CHAPTER IX

THE AGE OF TRANSITION

TIME-CHART OF THE CHIEF AUTHORS

_The thick line shows the period of active literary work._

1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1800 | | | | | | | | | | |║[162] | ║ | | | | | | Thomson |........|║==============║ | | | | | | (1700–48) | | | | | | | | | | ║ | | ║ | ║ | | | | | Collins | ║......|........|.....║=========║ | | | | | (1721–59) | | | | | | | | | | | | ║ |║[163] ║| |║ | | | Gray |........|........|...║============║|........|║ | | | (1716–71) | | | |║ | | | | | | |║ | | | | |║ | ║ Cowper | |║.......|........|........|........|........|║=================║ (1731–1800) | | | | | | | | | | | | | ║ | | | ║[164]| ║ | Burns | | | | ║.|........|........|...║=========║ | (1759–96) | | | | | | | | | | | |║[165] | ║ |║ | | | | Richardson |........|........|║==========║.....|║ | | | | (1689–1761) | | | | | | | | | | | | ║ ║ |[166]║ | | | | | Fielding |........|........|.║====║=======║ | | | | | (1707–54) | | | ║ | | | | | | | | ║ | | | | |║ ║ | | Johnson |........|....║========================================║..║ | | (1709–84) | | | | | | | | | | ║ | | | ║ | | ║ | | | Goldsmith | ║....|........|........|......║============║ | | | (1728–74) | | | | | | | | | | | ║ | | | | ║[167]| |║ ║ | Gibbon | | ║....|........|........|........|...║==============║..║ | (1737–94) | | | | | | | | | | ║| | | ║ | | | | ║ | Burke | ║|........|........|....║===================================║ | (1729–97) | | | | | | | | |

THE TRANSITION IN POETRY

The following table is meant to convey a rough idea of the drift of poetry toward Romanticism. In the table the lateral position of the title of a work gives an approximate estimate of its approach to the Romantic ideal. Such an estimate, especially in the case of the transitional poems, cannot be determined absolutely, and need not be taken as final. The table, nevertheless, reveals not only the steady drift, but also the manner in which the different stages of development overlap.

+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | DATE | CLASSICAL | TRANSITIONAL | ROMANTIC | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | 1730 | _The Dunciad_ | _The Seasons_ | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | | | | | | | _Epistle to Arbuthnot_ | | | | 1740 | _London_ | | | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | | | _Night Thoughts_ | | | | | | | | 1750 | _Vanity of Human Wishes_ | Collins’s _Odes_ | _The Castle of Indolence_ | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | | | Gray’s _Elegy_ | | | | | | | | 1760 | | | | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | | | | _Ossian_ | | | | _The Traveller_ | | | 1770 | | | Chatterton’s poems | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | | | _The Deserted Village_ | | | | | | | 1780 | | | | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+ | | | _The Village_ | | | | | | _The Task_ Burns’s poems | | 1790 | | | Blake’s poems | +------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1740–1800)

The period covered by the present chapter is that of the middle and later stages of the eighteenth century. During this time several relevant historical movements call for notice.

=1. Decline of the Party Feud.= The contest between the Whigs and the Tories still continues, but it is hardly of the previous bitterness. The chief reason for this change is found in the weakness of the Tory party, which by rash management and precipitate action made itself so unpopular that for nearly thirty years--those in the middle of the century--the Whigs had hardly any opposition. With the accession of George III in 1760 the Tories swiftly climbed into power, and, with the shadow of the French Revolution already looming up, party feeling soon acquired additional ferocity.

=2. Commercial and Imperial Expansion.= Under the pacific management of the great Whig minister Walpole, and owing to the successful wars of his successors, the eighteenth century saw an immense growth in the wealth and importance of the British Empire. On literature this material welfare had its effect by endowing and stimulating research and original work. The possession of India and America in itself was an inspiration, and when the new territories brought new burdens, like that of the American revolt, the clash of ideals led to fresh literary effort, as can easily be seen in the work of Burke.

=3. The French Revolution.= Long before it burst, the storm of the Revolution was, in the words of Burke, blackening the horizon. During the century new ideas were germinating; new forces were gathering strength; and the Revolution, when it did come in 1789, was only the climax to a long and deeply diffused unrest. Revolutionary ideas stirred literature to the very depths; the present chapter, and the next as well, are a chronicle of their effects upon the literature of England.

THE AGE OF TRANSITION

Like all other periods of transition, the one under review is disturbed and confused. It is a matter of great difficulty to trace the different tendencies, but with care the task may be accomplished with some accuracy.

=1. The Double Tendency.= Two movements can be clearly observed in the writing of the time, namely:

(_a_) The allegiance to the old order of classicism. In this movement the chief and almost the only figure is that of Samuel Johnson. He is a host in himself, however.

(_b_) The search after the new order of Romanticism. In their different degrees, as can be seen from the second table at the beginning of this chapter, many writers were engaged in the search. It began as early as 1730, with the publication of Thomson’s _Seasons_; and though it lapsed for a time, it was to continue with gathering force during the latter years of the century.

=2. The New Romanticism.= The general features of the Romantic movement were:

(_a_) A return to nature--to the real nature of earth and air, and not to the stuffy, bookish nature of the artificial pastoral.

(_b_) A fresh interest in man’s position in the world of nature. This led to great activity in religious and political speculation, as will be seen further on.

(_c_) An enlightened sympathy for the poor and oppressed. In English literature during this time one has but to think of the work of Cowper, Burns, and Crabbe, and even of the classically minded Gray, to perceive the revolution that is taking place in the minds of men.

(_d_) A revolt against the conventional literary technique, such as that of the heroic couplet. On the other hand, we have a desire for strength, simplicity, and sincerity in the expression of the new literary ideals.

(_e_) Fresh treatment of Romantic themes in such poems as _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _The Ancient Mariner_, _La Belle Dame sans Merci_.

In the present chapter we shall perceive all the above features dimly taking shape. In the next chapter they will be the dominating features of the era.

=3. The New Learning.= The middle and later stages of the eighteenth century show a minor Renaissance that touched nearly all Europe. The increase in wealth and comfort coincided with a general uplifting of the standard of the human intellect. In France

## particularly it was well marked, and it took for its sign and seal the

labors of the Encyclopædists and the social amenities of the older _salons_. Many of the leading English writers, including Gibbon, Hume, and Sterne, visited Paris, which was the hub of European culture.

In England