In this place no
attempt can be made to sketch Berkeley's contributions to thought.
We have only to deal with him as a writer. In this capacity we
may note that the abstruse nature of his contributions to literature
has unduly concealed the fact that Berkeley is one of the most
exquisite of all writers of English prose. Among the authors who
will find a place in the present volume, it may perhaps be said
that there is not one who is quite his equal in style; his prose is
distinguished as well for dignity and fulness of phrase, without
pomposity, as for splendour and delicacy of diction, without
effeminacy.
William Law (I686-I76I) was a Christian mystic whose name
was first rescued from obscurity by the pious care of Gibbon, whose
father he had taught in early youth; Law had afterwards resided in
the historian's family. Law spent the rest of his life in a sort of
cloister in his native village of King's Cliff, where certain pious
ladies clustered round him and formed a little spiritual community.
For their use, in the first instance, he wrote his remarkable Evan



204


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP.


gelical treatise, A Serious Call to a Devout and RHoy zLfe, I729,
— a volume that is composed in an enthusiastic and exalted
spirit which is almost an anomaly in the prosaic eighteenth
century. Law was a High Churchman, and he enjoined upon his
readers an unflinching asceticism, denouncing every species of
carnal pleasure with the fervour of a Tertullian. Although the
Wesleyans in the succeeding generation owed a good deal to his
teaching, neither they nor any section of the Church of England
could be said to be his disciples. He is, in fact, a solitary philosophic mystic, of very unusual literary gift.  Certain of his
treatises contain sketches somewhat in the manner of La Bruyere,
of typical men and women of the world, drawn with a great deal
of wit and fancy. Wesley was at first an admirer of Law, but he
broke with him in 1738, and in 1756 Wesley severely and publicly
attacked his old friend's mysticism. Yet late on in life Wesley
found himself obliged to speak of the Serious Call as " a treatise
which will hardly be excelled in the English tongue either for
beauty of expression or for justice and depth of thought."
The two women who wrote most cleverly during the reign of
Anne were unlucky enough to secure a pre-eminence in coarseness
of language, a quality which would have enabled them to graduate
with success in the school of Charles II. It has never been suggested to question the ability of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
(I689-I762), the eldest daughter of Evelyn Pierrepont, Duke of
Kingston, though she is now perhaps best remembered by her
unseemly squabbles with Pope. Lady Mary was educated under
Bishop Burnet, who early instilled into her a passionate love of
literature. For him, at the age of twenty, she translated the
Enchiridion of Epictetus. At eight years old she was the toast of
the Kit-Cat Club, her face already giving promise of the splendid
beauty of her maturity. When she was six-and-twenty, her husband, Edward Wortley Montagu, was appointed ambassador to
the Porte, and Lady Mary had the advantage, for two or three
years, of studying Eastern manners under unusually favourable
circumstances. From I739 to I761 she resided principally in




VI


LADY MARY MONTAGU


205


Italy. It was her habit, during her long periods of exile from
England, to write copiously to friends at home, and when a selection from these letters was published in 1763 Lady Mary was
recognised at once as having been one of the wittiest of English
letter-writers. She took pains to introduce into this country in
I717 the Turkish practice of inoculation for the smallpox, and
it is in a letter to Miss Sarah Chiswell, from Adrianople, on
ist April of that year, that she first mentions this subject, in the
following terms:
" I am going to tell you a thing that I am sure will make you wish yourself
here. The small-pox, so fatal and so general amongst us, is here entirely
harmless by the invention of ingrafting, which is the term they give it. There
is a set of old women who make it their business to perform the operation
every autumn, in the month of September, when the great heat is abated.
People send to one another to know if any of their family has a mind to have
the small-pox; they make parties for this purpose, and when they are met
(commonly fifteen or sixteen together), the old woman comes with a nut-shell
full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what veins you please
to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her with a large
needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into
the vein as much venom as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after
binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner opens
four or five veins. The Grecians have commonly the superstition of opening
one in the middle of the forehead, in each arm, and on the breast, to mark the
sign of the cross; but this has a very ill effect, all these wounds leaving little
scars, and is not done by those who are not superstitious, who choose to have
them in the legs, or that part of the arm that is concealed.... Every year
thousands undergo this operation, and the French ambassador says, pleasantly,
that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters
in other countries."
In many respects, though hard and mannish in temper, Lady
Mary was eminent for width of view and for a mind open to the
whole intellectual horizon.   Her Town Ecdogues, printed in 1716
in heroic verse, are so rich and sparkling that they almost place
Lady Mary among the poets, but they are of astounding freedom
of thought and language.
A muse more draggle-tailed than Lady Mary's now claims our
attention for a moment. Delariviere Manley (I672-I724) was born




206


DEFOE AND THE ESSAYISTS


CHAP. VI


in Guernsey, of which island her father was governor. She was early
left an orphan, was seduced and basely abandoned by a relative,
and during the remainder of her unhappy life never succeeded in
making peace with society. She set herself to write for the stage,
and produced two plays in 696, a tragedy of The Royal Mischief and
a comedy of The Lost Lover, both of which enjoyed a considerable
success. Her later dramas were less brilliant and less fortunate.
She fell into poverty and distress, and revenged herself upon the
town in I709 by publishing the four volumes of that "cornucopia
of scandal" The New Atalantis, in which almost every public
character of the day had his or her niche. This scurrilous book
passed through a great number of editions; it amused Swift, who
determined to make use of the author. He described Mrs. Manley
to Stella as having "very generous principles for one of her sort,
and a great deal of good sense and invention;" although Steele,
after she had attacked him, professed to find her " a bubble to his
mind." She continued her prolific Secret Memoirs, and presently
slipped into journalism. In June I7II Swift gave up into her
hands the editorship of the Examiner.  She held it until the
beginning of I713. Mrs. Manley's scandalous pamphlets are now
dispersed, in many cases beyond recognition. Mr. Austin Dobson
believes that she wrote the famous Toby Character of Richard
St-le in 1713. She grew to be very fat and homely, but she found
an admirer in Alderman Barber, who lifted her from the drudgery
of Grub Street and gave her a home in his house until she died.
We would willingly give a page from The New Atalantis, but
unfortunately it is precisely where Mrs. Manley is most picturesque that it is least possible to quote from her.




CHAPTER VII


THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY
TOWARDS the close of Pope's career, a distinct change began to
come over the face of English poetry.  When the prestige of
Pope was at its height, and the execution of his verse most highly
admired, the strongest among the younger poets began to cease
to follow him, partly, perhaps, because they despaired of surpassing him in his peculiar excellences-partly, no doubt, in response
to an alteration in popular taste. Pope himself, by his Eloisa to
Abelard, had hinted at the possibility of reintroducing poetry
of a very serious and romantic type, which should deal with
questions of moral passion in solemn numbers. The work of the
group of poets which was then presently to be in the ascendant
proved to be pitched mainly in this key, to which Pope never
recurred, although he received the productions of the first
romantic poets with sympathy, and even, it is said, with the hand
and eye of a benignant technical master. The imitation of Pope
was revived a generation later, and also, of course, existed widely
throughout the period of which we are now speaking; but it is
not always clearly enough recognised that the Augustan spirit had
remarkably little part in suggesting what was best in the poetry of
the second section of the eighteenth century.
During the twenty-five years from the publication of Thomson's Spring in 1726 to that of Gray's Elegy in 1751, the nine or
ten leading poems or collections of verse which appeared were all




208   THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CItAP.


of a new type, sombre, as a rule, certainly stately, romantic in tone
to the extreme, prepared to return, ignorantly indeed, but with
respect, to what was " Gothic" in manners, architecture, and language, all showing a more or less vague aspiration towards the study
of nature, and not one composed in the heroic couplet hitherto
so rigorously imposed on serious verse.  The Seasons, Night
Thoughts, and The Grave are written in blank verse, The Castle
of Indolence and The Schoolmistress in Spenserian stanza, The
Spleen and Grongar Hill in octosyllabics (in the latter case very
loosely strung), while the early odes of Gray and those of Collins
are composed in a great variety of simple but novel lyric measures.
The later elaborate odes of Gray, published in I754, come outside our limit of date, and form in their turn a link with the
nineteenth century.
This group of poets, then, containing one great man of letters,
Gray, and at least two poets of very high rank, Thomson and
Collins, possesses an historical importance out of proportion with
its popularity at the present moment. After having enjoyed a
reputation considerably in excess of their merits, certain of these
romantic moralists of the second quarter of the eighteenth century
are now scarcely read at all. Their names, nevertheless, are still
familiar to every educated person, and they live in tradition and
anecdote. They mark the faint glow of the coming naturalism
much more clearly than do the poets of the succeeding age, where
the darkness was most solid just before the dawn. In their pomp
of style and crepuscular moral splendour they appeal to a taste
which is not of to-day; but a careful and sympathetic study of
their writings may be urged upon the student of literature as indispensable to a proper comprehension of one very characteristic side
of the intellectual development of the eighteenth century.
The study of nature which is marked in the writings of this
group of poets received considerable encouragement from the
newly-fostered appetite for ballads and loosely-kilted Scottish
songs. Allan Ramsay, in his Scots Songs of 1719, and still more
in his Tea-Table Miscellany and Evergreen of I724, had re



VII


"THE BRAES OF YARROW"


209


sponded to the nascent curiosity regarding the simpler lyric
literature of an earlier age. His own ballads were artless, but he
had encouraged the publication of those very remarkable lyrics,
The Braes of Yarrow of Hamilton of Bangour (1704-1754) and
the Williaz  and Margaret of David Mallet.      The former of
these poems contains such stanzas as the following, which, with
their strange fugitive melody, must have sounded with extraordinary freshness on the ears of the subjects of Queen Anne:
" Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass
Yellow upon Yarrow bank the gowan,
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowin'.
" Flows Yarrow sweet? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed,
As green its grass, its gowan as yellow,
As sweet smells on its braes the birk,
The apple frae the rock as mellow.
" Fair was thy love, fair, fair indeed thy love;
In flowery bonds thou him didst fetter;
Though he was fair and weil beloved again
Than me he never loved thee better.
" Busk ye, then busk, my bonny, bonny bride;
Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow,
Busk ye, and love me on the banks of Tweed,
And think nae mair on the braes of Yarrow.'
Although the sedateness of the style of Thomson and his school
shows little superficial influence from these pathetic ballads, the
simplicity of the latter and their direct appeal to nature were not
without a marked effect upon the poetry of the generation.
The connecting link between this group of poets and their
predecessors of the Augustan age is found in the works of Edward
Young (I68I-I765), who was considerably older than Pope and
Gay, but who did not develop his poetical genius till very late
in life. Young published nothing until his thirty-second year.
In I74I, at the mature age of sixty, he superintended the collection of his "poetical works," in two volumes, which, however
interesting now to the student of his career, contained no single
III                                             P




2IO   THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


page which, had Young written no more, would call for his mention in such a volume as this. It was during his old age that he
composed and published those works which have given him so
prominent a literary position.
Young was educated at Oxford, where he became a lay fellow
of All Souls; he remained at the university, fretting against
obscurity, until middle life. In I72I he attempted to enter Parliament, but was defeated, and finally, when nearly fifty years of
age, he took holy orders, and sought promotion in the Church,
since he could find it nowhere else. He was made chaplain to
the king in 1728, and accepted the college living of Welwyn in
I730, but here his ecclesiastical preferments ended. For the next
thirty-five years, in various tones of angry protest or murmuring
persuasion, he endeavoured, but in vain, to draw attention to his
want of a mitre. He closed his long career, rich indeed through
his marriage with the Earl of Lichfield's daughter, Lady Elizabeth
Lee, but petulant, proud, and solitary. The insatiable ambition
of Young has been the theme of many moralists, and the tendency
of his personal character was indubitably parasitic; but it would
be easy to show, on the other hand, that he really was, to an
eminent degree, what Hobbes calls an "episcopable" person, and
that his talents, his address, his loyalty, and his moral force were
qualities which not only might, but for the honour of the English
Church should, have been publicly acknowledged by preferment.
When he saw men like Sherlock and Secker (1693-I768), as a
reward for "running a race for the old ladies," bounding into the
padded ease of bishops' thrones, Young, sitting alone in the light
of his austere intellect, may be forgiven if he displayed some
angry indiscretion.
Towards the middle of the Queen Anne period Young
appeared with his first important poem, The Last Day, printed at
Oxford in I713; part of it had already been seen in the Guardian.
It is a sombre essay in the heroic couplet, and in three books, on
the end of the world; and, in spite of some coarse imagery and a
good deal of needless bombast, it possesses considerable gloomy




VII


YOUNG'S TRAGEDIES


211


force. The final book is the best, and the address of the lost
soul to God, beginning" Father of mercies! why from silent earth
Didst thou awake, and curse me into birth?"
if of dubious piety, is not equalled for poetic felicity elsewhere
in Young's writings outside N2ight Thoughts. This piece was
succeeded in I714 by The Force of Rehligin, a short poem in two
books; the first containing a very commonplace account, abruptly
introduced, of the feelings of Lady Jane Gray on being separated
from Guildford; and the second, a relation of their meeting.
There is no other point to this crude poem than the introduction
of compliments to Lady Salisbury. Young's next effort was made
in the direction of the theatre. He attempted to conquer distinction as a tragedian. His Busiris succeeded at Drury Lane in
I7I9.  In this blank-verse tragedy there is very little about
Busiris; the interest centres around the violent and lawless
passion of Myron for the gentle Mandane.  There is a perilous
scene of dumb show between Mandane and Memnon, in the fourth
act, which might be so played as to be very effective. But the
verse and language have the violence, with some of the tragic
glow, of Lee, whom Young seems to have taken as a model. The
Rezenge (I72I), though generally admitted to be a better play, was
not so successful as its predecessor. This also is in the taste and
style of the Restoration, and turns upon the colossal passions and
magnificent indignation of a Moor, Zanga, who talks very eloquently,
and like the future poet of the rNight T2houghts; it is to Young's
credit that he treats a story much resembling that treated by
Shakespeare, without inevitably reminding us of Othello. His
third tragedy, The Brothers, was not performed until 753. Young
was too rhetorical to be a successful dramatist, and the lamp he
affected to use while composing-a candle stuck into a human
skull-failed to inspire him satisfactorily. In 1725 he began, and
in 1728 concluded, the publication of his series of seven satires,
Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, for which he received
~3000.   These pieces preceded Pope's essays in the same




212    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


direction, and though Swift justly complained that they should
have been either more merry or more angry to be good satires,
they pleased the town. They were smooth and brilliant, though
very carelessly rhymed; they were really witty, though they
always lacked the last polish; and, until Pope threw them into
the shade by the lustre of his own, they passed as very light
and sparkling satires in the Latin manner.    The fifth, on
Woman, is much the brightest and liveliest; the second contains
the famous eulogy upon Chesterfield. These satires are so entirely unlike Young's earlier and later writings in character and
versification as to show the extreme danger of dogmatising upon
questions of dubious authorship on the sole evidence of internal
style. Young now sank to extraordinary depths of failure in a
variety of lyrical experiments. He had less of the singing gift in his
composition than almost any other poet of equal magnitude on record, and his Odes called Ocean (i728), Imnperium Pelagi (I729),
Sea-Piece (I733), and The Foreign Address (I734), read like intentional burlesques, or the patter-songs in some screaming nautical
vaudeville. Hardly less unfortunate is the lyric volume of his
extreme old age, Resignation, printed in 1762.
It is by The Coanplaint, or Night Thoughts (I 742-44), a poem of
about ten thousand lines of blank verse in nine books, that Young
holds his rank among the British poets, and the general reader may
totally ignore all else that he has written. The first book of Nzight
Thoughts, with its famous opening line, its rich note of romantic
despair, its exquisite episodes, its sustained magnificence of
phrase, is one of the lesser treasures of the English language. In
form, it is Miltonic, without exaggeration, and, save for an unfortunate tendency to crystallise in abrupt self-contained single lines,
its versification is of a rare dignity and harmony. This first book
is studded with peculiar beauties, and it is to its successors, where
the argument counts for more and the mere ornament for less,
that we must look for the general characteristics of the poem.
We find there that the poet is occupied, night after night, during
his fits of sleepless dejection, in vindicating orthodoxy against an




VII


" NIGHT THOUGHTS "


213


infidel lay-figure named Lorenzo, who is for ever being knocked
over and then placed on his feet again.     The whole didactic
edifice is completed by the addition of a book of Consolation,
"addressed to the Deity, and humbly inscribed to His Grace the
Duke of Newcastle," in which the starry orrery of the nightly
heavens is reviewed and commended. The extraordinary vogue
of Night Thoughts, which lasted for a century, has succumbed to
a series of vigorous attacks in our own age, and Young is now in
danger of being underrated. His faults are volubility, inequality
of workmanship, excessive fondness for a hollow kind of brazen
rhetoric, and an atrabilious view of the duties as well as the
pleasures of life. His merits are wit, great quickness, and ingenuity of fancy, dignity of expression and a power, obtained
through emulation with Thomson, of spinning off reams of correct
and harmonious blank verse.     Many of his single lines, such
as"And quite unparadise the realms of light,"
or
" The worm to riot on that rose so red "
show the beginning of a return to the fuller music of the seventeenth century. The following passages may be given as exemplifying the peculiarities of Young's style:
" Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire; and to quench the stars.
The sun himself by thy permission shines;
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
Amid such mighty plunder, why exhaust
Thy partial quiver on a mark so mean?
Why thy peculiar rancour wreak'd on me?
Insatiate archer! could not one suffice?
Thy shaft flew thrice; and thrice my peace was slain;
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn."
"The sprightly lark's shrill matin wakes the morn;
Grief's sharpest thorn hard pressing on my breast,
I strive, with wakeful melody, to cheer
The sullen gloom, sweet Philomel! like thee,




214    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


And call the stars to listen; every star
Is deaf to mine, enamour'd of thy lay.
Yet be not vain; there are, who thine excel,
And charm through distant ages: wrapt in shade,
Pris'ner of darkness! to the silent hours,
How often I repeat their rage divine,
To lull my griefs, and steal my heart from woe!
I roll their raptures, but not catch their fire.
Dark, though not blind, like thee, Maeonides!
Or, Milton! thee; ah, could I reach your strain!
Or his, who made Mseonides our own.
Man too he sung: immortal man I sing;
Oft bursts the song beyond the bounds of life;
What, now, but immortality can please?
O had he press'd his theme, pursu'd the track,
Wrhich opens out of darkness into day!
O had he, mounted on his wing of fire,
Soar'd where I sink, and sung immortal man!
How had it blest mankind, and rescu'd me!"
Two poets, who carried but a light weight, and whose work
was mainly put forth posthumously, claim, nevertheless, a brief
notice as taking part in the general return to a more natural treatment of verse.  John Byrom (I692-I763) was a Manchester man,
who became a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and fell in
love with the daughter of the great Bentley.        A  melodious
Pastoral, celebrating that lady under the name of Phebe, was
printed in the 605th Spectator, and is the best known of Byrom's
writings. He became a physician, and then a professional stenographer, liking to describe himself as "Inventor of the Universal
English Short-hand," and a votary of the " Tachygraphic Goddess." Late in life he became deeply impressed by the views of the
religious mystic, Law, and in 175I he versified the views of that
apostle in an essay in heroic rhyme, entitled Enthusiasm.    The
poems of Byrom were first published after his death, in two
volumes, printed at Manchester in 1773; his Journals first saw
the light in 1854-57.   His verse is of a highly miscellaneous
character; the bulk of it is religious, and even polemical; the
remainder is made up of apologues, epigrams, epistles, pastoral




VII


BYROM


215


songs, dialogues in Lancashire dialect, tales and descriptions.
Here are some of his pastoral stanzas:
" Sweet music went with us both all the wood through,
The lark, linnet, throstle, and nightingale too;
Winds over us whisper'd, flocks by us did bleat,
And chirp went the grasshopper under our feet.
But now she is absent, though still they sing on;
The woods are but lonely, the melody's gone:
Her voice in the concert, as now I have found,
Gave ev'rything else its agreeable sound."
"Rose, what is become of thy delicate hue?
And where is the violet's beautiful blue?
Does aught of its sweetness the blossom beguile?
That meadow, those daisies, why do they not smile?
Ah! Rivals, I see what it was that you drest,
And made yourselves fine for-a place on her breast:
You put on your colours to pleasure her eye,
To be pluckt by her hand, on her bosom to die."
" How slowly time creeps, till my Phebe return!
Whilst amidst the soft zephyr's cool breezes I burn;
Methinks if I knew whereabouts he would tread,
I could breathe on his wings, and 'twould melt down the lead.
Fly swifter, ye minutes, bring hither my Dear,
And rest so much longer for 't when she is here.
Ah, Colin! old Time is full of delay,
Nor will budge one foot faster for all thou canst say."
Byrom delights in the anapaestic tetrameter, which he wields very
smoothly, and employs on the most extraordinary occasions, as
when he is discussing Biblical criticism"Dismissing the doubt, which a querist had got,
If the Baptist did eat animalcules, or not,
'God forbid!' says the Father, 'a thing so absurd!
The summit of plants is the sense of the word.'"
Occasionally Byrom drops his characteristic or typical eighteenth
century manner, and writes quaint lyrics which seem inspired by
Nicholas Breton. He is one of the most interesting provincial
figures of the time.
An old bachelor named Matthew Green (I696-I737), who had




2I6    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


been all his life a clerk in the Customs, left behind him a poem of
some eight hundred lines-The Spleen-which "Mr. C. J.," the
friend for whose amusement it had been written, published in 1737,
and so practically introduced Green's name to the public. This
poem was an epistle in octosyllabic verse, recommending a quiet
life and sensible manners as the best remedy against dejection or
"the vapours." In the seventeenth century this metre had been
used for lyrical and pastoral verse, Butler and Swift had successively employed it, with modifications, for purposes of satire, but
Green was quite independent of these his predecessors. In style
and temper he was astonishingly like his French contemporary,
J. B. L. Gresset (I709-I777), whose poems, first printed in 1734,
it is needless to say Green had never heard of. He is a master
of refined philosophic wit and gentle persiflage; his delicate
raillery is without the least element of rancour; he addresses a
little circle of private friends, and is charming because so easy,
natural, and sincere:
" Here stillness, height, and solemn shade
Invite, and contemplation aid:
Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate
The dark decrees and will of fate,
And dreams beneath the spreading beech
Inspire, and docile fancy teach;
While soft as breezy breath of wind,
Impulses rustle through the mind:
Here Dryads, scorning Phcebus' ray,
While Pan melodious pipes away,
In measur'd motions frisk about,
Till old Silenus puts them out:
There see the clover, pea, and bean,
Vie in variety of green;
Fresh pastures speckl'd o'er with sheep;
Brown fields their fallow sabbaths keep;
Plump Ceres golden tresses wear,
And poppy-topknots deck her hair;
And silver stream through meadows stray,
And Naiads on the margin play;
And lesser nymphs on side of hills
From plaything urns pour down the rills."




VII


SAVAGE


217


It calls forth the reader's surprise to note how wide a range of
reflection Green's little poem moves across, yet whatever his witty
muse touches she adorns. The originality of Matthew Green,
the fact that he never wastes a line by repeating a commonplace,
together with his fine cheerfulness as of a Jabez, desiring neither
poverty nor riches, make us regret that he left so little behind him,
and so narrowly escaped the poppy of oblivion.
The world has become familiar with the misfortunes and adventures of Richard Savage (I698-I743) through the captivating
biography of him written by Dr. Johnson.  There is now no
question, however, that Johnson was biassed in his judgment of
this person by the partiality of friendship, and the life is full of
obvious errors of date and fact. Savage ostentatiously described
himself on his title-pages as "Son of the late Earl Rivers," but it
is more than doubtful whether this unwise son knew his own
father. It is needful here only to dwell on the fact that at the
age of about thirty Savage displayed for two or three years some
genuine poetical talent, and published three vigorous works in
heroic measure.  The Bastard (I728), written in real or feigned
indignation against his supposed mother, the Countess of Macclesfield, enjoyed a success of scandal; it is short, terse, and effective.
In The Wanderer (i729) Savage made a very different effort to
subdue the public, with a long and serious poem in five books.
Dr. Johnson, naturally attracted to the moral parts of this work,
gives a totally false idea of its character. It is really a kind of
prototype of Goldsmith's Traveller, to which it bears the sort of
relation that Dryden is conventionally supposed to bear to Pope.
What is mainly noticeable in The Wanderer, which describes the
flight over Europe of a man who has been bereaved of one
Olympia, is the influence of Thomson, enlarging the range of
poetic observation, and encouraging an exacter portraiture of
natural objects. The last book of Savage's poem is remarkably
full of brilliant if often crude colour, and the reader is startled
to meet with such attempts to give new landscape-features as the
following:




218   THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


"There blue-veil'd yellow, thro' a sky serene,
In swelling mixture forms a floating green;
Streaked thro' white clouds a mild vermilion shines,
And the breeze freshens, as the heat declines."
In 1730 Savage published in folio certain very mellifluous Verses
on Viscountess Tyrconnel's Recovery, and then sank, for the rest of
his life, into a merely perfunctory versifier.
A brilliant but obscure metaphysical and scientific poem,
entitled Universal Beauty, was published in no less than six anonymous folio instalments in the course of 1735, and is now very rarely
met with complete. It was from the pen of an Irish squire, Henry
Brooke (I703-I783), long afterwards author of an unimportant
sentimental novel, The Fool of Qualily. His poem deserves attention. It is written in very musical couplets, with, however, too
frequent indulgence in the alexandrine.    It is manifestly inspired
by the optimistic philosophy of Shaftesbury. The following passage gives an idea of Brooke's mode of approaching the most
intractable natural phenomena:
" Recluse, th' interior sap, and vapour dwells
In nice transparence of minutest cells;
From whence, through pores or transmigrating veins,
Sublim'd, the liquid correspondence drains,
Their pithy mansions quit, the neighb'ring choose,
And subtle, thro' th' adjacent pouches ooze;
Refin'd, expansive, or regressive pass,
Transmitted through the horizontal mass;
Compress'd, the ligneous fibres now assail,
And, ent'ring, thence the essential sap exhale,
Or lively with effusive vigour spring,
And form the circle of the annual ring;
The branch implicit, of embow'ring trees;
And foliage, whisp'ring to the vernal breeze;
While zephyr tun'd, with gentle cadence blows,
And lull'd to rest consenting eyelids close."
The third part of Universal Beauty deals with the vegetable kingdom in detail, and in a style which irresistibly reminds the reader




VII


DYER


219


of Erasmus Darwin's verses half a century later. Brooke never
fulfilled the promise of this remarkable first poem.
A friend of Savage and Thomson, of whose early career little
is known, was the Welshman John Dyer (I699-I758), to whom,
by some accident of fortune, rather more than his share of credit
has habitually been given by the critics.  No doubt Dyer was
very early in the field with his G-ongar HKil, a kind of descriptive
ode, published in I726, the year of Thomson's Winter. It is rash
to deny genius to a poet whom   Gray and Wordsworth have extravagantly praised, and Dyer, who was a painter by profession,
had a delicate eye for landscape. The closing lines of the poem
are, undeniably, very charming:
" Be full, ye courts, be great who will;
Search for Peace with all your skill:
Open wide the lofty door,
Seek her on the marble floor,
In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads, and mountain-heads,
Along with Pleasure, close allied,
Ever by each other's side:
And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves of Grongar Hill."
It seems odd that the extreme awkwardness of the opening lines
of Grongar Hill, and a certain grammatical laxity running through
the work of Dyer, should have been treated with so much lenity
by critic after critic. His later didactic poems, in blank verse
which owes its existence still more to Milton than to Thomson,
are The Ruins of Rome (1740) and The Fleece (I757).       Dyer's
Welsh landscapes, with their yellow sun, purple groves, and pale
blue distance, remind us of the simple drawings of the earliest
English masters of water-colour, and his precise mode of treating
outdoor subjects, without pedantry, but with a cold succession of
details, connects him with the lesser Augustans through Somerville.




220    THIE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


As the gentleman predicted, Dyer is buried in the "woollen " of
his too-laborious Fleece.
In I728 a young Scotch minister, Robert Blair (I699-I746),
printed an elegy in A/emory of William Lawe.   He then began to
sketch a poem of a more ambitious character, on the terrors of
death. In I73I he was appointed to the living of Athelstaneford,
where he polished and slowly completed his poem. In I743,
Young having in the meanwhile started his Night Thoughts, Blair
finally published The Grave, a didactic piece in something less
than eight hundred lines of blank verse. He wrote nothing else,
and died still young. Blair was isolated from all his chief English
contemporaries, but he follows the same moral and romantic aims
as they. In his celebration of the ghastly solitude of the tomb,
and all the grim circumstances of death and bereavement, he
seems to stretch out his hands to Otway on the one side and to
Crabbe on the other. His poem is less ornate, but more vivid
and concentrated than Young's, and has the advantage of being
a great deal shorter.   Blair was evidently acquainted with the
Elizabethan tragic poets, and his iambics are more easy and varied
than even those of Thomson:
" Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity
To those you left behind, disclose the secret?
Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be.
I've heard that souls departed have sometimes
Forewarn'd men of their death. 'Twas kindly done
To knock, and give the alarum. But what means
This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness
That does its work by halves. Why might you not
Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws
Of your society forbid your speaking
Upon a point so nice? I'll ask no more:
Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine
Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;
A very little time will clear up all
And make us learn'd as you are, and as close."
" Oft, in the lone church-yard at night I've seen,
By glimpse of moonlight chequering thro' the trees,




VII


BLAIR


221


The schoolboy with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up,
And lightly tripping o'er the long, flat stones
(With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown),
That tell in homely phrase who lies below.
Sudden he starts! and hears, or thinks he hears,
The sound of something purring at his heels;
Full fast he flies, and dares not look behind him,
Till out of breath he overtakes his fellows;
Who gather round, and wonder at the tale
Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,
That walks at dead of night, or takes his stand
O'er some new-open'd grave, and, strange to tell!
Evanishes at crowing of the cock."
Among the single didactic poems of a gloomy cast, of which so
many were produced during the eighteenth century, The Grave
stands highest in point of execution, and is the least overweighted
with mere rhetoric and commonplace.      It was Blair who first
spoke of "visits, like those of angels, short and far between,"
and the rough felspar of his style flashes with sudden felicities
that resemble these heavenly interviews.
The poets whom we have hitherto mentioned, however meritorious, were distinctly of the second order, and not one of them
could be named as a leader or pioneer. Very different was the
position of James Thomson (I700-I748), in whom we meet with
the most original and influential poetic figure which exists
between Pope and Gray. There was hardly one verse-writer of
any eminence, from 1725 to 1750, who was not in some measure
guided or biassed by Thomson, whose genius is to this day fertile
in English literature. If his influence had been as broad as it was
potent, and his originality as versatile as it was genuine, Thomson
might have been one of the six or seven greatest English poets.
As it is, within his restricted limits he is as exquisite, as sincerely
inspired, as any poet needs be, and his function in recalling
English men of letters to an imaginative study of external nature
is of the highest historical importance.
Thomson was born of genteel parents, at Ednam, on the Scottish




222   THIE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


border. His childhood was spent in a romantic part of Roxburghshire, surrounded by all the elements of local superstition and natural
mystery. He was educated at Edinburgh, where, as a student of
divinity, he began, at the age of twenty, to write verses, which,
like the piece beginning " When from the opening chambers of the
east," however crude in execution, showed a marvellous fondness
for such unfashionable themes as the labour of plaided herdsmen
and the sights and sounds of village life. Early in 1725 Thomson
came up to London to seek his fortune, and while in great straits
from poverty wrote his poem of Winter in the autumn of that year.
He was at this time in correspondence with other young poets,
with Dyer, with Savage, and with David Mallet or Malloch (I702?1765), whose ballad of WHilliamz and Margaret had in some sort
inaugurated the new romantic school in 1724. Mallet afterwards
became a pronounced imitator of the blank verse of the Seasons,
but, though afterwards only too notorious in the worlds of politics
and letters, he never fulfilled the lyric promise of his early youth.
Thomson, whose genius seems to have struck every one who met
him, soon found patrons, and in March 1726 Winter was published
in folio. Mallet took a copy of it to Aaron Hill (I685-1750), a
poetaster and small dramatist of very considerable pretensions at
that time, who affected to be a rival censor elegantiarum to Pope.
Hill sounded the praises of the new descriptive poem through
London, and Thomson's success was complete. In 1727, after
publishing a poem to The Memzory of Sir Isaac JVewton, he produced
Summler; Spring followed in 1728, and in I730 the completed
Seasons appeared, including Autumn and a final fymn to Nature.
As this celebrated series of poems now stands, it contains about
5500 lines, but it was much shorter in its original form. To the
close of his life the poet was incessantly altering and adding to it,
introducing allusions to dead friends, and modifying the episodes.
A variorum edition of the Seasons, a task often promised but
never fulfilled, would be a boon to students of English literature.
In its present form Wlinter, which was the earliest, is also the
shortest and the freshest of the sections. The author paints what




VII


THE "SEASONS"


223


by experience he knows so well, the horrors of a Cheviot December.
It cannot, perhaps, be said that Winter is so imaginative, in the
special Wordsworthian sense, as some later writings of Thomson
became, but it is peculiarly delightful as the outpouring of a
picturesque memory, exactly stored with all those beautiful trifling
incidents of life and nature which most men see only to forget.
Such vignettes as those of the redbreast helping himself to crumbs,
the family waiting anxiously for the man who is perishing in the
snow, the goblin-story told to a ring of pale faces round the farmhouse fire,-these have a sharpness of outline, an impassioned
simplicity and truth, which the poet never surpassed. In Spring
there is less incessant verbal felicity, but more imagination; the
poet has read more and thought more, and while the scene of the
fisherman angling for trout has scarcely less brightness than its
forerunners, the final panegyric on nuptial love displays higher
intellectual powers than Winter had revealed. Summer is very
much longer than the other three sections, and presents a different
character. It is somewhat over-burdened with narrative episodes,
that of Celadon and Amelia, that of Damon and Musidora, which
are graceful in themselves, but a little out of keeping with the
rest; while several hundred lines are expanded in a most elaborate
but second-hand description of the various modes in which men
are affected by the torrid agonies of the tropic summer. Yet,
even in Summer, and specially in the beautiful picture of the
washing and shearing of sheep, we find Thomson, as ever, when
he deals with what he has himself known and seen, glowing and
felicitous. Autumn, with the lengthy episode of Lavinia, and its
vivid sketches of hunting and harvesting, follows with no sense of
loss; and the Hymnn at the close, with the rolling organ-harmony
of its Pantheism, rounds the whole poem off with splendid effect.
It is from the fJ3,mn that we may here pause to give an example
of Thomson's most serious manner:
" Nature, attend! join every living soul,
Beneath the spacious temple of the sky,
In adoration join; and, ardent, raise




224    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


One general song! To Him, ye vocal gales,
Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes:
Oh! talk of Him in solitary glooms,
Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine
Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.
And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,
Who shake the astonished world, lift high to Heaven
The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;
And let me catch it as I muse along.
Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound;
Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself,
Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voice
Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.
Soft-roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,
In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,
Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.
Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;
Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,
As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
Ye that keep watch in Heaven, as earth asleep
Unconscious lies, effuse your mildest beams,
Ye constellations, while your angels strike,
Amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creator, ever pouring wide,
From world to world, the vital ocean round,
On nature write with every beam His praise.
The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;
While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn."
At the age of thirty, therefore, Thomson found himself the
leading poet of the younger generation, and the heir-apparent to
the throne of Pope. But instead of rising to fresh triumphs, he
began to decline, and although he still wrote abundantly, a kind
of sterility, a blight of dulness, fell upon his verses. Immediately
after the publication of the completed Seasons he enjoyed the
advantage of travelling for nearly two years in France and Italy,
as governor to the son of the Solicitor-General, and this experience




VII


" THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE "


225


of the South of Europe inspired the descriptive passages of his
poem of Liberty, which appeared in five separate folio instalments
between 1734 and 1736. This poem, which, when completed,
consisted of rather more than three thousand lines of blank verse,
proved a great disappointment to Thomson's admirers. Aaron
Hill, indeed, declared that he looked "upon this mighty work as
the last stretched blaze of our expiring genius"; but no one else
was able to read it, and the most devoted of all Thomsonians,
Lord Lyttelton himself, thought it an act of piety to reduce and
popularise it. The poet now gave his attention, with moderate
and temporary success, to the stage, and produced the tragedies
of Sophonisba ( 730), Agamemnon (I738), Edward and Eleanora
(which was suppressed on account of its flattering allusions to
Frederick, Prince of Wales), 1739, Tancred and Sigismunda (I745),
and the posthumous Coriolanus. On the Ist of August 1740,
moreover, there was performed at Clifden the masque of Alfred,
by Thomson and Mallet, in the second act of which "Rule
Britannia" first occurred. The first edition of Alfred, an octavo
of 740, is anonymous, but the lyric was afterwards published with
Thomson's initials, without remonstrance from Mallet, and was no
doubt the composition of the former.
In May 1748 was printed the most exquisite of Thomson's
productions, the famous poem in Spenserian stanza entitled The
Castle of Indolence. From a letter to Paterson it appears that this
poem was written as early as 1733, and if Thomson had died at
that time his poetical works would be as rich although much less
copious than they now are, for The Castle of Indolence is of a very
different quality from the leaden Liberty and the stolid bombastic
dramas. The opening stanzas are more like the work of Keats
than any other verse which the eighteenth century has given us, and
in their music there is less of the dull undertone of the conventional manner of the age than anywhere else, except in the finest
lines of Gray and Collins. The poem is in two cantos-the first
describing the embowered castle of the false enchanter, Indolence,
and all the lotus-eating captives that it harboured; while the second


III


Q




226    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


recounts the conquest of this wicked one by a certain Knight of
Arts and Industry. The poem is a curious mixture of romantic
melancholy and slippered mirth, of descriptive passages which rise
into a clear AEolian melody, and portraits of real people sketched
in the laughter of gentle caricature. Over the whole lies a blue
atmosphere of vagueness, an opium-cloud, a vapour of dreams
from the land of echoes, and the total effect is one of elaborate
unreality, as of a finely-proportioned piece of architecture built in
mirage:
" Joined to the prattle of the purling rills
Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale:
And, now and then, sweet Philomel would wail,
Or stock-doves plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds yblent, inclined all to sleep.
"Full in the passage of the vale, above,
A sable, silent, solemn forest stood;
Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move,
As Idlesse fancied in her dreaming mood:
And up the hills, on either side, a wood
Of blackening pines, ay waving to and fro,
Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;
And where this valley winded out, below,
The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.
"A pleasing land of drowsy-hed it was,
Of dreams that wane before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer-sky:
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;
But whate'er smacked of noyance, or unrest,
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest."
There can be no doubt that The Castle of Indolence had a marked
influence in determining certain phases of the work of Shelley.




VII


ARMSTRONG


227


Thomson was a very indolent man, "more fat than bard
beseems," but unselfish, singularly loyal as a friend, and devoid of
all mean vices.  "That right friendly bard, Mr. Thomson," as
Shenstone calls him, was a universal favourite, and every Muse in
England went into mourning when, in consequence of a neglected
cold, he died suddenly on the 27th of August 1748, having but a
little while outlived Pope and Swift. The mode in which the
most dissimilar persons unite to speak of " our old, tried, amiable,
open, and honest-hearted Thomson," shows us that the heavy,
silent little man, with his mixture of shyness and laziness, exerted
an irradiating influence over which he had no conscious control,
and prepares us to find him surrounded and followed by a cloud
of more or less distinguished disciples. Of these the most prominent, in their personal relation to the master, were Armstrong and
Lyttelton. In both these writers we see very plainly the defects
of the poetic system of Thomson, with its excess of redundant
phraseology and its pompous Latin phrases and neologisms.
John Armstrong (I709-1779) was, like Thomson, a Roxburghshire
man. He became a London physician, and had the indiscretion
to admit being the author of a didactic poem, The Economy of
Love (1736), the publication of which was justly considered
a breach of professional etiquette.  He tried to "drug the
memory of that insolence" by producing a very grave poem, also
in blank verse, on The Art of Preserving Health (I744), divided
into four books, on air, diet, exercise, and the passions. This was
a very difficult subject, but it was treated with unexpected grace
and vigour. Armstrong also contributed four medical stanzas to
The Castle of Indolence. His epistles, Benevolence (I 75 I) and Taste
(I753), are in heroic rhyme, in which none of the Thomsonians
excelled, and no one will ever read either Armstrong's tragedy,
The Forced Marriage (I754), or the would-be sprightly prose
essays which he published in 1758 under the pseudonym of
Lancelot Temple. He collected his works in two pretty volumes
of Miscellanies in I770. Armstrong's diction was absurdly tumid;
he calls a wild briar-rose "a cynorrhodon," and a cold bath "a




228   THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


gelid cistern." But his merits of dignity and melody are at present underrated. The structure of Armstrong's blank verse is
excellent, and though founded upon Thomson's, has a certain
independent stateliness.
If we desire to name a personage as typical of what was best in
the ordinary man of cultivation in the eighteenth century, we can
do no better than point to George Lyttelton of Hagley, first Lord
Lyttelton (1709-I773). He was a virtuous politician, who rose to
be Chancellor of the Exchequer; he was the founder of a house
that has never ceased to hold a respectable place in the country;
he was the friend of great poets and divines, and something of a
divine and a poet himself, while his life comprised all that was
elegant and amiable in man. Cruel sceptics, like Gibbon, have
not failed to point out that his works are "not illuminated by a
ray of genius." But his heart has spoken once or twice, in the
loosely-strung Pindaric Jfonody to his wife, and in the elegiac
prologue to Coriolanus, Thomson's posthumous tragedy.
Another and more ambitious Thomsonian was Richard Glover
(I712-1785), a politician whom  indignation against Walpole
hurried into copious blank verse. There must be few men now
alive who can boast a more than fragmentary acquaintance with
the epics of Glover. Leonidas (in nine books, afterwards enlarged),
I737, begins his poetical career, and The Athenaid (positively in
thirty books), 1788, closed it. Glover is only remembered by his
extremely spirited ballad of Admiral Hosier's Ghost, which, however, he might have improved by shortening to five syllables the
last line of each octett.
The increased lightness of touch and command over the
resources of language which were secured by the practice of the
Augustan age, encouraged the production of rapid and polished
epigrammatic or burlesque verse in the period we have now
reached. Lord Chesterfield's exquisite impromptu to Miss Ambrose is one example of the exercise of this new power; another
is the "Live while you live" of Dr. Philip Doddridge (I702 -I75I):




VII


EPIGRAMS


229


"Say, lovely Tory, why the jest
Of wearing orange on thy breast,
When that same breast, betraying, shows
The whiteness of the rebel rose?"
"' Live while you live '-the epicure would say,
'And seize the pleasure of the present day;'
' Live while you live'-the sacred preacher cries,
' And give to God each moment as it flies.'
Lord! in my views let both united be;
I live in pleasure when I live to Thee!"
Isaac Hawkins Browne (x706-1760) was master of this easy
brightness; in 1736 he published an amusing set of parodiesThe Pipe of Tobacco, long afterwards imitated by the authors of
Rejected Addresses. The epigrams of Robert Craggs, Lord Nugent
(1709-I788), may still be read with entertainment; and David
Garrick (I716-I779), although he affected to call himself "a poor
player and still poorer bard," was vain of his accomplishments
upon the lighter lyre. There is a touch of genuine pathos in his
clever epitaph on Quin the actor:
"That tongue which set the table on a roar,
And charm'd the public ear, is heard no more!
Clos'd are those eyes, the harbingers cf wit
Which spoke, before the tongue, what Shakespeare writ;
Cold are those hands, which, living, were stretched forth
At friendship's call to succour modest worth.
Here lies James Quin! deign reader to be taught
(Whate'er thy strength of body, force of thought,
In nature's happiest mould however cast),
To this complexion thou must come at last."
Among all these butterflies of song, Sir Charles Hanbury
Williams (1709-1759) takes the place of a wasp, if not of a veritable hornet. He was the Pasquin of his age, and a master of
violent stinging invective in hard verse. In his own age no one
dared to collect the savage lyrics of Williams, which were first presented to the world in 1822.  Dr. Alexander Webster's (I707-1784)
epigram or address to his wife recalls us to humanity, and displays




230    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


the fragile porcelain beauty of eighteenth-century verse in its
tenderest light.
From among the multitude of minor poets, we may select three
very dissimilar names for brief special notice.  In a family of
distinguished rhyming divines, Charles Wesley (I708-I788) was the
one who rose nearest to the purely secular standard of a poet.  He
was the younger brother of the great founder of the Methodists,
with whom he was associated as a hymn-writer. There can be
little question that the sacred songs of Charles Wesley, most of
them what are called "hymns of experience," reach at their
noblest the highest level of Protestant religious poetry in this
country since George Herbert. His WrestlingJacob is his masterpiece, and is inspired by a genuine dramatic passion. It opens
thus:
"Come, O thou traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see;
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.
" I need not tell thee who I am,
My misery or sin declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name,
Look on thy hands, and read it there!
But who, I ask thee, who art thou?
Tell me thy name, and tell me now."
The hymns of the eighteenth century are so interesting from
what we may call the philosophical standpoint that we may be in
danger of overrating their positive literary value, which is apt
to be small. William Shenstone (I714-1764), the bard of the
Leasowes, has been called "our principal master of the artificialnatural style in poetry."  His Pastoral Ballad (I743), in four
sections, is written in the lightest of anapxests, and has all the pink
and silver grace of a Watteau.    In 1742, when Thomson had
written, but not circulated, his Catstle of Indolence, Shenstone
issued The Scjoolmistress, a short but very happy study in some




VII


SHENSTONE


231


thirty-five half-burlesque Spenserian stanzas. He takes his place
in the rapid transition of style as a definite link between Thomson
and Goldsmith. His bachelor ideal of life is very neatly summed
up in the ingenious stanzas, Written in an Inn at Henley.
" To thee, fair freedom! I retire
From flattery, cards, and dice, and din;
Nor art thou found in mansions higher
Than the low cot or humble inn.
" 'Tis here with boundless power I reign;
And every health which I begin
Converts dull port to bright champagne,Such freedom crowns it, at an inn.
" I fly from pomp, I fly from plate!
I fly from falsehood's specious grin;
Freedom I love, and form I hate,
And choose my lodgings at an inn.
" Here, waiter, take my sordid ore,
Which lacqueys else might hope to win!
It buys, what courts have not in store,
It buys me-freedom at an inn.
" Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome-at an inn."
Still more artificial, still more mild and colourless, are the productions of William Whitehead (I7I5-1785), the laureate, who,
nevertheless, has some indefinite claim to be called a poet. His
epistles on The Danger of Writing Verse (I741) and Ridicule
(1743) were incessantly scoffed at by Churchhill; his little epitaphs, "similes," fables, and songs are often happier in their
simplicity.
Two very noble lyrical poets closed this period of our literature,
and preserved it from expiring in feebleness and insipidity. It
may be convenient to consider first the younger of these, William
Collins (I721-1759), whose career practically closed before the
end of the half century, and before Gray came prominently before




232    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


the public. Collins was the son of a hatter in Chichester. His
early verses are lost, though one copy of them was actually published, it is believed, in 734. He was educated at Winchester and
at Magdalen College, Oxford. While he was an undergraduate
he printed a volume of Persian Eclogues (1742), and a brief
Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer (I743), both works now extremely
scarce. He proposed to enter the army, and then the Church,
but was prevented in each case by indolence, as it is said,-more
probably by a nervous irresolution of character, which foreshadowed
his future calamity. Collins came to London with "many projects in his head." In 1747 (December 1746) he printed his
famous Odes, a thin pamphlet of three and a half sheets.  The
book failed to sell, and Collins destroyed the remainder of the
edition. The young poet now formed the friendship of the genial
and affectionate Thomson, on whose death, in I748, he wrote the
exquisite elegy (or "ode "), beginning, " In yonder grave a Druid
lies." In I749, after a brief acquaintanceship with the Rev. John
Home (1724-I808), afterwards popular as the author of the
tragedy of Douglas, Collins addressed this friend in an ode, the
longest of his existing works, On the Popular Superstitions of the
Highlands. An uncle in this year left the poet a small fortune,
and feeling his nervousness grow upon him, Collins retired to
Chichester. He was at this time only twenty-eight years of age,
but no further writings of his have been preserved. In 1750 he
wrote an Ode on the AJisic of the Grecian Theatre, which he invited the Oxford composer, William Hayes (1707-1777), to set to
music. Unfortunately this and The Bell of Arragon, the latest of
the odes of Collins, have never been recovered. Their immediate
predecessor, in a mutilated condition, was printed in 1788.
Collins's debilitated state of health gradually settled into absolute
melancholia; in I753 he went to France and Flanders to avert
the coming horror, if possible, but returned worse than he went;
and in 1754, during a visit to Oxford, had to be removed to a
lunatic asylum.  He lived in his sister's house in Chichester,
hopelessly insane, and was released at last by death on the I2th of




VII


COLLINS


233


June 1759, neglected by the world and scarcely remembered by
his friends.
There are very few poets from whose wheat so little chaff has
been winnowed as from that of Collins. His entire existing work
does not extend to much more than fifteen hundred lines, at least
two-thirds of which must live with the best poetry of the century.
Collins has the touch of a sculptor; his verse is clearly-cut and
direct; it is marble-pure, but also marble-cold. Each phrase is a
wonder of felicitous workmanship, without emphasis, without sense
of strain. His best strophes possess an extraordinary quiet melody,
a soft harmonious smoothness as of some divine and aerial creature
singing in artless, perfect numbers for its own delight. The Ode
to Simpicity and the Ode written in 1746 perhaps present this
delicate art of melody in its directest form:
' How sleep the brave who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than fancy's feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there!"
Essentially a lyric poet, Collins is not happy in a long flight,
and his two lengthiest odes, To Liberty, and On Popular Superstitions, though they contain what are perhaps his noblest passages, are far from being noble throughout. The most popular
of his lyrics have been the Ode to Evening and The Passions.
The first of these displays a sustained power of painting landscape
effects which Collins does not repeat elsewhere. Mr. Swinburne
has made a very interesting comparison between this poem and
the paintings of the school of Corot and Theodore Rousseau.
The Passions suffers from the disadvantage of having been made




234   THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CITAP.


a stock-exercise for elocutionists in successive generations.  Its
language is often exceedingly brilliant and effective, but the continuity of thought is broken, and simplicity is sacrificed to the
desire of covering too large a canvas. Of the twelve odes of
which the famous little volume of 1747 is composed, five have now
been mentioned. The Ode to Pity has a pathetic flute-like melody,
and some pleasant note of that other unhappy Sussex poet, Otway:
"But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Ilissus' distant side,
Deserted stream and mute?
Wild Arun, too, has heard thy strains,
And Echo, 'midst my natiye plains,
Been soothed by Pity's lute."
The Ode on the Poetical Character is inferior to Gray's analo.
gous ode, with which it is impossible not to compare it. The
Manners achieves with perfect ease and grace what the Whiteheads and Nugents of the age were for ever attempting to perform.
Among the posthumous poems, the Popular Superstitions, especially in its ninth and subsequent strophes, reaches a height of pure
lyric elevation and rapture, which makes us deeply regret the loss
of what may have been the masterpiece of Collins, his ode on the
Music of the Grecian Theatre.   His latest lyrics, especially the
Dirge in Cymbeline, prove to us that up to the moment when he
laid down his pen in unconquerable physical lassitude, the genius
of Collins was advancing in precision and delicacy. This is the
marvellous ninth strophe of the Popular Superstitions.:
"Unbounded is thy range; with varied style
Thy muse may, like those feathery tribes which spring
From their rude rocks, extend her skirting wing
Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle,
To that hoar pile, which still its ruin shows;
In whose small vaults a pigmy-folk is found,
Whose bones the delver with his spade upthrows,
And culls them, wondering, from the hallowed ground!
Or thither, where, beneath the showery west,
The mighty kings of three fair realms are laid;
Once foes, perhaps, together now they rest,




NVII


COLLINS


235


No slaves revere them and no wars invade;
Yet frequent now, at midnight's solemn hour,
The rifted mounds their yawning cells unfold,
And forth the monarchs stalk with sovereign power,
In pageant robes, and wreathed with sheeny gold,
And on their twilight tombs aerial council hold."
The intellectual quality of Collins is not so strongly marked as
his pure and polished art; but he had sympathy with fine things
unpopular in his own lifetime.   He was a republican and a
Hellenist and a collector of black-letter poetry, in an age that
equally despised what was Greek and what was Gothic. It may
perhaps be allowed to be an almost infallible criterion of a man's
taste for the highest forms of poetic art to inquire whether he has
or has not a genuine love for the verses of William Collins.
It seems scarcely generous to say of a writer, whom we must
all admit to be a much greater man of letters, that what has just
been said is not true in his case, yet certainly no such special
training or native capacity is needful for the appreciation of much
that is obviously delightful in the poetry of Thomas Gray (I7I6 -I77I). Gray and Collins, distinct enough in character to the
careful critical inspector, have to the outward eye a curious similarity. They were contemporaries; they wrote very little, and that
mostly in the form of odes; they both affected personation and
allegorical address to a very unusual extent; both studied effects
which were Greek in their precision and delicacy; both were
learned and exact students of periods of literature now reinstated
in critical authority, but in their day neglected. Yet, while Gray
was the greater intellectual figure of the two, the more significant
as a man and a writer, Collins possessed something more thrilling,
more spontaneous, as a purely lyrical poet. When they are closely
examined, their supposed similarity fades away; and, without
depreciating either, we discover that each was typical of a classthat Collins was the type of the poet who sings, as the birds do,
because he must; and Gray of the artist in verse, who has learned
everything which the most consummate attention to workmanship
can teach him, when added to the native faculty of a singularly




236    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


delicate ear. Each has his separate charm, but we must not stultify our own enjoyment of either by pushing too far a parallelism
which, though strongly marked, turns out to be mainly superficial.
Gray, the most important poetical figure in our literature
between Pope and Wordsworth, was born in London on the 26th
of December I716. He was educated at Eton, where his principal friends were Horace Walpole and Richard West (I717-I742),
the "Favonius" of his correspondence, a lad of some tender
elegiac promise. From Eton Gray proceeded in 1734 to Cambridge, which was henceforth to be his main domicile. He was
admitted to Pembroke, but presently went over as a fellowcommoner to Peterhouse. While he was an undergraduate Gray
began to publish Latin verses, and in 1738 to translate classical
passages into excellent English verse. In 1739 he accompanied
Horace Walpole to France and Italy in a tour which occupied three
memorable years, and it was on first crossing the Alps that Gray
became impressed with the noble beauty of mountain scenery,
which had hitherto been regarded, even by poets, with more
horror than admiration. In a letter to West (November i6, 1739)
he uses the now famous phrase, describing the Alps, "not a
precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion
and poetry." In 174i Gray and Walpole, who had been too
long in exclusive mutual companionship, quarrelled, and each
proceeded home alone; but in I744 this breach was amicably
healed. On the death of his father, which happened two months
after the poet's return from Italy, he found the affairs of his
family disordered, and in the winter of 1742 he returned to reside
at Cambridge. This year, I742, was that in which he began to
be an original English poet.  He wrote a fragment of a
Thomsonian tragedy, Agrippzina, his odes To Spring, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College, and On Adversity, the Sonnet on the
Death of [West, and began the Elegy in a Counlry Churchyard.
To this fertile year succeeded five of almost entire poetic stagnation, during which Gray, a victim to dejection, buried himself among
the classics in his rooms at Peterhouse. In 1747 he published, in




VII


GRAY


237


pamphlet form, his Eton College ode, which attracted no attention
whatever. About this time Gray wrote that delicious trifle The
Ode on the Death of Mr. Wallpole's Cat. Next year he formed
the acquaintance of William Mason (1725-1797), then a scholar
of St. John's, his imitator and future biographer, and from
this time forward Gray never again endured the same solitary
wretchedness that he had first suffered at Cambridge.  Three
of Gray's odes, printed in Dodsley's fiscellany in 1748, introduced his work, though still not his name, to the public, and in
the winter of I749 he continued, and in the summer of 1750
finished, his Elegy in a Country Churchyard. This was anonymously published in the spring of I751. In 1753 Six Poems by
Mr. T. Gray, including, besides those already mentioned, A
Long Story, written in 175I, were published as a luxurious folio,
with full-page illustrations by Richard Bentley, son of the Master
of Trinity. Many of these poems were identified with the rustic
village of Stoke Pogis, in Bucks, where several of Gray's female relations resided, and where his mother died and was buried in I753.
The first period of Gray's literary career now closes. In 1754
he opened a second by finishing a very important poem, a resonant
ode on The Progress of Poesy, composed in competition with the
triumphal epinikia of Pindar, in very elaborate stanza-form. A
second Pindaric ode on The Liberty of Genius was planned about
the same time, but of this there exists only a fragment of the
argument. A third effort in the same direction, The Bard, begun
in the winter of 1754, was completed in the summer of 1757.
Meanwhile Gray, dissatisfied with the want of notice taken by
the Peterhouse authorities of a rude practical joke played upon
him by some undergraduates, moved over to Pembroke in 1756.
In this latter college he was among personal friends, and this
remained his home until he died. He never held a fellowship or
any college office. In 1757 he printed at Strawberry Hill the
two Pindaric poems under the title of Odes. They were instantly
and decisively successful; Gray was acknowledged to be the
leading poet of the day, and a few months later he was offered,




238    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


and declined, the office of poet-laureate at the death of Colley
Cibber.   The remainder of his life was very uneventful.     In
1760 and 1761 he was mainly giving his attention to early English
poetry, of which he intended to write a history; and in the latter
year his study of Icelandic and Celtic verse led to the composition of his Eddaic poems, The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of
Odin.   Henceforward the main events in Gray's life were his
enthusiastic friendships with younger men, such as Nicholls and
Bonstetten, and his summer excursions in search of romantic
scenery.   In 1768 he collected his Poems in the first general
edition, and was appointed Professor of Modern History and
Modern Languages at the University of Cambridge; he delivered
no lectures. In 1769 Gray's latest poem, the Installation Ode,
was published, and in the autumn of that year he took his famous
journey among the English lakes, the Journal of which was
posthumously published in I775, and is the most finished of his
prose writings. Gray died, in his rooms at Pembroke College,
on the 3oth of July 1771, and was buried, beside the body of his
mother, in the romantic churchyard of Stoke Pogis. Some stanzas
may here be quoted from one of the least hackneyed of Gray's
poems, the beautiful fragmentary Ode on Vicissitude 
" Now the golden morn aloft
Waves her dew-bespangled wing,
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft
She woos the tardy spring;
Till April starts, and calls around
The sleeping fragrance from the ground;
And lightly o'er the living scene
Scatters his freshest, tenderest green.
" Newborn flocks, in rustic dance,
Frisking ply their feeble feet;
Forgetful of their wintry trance,
The birds his presence greet:
But, chief, the sky-lark warbles high
Iis trembling, thrilling ecstasy;
And, lessening from the dazzled sight,
Melts into air and liquid light.




VII


GRAY


239


" Yesterday the sullen year
Saw the snowy whirlwind fly;
\Mute was the music of the air,
The herd stood drooping by;
Their raptures now that wildly flow,
No yesterday, nor morrow know;
'Tis Man alone that joy descries
With forward and reverted eyes.
" See the wretch, that long has tossed
On the thorny bed of pain,
At length repair his vigour lost,
And breathe and walk again;
The meanest flowret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise."
Against the right of Gray to be considered one of the leading
English men of letters no more stringent argument has been produced than is founded upon the paucity of his published work. It
has fairly been said that the springs of originality in the brain of a
great inventive genius are bound to bubble up more continuously
and in fuller volume than could be confined within the narrow
bounds of the poetry of Gray.  But the sterility of the age, the
east wind of discouragement steadily blowing across the poet's
path, had much to do with this apparent want of fecundity, and it
would be an error to insist too strongly on a general feature of
the century in this individual case.  When we turn to what Gray
actually wrote, although the bulk of it is small, we are amazed at
the originality and variety, the freshness and vigour of the mind
that worked thus tardily and in miniature. As a poet Gray closes
the period we have been discussing in the present chapter, and then
passes beyond it. His metrical work steadily advances: we have
the somewhat cold and timid odes of his youth; we proceed to
the superb Elegy, in which the Thomsonian school reaches its
apex, and expires; we cross over to the elaborate Pindaric odes,
in which Gray throws off the last shackles of Augustan versification, and prepares the way for Shelley; and lastly, we have the




240    THE DAWN OF NATURALISM IN POETRY


CHAP.


purely romantic fragments of the close of his life, those lyrics
inspired by the Edda and by Ossian, in which we step out of the
eighteenth century altogether, and find ourselves in the full stream
of romanticism.
In no sketch of the genius of Gray, however slight, can we
afford to ignore the range and singular fulness of his intellectual
acquirements. He was described by one well qualified to judge
as being in his time "perhaps the most learned man in Europe."
His knowledge of Greek literature, and especially Greek poetry,
was as deep as it was subtle; he was equally keen in his study of
all that suited his own peculiar habits of mind in the authors of
modern Europe, and when he was already advanced in life he
mastered Icelandic, at that time a language almost unknown even
in continental Scandinavia. His tendency of mind was to be habitually dejected; he was solitary, and a hypochondriac. Against this
constitutional melancholy, intellectual activity was his great resource, and his favourite saying was, "to be employed is to be
happy." We are fortunately able to follow the development of
this exquisite and sequestered mind in the copious series of his
letters to his private friends, first imperfectly collected in 1775;
in this remarkable correspondence, which yields to none in the
language in brightness and elegance, we observe the movements
of the fastidious brain and melancholy conscience, illuminated and
gilded by the light of such spontaneous humour as the sprightlier
poems of the writer ought to have prepared us for.
Among the writings of Gray it is unquestionable that the
C/urczyard Elegy stands first. In other poems he has during
brief passages displayed higher qualities than are illustrated here,
but in no second work is the noble tone of tenderness and distinction preserved at such a uniform level of perfection.  By
credit of this single piece Gray stands easily at the head of all the
English elegiac poets, and, as Mr. Swinburne puts it, " holds for
all ages to come his unassailable and sovereign station."
Encrusted as it is with layers upon layers of eulogy, bibliography,
and criticism, we have but to scrape these away to find the im



VII


GRAY


241


mortal poem beneath as fresh, as melodious, as inspiring as
ever. With regard to the two great Pindaric odes, criticism has
by no means spoken with the same unanimity. The contemporaries of Gray found these elaborate pieces difficult to the verge of
unintelligibility. Later critics, who have not pretended to find
them unmeaning, have yet objected to their overblown magnificence, their excess of allegorical apparatus, and their too manifest metrical artifice. That they do not belong to the school
of simplicity may be freely admitted, but there are certain
themes, suggestively described by De Quincey, in the treatment
of which simplicity is out of place. The Progress of Poesy and
the prophetic raptures of a dying bard may be recognised as
belonging to the same class of subjects as Belshazzar's Feast.
The qualities rather to be regarded in these elaborate pieces of
poetic art are their originality of structure, the varied music of
their balanced strophes, as of majestic antiphonal choruses
answering one another in some antique temple, and the extraordinary skill with which the evolution of the theme is observed
and restrained.  It is in this latter characteristic that Gray
shows himself, as an artist, to be far superior to Collins. The
student will not fail, in some of Gray's minor writings, in the
sonorous Stanzas to Mr. Bentley, in the thrilling flute-like tones
and nature-sketches of the fragmentary Ode on Vicissitude, in the
Gothic picturesqueness of The Descent of Odin, to detect notes
and phrases of a more delicate originality than are to be found
even in his more famous writings, and will dwell with peculiar
pleasure on those passages in which Gray freed himself of the
trammels of an artificial and conventional taste, and prophesied of
the new romantic age that was coming. The faults of Gray's poetry
are obvious, especially in his earlier writing; they are the results of
an exaggerated taste for rhetoric and for allegory. But the main
features of his work are such that we may frankly acknowledge
him to have succeeded when he tells us that "the style I have
aimed at is extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical."


III


R




CHAPTER VIII


THE NOVELISTS
THERE is nothing offensive to the dignity of literary history in
acknowledging that the most prominent piece of work effected by
literature in England during the eighteenth century is the creation,
for it can be styled nothing less, of the modern novel. In the seventeenth century there had been a very considerable movement in the
direction of prose fiction. The pastoral romances of the Elizabethans had continued to circulate; France had set an example in
the heroic stories of D'Urf6 and La Calprenede, which English imitators and translators had been quick to follow, even as early as 1647.
The Francion of Sorel and the Roman Bourgeois of Furetiere (the
latter, published in i666, of especial interest to students of the
English novel) had prepared the way for the exact opposite to the
heroic romance, namely, the realistic story of everyday life. Bunyan and Richard Head, Mrs. Behn and Defoe-each had marked
a stage in the development of English fiction. Two noble forerunners of the modern novel, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's
Travels, had inflamed the curiosity and awakened the appetite of
British readers; but, although there were already great satires and
great romances in the language, the first quarter of the eighteenth
century passed away without revealing any domestic genius in
prose fiction, any master of the workings of the human heart.
Meanwhile the drama had decayed. The audiences which had
attended the poetic plays of the beginning and the comedies of




VIII


MIARIVAUX


243


close of the seventeenth century now found nothing on the boards
of the theatre to satisfy their craving after intellectual excitement.
The descendants of the men and women who had gone out to
welcome the poetry of Shakespeare and the wit of Congreve were
now rather readers than playgoers, and were most ready to enjoy
an appeal to their feelings when that appeal reached them in book
form. In the playhouse, they came to expect bustle and pantomine rather than literature. This decline in theatrical habits
prepared a domestic audience for the novelists, and accounts
for that feverish and apparently excessive anxiety with which the
earliest great novels were awaited and received.
Meanwhile, the part taken by Addison and Steele in preparing
for this change of taste must not be overlooked, and the direct
link between Addison, as a picturesque narrative essayist, and
Richardson, as the first great English novelist, is to be found in
Pierre de Marivaux (i688-1763), who imitated the Spectator, and
who is often assumed, though somewhat too rashly, to have
suggested the tone of Pamela. Into this latter question we shall
presently have need to inquire again. It is enough to point out
here that when the English novel did suddenly and irresistibly
make its appearance, it had little in common with the rococo
and coquettish work which had immediately preceded it in
France, and which at first, even to judges so penetrating as the
poet Gray, was apt to seem more excellent, because more subtle
and refined. The rapidity with which the novel became domiciled
amongst us, and the short space of time within which the principal
masterpieces of the novelists were produced, are not more remarkable than the lassitude which fell upon English fiction as soon as
the first great generation had passed away. The flourishing period
of the eighteenth-century novel lasted exactly twenty-five years,
during which time we have to record the publication of no less
than fifteen eminent works of fiction. These fifteen are naturally
divided into three groups. The first contains Pamela, Joseph
Andrewss, David Simple, and Jonathan Wild.  In these books
the art is still somewhat crude, and the science of fiction incom



244


THE NOVELISTS


CHIIAP.


pletely understood. After a silence of five years we reach the
second and greatest section of this central period, during which
there appeared, in quick succession, Clarissa, Roderick Random,
Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, Amelia, and Sir Charles Grandison.
As though invention had been exhausted by the publication of
this incomparable series of masterpieces, there followed another
silence of five years, and then were issued, each on the heels of the
other, Tristram Shandy, Rasselas, Chrysal, The Castle of Otranto,
and The Vicar of Wakefield. Five years later still, a book born
out of due time, appeared Humphrey Clinker, and then, with one
or two such exceptions as Evelina and Caleb Williams, no great
novel appeared again in England for forty years, until, in I8II,
the new school of fiction was inaugurated by Sense and Sensibility.
The English novel, therefore, in its first great development, should
be considered as comprised within the dates I740 and 1766; and
it may not be uninstructive, before entering into any critical
examination of the separate authors, to glance at this chronological list of the first fifteen great works of English fiction.
The novels contained in the catalogue just given, however
widely they differed from one another in detail, had this in
common, that they dealt with mental and moral phenomena.
Before 1740 we possessed romances, tales, prose fiction of various
sorts, but in none of these was essayed any careful analysis of
character or any profound delineation of emotion. In Defoe,
where the record of imaginary fact was carried on with so much
ingenuity and knowledge, the qualities we have just mentioned
are notably absent; nor can it be said that we find them in any
prose-writer of fiction earlier than Richardson, except in some
very slight and imperfect degree in Aphra Behn, especially in her
Rousseauish novel of Oroonoko.  Before, indeed, we begin to
chronicle the feats of the novelists, we have to deal with the last
of the old school of romance-writers, whose solitary work appeared
when Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett were in the midst of
their successes.  This was Robert Paltock (1697?-I767?) of
Clement's Inn, of whom nothing is certainly known, save that, in




VIII


PALTOCK


245


1751, he published, in two volumes, The Lafe and Adventures of
Peter Wilkins, a sailor who was shipwrecked near the South Pole,
and who fell in with a wonderful winged race of Glums and
Gawries, one of whom, the beautiful Youwarkee, he found fainting outside his hut, and afterwards married. On taking her up,
" I found she had a sort of brown chaplet, like lace, round her head, under
and about which her hair was tucked up and twined; and she seemed to me
to be clothed in a thin hair-coloured silk garment, which, upon trying to raise
her, I found to be quite warm, and therefore hoped there was life in the body
it contained."
This book is not so skilfully imagined as Robinson Crusoe, to
which it owes not a little; but the strange people, winged with
graundees or throbbing crimson robes of their own skin, are described with a charming fancy, and Peer Wilkins will never want
admirers. It belongs, however, to the old school, and was probably written before the publication of Panmela.
The first great English novelist, Sarauel Richardson (I689 -1761), was born and bred in Derbyshire.  He records of himself
that when still a little boy he had two peculiarities-he loved the
society of women best, and he delighted in letter-writing. Indeed,
before he was eleven, he wrote a long epistle to a widow of fifty,
rebuking her for unbecoming conduct. The girls of the neighbourhood soon discovered his insight into the human heart, and
his skill in correspondence, and they employed the boy to write
their love-letters for them.  In 1706 Richardson was apprenticed
to a London printer, served a diligent apprenticeship, and \vorked
as a compositor until he rose, late in life, to be Master of the
Stationers' Company. He was fifty years of age before he showed
symptoms of any higher ambition than that of printing correctly
Acts of Parliament and new editions of law-books. In 1739 the
publishers, Rivington and Osborne, urge-d him to compose for
them  a volume of Familiar Let/ers, afterwards actually produced as an aid to illiterate persons in their correspondence.
Richardson set about this work, gave it a moral flavour, and at
last began to write what would serve as a caution to young serving



246


THE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


women who were exposed to temptation.   At this point he
recollected a story he had heard long before, of a beautiful and
virtuous maid-servant who succeeded in marrying her master;
and then, laying the original design aside, Richardson, working
rapidly, wrote in three months his famous story of Pamzela.
All Richardson's novels are written in what Mrs. Barbauld has
ingeniously described as " the most natural and the least probable
way of telling a story," namely, in consecutive letters.  The
famous heroine of his first book is a young girl, Pamela Andrews,
who describes in letters to her father and mother what goes on in
the house of a lady with whom she had lived as maid, and who is
just dead when the story opens. The son of Pamela's late mistress,
a Mr. B. (it was Fielding who wickedly enlarged the name to
Booby) becomes enamoured of her charms, and takes every
mean advantage of her defenceless position; but, fortunately,
Pamela is not more virtuous than astute, and after various
agonies, which culminate in her thinking of drowning herself in a
pond, she brings her admirer to terms, and is discovered to us at
last as the rapturous though still humble Mrs. B. There are all
sorts of faults to be found with this crude book. The hero is a
rascal, who comes to a good end, not because he has deserved to
do so, but because his clever wife has angled for him with her
beauty, and has landed him at last, like an exhausted salmon. So
long as Pamela is merely innocent and frightened, she is charming,
but her character ceases to be sympathetic as she grows conscious
of the value of her charms, and even the lax morality of the day
was shocked at the craft of her latest manoeuvres. But all the
world went mad with pleasure over the book. What we now
regard as tedious and prolix was looked upon as so much linked
sweetness long drawn out. The fat printer had invented a new
thing, and inaugurated a fresh order of genius. For the first time,
the public was invited, by a master of the movements of the heart,
to be present at the dissection of that fascinating organ, and the
operator could not be leisurely enough, could not be minute
enough, for his breathless and enraptured audience. In France,




VIII


RICHARDSON


247


for some ten years past, there had been writers,-Crebillon, Marivaux, Pr6vost,-who had essayed this delicate analysis of emotion,
but these men were the first to admit the superiority of their rough
English rival. In lMarianne, where the heroine tells her own story,
which somewhat resembles that of Pamela, the French novelist
produced a very refined study of emotion, which will probably be
one day more largely read than it now is, and which should be
looked through by every student of the English novel. This book
is prolix and languid in form, and undoubtedly bears a curious
resemblance to Richardson's novel. The English printer, however, could not read French,l and there is sufficient evidence to
show that he was independent of any influences save those which
he took from real life. None the less, of course, Marivaux, who
has a name for affectation which his writings scarcely deserve, has
an interest for us as a harbinger of the modern novel. Pamela
was published in two volumes in I 740. The author was sufficiently
ill-advised to add two more in I74I. In this latter instalment
Mrs. B. was represented as a dignified matron, stately and sweet
under a burden of marital infidelity.  But this continuation is
hardly worthy to be counted among the works of Richardson.
The novelist showed great wisdom in not attempting to repeat
too quickly the success of his first work.  He allowed the
romances of Henry and Sarah Fielding, the latter as grateful to
him as the former were repugnant, to produce their effect upon
the public, and it was to an audience more able to criticise fiction
that Richardson addressed his next budget from the mail-bag.
Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady, appeared, in instalments, but in seven volumes in all, in I748, with critical prefaces
prefixed to the first and fourth volumes.  In this book, the
novelist put his original crude essay completely into the shade,
and added one to the masterpieces of the world. Released from
the accident which induced him in the pages of Pamela to make
his heroine a servant girl, in Clarissa Richardson depicted a lady,
yet not of so lofty a rank as to be beyond the range of his own
1 It is, however, now certain that there existed an English version of farianne.




248


TIIE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


observation. The story is again told entirely in letters; it is the
history of the abduction and violation of a young lady by a
finished scoundrel, and ends in the death of both characters. To
enable the novelist to proceed, each personage has a confidant.
The beautiful and unhappy Clarissa Harlowe corresponds with
the vivacious Miss Howe; Robert Lovelace addresses his friend
and quondam   fellow-reveller, John Belford.  The character of
Clarissa is summed up in these terms by her creator:-" A young
Lady of great Delicacy, Mistress of all the Accomplishments,
natural and acquired, that adorn the Sex, having the strictest
Notions of filial Duty." Her piety and purity, in fact, are the two
lode-stars of her moral nature, and the pursuit of each leads her
life to shipwreck.
By the universal acknowledgment of novel-readers, Clarissa is
one of the most sympathetic, as she is one of the most lifelike, of
all the women in literature, and Richardson has conducted her
story with so much art and tact, that her very faults canonise her,
and her weakness crowns the triumph of her chastity. In depicting the character of Lovelace, the novelist had a-difficult task, for
to have made him a mere ruffian would have been to ruin the
whole purpose of the piece. He is represented as witty, versatile,
and adroit, the very type of the unscrupulous gentleman of fashion
of the period. He expiates his crimes, at the close of a capital
duel, by the hands of Colonel Morden, a relative of the Harlowe
family, who has seen Clarissa die. The success of Clarissa, both
here and in France, was extraordinary. As the successive volumes
appeared, and readers were held in suspense as to the fate of the
exquisite heroine, Richardson was deluged with letters entreating
him to have mercy.   The women of England knelt sobbing
round his knees, and addressed him as though he possessed the
power of life and death.
The slow and cumbrous form of Clarissa has tended to lessen
the number of its students, but there is probably no one who reads
at all widely who has not at one time or another come under the
spell of this extraordinary book. In France its reputation has




VIII


RICHARDSON


249


always stood very high. Diderot said that it placed Richardson
with Homer and Euripides, Rousseau openly imitated it, and
Alfred de Musset has styled it the best novel in the world. To
those who love to see the passions taught to move at the command of sentiment, and who are not wearied by the excessively
minute scale, as of a moral miniature painter, on which the author
designs his work, there can scarcely be recommended a more
thrilling and affecting book. The author is entirely inexorable,
and the reader must not hope to escape until he is thoroughly
purged with terror and pity.
After the further development of Fielding's genius, and after
the advent of a new luminary in Smollett, Richardson once more
presented to the public an elaborate and ceremonious novel of
extreme prolixity.  The History of Sir Charles Grandison, in
seven (and six) volumes, appeared in the spring of I754, after
having been pirated in Dublin during the preceding winter.
Richardson's object in this new adventure was, having already
painted the portraits of two virtuous young women-the one
fortunate, the other a martyr-to produce this time a virtuous
hero, and to depict "the charadter and actions of a man of true
honour," as before, in a series of familiar letters. There is more
movement, more plot in this novel than in the previous ones;
the hero is now in Italy, now in England, and there is much more
attempt than either in Pamela or Clarissa to give the impression
of a sphere in which a man of the world may move. Grandison
is, however, a slightly ludicrous hero. His perfections are those
of a prig and an egoist, and he passes like the sun itself over his
parterre of adoring worshippers. The ladies who are devoted to
Sir Charles Grandison are, indeed, very numerous, but the reader's
interest centres in three of them-the mild and estimable Harriet
Byron, the impassioned Italian Clementina della Porretta, and
the ingenuous ward Emily Jervois. The, excuse for all this is
that this paragon of manly virtue has " the most delicate of human
minds," and that women are irresistibly attracted to him by his
splendid perfections of character.  But posterity has admitted




250


THE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


that the portrait is insufferably overdrawn, and that Grandison is
absurd. The finest scenes in this interesting but defective novel
are those in which the madness of Clementina is dwelt upon in
that long-drawn patient manner of which Richardson was a master.
The book is much too long.
Happy in the fame which "the three daughters" of his pen
had brought him, and enjoying prosperous circumstances, Richardson's life closed in a sort of perpetual tea-party, in which he, the
only male, sat surrounded by bevies of adoring ladies.  He died
in London, of apoplexy, on the 4th of July 176I. His manners
were marked by the same ceremonious stiffness which gives his
writing an air of belonging to a far earlier period than that of
Fielding or Smollett; but his gravity and sentimental earnestness
only helped to endear him to the women. Of the style of Richardson there is little to be said; the reader never thinks of it. If
he forces himself to regard it, he sees that it is apt to be slipshod,
although so trim and systematic.  Richardson was a man of unquestionable genius, dowered with extraordinary insight into
female character, and possessing the power to express it; but he
had little humour, no rapidity of mind, and his speech was so
ductile and so elaborate that he can scarcely compete with later
and sharper talents. It should be no small praise to him, however,
that he is able, in the course of his lengthy and wiredrawn productions, to preserve the general proportions of a scheme better
than either Fielding or Smollett.  He was a plump man, very
gracious and gentle, but painfully afflicted with nervous tremor,
and a hypochondriac all his life. As an example of Richardson,
we may give part of one of the letters addressed to Miss Howe
by Miss Harlowe:
" I have been frighted out of my wits. Still am in a manner out of breath.
Thus occasioned-I went down, under the usual pretence, in hopes to find
something from you. Concerned at my disappointment, I was returning from
the woodhouse, when I heard a rustling, as of somebody behind a stack of
wood. I was extremely surprised, but still more to behold a man coming
from behind the furthermost stack. O! thought I, at that moment, the sin
of a prohibited correspondence!




VIII


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251


" In the same point of time that I saw hill, he besought me not to be
frighted, and, still nearer approaching me, threw open a horseman's coat;
and, who should it be but Mr. Lovelace! I could not scream out (yet
attempted to scream the moment I saw a man, and again when I saw who it
was), for I had no voice; and had I not caught hold of a prop, which
supported the old roof, I should have sunk.
"I had hitherto, as you know, kept him at distance, and now, as I
recovered myself, judge of my emotions when I recollected his character from
every mouth of my family, his enterprising temper, and found myself alone
with him, in a place so near a bye-lane, and so remote from the house. But
his respectful behaviour soon dissipated those fears, and gave me others, lest
we should be seen together, and information of it given to my brother; the
consequences of which, I could readily think, would be, if not further mischief,
an imputed assignation, a stricter confinement, a forfeited correspondence
with you, my dearest friend, and a pretence for the most violent compulsion;
and neither the one set of reflections, nor the other, acquitted him to me for
his bold intrusion."
The greatest of English novelists, Henry Fielding (I707-I754),
was descended from a younger branch of the Denbigh family.
He was born at Sharpham Park, in Somersetshire; he was educated at Eton and at Leyden, and appeared in London, as a very
fine strapping fellow of over six feet, with enormous capacity for
enjoyment, and no obvious opportunity of securing it, in 1728.
He began to earn a living by writing for the stage, and by publishing lampoons in verse. There are attributed to him, in all,
some twenty-eight dramas, mostly comedies and farces, mainly
produced before I737.     One of his burlesques, The Tragedy of
Tragedies (I730), an impassioned piece of parody in honour of
Tom Thumb, has lived in dramatic literature, but the rest of
Fielding's plays are remembered only by the curious. It is believed that, discovering that he could no longer live by the stage,
Fielding determined about 1737 to revert to his original study of
the law, and meanwhile supported himself by much anonymous
writing.  In 1740 he was called to the Bar, and in November of
that year was awakened to his true vocation by the publication of
Pazela.   Fielding was not one of the admirers of Richardson's
method of rewarding virtue in long-drawn epistolary fiction. All
that was tame and priggish and sordid in that very imperfect




252


THE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


book appealed to Fielding at once as deserving sharp and condign punishment.  He determined to parody Pamela, and to
take a brother of that heroine as the central figure of his burlesque.
Hence it is that at the opening of Fielding's first novel, Joseph
Andrews is discovered modestly rebuffing the advances of an
unscrupulous lady of fashion.  After progressing a little way,
however,-some five chapters comprise all the parody of Richardson,-Fielding became fascinated by his own characters, invested
them with genuine human interest, and on a foundation of rough
burlesque built that beautiful structure of pure comedy which
we know as The History of Joseiph Andrezs, published early in
I742.
On the title-page of the novel composed in this half-accidental
way the author has stated that it is "written in imitation of the
manner of Cervantes," and in the preface he has defined Joseph
Andrewzs as "a comic epic poem in prose." He was evidently
conscious that the book was formed of somewhat heterogeneous
materials, and he was anxious to cover his inconsistencies by
emphasising the fact that it was all a burlesque. In this Fielding
did himself an injustice; Joseph Andrews is comic, no doubt, but it
is a work of far higher artistic value than any mere burlesque of a
novel like Pamela could be. It is not its author's best constructed
book, and Fielding was never, as we have remarked, so good an
architect of his work as Richardson was.  There are episodes,
such as that of Leonora and Bellarmine, which break the thread
of the narrative and leave the reader in suspense for pages and
pages. But the characters, and the bustle and intrigue in which
they exhibit themselves, are of the purest comedy, while Parson
Abraham Adams, alone, would be a contribution to English
letters. This simple and learned clergyman, with his goodness
of heart and his eccentric manners, is really the hero of the novel,
the somewhat insipid loves of Joseph and Fanny forming little more
than an excuse for the journeys of Parson Adams. Mrs. Slipslop
and Mrs. Towwouse, Trulliber and Peter Pounce, make excellent
minor figures in this most facetious genre-piece, while at the end




VIII                     FIELDING                       253
the author recurs to the old satire on Richardson, and introduces
Squire Booby (the Mr. B. of Pameela) and his wife in the very
triumph of her "strange conjunction of purity and precaution."
Joseph, however, by a touch of final satire, is proved not to be
Pamela's brother after all, but the child of "persons of much
greater circumstances" than  Gaffer Andrews and his wife.
Richardson bitterly resented all this rude intrusion into his
moral garden, and never ceased to regard Fielding with open
aversion.
Fourteen months after the publication of his first novel,
Fielding collected his scattered writings, or a certain portion of
them, in three volumes of Miscellanies (I'743). The first volume
comprised his occasional poems of the last fifteen years, and
several essays in prose.  The second contained, beside two
dramas, the Lucianic history called A Journey from  /his World
to the Niext; this begins with a very sprightly satire, culminating
in the author's entrance into Elysium; unhappily, when in a
charming vein, he meets Julian the Apostate, who soliloquises,
not always very amusingly, for one hundred and forty pages.
Julian relinquishes his position to Anne Boleyn, and the fragment
presently closes. There are some exceedingly fine passages in
this shapeless work. The third volume of the Miscellanies is
entirely occupied by the novel of Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great.
This has never been a favourite among Fielding's readers, because
of its caustic cynicism and the unbroken gloom of its tone, but
it is equal to the best he has left us in force and originality.  It
is the history of an unmitigated ruffian, from his baptism by
Titus Oates to his death at Newgate on "the Tree of Glory."
The story is intended to mock those relations in which biographers
lose themselves in pompous eulogies of their subjects, for their
"greatness," without consideration of any "goodness," by showing that it is possible to write the history of a gallows-bird in
exactly the same style of inflated gusto. The inexorable irony
which is sustained all through, even when the most detestable acts
of the hero are described, forms rather a strain at last upon the




254


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reader's nerves, and no one would turn to Jonathan TVild for
mere amusement. But it shows a marvellous knowledge of the
seamy side of life, the author proving himself in it to be as
familiar with thieves and their prisons as inJoseph Andrews he
had been with stage-coaches and wayside taverns; while nothing
could be more picturesque than some of the scenes with Blueskin
and his gang, or than the Petronian passages on board ship.  It
may be noted that there had been a real Jonathan Wild hanged
at Tyburn in 1725.  Mr. Austin Dobson has suggested that this
novel, which certainly shows little sign of the new tendencies in
fiction, was written earlier than Joseph Andrews.
It now becomes very difficult to trace Fielding for several
years. He was poor, his health had declined, and his fortitude
was assailed by a multitude of calamities.  In I744 he prefixed
to the second edition of Sarah Fielding's novel of David Simzple,
which had been attributed to him, a long and very interesting
preface, in which he speaks of himself as having no leisure for
writing. We cannot guess what can thus have absorbed his time,
unless he was working as a barrister. A little later he was certainly engaged in political journalism, and had gained the friendship of Lord Lyttelton. By the help of this enlightened patron,
Fielding was at the close of 1748 raised above the fear of want by
being appointed a Justice of the Peace for Westminster. It is further
to Lyttelton, it appears, that we owe the next and greatest of Fielding's works, since Tom Jones was begun at his suggestion, and since
he supported the novelist during great part of its composition.
This famous book, which many critics have not hesitated to style
the greatest novel ever published, appeared in six volumes, under
the title of Tile History of Tom Jones, a foundling, in February
I749. The very form of this book showed that the author, who
stated when the work was only half through that it had already
employed " some thousands of hours," had shirked no pains to
make it a work of art; it opened with a dignified but somewhat
pathetic dedication to Lord Lyttelton, and consisted of eighteen
books, each preceded by a "prolegomenous " chapter which was




VIII


" TOM JONES "


255


an essay, usually of a bantering kind, on some favourite theme of
the author's.     Fielding  took  great pains in composing these
essays, which were imitated by Thackeray and by George Eliot,
and a perusal of them, isolated from the novel itself, gives us
perhaps the most favourable impression of Fielding as a prose
writer.   It is from  the introduction of the Third Book of Tom
Jones that we select our specimen of Fielding's style:
" I am convinced that awful magistrate my Lord Mayor contracts a good
deal of that reverence which attends him through the year, by the several
pageants which precede his pomp. Nay, I must confess, that even I myself,
who am not remarkably liable to be captivated with show, have yielded not a
little to the impressions of much preceding state.  When I have seen a man
strutting in a procession after others whose business hath been only to walk
before him, I have conceived a higher notion of his dignity than I have felt
on seeing him in a common situation. But there is one instance which comes
exactly up to my purpose. This is the custom of sending on a basket-woman,
who is to precede the pomp at a coronation, and to strew the stage with
flowers, before the great personages begin their procession. The Ancients
would certainly have invoked the Goddess Flora for this purpose, and it would
have been no difficulty for their priests or politicians to have persuaded the
people of the real presence of the deity, though a plain mortal had personated
her and performed her office. But we have no such design of imposing on
our reader, and therefore those who object to the heathen mythology may, if
they please, change our goddess into the above-mentioned basket-woman.
Our intention, in short, is to introduce our heroine with the utmost solemnity
in our power, with an elevation of style, and all other circumstances proper to
raise the veneration of our reader. Indeed, for certain cases, we would advise
those of our male readers who have any hearts to read no further, were we not
well assured that how amiable soever the picture of our Heroine will appear,
as it is really a copy from nature, many of our fair countrywomen will be found
worthy to satisfy any passion, and to answer any idea of female perfection,
which our pencil will be able to raise."
When we come to the story itself, it is to find ourselves moving among the healthiest company ever devised by a human
brain. The winds of heaven blow along the pages, the stage is
filled with persons whose cheeks are ruddy with the freshest
health, whose simplicity and unaffectedness are nature itself, and
whose voices are so     gay and wholesome that we hardly can




256


TIIE NOVELISTS


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bring ourselves to be offended when some of them speak a little
too coarsely in their old-world accents. There is Mr. Allworthy,
with his "good heart and no family," who finds so mysteriously
in his bed, on his return from London, a new-born infant, needless to say, the full-blooded hero of the story. There is that
typical roaring foxhunter, Squire Western, there is the timid and
unfortunate  Partridge, there  are the pedants  Square and
Thwackum, there is the impossible little prig Blifil, whom only
a generous mind could have created. All these, and a host of
other clearly-defined characters, all drawn standing out in the
sunlight, dance attendance on the gallant, handsome, but toohuman Tom, and the bright Sophia. Any sketch of the plot of
a book which every one ought to have read, would be entirely
out of place here. We are all still echoing the " ne plus ultra "
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. It is only critical, however, to
admit that there are spots on the sun. Fielding's unfortunate
love of episodes leads him astray here as elsewhere. In the
tenth chapter of the eighth book the plot is caught in the web of
a dreadful spider called "the Man of the Hill," and is held there
for six mortal chapters.  In the eleventh book there is a great
deal more than the reader cares for about Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and
in the fourteenth book about Mrs. Miller, which ladies, however,
have more claim to our attention than the Man on the Hill has.
It is also obvious, surely, that the last volume is hurried, as though
the author were tired, and did not care to draw his threads
together neatly.  But there is remarkably little to cavil at, and so
long as wit and wholesomeness, manly writing and generous
thinking, with a genial appreciation of all that makes life worth
enjoying, are welcome among us, this truly sunny book will never
lack its admirers.
His gout and his active labours as a magistrate made Fielding's life for the next few years no bed of roses. He was suggesting plans for checking the increase of robbers, he was
recommending the new-found waters of Glastonbury. Finally, in
the last week of I75I appeared his latest novel, Amelia, in four




VIII


"AMELIA"


257


volumes. It might be separated from Tom Jones by twenty years,
instead of two, so obvious is the sense of failing health, so ripe
and melancholy the fulness of experience. When we speak of
the proofs of failing health, we refer to no decline in force or
genius, but to lessened animal spirits, to a quieter and sadder
ideal of life.  There is far more shadow and less sunshine in
Amelia than in Tom Jones, while in some respects it is certainly
much more humane and tender.     Those who have preferred
Amelia to its predecessors must, we think, have been overenchanted by the character of its patient and saintly heroine,
without whom the book would fall in pieces.  Her husband,
Captain Booth, on whom it can scarcely be doubted that the
world has unjustly built its conception of Fielding himself, is
very natural and human, but unstable to the last degree, and
noticeably stupid.  Many of the incidents are crudely introduced, being no doubt actual history which the novelist did
not take the trouble to work into his picture. Amelia was not
popular in its own day, but rose into favour at the beginning of
the present century; and Thackeray, who did not wholly appreciate the morals of Tom Jones or Joseph, Andrews, found those
of Fielding's latest novel entirely to his taste.  On the other
hand, it is, surely, what they certainly are not, a little dull.
Indeed the end was near, and the Atlantean novelist, who had
squandered the rich treasure of his youth, was already bowed
under the orb of his fate. He still struggled manfully to be a
faithful servant to the public, and his pamphlets of 1752 and I753
testify to his vigilance as a magistrate and his anxiety to befriend
the poor. At length, in the summer of the latter year, the physicians insisted on his retirement to Bath, but he soon came back
to break up, for the Government, a notorious gang of street
robbers. He could scarcely drag himself about, so feeble was he
with gout, asthma, and jaundice, and in the summer of 1754 he
was obliged, as a last chance, to try the voyage to Portugal. He
lingered for two months at Lisbon, where he died on the 8th of
October, and where
III                                        S




258


THE NOVELISTS


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"Beneath the green Estrella trees,
No Artist merely, but a Man,
Wrought on our noblest island-plan,
Sleeps with the alien Portuguese."
His Journal of the Voyage, his last book, appeared in I755.
There are few figures in our literary history which inspire so
much sympathy as Fielding. His character was full of superficial
faults, but he was pre-eminently honest, good, and manly. These
qualities are reflected in his work, which is not always clean, but
always breezy and healthy. Fielding was a much more careful
writer, in spite of his easy air, than either Richardson or Smollett;
his intellect was better trained than that of either, and he is as
much more grammatical than the first as he is more graceful than
the second. His constructive power as a novelist was perhaps less
than Richardson's, and he certainly had not so refined an insight
into the character of women. But he knew men ten times better
than the creator of Sir Charles Grandison, and his place in the
fiction of manners is broader as well as higher than Richardson's
can ever be. The extraordinary variety of his four great books,
inspired respectively by indignant humour, by irony, by geniality,
and by tenderness, puts him easily above Smollett, who might
otherwise at one or two points seem to compete with Fielding
successfully.
Richardson was an elderly man, Fielding in the ripeness of
manhood, and Smollett quite young, when each flourished as a
novelist; and hence, though more than thirty years separated
the birth of the first from that of the third, they are to be considered as contemporaries-Roderick Random, indeed, being exactly
contemporaneous with Clarissa, and a little older than Ton Jones.
Tobias George Smollett (I72I-I77I) was brought up in a beautiful
valley of Dumbartonshire by his grandfather, Sir James Smollett
of Bonhill, whose death in 1740 left the youth with no other provision than an excellent education. He was already something
of a poet, and had come up to London in I739 with a very
bad tragedy, Thze Regicide, which Garrick refused. Smollett was




VIII


SMOLLETT


259


obliged to become surgeon's mate on board a man-of-war, and
served in the affair of Carthagena. He left the fleet and settled
in the West Indies, somewhat longer than Roderick Random did.
In Jamaica he married one who at least had seemed to be an
heiress, Miss Nancy Lascelles. After a world of adventures he
found himself in London again in I744, trying to combine the
professions of medicine and literature, and. scourging the follies of
the age from a garret. In January I748 Smollett published, in
two volumes, his first novel, The Adventures of Roderick Random.
This book is a good instance of his method, and exemplifies the
merits as well as the defects of his style.  It takes the form of an
autobiography; the hero is a Scotchman who is singularly like
Smollett himself in the nature of his adventures.  He is even
shipped off to the West Indies as a surgeon, and there can be no
doubt that the author was mainly repeating, but also, one hopes,
exaggerating, what he himself had seen and experienced. Roderick
Random is intentionally modelled on the plan of Lesage, and here,
as elsewhere, Smollett shows himself less original than either
Richardson or Fielding. He can hardly be said to invent or
to construct; he simply reports. He does this with infinite spirit
and variety. Comedy and tragedy, piety and farce, follow one
another in bewildering alternation. But although he dazzles and
entertains us, he does not charm. The book is ferocious to a
strange degree, and so foul as to be fit only for a very well-seasoned
reader.  The hero, in whom Smollett complacently could see
nothing but a picture of " modest merit struggling with every difficulty," is a selfish bully, whose faults it is exasperating to find
condoned. The book, of course, is full of good things. The
hero is three separate times hurried off to sea, and the scenes of
rough sailor-life, though often disgusting, are wonderfully graphic.
Tom Bowling, Jack Rattlin, and the proud Mr. Morgan are not
merely immortal among salt-sea worthies, but practically the
first of a long line of sailors of fiction. There is, moreover, the
meek and gentle Strap, so ungenerously treated by the hero, that
we almost throw the book from us in anger, when at last Random




260


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CHAP.


is permitted, on the last page, to crown his own ill-gotten gains
with the fortune of the lovely Narcissa.
The same inconsistent qualities, mingled, however, with considerably greater breadth and freedom, go to make up the four
volumes of The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (I75I), which is
not a better novel than its predecessors, but possesses finer
passages. This is, indeed, a very difficult book to criticise, so
great is the inequality of its execution. The first volume is in
Smollett's best style, displaying his faults of coarseness and satiric
ferocity to the full, but concise, brisk, and exquisitely humorous.
The second, which is mainly occupied with the French and
Flemish passages, is vivacious, but to a much less degree, and by
fits and starts. Two-thirds of the third volume are taken up by
the nauseous and impertinent "Memoirs of a Lady of Quality,"
a fungoid growth of episode. The fourth is weighted through its
first half by Smollett's passion for elaborate social satire, but wakes
up again into pure and lively fiction towards the close. Here, as in
Roderick Random, the personal unloveliness of the hero's character
is annoying.  Peregrine is a handsome, swaggering swashbuckler,
ungenerous and untrustworthy to the highest degree, with hardly
any virtue but that of brute courage.  Smollett, nevertheless,
smiles at him all through, and seems to be assuring us that he is
only sowing his wild oats.  The extraordinary violence of the
characters, which is more marked here than in any other book of
the author's, becomes fatiguing at length. The internecine animosities of Mrs. Trunnion and Mrs. Pickle, the bitter inhumanity
of almost everybody in the book, leave us at first exasperated and
then incredulous. It is difficult to say why a novel so very disagreeable and so full of faults does, nevertheless, impress the
reader as a work of genius.    The humours of Commodore
Trunnion and Lieutenant Jack Hatchway are still unsurpassed
in their kind, though they have inspired so many later hands.
The long and stately comedy of the Roman dinner is still a
masterpiece of elaborate, learned fooling. Nor are the treasures
of the author's studied and artificial humour anywhere scattered




VIII


SMOLLETT


26I


with more careless profusion than over the earlier pages of this
unequal book.
Smollett was not happily inspired in his next novel.  The
Adventures of Ferdinand, Count Fathom (I753), is more serious
than its predecessors; the author's intentions seem to have been
romantic. But the hero, once more, and more than ever, is a
repulsive scoundrel, and the forest-scenes, which have been
praised for their poetical force, appear to us to be simply brutal
when they are not bombastic. The public, at all events, rejected
Count Fathom, and Smollett turned to other branches of literature.
He translated Don Quixote (I755); he started the Critical Review,
a newspaper, mainly consisting of short notices of books, which
Smollett edited, and partly wrote, with the help of a staff of six or
seven hacks. He had an old grudge against one of the Carthagena
admirals, and he used the Critical Reviewe as a vehicle for censuring this man anonymously in terms which went beyond all possible
endurance. Smollett acknowledged the authorship of the article,
and was imprisoned as well as fined for the libel. While he was in
gaol, he amused himself by imitating Cervantes in a novel in two
volumes, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot Greaves, printed in 76 I, an
absurd and exaggerated satire which added nothing to his fame.
Emulous of the success which was attending his countrymen,
the Scotch historians, Smollett undertook to write a Complete History of England, from Julius Caesar down to the year 1748; this
he afterwards continued to the year 1765. The first edition of
this perfunctory work appeared in I758; Smollett was no born
historian, but he wrote with verve and confidence, and when he
approached the events of his own age, he prepared himself to
treat them with the vivacity of a novelist. If he did not lift his
style to a level with that of Hume or Robertson, he easily surpassed
the Guthries and Campbells of his day; and from this period we
have to think of him as famous. Unfortunately, with success in
authorship came the utter ruin of his health, and the loss of his
only child, a charming daughter. Smollett was ordered to Italy
by his doctors, and he spent two years on the continent of Europe




262


THE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


in desultory travel, out of sympathy with what he saw, and
ignorantly prejudiced against all customs that clashed in any
degree with British habit. He was the original of Smelfungus, who
" set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he passed
by was discoloured and distorted." Sterne, who did not err from
want of sympathy, wittily says of Smollett's opinions of the works
of art in Italy, that they should have been reserved for his physician.
The Travels in France and Italy, which he published in 1766,
throw more light upon the author than upon the countries he
traversed.
Smollett, indeed, was now a wreck; he enjoyed a slight respite
in the village of his birth by his native lake, which suited him
far better than Bolsena or Garda. His praises of Leven Water, in
Hutmphrey Clinker, both in prose, and in his graceful ode, are
among the best specimens we possess of his descriptive powers,
and show that he could be deeply moved by landscape, when its
associations assisted the impression. Any return to cheerfulness
or ease, however, was but temporary. The angry and tortured
spirit produced in 1769 a fantastic story in two volumes, The
Adventures of an Atom, one of the foulest and most distressing
works ever published, in which the firebrands of indiscriminate
satire are hurled hither and thither without aim or purpose. The
only part of this Japanese monstrosity which is worth remembering is the attack on Yak-strot, the Earl of Bute. Smollett certainly
possessed, with his own Jan-ki-dtzin, "the art of making balls of
filth, which were famous for sticking and stinking." This dreadful book was the last that he wrote in England. Utterly shattered
and exhausted, he went abroad again, and settled in a villa near
Leghorn, under the care of the amiable poet-physician Armstrong.
And now a miracle took place, almost unparalleled in literature.
For ten years the imaginative powers of Smollett had shown signs
of steady decline, and had in his last novel sunk below toleration.
What he wrote had long been dull and vindictive, the outcome
of a dying mind that sought in filth and peevishness a counterirritant to its exhaustion.  But at Leghorn, during the last year




VIII


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263


of his life, all the wasted powers of the brain appeared to flicker
up in a last flame, and it was almost on his deathbed that Smollett
wrote the best of all his books, that masterpiece of wit and frolic,
the inimitable Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, published in three
volumes, in I771, a few weeks before he died.
It may, perhaps, be questioned whether certain isolated passages of Peregrine Pickle do not surpass, in graphic power, any one
page of Humphrey Clinker; but no critic can well question that
the latter is the best sustained, the most complete, and the least
disagreeable of Smollett's novels. It is written in the form of
letters; it should more properly be called the Expedition of
Matthew Bramble, for Humphrey is merely a Methodist postilion
picked up by the family of that gentleman near the end of the
first volume, and no very prominent character anywhere. The
adventures of Mr. Bramble, who sallies forth in search of health
at Bath, in London, at Harrogate, at Scarborough, in the Scottish
Highlands, at Buxton, and at Gloucester, are no doubt mainly
those of Smollett himself, and the only disagreeable parts of the
book are the pages in which the old gentleman dwells with the
gusto of an invalid on the symptoms of himself or of his fellowpatients. Mr. Bramble is accompanied, however, by his sister
Tabitha, a treasure, and by his excellent niece and nephew; it is
the letters of all these persons, with those of their servants, that
make up the tale. There is a pretty love-intrigue going on all
the time between the niece Lydia and a mysterious stranger; but
as a rule the novel is distinctly comic in tone, yet with none of
the ferocity, the tendency to scourge society, which is so marked
elsewhere in Smollett.  There is noticeable, moreover, for the
first time, in Humnphrey Clinker, a power of creating characters
which are not caricatures, and a sympathy for average human
nature. In short, this swan-song of the novelist is in the highest
degree tantalising as showing us what he could have done
throughout his life if he had cared to cultivate the best part of his
genius. If we had more examples of the gaiety that presided at
the birth of Winifred Jenkins and Tabitha Bramble we should




264


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not doubt, as we now do, whether we are justified in naming
Smollett in the same breath with Richardson and Fielding.
Looking at his work, however, from the broadest point of view,
and acknowledging all its imperfections as well as its imitative
quality, we have also to acknowledge that it bears upon it the
stamp of a vigorous individuality, and that it has extended no
little fascination to later masters of English fiction.   Without
Smollett Dickens would no more be what he is than Thackeray
would be without Fielding.      Here is a page from      Peregrine
Pickle.
"The next enterprise in which this triumvirate engaged was a scheme to
frighten Trunnion with an apparition, which they prepared and exhibited in
this manner. To the hide of a large ox Pipes fitted a leathern vizor of a most
terrible appearance, stretched on the jaws of a shark which he had brought
from sea, and accommodated with a couple of broad glasses instead of eyes.
On the inside of these he placed two rush-lights, and with a composition of
sulphur and saltpetre made a pretty large fuse, which he fixed between two
rows of his teeth. This equipage being finished, he, one dark night chosen
for the purpose, put it on, and following the commodore into a long passage
in which he was preceded by Perry with a light in his hand, kindled his firework with a match, and began to bellow like a bull. The boy, as it was
concerted, looking behind him, screamed aloud and dropped the light, which
was extinguished in the fall; when Trunnion, alarmed at his nephew's consternation, exclaimed, 'Zounds! what's the matter?' And turning about to
see the cause of his dismay, beheld a hideous phantom vomiting blue flame,
which aggravated the horrors of its aspect. He was instantly seized with an
agony of fear, which divested him of his reason; nevertheless, he, as it were
mechanically, raised his trusty supporter in his own defence, and the apparition advancing towards him, aimed it at the dreadful annoyance with such a
convulsive exertion of strength, that, had not the blow chanced to light upon
one of the horns, Mr. Pipes would have had no cause to value himself upon
his invention. Misapplied as it was, he did not fail to stagger at the shock,
and dreading another such salutation, closed with the commodore, and having
tripped up his heels, retreated with great expedition."
Before we leave the great period we must spare a word for
Sarah Fielding (i7Iol-I768), the pale moon who attended these
three main luminaries.   Her David Simple, published in 1742, in
1 Not I714, as usually stated on the authority of her monument at Bath.




VIII


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two volumes, is not a great, but it is certainly an unduly neglected,
book. Not only does its rank in time, as the third English novel,
give it interest, but it displays a certain prim grace of construction,
and a considerable refinement in the analysis of character. It
takes a place midway between the work of Richardson and that
of her brother, less morbid than the former, less gusty than the
latter, and of course much feebler than either.       The sedate
wavering of David Simple between the rival passions of Camilla
and Cynthia might, it may be suggested, have. served Richardson
as a hint for the conduct of Sir Charles Grandison.         Sarah
Fielding, it is to be regretted, made no further serious effort in
fiction; perhaps her brother's genius dazzled her. But she had a
genuine talent of her own.  It is thus that David Simple closes:
" If every man who is possessed of a greater share of wit than is common,
instead of insulting and satirising others, would make use of his talents for
the advantage and pleasures of the society to which he happens more particularly to belong; and if they, instead of hating him for his superior parts,
would, in return for the entertainment he affords them, exert all the abilities
nature has given them for his use, in common with themselves, what happiness would mankind enjoy, and who could complain of being miserable?
It was this care, tenderness and benevolence to each other which made David
and his amiable company happy, who, quite contrary to the rest of the
world, for every trifling frailty blamed themselves, whilst it was the business of
all the rest to lessen, instead of aggravating, their faults. In short, it is this
tenderness and benevolence which alone can give any real pleasure, and which
I most sincerely wish to all my readers."
There was born between the date of Fielding's and Smollett's
births a writer whose position in literature is anomalous, but whom
we may for convenience sake treat among the novelists. He was
in all things the very antidote to Smollett, whose excess of ferocity
was a symptom of retrograde movement in literary civilisation
which perhaps needed to be balanced by an equal excess in
effeminate tenderness.   Laurence Sterne (I713-I768) was born
at Clonmel, the third of a long line of the feeble children
born to a soldier and his wife during their incessant hurrying
from camp to camp. His childhood was spent in the fatiguing




266


THE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


and demoralising life of a wandering regiment, until, in I723,
he went to school at Halifax.  His weary father was at last
run through the body in a duel about a goose, in Jamaica, and
died in I731. Next year his cousin sent Sterne to Jesus College,
Cambridge, where he formed a lifelong friendship for the witty
and disreputable versifier John Hall Stevenson (I7I5-I785).
Sterne was at the university for three years, and then went
into the Church, the profession for which, in all probability, he
was less fitted than for any other. Nothing is more curious than
the fact that this singularly original and ebullient character was
content for no less than twenty-three years, from 1736 to 1759,
to be no more than a silent country clergyman. In 1738 he
became vicar of Sutton-in-the-Forest; in I74I he married Miss
Elizabeth Lumley, who brought him the extraordinary weddingportion of an extra living, that of Stillington; he painted and
fiddled and shot, he joked with Stevenson at Skelton Castle;
and he indulged to excess, and to the rapid destruction of his
domestic peace, in what he calls "a course of small, quiet
attentions " to a succession of ladies. He was a prebendary, and
a speculative farmer, and the first of flirts; but he passed middle
life without showing any signs of becoming an author. At last,
in the beginning of 1759, at the age of forty-six, he began to write
a heterogeneous sort of humorous memoirs, the form of which
seemed to depend on the whim of the writer, and his perseverance
in pursuing his task. Two volumes of this book, called The Life
and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent., were published at York
on the ist of January I760, and the unknown country parson
began his real life, the seven years of celebrity and social triumph
allotted to him before his death.
The first volume of Tristram Shandy introduced to a delighted if faintly scandalised public the immortal Rabelaisian
figures of Slop and Yorick, Uncle Toby knocking the ashes out
of his tobacco-pipe, and that exemplary couple Walter and Elizabeth Shandy. It also propounded the new religion of philandering,
"that tender and delicious sentiment which ever mixes in friend



VIII


"TRISTRAM SHANDY"


267


ship where there is a difference of sex." But the general effect
of the first volume, unaided and undeveloped, must have been
rather bewildering; it was annotated, as it were, by the second
volume, which certainly shows more brilliant literary ability, and
in which the great figures of the brothers Shandy and that of
Corporal Trim stand out with extraordinary force. The public
was enchanted, and Sterne hurried up to town to be the lion of
the season; "the honours paid me were the greatest," he complacently writes, "that were ever known from the great "; and he
hastened next year to publish a collection of rather commonplace
Sermons of Mr. Yorick. In January I76I had followed two more
volumes of Tristram Shandy. In the third volume Sterne gets his
hero off his hands, and writes a preface; unhappily, too, he gets
afloat upon the dreary subjects of Noses and Slawkenbergius, and
indulges in a great deal of fantastic cursing, in the Rabelais vein.
The early part of vol. iv., "Slawkenbergius's Tale," is sheer
Rabelais, but we come out of it into the most delightful sunshine
of humour; then follows the bedroom scene, and we sit, hushed
with delight, while Mr. Shandy, holding fast his forefinger between
his finger and thumb, reasons with my Uncle Toby as he sits in
the old fringed chair, valenced round with parti-coloured worsted
bobs.
Unhappily, Sterne's health began to fail just as he became
famous; vol. iv. closes with a reference to his "vile cough." In
his letters he talks of lying down and dying, though next moment
he will be "as merry as a monkey and forget it all." Early in I762
he was obliged to set out for the South of Europe, and lived for
more than a year at Toulouse, with his wife, and Lydia his only
daughter. Before starting he saw the fifth and sixth volumes of
Tristram Shandy out of the printer's hands (December I76I).
These were less popular than their predecessors; vol. v., indeed,
is not remarkable; but vi. should have instantly pleased, for it
contains the story of Le Fevre, and, what is even better than that
famous episode, the admirable curtain dialogue between Mr. and
Mrs. Shandy on the question whether Tristram should be breeched




268


THE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


or no. In 1764 Sterne came back to England; some notes of
French travel were worked up for publication, and then put aside
to serve for Tristram Shandy. They now form vol. vii., which
with vol. viii., introducing the Widow Wadman, saw the light in
January I765. Both of these are charming; the first prepares us
for the lighter touch and more exquisite style of the Sentimental
Journey; in the second the long-drawn answers of Uncle Toby
begin to fascinate us, and have not yet time to weary us. In I766
followed a second and a much livelier collection of Sermons, in
which, as Gray said, you often see Sterne "tottering on the verge
of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of the
audience." These sermons may be taken as forming a sort of
Sunday edition of Tristram Shandy, for family use. To conclude
the history of the latter work, its last and ninth volume appeared
in January 1767.
Sterne's second visit to the South of Europe began in the
autumn of I765 and closed in the summer of I766. He returned
to enter upon the most celebrated of his Platonic flirtations, that
with Mrs. Draper, the Eliza of his correspondence, although the
wretched state of his health should alone have warned him against
such exhausting frivolities.  He was writing in 1767 a new book,
which was to be in four volumes, describing his latest adventures
in France and Italy, and while composing this, he says: "I have
torn my whole frame into pieces by my feelings." He came to
London when the MS. of two small volumes was finished, and in
February I768 appeared A Sentimental Journey through France
and Italy, by Mr. Yorick. No more was to be written. Sterne
was lodging over a silk-bag shop in Old Bond Street, and there,
on the I8th of March I768, he rather suddenly died, in the presence of none but servants, and they strangers. It is asserted
that the body was snatched from its grave, and was dissected in
the surgery of a Cambridge professor of anatomy-a grim anecdote
which seems to round off Sterne's odd career as he himself might
have desired. He did not live quite long enough to enjoy the
success of his latest book, a success which was almost unbounded,




VIII


STERNE


269


whether in this country or in France. These passages are taken,
the first from  Tristram  Shandy,, the second from A Sentimental
Journey.
"Though my father persisted in not going on with the discourse, yet he
could not get my Uncle Toby's smoke-jack out of his head. Piqued as he
was at first with it, there was something in the comparison at the bottom
which hit his fancy; for which purpose, resting his elbow upon the table,
and reclining the right side of his head upon the palm of his hand, but looking first steadfastly in the fire, he began to commune with himself and
philosophise about it. But his spirits being wore out with the fatigues of
investigating new tracts, and the constant exertion of his faculties upon
that variety of subjects which had taken their turn in the discourse, the idea
of the smoke-jack soon turned all his ideas upside down, so that he fell
asleep almost before he knew what he was about.
" As for my Uncle Toby, his smoke-jack had not made a dozen revolutions before he fell asleep also.  Peace be with them both! Dr. Slop is
above stairs: Trim is busy in turning an old pair of jack-boots into a couple
of mortars to be employed in the siege of Messina next summer, and is this
instant boring the touch-holes with the point of a hot poker: all my heroes
are off my hands; 'tis the first time I have had a moment to spare, and I'll
make use of it, and with my preface."
" When we had got within half a league of Moulins, at a little opening in
the road leading to a thicket, I discovered poor Maria sitting under a poplar;
she was sitting with her elbow in her lap, and her head leaning on one side
within her hand; a small brook ran at the foot of the tree.
"I bid the postilion go on with the chaise to Moulins, and La Fleur to
bespeak my supper; and that I would walk after him.
" She was dress'd in white, and much as my friend described her, except
that her hair hung loose, which before was twisted within a silk net. She
had, superadded likewise to her jacket, a pale green ribband which fell across
her shoulder to the waist; at the end of which hung her pipe.  Her goat
had been as faithless as her lover; and she had got a little dog in lieu of him,
which she had kept tied by a string to her girdle; as I looked at her dog,
she drew him towards her with the string.  'Thou shalt not leave me,
Sylvio!' she said.  I looked in Maria's eyes, and saw she was thinking
more of her father than of her lover or her little goat; for as she uttered
them the tears trickled down her cheeks."
The present writer is obliged to record an opinion at variance
with what is usual among critics when he confesses a great pre



270


THE NOVELISTS


CHAP.


ference for the Sentimental Journey over Tristram Shandy. In
the earlier book, no doubt, the humour, which is sometimes
worthy of Shakespeare, is superlatively fine, where it makes itself
felt; but this is at intervals, through splendid oases in what is
now little better than a desert of oddity, dulness, and indelicacy.
In the Sentimental Journey the wit is perhaps less brilliant, but it
is more evenly distributed, and there is not a dull page in the
book. There is an extraordinary completeness of impression here,
a delicacy of light and colour, an artistic reserve, which were
totally wanting, perhaps wilfully excluded, from Tristram Shandy.
Sentiment, it may be said, has gained on humour, and few English
critics have any patience with Sterne's sentiment. It is, however,
the very blood in the veins of his style, and to disregard it seriously is to fail to comprehend the author. There is no writer
with whom it is more necessary to be in intellectual sympathy
than Sterne. We must think of him as he was, with his thirst for
enjoyment, for colour, for mental and physical sunlight, bound
down to the proprieties by his cassock of an English clergyman,
standing, as he says, "at the window in my dusty black coat, and
looking through the glass to see the world in yellow, blue, and
green, running at the ring of pleasure." He is much more himself, much happier and more inimitable, when he is surveying
French life in this wistful and indulgent humour, than when he is
riding the hobby-horses of his crotchets, and boring us with Slawkenbergius. In his latest work the theme is slight enough, but
the absence of cant, the apparent artlessness, the freaky and
childish oscillation between laughter and tears, the quickness of
observation in little things, in which last quality Sterne is absolutely unrivalled, combine to delight all who are not too solemn
to be pleased.
The style of Sterne is more strongly marked than that of
any of his contemporaries.  In such examples as the episode
of Nameth (in Tristram Shandy), and the story of Maria, it
is a sort of essence evidently distilled word by word, phrase
by phrase, with infinite attention to artistic beauty and melody.




VIII


" CHRYSAL "


27I


In other cases he seems to be so unaffected as to aim at
no style at all, but the careful reader will generally suspect
this artlessness to be the result of labour. He had evidently
studied the French writers of the age very carefully, and had
adopted many of their roseate graces. It has to be added, in the
briefest sketch of this very difficult writer, that his extraordinary
originality did not guard him against that snare of the indolent,
plagiarism, in which he was a terrible sinner; that his delicacy of
style and feeling do not prevent his being, not indeed gross like
Smollett, but scandalously prurient; like Aretino, il ricane dans
P'ombre; and finally, that his sentimentality is commonly only
skin-deep, and adopted more for purposes of intellectual selfindulgence than for philanthropy. Critics of the present day,
however, are scarcely ready enough to perceive how civilising a
thing this conscious tenderness was in an age and country that
were still in many ways brutally barbaric. It is easy in analysing
Sterne to point out faults and shortcomings; it is harder to give
a suggestion of his marvellous charm as an artist, and of the
enduring beauty of his pathetic humour.
The success of the great masters of realistic fiction created a
demand for novels, and a great number were produced by minor
hands only to be forgotten. The solitary instance in which anything like reputation was gained by one of these imitators was in
the case of Charles Johnstone (?-i8oo), whose Chrysal, or the
Adventures of a Guinea, originally in two volumes, attracted great
attention in I760. This savage and gloomy book, which, perhaps,
took its form from a reminiscence of Addison's "Adventures of a
Shilling," in the Tatler, was a very clever following of Smollett
in his most satiric mood. It was several times reprinted before
the author completed it by publishing two volumes more in I765.
In 1759 Dr. Samuel Johnson produced his didactic romance,
Rasselas. A little later, in 1764, Horace Walpole inaugurated
the mediaeval school of fiction, which was to culminate in Walter
Scott, with his Castle of Otranto.  In I766 appeared Henry
Brooke's Fool of Quality, and that ever fresh and ever charming




272                  THE NOVELISTS                CHAP. VIII
masterpiece, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Henry Mackenzie,
inspired by Sterne, opened his series of melancholy romances
with The Man of Feeling in 7 7 I, the year of Smollett's death. We
shall speak of the most important of these works in dealing with
their respective authors; several of them still hold a prominent
place in literature.  But they are merely satellites in attendance
on the three great lights of eighteenth-century fiction, on Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, and when the third of these departed,
the art of novel-writing ceased to progress, in any large sense,
until it was taken up forty years afterwards by Jane Austen and
Sir Walter Scott.




CHAPTER IX


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS
A CRITIC who is certainly unprejudiced has called Bishop Butler
"the most patient, original, and candid of philosophical writers."
The second quarter of the eighteenth century was not rich in
contributions to religious literature, but J:t is to the glory of the
Church of England that it possessed this singularly interesting
man. The enthusiasm and direct ardent rhetoric of the seventeenth century were now things of the past. The very struggle
between orthodoxy and the Deists was no longer novel; in the
prosaic and mathematical theology of Clarke, stuck full of intellectual diagrams, it had ceased to be a spirit of warmth or movement. It is difficult to be convinced that on one side or the other
there had been of late any great doctrinal fervour of faith or disbelief. The last of the genuine old Deists was Thomas Chubb
(I680-I747), the tallow-chandler, a writer of little dignity. The
orthodox theologians, in spite of their indignant and perpetual
protestations, had really resigned so much that the creed of the
English Church was becoming unnerved. The proper stimulant
required by the religious mind of the country was given on one
side by the new Puritans, by Law and Wesley and Whitefield,
and on the other by an Anglican philosopher of extraordinary
force and genius. So much had gradually been admitted to be
doubtful that the scribbling bishops were ready to let Pilate's
question pass virtually unanswered; Butler came, and revealed a


III


T




274


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CITAP.


man who, as he himself says, made "the search after truth the
business of his life."
Joseph Butler (I692-I752) was the son of a dissenting linendraper in Wantage. He was educated at a nonconformist school
at Tewkesbury, where it is curious that three future bishops of the
Church of England were taught at the same time. In 1713 Butler,
although past the age of twenty-one, was still at this college, for it
was from Tewkesbury that he sent his famous letters to Clarke,
then the acknowledged intellectual head of the English Church,
putting forward certain metaphysical objections which had occurred
to him in the study of Clarke's writings. Clarke thought so highly
of these letters that he appended them to his own letters and
published them in I7I6. In 17I4 Butler entered the English
Church, and proceeded to Oriel College, Oxford.  He was
ordained in I7I8, and next year we find him appointed Preacher
at the Rolls Chapel, to which was presently added the rectory of
Haughton-le-Skerne in Durham; this was exchanged in 1725 for
the "golden rectory" of Stanhope, in the same county.
In 1726 Butler published his first book, a selection of fifteen
Sermons preached at the Rolls Chapel. The first three, on human
nature, are, in fact, sections of one essay, on the constitution of
the instincts of humanity; in which an effort is made to inquire
into the meaning of morality. There follow sermons on certain
of the passions, as Benevolence, Anger, Compassion, and Love to
God. More lively than Butler usually cares to be is the sermon
on "The Government of the Tongue."  This volume attracted a
moderate degree of notice, but the author of it was soon temporarily forgotten. Seeker, who had courtlier ways, but whose
affection for his old schoolfellow was unbounded, took occasion
at last to mention him one day to Queen Caroline, who was known
to have read the Rolls Sermons with profit. She replied that she
thought Mr. Butler had been dead. " No, madam, but buried!" another friend, Archdeacon Blackburne, answered. Butler was soon
digged out of his Durham grave to be Clerk of the Queen's Closet.
In 1736 Butler emerged into fame by the publication of a




IX


BUTLER'S " ANALOGY';


275


work on which he had been engaged for seven years, The Analogy
of Relzgion, Vatural and Rezealed, to the Constitution and Course
of Nature. In 1738 he was made Bishop of Bristol, in 1740 Dean
of St. Paul's, and in 1747 was offered the Primacy. This he
refused, saying, in his melancholy way, that "it was too late for
him to try to support a falling church." In 1750, however, he
consented, after some demur, to exchange the see of Bristol for
Durham. He had become prematurely old, and of venerable appearance, with long white hair. Two years later he died. Butler's
temperament was silent and retiring; he did not shine in conversation, though some very striking remarks of his are recorded.
He had no love for female society, but preserved very loyally his
old companionships with friends, such as Secker. His writings
show no interest whatever in any form of literature, except theological controversy, nor is it recorded of him that he had any love
of books.  But he cultivated the fine arts, and in particular had
a sort of passion for architecture. His taste for what would a
century later have been called Puseyite decorations is well known.
The Analogy is an isolated work. Even in its own age, when
polemical pamphleteering was in fashion, though it was read, it was
neither attacked nor defended. It does not refer to any theological
movement that preceded it, and it is not the precursor of any subsequent literature.  It stands alone, original, inexorably honest
and veracious, but unsympathetic, like its silent and unexpansive
author. The germ of the Analogy has been traced to the fifteenth
of the Ralls Sermons, that on the Ignorance of Man. The aim of
these sermons had been to deduce the existence of a Creator from
the constitution of the human mind; the object of the Analogy
is to prove the same thing by "the analogy of nature,"-that is to
say, from the laws and phenomena of the external world. Butler's
central idea is the majesty and authority of the conscience, placed
in the centre of the human instincts as a representative of the
divine will. Of late years a great many thinkers of various schools
have held that Butler, although so fervent a believer himself, has
furnished in the Analogy a philosophical persuasion to atheism.




276


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


His debt to the views of Shaftesbury has been dwelt upon, and he
has been charged with exalting morality at the expense of faith.
Into these questions it is impossible to enter here.  No serious
mind, however, can deny the greatness of Butler. His work, with
all its peculiarities, is marked by extreme intellectual candour, by
the purity of thought which disdains to conceal a weakness through
any subterfuge of style, and by a passion for truth which must
always affect the unbiassed reader.
Some words must be given to the subject of Butler's style, on
which critics have been curiously at disagreement. The question
was early raised; even the Bishop's dearest friend, Secker, thought
that somewhat was lacking to this expression of his thoughts.
Later admirers have combated the criticism, and have found no
fault with the lucidity of his diction. All must agree that Butler's
style is studiously unadorned. But the source of a considerable
difference of opinion among critics may perhaps be traced to the
bishop's own inequality.   The pure and eloquent sentences of
the sermon on " Love to God " are scarcely to be recognised as
by the same hand as parts of the Analogy. An enthusiast who
is impatient of any condemnation of Butler's style may, however,
be confronted with the famous passage about the microscope and
the staff, for instance:
"Thus a man determines that he will look at such an object through a
microscope, or, being lame, supposes that he will walk to such a place with a
staff a week hence.  His eyes and his feet no more determine in these
cases than the microscope and the staff. Nor is there any ground to think
they any more put the determination in practice, or that his eyes are the
seers or his feet the movers in any other sense than as the microscope and
the staff are.  Upon the whole then our organs of sense and our limbs
are certainly instruments which the living persons ourselves make use of to
perceive and move with: there is not any probability that they are any
more, nor, consequently, that we have any other kind of relation to them
than what we may have to any other foreign matter formed into instruments
of perception and motion, suppose into a microscope or a staff (I say any other
kind of relation, for I am not speaking of the degree of it), nor consequently
is there any probability that the alienation or dissolution of these instruments
is the destruction of the perceiving and moving agent."




IX


HUTCHESON


277


These involved and clumsy clauses creep along like the steps
of a man floundering in deep sand. The author struggles with
his thoughts, gets entangled in contingent sentences, repeats the
same word with awkward persistence; and all from an intense
and scrupulous desire to say nothing but what he means. Yet
it must be recollected that Berkeley, saying also nothing but what
he means, says it in language that is all fire and crystal. The best
apology that can be made for Butler at his driest, is to admit that
he is seldom quite so wooden as Locke. His method in argument
has been ingeniously compared to that of a chess-player.
Much more obviously related to Shaftesbury than Butler was
the Scottish metaphysician Francis Hutcheson (I694-I746), who
was born at a village in Ulster. Like Butler, he early corresponded
with the amiable Dr. Clarke on religious philosophy. In 1725 he
published the first of a group of four anonymous pamphlets, his
Inruiry concerning Beauty.   He was then residing as a schoolmaster in Dublin, which city he left on his election in 1729 to fill
the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow. He published a good
deal, and after his death there appeared, in I755, his System of
Moral Philosophy.     Hutcheson is principally remembered by
those essays in which he expands and illustrates the aesthetic
system of Shaftesbury, and accentuates the analogy between virtue
and beauty. He is a link between the author of the Characteristics
and Adam Smith, who worked under him at Glasgow.        Hutcheson's manner as a writer is clear and elegant. Here is a graceful
fragment from the Inquiry concerning Beauty.
"The beauty of trees, their cool shades, and their aptness to conceal
from observation, have made groves and woods the usual retreat to those who
love solitude, especially to the religious, the pensive, the melancholy, and the
amorous. And do we not find that we have so joined the ideas of these
dispositions of mind with those external objects, that they always occur to
us along with them? The cunning of the heathen priests might make such
obscure places the scene of the fictitious appearances of their Deities; and
hence we join ideas of something divine to theni. We know the like effect
in the ideas of our churches, from the perpetual use of them only in religious
exercises. The faint light in Gothic buildings has had the same association




278


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


of a very foreign idea, which our poet shows in his epithet-' a dim religious light.' In like manner it is known that often all the circumstances of
actions, or places, or dresses of persons, or voice, or song, which have
occurred at any time together, when we were strongly affected by any passion,
will be so connected that any one of these will make all the rest recur. And
this is often the occasion both of great pleasure and pain, delight and aversion
to many objects, which of themselves might have been perfectly indifferent
to us. But these approbations or distastes are remote from the ideas of
beauty, being plainly different ideas."
The learned and caustic librarian of Cambridge University,
Conyers Middleton (I683-I750), has a niche in anecdote as the
personal opponent of Bentley, and in literature as a traitor in the
camp of orthodoxy, or, more favourably, as the author of a too
idolatrous, but eloquent and highly polished Life of Cicero, in 1741.
It has been considered that Middleton's covert attacks upon the
credibility of miracles and other matters of Protestant creed,
marked the beginning of a new tide of critical religious speculation
in England. His Free Inquiry into liraculous Powers caused quite
a sensation when it appeared in I 747. The arguments of Middleton were ridiculed by Wesley, and scandalised Gray, but they
strengthened the hands of Hume, and they helped to mould the
conscience of Gibbon. His writings were collected in 1752.
A queer writer whose work long possessed a peculiar attraction for the public, and who is now less read than he deserves, is
Thomas Amory (I691-I788), who would have been a novelist had
he been born a generation later.   As it is, his somewhat crazy
books hover about the borderland of regular fiction, and have
some relation, though no similarity, to those of Sterne.  Amory
was an ardent Unitarian, and in his volumes all the virtuous
characters belong to this persuasion.  He published nothing until
he had passed his sixtieth year. In I755 he sent out from his
house in the Barbican Memoirs of several Ladies of Great Britain,
which purports to describe English country life in the years I739
and I740.   This was followed by a most eccentric romance, The
Life of John Buncle, Esq. (I756-66).  Buncle marries seven successive wives, all of them Socinians. These books are excessively




IX


AMORY


279


long-winded and full of miscellaneous information, quaintly, but
often humorously, imparted, for Amory's aim was to compose an
olio of universal entertainment.    His descriptive passages are
charming, and his pages are redolent of the po-pourri of the
eighteenth century. He desired that his epitaph should be " Here
lies an Odd Man." It is difficult to know what Hazlitt meant
when he said that the spirit of Rabelais had entered into Amory,
for there seems no sort of relation between the two, except a taste
for rambling on from one theme to another. As a specimen of
Amory at his best, we may quote from John Buncle the description
of the grotto (the book is full of grottos, mostly decorated with
shells) in which the hero discovered the charming Azora:
"It was a large cavern at the bottom of a marble mountain, and, without, was covered round with ivy, that clung about some aged oaks, on either
side the entrance, that seemed coeval with the earth on which they grew.
Abundance of large laurel trees, in clumps, adorned an extensive area before
the door; and saffron, and hyacinth, and flowers of many colours, covered in
confused spots the carpet green. The beautiful ground refreshed the sight, and
purified the air; and to enhance the beauties of the spot, a clear and cold
stream gushed from a neighbouring rock, wh ch watered the trees and
plants, and seemed to combat with the earth, whether of them most contributed to their growth and preservation.  It was a sweet rural scene. For
charms and solitude the place was equally to be admired.
"The inside of this grotto was a beautiful green marble, extremely
bright, and even approaching to the appearance of the emerald.  It was
thick set with shells, and those not small ones, but some of the largest and
finest kinds; many of them seemed, as it were, squeezed together by the marble
so as to show the edges only; but more were to be seen at large, and filled
with the purest spar. The whole had a fine effect, and as the cave had been
divided by art into six fine apartments, and had doors and chimneys most
ingeniously contrived, both the mansion and its situation charmed me in a
high degree."
Amory's span of life, which covered nearly a hundred years,
touched the careers of Dryden and of Byron.
Another pleasant worthy was William      Oldys, the antiquary
(I696-I76 ), one of the earliest of our bibliographical writers. He
published, in a miscellany, in 1732, the admirable anacreontic




280


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


beginning, "Busy, curious, thirsty Fly"; and, on quite another
scale, a very eloquent and heroic Lzie of Sir WIalter Raleigh, in
I736. Oldys was a lifelong collector of literary curiosities, and in
1755 his industry was rewarded, after a period of great poverty,
and two years spent in the Fleet Prison, by his being made
Norroy King-at-Arms. From 1744 to I746 Oldys was engaged
on the mighty task of editing the eight volumes of the Harleian
Miscellany. But perhaps the best literary work he performed is
to be found in the numerous biographies he contributed between
I747 and 1760 to the original edition of The Biograpphia Britannica. Several copies of Langbaine's Lives of the Dramatic Poets,
containing copious MS. notes by Oldys, still exist, and are much
sought after by collectors.
In 1774 appeared a collection of the Letters of Philip Dormer
Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (I694-1773), addressed to his
natural son, Philip Stanhope, and this correspondence excited a
great deal of curiosity. It has been the misfortune of Chesterfield
to be seen through the coloured glass of a much greater man's
anger. Few now read the letters, but every one knows that
Johnson said that "they teach the morals of a -, and the
manners of a dancing-master," and of their author, " This man, I
thought, had been a lord among wits, but I find he is only a wit
among lords." It was on the 7th of February 1735 that Johnson
addressed to Chesterfield his terrible and celebrated invective
about the Dictionary.  The Letters, however, were read with
eagerness, and deserved to be read. If they were Machiavelian,
they were full of good sense expressed in pure English, and full
also of unaffected grace and fine breeding. It is curious that the
man who in all England desired most, during his lifetime, to be
considered polite, is mainly remembered for one breach of manners,
which was very probably due to the neglect of a servant. A writer
of less brilliant rank than Lord Chesterfield, but, like him, the
darling of society, was the psychologist and critic Henry Home,
Lord Kames (I696-1782), a Scotch law lord, who, starting from
Shaftesbury, found himself violently affected by Butler. His Art




IX


WARBURTON


28I


of Th/inking (176I), and Elements of Criticism (I 762), especially the
latter, were widely read in that age of universal metaphysical
curiosity.  Lord Kames managed a county estate with vigour,
and wrote a practical work, The Gentleman Farmer (i 77 ), which
was long esteemed. In the present day, if Lord Kames is read at
all, it is for his ingenious and acute speculation into the sources
of aesthetic pleasure.
It was the conviction of William Warburton, Bishop of
Gloucester (I698-1779), that he would hold in the eyes of posterity
much the same pre-eminence and isolated greatness that Samuel
Johnson actually maintains. He cultivated the majestic airs of
a tyrant in literature; he argued, he denounced, he patronised
the orthodox, and he bellowed like a bull at the recalcitrant. He
was so completely certain of his own intellectual supremacy, that
the modern reader feels almost guilty in being able to feel but
scant interest in him and in his writings. Mr. Leslie Stephen
remarks that "for many years together Warburton led the life of
a terrier in a rat-pit, worrying all theological vermin." In 1736
he published his Alliance between Church and State, in 1738 three
books of his once famous Divine Legation, in I74I three books
more. In 1738 he took up the cudgels in defence of Pope's
orthodoxy, and lived in ever-deepening intimacy with that poet
until Pope's death in I744. He slowly rose in the Church,
attaining the see of Gloucester in 1760, after which he published
little except his Doctrine of Grace, in I762. Warburton was very
learned, but so headstrong, arrogant, and boisterous, that he stuns
the reader, and those who now examine the vast pile of his writings
are not likely to be gratified. What he might gain by his vigour
he more than loses by his coarseness, and the student sickens of
his ostentation and his paradox. His disciple, Dr. Richard Hurd
(I720-1808), Bishop of Worcester, tried to continue the influence
of Warburton, whose remains he edited:in 1788. Hurd was a
cold and "correct" writer, no less arrogant than his master, little
less learned, and if anything even more vapid and perverted as a
would-be leader of literary taste; in style he seems a kind of




282


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERSS


CIIAP.


ice-bound Addison. The Correspondence of these two portentous
divines appeared in 1809.
All that Warburton fancied himself to be, Dr. Samuel Johnson
(I709-I784) was. In the person of this ever-fascinating hero of
the world of books we find the dictator of letters, the tyrant over
the consciences of readers, that the militant bishop of Gloucester
was too ready to conceive himself to be. Johnson holds a place
in some respects unique in literature.  Other writers, however
sympathetic or entertaining theirpersonal characters mayhave been,
live mainly in their works; we read about them with delight,
because we have studied what they wrote. But with Johnson it
is not so. If we knew nothing about his career or character, if we
had to judge him solely by the works he published, our interest
in him would shrink to very moderate proportions.  Swift and
Pope, Berkeley and Gray, Burke and Fielding, have contributed
more than Johnson to the mere edifice of English literature.
But, with the exception of Swift, there is no one in the eighteenth
century who can pretend to hold so high a place as a man of
letters. The happy accident by which he secured the best of all
biographers is commonly taken to account for this fact, but the
character, the wit, the vigour, must have first existed to stimulate
a Boswell and to entrance generation after generation.  The
fact is that Johnson's indolence and the painful weight of his
physical temperament prevented his literary powers from being
fully expressed in the usual way; but they were there, and they
found a vehicle in speech at the dinner-table or from his tavernthrone. He talked superb literature freely for thirty years, and
all England listened; he grew to be the centre of literary opinion,
and he was so majestic in intellect, so honest in purpose, so kind
and pure in heart, so full of humour and reasonable sweetness,
and yet so trenchant, and at need so grim, that he never sank to
be the figure-head of a clique, nor ever lost the balance of
sympathy with readers of every rank and age. His influence was
so wide, and withal so wholesome, that literary life in this country
has never been since his day what it was before it. He has made




IX


SAMUEL JOHNSON


283


the more sordid parts of its weakness shameful, and he has raised
a standard of personal conduct that every one admits. He was a
gruff old bear, "Ursa Major," but it would surely be hard to
find the man or woman, whose opinion is worth having, who does
love almost more than revere the memory of Sam Johnson.
On the i8th of September 1709 a son was born at Lichfield
to a local bookseller and his wife, Michael and Sara Johnson.
From his birth Samuel Johnson was afflicted with the scrofulous
complaint known as the king's evil, and when he was three years
old his mother took him up to London to be touched by Queen
Anne. He attended the Lichfield grammar-school, and then read a
great deal in a desultory fashion at home. In the autumn of 1728
he went up to Oxford, to Pembroke College, where he seems to have
resided only about fourteen months, though he returned again
for a very short time in 173.  At the close of that year, Johnson's
father died, and left his affairs in so embarrassed a condition that
his family was reduced to poverty.       For the next five years
Johnson's career is very obscure to us. We gather that he made
several efforts to get work as an usher, and was for a short time
tutor at Heywood; in 1735 he performed a piece of hack-work
for a Birmingham    bookseller, A   Voyage to Abyssinia, from   a
French abridgment of Father Lobo's Portuguese travels. The
anonymous preface to this translation is Johnson's earliest original
publication.  This preface is written in a very characteristic style,
though not, as has been carelessly stated, in his more pompous
manner.   We give an example of it:
"The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity, no perpetual gloom or unceasing
sunshine; nor are the nations here described ei:her devoid of all sense of
humanity, or consummate in all private and social virtues.  Here are no
Hottentots without religion, policy or articulate language, no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences. ITe will discover, what
will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that whereever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a
contest of passion and reason, and that the Creator doth not appear partial in
His distributions, but has balanced in most countries their particular inconveniences by particular favours."




284


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


From this time, for twenty years, Johnson was more or less
dependent for support on the labours of his pen, and the iron
entered deeply into his soul.  He suffered from  a physical
inability to prolong the effort of writing, and he absolutely required
leisurely intervals of repose and meditation. Hence, even when
employment was abundant, he often failed to take full advantage
of it, and not less often the work he did gave dissatisfaction to
his stupid taskmasters. As a schoolmaster he had already failed
because he had "the character of being a very haughty, illnatured gent, and had such a way of distorting his face" that
it frightened the lads. It was at this moment that he married a
wife twenty-one years older than himself, whose little fortune was
presently sunk in a school near Lichfield. Johnson was now
forced to try the tender mercies of Grub Street.
In the spring of 1737, with twopence-halfpenny in his pocket,
and in company with one of his late pupils, David Garrick, who
had three-halfpence in his, Johnson arrived in London. It is not
clear how he lived at first, but later on in the year he entered the
service of Edward Cave (I69I-I754) the publisher, who, in I732,
had started The Gentlemlan's Magazine, an admirable periodical,
which still survives. Cave had a large staff of literary hacks at
work on his magazine, which had by this time secured an important
position, and in I738 Johnson was installed as one of these
regular writers. In May of that year S. J. published, in folio, an
imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal, under the title London,
for which he received ten guineas. This poem, though to be somewhat eclipsed by a later success, enjoyed the favour of the town.
It was a vigorous but certainly not an inspired study in heroic
couplets in the manner of Pope, who was still before the public
as a living force, one of whose satires appeared on the very same
day as London. The latter poem is not always marked by the
author's later seriousness of purpose; Johnson affects in it to scorn
and puff away the city which he had really learned to find already
indispensable, and which he was presently to love with passion.
After the thirty-fourth line the sentiments of London are placed in




IX


" LONDON "


285


the mouth of "indignant Thales," in whom the person of Savage
has been usually recognised; he is represented as seeking retirement in Wales. There is pathos in the nervous lines in which
the poet expresses the misery of those who, poor and enlightened,
are obliged to endure the insolence of blockheads; Johnson, here
at least, speaks from the heart, and not less when he asks the
question, "When can starving merit find a home?" The Orgilis
passage is the best in the poem, which only extends to about two
hundred and sixty lines.
Two trifling publications belong to the year 1739, The Comzpete
Vindication, an ironical defence of the licensers for suppressing
Brooke's tragedy of Gustavus Vasa, and a satire, Marmor Norfolciense, for which latter it was absurdly rumoured afterwards that
Johnson suffered a state prosecution.  For the next four years he
was busy in writing out the reports of the parliamentary debates for
The Gentleman's Magazine, under the transparent disguise of
"Debates in Magna Lilliputia."  He was now working in companionship with Savage and with Dr. John Hawkesworth (1715?1773), who acquired an extraordinary skill in counterfeiting
Johnson's style, to the dismay of the future editors of the latter.
At this time Johnson seems to have admired Savage as much as
Hawkesworth admired Johnson; and when the unhappy poet
died in 1743, the latter set to work to write his memoir. The
Account of the Life of Mr. Richard Savage appeared in 1744; it
is the longest and most elaborate of Johnson's essays in biography,
and may still be read with great pleasure, in spite of various
patent faults.  It recounted, with all detail, a scandal, into the
truth of which Johnson had not taken the pains to inquire; it
was but careless in the statement of facts which lay easily within
the writer's circle of experience; and it treated with extreme indulgence a character which, in a stranger, would have called down
the moralist's sternest reproof. The critical passages now escape
censure only because so few in the present day read the works
examined. But the little book was undeniably lively; it contained several anecdotes admirably narrated, and its graver parts




286


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


displayed the development of Johnson's studied magnificence of
language. Good biography was still rare in England, and The
Account of Savage attracted a great deal of notice.
It again becomes difficult at this point to trace Johnson's
career very closely. In 1745 he printed a pamphlet on Macbeth,
and in 1747 the prospectus of a vast scheme which he had formed,
that of an English Dictionary, on a scale hitherto unattempted.
He dedicated his Plan of a Dictionary to Lord Chesterfield, who
sent him ten pounds, and then took no further interest in the
matter, to his own lasting misfortune. For eight years no more
was heard of this projected work. In 1748 Johnson spent a short
holiday at Hampstead, where he wrote his longest and best poem,
The Vanity of Human Wishes, published in 1749. This is a
study in heroic verse, like London, but it extends to another
hundred lines, and is, moreover, a much finer and more
accomplished production. It is an imitation of the Tenth Satire
of Juvenal, and is written in a very grave and even melancholy
vein, though without unseemly bitterness. It was not much
liked when it appeared; Garrick declared it was "as hard as
Greek." The public had become accustomed to a thinner and
smarter kind of satire, to the lucid snip-snap of the immediate
followers of Pope, and The Vanity of Human Wishes was voted
obscure. It is certainly weighted with thought, and the closeness
with which the Latin original is followed gives a certain tightness of
phrase, the result of a meritorious concentration. But it is perhaps
the most Roman poem in the language, the one which best reflects
the moral grandeur of Latin feeling and reflection; and it has
contributed more familiar quotations to the language than any
other work of Johnson's.  Such a passage as the following gives
a very favourable notion of Johnson as a didactic poet:
"On what foundation stands the warrior's pride,
How just his hopes, let Swedish Charles decide;
A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,
No dangers fright him and no labours tire;
O'er love, o'er fear, extends his wide domain,
Unconquer'd Lord of passion and of pain;




IX


" IRENE"


287


No joys to him pacific sceptres yield,
War sounds the trump, he rushes to the field;
Behold surrounding kings their power combine,
And one capitulate, and one resign;
Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain,
'Think nothing gained,' he cries, ' till nought remain;On Moscow's walls till Gothic standards fly,
And all be mine beneath the polar sky.'
The march begins in military state,
And nations on his eye suspended wait;
Stern Famine guards the solitary coast,
And Winter barricades the realms of Frost;
HIe comes, nor want nor cold his course delay,Hide, blushing glory, hide Pultowa's day."
A pleasing incident now broke into the monotony of Johnson's
gray and laborious existence. His old pupil, David Garrick, had
risen into success more rapidly than Johnson had, and was now
manager of Drury Lane Theatre. When he was keeping school
at Edial Hall, in 1736, Johnson had written a blank verse tragedy
on a Turkish subject, but had vainly attempted, in later years, to
get it acted. Garrick loyally determined that he would produce
it, and after some obstinate struggles with the author, who could
not be brought to yield willingly to any stage requirements, M/ahomet
and Irene was acted on the 6th February I749. Johnson was
present, and did not, on this occasion, "suspend the soft solicitudes of dress."  He gained nearly    30oo by the play, which,
however, did not run for more than nine nights, and was never
revived. Garrick had introduced the incident of Irene's being
strangled on the stage, and to Johnson's mingled mortification
and satisfaction, the audience hissed and! called out " Murder!
murder!" In future, on the stage, as in the printed play, the
heroine was forced out by the mutes, crying for mercy, and was
seen no more. The tragedy was presently published under the
title of Irene.  Johnson's solitary play labours under the disadvantage of being perfectly uninteresting. It was founded on a
tragedy, by one Charles Goring, that had been acted at Drury
Lane forty years before; there was no plot worth mentioning, no




288


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


development of characters, no bustle or intrigue. The conduct of
the speeches and the versification is closely modelled on that of
the sentimental tragic poet Rowe, whose plays had been popular
in Johnson's early youth; what Johnson said of Rowe's plays,
long afterwards, might be repeated almost verbally as a criticism
of Irene. The most amusing thing about the whole incident
of this play is Johnson's odd remark to Garrick about the white
stockings of the actresses.
Posterity is more ready to realise the Sage in the character of
"a majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom" than as one
whose scarlet waistcoat fluttered the dove-cotes of Drury Lane.
Since the days of Addison and Steele, or since, to be more exact,
the Guardian of I713, there had been made many attempts to
rival the great social newspapers of the reign of Anne. But none
of these had been successful, and Johnson, finding himself now
moderately famous, determined to issue a new periodical. It was
difficult to find a name; but one night he sat down on his bed,
and determined not to go to sleep till he had thought of a title.
The Rambler occurred to him at last, and he sank to rest contented. On the 2oth of March 1750 the first number of this little
newspaper appeared, and it closed on the I4th of March 1752.
The death of his wife, a few days after the latter date, has been
given as the cause of Johnson's discontinuance of a periodical of
which he was probably weary. He wrote the Rambler unaided,
with the exception of five numbers-of these one was written by
Richardson; two by Elizabeth Carter (I7 7-I806), the translator
of Epictetus; one by Hester Mulso, better known as Mrs. Chapone (I727-I80o); and one by Catherine Talbot (1720-I770).
These ladies deserve mention, not merely as dear and lifelong
friends of Johnson, but as apt disciples of his moral manner.
Johnson's authorship was at first kept secret, but his style was
now familiar to careful readers, and was promptly recognised.
The publisher complained that "the encouragement as to sale"
was not in proportion "to the raptures expressed by the few that
did read it."  The Rambler is "too wordy," as the author con



IX


JOHNSON'S " DICTIONARY "


289


fessed; he tried to be a little lighter in manner in the twenty-nine
papers he contributed in I752 and I753 to Hawkesworth's Adventurer, and somewhat later we shall be called, in describing the
Idler, to speak of him as a periodical writer at his best.
Meanwhile the mighty Dictionary had been slowly progressing,
and in April I755 it was published in two folio volumes. It hardly
belongs to literature, except in connection with two short essays,
in which Johnson shows himself at his best as a prose-writer,
namely, the dignified and pathetic preface, which can scarcely be
read to the close without emotion, and the astonishing letter, on
the subject of a patron's duties, which he addressed to Chesterfield on the 7th of February I755. In these two short compositions, in each of which the author is singularly moved, his
English, though always stately and formal, is lifted out of the
sesquipedalian affectation of magnificence which has amused the
world so much, and which was beyond question a serious fault of
Johnson's style. Here, and especially in the letter to Chesterfield,
he is simple, terse, and thrilling, and, as the occasion was a private
one, we may take it that in the extraordinary fire and pungency of
the sentences we have something like a specimen of that marvellous power in conversation which made Johnson the wonder of
his age. What, in all literature, indeed, is more splendid than
such restrained and suggested invective as this:
" Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and
have brought it, at last, to the verge Df publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I
did not expect, for I never had a patron before.
" The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.
"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers
him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my
labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am
indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till
I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to
III                                              U




290


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling
that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which Providence
has enabled me to do for myself."
There is something of the same brightness and ease in the
papers of the Idler, a series of essays published by Johnson
from the I5th of April 1758 to the 5th of April 1760 in a newspaper called the Universal Chronicle. He took less trouble with
his Idlers than with his Ramblers, and the result is more pleasing.
Johnson as an essayist is most happy when he analyses a character,
in the manner of La Bruyere, mingling criticism with narrative;
the best example is the sketch of Dick Minim. He possessed
shrewdness, judgment, singular knowledge of human nature, and
plentiful wit; somehow all these qualities, though fused by his
literary genius, did not quite produce a great essayist.
Perhaps it might be said that the best of Johnson's Idlers was
the long apologue which appeared in book form while he was
publishing his shorter weekly essays.  The agreeable story of
The Prince of Abyssinia (known from the seventh edition onwards
by the name of its hero, Rasselas) was composed in the evenings
of one week, to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral and
to pay her debts. He received one hundred pounds as the first
payment for this book, which appeared in April I759, about three
weeks after Voltaire's Candide. Johnson was interested in this
latter fact, and said that "If they had not been published so
closely one after the other... it would have been in vain to
deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from
the other." The resemblance, however, appears somewhat slight
to a modern reader; Johnson has all the advantage in health and
profundity, Voltaire in wit and intellectual daring. Rasselas is not
a brilliant romance; the artless young person who flies to it as
a story of African adventure will be sadly disappointed.  It is
a description in measured and elegant prose of how Rasselas
became discontented in his Happy Valley, how he fled from
it, in company with his sister Nekayah, under the guidance of
an old man of infinite resource named Imlac, and how, after




IX


" RASSELAS "


29I


some mild and incredible incidents, they resolved to return to
Abyssinia. The charm of the book is its humanity, the sweetness
and wholesomeness of the long melancholy episodes, the wisdom
of the moral reflections and disquisitions; nor is there wanting
here and there the gentle sunshine of a sort of half-suppressed
humour. Rasselas enjoyed an instant success, and was reprinted
seven or eight times before Johnson died.
The toilsome part of Johnson's life closed with the publication
of the Dictionary; and with his acceptance of a pension of 300oo
from the king a few years later he attained positive ease. He had
now passed the age of fifty, and for the rest of his life he was
glad to sit in his arm-chair and genially to tyrannise over the
literary world. In 1763 he had the signal good fortune to have
presented to him James Boswell, a young Scotchman of some
quality, who rewarded Johnson's fatherly friendship by writing
after his death a more perfect biography than has hitherto been
composed about any other human being. Boswell was always
taking "minutes of what passed," and from this time onward the
smallest incidents of Johnson's career, his phrases, his jokes, his
gestures, all are known to every educated reader, far better known
indeed than any fragment of his literary works.  In 1764 the
"Club" was created; among its original members were-besides
Johnson-Reynolds, Burke, Goldsmith, and Hawkins. Garrick,
C. J. Fox, and Boswell were soon added. To Johnson his semipresidential chair at the Club was, as he said, "the throne of
human felicity," and it was from this social palace that his edicts
went forth to the world. He was no longer anxious to write.
He loitered for nine years over a very perfunctory edition of
Shakespeare, which finally appeared in 1765.  For five years
more he was silent, until in 1770 he contributed to the Wilkes
controversy a tract, The False A/arm, on the Tory side. Having
once plunged into the giddy waters of political pamphleteering,
the old Tory veteran could not induce himself to withdraw. He
published in 1771 Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting the
Falkland Islands, which was geographical as well as polemical.




292


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


In 1774 he attempted to stem the tide then flowing against the
court party by a tract entitled The Patriot, and in I775 he took
the wrong side about America in Taxation no Tyranny. In 1776
these four treatises were issued in one volume, as Political Tracts,
by S. J. It may be noticed that Johnson's full name appeared
on no title-page during his lifetime. Of the political pamphlets it
may be said that they were forcible, but entirely without historical
breadth or sympathy.
As Johnson approached his sixtieth year his health and spirits
improved, and the lifelong weariness of his physical nature, which
had made him seem indolent and sometimes irritable, abated.
He even began to think that he could venture upon what was, in
those days, a heroic adventure-no less than a journey to the
Scottish Highlands and Hebrides. Boswell was extremely anxious
that this apparently impossible scheme should be carried out, and
in August I773 the sage positively started for Edinburgh. Here
his younger friend joined him, and they passed up the east coast of
Scotland, crossed by Inverness, visited most of the inner Hebrides,
and returned by Boswell's home at Auchinleck to Edinburgh.
Johnson was away from London three months and a half, and
justly desired to be praised for his "resolution and perseverance."
The day after his return he wrote to Boswell that he was "ready
to begin a new journey"; and accordingly in the autumn of 1774
he made a tour in North Wales. He gallantly complained that
there was nothing adventurous in travelling in Wales. Late in the
year appeared his Journey to the WIestern Islands, which is not to
be compared for interest with Boswell's later work on the same
theme. It was, however, read with curiosity and respect, for
Johnson's reputation was now in its full splendour.  In 1775
Oxford made her old disciple an LL.D., and Johnson a few months
later entered into controversy with the "foolish and impudent"
James Macpherson, whose version of Ossian he regarded with
contempt. Johnson properly mistrusted the literary honesty of
Macpherson, and openly told him that his book was an imposture
in a letter only less famous than the Chesterfield specimen.




IX


" LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS"


293


Johnson's literary work now seemed to be wellnigh ended,
but in 1777 he undertook a labour of biography and criticism,
which was perhaps, had he considered his responsibilities, the
most arduous he had ever thought of. This is the book usually
reprinted as Lives of the English Poets, but published in I779 -I781 as Prefaces, biogracphical and critical, of the most eminent
of the English Poets.  The life of Savage, though too long for the
system of the book, was worked in, and so were other lives that
Johnson had already written. The poets themselves appeared in
sixty-eight volumes, and Johnson's Lives in a special edition of
four volumes. The selection was arbitrary, although there was no
intention of throwing scorn on Chaucer and Spenser by opening
the roll of fame with Cowley. This was done merely to suit the
convenience of the publisher.     The Lzives are of very various
interest and value.    Some of the worst are those in which
Johnson deals with great men, such as Milton and Gray; some
of the best are those in which he allows himself to meditate
around very little men, as in the case of Edmund Smith. A very
beautiful passage, from the last-mentioned life, fairly represents
the style of Johnson at its ripest and best:
" Of Gilbert Walmsley, thus presented to my mind, let me indulge myself
in the remembrance.  I knew him very early; he was one of the first friends
that literature procured me, and I hope that at least my gratitude made me
worthy of his notice.
"He was of advanced age, and I was only not a boy; yet he never
received my notions with contempt. IHe was a Whig, with all the virulence
and malevolence of his party; yet difference of opinion did not keep us apart.
I honoured him, and he endured me.
" He had mingled with the gay world, without exemption from its vices
or its follies, but had never neglected the cultivation of his mind; his belief of
Revelation was unshaken; his learning preserved his principles; he grew first
regular, and then pious.
" His studies had been so various that I am not able to name a man of
equal knowledge.  His acquaintance with books was great; and what he did
not immediately know, he could at least tell where to find. Such was his
amplitude of learning, and such his copiousness of communication, that it may
be doubted whether a day now passes in which I have not some advantage
from his friendship.




294


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


" At this man's table I enjoyed many cheerful and instructive hours, with
companions such as are not often found; with one who has lengthened, and
one who has gladdened life; with Dr. James, whose skill in physic will be
long remembered; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified
with this character of our common friend. But what are the hopes of man!
I am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of
nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure."
The book is full of wit and thought, but although a charming companion it is one of the worst of guides. Johnson was
a competent critic only within a certain sharply-defined groove.
In 1782 the death of his old dependant, the "useful and companionable" Robert Levett, called forth what is certainly the
most tender, and towards its close the most admirable of Johnson's
minor poems:
' His virtues walked their narrow round,
Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
And sure the Eternal Master found
The single talent well employed.
"The busy day, the peaceful night,
Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
His frame was firm, his powers were bright,
Though now his eightieth year was nigh.
' Then with no fiery throbbing pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way."
These stanzas might have been signed by Matthew Arnold, so
modern are they in their workmanship.
Johnson was now himself approaching his end, and more illustrious friends than Levett were dropping away from his side. His
last two years were melancholy, and somewhat lonely. On the
I3th of December 1784, tended by many whom he loved, he
passed away at his house in Bolt Court. George III. had lost
the most famous of his subjects. After Johnson's death every
scrap of his manuscript that could be found was printed, his
Prayers anid Meditations in 1785, his Sermons in I788-89, his




IX


DAVID HARTLEY


295


Diary in Nortlh liales in I8I6; and in I79I Boswell set the topstone to the edifice of Johnson's glory by his immortal biography.
Philosophical speculation occupied the pens of so many men
of letters in the middle of the eighteenth century, that it is impossible here to do more than name the most original of the
thinkers by profession.  David Hartley (1705-I757) was the
founder of associational psychology. He was a Yorkshire man,
a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and eventually a country
physician. His life was wholly without incident; he had poor
health, but great cheerfulness and benevolence. Hartley is in
the highest sense of the phrase a man of one book, which he
began to write before he was twenty-five, published when he
was forty-four, and continued to revise until his death.  This
is his Observations on Man, His Frame,.Duty, and Expectations
(I749). He defined his own contribution to moral philosophy in
these words: " I take it to be proved from the doctrine of association, that there is, and must be, such a thing as pure disinterested benevolence; also a just account of the origin and
nature of it."  A side doctrine of his which was much discussed
is the theory of vibrations, and of man as a cluster of "vibratiuncles." Hartley's ideas were afterwards taken up and expanded
by James Mill (1773-x836).  Another founder of a school, though
a thinker of less force than Hartley, was Thomas Reid (I710 -I796), the philosopher of common-sense applied to moral questions.
The works of Reid, from his Enquiry into the Hunan Mind
(I763), to his Active Powers of Man (1788), show a great clearness
of intellect and a strictly logical habit, but no great enthusiasm or
originality. His philosophy has been defined as a combination
of the views of Clarke and Shaftesbury.
By far the greatest philosophical writer who had appeared
since Berkeley was revealed, however, in David Hume (17II1776), the leader of the utilitarians, and one of the greatest critics
of thought who have ever lived. Hume occupies our attention in
many ways, as an essayist, as an historian, and as a philosopher,
in all three durably eminent.  He was born, of Berwickshire




296


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CIIAP.


parents, in Edinburgh; from his earliest infancy he was strongly
inclined to books, but he was not prominent as a scholar, and his
opening steps in life were somewhat vacillating. Some physical
crisis occurred in him at the age of twenty, and woke him into
genius. He spent three years with the Jesuits at La Fleche, and
there he began to plan his first work, an essay on moral philosophy, which appeared at length, early in I739, in two volumes,
under the title of a Treatise of Human Nature.        It was not
successful, though Hume probably exaggerates in describing it as
stillborn from the press. At all events a third volume appeared
next year. Hume was now beginning to attract notice; Hutcheson was interested in him, and introduced him to his brilliant
young scholar, Adam      Smith.   In  I74I and    1742 appeared
anonymously the two volumes of his Essays, Moral and Political,
which were very warmly received.       Here as elsewhere Hume
shows himself, though so modern in speculation, an aristocrat in
politics, and from the first a sincere enemy to popular government.
In the essay on the origin of government, he states his view
of the limited responsibilities of the people with his accustomed
calm lucidity:
"Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society from necessity,
from natural inclination, and from habit. The same creature, in his further
progress, is engaged to establish political society, in order to administer
justice, without which there can be no peace among them, nor safety, nor
mutual intercourse. We are therefore to look upon all the vast apparatus of
our government, as having ultimately no other object or purpose but the distribution of justice, or in other words, the support of the Twelve Judges. Kings
and parliaments, fleets and armies, officers of the court and revenue, ambassadors, ministers and privy councillors, are all subordinate in their end to this
part of administration.  Even the clergy, as their duty leads them to inculcate
morality, may justly be thought, so far as regards this world, to have no other
useful object of their institution."
He loses no opportunity of exposing the evil results of " villainous
seditions" and "Whig strokes."      His home all this time was
his mother's farmhouse at Ninewells, on the border of Berwickshire, where he was content to live very quietly among his books.




IX


HUME


297


He roused himself from this retirement in I745, when he undertook to take charge of a wretched young nobleman, the Marquis of
Annandale; this irksome business soon came to an end. Hume's
friends saw that his talents were not appreciated, and that he
was in danger of yielding to indolence; they gained him a secretary's office on the absurd expedition of General St. Clair; a little
later, under the same commander, at Turin and then at Vienna,
the philosopher cased his now very unwieldy person in scarlet,
which made him look "like a grocer of the train-bands." He
was in London again, glad to return to his library, in I749. While
he was away from England, in I748, a publisher reproduced his
first work, in abridged form, as Philosophical Essays Concerning
the Human Understanding, but again without attracting public
attention.
Retiring once more to Ninewells, Hume buried himself again
in literature, and produced in rapid succession three of his most
important books, his Dialogues on Natural Religion in I750 (not
published till long afterwards), his Principles of IMorals in I751,
and his Political Discourses in I752.  The last of these was as
happy in increasing the reputation of the author as it has been
influential in pointing the road for all future students of political
economy. He had by this time, through strict economy, arrived
at a competence, and he removed his residence to Edinburgh,
where, in 1752, he became the Advocates' Librarian, a post which
was greatly envied for its opportunities, although the salary was
paltry. It had already been discovered that Hume was unsound
in doctrine, but though his election was bitterly opposed on the
ground of his deism, it was enthusiastically carried by his friends.
In 1753 Hume thus described to a friend his condition in his
Edinburgh home:
" I shall exult and triumph to you a little that I have now at last-being
turned of forty, to my own honour, to that of learning, and to that of the
present age-arrived at the dignity of being a householder.
" About seven months ago, I got a house of my own, and completed a
regular family, consisting of a head, viz. myself, and two inferior members, a
maid and a cat. My sister has since joined me, and keeps me company.




298


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CIIAP.


With frugality, I can reach, I find, cleanliness, warmth, light, plenty and contentment?  What would you have more?   Independence? I have it in a
supreme degree. Honour? That is not altogether wanting. Grace? That
will come in time. A wife? That is none of the indispensable requisites of
life. Books? That is one of them; and I have more than I can use. In
short, I cannot find any pleasure of consequence which I am not possessed of
in a greater or less degree; and, without any great effort of philosophy, I may
be easy and satisfied. As there is no happiness without occupation, I have
begun a work which will occupy me several years, and which yields me much
satisfaction."
This was the famous History of Great Britain (James I.,
Charles.), the first volume of which appeared in 1754.    To his
great chagrin this famous work failed to please any class of
readers. He tells us: "I was assailed by one cry of reproach,
disapprobation, and even detestation.... I scarcely heard of one
man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that
could endure the book." In the first anguish of disappointment,
he talked of changing his name, and becoming a citizen of France.
Further volumes, however, of the History appeared in 1756, 1759,
and I762, and the merits of the work gradually commended
themselves to the general public. The methods of the recent
school of history have discredited Hume, whose first aim was to
amuse, or at least to please, whose researches were superficial, and
whose statements were anything but authoritative. It is almost
laughable to compare Hume's treatment of any incident, or still
more, of any crisis, with that of Mr. S. R. Gardiner's treatment of
the same.   But Hume's style, which had always been easy and
lucid, was now at its best, and in an age which did not demand
scientific accuracy from its historians he passed for a chronicler
of genius.  His slavish regard for royal authority is a worse fault
than his want of exact information; the reader seeks in his pages
in vain for an expression of enthusiasm for British liberty or of
indignation at Stuart tyranny.   Hence the philosophic attitude
which is so adroitly adopted ceases presently to deceive the
reader, and at last exasperates him. Nevertheless, when we compare this polished and elegant compendium, in all its dignity




IX


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299


and sober beauty, with such crude histories as those of Carte,
Bower, and Guthrie, which preceded or accompanied it, we are
ready to grow enthusiastic over its signal excellence.
While this great book was passing through the press, Hume's
indomitable industry found occasion for the publication of other
important work. In I757 appeared the Natural History of Religion, which completed the statement of his sceptical philosophy.
In 1763, having completed the History, Hume went to reside in
France, a country where he found himself particularly happy, and
where his literary reputation stood remarkably high. For more
than three years he was secretary to the English embassy in Paris.
He returned to England to hold office as Under-Secretary of
State until I769. The rest of his life was spent in comparative
affluence, always as a bachelor, in his house at Edinburgh, where
he died on the 25th of August 1776.
Hume's place in literature is not, at the present moment,
adequate to what we know of his powers of intellect or to his
originality as a thinker. He is acknowledged to be a great man,
but he is very little read. His History, in fragments, and his
Essay on Miracles, which still enjoys a kind of success of scandal,
are all that the general reader knows of Hume. If we deplore
this fact, it must be admitted that his cool and unimpassioned
criticism of belief, his perpetual return to the destructive standpoint, yet without vivacity, as one who undermines rather than
attacks an opposing body, his colourless grace, the monotony of
his balanced and faultless sentences, offer to us qualities which
demand respect but scarcely awaken zeal, and, in short, that Hume
although a real is a somewhat uninspiring classic.  His great
merit as a writer is his lucidity, his perfectly straightforward and
competent expression of the particular thing he has it on his
mind to say. To demand from him the fire of Berkeley or the
splendour of Gibbon w6uld be to expect from an essentially
frigid writer an effect which he does not even desire to produce.
It is only right to add that several distinguished critics of the present century have expressed for the style of Hume an admiration




300


JOHNSON AND TIlE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


which we cannot help believing to be a little in excess of its
merits.   A good example of Hume's sententious manner is to
be found in his remarks on the character of Elizabeth:
" So dark a cloud overcast the evening of that day which had shone out
with a mighty lustre in the eyes of all Europe.  There are few great personages in history who have been more exposed to the calumny of enemies and
the adulation of friends than Queen Elizabeth; and yet there is scarcely any
whose reputation has been more certainly determined by the unanimous consent of posterity. The unusual length of her administration, and the strong
features of her character, were able to overcome all prejudices; and, obliging
her detractors to abate much of their invectives, and her admirers somewhat
of their panegyrics, have at last, in spite of political factions, and, what is more,
of religious animosities, produced a uniform judgment with regard to her conduct.  Her vigour, her constancy, her magnanimity, her penetration, vigilance
and address, are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have
been surpassed by any person that ever filled a throne.  A conduct less
rigorous, less imperious, more sincere, more indulgent to her people, would
have been requisite to form a perfect character.  By the force of her mind
she controlled all her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them
from running into excess; her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality
from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active temper from turbulency
and a vain ambition; she guarded not herself with equal care or equal success
from lesser infirmities, the rivalship of beauty, the desire of admiration, the
jealousy of love, and the sallies of anger."
That most whimsical of triflers and wittiest of fops, Horace
Walpole, Earl of Orford (I717-I797), in I757 set up a private
printing-press at Strawberry Hill, and had no choice but to
become an author.       He had previously published some easy
pamphlets and had contributed essays in 1753 to The World.
His Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors appeared early in
1758, in a private edition, and was so much sought after that the
delighted amateur was forced to develop into a professional writer
against his will.  His book was very successful; but faults were
justly found with it, and Walpole suffered the agonies of criticism
until he was "sick of the character of author."     He was not so
sick, however, as to refrain from printing a volume of his Fugitive
Pieces in I758, and three volumes of Anecdotes of Painting in
I76i.   In  1765 (December I764) there was published, under




IX


HORACE WALPOLE


301


circumstances of thrilling secrecy, an anonymous romance, The
Castle of Otranto, which was promptly fathered upon Horace
Walpole.  This Gothic novel positively frightened grown-up
people to the extent of making them unwilling to seek their beds,
and was pronounced a "masterpiece" by so grave a critic as
Warburton. In his Historic Doubts (1766), Walpole attempted
to whitewash the character of Richard III., and awakened an
agreeable controversy. In I768 he produced a clever buckram
tragedy, The Mysterious Mother.  Besides all these and other
miscellaneous works, Horace Walpole is the author of what gives
him a far higher place than he would otherwise hold, the
marvellously sprightly and charming series of letters first given to
the world in I798, and added to in successive instalments down
to I847.
The critics of the eighteenth century were very unwilling to
take Horace Walpole seriously, and his frivolity, foppery, and
artificiality gave them an excellent excuse. He was the prince of
petits maitres, and everything which proceeded from his pen
showed an affectation of writing carelessly, like a fine gentleman.
But his natural gifts were very brilliant, and if he had been poor
or a Frenchman he would probably have made a great name for
himself in literature. He catches and reflects, in his correspondence, the physiognomy of the middle of the century to a degree
which points to something little short of genius.  The social
seductions of the age, its rose-coloured affectations, the very froufrou of the fans of its great ladies, live and will live for ever in
his easy pages.  Horace Walpole's letters, long cast aside contemptuously by criticism as malicious and ephemeral, are now
reasserting their right to exist, in virtue of the enchantment of
their delicacy.  Nor is his work in other departments of literature
wholly contemptible.  The Castle of Otranto, which pretended to
be a reprint of a black-letter publication of 1529, would impose
on no one now as an antique, but it is decidedly interesting as a
story, in its mild moonlight horror.  It is still more important as
the first specimen in English of the narrative of mediaeval romance




302


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


which was presently to culminate in the novels of Walter Scott,
and which was, for a time, to sweep every other species of fiction
before it. This was part of Horace Walpole's ignorant but instinctive love of Gothic ornament and medieval architecture,
neither of which he understood, however, nearly so well as the
less ambitious Gray, who had science enough to laugh at the
stucco and the gilded gimcracks of Strawberry Hill. The Castle
of Otranto is now seldom printed except in company with its
earliest imitator, The Old English Baron of Clara Reeve (1725 -I803), published in 1777. A certain relation or parallelism may
not uninstructively be drawn between Walpole and his French
contemporary, the Comte de Caylus (I692-I765). Each was an
amateur in archeology, art, and literature, and each did not a
little to prepare the way for serious professional labour in all those
departments.
In I759 the popular Scottish rhetorician, Dr. Hugh Blair
(I718-I800), began a series of discourses on the cultivation of
taste by the study of polite literature, which, wanting as they are
in all that constitutes sound criticism, demand notice because of
the authority which they exercised for at least half a century, and
because of their influence upon contemporary style. Blair was vain
and empty, insipid and loquacious, and his lectures have not even
the sincerity of the dry essays of Kames. Towards the end of
the century Blair achieved reputation and emolument by publishing successive volumes of his sermons, in which he applied
to theology the same vague platitudinising rhetoric that he had
before given to literature. In these sermons the manner introduced by Shaftesbury reaches its final debasement. Blair had
the presumption to blame the style of Johnson; but as the
reputation of that great man rose, his Scottish critic found himself supple enough to become one of the closest of Johnson's
superficial imitators. Johnson himself, and others only less than
he, thought that they found something to praise in Blair's bucket
of warm water; but the modern reader seeks there in vain for
any solid profit to the intellect or the taste.




IX


GILBERT WI-IITE


303


A whole literature of delightful books was inaugurated by the
Rev. Gilbert White (I720-I793) in his immortal Nafural History
of Selborne, which appeared in 1789, but was the collection of a
lifetime. White was educated with the Wartons at Basingstoke,
and proceeded to Oriel College, Oxford; he took orders in
1747, and as early as 1751 became curate of Selborne, a
beautiful sylvan parish in Hampshire, where he had been born.
He came back to Oriel the following year, and served the
university as proctor; in I755, however, he returned to Selborne,
and remained there for the rest of his life, becoming vicar in
1758. He declined living after living that he might remain in his
beloved birthplace, accepting only one or two college-curacies
that he might hold as sinecures.  Gilbert White was deeply in
love with Hester Mulso, afterwards known as Mrs. Chapone; she
declined his hand, and he never offered it to any one again. He
corresponded with two of the most active naturalists of the period,
Thomas Pennant (I726-I796), and the Hon. Daines Barrington
(1727-I800), to both of whom he was abundantly useful in his
observations. In I767 Gilbert White began to write down the
natural history of his native parish, and in 177I we find that the
idea of publication had crossed his mind; three years later he
talks of a possible "moderate volume." He was hampered, however, by every species of scruple and timidity, and the handsome
quarto did not leave the printers' hands until the spring of 1789.
The book is written in the form of letters to friends; a shorter
second part, with a new title-page, deals with The Antzquities of
Selborne in the same manner.  It is the earlier part which is the
favourite; after the appearance of hundreds of volumes describing the natural history of various parts of England, Gilbert White's
book still preserves its unfailing charm and the bloom of its
pristine freshness.  It is one of the most delightful legacies
which the eighteenth century has bequeathed to us. On every
page some trace of original observation arrests us:
"' Herons seem encumbered with too much sail for their light bodies; but
these vast hollow wings are necessary in carrying burdens, such as large fishes




304


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


and the like.  Pigeons, and particularly the sort called smiters, have a way of
clashing their wings the one against the other over their backs with a loud
snap; another variety called tlumblers turn themselves over in the air. Some
birds have movements peculiar to the season of love; thus ring-doves, though
strong and rapid at other times, yet in the spring hang about on the wing in
a toying and playful manner; thus the cock-snipe, while breeding, forgetting
his former flight, fans the wind like the wind-hover; and the greenfinch in
particular exhibits such languishing and faltering gestures as to appear like a
wounded and dying bird. The king-fisher darts along like an arrow; fernowls, or goat-suckers, glance in the dusk over the tops of trees like a meteor.
Starlings, as it were, swim along, while missel-thrushes use a wild and desultory
flight. Swallows sweep over the surface of the ground and water, and distinguish themselves by rapid turns and quick evolutions; swifts dash round in
circles; and the bank-martin moves with frequent vacillations like a butterfly.
Most of the small birds fly by jerks, rising and falling as they advance."
Without aiming at a style, Gilbert White is picturesque, precise,
and vivid to a very brilliant degree; and there are few novelists
who sustain the reader's interest so successfully.
Hume's work as a historian was continued by a very accomplished writer, who, without being an imitator of Hume, possessed
to a singular extent the same habits of mind, the same merits, and
the same faults. William Robertson (I72I-1793) was a native of
Midlothian, and entered the Scottish Church in I743. He took
a prominent and spirited part in the public life of Edinburgh, and
in 1758 became suddenly famous by the publication of his History
of Scotland. He was rewarded for this excellent work by being
made Principal of Edinburgh University and Historiographer for
Scotland. In 1769 he issued the three volumes of his History
of the Reign of Charles V, one of the best paid pieces of literary
labour ever undertaken by a human pen, and this was followed
by several historical works of minor importance.        Robertson
was not more impressed than Hume with the necessity of close,
independent, and impartial research, but he was no less graceful
in style, and he diffused over his best work an even milder
radiance of philosophic reflection.    Hume and Robertson are
strangely alike as historians.  Neither descends the hill to survey
the country at his feet, but each has exceedingly long sight, and




IX


ROBERTSON


305


the power of taking wide and harmonious Pisgah-views from his
self-adopted eminence. Robertson, however, is certainly superior
to Hume in his skill in making general estimates of history. It
is not the least of Robertson's claims to our consideration that
the opening chapters of his Charles V. had the effect of awakening a historic sense in the childhood of Carlyle, supplying him
with "new worlds of knowledge, vistas in all directions."  Robertson describes the discovery of America with peculiar gusto, lingering with delight over every gorgeous detail:
"As the sun arose, all their boats were manned and armed. They rowed
toward the island with their colours displayed, with warlike music, and other
martial pomp. As they approached the coast, they saw it covered with a
multitude of people, whom the novelty of the spectacle had drawn together,
whose attitudes and gestures expressed wonder and astonishment at the
strange objects which presented themselves to their view. Columbus was the
first European who set foot on the new world which he had discovered. He
landed in a rich dress, and with a naked sword in his hand. His men
followed, and kneeling down, they all kissed the ground which they had so
long desired to see. They next erected a crucifix, and prostrating themselves
before it, returned thanks to God for conducting their voyage to such a
happy issue. They then took solemn possession of the country for the crown
of Castile and Leon, with all the formalities which the Portuguese were
accustomed to observe in acts of this kind in their new discoveries."
Various streams of philosophical tendency from Hutcheson,
Hume, and Hartley met in the brilliant Adam         Smith (I723 -I790), a Kirkcaldy youth, educated at Balliol College, Oxford,
and called early in life to be the disciple and then the successor of Hutcheson     at Glasgow.     His two   books are the
Theory of    ioral Sentinents (I759), and the Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Weath of Nations (1776), both originally delivered as courses of lectures at Glasgow.     The former
of these was highly popular; it presented with dignity and
felicity the favourite optimistic theories of the age, the cheerful
system of man as a beautiful specimen of celestial clock-work
which needs but to be undisturbed to go on merrily till it runs
down. None of the philosophers, except Butler, seem to have


III


X




306


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


retained the seventeenth -century conviction of the inherent
badness of human nature, or of its tendency to moral decay.
Smith's second book is vastly superior to his first. He had been
to France in the meantime, and had come into personal relations
with the great French economists Quesnay (1694-I774) and
Turgot (I727-1781).    His mind was eminently receptive, and in
an element of extreme tranquillity he worked out his theories
slowly to their last results. The chief merit of the Wealth of
Nations, and that which enables it still to hold its place at the
head of the politico-economic literature of the world, is not any
very great originality in detail, but an extraordinary grasp of
all parts of the subject, and a marvellous ability in illustrating
theoretical propositions by apt instances from practical life.
Adam Smith is usually spoken of as the first prophet of Free
Trade; it would     be   nearer the truth, remarks    Mr. Leslie
Stephen, "to say that he was the first writer who succeeded in
so presenting that doctrine as to convince statesmen" in its
favour. To the purely literary student, desirous of an example
of Adam Smith's style, which is always lucid and correct, no
better specimen can be recommended than the letter he wrote to
Strahan, describing his last interview with the dying Hume:
"He said that when he was reading, a few days before, Lucian's
Dialogues of the Dead, among all the excuses which are alleged to Charon
for not entering readily into his boat, he could not find one that fitted him;
for he had no house to finish, he had no daughter to provide for, he had
no enemies upon whom he wished to revenge himself.  ' I could not well
imagine,' said he, 'what excuse I could make to Charon in order to obtain a
little delay. I have done everything of consequence which I ever meant to
do; and I could at no time expect to leave my relations and friends in a
better situation than that in which I am now likely to leave them. I therefore
have all reason to die contented.' He then diverted himself with inventing
several jocular excuses, which he supposed he might make to Charon, and
with imagining the very surly answers which it might suit the character of
Charon to return to them.  ' Upon further consideration,' said he, ' I thought
I might say to him "Good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a
new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receives
the alterations."  But Charon would answer, "When you have seen the




IX


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307


effect of these, you will be for making other alterations. There will be no
end of such excuses: so, honest friend, please step into the boat." But I
might still urge, " Iave a little patience, good Charon; I have been endeavouring to open the eyes of the public.  If I live a few years longer, I
may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing
systems of superstition."  But Charon would then lose all temper and
decency.  "You loitering rogue, that will not happen those many hundred
years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into
the boat this instant, you lazy loitering rogue."'"
Several of the pioneers of science in the eighteenth century,
the great technical teachers, were far from. disdaining the arts of
graceful expression. There is no more interesting example of this
fact than Sir William  Blackstone (I723-I780), who contrived to
make one of the most readable of books out of a compendium
of jurisprudence.  Blackstone began life as a poet.   His copy of
octosyllabics, entitled The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse, is one
of the best minor poems of the time, and suggests that so
skilful a versifier might have taken his place with the professional
lyrists. In one hundred lines it describes the charms of poetry,
the obligation of the author to quit the Muse, and the solemn
enthusiasm with which he will devote himself to another mistress,
and, absorbed in the study of " Britannia's laws,"
" Observe how parts with parts unite
In one harmonious rule of right;
See countless wheels distinctly tend
By various laws to one great end."
These lines are usually attributed to the year 1741, when
Blackstone entered himself at the Middle Temple; but they
seem  too vigorous and too polished to be the work of a lad of
eighteen, and it may be suggested, as more probable, that they
were written in 1746, when the author was called to the bar.
Until 1766 Blackstone remained identified with Oxford, successively as undergraduate at Pembroke, as fellow and bursar of All
Souls, as principal of New Inn Hall, and as first Vinerian professor.  In I765-69 he published his Commzentaries on the Laws
of England, in four quarto volumes   By this work he made about




308


JOHNSON AND THE PHILOSOPHERS


CHAP.


5,ooo00.    Although the Commentaries had faults which have
since been abundantly pointed out, their merits were obvious
alike to lawyers and to the public, and no legal work has ever
enjoyed or deserved so eminent a popular success. Blackstone
writes easily and brightly, though few critics of to-day would
endorse Fox's enthusiastic dictum that the Vinerian Professor was
the best prose-writer of his day, "far more correct than Hume
and less studied than Robertson."
The earliest art-criticisms of any value published in this
country were contained in the annual and biennial Discourses
which Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (I723-I792), delivered from
January 1759 to his retirement in December I790. They were
issued year by year, and collected after his death. The popularity of
these essays has been steadily maintained, and Reynolds can now
be omitted in no catalogue of the leading writers of the second
half of the century. His periods are full and eloquent, and he
mingles with his msthetic philosophy, which he borrowed mainly
from the French, a practical knowledge due to his own technical
experience. He is often enthusiastic and always singularly sympathetic as a teacher, while the best proof of the value of his
discourses is that they are still in constant demand, and eagerly
consulted by professional artists.  It is in the course of his Fourteenth Discourse that the President pauses to make his touching
reference to the recent death of his rival Gainsborough:
"It may not be improper to make mention of some of the customs and
habits of this extraordinary man; points which come more within the reach
of an observer: I, however, mean only such as are connected with his art,
and indeed were, as I apprehend, the causes of his arriving to that high
degree of excellence which we see and acknowledge in his work. Of
these causes we must state, as the fundamental, the love which he had to his
art; to which, indeed, his whole mind seems to have been devoted, and to
which everything was referred; and this we may fairly conclude from various
circumstances of his life, which were known to his intimate friends. Among
others, he had a habit of continually remarking to those who happened to be
about him, whatever peculiarity of countenance, whatever accidental combination of figurcs, or happy effects of light and shadow, occurred in prospects, in the sky, in walking the streets, or in company.  If, in his walks,




ix                         REYNOLDS                            309
he found a character that he liked, and whose attendance was to be obtained,
he ordered him to his house: and from  the fields he brought into his
painting-room stumps of trees, weeds, and animals of various kinds; and
designed them, not from memory, but immediately from the objects, He
even framed a kind of model of landscapes on his table, composed of broken
stones, dried herbs, and pieces of looking-glass, which he magnified and
improved into rocks, trees, and water.  How far this latter practice may
be useful in giving hints, the professors of landscape can best determine."
It was, doubtless, through his lifelong companionship with
Johnson, Burke, and Goldsmith that Reynolds learned to write
in the English language only a little less brilliantly than they.




CHAPTER X


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE
THERE is no section of our national poetry so sterile, so unstimulating, as that which we have now reached, the poetry of the third
quarter of the eighteenth century.  Compared even with the
period which immediately preceded it, although that was not
greatly inspired, it is singularly dull, mechanical, and dusty. There
is nothing here so majestic as the odes of Gray or so tender as
those of Collins-nothing to challenge comparison with the frank
nature-study of Thomson. Names there are in plenty, names of
poets not yet utterly discrowned, but on whose brows the laurel is
growing very thin and brittle. The greatest of the group is a
noble prose-writer, who wrote graceful verses. The rest are either
survivals, or else men with the light of the next age already dimly
reflected in their faces.  The most characteristic of them  is
scarcely a poet at all, but a versifier, who without charm or imagination, summed up all that the mere tradition of poetic art in the
eighteenth century could teach an extremely clever artisan. In
the verses of Erasmus Darwin the classic style found itself unsurpassed, and, in that direction, fortunately unsurpassable. As the
century approached its close, a newer and a nobler choir of true
poetic voices began to be heard, not always to be distinguished at
the outset from the hard see-saw of the older generation, yet for
ears attuned bringing real music in the Village of Crabbe, and the
Poetical Sketches of Blake, both in I783, the Table-Talk of Cowper




CHAP. X


AKENSIDE


3II


(I785), and Burns's Kilmarnock volume of I786. But the pleasant
task of touching this revival is left to my successor.
How very rapidly what was living and organic in Collins and
Gray became fossilised may be seen by examining the frigid work
in verse of the physician, Mark Akenside (I72I-I770).  This
writer was the son of a butcher in Newcastle-on-Tyne, where, at
the age of sixteen, and still at school, he published The Virtuoso,
a poem in Spenserian stanza, which preceded in publicity both
Thomson's and Shenstone's efforts in that form, the honour of
reviving which should therefore rest with Akenside. In 1744, on
his way from Edinburgh to complete his medical studies in
Holland, he published his Pleasures of Imagination in London;
his Odes appeared in I745; and in 1746 his Hymn to the Naiads.
He was at the latter date only in his twenty-fifth year, but he
wrote no more poetry of importance, and is to be classed with
those in whom the lyric vein is early stanched. Akenside became
a distinguished member of the Royal Society, a writer of valuable
physiological treatises, and a leading hospital physician.  The
first edition of the Pleasures of the Imagination was anonymous,
and in three books of cold and stately blank verse. In the prose
"design," Akenside mentioned Addisor, from  whom   he had
borrowed much, but not Shaftesbury, to whom he owed his entire
philosophical groundwork. Akenside thought that "the separation of the works of imagination from philosophy" was a very
undesirable thing, and he determined to unite the theories of the
Characteristics with his own strenuous verse. The result was not
wholly unlucky, but the world has preferred to take its Shaftesbury
undiluted with blank verse; Akenside afterwards re-wrote his
poem, without improving it. His odes are icy-cold, and full of
elegance rather than beauty; his Hymn to the Naiads is usually held,
and with good cause, to be his best poem, the most graceful, the
most sculpturesque specimen of his blank verse. It closes thus:
" He, perchance, the gifts
Of young Lyzeus, and the dread exploits,
May sing in aptest numbers: he the fate




312


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


Of sober Pentheus, he the Paphian rites,
And naked Mars with Cytherea chained,
And strong Alcides in the spinster's robes,
May celebrate, applauded. But with you,
O Naiads, far from that unhallowed rout,
Must dwell the man whoe'er to praised themes
Invokes the immortal Muse. The immortal Muse
To your calm habitations, to the cave
Corycian, or the Delphic mount, will guide
His footsteps; and with your unsullied streams
His lips will bathe: whether the eternal lore
Of Themis, or the majesty of Jove,
To mortals he reveal; or teach his lyre
The unenvied guerdon of the patriot's toils,
In those unfading islands of the blessed,
Where sacred bards abide. Hail, honoured Nymphs!
Thrice hail! For you the Cyrenaic shell,
Behold, I touch, revering. To my songs
Be present ye, with favourable feet;
And all profaner audience far remove."
Akenside was not without influence on poetic style, and he
possessed a direct disciple in the early writings of T. L. Peacock.
At his very best Akenside is sometimes like a sort of frozen
Keats. Two exact contemporaries of Akenside claim mention
here only on the strength of one fine lyric apiece-James Grainger
(I72I-I766), a didactic West Indian sugar-planting physician,
having published in 1755 an Ode to Solitude, before he began to
sing of canes and swains in tedious couplets; and Francis Fawkes
(I72I-I777), being the author of "The Brown Jug," printed among
his Original Poems of 1761:
" Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale
(In which I will drink to sweet Nan of the Vale)
Was once Toby Fillpot, a thirsty old soul
As e'er drank a bottle, or fathom'd a bowl;
In boosing about 'twas his praise to excel,
And among jolly topers he bore off the bell.
"It chanc'd as in dog-days he sat at his ease
In his flower-woven arbour as gay as you please,




X


SMART


313


With a friend and a pipe puffing sorrows away,
And with honest old stingo was soaking his clay,
His breath-doors of life on a sudden were shut,
And he died full as big as a Dorchester butt.
His body, when long in the ground it had lain,
And time into clay had resolv'd it again,
A potter found out in its covert so snug,
And with part of fat Toby he form'd this brown jug,
Now sacred to friendship, and mirth, and mild ale;
So here's to my lovely sweet Nan of the Vale."
Fawkes was distinguished as a translator of the classics, and
he had the complaisance to render into English the Latin poems
of his friend Christopher Smart (I722-:[77o). Throughout his
own century, Smart received no other honours, and his forlorn
reputation has only very recently been lifted out of the limbo
where it was lying with that of the Langhornes and the Merricks.
In no existing history of literature does Smart receive anything
like his due need of attention, as being, in a dreary age of
versifiers, a very original, if somewhat crazy and unbalanced poet.
He went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1738, and remained
there until 1754, when he lost his fellowship through the fact of
his marriage having been discovered. Of his eccentric and disreputable ways in college we find traces in the letters of Gray,
who was resident with him for a long time at Pembroke, and who
describes him as graduating for Bedlam or a jail. After having
tested the merits of either kind of asylum, however, in 1752
Smart pulled himself together, and published a collection of his
Poems, a handsome quarto, containing, besides some sixteen odes
in following of Gray, a didactic Hop-Garden, in two books of
Thomsonian blank verse, a masque, and some miscellaneous
ballads.  These pieces are all mediocre, although illuminated
here and there with flashes of gorgeous phraseology. In I753
Smart published The Hilliad, a conceited satire on Dr. John Hill,
who had somewhat severely reviewed Smart's odes. This poem
is chiefly notable as having probably suggested the form and the
title of the much more famous Rolliad (I785) of Lawrence and




314


TIHE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


Fitzpatrick. About 1754 Smart let himself out on a lease for
ninety-nine years, to work for a bookseller, and in 1761 he became
violently insane once more. Dr. Johnson went to see him in the
madhouse, and his account of the visit is well known. "I did
not think," said the lexicographer, "that he ought to be shut up.
His infirmities were not noxious to society. He insisted on people
praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as with any
one else. Another charge was that he did not love clean linen;
and I have no passion for it." While in Bedlam, Smart wrote his
famous Song to David, published in 1763. Worn out with drunkenness and depressed with debt, the unhappy poet sank in I770.
It is difficult to describe and impossible to analyse the Song to
David, a lyric in 516 lines, many of which evade any literal paraphrase in prose. It is obviously the work of an intellect which is
partially unhinged, but the removal of self-criticism seems to have
withdrawn at the same time many of the conventional scruples of
the hide-bound eighteenth-century writer, and to have unsealed
the fountains of poetic language.   What Smart means may occasionally be doubtful, but no one can fail to recognise that his
Biblical fancy is steeped in all the flush and bloom of Eden:
" For adoration ripening canes
And cocoa's purest milk detains
The western pilgrim's staff;
Where rain in clasping boughs inclos'd,
And vines with oranges dispos'd,
Embower the social laugh.
Now labour his reward receives,
For adoration counts his sheaves
To peace, her bounteous prince;
The nectarine his strong tint imbibes,
And apples of ten thousand tribes,
And quick peculiar quince.
"The wealthy crops of whitening rice,
'Mongst thyine woods and groves of spice,
For adoration grow;
And, marshall'd in the fenced land,
The peaches and pomegranates stand,
Where wild carnations blow.




x


ANSTEY


3I5


" For adoration, beyond match,
The scholar bullfinch aims to catch
The soft flute's ivory touch;
And, careless on the hazel spray,
The daring redbreast keeps at bay
The damsel's greedy touch."
How much the Song to David perplexed Smart's contemporaries
may be gathered from the fact that it, the only real jewel in his
crown, was omitted from the posthumous collection of his works.
Of late, full justice has tardily been done to the highly-coloured
phrases and daring adjectives of the Song, and Mr. Browning, in
his recent Parleyings, has celebrated the magic of Smart's disordered but glowing imagination in fervid iambics. In reference
to the mediocrity of Smart's other poems, the greater modern
poet compares the Song to David to a gorgeous chapel lying
perdue in some dull old commonplace mansion.
The latest and brightest of Goldsmith's poems would scarcely
have been written if the manner of rhyming had not been
suggested to him by the popularity of a very whimsical and elegant
trifle.  The New Bath Guide, which appeared in quarto in 1766,
was the herald of a new school of society verse, and led the way
towards Praed and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The author was a Cambridge scholar of distinction, a fox-hunting country squire, and an
inglorious member of Parliament, Christopher Anstey (I 724-I805).
This gentleman had for many years frequented Bath, then in the
heyday of fashion, and he determined to lampoon the society of
that city in a rhyming satire. The sub-title of The vNewe Bath
Guide is " Memoirs of the B-r-d Family," and the poem takes
the form of fifteen letters addressed by members of that family,
who are drinking the Bath waters for their health. The first
correspondent remarks:
"From water sprung, like flowers from dew,
What troops of Bards appear!
The God of Verse-and Physic too —
Inspires them twice a year."
And accordingly all the Blunderheads, male and female, express




316


TIHE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHATI.


their feelings, whether cynical or romantic, in rhyme. The whole
poem, though coarse in parts, and in others darkened by lost
illusions, remains one of the lightest and most sparkling of purely
mundane compositions in the language; the "letters," written in
anapaestic verse of four stresses, being decidedly the best. It is in
these latter that we see the coming Goldsmith foreshadowed.
From The Vew Bath Guide to Retaliation the transition is
easy, and we now approach the chief poetic name of the period,
Oliver Goldsmith (I728-I774), whose interesting personal career
it will be desirable to defer treating till we reach him, in his
more important character of a prose-writer, in the next chapter.
Goldsmith, if carefully examined, is seen to mark a retrograde
step, a momentary phase of reaction.  In versification he returned,
in company with Churchill, to the heroic couplet, which had
received no support of any great weight, save that of Samuel
Johnson, in the preceding generation.  For the Spenserian stanza
and the blank verse of Thomson, for the ode-forms of Gray and
Collins, Goldsmith did not conceal his disdain. He looked back
beyond these naturalistic poets, and took his place in direct succession to Pope. His disdain, in non-dramatic poetry, of blank
verse, the employment of which had become general since I725,
is not more seen in the remarks in the Polite Learning and the
dedication to The Traveller, than in Goldsmith's total repudiation
of it in his own work. He studied the couplet with great care, and
he contrived to introduce into it an ease, an unstudied simplicity,
which raise Goldsmith far above Johnson and Churchill, and sometimes place him, in mere charm, above Pope himself. The keyword of Goldsmith's verse is grace. He is not, as a poet, very
strong, or very original, or very frequently inspired; but his simplicity is often touching, his ear is commonly delicate, and his
rectitude of feeling always takes a polished and yet a natural form
of expression. But here it becomes necessary to distinguish, since
Goldsmith claims our attention in two classes of imaginative art,
as a dramatist and as a descriptive poet.  We touch on the
former first.




X


EIGHTEENTHI-CENTURY COMEDY


317


Goldsmith's earlier comedy, The Good Natur'd Man, was produced at Covent Garden in January 1768, having been written in
the two preceding years. It enjoyed but a comparative success,
although good judges, such as Dr. Johnson, pronounced it the
best comedy seen on the English stage since Cibber completed
Vanbrugh's Provoked Husband in I728. The period of forty
years contained between these two representations had certainly
been one of the most sterile in the dramatic history of the
country. Cibber had been succeeded by Foote (I721-I777),
in whose numerous dramas the development of characteristic
dialogue was entirely subordinated to the illustration of such
oddities and whimsical singularities as could be emphasised by
the talent for mimicry possessed by the author-actor himself; and
not one of Foote's plays holds a niche in literature. Near the
close of the half-century a change carne over dramatic taste;
the mere farce or burlesque grew to be less in favour, and the
audiences welcomed attempts at a purer and more legitimate
comedy of intrigue. There is still a savour of the salt of wit to
be tasted in Thle Suspicious HIusband of Dr. Benjamin Hoadly
(1706-I757) and in the Miss in Her Teens of Garrick, both produced in 1747; while if High Life Below Stairs (I759) of the Rev.
James Townley (I714-I778) be a trifle, it is one which keeps any
audience alive with laughter to the present day. When Goldsmith's
attention was first called to the drama the popular taste had once
more changed, and the favourite of the moment was Hugh Kelly
(I739-I777), the Irish staymaker, who made himself, for a short
time, pre-eminent with a series of five comedies, all of the larmzoyanle sentimental class recently introduced from France, in
which everything that was vulgar or vigorous was carefully omitted.
It was one of Kelly's pieces, False Delicacy, which was produced
at Covent Garden six days before The Good Niatur'd AMan, and
so sorely interfered with the success of that play.  Goldsmith
defined the compositions of Kelly and Cumberland as "sentimental comedies, in which the virtues of private life are exhibited,
rather than the vices exposed; and the distresses rather than the




318


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


faults of mankind make our interest in the piece." His own
Good Natur'd Man, although strong comic writing is introduced,
shows to a considerable extent this sentimental quality. It is a
play that has scarcely preserved its vitality; when it is revived, it
is before an audience that accepts it from an antiquarian point of
view, and consents to be only occasionally amused. Yet Croaker
is a good creation, and Jack Lofty a better one.
The hero-worship of Goldsmith's biographers has obscured the
memory of a play which is really a far better and livelier comedy
than The Good Natur'd Man, and much more worthy to precede
She Stoops to Conquer. It occurred to Garrick and to George
Colman that an entertaining drama might be drawn up on the
lines of Hogarth's " Mariage a la mode," and the result of their
joint labours was The Clandestine Marriage (I766), a play now
wholly neglected, but worthy of revival as much on the stage as in
the study. Two years earlier, in 1764, Macklin had, in his True
Born Scotchman (afterwards known as The Man of the World),
sketched, rather inartistically, the outline of a most laughable
play. The Lord Ogleby of the former comedy, and the Sir Pertinax Mac-Sychophant of the latter, are characters which display
very brilliant qualities of comic invention, and it is to do their
authors a gross injustice to pretend, as the worshippers of Goldsmith
are accustomed to do, that the latter arises, like a phoenix, out of
the absolute ashes of the drama. In all other branches of literature
Goldsmith's originality shows itself in the art with which he
excels those who had been doing well on the same lines; and it
is this praise, and no other, which is due to him as a comic
dramatist.
The famous "low" scene in The Good Natur'd Maln, between
young Honeywood, Miss Richland, and the bailiffs, which is so
funny to read and so distressing to see that Goldsmith was forced
to cut it out, is really that which most characteristically prepares
us for the playwright's second and far more genuine dramatic
success. If one swallow could make a summer, She Stoops to
Conquer would make the eighteenth century a period of genuine




x


GOLDSMITH'S " TRAVELLER "


3I9


dramatic vitality, for it is one of the great comedies of the world.
It lives mainly by the vigour of its broad humour. " The genteel
thing is the genteel thing any time, if so be that a gentleman bees
in a concatenation accordingly," but the public is not always in a
mood to dance the Minuet in Ariadne. Sometimes it likes to be
reminded of its Tony Lumpkins and the frolics at the Three
Pigeons, and then She Stoops to Conquer is once more in all its
glory. This inimitable comedy, with all its innocent wit and frank
good-nature, was put on the stage, after extraordinary objections
on Colman's part, in March 1773, just a year before the author's
death, and brought Goldsmith considerable pecuniary profit and
endless personal distresses. At the present day it is probably the
best known of the author's works, and, outside Shakespeare and
Sheridan, the English play with which the greatest number of
persons are familiar. Of post-Elizabethan comedies which preceded it in this country, those of Congreve alone can be named
by its side; and if it is less artistically constructed, somewhat less
carefully written, and much less witty, its moral purity and wholesomeness, its fund of good spirits, and its wonderful flow of
natural dialogue, are qualities that raise it almost to a level with
Love for Love or The Way of the World. Of succeeding comedies,
but one has approached it in lasting popularity-the School for
Scandal, produced four years later, by Sheridan.
No earlier poem of Goldsmith than Tie Traveller is known to
exist, for this piece belongs, at least in part, to the year 1757,
when the poet was wandering over the face of Europe on foot.
But it was not published until the last days of I764, in a quarto
form dated I765. In plan The Traveller is a perfect example of
an eighteenth-century didactic or descriptive poem in heroics.
The person who speaks the verses-Goldsmith himself in his
Swiss exile-sits pensively on an Alpine rock, and moralises on
the condition and the limitations of European society. The poem
pleased Goldsmith's contemporaries; Johnson, who deigned to
complete it with couplets of his own, declared it to be the best
poem since the death of Pope, but this was a mistake. The




320


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CH AP.


Traveller is far from being so good a poem as the Churchyard
Elegy or even the Vanity of Human     Wishes, but it is a delicate
and pathetic piece of idealism in highly-finished verses. It is far
inferior, however, to The Deserted Village, a poem   in the same
manner and measure,-and of about the same length, each
containing less than five hundred lines,-which Goldsmith published, also in quarto, in I770.   The descriptions in the later
piece are not merely superior in freshness and reality to those in
The Traveller, but they have a truth      of detail, an exquisite
simplicity and penetrative sweetness, which are hardly rivalled
elsewhere in the language:
" Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose;
There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came soften'd from below;
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung,
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool,
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind,
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind,These all in sweet confusion sought the glade,
And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.
But now the sounds of population fail,
No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,
No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread,
But all the bloomy flush of life is fled!"
The last ninety lines may be charged with a certain heaviness,
due to the requirements of the age, which, like Horace Walpole,
called for "edification " in its art; but if these are omitted, the
rest of the contrast between the smiling Auburn of old and its
hag-haunted ruins is in the highest and truest sense felicitious and
poetical. The heroic couplet was never employed, even by Pope
himself, with more melody, and there is an easy lightness about
the best descriptive passages which is hardly to be discovered elsewhere in English heroic verse.
With the single exception of the anap)ests of his latest years,




x


GOLDSMITH'S POEMS


321


the remainder of Goldsmith's poetry is inconsiderable. Edwin
and Angelina is absurd; even Shenstone could do this sort of
thing better, and Johnson's burlesque sums up all criticism. The
songs and lyrics are poor, always excepting the comic ballads of
"Mary Blaize" and the "Mad Dog," to which a fresh vitality has
been given by the sympathetic genius of Randolph Caldecott.
The best of Goldsmith's minor pieces is the very carefully polished
"Description of an Author's Bedroom ":
"Where the Red Lion, staring o'er the way,
Invites each passing stranger that can pay;
Where Calvert's butt, and Parsons' black champagne,
Regale the drabs and bloods of Drury Lane;
There, in a lonely room, from bailiffs snug,
The Muse found Scroggen stretched beneath a rug.
A window, patched with paper, lent a ray
That dimly showed the state in which he lay;
The sanded floor, that grits beneath the tread;
The humid wall, with paltry pictures spread.
The Royal Game of Goose was there in view,
And the Twelve Rules the Royal Martyr drew;
The Seasons, fram'd with listing, found a place,
And brave Prince William show'd his lamp-black face.
The morn was cold; he views with keen desire
The rusty grate unconscious of a fire;
With beer and milk arrears the frieze was scor'd
And five crack'd tea-cups dress'd the chimney-board;
A night-cap deck'd his brows instead of bay,
A cap by night-a stocking all the day!"
But after the publication of The New,Bath Guide, Goldsmith
adopted the ambling measures in which he wrote three posthumously-printed masterpieces, Retaliation (I774), The Haunch of
Venison (I776), and the Letter to Mrs. Bunbury (I837), and it is
in these of all his works in verse that he attains his easiest movement and most racy vocabulary.       In  The Traveller and The
Deserted Village, with all his brilliancy and charm, he was really
returning consciously to a form of writing which the world had
already decided to condemn.     In Retaliation, although clinging


III


Y




322


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CIHAP.


to the modes of his generation, his style was prophesying of a
freer and a more courageous period:
" Here lies David Garrick, describe me, who can,
An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man;
As an actor, confess'd without rival to shine,
As a wit, if not first, in the very first line;
Yet with talents like these, and an excellent heart,
The man had his failings, a dupe to his art;
Like an ill-judging beauty his colours he spread,
And beplastered with rouge his own natural red. 
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting;
'Twas only that when he was off he was acting.
But let us be candid, and speak out our mind,
If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind;
Ye Kenricks, and Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave,
What commerce was yours, while you got and you gave!
How did Grub Street re-echo the shouts that you raised,
While he was be-Rosciused and you were bepraised!
But peace to his spirit wherever it flies,
To act as an angel and mix with the skies;
Those poets who owe their best fame to his skill,
Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will.
Old Shakespeare receive him with praise and with love,
And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above."
On the whole, however, we must deny to the verse of Goldsmith
any great importance in the procession of English literature. It
presents us with certain very graceful and delicate numbers, but
ft marks no progress in the art of poetry.
Still less can be claimed for the satirist who towered for a
moment so high above his contemporaries, and who leaves upon
us the same impression of greatness as a knock-kneed giant at a
country fair may leave. The Rev. Charles Churchill (1731-1764)
has faded to the merest shadow of himself, and the writer who of
all others aimed at being virile, robust, and weighty, has come to
be regarded as the ideal of a pasteboard hero. Churchill was at
Westminster and would have been at Trinity; but he disqualified
himself at seventeen by marrying, and was forced by poverty to




x


CHURCHILL


323


prepare for the uncongenial profession of a clergyman. He held
curacies in Wales and Somerset, and in 1758 he came back to
London as a curate and, regardless of his cloth, plunged into a
succession of debaucheries which carried him off within six years,
at the age of thirty-three. His literary career was brief and full of
activity.  In 176I he began by publishing The Rosciad, a satire in
the manner of Dryden, on the actors of the day.    This piece was
short (it does not contain more than one thousand lines); it
lampooned the masters of the stage openly, by name; and it was
written in rough but very vigorous verse. To this rapidly succeeded Night (1762), addressed to Lloyd, The Prophecy of Famine,
an abominable assault upon the Scotch nation, and An Epistle to
William Hogarth, which drove its illustrious but thin-skinned
subject into a passion of distress:
" Virtue, with due contempt, saw Hogarth stand,
The murderous pencil in his palsied hand;
What was the cause of Liberty to him,
Or what was Honour? Let them sink or swim,
So he may gratify, without control,
The mean resentments of his selfish soul.
Let Freedom perish, if, to Freedom true,
In the same ruin Wilkes may perish too.
With all the symptoms of assured decay,,
With age and sickness pinch'd and worn away,
Pale, quiv'ring lips, lank cheeks, and faltering tongue,
The spirits out of tune, the nerves unstrung,
Thy body shrivell'd up, thy dim eyes sunk
Within their sockets deep, thy weak hands shrunk
The body's weight unable to sustain.
The stream of life scarce trembling thro' the vein,
More than half-kill'd by honest truths, which fell,
Thro' thy own fault, from men who wish'd thee well,
Can'st thou, e'en thus, thy thoughts to vengeance give,
And, dead to all things else, to malice live?
Hence, Dotard, to thy closet! Shut thee in,
By deep repentance wash away thy sin;
From haunts of men to shame and sorrow fly,
And, on the verge of death, learn how to die."




324


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


This was written to revenge Hogarth's plate of " The Times,"
into which Wilkes and Churchill, till lately friends of the painter's,
had been introduced with ridicule. The cruelty of the satire consisted in its truth, for Hogarth was actually dying, though he
lingered for another year.
Churchill was so ill-advised as to turn from the composition of
these pamphlets in heroic verse, which were at least readable and
brief, to a poem in no less than five thousand lines-The Ghost,
written in dull octosyllabic couplets.  He acknowledges in one
of his reckless passages of self-appreciation that he has " nothing
of books and little known of men," and his writings are tiresome
in their wholesale denunciation of persons and things which the
author is utterly unable to appreciate. He returned to the heroic
couplet, which suited his hasty talent best, in The Conference and
The Author, each I763; The Duellist (I763) is in the Swiftean
eight-syllable verse.  Churchill contrived to publish no less
than five separate poems during the last year of his life, one of
these, Gotham, being issued in three distinct instalments. He
became at last so truculent and foul that he dared not print his
name on his title-page, and copies of The Tines and Indepeendence
are often found to be franked with the poet's signature in ink.
The friendship of Wilkes was very unfortunate for Churchill, whose
character was much more liable to be injured by excess; but it
must be admitted that the patriot was faithful to his coarse associate and laureate. Churchill was visiting Wilkes in Boulogne,
when he died of fever, prematurely exhausted, in November I 764.
Feared and admired for his force, with his tempest of uncouth
and vituperative verse, his rattling facility, and his reckless swaggering courage to support him, Churchill exercised a genuine
power so long as he lasted, and to some of his contemporaries he
appeared another Dryden. But he was really scarcely even an
Oldham. His work is crude and unfinished to excess, he has
no ear and no heart, and he fails to please us the moment that
our surprise at his violence is over. His latest works are positively
execrable, whether in morals or in style, and he alternates in




X


THOMAS WARTON


325


them between the universal attribution of hypocrisy to others,
and the cynical confession of vice in himself. He is a very
Caligula among men of letters; when he stings his Muse to the
murder of a reputation, he seems to cry "Ita feri, ut se mori
sentiat." The happiness of others is a calamity to him; and his
work would excite in us the extremity of aversion, if it were not
that its veryviolence betrays the exasperation and wretchedness of its
unfortunate author.  Even more than Goldsmith, Churchill ex,
emplifies the resolute return to the forms of poetic art in vogue
before the age of Thomson and Gray. A satellite and boon-companion of Churchill was Robert Lloyd (1733-1764), who survived
him but a few weeks. Cowper, who was his schoolfellow, says
that Lloyd was "born sole heir and single of dear Matt Prior's
easy jingle." He collected his fables, epistles, and translations in
quarto in 1762.
Two minor versifiers, who could ill pretend to compete with
Goldsmith in sweetness or with Churchill in strength, nevertheless arrest the attention of the critic as having done more than
either of those more eminent writers to secure the progress of poetry.
Thomas Percy (I728-I8II), Dean of Carlisle and then Bishop
of Dromore, wrote some songs and tinkered up some ballads, but
his real contribution to literature was his epoch-making Reliques
of English Poetry, published in 1765. Thomas Warton of Basingstoke (I728-I790), the most inspired of a respectable family of
songsters, has, in like manner, immortalised his name, not by his
easy verses, but by his resuscitations of the forgotten masterpieces of the elder poets, in particular his Observations on Spenser
(I754), and his History of English Poetey (1777-78-8I),-books
which Johnson, who disliked such excursions, was shrewd enough
to acknowledge would " show to all, who should afterwards attempt
the study of our ancient authors, the way to success." Neither
Percy nor Warton escaped the strictures of Ritson, that "blackletter dog," a tame and affected pedant of no critical importance,
but far more careful as an editor than either of them. Warton, a
very gentle and enlightened scholar, was Professor of Poetry at




326


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


Oxford for ten years, and lectured, of course in Latin, on the
Greek pastoral poets. He eventually succeeded Whitehead for
a little while as poet-laureate.  As an original versifier he was
copious and careful, in the school of Gray, but not strong or vivid.
Johnson, with unerring skill, packed the whole of Warton's lyrical
work into the compass of one cruel copy of verses:
"Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new;
Endless labour all along,
Endless labour to be wrong;
Phrase that time has flung away,
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode and elegy and sonnet."
But he was prompt to add, "Remember that I love the fellow
dearly-for all I laugh at him."
The result of studies less complete and authoritative than
those of Percy and Warton, but undertaken in the same direction,
is seen in the work of a group of small poets, whose names once
occupied a prominent position in the history of English literature,
but are now slipping out of notice altogether. For auld lang
syne, their existence may here be briefly recognised, although not
one of them is really significant.  William  Falconer (I732-I769),
a common sailor in the merchant-service, published, in I762,
T/he Shzipwreck, a long heroic piece in couplets, in three cantos,
describing the disaster which attended a vessel in which he
himself had been wrecked, in Greek waters, in a style which is
partly pompous, partly crude with realism. The technical part of
Falconer's poem, expressed in such verses as these"The swelling stud-sails now their wings extend,
Then stay-sails sidelong to the breeze ascend;
While all to court the wandering breeze was placed,
With yards now thwarting, now obliquely braced";
or" To each yard-arm the head-rope they extend,
And soon their earings and their robans bend;




X


FALCONER


327


This task performed, they first the braces slack,
Then to the chesstree drag the unwilling tack;
And, while the lee clue-garnet's lowered away,
Taut aft the sheet they tally, and belay,"is said to be extremely accurate. Falconer was congratulated on
having rivalled Virgil in his own line, and was appointed purser
on board a royal frigate to encourage the others. But his triumph
was brief; his ship, "The Aurora," sailed away and was never
heard of again, and Falconer is supposed to have been
drowned off the coast of Mozambique, sinking, like his own
hero Albert, "amid the vast profound."   Of James Beattie (I735 -1803) it is enough to record that he published incoherent fragments of a mock-antique Minstrel, in the Spenserian stanza, in
1771 and 1774.    William Julius Meikle (or Mickle) (I734-I788)
essayed many things, and succeeded once with a tender ballad of
Cumnnor Hall, which had the honour of inspiring Sir Walter Scott
with the story of Kenilworth.  It was either Michael Bruce (I746 -1767), or his friend John Logan (1748-1788) who wrote a lyric
"To the Cuckoo," which is one of the freshest strains of unpremeditated song that meet us in the arid flats of late eighteenthcentury poetry:
"Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou messenger of Spring!
Now Heaven regains thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.
What time the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?
"Delightful visitant, with thee
I hail the time of flowers,
And hear the sound of music sweet
From birds among the bowers.
" The schoolboy, wandering through the wood,
To pall the primrose gay,
Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear,
And imitates thy lay.




328


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


" What time the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fliest thy vocal vale,
An annual guest in other lands,
Another Spring to hail.
" Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year!
"   could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make on joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring."
The influence of this little ode "about a gowk" on the genius of
Wordsworth was direct and unquestionable.
It would be inexcusable to linger over names even less than
these-names of versifiers who stood out for a moment above
the general level of mediocrity, but did nothing to stem or even
to hasten the final deluge. At the close of the third quarter of
the century the ruin of the classical school almost abruptly became complete. But we must pass on to consider the clever
artificer of verse, in whom the manner of Pope at once culminated
and became hopelessly ridiculous. The antithesis to Edmund
Waller is Erasmus Darwin (I73I-I802). The greater part of the
life of this remarkable man was spent at Lichfield, where he
practised as a physician, and reigned as a local king of letters.
From 1756 for nearly fifty years a clique of scientific and literary
people, male and female, surrounded the doctor, and gave emphasis
to the natural bent of his character; in the " Darwinian sphere,"
as Lichfield was called, the author of The Botanic Garden was
confidently pointed to as " equal in science, superior in genius "
to the "arrogant" Dr. Samuel Johnson.  It was in this provincial
hotbed that in 1771 was begun, slowly polished through nearly a
quarter of a century, and in I794, published, the Zoonomiia, Darwin's valuable treatise on the laws of organic life, a work which is
understood to foreshadow in a singular degree the discoveries of
his illustrious descendant.




X


DARWIN


329


While engaged in these scientific studies, Darwin, who had
cultivated with the success of an amateur an easy gift of verse, was
persuaded in I779 to embody the botanical system which bears
the name of Linnaeus in an elaborate poem, The Botanic Garden,
on which for many years he expended all his leisure moments.
The first instalment, containing the second part of the poem, The
Loves of the Plants, appeared in 1789; the first part, The Economy
of Vegetation, followed in I792; each contains four cantos.  The
Botanic Garden is written in heroic couplets, studiously imitated
from Pope, and, in a certain sense, polished to a degree that surpasses even the skill of that consummate artist. It is the extraordinary nature of Darwin's theme, however, that first attracts
attention.  At the opening of The Econony of Vegetation we find
the Goddess of Botany descending to earth; she is met by Spring,
attended by gnomes, nymphs, sylphs, and fire-spirits, to whom
she addresses, in pompous soliloquy, the four cantos that follow.
Electricity, water-nymphs in general, Captain Savery's steamengine, the circulation of the blood, terrestrial volcanoes, the
statuary of Mrs. Damer, azotic gas (represented as the Lover of
the Virgin Atmosphere), Mr. Wedgwood's porcelain, the Slave
Trade, the architectural taste of the Duke of Devonshire, the
mechanism of the common pump, the Tornado, the Plague in
Holland, and a great many other subjects, among which not the
least singular is an account of the Nuptials of Pure Air and
Inflammable Gas, make up the broidery of this extraordinary
work. The Loves of the Plants is yet more luxurious and unparalleled.  Here we have described "The Ovidian metamorphosis
of the flowers, with their floral harems," and witness in succession
the transformations of a great variety of plants, all described by
their Latin names, and introduced as living personages:
" Sofa'd on silk, amid her charm-built towers,
Her meads of asphodel, and amaranth bowers,
Where Sleep and Silence guard the soft abodes,
In sullen apathy, Papaver nods.
Faint o'er her couch, in scintillating streams,
Pass the light forms of Fairy and of Dreams."




330


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CIIAP.


The machinery of the poem becomes bewildering and incongruous
to the last degree; "The gnomes suspend the again silent lyre on
the shrine of Hygeia; the sylphs slacken the strings, and catch
the rain-drops on their shadowy pinions, whilst a Naiad prepares
the Tea-Urn"; at last, while the brain whirls with preposterous
images and learned array of fancy, the Goddess of Botany dismisses her gnomes and sylphs, and retires, leaving the nightingale
to carry on her descant.
Darwin's object was to instruct in physical science, and to
introduce to the abstruser forms of knowledge those who shrank
from the routine of an educational course. He thought that by
drowning it in gorgeous imagery, and by gilding it with what he
conceived to be poetry, he could make idlers swallow the pill of
vegetable physiology. He was, indeed, an extraordinary being,
and if verve, knowledge, a brilliant vocabulary, and boundless
intellectual assurance could make any man a poet, Darwin might
have been one. But he has no imagination, and almost every
fault of style. When he desires to seem glowing, his verses have
the effect of ice; his very versification, for which he was once
greatly admired, is so monotonous and so exasperatingly antithetical, that it reads like a parody of the verse of the earlier
classicists. His landscapes, his sketches of character, his genrepieces, his bursts of enthusiasm, are all of them ruined by his
excessive insincerity of style, his lack of genuine vivacity, and his
unceasing toil and tumidity of phrase. In his abuse of personation, as in many other qualities, he is the typical helot of
eighteenth-century poetry, and the great temporary success of
his amazing poem led to the final downfall of the school. To
rival the hortus siccus of Darwin was more than the most ambitious of grandiose poetasters could hope to do. It would take us
beyond the scope of the present volume to show how Darwin was
ridiculed by Canning and Frere in The Loves of the Triangles.
In the darkness of the final decline there appeared two
cometary lights which criticism finds it very difficult to assign to
any definite place in the poetical heavens. Of these Ossian is one,




X


CHATTERTON


33I


and Rowley the other.  To mention first that which seems of
essentially the greater value, and that of which we certainly know
the most, we find ourselves confronted with the problem of the
talent of the "marvellous boy," Thomas Chatterton (I752-1770),
whose fate appealed so directly to the sympathies of Wordsworth
and of Keats. He was the posthumous son of a Bristol schoolmaster, and was born, on the 20th of November, in the very
shadow of the noble minster of St. Mary Redcliffe. Before he
was seven years of age he began to show signs of an extraordinary
antiquarian precocity. His uncle was sexton of the great church,
" that wonder of mansions," and the child spent his leisure hours
in a chamber called the Muniment Room, where there existed
certain medieval parchments of little value. It seems certain that
at a very early age Chatterton began to imitate these documents.
When he was ten, he contributed poems to the local magazines;
the satire called "Apostate Will" belongs to his twelfth year,
and about this time (I764) he began to create the series of poetic
forgeries entitled the Rowley Poems.
In the summer of that year the child was heard to speak mysteriously of marvellous vellum MSS. which he had discovered in
Redcliffe Church, and already he found dupes among his adult
acquaintance. A surgeon named Barrett, and a conceited local
bibliophile, George Catcott, were the chief of those on whose
credulity the adroit boy played his tunes. To these patrons he
began to dribble out a series of astonishing transcripts from unknown poets of the fifteenth century-ballads, eclogues, interludes,
tragedies, and the like, the whole surrounding the figure of a
mythical T. Rowley, secular priest, historiographer, and laureate
of Bristol. In December I 768 he sent some of the Rowley poems
to the publisher Dodsley, who took no notice, and in March 1769,
at the age of sixteen years and four months, Chatterton wrote the
famous letter which gulled Horace Walpole, who presently formed
a suspicion of the truth, and was finally enlightened by the
superior critical taste of Gray. In May of the same year Elinoure
andJiuga, one of the best of the Rowley poems, appeared in a




332


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


magazine, and Chatterton began to be known to the editors of
journals. In April I770 he determined to leave Bristol, and to
try his fortune in London. He was tolerably successful at first,
and a clever burletta, The Revenge (not published until I795),
was brought out at Marylebone Gardens in July.    The Balade
of Char-tie, the latest of the Rowley poems, was written at the
same time, but was rejected by the editors.  Chatterton found
himself starving.  He had long contemplated suicide, and on
the 24th of August I770 he poisoned himself with arsenic in
his Brook Street lodgings. His dead body was found surrounded by torn fragments of his latest poetry and prose.  He
had lived only seventeen years and nine months.
Chatterton's work was not allowed to disappear. Public curiosity
in it grew, and when in I777 Tyrwhitt collected it for the first time
it excited a storm  of controversy.  Of the Rowley poems the
most important were found to be the Bristowe Tragedie, a ballad
on the death of Sir Charles Baldwin; ~Ella, a tragical interlude
in various lyrical forms, containing "As Elinor by the green
arbour was sitting," and "Oh sing to me my roundelay," but
mainly in a sort of Spenserian stanza; Goddwyn, a tragedy of
the same semi-lyrical kind; A Ballad of Charitie, in a seven-line
stanza; The Tournament, another "tragedy"; The Battle of
Hastings, a heroic poem, re-written in the pseudo-Spenserian
form; and a dramatic interlude called The Parliament of Sprites.
These stanzas form part of the dialogue in EIlla:
" The budding floweret blushes at the light,
The meads are sprinkled with the yellow hue;
In daisied mantles is the mountain dight,
The nesh young cowslip bendeth with the dew;
The trees enleafed, unto heaven straught,
When gentle winds do blow, to whistling din are brought.
"The evening comes, and brings the dew along;
The ruddy welkin shineth to the eyne;
Around the ale-stake minstrels sing the song;
Young ivy round the door-post doth entwine,
I lay me on the grass, yet, to my will,
Albeit all is fair, there lacketh something still."




x


CHATTERTON


333


So small was the critical experience of even lettered persons
in that age, when what professed to be medieval work came
under their attention, that it was by no means generally admitted
at first that these productions were wholly composed and deliberately presented as forgeries by the unaided hand of Chatterton.  But the controversy has now ceased, and as knowledge
of genuine fifteenth - century documents has become extended,
the absurdity or anachronism of the Rowley alphabet, rhymes,
phraseology, and metre has become evident to the most superficial student.  Professor Skeat, in I875, closed the whole
dispute, and placed Chatterton's work for the first time on a
firm basis, by modernising, or rather correcting, his preposterous spelling, under which his true character as a poet lay
hidden as the body of the cuttle-fish lies concealed in the profusion of its ink.   Chatterton's ignorance of real fifteenthcentury literature was profound; his knowledge was confined to
a slight acquaintance with Speght's Chaucer.   Almost all his
strange words have been traced to Kersey's Dictionary, and
from this very incorrect authority he compiled his odd Rowley
dialect. It is therefore desirable, if we wish to consider Chatterton as an original poet,-and this is the only claim he has upon
our consideration, —to remove the useless curtain of his bad
spelling, and to minimise his use of mechanical synonyms. This
is what his wonderful mock-antique spelling looks like:
"Whanne Sprynge came dauncynge onne a flowrette bedde,
Dighte ynne greene Raimente of a chaungynge kynde;
The leaves of Hawthorne boddeynge on hys hedde,
Ande whyte Prymrosen coureynge to the Wynde;
Thanne dydd the Shepster hys longe Albanne spredde
Uponne the greenie Bancke and daunced arounde
Whilest the soft Flowretts nodded onne hys hedde,
And hys faire Lambes besprenged on the Grounde,
Anethe hys Fote the brookelette ranne alonge,
Whyche strolled rounde the Vale to here hys joyous Songe."
It is possible that the reaction from supposing Chatterton to
have been the ignorant transcriber of ancient works of high




334


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


merit has led critics to an exaggerated opinion of the value of
verses now certainly written between I760 and 1770 by a child.
A very acute and learned authority has styled the Ballad of
Charitie "the most purely artistic work perhaps of the time ";
the saving "perhaps " suggesting that a doubt occurred to the
writer at the moment of his enthusiasm.  It is not to be denied
that, in relation of his years and equipments to the vigour and
bulk of his work produced, Chatterton is —let us say it boldlythe most extraordinary phenomenon of infancy in the literature
of the world. To an intellect so untrammelled, to a taste so
mature, to an art so varied and so finished at the age of seventeen,
twenty years more of life might have sufficed to put the possessor
by the side of Milton and perhaps of Shakespeare. But when
we come to think not of what was promised, but of what was
actually achieved, and to compare it with the finished poems of
Thomson and Goldsmith, of Collins and Gray, some moderation
of our rapture seems demanded. Our estimate of the complete
originality of the Rowley poems must be tempered by a recollection of the existence of The Castle of Indolence and The Schoolmistress, of the popularity of Percy's Reliques and the Odes of
Gray, and of the revival of a taste for Gothic literature and art
which dates from Chatterton's infancy. Hence the claim which
has been made for Chatterton as the father of the Romantic
School, and as having influenced the actual style of Coleridge
and Keats, though supported with great ability, appears to be
overcharged.  So also the positive praise given to the Rowley
Poems, as artistic productions full of rich colour and romantic
melody, may be deprecated without any refusal to recognise those
qualities in measure. There are frequent flashes of brilliancy in
Chatterton, and one or two very perfectly sustained pieces, but
the main part of his work, if rigorously isolated from the melodramatic romance of his career, is surely found to be rather poor
reading, the work of a child of exalted genius, no doubt, yet
manifestly the work of a child all through. His acknowledged
poems are more mature, but still less pleasing. His satires show




X


OSSIAN


335


how very little mental training or knowledge of the world were
needed to equip a Churchill.  Kew   Gardens is quite as good,
or as bad, as Gotham or The Times, while The Prophecy, of which
we give a couple of stanzas, is perhaps the most terse and vivid
political lyric of the age:
" When vile Corruption's brazen face
At council-board shall take her place;
And lords and commoners resort
To welcome her at Britain's court;
Look up, ye Britons! cease to sigh,
For your redemption draweth nigh.
"See Pension's harbour, large and clear,
Defended by St. Stephen's pier!
The entrance safe, by current led,
Tiding round Grafton's jetty-head!
Look up, ye Britons! cease to sigh,
For your redemption draweth nigh."
The Ossian problem has not proved so easy of solution as the
Rowley problem. The wild Gaelic rhapsodies which formed the
taste of so many would-be lovers of romance, from David Hume
to the great Napoleon, were first given to the world under very
suspicious circumstances by James Macpherson (I738-I796), an
ambitious Highland schoolmaster, in I760, in the form of a tiny
volume of fragments from the Erse language. The reading public
was very much interested in these supposed translations, and
certain friends of literature, including Boswell, "Douglas" Home,
Hugh Blair, and Lord Lynedoch, subscribed to enable Macpherson to travel through the Highlands and the Hebrides in
search of oral poetry. The result was the most important of all
the Ossian literature-the ancient epic of Fingal, in six books,
published in quarto in 1762. To this volume Macpherson prefixed
an essay on the antiquity of these verses, which he confidently
attributed to Ossian, a Gaelic bard of the third century. Sixteen
other pieces were appended to Fingal, to fill up the volume.  Of
these the most striking were Temora, Oilhoma, and Croma, but so
far as style and subject were concerned there was really very little




336


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


to choose between them all.   This was the sort of thing, a rhapsody in modulated prose:
" Pleasant is thy voice in Ossian's ear, daughter of car-borne Scroglan!
But retire to the hall of shells: to the beam of the burning oak. Attend to
the murmur of the sea: it rolls at Dunscaich's walls: let sleep descend on
thy blue eyes, and the hero come to thy dreams.
"Cuchullin sits at Lego's lake, at the dark rolling of waters. Night is
around the hero; and his thousands spread on the heath: a hundred oaks
burn in the midst; the feast of shells is smoking wide. Carril strikes the
harp, beneath a tree; his gray locks glitter in the beam; the rustling blast
of night is near, and lights his aged hair. This song is of the blue Togorma,
and of its chief, Cuchullin's friend."
Temora proving attractive, Macpherson enlarged it to eight
books, and published    it separately in  1763.  A   controversy
instantly sprang up between those who believed and those who
disbelieved in the authenticity of these works. For ten years, till
the very name of Ossian became a weariness, people argued up
and down.    Macpherson found a sturdy sceptic in Dr. Johnson,
and, becoming insolent, dared to provoke the sage with personal
threats, so that Johnson provided himself with a strong oaken
plant, headed with a knob as large as an orange.  As an original
writer Macpherson became more and more discredited, but as an
individual more and more wealthy; and, to prove that no honour
lies beyond the grasp of unprincipled mediocrity, he was buried in
Poet's Corner.
The vagueness and unreality of the natural phenomena described
in Ossian have long been felt to be one of the great objections to
its genuineness. No particulars are vouchsafed which enable us
to form a distinct idea of the dress or food of the warriors, of their
customs or religion, or even of the animal world in which they
moved, for the eagle and the whale positively exhaust the list of
Ossian's finned and feathered fauna. Again, the uncultured and
inartistic measures in which Macpherson's originals are composed
are understood to be wholly foreign to the genius of ancient
Gaelic poetry, which is ruled by a complex and elaborate metrical
system.   Moreover, such certainly genuine examples of Gaelic




X


SHERIDAN


337


verse as have been preserved, going back, not indeed to the third,
but possibly to the eleventh century, are archaically pure and
simple in style, with no trace of the turgid pomp of Ossian. But
most important of all, perhaps, is the statement of the best Gaelic
scholars, that the language of Ossian is a modern and mutilated
form of Erse which did not exist five hundred years ago. Macpherson was extremely disingenuous with regard to his documents,
and what he did at last produce was so much rubbish. Even
Dr. Johnson could gauge the antiquity of "the dusky manuscript
of Egg." Curiously enough, although Macpherson died suddenly,
his papers were searched in vain for a scrap of evidence for or
against his culpability.  In these days few will be credulous
enough to pin their faith to the misty songs of Ullin; but there
are probably some persons of intelligence, especially north of
the Tay, who still " indulge the pleasing supposition that Fingal
fought and Ossian sang."
Although the plan of this work excludes partial reference to
writers the main part of whose production belongs to the period
dealt with in the succeeding volume, an exception must be made
by a brief allusion to the plays of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(I752-I816), whose career as a dramatist practically closed when
he was twenty-seven years of age. His first appearance was with
Thle Rivals (I775), an amazing feat in comedy for a young man of
twenty-two, not much resembling life indeed, but full of whim and
wit and theatrical activity. In the same year Sheridan not merely
brought out a farce, but took the town by storm with the laughable opera of The Duenna. In this he owed something to
Wycherley, and he borrowed more from Vanbrugh in his comedy
of A Trip to Scarborough (I777); but in May of the same year he
suddenly achieved a very great and entirely original success with
what is perhaps the best existing English comedy of intrigue, The
Schoolfor Scandal. This play was produced by Sheridan in his
capacity of proprietor of Drury Lane Theatre. For years the
popularity of The School for Scandal "damped the new pieces,"
and it is still one of the safest favourites of the public. Two years


III


Z




338


TIlE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


later the brilliant extravaganza of The Critic closed the list of
Sheridan's dramatic successes. These dramas are among the most
familiar of all products of English genius. A period of only one
month separated the first appearance of The Rivals from that of
Le Barbier de Seville, and it is not unworthy of notice that Sheridan
is in a certain sense the Beaumarchais of the English stage. Each
of these playwrights marked the return of theatrical taste to the
Moliere ideal of conventional comedy, after a brief interval of
drame larnzoyante.  In Sheridan's case the direct inspiration
came, not so much from Moliere, as from the masters of English
Restoration comedy, whose merits he imitated with a happy exclusion of their worst faults. The decade from 1770 to 1780 was
a blossoming-time for English comedy, since it saw the performance not only of She Stoops to Conquer, and of Sheridan's pieces,
but of The WVest Indian of Richard Cumberland (I732-181I),
Three WIeeks after Marriage of Arthur Murphy (I730-1805), and
The Belle's Stratagem of Hannah Parkhouse (Mrs. Cowley —I743 -1809). These pieces are of various literary value, but they are all
in possession of a considerable share of the vis comica, and all
agree in making laughter and the amusement which arises from
brisk movement and incisive wit, rather than didactic moralising
or an appeal to sentiment, their principal aim. In other words,
so far as they went, they marked a distinct return to the pure
tradition of comedy.
While all the forms of serious poetry were declining in England, and the higher species of lyric for a time absolutely disappeared, verse of the native order and a strain of spontaneous
song began to flourish north of the Tweed. The scholars of Allan
Ramsay, with Hamilton of Bangour at their head, take hands
with the precursors of Burns through Alexander Ross of Lochlee
(I698-I784), who, at the age of eighty, collected his pastoral Doric
ditties in a volume called Helenore, in 1778. The poem which
gives its name to this volume, "Helenore, or the Fortunate
Shepherdess," seems to have been written before I740, in direct
rivalry with Allan Ramsay. It is in some respects unique, parti



x


ROSS'S " HELENORE "


339


cularly as being the most ambitious narrative work in Scots written,
perhaps, down to the present time; it is composed in the heroic
measure, and extends to more than four thousand verses.         An
elaborate story of homely Scottish life is told with some skill,
an almost Chaucerian simplicity, and much occasional picturesqueness, disguised by the rough dialect.      This is a portrait
of the heroine:
"Now Nory was the bonniest lassie grown
Was to be seen a-landward or in town;
Three halyears younger she than Lindy was,
But for her growth was meikle about a pass;
Her hair was like the very threads of goud,
First hang well down, then back in ringlets row'd;
Pure red and white, her mother o'er again,
And bonnier,-gin bonnier could ha' been.
Ye could na look your sairin' at her face,
So meek it was, so sweet, so fu' o' grace.
Her cherry-cheeks ye might bleed wi' a strae;
Syne was she swift and souple like a rae,
Swack like an eel, and calour like a trout."
Alexander Ross eked Helenore out with some good songs-in
particular, "Woo'd and married and a'," and "What ails the lasses
at me? "  But he wrote nothing so spirited as the Tullochgorum
of the Rev. John Skinner (I72I-I807), which Burns called "the
best Scotch song Scotland ever saw ":
"There needs na' be sae great a phrase,
Wi' dringing dull Italian lays;
I wadna gie our ain strathspeys
For half a hundred score o' 'em.
"They're douff and dowie at the best,
Douff and dowie, douff and dowie,
They're douff and dowie at the best
Wi' a' their variorum.
"They're douff and dowie at the best,
Their allegros and a' the rest,
They canna please a Scottish taste
Compar'd wi' Tullochgorum."




340


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


About 1765 there began to spring up all over the Lowlands
a tendency to put the homely events of life and its tender
emotions to untrammelled and tuneful ballad-measures. Tibbie
Pagan (I740-I82 ), the hunchbacked hostess of an Ayrshire alehouse, was the first to prophesy of the full music of Burns in her
sincere and thrilling " Ca' the Yowes ":
"Ca' the yowes to the knowes,
Ca' them where the heather grows,
Ca' them where the burnie rows,
My bonnie dearie."
In I77I Lady Anne Barnard (I750-I825) wrote her immortal
"Auld Robin Gray." Jean Adams, to whom is now commonly
attributed the honour of having enriched the language with " And
are ye sure the news is true," belongs to a slightly earlier period:
"Sae true his words, sae smooth his speech,
His breath's like caller air!
His very foot has music in't,
As he comes up the stair.
And will I see his face again?
And will I hear him speak?
I'm downright dizzie wi' the thought,In troth, I'm like to greet."
It is indeed remarkable how prominent a place was taken by
women of every rank in this revival of North British song. At first
the stream was often clouded by the conventional phraseology of
the age, as in "Lewie Gordon " we read, side by side with
"0 to see his tartan trews,
Bonnet blue and laigh-heel'd shoes,
Philabeg aboon his knee;
He's the lad that I'll gang wi'."such a Whitehead or Langhorne stanza as,
"This lovely lad of whom I sing
Is fitted to become a king;
And on his breast he wears a star,
You'd tak' him for the god of war."




X


FERGUSSON


34I


The only cure for such errors of convention was a complete
plunge into the pure local dialect. This was not fully understood
until it was exemplified in the practice of Fergusson.
Thirteen years before Burns arrived in Edinburgh there had
passed away in a Scotch lunatic asylum, under circumstances
acutely distressing, a youth whose temperament and genius had
been the foreshadowing of Burns's own. The memory of Robert
Fergusson (I750-I774), indeed, awakened in the breast of Burns
an almost excessive passion of sympathy, admiration, and regret.
It was the reading of Fergusson's little volume of I773 which had
induced Burns to take up the art of native poetry seriously, and
it has been happily said that the works of the earlier and lesser minstrel were thejuvenilia of this great poet. After Burns's ecstatic
praise, the reader turns to Fergusson with some disappointment.
A great part of his little book is filled with odes in the manner of
Collins, with eclogues, with Shenstonian ballads. His burlesque
heroics are better, and celebrate phases of Edinburgh society in
smart English couplets. But his genius is revealed by the narrow
section of his Scots Poems, and particularly by those lyrics in what
we think of as the Burns stanza, "Caller Oysters," " Daft Days,"
"Caller Water,"and "To the Tron Kirk Bell." In his "Hallow-Fair,"
his " Ode to the Gowdspink," and "Auld Reikie," he comes nearer
to Burns than any other Scottish poet of earlier or later times:
" At Hallowmas, whan nichts grow lang,
And starries shine fu' clear,
Whan fouk the nippin' cauld to bang,
Their winter hap-warms wear,
Near Edinburgh a fair there hauds,
I wat there's nane whase name is,
For strappin' dames and sturdy lads,
And cap and stoup, mair famous
Than it that day.
" Upo' the tap o' ilka lum
The sun began to keek,
And bade the trig-made maidens come
A sightly joe to seek




342


THE POETS OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


At Hallow-Fair, where browsters rare
Keep gude ale on the gantries,
And dinna scrimp ye o' a skair
0' kebbucks frae their pantries
Fu' saut that day.
" Here chapman billies tak' their stand,
And shaw their bonny wallies;
Wow! but they lie fu' gleg off hand
To trick the silly fallows;
Hech, sirs! what cairds and tinklers come,
And ne'er-do-weel horse-coupers,
And spae-wives fenzying to be dumb,
Wi' a' sic-like landloupers,
To thrive that day!"
Fergusson is familiar, however, as Burns never was, with the town
life of the poor in Edinburgh, and he is perhaps most himself
when he paints the world as he saw it from his desk in the office
of the Commissary Clerk. Not very great in himself, a knowledge
of Fergusson is yet a necessary introduction to the complete study
of Burns.
In closing a description of the poetry of an age, there is a
great temptation to draw the threads neatly together in an effective
conclusion. But in the case of the eighteenth century this can
be done only at the expense of truth. That system of poetics
which sprang into existence with Waller, became dominant under
Dryden, reached its pinnacle in Pope, and was continued by Goldsmith and Johnson, after being partially transformed by Thomson
and Gray, did not finish in any glow of Alexandrianism, nor reach,
except in Darwin, any final Gongorian extravagance. It simply
divided its current into shallow streams and sank in the desert,
leaving a dry district between itself and the approaching flood of
romanticism. In 1780 every poem which we have mentioned
was either produced or planned, and nothing in a similar style, of
even fifth-rate promise, was being given to the world.      The
names of the candidates for fame were such as John Wolcot,
Anna Seward "the Swan of Lichfield," the guileless Anna Letitia




X


THE NEW ERA


343


Barbauld, and the amorous votaries of Della Crusca. Even these
nonentities belong to a slightly later date. Of the great, or even
of the considerable poets of the new era., only two had hitherto
given any specimens of their art, and those most unimportant
ones, to the public; since of what was in store for English poetry
little could be guessed from The Olney Hymns or The Candidate.
If Cowper and Crabbe were still unknown, the rest of the chorus
was immature indeed. Blake, the visionary engraver's apprentice,
had still his Poetical Sketches snug in the table-drawer. Burns,
yet unambitious, was roving "where busy ploughs are whistling
thrang," a fresh-coloured farmboy and no more. Wordsworth
was a child of ten, Scott and Coleridge eight years old, Landor
five, Campbell three, Byron and the rest not born. So, partly by
the accidental shortening of the lives of the most eminent poets
of the passing age, since neither Gray nor Thomson nor Collins
nor Goldsmith nor Chatterton lived to be an elderly man, a calm
and fallow period was left between the extinction of the old and the
creation of the new school. The artificial poetry died of sheer
exhaustion, as last year's leaves fall off without waiting for the
new buds to push them from their places. When Cowper and
Crabbe, Wordsworth and Coleridge, were ready to try their new
effects, there was no resistance to their music. They piped upon
an empty stage to an audience whose appetite for song had been
whetted by a long interval of perfect hush, in a theatre where even
the nibblings of such a mouse as Hayley could be heard through
the portentous silence.




CHAPTER XI


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE
THE presence of two writers of incomparable splendour makes the
prose field of the close of our period seem more attractive than the
poetic. But in reality we trace the same elements in the former
as in the latter. The anxieties of the American War, the hollow
calm which preceded the French Revolution, the general interest
in and apprehension regarding purely political questions, seem
to have deadened the intellectual life of the country, or to have
diverted it into the channels of action. Between I770 and I780
the pamphlet once more became the vehicle of what was most
strenuous and impassioned in contemporary writing, and books,
though still numerous enough, did not, with a few exceptions,
possess much vitality. Johnson was dictator through all this
generation, and beyond it; and what was best in prose was supported, directly or indirectly, by his influence-directly in the
cases of Burke, Goldsmith, and Boswell; indirectly in that of
Gibbon. Magnificence of phrase, something of the tumid pomp
of Johnson, became requisite in all serious prose writing; and
both Gibbon and Burke added the glory of colour to the splendour
of form of the Lexicographer. In the hands of these two masters
the prose of the eighteenth century did not sink into insignificance,
as poetry did in the hands of the versifiers, but became so heavy
with gold and jewels, so radiant with massy ornaments of bullion,
that the first duty of the next generation was to simplify it, and




CHIAP. XI


GOLDSMITH


345


to reduce the volume of the sonorous sentences. In this regard,
Gibbon, who died unaffected in style by a coming post-revolutionary age, is more typical of the school than Burke, who carried
his impassioned rhetoric over into a new atmosphere, and became
almost a modern nineteenth-century writer.
Entirely untouched by this magnificence, which we have
suggested as characteristic of the period, is Oliver Goldsmith
(I728-I774), whose graceful poetry and cheerful comedies have
already occupied our attention, and who must now be considered
as one of the most delicate of English prose-writers. Goldsmith
was born in Pallas, in County Longford, on the Ioth November
1728, but spent his childhood at Lissoy, in Westmeath, the putative "Auburn" of The Deserted Village. In 1744 he went to
Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar, and enjoyed a wretchedly
undistinguished university career.  He was rejected for holy
orders, he proposed to run away to America, he tried the law, and
at last, in I753, he managed to be admitted into the Medical
School in Edinburgh. Goldsmith was idle, unattractive, and unpromising as a youth, and at six-and-twenty seemed to be as fine
an example of the hopeless ne'er-do-weel as any one might wish to
see. At that age he went over to Leyden, took a very obscure
and dubious degree at Louvain, and then, in imitation of Baron
Holberg, set out as a pedestrian flute-player, or, as Johnson put
it, "disputed his passage through Europe " for a year.
His first introduction to the purlieus of literature was made by
his appointment as proof-reader to the press of Samuel Richardson, while in I757 he engaged himself to work for the Monthly
Review of the bookseller Griffiths. Goldsmith's life was still for
a long while full of troubles; no man was ever slower in finding
work to which he could successfully set his hand. One appointment after another came to nothing; he tried at last to earn his
bread as an hospital mate, but was rejected in Surgeon's Hall as
not qualified. It was in his thirty-second year that his first original
book saw the light, a little Enquiry into the Present State of Polite
Learning in Europe (I759), a presumptuous, but very bright and




346


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


daring little treatise in criticism. Goldsmith now got plenty of
journalistic work to do, and in I762 he achieved a place in literature with the two volumes of his delightful Citizen of the World, at
first anonymous. In these letters he frankly imitated Montesquieu,
but in a manner so fresh and brisk, with so gay a vein of satire,
that this little book remains one of the classics of the century.
The biographers of Goldsmith, however, have rightly observed
that his success had become assured before this, and that the
"birthday of his life " was the 3Ist of May 1761, when Percy
brought the great Johnson, in a new wig, to sup at Goldsmith's
lodgings in Wine Office Court. From this moment to the close
of Goldsmith's life the great good tyrant of literature watched over
him like an elder brother, and took care that Goldsmith's delicate
and easily disheartened temperament should never be so strained
by dejection as to lack elasticity for the rebound. One of the
mysteries of eighteenth-century biography is the tangled web of
anecdote which attributes to Johnson the sale of a novel which
Goldsmith had in 1762 already planned, if not completely written,
The Vicar of Wakefield.  Exceedingly confused is the whole
history of this famous book, which seems to have been sold in
sections, at various times, to various publishers.  Meanwhile,
Goldsmith was engaged in hack-work of all kinds, and never again,
until the close of his weary career, was he free from the toil of
book-building, the compilation of readable, but above all, of saleable summaries of second-hand knowledge. The names of these
works, which do not belong to literature, although Goldsmith
signed their title-pages, cannot be expected here. The miracle
is that, doomed as he was to trail a pen in the service of these
freebooters of Grub Street, he ever found time or inclination for
the production of his private masterpieces. In I765 he arrests
our attention, not merely by his appearance as a poet, but by the
facts that he collected his agreeable Essays into a volume, and
that he moved from Islington into lodgings, first in Wine Office
Court, and then in the Temple, where he received his friends in
purple silk breeches and a scarlet roquelaure buttoned to the chin.




X1


" THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD "


347


Goldsmith was now fairly well known to the literary public,
and in March 1766 he became more so by the publication of his
belated novel, The Vicar of Wakefield. Mr. Austin Dobson has
lately proved that this famous book did not please so quickly and
so completely as has been taken for granted. Goldsmith received
~60 for it, but it hardly paid its expenses during his lifetime. It
has been pointed out that Goethe was one of the first critics to give
The Vicar its full and unstinted measure of praise, and to insist
on its recognition as not merely a pleasing or a well-written but
as an immortal story. Its place in literature is now fixed beyond all
possibility of dislodgment. In the sudden and unexplained decline of the English novel it is the only book of the second generation which holds its rank with the masterpieces of the first,
with the novels of Richardson, Fielding:, and Smollett. It is
deeply to be deplored that this fresh and bright, though immature,
Joseph Andrews of Goldsmith's was succeeded by no Tomn Jones of
its author's finished prime. But the entire body of Goldsmith's
works is a collection of specimens and fragments. In 1768 the
success of The Good Natur'd Man emboldened the improvident
Goldsmith to fit out another and a too splendid apartment in
Brick Court, and with this he was shackled until he died. Many
a child of twelve has a juster sense of the value of money, and
what it will or will not fetch, than this adult creature of genius.
Writing copiously and continuously, Goldsmith from this
time forth added nothing to prose literature which has lived.
Biographies and histories, "brevities" and. "abridgments," make
up the tale of his hurried and painful struggle to win enough to
keep his payments abreast of his engagements. He was an honest
soul, if ever there lived one, but he had none of the convenient
Philistine virtues, and all the good advice and sound sense of
Johnson could not keep him from dying i,2000 in debt. It has
been thought that he was describing himself when, in the Enquiry
into Polite Learning, he speaks of an author as one whose "simplicity exposes him to all the insidious approaches of cunning,
his sensibility to the slightest invasions of contempt, though




348


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


possessed of fortitude to stand unmoved the expected bursts of
an earthquake, yet of feelings so exquisitely poignant as to agonise
under the slightest disappointment."  In 1769 Goldsmith was
appointed Professor of History to the new Royal Academy; but
as this honour brought no emolument, he said it was like a pair
of ruffles to a man without a shirt. Almost the last event in his
troubled life was the production of She Stoops to Conquer in I773;
before the bustle which attended this play in its first success had
subsided, the author succumbed, in his forty-sixth year, to a complaint which fed with ease on his exhausted constitution. This
was on the 4th of April 1774.
In prose style, as in poetic, it is noticeable that Goldsmith
has little in common with his great contemporaries, with their
splendid bursts of rhetoric, and Latin pomp of speech, but that
he goes back to the perfect plainness and simple grace of the
Queen Anne men. He aims at a straightforward effect of pathos
or of humour, accompanied, as a rule, with a colloquial ease of
expression, an apparent absence of all effort or calculation. It is
remarkable that it is only in his Enquiry into Polite Learning,
which was written before he personally knew Johnson, that he
makes any pretension to the sesquipedalian bow-wow. Perhaps,
when he came to know Johnson privately, he was influenced less
by that great man's writings than by his simple, humorous, and
powerful conversation.  Few English writers, always excepting
Johnson, hold so prominent a place as Goldsmith in literary
anecdote. We know him as though we had lived with him, and
see the rough ugly face, with its bright smile, the awkward limbs
tricked out beyond the fashion with the Tyrian bloom of velvets
and of satins, the guttural Irish voice that tripped itself up upon
the hesitating lips,-in short, the living portrait of the wonderful
man who wore his heart upon his sleeve and found plenty of daws
to peck at it. No figure, for all its shortcomings, is more endeared
to us than his; and above all criticism of the poems, the prose, the
dramas, some of which, to say the truth, a less interesting person
than he might have composed, there rises the extraordinary sym



XI


" THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD "


349


pathy and curiosity with which we follow the individual Oliver
Goldsmith, and to this day our hearts are stirred in thinking of
him by the "sodalium amor" and the "amicorum fides" quite
as much as by the "lectorum veneratio."
His most sustained prose-work, The Vicar of Wakefield, is
founded in form upon the tradition of the novel as Fielding had
laid it down. It is, however, less carefully constructed than the
most shambling of that writer's stories, and shows a retrograde
step towards the incredible and conventional romances of an
earlier generation.  With these faults of construction, however,
The Vicar mingles such a modern sweetness and tenderness, such
grace of portraiture, and, above all, such inimitable humour, that
we never think of comparing it to its disadvantage with its stronger
and coarser forerunners. But if we set aside our familiarity with
it as a tale, and try to think of it afresh as a literary work, we
shall probably be inclined to admit that. it is more like an extended episode, in the Spectator manner, than a story, and that
Fielding would have discoursed in vain if the British novel, after
its superb start, had gracefully trotted back again into its stable
in this way. As Goldsmith wrote but one novel, we cannot tell
how far he might have succeeded in developing his powers of
narrative construction; but the happiest passages in The Citizen of
the World and the Essays give us the impression that a long and
realistic study of the development of emotion was beyond his
powers, or, which is perhaps the same thing, contrary to his inclination. He loved to draw the portrait of a single creation,
half-grotesque, half-pathetic,-a Beau Tibbs or a Man in Black,
a Dr. Primrose or a Moses,-and to finish it so highly that we
can see it to this day like a figure by some great Dutch master;
but he was not very successful in making these people move in
concerted action, and it is when he tries to set them about the
work of human life that we smile indulgently because we see that
they are puppets. To select a fragment from one of Goldsmith's
highly-finished episodes is difficult, and cannot be satisfactory.
From the trilogy of Beau Tibbs, from the three superb chapters




350


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


dedicated to that famous gentleman's gentleman in The Citizen of
the World, we may borrow a page:
" We waited some time for Mrs. Tibbs's arrival, during which interval I
had a full opportunity of surveying the chamber and all its furniture, which
consisted of four chairs with old wrought bottoms, that he assured me was his
wife's embroidery; a square table that had been once japanned; a cradle in
one corner, a lumbering cabinet in the other; a broken shepherdess, and a
mandarin without a head, were stuck over the chimney; and round the walls
several paltry unframed pictures, which, he observed, were all his own drawing.
' What do you think, sir, of that head i' the corner, done in the manner of
Grisoni? There's the true keeping in it; it is my own face, and though there
happens to be no likeness, a Countess offered me a hundred guineas for its
fellow; I refused her, for, hang it, that would be mechanical, you know.'
"The wife at last made her appearance, at once a slattern and a coquette,
much emaciated, but still carrying the remains of beauty.  She made twenty
apologies for being seen in such odious dishabille, but hoped to be excused, as
she had stayed out all night at Vauxhall Gardens with the Countess, who was
excessively fond of the horns.  'And, indeed, my dear,' added she, turning
to her husband, 'his lordship drank your health in a bumper.'  'Poor
Jack!' cries he, 'a dear good-natured creature, I know he loves me.  But
I hope, my dear, you have given orders for dinner; you need make no great
preparations neither, there are but three of us; something elegant, and little
will do,-a turbot, an ortolan, a — ' ' Or what do you think, my dear,'
interrupts the wife, ' of a nice pretty bit of ox-cheek, piping hot, and dressed
with a little of my own sauce?'  'The very thing!' replies he; 'it will
eat best with some smart bottled beer; but be sure to let us have the sauce
his Grace was so fond of. I hate your immense loads of meat; that is country
all over; extremely disgusting to those who are in the least acquainted with
high life.'"
The historian of literature will scarcely reach the name of
Edward Gibbon (I737-I794) without emotion. It is not merely
that with this name is associated one of the most splendid works
which Europe produced in the eighteenth century, but that the
character of the author, with all its limitations and even with all
its faults, presents us with a typical specimen of the courage and
single-heartedness of a great man of letters. Wholly devoted to
scholarship without pedantry, and to his art without any of the
petty vanity of the literary artist, the life of Gibbon was one long




XI


GIBBON


351


sacrifice to the purest intellectual enthusiasm. He lived to know,
and to rebuild his knowledge in a shape as durable and as magnificent as a Greek temple. He was content for years and years
to lie unseen, unheard of, while younger men rose past him into
rapid reputation. No unworthy impatience to be famous, no sense
of the uncertainty of life, no weariness or terror at the length or
the breadth of his self-imposed task, could induce him at any
moment of weakness to give way to haste or discouragement in
the persistent regular collection and digestion of his material or
in the harmonious execution of every part of his design. His life
was not long, but it sufficed to bring him his reward, and he survived to finish what is, no doubt, the most majestic solitary work
which comes before us for mention in the present volume. On
this work he was engaged without intern-ission for fifteen years,
and it must not be forgotten that to this period should properly
be added one at least as long during which the future historian
was charging his mind with the learning that afterwards sat so
lightly on his memory. No man who honours the profession of
letters, or regards with respect the higher and more enlightened
forms of scholarship, will ever think without admiration of the
noble genius of Gibbon.
Like Gray, Gibbon was the sole survivor of a numerous family
of children, and retained through life a certain physical sluggishness and the proofs of an inelastic constitution. He was born on
the 27th of April I737, at Putney. He was o.f gentle birth, and
would have been very wealthy, but that his father squandered the
family resources. Notwithstanding this last fact, however, Gibbon
was relieved all his life from the necessity of working for his
bread. Had it not been so, with his temperament, we may confidently say that he would never have become famous. His health
as a child was miserable; but at fifteen his complaints left him,
and his father immediately sent him, backward and ignorant as
he was, to Magdalen College, Oxford.  His experience of the
university was most unfavourable. He says: "I spent fourteen
months at Magdalen College; they proved the most idle and un



352


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


profitable of my whole life." The fact is that the universities
were, at that time, what Junius called them, "peaceful scenes of
slumber and thoughtless meditation."  At the age of sixteen
Gibbon became a Catholic, a step of which he has given us a
curious and minute description in his Memoirs. As the religious
disposition was never developed in him, we must suppose that it
was as a logician that he was converted. He says that he "fell
by a noble hand," that of Bossuet. The result of taking a step
so unusual in English society of that day was, that his father instantly exiled him to Lausanne, to the house of a distinguished
pastor, whose instructions were to reconvert Gibbon to Protestantism. At the close of I754 this task was successfully achieved,
but Gibbon continued to remain at Lausanne, where he was very
happy, for five years. It was during his Swiss sojourn that the
intense thirst for literary knowledge sprang up in him and began
to be satisfied. He read incessantly, and with fine judgment, not
only the whole range of classical, and particularly Latin authors,
but all that was worth reading in the recent literature of France.
He had been transplanted from England so early, and in so crude
a condition, that he threw off, to a degree not equalled by any of
his contemporaries, the insular prejudices of his age.
In 1758 Gibbon hastily returned to England, and in the
breach which this step made in the regular course of his studies
was induced to enter the militia, which proved a most absorbing
distraction. It has been thought wholly incongruous that the
author of the Decline and Fall should spend several years marching from a guard-room to a country inn, and then back again to
barracks; and he himself declares that the militia was unfit for
and unworthy of him. But he took a great interest in military
tactics, and carried Quintus Icilius with him when he camped
under canvas. The result is seen in the lucidity and vigour of
his battle-pieces. As he says in the Memoirs, " the Captain of the
Hampshire Grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless
to the historian of the Roman Empire."  While he was in the
militia, in I76I, Gibbon published, in French, his first work, an




XI


GIBBON


353


Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature, which, to say the truth, shows
but little promise. In January 17/63, being freed from the bondage of his marchings and countermarchings, Gibbon escaped once
more to the Continent.
Passing leisurely through France and Switzerland, Gibbon
reached Italy at last, and it was here that the central object of his
life suddenly flashed upon his consciousness. In a famous sentence he tells us "it was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764,
as I sat musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that
the idea of writing the Decline and Fall of the City first started
to my mind." He returned home, and from a phrase in the
Memoirs, we may believe that he very soon began to accumulate materials.  His life now became sequestered and disturbed. His father had wasted the family property, and the son
was threatened with poverty. We know little more of Gibbon's
career until I770, except that he started one or two unsuccessful
historical projects, which have survived in fragmentary form. In
the latter year his father died, and Gibbon withdrew from the
country, to keep house as a bachelor in what was then the West
End of London. Before making this change he plunged into
polemics by publishing a pamphlet of Observations on the Sixth
Book of the zEneid, designed, if possible, to ruffle the complacency of Warburton. When settled in London he began, for the
first time, to move in society, and to form literary friendships; but
his gifts do not seem to have awakened as yet any general notice.
From 1770 to 1773 Gibbon worked away quietly and secretly
on the three first volumes of his Decline and Fall. No one, not
even John Baker Holroyd, afterwards Lord Sheffield, and Gibbon's
most intimate friend through life (1741-1821), suspected what
was the magnitude or importance of this undertaking. On a subject so interesting as the inception of his masterpiece, no words
can equal in value those of the historian himself. He says: "At
the outset all was dark and doubtful; even the title of the work,
the true era of the decline and fall of the empire, the limits of
III                                      2 A




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THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of
the narrative." After seven years, he was sometimes inclined to
destroy all that he had written.  "Many experiments," he continues, "were made before I could hit the middle tone between a
dull tone and a rhetorical declamation. Three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I
was tolerably satisfied with their effect. In the remainder of the
way I advanced with a more equal and easy pace." Yet the difficulty in starting is still felt by the reader in a certain restlessness of
style and comparative lack of charm throughout the first volume.
From 1774 to 1783 Gibbon was in Parliament. His life as a
member and as a civilian is, happily, of no interest to us here, and
we need not be concerned to know that he undertook a public
career without ambition and pursued it without patriotism. He
was desirous of being no worse than his neighbours as a citizen of
England, but in truth he cut a sorry figure as the representative
of Liskeard, and as afaineant Lord of Trade. This was not his
world, and his laxity as a politician contrasts strangely with his
modesty, ardour, and unshaken sincerity as a scholar and man of
letters. Early in 1776 the first volume of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire, a large quarto, containing exactly as much
as two of the ordinary octavo volumes of the reprint, appeared in
London. It enjoyed an immense and instant success. It " was
on every table and almost on every toilet." In 1781 volumes
ii. and iii. appeared.  Superior as they were in charm  and
finish, weightier in judgment and purer in style, they did not
please so completely. The town was accustomed to the manner
that had seemed so unique, and the clergy, disgusted with the
tone of the last two chapters of volume i., had raised no inconsiderable cabal against the book. Gibbon thought it needful to
pause, and to reply, but he was not born to be a disputant. It
was more to the point that, though he revoked nothing, he
altered his tone towards Christianity, and the remainder of the
history contains nothing which can be compared for offence with
the too-famous fifteenth and sixteenth chapters.




XI


GIBBON


355


Finding it needful to retrench his expenses, in 1783 Gibbon
broke up his London house, and transported all his household gods to Lausanne, where an old and intimate friend, M.
Deyverdun, resided.  Here he was very calm and happy for
several years of strenuous, patient labour. Volume iv. was almost finished before he left London; v. and vi. were entirely
written in Lausanne. It was on the night of the 27th of June
1787 that, a little before midnight, rising from the last lines of the
last page, which he had just completed, he walked to and fro on
the moonlit terrace over the Lake of Geneva, and formulated
those reflections, at once so simple and so pathetic, which are
familiar to us all. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Emnp're,
the most magnificent trophy of historic art in the eighteenth
century, was now complete, to the most delicate carvings on its
elaborate architrave.  In the summer of 1788 the three last
volumes were published in London.
The rest of Gibbon's record is the story of physical collapse
and decline, the withering of the aloe which had put forth one
such momentous blossom. Friend after friend was taken from him;
the French Revolution passed over Lausanne, and in the summer
of 1793 the exhausted and invalided Gibbon made a painful flight
back to England. Old long before his years, and weighted with a
cluster of complaints, he passed away in London very stoically early
on the morning of the 15th of January I,794. In person Gibbon
was stout and grotesquely hideous; "his mouth, mellifluous as
Plato's, was a round hole nearly in the centre of his visage." Shy
and hesitating among strangers and those who were indifferent to
him, he shone as a talker in the best society, and Colman, who often
heard him, has an ingenious passage comparing him with Johnson
as a social figure.  "Johnson's style [in conversation] was grand,
and Gibbon's elegant; the stateliness of the former was sometimes
pedantic, and the latter was occasionally finical. Johnson marched
to kettledrums and trumpets, Gibbon moved to flutes and hautboys." Gibbon never married, but he preserved through life a
Platonic sentiment for the charming Suzanne Necker, the mother




356


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


of Madame de Stael; he was eminent for the warmth and
duration of his friendships, and for his loyalty to those who were
connected with him by family ties. In religion, after his early
escapade to Catholicism, he was a pronounced free-thinker, yet
this fact is rather divined from than revealed in his writings, where
he is usually careful to preserve all possible religious decorum.
The absence, however, of any apparent conception of what was
mystical and enthusiastic in the creed of the early Church is a
serious blot on a work, the historic temper of which might else
seem nearly perfect.
It is proper to compare Gibbon with Hume and Robertson,
but he is as different from them both as they are like one another.
With those his predecessors, when charm of language, variety of
reflection, and vigour of narrative are put aside, comparatively
little that is serious remains, except a certain freshness of vision
and clearness of tact that often enables each of them, but particularly Hume, to be right when he had taken no trouble to be so.
Gibbon has all these qualities, but he has one which is far greater.
As Professor Freeman has put it, " He remains the one historian
of the eighteenth century whom modern research has neither set
aside nor threatened to set aside."  His design, as the same
authority remarks, is encyclopaedic, and his execution so accurate,
so broad, so free of the distortions of prejudice, founded upon so
vast a knowledge of documents, that it can never become antiquated.  " Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read too."
Gibbon's great work falls into three divisions, at the end of
each of which it might, if needful, have closed with propriety,
namely, from the Antonines to Constantine, thence on to the Fall
of Rome, and thence to the Capture of Constantinople by the
Turks. In covering this vast area without sign of fatigue, Gibbon
showed the scope of his genius; but to enter in the smallest degree
into any analysis of the work as history would here be out of
place. As to the style of Gibbon, opinion has been strangely at
variance,-strangely, we say, because it seems a style about which
a sharply-defined judgment might appear inevitable. It might be




XI


GIBBON


357


expected that friends and foes would unite to admit that it is
singularly correct, full, and harmonious, too pompous upon trivial
occasions, too ornate in matters of common narrative, somewhat
lacking in variety and sprightliness, yet for general historic purposes superb in its richness of colour and unflagging energy of
movement. This passage is one out of many which dilate on the
splendours of the Eastern Empire in the tenth century:
"The economy of the Emperor Theophilus allowed a more free and
ample scope for his domestic luxury and splendour. A favourite ambassador,
who had astonished the Abbassides themselves by his pride and liberality, presented on his return the model of a palace, which the Caliph of Bagdad had
recently constructed on the banks of the Tigris.  The model was instantly
copied and surpassed: the new buildings of Theophilus were accompanied by
gardens, and by five churches, one of which was conspicuous for size and
beauty; it was crowned with three domes, the roof of gilt brass reposed on
columns of Italian marble, and the walls were incrusted with marbles of
various colours.  In the face of the church, a semicircular portico, of the
figure and name of the Greek sigma, was supported by fifteen columns of
Phrygian marble, and the subterraneous vaults were of a similar construction.
The square before the sigma was decorated with a fountain, and the margin of
the bason was lined and encompassed with plates of silver.  In the beginning
of each season, the bason, instead of water, was replenished with the most
exquisite fruits, which were abandoned to the populace for the entertainment
of the prince.  He enjoyed this tumultuous spectacle from a throne resplendent
with gold and gems, which was raised by a marble staircase to the height of
a lofty terrace...  The long series of the apartments was adapted to the
seasons, and decorated with marble and porphyry, with painting, sculpture,
and mosaics, with a profusion of gold, silver, and precious stones.  His
fanciful magnificence employed the skill and patience of such artists as the
times could afford: but the taste of Athens would have despised their frivolous
and costly labours; a golden tree, with its leaves and branches, which sheltered
a multitude of birds, warbling their artificial notes, and two lions of massy
gold, and of the natural size, who looked and roared like their brethren of the
forest."
As the work advances, the style improves; the faults which are
commonly attributed to Gibbon are confined in large measure
to his first volume, and when he was fairly sailing on the deep
waters of his theme he proved himself a master in all the craft of
language.




358


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


It is peevish to refuse credit to those who do things admirably
well, because there is something incomprehensible in their capacity.
Those who think that James Boswell (I740-I795) was a vain and
shallow coxcomb of mediocre abilities, without intellectual gifts
of any eminence, are confronted with the fact that this supposed
fool was the unaided author of two of the most graphic and most
readable works which the eighteenth century has left us. It is
right that Boswell's claim to a high independent place in literature
should be vindicated, and the fact is that, after Burke and Goldsmith, he is by far the most considerable of the literary companions of Johnson.   That he has risen into fame on the
shoulders of that great man is true, but the fact has been
insisted upon until his own genuine and peculiar merits have
been most unduly overlooked. He was of good family, a Scotchman from Auchinleck in Ayrshire. He had long been an admirer of the Sage, when, in his twenty-third year (May i6, 1763),
he had at last the happiness of meeting him in Davies's backparlour. On that very day he began to take notes of Johnson's
conversation.  He pleased Johnson at once, and was promptly
taken into his awful familiarity, with the result that we all know,
and should all be thankful for. In 1768, Boswell, having visited
Pascal Paoli, the patriot-bandit, in his home, published An
Account of Corsica, the personal part of which is far better
written than the hasty critic is wont to acknowledge. In 1773
Johnson took unusual pains to insist that Boswell (as " the most
unscottified of Scotchmen") should be elected into the club, and
later in the same year the friends set out on their extraordinary
visit to Scotland. Boswell kept a minute diary of this excursion,
and published it in 1785 as the Journal of a Tour to the
Hebrides. Six years later, in 179I, he produced, in two volumes
quarto, his famous masterpiece, the Lzfe of Samuel Johnson,
LL.D., dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds. The universal verdict
of mankind has placed this work among the five or six most
interesting and stimulating of the world's books.
Biography was one of the latest branches of literature to




XI


BOSWELL


359


blossom  in this country.    There were interesting and affecting
lives of eminent men produced, no doubt, such as Walton's Donne
and Herbert, Sprat's Cowley, and Oldys'sRa/lei/z; but no biography,
in anything like the full modern sense, had been published in this
country till William  Mason (1725-1797) published his Life and
Letters of Gray in I775.     This timid and imperfect work, the
system of which embraced the correspondence of the subject of
the memoir, was the model on which Boswell constructed his
infinitely bolder and more powerful work. The theory of this new
kind of biography was, that the subject should as far as possible
tell his own story and throw light upon his own character, instead of forming a central nodus round which the eloquence and
piety of the biographer should crystallise in fine language. Bold as
the experiment was, Boswell rose at once to the summit of success. The faculty of forming and retaining impressions of social
phenomena was developed in him to an extraordinary degree, and
if Boswell had chosen to describe the rest of his world as searchingly as he has observed Dr. Johnson we should have a matchless collection of eighteenth-century portraits. Meanwhile this
is how the lexicographer lives in Boswell's photography:
"That the most minute singularities which belonged to him, and made
very observable parts of his appearance and manner, may not be omitted, it
is requisite to mention, that, while talking, or even musing as he sat in his
chair, he commonly held his head to one side towards his right shoulder, and
shook it in a tremulous manner, moving his body backwards and forwards,
and rubbing his left knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand.
In the intervals of articulating he made various sounds with his mouth, sometimes as if ruminating, or what is called chewing the cud, sometimes giving
a half-whistle, sometimes making his tongue play backwards from the roof of
his mouth, as if clucking like a hen, and sometimes protruding it against his
upper gums in front, as if pronouncing quickly under his breath, too, too, too:
all this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but more frequently
with a smile.  Generally, when he had concluded a period, in the course of
a dispute, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a whale. This, I suppose, was
a relief to his lungs; and seemed in him to be a contemptuous mode of expression, as if he had made the arguments of his opponent fly like chaff
before the wind.




360


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


" I am fully aware how very obvious an occasion I have given for the
sneering jocularity of such as have no relish of an exact likeness, which, to
render complete, he who draws it must not disdain the slightest strokes. But
if witlings should be inclined to attack this account, let them have the
candour to quote what I have offered in my defence."
T'here has never been since, and there probably never will be, seen,
a literary portrait so rich, so well-proportioned, and so detailed.
Johnson lives in Boswell's pages, and lives at full length.
Among Boswell's qualities as a narrator, his dramatic power
ranks very high.  In rendering long dialogues, the minutiae of
which cannot have lingered in his memory, he seldom fails to
preserve the utmost propriety of speech, the utmost regard for
what would be characteristic in the mouth of each speaker.
Johnson praised his "justness of discernment and fecundity of
images "; Boswell observed very exactly, and with a happy regard
for the picturesque touches of daily action. We feel that he did
not live among savages in Scotland and rakes in England to no
purpose; no man of that age saw the ground about his own feet
more clearly, with less prejudice, less obscured by reverie, or
vanity, or indifference.  His style, from  a man who idolised
Johnson, and could reproduce "the bow-wow" so faithfully, is
remarkably simple and unstudied; he is as free as Goldsmith is
from imitation of their common idol. Boswell was petulant and
foppish, excessively jealous of the attentions other men received
from Johnson, but at bottom as simple and honest as he was
vivacious.  The adjective "clubbable" was invented to describe
him; his "good humour and perpetual cheerfulness" were proverbial.  His great originality as a literary artist is best proved
by the fact that although every biographer since his day has imitated him, not one has successfully competed with him. It is
really not fair to Johnson to suggest a comparison between the
two existing accounts of their Tour to the Hebrides, but it is a
parallel which those provoke us to make who insist on giving all
the praise to Johnson and all the contempt to Boswell.
The decline of fiction during this period was complete, and




XI


FANNY BURNEY


36i


was the more emphasised from the fact that so brilliant a school
of novelists had adorned the preceding generation. The portraiture of real life, of the tragi-comedy of contemporary existence,
gave way to an affected pathos and a morbid excess of sentiment.
The success of Sterne, imperfectly understood by a host of feeble
imitators, naturally led to this result, and at the head of the
parodists of Sterne stood Henry Mackenzie (1745-1831), whose
life was prolonged so as to touch those of Mr. George Meredith
and Mr. Blackmore. Although wedded to the following of Sterne,
Mackenzie affected the moral earnestness of Richardson also, and
the characters in his three principal fictions move, meekly robed
in gentle virtue, through a succession of heartrending misfortunes.
There is no observation of life, no knowledge of the world, in Mackenzie's long-drawn lachrymose novels of feeling. The personal
affection of Sir Walter Scott for this amiable man has done much
to preserve Mackenzie's memory.
Dr. Johnson greatly admired the,/Memoirs of Miss Sydney
Biddui/ph, a tragic novel of manners written by Frances Chamberlaine (I724-I766), the wife of Thomas Sheridan, and mother of
the dramatist.  Johnson wrote to her, "Madam, I know not
that you have a right to make your readers suffer so much."
For the lively wife of " Sherry the dull" is as tearful in her novels
as Mackenzie is in his. Just after the close of this generation,
a whole group of lively novelists, all tinged with the new spirit
of romance, suddenly sprang into prominence, but none of
these writers, "Zeluco" Moore, Beckford, Bage, Holcroft, Sophia
Lee, or Ann Radcliffe, belongs to the present volume. We may,
however, claim to deal here with Frances Burney (I752-I840),
whose Evelina, the one great comic novel between Smollett and
Jane Austen, appeared in I778. Miss Burney was the daughter
of Dr. Burney, the historian of music. She had observed the
droll and farcical side of life with great acumen, and the frank
laughter which her pages provoked was indescribably welcome
after the tear-inspiring episodes of the Sensibility school. It is to
be desired that Miss Burney had remained the author of one book.




362


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


Her Cecilia is only read because it is by the creator of Evelina,
and her Camilla is never read at all. Her life became cramped
and tiresome, and the natural vivacity of her mind was subdued by
the intolerable boredom of court servitude.   In 1793 she became
Madame d'Arblay, and at the close of her long life she left
behind her five volumes of Diary and Letters, which are paradoxically lively and tiresome at the same time.
The sprightliness of Fanny Burney is well exemplified by her
account to Windham of the effect produced upon her own nerves by
Burke's oration, in February 1788, at the trial of Warren Hastings:
" Mr. Burke's opening had struck me with the highest admiration of
his powers, from the eloquence, the imagination, the fire, the diversity of
expression, and the ready flow of language with which he seemed gifted,
in a most superior manner, for any and every purpose to which rhetoric
could lead. And when he came to his two narratives, I continued; when he
related the particulars of those dreadful murders, he interested, he engaged,
he at last overpowered me; I felt my cause lost.  I could hardly keep
on my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance towards a man so accused
as Mr. Hastings; I wanted to sink on the floor, that they might be saved so
painful a sight. I had no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in
his favour remained.  But when from his narration Mr. Burke proceeded to
his own comments and declamation,-when the charges of rapacity, cruelty,
tyranny, were general, and made with all the violence of personal detestation,
and continued and aggravated without any further fact or illustration,-then
they appeared more of study than of truth, more of invective than of justice;
and, in short, so little of proof to so much of passion, that in a very short
time I began to lift up my head, my seat was no longer uneasy, my eyes were
indifferent which way they looked, or what object caught them, and before I
was myself aware of the declension of Mr. Burke's powers over my feelings,
I found myself a mere spectator in a public place, and looking all around it,
with my opera-glass in my hand!"
History was magnificently represented in this generation by
Gibbon, and no other name even approaches his in magnitude.
But few miscellaneous writers of the time have retained anything of
their fame. John Jortin (I698-1770), besides being a writer of
elegant sermons in an age when pulpit literature had greatly decayed, may be remembered as the author of various contributions
to ecclesiastical history, in which he showed liberality of thought.




XI


JUNIUS


363


Jortin was persistent and fairly successful in controversy with
Warburton. Jean Louis Delolme (I745-I807), a Genevese lawyer, wrote a superficial but very enthusiastic work on The English
Constitution, which he brought to this country, and published in
a remarkably good English version of his own in 1775. A Scottish "moderate," Dr. George Campbell (I719-1796) was long
famous as apparently the most successful of the many opponents
of Hume; his Dissertation on Miracles in 1763 was the only
attack which the philosopher deigned to answer in correspondence.
Campbell was a man of great intellectual liberality, and he rose to
be the leading spirit among the Scotch clergy of his time; he
was Principal of Marischal College, Aberdeen. The labours of
Joseph Priestley (I733-I804), the unitarian natural philosopher of
Birmingham, of Richard Price (I723-I79I), and of Tom Paine
(I736-I809) had begun before I780; but the real significance of
these revolutionary forces, so far as they concern literature at all,
belongs to a subsequent period.
As was natural in an age of extreme political uneasiness, the
publicist became more and more a power in the state as the
century wore on. Between January 1769 and 1772 the attention
of the entire public was riveted by the appearance of a rapid series
of letters in the "Public Advertiser," signed Junius, which surpassed
anything which had been previously known in ferocity of criticism. They were issued in support of Wilkes, as a constitutional
hero, and in vehement opposition to the Government, especially
to Grafton, North, and Mansfield. All atte~nrs to discover the
perpetrator of these outrages was in vain; as Lord North said,
"the great boar of the wood, this mighty Junius, broke through
the toils and foiled the hunters." Thirty-seven persons have at
different times been suggested as candidates for the mask of
Junius, and the pseudonymity of these Letters was preserved
with such astonishing adroitness and success that to this day
it is not every careful student of the subject who is persuaded that they were written by Sir Philip Francis (I740-1818),
a clerk in the War Office. The literary value of Junius seems




364


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


to have been absurdly overrated. The letters are vigorous, of
course, but their malignity is atoned for or relieved by no philosophical enthusiasm, while the indignation itself appears to be
personal first and patriotic afterwards.  It is an instance of the
difficulty which attends contemporary criticism that Johnson, so
eminent a judge of language, thought that Junius was Burke. To
us it seems amazing that brass should thus be mistaken for gold.
At the same time the Letters have "polish," a quality for which
Francis preserved an exaggerated affection; the balance and
modulation of their merciless sentences may still please the ear.
The principal objects of the hatred of Junius were the king
and the Duke of Grafton, but perhaps the loftiest flights of
his sarcastic genius are those in which he wheels and swoops
around the figure of the Duke of Bedford, the Verres of Woburn,
in attacking whom Junius attains for a moment a veritable splendour of invective:
" Let us consider you, then," he says to the tormented Duke, on the g9th
of September 1769, "as arrived at the summit of worldly greatness; let
us suppose that all your plans of avarice and ambition are accomplished, and
your most sanguine wishes gratified in the fear as well as the hatred of the
people. Can age itself forget that you are now in the last act of life? Can
gray hairs make folly venerable? and is there no period to be reserved for
meditation and retirement? For shame! my Lord: let it not be recorded
of you, that the latest moments of your life were dedicated to the same
unworthy pursuits, the same busy agitations, in which your youth and manhood were exhausted. Consider that, although you cannot disgrace your
former life, you are violating the character of age, and exposing the impotent
imbecility, after you have lost the vigour, of the passions.
"Your friends will ask, perhaps, Whither shall this unhappy old man
retire? Can he remain in the metropolis, where his life has been so often
threatened, and his palace so often attacked? If he returns to Woburn,
scorn and mockery await him. He must create a solitude round his estate,
if he would avoid the face of reproach and derision. At Plymouth, his
destruction would be more than probable; at Exeter, inevitable. No honest
Englishman will ever forget his attachment, nor any honest Scotchman
forgive his treachery, to Lord Bute. At every town he enters he must
change his liveries and his name, Whichever way he flies, the hue and cry
of the country pursues him."




XI


BURKE


365


While Junius and John Wilkes, with many others, were
the active sharpshooters of Whig journalism, the Tories upon
their side sought in vain for a stirring mouthpiece in the press,
and found nothing better adapted to their purpose than an
occasional sonorous pamphlet from the pen of Dr. Johnson, in
which the advantages of blind subordination to the will of the
sovereign were expanded in a strain that was not strictly popular.
But whether Whig or Tory, there was only one really great
political writer then in England, and with some brief summary of
his career and work we may close this chapter of our history.
As the minor political literature of the close of the eighteenth
century passes more and more into the background, the remnants
of the eloquence of the master-politician become more and more
the objects of critical panegyric. It now surprises no one to hear
it maintained that Edmund Burke (I729-I797) was the greatest
prose-writer of the century. Some critics have not hesitated to
place him at the absolute summit of English prose. With all due
enthusiasm for the majestic merit of his style, that extremity of
praise will not be reached here. Notwithstanding all its magnificence, it appears to me that the prose of Burke lacks the variety,
the delicacy, the modulated music of the very finest writers. When
Mr. Leslie Stephen applauds the "flexibility" of Burke's style, he
attributes to him the very quality which to my ear he seems most
to lack. A robe of brocaded damask is splendid, sumptuous, and
appropriate to noble public occasions, but it is scarcely flexible.
To be a perfect prose-writer, a man must play sometimes upon
thrilling and soul-subduing instruments, but Burke never takes the
trumpet from his lips. To those few who may think him humorous, I resign him in despair; and surely still fewer will be found
to think him pathetic. The greatest of English prose-writers, we
may be sure, would be found to have some command over laughter
and tears, but Burke has none. The ferocity and ungoverned passion of his attacks, on the other hand, are not critically distasteful to me. They seem to correspond with a conception of the man
as a filleted as well as togated senator, a certain priestly passion




366


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


being fitly mingled with this parliamentary zeal. Without such
outbursts his rich rhetoric might seem too polished to be quite
sincere. In short, the prose of Burke may be felt to be the finest
expression of a particular phase of the eighteenth-century minda phase from which all the coarse fibre of the Renaissance, to its
very last filament, had been extracted, where all is civilised, earnest,
competent, and refined, but where the imagination is almost too
completely under control.  So much may, in the face of the
modern idolatry of Burke, be suggested, without weakening in any
degree the effect which his unexampled majesty of rhetoric must
ever, and probably to an increasing degree, exercise upon those
who are moved by the loftier parts of language.
It is with some hesitation that I allow myself the pleasure of
closing my survey with this noble figure, since in 1780 Burke was
still comparatively undistinguished as a writer.  His greatest
triumphs of style succeed the French Revolution, and he may
therefore be considered as a resident in the domain of my successor. But Burke, though his genius developed late, belonged to an
earlier generation, and can properly be no more divided from the
immediate circle of Johnson than Boswell, Goldsmith, or Reynolds.
He learned to write between 1750 and 1760, and he belongs to the
group of men whom circumstances encouraged to blossom into
literature at that time. It should perhaps here be insisted upon
that Burke's figure must of necessity appear dwarfed and distorted
in a mere history of literature. He belongs to the history of
politics, and to the history of thought, and in each of these he
holds a more commanding place than in pure literature. For a
great part of his career he is absolutely submerged by the practice
of political life, and during these years it would be a licence to
follow him minutely in such pages as these. There is no greater
instance of the difficulty of treating in purely literary criticism a
writer whose first object was not literary expression. To pass
over into a consideration of the general work of such a man would
be to go beyond the limits of our inquiry, yet to keep it out of
sight seems to be doing less than justice to his genius. In these




XI


BURKE


367


days, however, the reader may be presumed able and willing to
fill up the blanks in Burke's intellectual portrait.
It is not quite certain that it was on the I2th of January I729
that Burke was born, but the event undoubtedly took place in
Dublin, of which city or its neighbourhood he was a resident until
he became of age. At Trinity College he read much, but on lines
of his own, and had little ambition for academic honours. In
1750 he came to London, to study law in the Middle Temple;
and here for some years he almost entirely disappears from
view.  All we know is -what he tells us himself, that during
this part of his life he was "sometimes in London, sometimes
in remote parts of the country, sometimes in France." He gave
hostages to society in 1756 by marrying a wife, and by making his
first essays in literary publication. These two volumes bear little
weight in relation to Burke's subsequent and far more authoritative writings, but their positive cleverness was interesting enough.
The Vindication of Natural Society professed to be a letter to a
lord, by a late noble writer-that is to say, by Bolingbroke, whose
sentiments it held up to ridicule in an exceedingly close and temperate parody of his style. It has excited surprise that so original
a writer as Burke should make his first appearance in the very
dress of so second-rate a rhetorician as Bolingbroke. But it must
be recollected that in 1756 Bolingbroke was considered absolutely
first-rate, and that it was no slight exercise in self-education for a
young man to force himself to forge the admired style of a great
favourite with so much success as to take in the St. Johnians
themselves. Even thus early Burke looked upon any relaxation of
the curb of government on the popular mouth as being not less
infamous than perilous; and it really is astonishing that there
should have been readers of the Vindication who did not perceive
that the arguments in that work were absurd, and the whole thing
a piece of polemic by parody. It is very interesting to those who
have mastered the needful elements of irony to trace in this his
first publication the same burning zeal for constitutional forms of
accepted rule which inspired the great speeches of his later man



368


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


hood.  One unfortunate result of this early pastiche has been
noted by Mr. John Morley, namely, that Burke never got entirely
clear from, the influence of the style of Bolingbroke.
To the same year belongs the once-famous but now little consulted mesthetic Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. This essay,
in a somewhat dark and tentative manner, opened up a new field of
speculation, and has been regarded as containing the germ of all later
art-criticism. The Polymetis of Joseph Spence (I698-I768), which
had appeared nine years before, had enjoyed a success which its artless ignorance of the principles of art had not deserved. The field
was open to Burke, but public ignorance on the subject was excessive, and his own artistic experience ludicrously limited. Thirteen
years were to elapse before Reynolds was to deliver his first Discourse before the students of the infant Royal Academy. Meanwhile Burke's Inquiry had the honour of attracting the attention
of Lessing, who is said to have just read it through at Breslau
when he began his Laokoon in 1760. It is claimed also that this
essay had a powerful influence on the mind of Kant; and in
Germany the Sublime and Beautdifu has always been held in
greater respect than in England, where subsequent art-criticism
has tended to become more empirical and less philosophical than
on the Continent. In I759 Dodsley started The Annual Register
under Burke's editorship; and in I76I we find Horace Walpole
considering that Mr. Burke is too much exercised with "authorism."  The reproof is strange, for Burke's first period of authorism
had by that time closed; and, immersed in active affairs, he did
not resume his pen for many years.
Certain pamphlets, of an occasional nature, and inconsiderable
size, are the next publications of Burke's which we meet with. In
these we find that his style has ripened to a more independent
eloquence, and that he has become a master of the arts of rhetoric.
His Observations on the Present State of the Nation, in 1769, and his
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, in I770, revealed
the young Whig statesman as by far the most effective publicist
of the age. These tracts had nothing of the rancour of Junius or




XI


BURKE


369


of Wilkes, but they hit harder, because the tone of them was infinitely more elevated and philosophical.  Yet even in these
admirable pamphlets, and especially in the Present Discontents,
the modern student may discover faults which were seldom entirely absent even from the most rapid of Burke's polemical
writings. The author is too long getting under weigh; in his
anxiety to be superior to all petty considerations, he is too particular and too verbose; and, to pass from style to subject, he is
already too obviously alarmed at the dangers which threatened
the prestige of rank and office.  It has been noted that
Burke by this time had come very directly under the influence
of the ideas of Montesquieu, an influence which henceforth became paramount over his intellect. Finally, it may be
confessed that the contents of these pamphlets, and of the
speeches and letters which combine to form with them the product of Burke's second literary period, are often rendered so
obscure by the cessation of the transitory interests which called
them forth, that the works appeal more to the historical student
than to the general reader. The Speech on American Taxation,
of I774, should perhaps be excepted from this judgment.
It would be impossible for us to follow in detail Burke's career
as an orator, noble as are those fragments of his eloquence which
have come down to us. Enough to say that his speeches are
more stimulating and more convincing after one hundred years
have elapsed than any others which exist under the pretence of
being literature. But in 1790 Burke once more reappeared in
the open field of letters, and it was between this date and that of
his death, 1797, that his main contributions to our literature were
published. This magnificent series of books opened with the
Reflections on the Revolution in ]France, in the form of a letter to
a French gentleman. In this extraordinary volume, inspired by
his constant intellectual mentor, the author of the Esprit des lois,
Burke contrasts the ancient monarchy of France, and the possibility of reforming its institutions, with the calamity of utter
revolution which had just burst over that unfortunate country. In
III                                      2 B




37o


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHAP.


1789 Price, in addressing a harmless body called the Revolutionary Society, had given, as Burke considered, "the solemn publick
seal of sanction " to what was going on in France. The publication of Price's Discourse on the Love of our Country, which had
been widely read, upset Burke's equanimity still further, and he
blazed forth, like an angry prophet, with the vial of his Reflections.
The weak point of the book now       is that it contains too much
about Price and the Revolutionary Society-entities which have
ceased to move our timidity or our curiosity. But such as it is,
it is a masterpiece.  It spoke with the thrilling accents of vehement sincerity, and with an enthusiasm       which rose above all
private and vulgar considerations of decorum:
" Why do I feel so differently from the Reverend Dr. Price, and those of
his lay flock, who will choose to adopt the sentiments of his discourse? For
this plain reason,-because it is natural that I should; because we are so
made as to be affected at such spectacles with melancholy sentiments upon
the unstable condition of mortal prosperity, and the tremendous uncertainty
of human greatness; because in those natural feelings we learn great lessons;
because in events like these our passions instruct our reason; because when
kings are hurled from their thrones by the Supreme Director of this great
drama, and become the objects of insult to the base, and of pity to the
good, we behold such disasters in the moral, as we should behold a
miracle in the physical order of things.  We are alarmed into reflexion;
our minds (as it has long since been observed) are purified by terror and
pity; our weak unthinking pride is humbled under the dispensations of a
mysterious wisdom.  Some tears might be drawn from me, if such a spectacle
were exhibited on the stage. I should be truly ashamed of finding in myself that superficial, theatric sense of painted distress, whilst I could exult
over it in real life. With such a perverted mind, I could never venture to
show my face at a tragedy.  People would think the tears that Garrick
formerly, or that Siddons not long since, have extorted from me, were the
tears of hypocrisy; I should know them to be the tears of folly."
The author was exactly twelve months sharpening the burning
arrows of his sarcasm with infinite pains and zest, and he was
rewarded by a success the like of which no political book had
ever enjoyed before.    Its appeal to the passions, its cruel force
and wit, its magnificent direct incentive to reaction, all these
gave the Reflections an amazing interest to those who had just




XI


" LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD"


37I


witnessed, with bewilderment, the incomprehensible and unexampled progress of events in France.  Upon all the trembling
kings of Europe, upon the exiles on the Rhine especially, the
book fell like rain after long drought; and a French version of
it was attributed to no less a pen than that of the most exalted of
the Emigrants.
Burke's disapproval of the French Revolution did not grow
calmer as events began to show that in many of his predictions
he had been a wise prophet. In the Letter to a Member of the
NationalAssembly, published early in I791, he goes to still more
violent extremes of invective. There was distinctly a less angry
unreasonableness in the beautifully modulated Appeal from the
New to the Old Whigs, of August in that year, but he returns to his
fiercest diatribes in the Thoughts on French Affairs of the subsequent winter. There was again a silence, amid the claims of public
life, and then, in February I796, appeared the famous Letter to a
Noble Lord, which remains, perhaps, the most typical of Burke's
writings, the most accomplished and surprising in matter, the
most splendid, melodious, and refined in manner. The Duke of
Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale had attacked the pensions
which Burke was by this time enjoying, and the old debater was
far too acute not to perceive in a moment the incongruity of such
attacks from the head of the vastly-pensioned house of Russell.
He therefore soon leaves Lord Lauderdale alone, and concentrates
his anger, irony, and scorn on the head of the Duke of Bedford,
that "leviathan among all the creatures of the crown," whom he
alternately tortures with ridicule and with threats of coming ruin
from French ideas. Nothing could be happier than the main
portion of this letter, nothing more dignified than Burke's references to his loss in the deaths of his son and of Lord Keppel.
But, as in other cases, the rhetoric is a little overdone; the golden
rolling sentences occasionally leave a blank upon the mind; and
the matter under discussion is certainly approached too slowly.
The great patriot was now very near the close of his wonderful
career, and the latest months of it were spent in composition.




372


THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE


CHIIAP.


To 1796 and 1797 belong the letters On a Regicide Peace.      They
were three in number, the third a fragment; but a fourth, which
was really the first, was found among Burke's papers, and published
in I8I2. There can be no doubt that in these celebrated compositions, the imaginative fervour of which has dazzled many critics,
there are signs enough of the decay of the author's physical powers.
To many it is merely distressing to see this Chrysostom of the
English language descending to scurrilities unworthy of a fishwife, and relinquishing all remnants of judgment, decorum, reason,
and good sense in ravings about "sanguinary cannibals " and the
tyrannies of a regicide jacobinism. Yet, to those who can stifle
their sentiments of indignation and pity,-indignation at an injustice so extreme, and pity at the decay of such noble qualities
of the heart, —to read the Regicide Peace is one of the most
fascinating of literary exercises. And there are more dignified
phases, even in his anger:
" This business was not ended, because our dignity was wounded, or
because our patience was worn out with contumely and scorn. We had
not disgorged one particle of the nauseous dose with which we were so
liberally crammed by the mountebanks of Paris, in order to drug and diet
us into perfect tameness.  No; we waited, till the morbid strength of our
boulimia for their physic had exhausted the well-stored dispensary of their
empiricism.  It is impossible to guess at the term to which our forbearance
would have extended. The Regicides were more fatigued with giving blows
than the callous cheek of British Diplomacy was hurt in receiving them.
They had no way left for getting rid of this mendicant perseverance but by
sending for the Beadle, and forcibly driving our Embassy' of shreds and
patches,' with all its mumping cant, from the inhospitable door of Cannibal
Castle. I think we might have found, before the rude hand of insolent
office was on our shoulder, and the staff of usurped authority brandished over
our heads, that contempt of the suppliant is not the best forwarder of a suit;
that national disgrace is not the high road to security, much less to power and
greatness.  Patience, indeed, strongly indicates the love of peace.  But mere
love does not always lead to enjoyment.  It is the power of winning that
palm that insures our wearing it. Virtues have their place, and out of their
place they hardly deserve the name.  They pass into the neighbouring vice.
The patience of fortitude and the endurance of pusillanimity are things very
different, as in their principle, so in their effects."




XI


BURKE


373


The decline in Burke's case was moral —it was not intellectual,
and to the very last he grew in power as an artificer of sonorous
prose. The second of the letters on a Regicide Peace is much
shorter than the others, and more decent in its effusion, and all
its author's old acuteness will be marked in the study of the
character of Louis XVI. Inveighing to the last against "that
mother of all evil, the French Revolution," Burke passed away
at Beaconsfield, not old, but worn out, on the 9th of July I797.
The total number of his separate publications is nearly sixty.
It is a matter of regret to the purely literary student that, as
a writer, Burke is displayed at his best only in those works in
which the sanity and probity which so eminently distinguished
his character are clouded by his rabid prejudice against France.
Hence it is that those who read only his masterpieces must carry
away so vague and so distorted an idea of what it was in which
the greatness of Burke consisted.  In his youth Johnson, with his
fine and generous discrimination, had said, "We who know Mr.
Burke know that he will be one of the first men in the country."
As his career developed, there is no doubt that he became the
first man in the country, and it was when his powers as a statesman and an orator were at their zenith, and when his partial
retirement gave him leisure for literary composition, that this
strange madness of anger seized and convulsed him. We must,
however, beware of exaggerating its mark on his work. It is true
that it pervades his leading later writings, but much came from
his pen, even when that excruciating robe of Nessus was wrapt
around his spirit, that was calm and clear and noble.
We learn that Burke was devoted to the study of Dryden's
prose, and resolutely endeavoured to imitate it. The resemblance
cannot be said to be very striking, except in the elaborate art of
balancing and adjusting the parts of the sentence, so as to produce
upon the ear the exact effect required. But in doing this, though
Burke carried to a greater perfection than any one else except
Gibbon what Dryden had been the first to invent, yet it cannot
be said that Burke's rhetoric, which is always golden, and some



374          THE PROSE OF THE DECADENCE             CHAP. XI
times jewelled and enamelled as well, has much superficial
likeness to the strong uncoloured prose of Dryden. In the class
of declamatory writers Burke stands easily first; his tracts and
orations do not speak reflectively, with the still small voice which
the cloistered student loves, but in resonant accents, so that even
in the study their effect is completed to the imagination by cries
of defiance or rounds of applause from an unseen audience. It
may be questioned whether books conceived and executed in this
spirit can ever be held among the most precious possessions of
the true lover of pure literature. But as illustrations of a wonderful public career, and as specimens of oratory at its loftiest pinnacle
of success, they outshine all rivalry; and although it is probable
that Burke, as a writer, has enjoyed his fullest panegyrics in the
immediate past, the future can never be entirely disloyal to a
publicist so chivalrous, so fervid, and so logical.




CHAPTER XII


CONCLUSION
WHEN we approach the close of the seventeenth century in
English literature, we begin to be confronted by a practical difficulty. A door must be open or shut, and the chamber of our
studies will hold but a limited number of forms or ideas at a single
time. What is to be excluded, and what retained, becomes a
burning question. In the early stages of civilisation, everything
written takes its place as literature, but with the widening of the
habit of penmanship there springs up an ever-increasing mass of
script which is by no means to be treated as literary art. Even
in the Elizabethan age there were two branches of written and
published work which mainly passed outside the conception of
literature, namely, theology and law. But still, throughout the
seventeenth century, poetry remained the normal class of expression, while prose retained its conscious character as something
which had to compete with poetry and share its graces. It is at
the point where these graces of language are entirely subordinated
(in the discussion of practical subjects) to exact statement of fact,
that there arises a class of books which cannot be treated as
literature, in spite of their importance as contributions to thought
and knowledge.   During the last quarter of the seventeenth
century a spirited effort was made to chronicle the new observations of science in the best literary form of the age, but it could
not be sustained. The reader has but to compare the Acetaria




376


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


of Evelyn and the Anti-Elixir of Boyle with any authoritative
modern treatise on the cookery of cucumbers or the composition
of alloys, to see how very much the absence of all literary elegance
is of advantage in obtaining exact information upon practical
subjects.  Accordingly, the graces were tacitly and gradually
excluded from all treatment of purely utilitarian problems and
exact observations, and this exclusion divided the vast body of
what was written into literature and non-literary matter.
We must, therefore, prepare ourselves, on approaching the
year I700, to find the history of English literature no longer
identical with the history of English thought. There has recently
been developed a tendency to go in the opposite direction,
and instead of narrowing the field of study to enlarge it.  It
has been proposed to combine with an examination of English
literature a survey of contemporary history and politics, science
and learning, theology and speculation. Such a curriculum is fit
only for an archangel, dowered with eyes " that run thro' all the
heavens," and with a memory and a comprehension beyond a mortal
span. No doubt a direct benefit in the exact study of any one
province of knowledge is gained by a correct superficial acquaintance with all that is contiguous to it; but common sense and
experience unite to show that with the increase of facts, and the
minute subdivision of science, the field of any one particular study,
to remain exact, must be rigidly narrowed. It is, therefore, I
think, useful for the student of English literature, on reaching the
eighteenth century, to make up his mind to the acceptance of a
formula less extended than he has hitherto brought with him down
from the Renaissance.  He will so contract his field of study as
to embrace only what may be contained within the denomination
of belles-lettres in its widest sense, to the exclusion of whatever is
purely technical or occasional.
It is difficult, no doubt, in practice, to draw any hard and fast
line between what is and is not literature in this sense. In a
rough kind of way we may see that while The Public Spirit of the
fVhigs and the Letter to a Noble Lord are inside, the Behaviour




XII


EIGHTEENTH CENTURY RESERVE


377


of the Queen's Ministry and the Duration of Parliaments are outside the frontier of literature; yet, on the whole, it will be convenient to give everything of such masters as Swift and Burke the
benefit of the doubt. It is when we descend to less accomplished
forces than these that it becomes obvious that the epoch-making
work of the Methodist and the Deist, the politician and the savant,
the jurist and the economist, although so important in the history
of society, of thought, and of the state, must, from the point of
view of the mere student of literature, be, for the future, left unexamined, or very briefly and inadequately touched. We must
restrict ourselves severely to what remains in some degree linked
with the art of poetry, to what aims at giving delight by its form,
to what appeals to the sentiments and the pleasure-receiving instincts, and is not merely a vehicle for instruction or edification.
If, however, it becomes necessary in approaching the Augustan
age to confine our study of English literature within closer limits,
we are encouraged in so doing by the tendency of that age itself.
The seventeenth century had been a period of extraordinary literary
adventure. Every species of intellectual stimulus had stirred the
educated classes throughout the reign of the last of the Tudors, and
one amazing achievement had followed on the heels of another.
Greece, Italy, Rome, and Spain had been laid under contribution
for the enrichment and enlargement of the genius of this country,
and a magnificent literature was borne, like a triumphal procession, heavy with the spoils of Europe, in front of the throne of
Elizabeth.  But this glowing triumph had tailed off, by the time
the Commonwealth was reached, into a grotesque and anarchical
body of camp-followers, with here and there a majestic Milton or
Taylor to recall the greatness of the past. When the Restoration
was complete, and the babel of voices had died away, the new
generation had no desire to recall the deafening chorus of Jacobean
decadence, but rather proposed to reduce its own manifestations to
the most decent and prosaic forms. The tradition of eighteenthcentury reserve was formed in the intellectual fatigue that succeeded the decline of Elizabethan greatness, and the last thing




378


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


which the contemporaries of Dryden proposed to themselves was
a new crusade of literary adventure.
Where there is life, however, there must be experiment, and in
spite of its studied quiescence, eighteenth-century literature is full
of new departures. To detect these, and to analyse them correctly,
is one of the first tasks which the student must set himself to
undertake, when once he has mastered the chart of the period.
At first sight there seems to be an absence of general tendency;
the forces appear to be wielded by certain master-spirits at their
individual pleasure, without much relation to contemporary feeling.
We have no longer, certainly, those well-defined schools, or, to
change the image, those prominent ranges, culminating in peaks,
which diversify the map of seventeenth-century literature, and
make its general aspect so rich and full. We find movements
less absorbing and men more prominent.  In the development of
literary society, the personage of letters emerges from the obscurity
of professional life, and poses as an important single figure.
Literary history in the eighteenth century, however, is far from
being the chronicle of a series of brilliant units. Perhaps because
of that very meagreness of outside influence which has been
alluded to, the transmission of forces from generation to generation was never more marked than between I660 and I780. The
continuity of metaphysical speculation from Locke onward, the
long-resisted and slowly-adopted new literary profession of journalism, the evolution of the modern novel from the expiring schools
of comedy, the gradual resumption of an observant interest in the
phenomena of society and of landscape, the dawning of a taste
for Gothic romance,-these are but the most salient of a number
of experimental movements, rising from the dead surface of the
century, and pursued across wide sections of its extent.
These experiments, these feats of literary adventure, are not
hurried forward during the eighteenth century as they were at the
close of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth. Then
it took but a year or two to create, introduce, and make fashionable a whole new form of literature. Any match, whatever wind




XII


OBSERVATION OF NATURE


379


was blowing, would set the prairie then on fire. But after the
Restoration, whatever was done had to be done in the green
tree. The judgment had grown sedate, enthusiasm was waxing
cold, and the changes were slow and not obviously apparent.
The close observer detects, for instance, a change of style between
the Astraea Redux of i660 and the Dispensary of 1699; but the
alteration is by no means obvious. An equal period would take
us from the Steel Glass of Gascoigne, across Spenser and Shakespeare, to Britannia's Pastorals and the songs of Carew-an excursion which bewilders the brain with its variety. But no more
suggestive instance of the slowness of post-Restoration changes
can be given than is offered by the history of a return to the
observation of nature. In I66o it seemed as though all use of
the physical eyes had been abandoned in prose and verse; those
who wrote appeared to see everything blurred and faint, as through
clouded spectacles. Dryden is perhaps the only great writer-he
is certainly the only English poet of high rank-who appears to be
wholly destitute of the gift of observation. In Congreve, in such
touches as Lady Wishfort's "Thou bosom-traitress that I took
from washing of old gauze and weaving of dead hair, with a blackblue nose over a chafing-dish of starved embers, and dining
behind a traverse rag in a shop no bigger than a bird-cage," we
see the art returning. But still no one looks beyond the street;
till years roll on, and Lady Winchelsea and Gay and Green,
venturing into country places, successively open the field of vision
each a little wider than the other; they pass away, and
Thomson arrives with a mannered but genuine vision of
something more grandiose, of mountain and lake and long,
billowy champaign; he gives place to Gray, with his intuition of
beauty among the genuine Alps and under the forehead of Helvellyn; and by the time we reach the Gilpins and the Gilbert
Whites, we perceive that a slow and slender, but ever-broadening
stream of natural observation has been meandering down the whole
length of that very century which is supposed to be so characteristically devoid of it.




380


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


To facilitate the study of eighteenth-century literature, it is convenient to divide the one hundred and twenty years which succeeded
the Restoration into three equal parts. Each of these is dominated
by one figure of far greater intellectual prestige than any other of
the same period. No one will question that the first of these is the
generation of Dryden nor the last that of Johnson. It may not perhaps be quite so readily conceded that the age of Anne lay under
the tyranny of Swift. It will, however, be found, I think, upon close
examination that neither Pope nor Addison has an equal claim
to be considered the centre of the action or the hero of the
story. They wrote with consummate skill, but Swift it was who
laid the torch to the standing-corn of thought; his was the irradiating, the Promethean mind from I700 to 1740 and his the force
of character, the thrill of personal genius, that rivets to itself the
main attention of students throughout that brilliant period.
The age of Dryden was the most prosaic in our literary history. In its course theology, philosophy, even poetry itself, were
chained either to common sense, or to a ranting rapture which dispensed with literary sincerity, and was, in fact, more prosaic than
all prose. What mainly flourished under the strong leaden sceptre
of Dryden was satire, in new and stringent forms; artificial comedy,
brutal at first, and harsh, but polished at length to the last extremity
of cynical elegance; burlesque verses, very smart and modern,
which passed for poetry; the political pamphlet; the clear, limpid
art of the letter-writer, modelled, through Roger L'Estrange, on the
directness of the Lettres Portugaises; the sincere, naked thought
of Locke, with its dislike of ornament and carelessness of authority;
the first grotesque babble of modern criticism; the dryness of the
polemical divines; and over it all, covering its defects as with a
garment, the new graces of the competent current prose of the
day. This is the vestibule of the eighteenth century, and across
its very threshold the rich brocaded wit of Congreve takes hands
with the urbanity and grace of Addison.
The age of Swift is fuller of intellectual activity, more genial,
more varied, more enthusiastic. The coldest period is over, and




XII


THE THREE PERIODS


3SI


already a faint flush of the summer of romanticism is discoverable.
This fuller life takes many forms. In philosophy the age is no
longer content with the bald presentment of Locke's ideas, but,
with something less of positive originality, calls to its aid the fancy
and ingenuity of Shaftesbury, the brilliant imagination of Berkeley.
In poetry, though the general type is artificial still, there is no longer
the protracted cultivation of one form; satire takes urbaner and less
brutal shapes, and halfway through the period the landscape poets
push in with their blank verse, and the lyrists with their octosyllabics.
The drama somewhat abruptly expires, and while the nation is
waiting for the development of the novel, Addison holds its ear
with the humour and dainty sentiment of his essays. A delicate
amenity, a sweetness of expression, marks the age of Anne; and
even the ferocities of Swift and Mandeville do not belie this general
impression of increasing civilisation of the mind, since the very
wounds inflicted by these writers show the tenderness of the contemporary epidermis. Such satire would not have penetrated a
generation grown pachydermatous under the flail of Oldham or
Lord Dorset. There was a rapid development of the power of
ridicule by prose and verse, a general sharpening and pointing
of every literary weapon, and it was in this age of Swift that
English prose reached its maximum of strength, elegance, and
elasticity combined.
Something was again relinquished in the third period, that of
Johnson. Here, to secure more strength, needless weight was
superadded to language; elasticity was lost in a harmony too
mechanically studied. What was really best in this third age was
directly recovered from the early Anne writers, as Goldsmith, its best
author, is seen returning to the traditions of Addison and Congreve.
The main contribution of this period to literature is the novel, which
opens with Pamela in its first year, I740. Before the generation
closed, the earliest development of fiction was over and the novel
in decline. In verse, what was not imitative of the old schools was
suggestive of what did not come till the next century began. On
one hand we have Goldsmith, Johnson, and Churchill reviving the




382


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


manner of Pope; on the other we have Gray and Collins in their
odes, and Chatterton in his verse-romances, prophesying of Coleridge and Shelley. Everywhere during this third period the buried
and forgotten seeds of romantic fancy were becoming stimulated,
and were pushing their shoots above ground in a Percy's Reliques, in
a Castle of Otranto, in a Descent of Odin. Meanwhile, what was
mainly visible to the public was the figure of Dr. Samuel Johnson, a
sesquipedalian dictator, not writing very much or in a superlatively
excellent manner, but talking publicly, or semi-publicly, in a style
hitherto unprecedented, and laying down the law on all subjects
whatever. Around this great man collects whatever there is of
normal genius in the generation-Goldsmith and Burke, Gibbon
and Reynolds, Boswell and Garrick,-and a group is formed, to the
student of personal manners the most interesting that literary history
can supply. So rich is the age in anecdote, so great in critical prestige, that the student must look closely and carefully to perceive
that it is rapidly declining in intellectual force of every kind, and by
1780 is only waiting for the decease of two or three old men to sink
completely into a condition of general mediocrity. When Doctor
Johnson dies, the literature of the eighteenth century is practically
closed, and the work of removing the debris to prepare for the
nineteenth begins.
A rough criterion of the vitality of English literature in the
eighteenth century may be gained by seeing at what points it was able
to influence foreign literatures, and at what points it was influenced
by the latter. The old theory that the whole business of the hardening and de-romanticising of English poetry came from France is now
exploded. It has been shown beyond dispute that Waller was, at
least, as early in the field as Malherbe. But the artificial verseproduct was never thoroughly at home in England, and at one
moment only, in the hands of Pope, was able to lay down a tradition
for Europe. It is a proof of the force of Pope's art that, while
Dryden remained, and still remains, a mere name on the continent
of Europe, Pope had direct followers and imitators among the
leading poets of Germany, Italy, Sweden, and even Holland.




XII


THE NOVEL


383


Thomson had the good fortune to be imitated also, and to found
a sort of French school, of which Saint-Lambert is the most prominent member. Pope might be said to owe much to Boileau,
and his influence to be therefore continental in a second degree;
but whatever the author of The Seasons might give to Europe was
wholly our own.
Yet far more important than any foreign influence from English
verse was the stimulus given abroad by the English novel. Here
again it was a Frenchman, Lesage, who first: started the modernisation of the Spanish story of adventure, and so prepared the way for
Fielding and Smollett; while another, Marivaux, may possibly have
had some slight effect on the manner of Richardson. But the
French critics immediately received the first great English novels
with enthusiasm, and acknowledged them to be, in almost every
respect, far superior to their own. This admiration for Tom Jones
and Clarissa being admitted, it is strange that Crebillon, rather
than Richardson or Fielding, continued to be imitated in France
almost to the end of the century; but the influence of the English
novel abroad, although suffused, was manifested in many ways
before the age of Rousseau, and is to be considered as perhaps
the most vivid which our purely eighteenth-century literature
exercised on the continent of Europe. In history, also, the preeminence of the English writers made itself felt during the last
years of our period. The French and Italians excelled already in
memoir-writing and in the compilation of historical essays; but it
was not until they had comprehended what Hume and Gibbon
had done that they realised the true function of history. It may
perhaps be maintained that the Decline and Fall was the most
epoch-making work of the English eighteenth century as regards
the entire literature of Europe.
In speaking of the direct influence of English literature in the
eighteenth century upon foreign nations, there are three names
which naturally recur to the memory, those of Montesquieu,
Lessing, and Rousseau. The famous Esprit des Lois, published in
1748, contains a glowing panegyric of the principles of the English




384


CONCLUSION


CIHAP.


Constitution, and one which could only have been written by a
man permeated by the ideas of Locke. Montesquieu knew this
country well, and he paid it the compliment of saying, "L'Ang/cterre estfaitepoury penser." When he returned to La Brede in
1731 his leisure was divided between his English garden and his
English books. Nevertheless, the traces of the study of English
literature on his style are insignificant, and Montesquieu is rather
the master of Hume and Burke than the pupil of Locke. Lessing
was deeply read in English drama and essay of the Orange and
Anne periods, and was the first continental critic to admit the full
greatness of our literature. Voltaire, to a less degree, exercised a
similar critical spirit, but it was Rousseau in whom the Anglicising
influence abroad culminated. Rousseau borrowed from England
on all sides, from Hobbes and the Deists, from Locke and the
political philosophers, from Clarke and from Richardson, taking
whatever he needed, in substance or in form, and throwing it indiscriminately into the fiery crucible of his genius. This fascinating and perilous theme might easily be pursued too far, especially
where the expression of literary work rather than its substance is
under review; but while we speak of Rousseau as owning, as a
novelist, the sway of Richardson, we must not fail to remember
that the same is true of Marmontel and of Bernardin de SaintPierre, while Goethe no less has acknowledged the debt of all the
early German novelists to Goldsmith and Fielding.
As far as the novel is concerned, we cannot be surprised at the
attention excited on the continent by this branch of English literature in the eighteenth century. When the period we are considering
begins, the ablest exercise of English fiction current was the Parthenissa of Roger Boyle ( 62 I-I679), a weak imitation of the Scudery
romances; when it closes, Evelina is the novel of the hour, and a
great school of original prose narration has adorned the intervening
years. Between Boyle and Miss Burney there lies the monument
of a vast literary reform, in some respects the most important which
the eighteenth century achieved. This reform, which swept away
the pinchbeck heroism that was so ridiculous in that singularly




XII


TIHE NOVEL


385


unheroic age, which dethroned from fiction the vague worship of
rank and substituted a spirit of minute and realistic observation of
life and character, had its first exponent in Defoe, who returned,
nevertheless, to the picaresque tradition, and moved in a world of
brigands and bandits which was not entirely genuine. It was
much to have got rid of Almahide and Almanzor, but it was
necessary to dismiss the cynical pirates of Defoe's lesser romances
also, in order to clear the field for perfectly sincere and genuine
fiction. The Gil Bias of Lesage was an inspiration and a snare
to English novelists, who were more healthily, but much less keenly,
stimulated by the Roman Bourgeois of Furetiere. The transition
between the harsh, direct narrative of Defoe, without sympathy or
insight, and the tender, penetrating fiction of Richardson, is to be
found in the urbane essays of Addison and Steele.
So untended was the field of prose narrative in England that a
ploughshare was needed to break up the fertile but unready soil,
and this instrument was provided by the genius of Defoe, with its
clearness of vision, justice of observation, and facility of superficial
analysis. But Defoe, that interesting and most difficult of intellectual problems, was too much a creation of his age, was too completely the outcome of a blunt and unsympathetic generation, to
comprehend that touch of enthusiasm without which the English
novel could not flourish. We see, accordingly, that, twenty years
after Robinson Crusoe had shown Englishmen what to demand, in
a story which, in certain qualities of narrative, would never be
excelled, the English novel seemed, nevertheless, as far as ever
from coming to the birth. It is the absence of a recognition of
this fact which impairs one of the most valuable contributions of
recent criticism to the history of the development of the European novel, the Refornme Litteraire de Defoe, by M. Jusserand. It
is not enough to show what marvels Defoe performed; the picture
gives a false impression, unless what Defoe could not perform be
also insisted upon.
It was in the fulness of time, when the drama had totally
deceased, when the essay of the age of Anne was also in complete
Il                                       2 C




386


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


decline, when new airs were beginning to blow from the land
of romance, when Thomson's landscape and Young's funereal
mystery, the starry speculation of Berkeley and the daring imagination of Swift, had prepared men's minds for what was less mundane,
less superficial than the observation of material facts, that the
novel of feeling began to take its place. It was welcomed from
the very first. So weak and faulty a book as Pamela must be
confessed to be awakened instant and universal enthusiasm, and
all mistakes of execution were forgotten in the European acclamation which hailed Richardson as a great creative talent. It was
fortunate for our literature that he was immediately succeeded and
accompanied by a man of genius still greater than his own; and
these two, Fielding and Richardson, remain after a century and a
half, in spite of the immense cultivation of the novel, acknowledged
masters as well as founders of this vast branch of literature, not
superseded and scarcely surpassed by the Scotts and Dumas, the
Thackerays and Tolstois, the race of giant novelists that have
sprung from their loins.
Scarcely less rich or less influential was the chain of metaphysical, or at least philosophical, literature which flourished in
England throughout the eighteenth century. But here it seems
necessary, in dealing with literature alone, to guard against the
obvious manner of observing this group of writers, namely, as a
sequence. Berkeley succeeds to Locke, Mandeville to Hobbes,
Butler to Shaftesbury, and the student is almost certain to be led
away from a consideration of the contributions of these writers to
style, into an inquiry into their intellectual relation one to another.
We must return to our opening reservation, and remind ourselves
that what is written, what is contributed to thought, is not valuable
in literature in proportion to its intellectual quality. From the
point of view of the philosopher, Berkeley owes his existence to
Locke, and is a planet of considerably lesser magnitude, if not absolutely a satellite. From the point of view of style, Berkeley is totally
distinct, is divided by a chasm, from Locke, and is a very great, as
distinguished from a perfectly ordinary and mediocre, writer.




XII


INFLUENCE OF SHAFTESBURY


387


Taking this standpoint, the most influential philosopher of the
first half of the century is Shaftesbury. No one will ever again
contend that this unequal writer owed this influence wholly to
his merits, or will quarrel with Brown for saying that, in the
Characteristics, Shaftesbury "hath mingled beauties and blots,
faults and excellencies, with a liberal and unsparing hand." But
with all its faults, with all its absurdities, the manner of Shaftesbury was stimulating and inflaming to a remarkable degree, and
for one eighteenth-century writer who was affected by the noble
simplicity of Berkeley, there were a dozen who imitated the
ingenuities, the subtle fancies, the curious aesthetic warmth of
Shaftesbury. It was not in this country only that the Characteristics affected thought and expression. Diderot and Voltaire, in
France, Herder, Lessing, and Wieland, in Germany, are only the
most illustrious of the direct disciples of "the Virtuoso of
Humanity."   Much of the admiration of these foreign writers
was directed, of course, to Shaftesbury's ethical system; but his
style also affected them  vividly, and no English metaphysical
writer of the eighteenth century has left so strong a mark on
European expression.
It is not to deny merit to Shaftesbury to assert that, on the
whole, this effect of his upon style was wholly deleterious. He
wrote with great care, but with an eagerness to attain grace which
was only partially successful, and which, when not successful, gives
an impression of strange affectation. Under this quaint air of the
fine gentleman, he moves briskly and clearly, and those who felt
his charm hastened to imitate his insipidities and oddities.  It is
Shaftesbury above all other men to whom the guilt must be brought
home of having fostered and legitimatised those vague and trite
generalities, those empty and ornate forms of expression, those
rotund commonplaces, which are so distressing to a modern reader
of eighteenth-century literature, and constitute its worst blot. Nor
does the propriety of this charge exclude the other, but less
material, fact that the writings of Shaftesbury abound, to a degree
now but very rarely acknowledged, in passages of genuine and




388


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


rare beauty. The main circumstance is that Shaftesbury, for
some reason which it would be difficult to define, although a
second-rate thinker and not a first-rate writer, stamped a caricature
of his individuality on the style of the succeeding half century.
It would take us too far, and would, on the whole, lie outside
the limits of the particular questions now under consideration,
to discuss the relations of the great English and French economists
of the centre of the eighteenth century. Although what Adam
Smith owed to Quesnay and to Gournay, what Turgot owed to
Hutcheson and to Adam Smith, was very considerable, and
although such facts as the appearance of the tract, Szur la rormation et la Distribution des Richesses, ten years before the publication of The Weal/t of Nations, are most interesting in themselves,
neither has any distinct relation to the history of style.
We are on safer ground when we turn from the influence
exercised on foreign literature by English writing to the reverse
action.  The English language was, as a rule, so imperfectly
understood on the continent of Europe, and French was so completely the tongue of travelling Englishmen, that what was borrowed
from English thought was apt to be taken through the medium of
translation. When the century was already half through, such
men as Gibbon and Hume were glad to make French the vehicle
for their ideas; there is perhaps no other instance than Delolme
of the opposite practice, and Delolme was a Swiss.  Hence, in
the politer and more precise departments of literature, where
matter counted for less, and manner more, there was much more
apt to be French influence at work in England than English
influence at work in France. We see this French spirit active
mainly in three principal fields, which may now be examined in
some detail. They are non-dramatic poetry, drama, and literary
criticism.
In a general survey of English poetry from I66o to 1780, the
first thing that strikes us is that, without ceasing to be either
popular or abundant, poetic work has become, and remains to the
close of the eighteenth century, subordinated to prose, and of a




XII


POETRY


389


second order of interest. This was a new thing. Until the end
of the sixteenth century, literature in England, broadly speaking,
was in verse, and we chronicle its fluctuations without special
regard to anything but the quality of this kind of writing. With
the Elizabethan period, prose begins to take a very great prominence, and to claim a large place in the history of English style;
this place, however, until the Commonwealth, is decidedly subordinated to that occupied by verse. Shakespeare is, on the whole,
a more luminous figure than Bacon, and Spenser than Hooker,
while, if we go further down in the ranks, the superiority of the
poets becomes more and more obvious. We may take an image
from the lighthouse service. The Elizabethan poets carry white
lights, the prose-men carry red ones, and, as we recede from them
all, the red rays do not seem to penetrate so far as the white ones.
But with the Restoration this state of things ceases; the art of
verse becomes monotonous and mechanical, the prose-writers
assert themselves more, are brighter, more various, and more
entertaining; and though the poets are slow to lose their personal
prestige, the poetic art is no longer paramount.  If Dryden
dominates the first age, he was a great prosaist as well as a great
poet; Swift, though a hardy rhymester, does not live among the
poets at all, and Johnson is only admitted by personal favour, on
the credit of two paraphrases of Juvenal, among the ranks of those
who put on singing raiment. Verse is very active and prominent
throughout the eighteenth century, but it plays the part of Mascarille in the comedy of literature. It is no longer the master,
but the entertaining and irrepressible domestic, of the imagination.
The eccentricity and lawlessness of seventeenth-century
poetry are now recognised even by those who exaggerate its
qualities of simplicity, naivete, and nobility.  The necessary
reaction which followed the lyrics of Quarles, the epics of the
Fletchers, the tragedies of Goff and Cartwright, stranded English
poetry high and dry upon the shore of common sense. Where
invention had been strained into monstrosity, a decent sterility of




390


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


imagination began to reign, and a generation of readers whose
taste had been positively tortured enjoyed a complete respite from
enthusiasm, familiarity, and surprise.  In Dryden the English
nation found the best possible leader of the chorus for a condition
of things so peculiar. The poetic genius of this man was eminently
robust and unromantic; sustained at a considerable, but never
at a transcendent, height, his shoulders were broad enough and
his patience great enough to support the poetry of his country
through a period of forty years, when all that was most essential
was that after so many violent oscillations the tradition of verse
should for one whole generation be unruffled, and that nothing
should be done to destroy the hold which poetry still contrived to
maintain, wounded and shaken as it had been, on the respect of
men of average intelligence.  In order to do this it was necessary
to secure a strong popular poet of little invention, indisposed to
formal experiment of any kind, more desirous to accompany public
taste than to lead it, and such a poet the Restoration revealed in
the panegyrist of the Coronation. When the entire generation
had passed away, the same voice was heard, merely mellowed to
a deeper cadence, in the nervous couplets of Cymnon and Iphirenia.
The long dictatorship of Dryden, uninspiring as it seems in various
superficial degrees, ought to be regarded with gratitude by every
lover of English. Had Dryden been other than he was, or had
his life been cut off in early manhood, it is difficult to see what
could have prevented our brilliant national poetry from sinking
into fantastic ruin, and expiring in a sort of frenzied Gongarism.
Until near the close of the seventeenth century, the direct
influence of France upon our poetry is rather surmised than discovered. So far as we can prove its existence, it seems to have
been the result of the reading of the French critics rather than of
the French poets.  Malherbe, it might be supposed, would affect
English style, but there seems no evidence that the very name of
the Norman reformer had crossed the Channel. Voiture was read,
and to some extent imitated; the vers de societe of this elegant
master were distinctly beneficial to the humorous versifiers of the




XII


RELATION TO FRANCE


391


Revolution and of the Orange period, and through Oldham and
Vanbrugh the lighter poetry of our own age claims direct descent
from the band who fought around the Uranie sonnet. The narrative style of Dryden, perhaps, and of the English poets of the age
of Anne, certainly, was strengthened by a study of the Contes and
Fables of Lafontaine. In Prior we at last reach an English poet
who can manage the mechanism of a conte as well as the most
skilful Frenchman. The workmanship of the heroic couplet was
probably affected-but on this subject it is most dangerous to
dogmatise-not so much by French narrative poetry as by the
alexandrines of Corneille and Moliere. Probably what had more
effect on the Royalist poets than all the practice of the versemen
and the dogmas of the critics, was the regular fall of the distich
on their ears when they went to see a tragedy or a comedy in
Paris before the Restoration.
After I700 the relation between English and French poetry,
though still far from intimate, becomes closer and more definite.
St. Evremond in London and Maynwaring in Paris brought the
two literary worlds nearer in contact. The story of Maynwaring's
visits to the aged Boileau, who, when Dryden died, was glad to
be assured that England had possessed a poet, gives us the earliest
distinct evidence of the looking to Paris for poetical encouragement. Boileau, thenceforward, though often disrespectfully used
in this country, becomes a kind of dictator of taste to English
poets, until in I7II the sceptre seems to descend again to an
Englishman, to Pope. In the succeeding generation there is no
talk over here of the clever artificial work of the school of Boileau,
and Voltaire presently proceeds to London in the same spirit
which took Maynwaring to Paris. The result of all this relation,
when closely studied, is to persuade us that what is so similar in
the English and French poetry of the eighteenth century is mainly
an accidental parallelism or a likeness due to simultaneous action
of similar intellectual forces, and not to be accounted for by any
very definite discipleship on one hand or on the other. What is very
odd is the similarity in phrase, in colour, in the adoption of tricks




392


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


and fripperies almost exactly identical, the apparent deliberation
with which a basis of style is prepared, upon which, at the appointed
hour, either an Andre Chenier or a Wordsworth, a Keats or a
Victor Hugo, may build his romantic structure.
From the age of Anne onward the sole object of interest, to
the student of broad effects, is the gradual development, as from
a grain of mustard-seed, of the mighty tree of naturalism. The
prosaic poetry of English rhetoric, which stands, like the Cathedral
of Chartres, with its two great towers, the one solid and majestic,
the other a miracle of grace and lightness, is an object of definite
critical interest. But when we pass Dryden and Pope, we reach
a long stretch of country where no poetical structure of complex
significance meets us until we arrive at the temple of Wordsworth
and Coleridge. During the sixty years which intervene, much
was done of a beautiful and accomplished character, but the
interest of it is either confined to its relation with the past or to
its intuition of the future. The verse of Goldsmith and Churchill
has to be considered in the light of Pope, that of Gray and Cowper
in the light of Coleridge; all the tract between 1740 and 800o is
covered with accidental, diffused, and tentative work in verse, the
work of a period virtually preserved from anarchy only by its lack
of animation.
The conditions of drama during the period we are considering
were, in some degree, analogous to but much more extraordinary
than those of non-dramatic poetry. Between I660 and 1700 the
English stage cannot be called sterile or inanimate, nor was it supported only by the prestige of a single man. Both in its tragic
and its comic department it was crowded with figures, enjoyed
a lively professional existence which was also literary, and produced a body of work which is very large in quantity and not
despicable in quality. The drama of the Restoration is an important fragment of the literature of this country, and if it contains
but two names, those of Congreve and Otway, which are in the
first rank, it boasts a whole galaxy of the second and third.
Tragedy had the marks of decrepitude upon it, but it was alive




XII


DRAMA


393


until the days of Southerne; sentiment, character, passion, though
all clouded by a prevailing insincerity of style, were present.  A
gulf divides such a drama as Crown's T/.yestes from Douglas or
The Revenge, a gulf on the earlier side of which are all the traditions of poetry and literature. Of comedy there is still more to
be said. To Etheredge belongs a merit above that of any other
poet of the age, that of introducing into England a new and
vigorous form of imaginative art. Needless to say that this was
the Comedy of Manners, sweeping away the old decayed Comedy
of Humours, and giving us in its place something of Moliere's
love of truth and penetration of character. Through Wycherley,
Congreve, and Vanbrugh, this school rose to proportions genuinely
considerable; but from the first the English stage, unable to perceive the charm of the purity of French comedy, had defiled our
scenes with a cynicism that grew to be intolerable, and English
comedy of manners fell before an incursion of indignant puritanism.
This fall of comedy is an extraordinary phenomenon. In 1699
England possessed the most vigorous and vivacious school of comic
dramatists in Europe; ten years later the chorus was absolutely
silenced, or vocal only in the feeble pipe of Colley Cibber.
Through the remaining years of the eighteenth century, dramatic
vitality was accidental and sporadic; a good play appeared from
time to time, but there was no school of dramatic literature, no
school of capable literary writers for the stage.
Some hints of the modern drama, pure and simple, are to be
met with in writers who scarcely demand a word from the historian
for their personal merits. A Moorgate jeweller, George Lillo (i693 -1739), amused the town with some perfectly unreadable plays, principally George Barnwell and The Fatal Curiosity, which are interesting as the first specimens of " tragedie bourgeoise " or modern melodrama. These artless dramas were composed in the interests of
morality and virtue, and are the parents of a long line of didactic
plays of crime and its punishment.  Of somewhat the same
character were the sentimental comedies, influenced by the
" comedies larmoyantes" of La Chaussee. There were various other




394


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


innovations, mostly of a non-literary or anti-literary kind, such as
the introduction of popular opera early in the reign of Anne, and
the fashion for pantomimic drama which came in some forty years
later. All tended to sever more and more completely the marriage
between literature and the theatre, and to destroy that art of
drama which had existed until the close of the seventeenth
century. The four or five best plays of the eighteenth century
are comedies in which Goldsmith, Colman, and Sheridan have
deliberately gone back to the Congreve and Wycherley tradition,
and have resumed, with the reprehensible elements omitted, the
style and method of the great comedians of manners. But these
are exceptions, and only enough to prove the rule of dramatic
insignificance in England from 1700 onward.
Too little attention has been given to the growth of literary
criticism in England. It begins, so far as a modern conception
of the critical faculty is concerned, with the Restoration and in the
famous prefaces of Dryden. Before this what passed for criticism
had been the pseudo-philosophical reflections of rhetoricians.
The first professional criticism in England, if we ignore the dissertations of Dryden, was that introduced about 1675 from France,
where the Jesuit critics, Le Bossu and Rapin, began to formularise
and adapt to modern poetry the rules of Aristotle. These rules
were soon adopted in this country, particularly by a writer, Thomas
Rymer (I638-I713), who made himself highly ridiculous by using
them as a standard by which to measure and condemn Shakespeare
and Fletcher. These Jesuit critics, by no means wanting in wit,
knowledge, or even, in the case of Rapin, taste, were more fitted
to deal with French literature than English. They were ready
cheerfully to undertake to shut up all individual inspiration within
limits which they rigorously defined, and they were only serviceable so long as men were passing through that curious condition
of craving for order and regularity.
In John Dennis, a writer to whom great injustice has been and
still is done, a critic appeared who, with great faults of temper,
had a far higher idea than Rapin or Rymer, or even Dryden, of




XII


CRITICISM


395


certain classes of poetic work. The praise is due to Dennis of
having been the first to dwell judicially on the sublime merits of
Milton, and to give him his right place among the poets of the
world. Literary criticism, by which was principally meant the
analysis of poetry and the poetic art, received further contributions
from Shaftesbury and Addison. As the century proceeded, more
and more was attempted in this direction, until it may be said
that critical analysis began to take a part in general literature which
was unwholesomely prominent. Some parts of the work of men
like Lord Kames and Hurd are good and readable as literature,
though not very useful as criticism; most of it is deliberately to
be condemned as empirical, dull, and preposterous, and as leaving out of discussion the only elements worthy to be included.
The criticism of Matthew Arnold or Sainte-Beuve is not a development of such criticism as that of Hurd; it is something wholly
different in kind, starting from another basis and aiming at another
goal. To the comparative student a few words which Gray has
has scattered here and there in his prose, and some sturdy
positive pages in Doctor Johnson, comprise all of literary criticism
which is really noteworthy after the age of Anne is over. In
Dennis and Addison criticism possessed something of the personal
accent, and faintly suggested a causerie. But this was soon lost
in the pretentiousness of a false philosophy, and criticism ceases
to be the expression of genuine individuality.
The place of theology in eighteenth-century literature, properly
so called, has been greatly exaggerated.  The importance of
theology in the vicissitudes of thought during the same period
could hardly be overrated. The progress of independent speculation, whether tending toward scepticism as in the Deists, or toward
a closer puritanism as in the Methodists, or toward the more conservative reaction of the Evangelicals, is of great historical interest.
But a florid page of Jeremy Taylor gives a critic of style more to
talk about than all Toland's tracts or Whitefield's sermons. Berridge's Christian World Unmasked, which just comes within our
period, is a typical instance of divinity produced solely to rouse




396


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


the conscience and excite the belief in a supernatural creed,
without a single appeal, in the turn of a sentence or the choice of
a word, to any other purpose. With such a writer all the charms
of intellectual expression were so many narcotics provided to dull
the soul's sense of its awful condition. With the Deists, with those
curious Chubbs and Annets and Collinses who wandered about
in sheepskins and goatskins under George I., and whose scattered
leaves have been so tenderly examined by Mr. Leslie Stephen,
-with these, also, the substance was everything and the form
nothing, except when, like Shaftesbury and Conyers Middleton,
they rose upon a politer sphere, and only hinted their deism incidentally. Needless to add that the same spirit, so inimical to
literature, actuated those orthodox divines who denounced these
dry and uninspired opponents.
It became no better when the rage for speculation died away,
and calm fell upon the theologians. The rationalism of the English Church after I750 gave no encouragement to enthusiasm or
imagination; it even kept in check what had inspired a good deal
of seventeenth-century Church literature, personal oddity. The
principal representative of this late class of theologian is William
Paley (I743-1805), who summed up the dry and almost mathematical manner of his age when it had nearly closed. The Horce
Paulince, it is true, did not appear until 1790; but Paley may very
well be taken as characteristic of the theological style of the forty
years preceding, and between Paley's literary form and the sapless
legal style of Clarke, in the age of Anne, there is so little difference that we are tempted to regard these two as typical of their
respective groups.  If, then, we can say that in the generation
of Swift leading theologians wrote like Clarke, and in the age
of Burke like Paley, we are almost justified by that very circumstance in conjecturing that the contributions of eighteenth-century
divinity to literature are so small that they are hardly worth considering. Among all the divines, the one who wrote most vigorously is perhaps that very ingenious and powerful Tertullian of the
dissenters, Williaml Law.




XII


IHISTORY


397


The student will not omit to note, as one of the interesting
features of the eighteenth century, the school of history which
arose in England toward the end of the reign of George II.
History at its best had been what Lamb, with an intention wholly
laudatory, calls the chronicles of Burnet, "good old prattle,"
garrulous and pleasant. Early in the century, the laborious compilations of Strype, Carte, and Echard, which were innocent of
any general horizon, of any clear or correct view of the relation of
one part of history to another, were accepted as contributions to
the science. Rapin's History of England and Rollin's Ancient
History, which were well known in England, aimed somewhat
higher, but no other French historian, before Voltaire, had any
influence in this country; and when the new school made its
appearance, it was of purely English growth. The year I754, in
which Hume printed the first volume of his History of England,
is the date of the burgeoning of English history; it came to its full
greatness in I776, with the publication of the first volume of
Gibbon's Decline and Fall.  The sudden efflorescence of this
school of historians, with Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson at its
head, may be not too fantastically compared with that of the first
great generation of novelists, who began to appear twelve years
prior to Hume, and who sustained their glory about as long as
the historians did.  After Gibbon's death there occurred a
period of relapse analogous to that which succeeded the death
of Smollett.
The condition of England had, since late in the Renaissance,
afforded no general opportunities for the cultivation of purely provincial literature until the eighteenth century began. The existence of work in dialects or inspired by provincial feeling became
from that time forth too evident to be overlooked. But it is the
revival of letters in Scotland which is likely first of all to attract
the notice of a student, and it is the more necessary to dwell on
this because that revival, although more important than any other
of its class, was at first so imitative, and remained so feeble until
near the end of the century, that it may easily be lost sight of in




398


CONCLUSION


CHAP.


the glare of English literature. There went on a curious struggle
between pure Scots and classic English-men who, as Ramsay
of Ochtertyre puts it, "spoke their mother-tongue without disguise," finding it exceedingly difficult to suppress that native
idiom when they came to emulate the Spectator or the Tatler.
The worst of it was that the Scots tongue was looked upon as
rude and contemptible, and for a long time even the preachings
and the practice of Allan Ramsay did not contrive to make
the dialect fashionable.  The revival of popular poetry came
at last, and culminated splendidly in Burns. The use of Scotch
prose, except by the novelists in dialogue, has never been seriously
accepted, and probably never will be. Toward the close of the
eighteenth century America began to supply herself with a species
of literature, which, however, gave at first but little promise of
all she has done within the last hundred years. By far the most
eminent of the early American writers was Benjamin Franklin
(1706-I790), whose works, first collected in I779, only just come
within our chronological limits.  Franklin's style is notoriously
graceful and charming, but he is almost the only American writer
before the Independence who can be named with the recognised
masters of eighteenth-century English.  It is curious to reflect
that in I780, a date which to the historian of English literature
seems late indeed, neither Washington Irving nor Bryant, neither
the father of American prose nor the father of American poetry,
was yet born.
This so-called classic age of ours has long ceased to be
regarded with that complacency which led the most flourishing
part of it to adopt the epithet "Augustan."  It will scarcely
be denied by its greatest admirer, if he be a man of wide reading, that it cannot be ranked with the poorest of the five great
ages of literature.  Deficient in the highest intellectual beauty,
in the qualities which awaken the fullest critical enthusiasm, the
eighteenth century will be enjoyed more thoroughly by those
who make it their special study than by those who skim the
entire surface of literature. It has, although on the grand scale




XII.


MASTERY OF PROSE


399


condemned as second-rate, a remarkable fulness and sustained
richness which endear it to specialists. If it be compared, for
instance, with the real Augustan age in Rome, or with the Spanish
period of literary supremacy, it may claim to hold its own against
these rivals in spite of their superior rank, because of its more
copious interest. If it has neither a Horace nor a Calderon, it
has a great extent and variety of writers just below these in merit,
and far more numerous than what Rome or Spain can show during
those blossoming periods.    It is, moreover, fertile at far more
points than either of these schools. This sustained and variegated
success, at a comparatively low level of effort, strikes one as
characteristic of an age more remarkable for persistent vitality
than for rapid and brilliant growth.   The Elizabethan vivida vis
is absent, the Georgian glow has not yet dawned; but there is a
suffused prosaic light of intelligence, of cultivated form, over the
whole picture; and during the first half of the period, at least, this
is bright enough to be very attractive.
Perhaps, in closing, the distinguishing mark of eighteenthcentury literature may be indicated as its mastery of prose as a
vehicle for general thought. It is customary to note the Restoration as marking the point where English prose took a modern
form. This is true, but there was nevertheless much left to reform
in the practice of authors. At the close of the reign of Charles II.,
we find the most accomplished prose-writer of the age still encumbering himself in the toils of such sentences as this:
" That which is not pleasant to me, may be to others who judge better,
and to prevent an accusation from my enemies, I am sometimes ready to
imagine that my disgust of low comedy proceeds not so much from my judgment as from my temper, which is the reason why I so seldom write it, and that
when I succeed in it, I mean so far as to please the audience, yet I am nothing
satisfied with what I have done, but am often vexed to hear the people laugh
and clap, as they perpetually do, where I intended them no jest, while they
let pass the better things, without taking notice of them."
A hundred years later, such a sentence had become an impossibility.  It is not merely that we should search Burke or




400                    CONCLUSION                CHAP. XII
Robertson in vain, at their weariest moments, for such a flaccid
chain of clauses, but that the ordinary newspaper-man, the
reporter or inventor of last night's speeches, would no longer
endure this clumsy form, this separation of the noun from its verb,
and the pronoun from its noun. It was the work of the period
which we roughly describe as the eighteenth century to reform and
regulate ordinary writing.  It found English prose antiquated,
amorphous, without a standard of form; it left it a finished thing,
the completed body for which subsequent ages could do no more
than weave successive robes of ornament and fashion.




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INDEX
Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden, 14, 15, Armstrong, John, 227, 228.
i6, 18, 59.                       Arnold, Matthew, 24, 90, 395.
Acetaria, Evelyn, 79, 375.          Articles, Exposition of the Thirty-nine,
Adams, Jean, 340.                     G. Burnet, 102.
Addison, Joseph, 99, IOT, 105-7, 112, Assignation, Dryden, 44, 92.
II4, 117, I23, I37, 138, I47, 150, Astrcea Redux, Dryden, 10, 379.
177, i86, 187-I91, I92, I93-5, 243, 1 Atterbury, Francis [Bishopof Rochester],


271, 311, 380, 381.
Admiral Hosier's Ghost, Glover, 228.
Advancement of Learning, Cowley, 77.
Adventurer, Hawkesworth's, 289.
Adventures of an Atom, Smollett, 262.
Akenside, Mark, I96, 311, 312.
Alcander, Pope, o09.
Alcibiades, Otway, 54.
Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher,
Berkeley, 201.
Alexander's Feast, Dryden, 22.
Alfred, Thomson and Mallet, 225.
All for Love, Dryden, 13, 45, 92.
Allies, Conduct of the, Swift, 155, 167.
Alna, Prior, I34.
AlmanzorandAzlmahide, Dryden, 42-4,
9I.
Amelia, Fielding, 244, 256, 257.
American Taxation, Burke's Speech on,
369.
Amory, Thomas, 278, 279.
Amphitiyon, Dryden, 45.
Analogy of Religion, Butler, 275.
Anecdotes of Painting, Walpole, 300.
Annual Register, 368.
Annus Mirabilis, Dryden, Io, 11, 91.
Anstey, Christopher, 3I5, 3I6.
Anti-Elixir, Boyle, 376.
Antony and Cleopatra, Dryden, 13.
Appius and Virginia, Dennis, IIi.
Arbuthnot, John, 156, 159, i6o, 167-9.
Arbuthnot, Pope's Epistle to Dr., 129.
Architectura, Evelyn, 78.


103, 0o4, I27, I99 -Atterbury, Lewis, 103.
Auld Langsyne, Sempill, 33.
Auld Robzn Gray, Barnard, 340.


Aureng-Zebe, Dryden, 13, 44, 92.
Austen, Jane, 272.


Badman, Life    and Death of Mr.,
Bunyan, 84, 85.
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, 246, 343.
Barnard, Lady Anne, 340.
Barrington, Hon. Daines, 303.
Barrow, Isaac, 88, 89.
Barry, Mrs., 54.
Bastard, The, Savage, 217.
Battle of the Books, Swift, 140, 143.
Battle of the Frogs and Mice, Parnell,
I 19.
Baucis and Philemon, Swift, 153.
Baxter, Richard, 76.
Beattie, James, 327.
Beauty, Inquiry concerning, Hutcheson,
277.
Beaux' Strata gcem, The, Farquhar, 71.
Beggar's Obera, Gay, I35.
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 32, 51, 242, 24;
her Songs, 32, 54.
Bellamira, Sedley, 50.
Belle's Stratagem, 7he, Parkhouse (Mrs.
Cowley), 338.
Benevolence, Armstrong, 227.
Bentley, Richard, 103, 104, T47.
13ergerac, Cyrano de, i60.




406


INDEX


Berkeley, George [Bishop], 95, I56,
197-203, 277, 381, 386.
Berridge's Christian World Unmasked,
395.
"Bickerstaff, Isaac," 151, I52, i88.
Blackstone, Sir William, 307, 308.
Blair, Hugh, 302, 335.
Blair, Robert, 220, 22r.
Blenheimn, Philips, I08.
Boileau, 132, 133, 383, 39I.
Bolingbroke, Viscount, 126, 128 173,
174, 367.
Boswell, James, 291, 292, 358.
Botanic Garden, Darwin, 328, 329.
Boyle, Hon. Robert, 8I, I49, 376.
Boyle, Roger, 384.
Brooke, Fulke Greville, Lord, 9.
Brooke, Henry, 218, 27I.
Broome, William, 119.
Browne, Dr. Peter, I97.
Browne, Isaac Hawkins, 229.
Browne, Sir Thomas, I94.
Browning, Mr.. 3I5.
Bruce, Michael, 327.
Brutus, Lucius Junius, Lee, 58.
Buckingham, George Villiers, 2d Duke
of, 43, 60, 6i.
Buckingham   [Mulgrave, which see],
Duke of, 31.
Budgell, Eustace, 190.
Bunyan, John, 82-6, 242.
Burke, Edmund, 362, 365-74, 377.
Burnet, Gilbert [Bishop], 102, 0o3, I49,
204, 305.
Burnet, Thomas, 99, oo00.
Burney, Miss Frances, 361, 362.
Burns, Robert, 33, 339, 34I, 342.
Busiris, Young, 211.
Butler, Joseph [Bishop], 273, 274-7,
280.
Butler, Samuel, 26-8, 6i, I34.
Byrom, John, 214, 215.
Cadenus and Vanessa, Swift, 162.
Caldecott, Randolph, 321.
Caleb Williams, Godwin, 244.
Caligula, Crown, 58.
Call to the Unconverted, Baxter, 76.
Cambyses, Settle, 59.
Canpaign, The, Addison, io6, 107.
Campbell, Dr. George, 363.
Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, 3.
Captain Singleton, Life of, Defoe, 179,
I 8.


Careless Husband, The, Cibber, 70.
Carte, Thomas, 397.
Carter, Elizabeth, 288.
Caryll, John, 112, I3I.
Castle of Indolence, Thomson, 225, 226,
227.
Castle of Otranto, Walpole, 244, 721,
30I, 302.
Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors,
Walpole, 300.
Cato, Tragedy of, Addison, io6, 116,
I90, I99.
Cave, Edward, 284.
Caylus, Comte de, 302.
Chamberlaine, Frances, 36I.
Chapone, Mrs. See Mulso.
Character of a Trimmer, Savile, 89.
Characteristics of MJen, etc., Anthony,
3d Earl of Shaftesbury, I71, 311,
387~
Charles V., History of Reign of, Robertson, 304.
Charleton, Walter, 74.
Chase, The, Somerville, 138.
Chatterton, Thomas, 33I-4.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 3, 22.
Cheats, The, Wilson, 39.
Chesterfield, Philip Dormer, Earl of,
228, 280, 289.
Choice, Pomfret, 107.
Christian Hero, The, Steele, 187.
Christianity, Argument again st Abolishing, Swift, I50.
Christianity not Mysterious, Toland,
I75.
Christie, Mr., i8.
Chrysal, Johnstone, 244, 27I.
Chubb, Thomas, 273.
Churchill, Charles, 23I, 322-5.
Cibber, Colley, 69, 70, I22, 124, 317,
393 -Cicero, Life of, Middleton, 278.
Cider, Philips, 108.
Circassian, The Fair, Croxall, 138.
Citizen of the TWorld, Geldsmith, 346,
349.
Clandestine  Mal rriage, Colman  and
Garrick, 318.
Clarenont, Garth, 34.
Clarendon, Earl of, 74.
Clarissa, Richardson, 244, 247-9, 383.
Clarke, Samuel, 195, i96, I98, 273,
274, 384, 396.
Cleomencs, Dryden, 45.




INDEX


407


Cleveland, John, 28.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 334.
Collier, Jeremy, 67, 69.
Collins, Anthony, I75.
Collins, William, 208, 231-5.
Colman, George, the Elder, 318, 319,
355.
Colonel Jack, Defoe, I79, I81.
Comical Revenge, Etheredge, 46.
Commentaries on the Laws, Blackstone,
307.
Conduct of the Allies, Swift, 155, 167.
Confederacy, The, Vanbrugh, 68, 69.
Congreve, William, 53, 64-7, 141, 150,
319, 379, 380.
Conscious Lovers, Steele, 187, I92.
Constant Couple, The, Farquhar, 70.
Contentment, Hymn to, Parnell, 137.
Contests and Dissensions in Athens and
Rome, Swift, 149.
Conversation, Polite, Swift, I64.
Cooper's Hill, Denham, 5, 34.
Coriolanus, Thomson, 228.
Corneille, 93.
Coronation Panegyric, Dryden, 1o.
Corsica, Boswell, 358.
Count Fathom, Smollett, 261.
Country Wife, Wycherley, 52.
Courthope, Mr. W. J., 106, I3I.
Cowley, Mrs. See Parkhouse, Hannah.
Cowley, Abraham, 5-8, 77, 78, IoI.
Cowley, Life of, Sprat, 359.
Cowper, William, 325.
Crabbe, George, 220.
Craggs, Robert. See Nugent, Lord.
Crebillon, 383.
Creech, Thomas, 21.
Creed, Exposition of the, Pearson, 76.
Critic, The, Sheridan, 61, 337.
Critical Review, Smollett, 261.
Criticism, Essay on, Pope, i I.
Cromwell, Discourse concerning Oliver,
Cowley, 77.
Crown, John, 58, 59.
Croxall, Samuel, 138, I39.
Cuckoo, To the, Bruce, 327.
Cudworth, Ralph, 77, 8i.
Cumberland, Richard, 338.
Cumnor Hall, Meikle, 327.
Curll, Edmund, 122.
Cythereia, 18.
Damascus, Siege of, Hughes, 188.
Darwin, Erasmus, 4, 219, 3IO, 328.


Davenant, Sir William, 8, 9, 38, 39, 60.
David Simple, S. Fielding, 243, 254,
264, 265.
Davideis, Cowley, 6.
De Quincey, Thomas, 241.
Death, Practical Treatise on, Sherlock,
IOI.
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
Gibbon, 352, 353, 354-7, 383 -Defoe, Daniel, 176-185, 242, 385.
Deists, Short and easy Method with the,
Leslie, 174.
Delolme, Jean Louis, 363, 388.
Denham, Sir John, 4, 5, 34.
Dennis, John, III, 114, 122, 185, 394
Description of an Author's Bedroom,
Goldsmith, 321.
Deserted Village, The, Goldsmith, 320,
321.
Diary of Evelyn, 79.
Diary of Pepys, 97.
Dictionary, Johnson's, 280, 289, 290.
Discourses, Sir J. Reynolds, 308.
Dispensary, Garth, 34, 379.
Dissenters, The Shortest Way with the,
Defoe, 177.
Divine Legation, Warburton, 281.
Dobson, Mr. Austin, 195, 206, 254, 347.
Doddridge, Philip, 228.
Don Carlos, Otway, 54.
Don Quixote, Smollett's trans., 261.
Don Sebastian, Dryden, 45.
Donne, Satires of Dr., Pope, 130.
Dorset, Charles Sackville, Lord, 20, 32.
Double Dealer, Congreve, 65.
Douglas, Rev. J. Home, 232.
Dramatic Poetry, Essay on, Dryden, 91.
Drapier's Letters, Swift, 156-9.
Drummer, The, Addison, I91.
Dryden, John, 4, 5, 9-26, 30, 31, 37,
41-6, 43, 49, 60, 62, 65, 89, 90-4,
105, 131, 133, 142, 373, 379, 380,
389, 390.
Dryden's Songs, 12, 25.
Duncan Campbell, lMr., Defoe, I79.
Dunciad, The, Pope, 119, 123, 132,
I59 -Dunciad, The Nez, Pope, 124, 130.
Dyer, John, 219.
Earth, The Sacred    Theory of the,
Burnet, 98.
Earth may be a Planet, That the,
Wilkins, 75.




408


INDEX


Echard, Laurence, 397.
Economy of Love, Armstrong, 227.
Education, Thoughts concerning, Locke,
95.
Elegy on Anne Killigrew, Dryden, I9.
Elegy to the AMemory of an Unfortunate
Lady, Pope, 120.
Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,
Gray, 207, 236, 239, 240.
Eloisa to Abelard, Pope, 120, 121, 207.
Elysium Britannicum, Evelyn, 79.
English Commerce, The Plan of, Defoe,
179.
English Language, Proposal for correcting the, Swift, I55.
English Poets, Account of the Greatest,
Addison, io6.
English Poets, Lives of the, Johnson, 293.
Englishman, True-born, Defoe, 177.
Enquiry into Polite Learning, Goldsmith, 345, 347, 348.
Enthusiasm, Letter concerning, Shaftesbury, 171.
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Pope, 129.
Epistle to the Earl of Dorset, Philips,
I37.
Epsom Wells, Shadwell, 49.
Esprit des Lois, 383.
Essay on Man, Pope, 126, 127, 132,
I7I.
Essays, Cowley, 77, 78.
Essays, Goldsmith, 346, 349.
Essays, Hume, 296.
Etheredge, Sir George, 32, 41, 46-8,
51, 64, 393.
Evelina, Miss Burney, 244, 361, 384.
Evening, Ode to, W. Collins, 233.
Evergreen, The, Ramsay, 139.
Evelyn, John, 53, 78-80, 376.
Examiner, I55, 206.
Executions at Tyburn, Causes of the
Frequent, Mandeville, 170.
Fable of the Bees,; or, Private Vices,
Public Benefits, Mandeville, 169.
Fables, Gay, I35.
Fables, Ancient and Aodern, Dryden,
22, 93.
Falconer, William, 326, 327.
Familiar Letters, Richardson, 245.
Farquhar, George, 53, 70-2.
Fatal Marriage, The, Southerne, 62.
Fawkes, Francis, 312, 313.
Fenton, Elijah, 119.


Ferdinand, Count Fathom, Smollett, 26.
Fergusson, Robert, 34I, 342.
Fielding, Henry, 247, 251-8, 386.
Fielding's Miscellanies, 253.
Fielding, Sarah, 247, 254, 264, 265.
Fingal, 335.
Flavel, John, 88.
Flecknoe, Richard, 48.
Fleece, The, Dyer, 219.
Fontenelle, i60.
Fool of Quality, The, H. Brooke, 218,
271.
Foote, Samuel, 317.
Forc'd Marriage, The, Behn, 5I.
Forced MIarriage, The, Armstrong, 227.
Forster, John, 154.
Fourth IMoral Essay, Pope, 126.
Fox, George, 88.
Francion, Sorel, 242.
Francis, Sir Philip, 363.
Franklin, Benjamin, 398.
Freeholder, The, 191, 192.
Freeman, Prof. E. A., 356.
Freethinking, Discourse on, Collins, 175.
Funeral, The, Steele, 187.
Furetiere, 242, 385.
Gallant, The Wild, Dryden, 41,
Gardening, Evelyn, 78.
Gardiner, Mr. S. R., 298.
Garrick, David, 229, 284, 287, 317.
318, 322.
Garth, Sir Samuel, 33-5.
Gay, John, 135, 136, 379.
" Gazette in rhyme," Waller, 107.
Gentle Shepherd, Ramsay, 139.
Gentleman's AMagazine, 284, 285.
Ghost, The, Churchill, 324.
Gibbon, Edward, 203, 228, 278, 345,
350-7, 397.
Gil Bias, Le Sage, 385.
Gloriana, Lee, 57.
Glover, Richard, 228.
Godolphin, Sidney, 5.
Goethe, 384.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 217, 272, 316-22,
345-50, 381.
Goldsmith's Essays, 346, 349.
Gondibert, Davenant, 9, Io.
Good Natur'd Man, Goldsmith, 317,
347.
Government, Locke, 95.
Government,  Discourses  concerning,
Sydney, 8I.




INDEX


4c9


Grace Abounding, Bunyan, 84.
Grainger, James, 312.
Granada,   The   Conquest of.   SEE
Almanzor.
Granville, George, Lord Lansdowne,
IIo, 116.
Grave, The, R. Blair, 220.
Gray, Thomas, 25, 63, 208, 231, 235 -4I, 302, 33I, 379.
Gray's Elegy, 207, 236, 239, 240.
Gray's Life and Letters, Mason, 359.
Gray's Odes, 237, 239.
Great Britain, Hume's History of, 298.
Green, Matthew, 215-7, 379.
Gresset, J. B. L., 216.
Grongar Hill, Dyer, 2I9.
Grub Street Journal, 126.
Grumbling Hive, The, Mandeville, I69.
Guardian, The, I90, I99, 2io.
Guise, Vindication of the Duke of,
Dryden, 91.
Gulliver's Travels, Swift, 147, 159,
160-2, 242.
HALIFAX, Earl of. See Montague.
Halifax, Marquis of. See Savile.
Hamilton of Bangour, 209, 338.
Hanmner, Epistle to Sir Thomas, Collins,
232.
Harleian Miscellany, Oldys, 280.
Harmony in an Uproar, Arbuthnot, i68.
Hartley, David, 295, 305.
Haunch of Venison, The, Goldsmith,
321.
Hawkesworth, Dr. John, 285, 289.
Hazlitt, William, 279.
Head, Richard, i80, 242.
Health, Art of Preserving, Armstrong,
227.
Hebrides, Tour to the, Boswell, 358.
Helenore, Ross, 338.
Herbert, George, 230.
Hermit, The, Parnell, 136.
Hervey, William, stanzas by Cowley
on, 6.
High Life Below Stairs, Townley, 317.
Hill, Aaron, 222, 225.
Hind and the Panther, The, Dryden,
19.
Historic Doubts, Walpole, 301.
History of England, Smollett, 261.
History of Great Britain, Hume, 298.
History of Myj Owzn Times, G. Burnet,
102.


History of Reign of Charles V., Robertson, 304.
History of Scotland, Hume, 304.
History of the Devil, The Political,
Defoe, I79, 182.
Hive, The Grumbling, Mandeville, I69.'
Hoadly, Dr. Benjamin, I96, 3i7.
Hogarth, William, 318, 324.
Hogarth, An    Epistle to  William,
Churchill, 323.
Holland, The Character of, Marvell, 29.
Holroyd, J. B. [Lord Sheffield], 353.
Holy War, Bunyan, 84, 85.
Home, Henry. See Kames, Lord.
Home, Rev. John, Douglas, 232, 335.
Homer, Pope's translation, 117, 118.
Horce Pauince, 396.
House of F7me, Pope's Paraphrase, I7.
Howard, Sir Robert, 42, 60.
Hudibras, Butler, 27, I34.
Hughes, John, i88, I89, I90.
Human Knowledge, Principles of, Berkeley, I98.
Human Nazture, Hume, 296, 297.
Human Understanding, Locke, 73, 95.
Hume, David, 203, 295-300, 304, 306,
397.
Hume's History, 298.
Humphrey Clinker, Smollett, 244, 262.
263.
Hunt, Leigh, 107, I95.
Hurd, Richard, [Bishop], 281, 395.
Hutcheson, Francis, 277, 305.
Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley, I98.
Hymn to Contentment, Parnell, 137.
Hymn to thle Naiads, Akenside, 311.
Idea of a Patriot King, Bolingbroke,
174.
Idler, Johnson, 289, 290.
Iliad, Pope's translation of the, 117 -II9.
Imitations of Horace, Pope, I28-I30.
Indian Emperor, The, Dryden, 41, 42,
9I.
Indian Queen, The, Dryden, 41.
Inn at Henley, Written in an, Shenstone,
231.
Innocence, The State of, Dryden, 92.
Inquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful,
Burke, 368.
Intellectual System of the Universe,
Cudworth, 77.
Irene, Johnson, 287.




4Io


INDEX


Italy, Letterfrom, Addison, io6.
JEBB, Prof. R. C., 104.
Jesuits, Satire upon the, Oldham, 30.
John Bull, The History of, Arbuthnot,
i68.
John Buncle, T. Amory, 278, 279.
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 26, 77, 217, 271,
280, 281, 282-95, 302, 314, 32I, 325,
326, 336, 337, 346, 355, 358, 365, 373,
380, 382, 389.
Johnson, Boswell's Life of, 358.
Johnson, Esther. See "Stella."
Johnstone, Charles, 27I.
Jonathan Wild, Fielding, 253.
Jonson, Ben, 39, 40, 48, 92.
Jortin, John, 362.
Joseph Andrews, Fielding, 243, 252,
254.
Journal to Stella, Swift, I54, I55.
Journey to the WVestern Islands, Johnson,
292.
Juliana, Crown, 58.
"Junius," Letters of, 363-5.
Jusserand, Mons. J. J., 385.
KAMES, HOME, Lord, 280, 302, 395.
Keats, John, 33I,334.
Kelly, Hugh, 3I7.
Kersey's Dictionary, 333.
Killigrew, Anne, Elegy on, Dryden, I9.
LA BRUYkRE, I94, 204.
Lamb, Charles, 182.
"Lancelot Temple" [J. Armstrong],
227.
Lansdowne, Lord. See Granville.
Last Day, The, Young, 2Io.
Law, William, 203, 273, 396.
Law, In Meezocy of [illiam, Blair,
220.
Law is a Bottomless Pit, Arbuthnot,
i68.
League, History of the, Dryden's translation, 93.
Lee, Nathaniel, 57, 58.
Lee, Mr. William, I79.
L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 89, 380.
Leonidas, Glover, 228.
LeSage, 181, 383, 385.
Leslie, Charles, 174.
Lessing, 368, 383, 384.
Letters of Junius, 363-5.
Letters of Lord Chesterfield, 280.


Letters of Phalaris, 104.
Letter to a Noble Lord, Burke, 371, 376.
Lettres Portugaises, 380.
Liberty, Thomson, 225.
Lillo, George, 393.
Lives of the English Poets, Johnson,
293.
Lloyd, Robert, 323, 325.
Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia, 283.
Locke, John, 94-7, 171, 197, 277, 378,
380, 381, 386.
Logan, John, 327.
London, Johnson, 284.
Love, Sydney, 81.
Love, Allfor, Dryden, 92.
Love and a Bottle, Farquhar, 70.
Love and Business, Farquhar, 72.
Love, An Evening's, Dryden, 42, 91.
Love of Fame, The Universal Passion,
Young, 211.
Lovefor Love, Congreve, 66.
Love in a Wood, Wycherley, 51.
Love makes a Man, Cibber, 70.
Love Triumphant, Dryden, 45.
Love Tyrannic, Dryden, 42.
Love's Last Shift, Cibber, 70.
Loves of the Plants, The, E. Darwin,
329.
Loves of the Triangles, The, Canning
and Frere, 330.
Loyal Brother, The, Southerne, 62.
Lucreti7ns, Creech, 2I.
Lying Lover, The, Steele, 187.
Lyttelton, George, Ist Lord, 225, 227,
228, 254.
lMacFlecknoe, Dryden, 15, I7, 48.
Mackenzie, Henry, 272, 361.
Macklin, Charles, 318.
Macpherson, James, 292, 335-7.
Madagascar, Davenant, 9.
Maiden Queen, The, Dryden, 42.
Malebranche, 199.
Malherbe, 390.
Man, Essay on, Pope, 126.
flan of Feeling, Mackenzie, 272.
Man of Mode, Etheredge, 46, 47.
Jlan of the W/orld, Macklin, 3I8.
Man's the Master, The, Davenant, 39.
Mandeville, Bernard de, 169-70, 20i,
381.
Manley, Delariviere, 205, 2o6.,Marianne, Marivaux, 247.
Marivaux, P:erre de, 243, 247, 383.




INDEX                 4


4IT


Mfarriage 4 la Mode, Dryden, 44.
Martinus Scriblerus Club, 159, Ml/emoirs
of, I 68.
Marvell, Andrew, 14, 28-30.
Mason, William, 359.
Massacre of Paris, Lee, 58.
Maynwaring, Arthur, i87, 39I.
MDCCXXXV11I. Pope, I3o.
Medal, The, Dryden, I4, i6, 93.
MJeditation on a Broomstick, Swift, 8i,
148.
Meikie or Mickle, William Julius, 327.
Memoirs, Gibbon, 352.
Memoirs a/ a Cavalier, Defoe, I179, i 8I,
i82.
Mercuoy, Wilkins, 75.
Messiah, The,2 Pope, II 5, 189.
Mickle or Meikle, W. J., 327.
Middleton, Conyers, 278, 396.
V/Zill, Letter to Dr., Bentley, I03.
Mill, James, 295.
Milton, John, 3, 1Ii, 58.
Miracles, Essay on, Hume, 299.
Jlliraculous Powers, Free, Inquiry into,
Middleton, 278.
Miscellanies, Fielding, 28.
Miscellanies, Swift, 152, 154, i65.
Miscellanies, J. Armstrong, 227.
Mfiss in Her Teens, Garriek, 317.
Miss- Sydney LBiddul~ph, Chamberlaine,
3 i6.
A'Iistress, The, Cowley, 5.
Mistress, The Fortunate, Defoe, 179,
See Roxana.
Mithridates, Lee, 57.
MaollFl,'anders, Defoe, 179, ii8o, i8i.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 122,
129, 192, 204, 205.
Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax,
iio6.
Montesquieu, 346, 369, 383, 384.
M3oon may be a World, That the,
Wilkins, 75.
Mforal Essays, Pope, I27, 128.
Moralists, The, Shafteshury, 171, I73.
Morley, Mr. John, 368.
Morocco, The Empress of, Settle, 59.
Afourning Bride, Congreve, 67.
M~rs. Veal, The Ap~parition of, Defoe,
178.
Mlulberry Garden, The, Sedley, 50.
Mulgrave, John Sheffield, Earl Of, 3T.
Mulso, Hester, 288, 303.
Mlurphy, Arthur, 338.


Musset, Alfred de, 249.
Mysterious Mother, Walpole, 301.
Naboth's Tlineyard, 14.
Naiads, Hymn to the, Akenside, 3"1.
Natural History of Selborne, White,
303.
Navigation and Commerce, Evelyn, 78.
Nero, Lee, 57..New Atalantis, Mrs. Manley, 206.
New Bath Guide, Anstey, 3I5, 316,
32I.
Nighit Piece, The, Parnell, 137.
Night Thoughts, Young, 212.
Nocturnal Reverie, Lady Winchelsea,
35.
Nugent, Lord, 229.
Odes, Collils, 232.
Odyssey, Pope, 119.
Old Bachelsr, Congreve, 65.
Old English Baron, C. Reeve, 302.
Oldham, John, 14, 30, 31, 391.
Oldmixon, John, 124.
Oldys, William, 279, 280.
Oldys' Life a/ Raleigh, 280, 359.
Ormond, 'Duchess of, Dedication by
Dryden to0, 23, 113.
Oroonoho, S~outherne, 62.
Oroonoho, Aphra Behn, 244.
Or~phan, Otway, 55 62.
Ossian, 240, 335-7.
Otway, Thomas, 54-7, 62, 220.
Pagan, Tibbie, 340.
Paine, Toni, 363.
Painter, Last Instruction to a, Marvell,
28.
Paley, William, 396.
Paltock, Robert, 244, 245.
Pamela, Richardson, 243, 246, 247,
251, 252, 253, 381, 386.
Parkhouse, Hannah, 338.
Parnell, Thomas, 119, 136.
Parthenisso, Roger Boyle, 384.
Partridge, John, 151, 152.
Partridge's Death, An Account of,
Swift, I131.
Passions, The, Collins, 233.
Pastorals, A. Philips, I io.
Pastorals, 'Pope, uni.
Pastoral Ballad, Shenstone, 230.
Patriot King, Idea of a, Bolingbroke,
174.




412


INDEX


Peacock, T. L., 312.
Pearson, John, Bishop of Chester, 76.
Pennant, Thomas, 303.
Pepys"Diary, 97.
Pepys, Samuel, 97, 98.
Percy, Thomas, 325, 346.
Peregrine Pickle, Smollett, 244, 260,
263.
Persian Eclogues, Collins, 232.
Peter Wilkins, Paltock, 245.
Petition of Francis Harris, Swift, 148.
Phalaris, Letters of, 104.
Philips, Ambrose, IIo, III, 117, 135,
I37.
Philips, John, 108.
Pilgrim, Beaumont and Fletcher, 45.
Pilgrim's Progress, 73, 84-6.
Pindaric Odes, Swift, 142.
Pindarique Odes, Cowley, 7.
Pix, Mary, 51.
Plague Year, The, Defoe, 179.
Plain Dealer, Wycherley, 52, 54.
Plays, Essay on Heroic, Dryden, 9I.
Pleasures of Imagination, Akenside, 3II.
Poems, Prior, I34.
Poems, Swift, I53.
Poetry, Essay on, Mulgrave, 3I.
Poetry, History of English, Warton, 325.
Poetry, Roscommon's Paraphrase of
Horace's Art of, 32.
Polite Conversation, Swift, 164.
Political Lying, The Art of, Arbuthnot,
168.
Polly, Gay, 135.
Polymetis, Spence, 368.
Pope, Alexander, 24, 36, 53, 105-34,
135, 137, 156, 159, I7I, 185, 189,
204, 207, 224, 281, 284, 380, 382,
39I.
Pope, his Safe Returnfrom Troy, Gay's
Alexander, I35.
Predictions for theyear 1708, Swift, 151.
Price, Richard, 363, 370.
Priestley, Joseph, 363.
Princess of Cleve, The, Lee, 58.
Prior, Matthew, 101, 134, 391.
Procession, The, Steele, 187.
Projectors, The, Wilson, 40.
Prophecy, The, Chatterton, 335.
Proposal for correcting the English Language, Swift, I55.
Provoked Husband, Cibber and Vanbrugh, 317.
Provoked WIife, Vanbrugh, 68.


QUESNAY, 306, 388.
RACINE, 7.
Raleigh, Oldys's Life of, 280, 359.
Rambler, The, 192, 288.
Ramsay, Allan, 139, 208, 209, 338, 398.
Rape of the Lock, Pope, 112-4, 119, 132.
Rasselas, Johnson, 244, 271, 290, 291.
Ray, John, 81.
Recruiting Oficer, The, Farquhar, 71.
Reeve, Clara, 302.
Refections on the French Revolution,
Burke, 369.
Reformation, History of the, G. Burnet,
102.
Regicide Peace, Burke On a, 372.
Regicide, The, Smollett, 258.
Rehearsal, The, Villiers, 44, 60, ioi.
Reid, Thomas, 295.
Relapse, The, Vanbrugh, 68.
Religio Laici, Dryden, 18.
Religion ofNature delineated, Wollaston,
I75.
Religion, Projectfcr the Advancement of,
Swift, 151.
Religion, The Force of, Young, 211.
Reliques of English Poetry, Percy, 325.
Retaliation, Goldsmith, 321.
Revenge, The, Young, 21.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 308, 309, 368.
Rhodes, Siege of, Davenant, 39.
Richardson, Samuel, 243, 245-51, 258,
265, 345, 383, 386.
Ritson, Joseph, 325.
Rival Ladies, The, Dryden, 41, 91.
Rival Queens, Lee, 57.
Rivals, The, Sheridan, 337.
Rivarol, 145.
Robertson, William, 304, 305.
Robinson Crusoe, Defoe, 160, 179, i8o,
181, 184, 185, 242, 245, 385.
Rochester's Songs, 32, 33.
Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, II,
31, 32, 55, I02.
Roderick Random, Smollett, 244, 258,
259, 260.
Rogue, The English, Head, i8o.
"Rolls" Sermons, J. Butler, 274, 275.
Roman Bourgeois, Furetiere, 242, 385.
Rome, Ruins of, Dyer, 219.
Rosamund, Addison, io6.
Rosciad, The, Churchill, 323.
Roscommon, Wentworth Dillon, Earl
of, 31, 32.




INDEX


413


Ross, Alexander, 338, 339.
Rousseau, 383, 384.
Rover, The, Behn, 51.
Rowe, Nicholas, 112, 288.
Rowley Poems, Chatterton, 33I-5.
Roxana, Defoe, 179, i8o, i8i, 182,
I84.
Royal and Noble Authors, Catalogue of,
Walpole, 300.
Royal Society, History of the, Sprat,
IOI.
Rule Britannia, 225.
Rymer, Thomas, 394.
Sacramental Test, Letter on the, Swift,
152.
Saint Lambert, 383.
Saintsbury, Mr. G., 13, 44.
Saints' Everlasting Rest, Baxter, 76.
Salamander, The, Swift, 152.
Satire, Essay on, Mulgrave, 31.
Satire 1740, Pope, I30.
Satires, Pope, 130.
Savage, Richard, 217-8, 285, 293.
Savage, Johnson's Life of, 285.
Savile, George, Marquis of Halifax, 89,
90, 93 -Scarron, 39.
Schoolmistress, The, Shenstone, 230.
Scotland, Robertson's History of, 304.
Scots Poems, Fergusson, 341.
Scots Songs, Ramsay, 208.
Scott, Sir Walter, 94, 272, 327, 361.
Scriblerus Club, I59, i68.
Scriblerus, Memoirs of, Pope, I59, i68.
Sculptura, Evelyn, 78.
Seasons, Thomson, 222.
Seeker, Thomas, 210, 274, 275, 276.
Sedley, Sir Charles, 32, 50.
Sempill, Francis, 33.
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen, 244.
Sentimental Journey, Sterne, 268, 269.
Sentiments of a Church of England
Man, Swift, I50.
Serious call to a Devout and Holy Life,
Law, 204.
Sermons of Mr. Yorick, Sterne, 267.
Servants, Rules for, Swift, I65.
Settle, Elkanah, 18, 48, 59.
Seward, Anna, 342.
Shadwell, Thomas, 8, 15, 17, i8, 48 -50~
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley, 3d Earl
of, 147, 170,   171-3, 201, 218,


276, 277, 280, 295, 302, 311, 381,
387, 396.
Shaftesbury, ist Earl of, 14, 15, i6,
95.
She Stoops Io Conquer, Goldsmith, 318,
319, 338, 348.
Sheffield, John, Earl of. See Mulgrave.
Shelley, Percy, Bysshe, 226.
Shenstone, 'William, 230, 32I.
Shepherd's Week, Gay, I35.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 337-8.
Sheridan, Thomas, 36I.
Sherlock, Thomas, 197.
Sherlock, William, IoI.
She Would if She Could, Etheredge, 46.
Shilling, The Splendid, Philips, 108.
Shipwreck, The, Falconer, 326.
Shirley, James, 38.
Siege of Rhodes, Davenant, 39.
Singleton, Life of Captain, Defoe, 179,
i8i.
Sir Charles Grandison, Richardson, 244,
249.
Sir Courtly Nice, Crown, 59.
Sir Lancelot' Greaves, Smollett, 261.
Siris, Berkeley, 202, 203.
Skeat, Professor W. W., 333.
Skinner, Rev. John, 339
Smart, Christopher, 313, 314.
Smith, Adam, 277, 296, 305-7, 388.
Smith, Edmund, 293.
Smollett's History of England, 261.
Smollett, Tobias George, 258-64.
Snake in the Grass, Leslie, 174.
Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author,
Shaftesbury, I7.
Solomon, Prior, 134.
Somerville, 'William, I38, 219.
Song to David, Smart, 314.
Songs, Aphra Behn, 32.
Songs, Dryden, 12.
Songs, Rochester, 32.
South, Robert, oo00, 11o.
Southerne, Thomas, 62, 63.
Sophonisba, Lee, 57.
Spanish Friar, The, Dryden, 45.
Spectator, The, 189-91, 192, 194, 214,
243.
Spleen, The, M. Green, 216.
Sprat, Thomas, Io, IO1.
Sprat's Cowley, 359.
Spring, Thomson, 207, 222, 223.
St. Cecilia's Day, Songfor, Dryden, 20,
22.




414


INDEX


St. John, Henry, Viscount. See Bolingbroke.
Stanhope, Philip Dormer. See Chesterfield.
Stanhope, Philip, 280.
Steele, Sir Richard, Io5, 114, 186-92,
194, 195, 199, 206, 243.
"Stella," 148, I54, i6i, 162, 206.
Stella, Journal to, Swift, I54.
Stephen, Mr. Leslie, II3, 119, 152, 170,
196, 28i, 306, 365, 396.
Sterne, Laurence, 265-71, 361.
Stillingfleet, Edward, 101, 104.
Strype, John, 397.
Sublime and Beautiful, Inquiry into the,
Burke, 368.
Sullen Lovers, The, Shadwell, 48.
Summer, Thomson, 222, 223.
Superstitions of the Highlands, On the
popular, Collins, 232.
Suspicious Husband, The, Hoadly 317.
Swift, Jonathan, 8I, 117, 122, 130, 136,
140-69, i88, 189, 199, 206, 377.
Swift, On the death of Dr., 163, 164.
Swinburne, Mr., 233, 240.
Sydney, Colonel Algernon, 80, 8i.
Sylva, Evelyn, 78.
TALBOT, Catherine, 288.
Tale of a Tub, Swift, 140, I43-7, 167,
193.
Tate, Nahum, 15.
Tatller, I52, 153, I86, i88, 189, 192,
271.
Tea Table Miscellany, Ramsay, 139,208.
Temple, Sir William, 86-8, 142, 143.
Temple of Fame, Pope, 117.
Tender Husband, The, Steele, 187.
Terra, Evelyn, 79.
Thackeray, William, 64, 257.
Thebais of Statius, Pope's trans., 109.
Theobald, Lewis, 123.
Thirty-nine Articles, Exposition of the,
G. Burnet, 102.
Thomson, James, 208, 209, 217, 219,
221-7, 232, 383.
Thomson's Spring 207.
Three Weeks after Marriage, Murphy,
338.
Tickell, Thomas, 117, 138, i88, I91.
Tillotson, John, 76, 88, 89.
Tindal, Dr. Matthew, 174.
Tobacco Pipe of, J. H. Browne, 229.
Toland, James Junius, 175, 197.


Toleration, First and Second Letters concerning, Locke, 95.
Third letter, Locke, 96.
Tom Jones, Fielding, 244, 254-6, 383.
Tongue, Government of the, J. Butler,
274.
Tonson, Jacob, 187.
Tour to the Hebrides, Boswell, 358.
Town Eclogues, Lady M. W. Montagu,
205.
Townley, Rev. J., 317.
Tragedy of Tragedies, Fielding, 251.
Translated Verse, Essayon, Roscommon,
32.
Traveller, The, Goldsmith, 217, 319,
321.
Tristram Shandy, Sterne, 244, 266-8,
269.
Trivia, Gay, I35.
True Born Scotchman, Macklin, 3 8.
Tullochgorum, Skinner, 339.
Universal Beauty, H. Brooke, 218.
Universe, True Intellectual System of
the, Cudworth, 77.
Vanbrugh, Sir John 45, 67-9, 152, 217,
337, 39I1
"Vanessa," I54, 162, 200.
Vanhomerigh, Hester. See ' Vanessa."
Vanity of Human Wishes, Johnson, 286.
Vegetation, The Economy of, E. Darwin,
329~
Venice Preserved, Otway, 55.
Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith, 244,
272, 346, 347, 349 -Villiers. See Buckingham, 2d Duke.
Vindication of Natural Socie.y, Burke,
367.
Vindication of theDuke of Guise, Dryden,
93.
Virgil, Dryden's, 22.
Virtue, Inquiry concerning, Shaftesbury,
171, 172.
Virtuoso, The, Shadwell, 49.
Vision, Essay towards a New Theory of,
Berkeley, 198.
Voiture, 12, 390.
Voltaire, 146, 200, 384, 391.
Voltaire's Candide, 290.
Volunteers, Shadwell, 48.
WALLER, EDMUND, 2-5, 9, 10, io6,
107, 382.




INDEX


4I5


Walpole, Horace, Earl of Orford, 236,
271, 300-2, 331, 368.
Walsh, William, o09, IIo.
Wanderer, The, Savage, 217.
Warburton, William [Bishop], 127, 13I,
281, 353 -Ward, Edward, 124.
Warton, Thomas, 303, 325, 326.
Way of the World, Congreve, 67.
Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, 305,
306, 388.
Webster, Dr. Alexander, 229.
Welsted, Leonard, I24.
Wesley, Charles, 230.
Wesley, John, 204.
WI4est Indian, The, Cumberland, 338.
West, Richard, 236.
White, Gilbert, 303, 304, 379.
Whitehead, William, 13I, 327.
Wild, Jonathan, 243.
Wild, Robert, 28.
Wilkins, John [Bishop], 75, 76.
William and Mlalgaret, Mallet, 209,
222.


Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, 229.
Wilson, John, 39, 40.
Willughby, Francis, 81.
Winchelsea, Anna Finch, Countess of,
35, 36, 379.
Windsor bfrest, Pope, i 6.
Wit and Humour, Essay on the Freedom
of, Shaftesbury, I7r.
Wolcot, John, 342.
Wollaston, William, 175.
Woman's Wit, Cibber, 70.
Wordsworth, William, 35, 219, 328,
33IWotton, William, I47.
Wrestling/ acob, C. Wesley, 230.
Wycherley, William, 5I, o09, IIo,
337 -YALDEN, THOMAS, 152.
Yarrow, Braes of, Hamilton, 209.
Young, Edward, 209-14, 220.
Zola, M. 182.
Zoonomia, E. Darwin, 328.


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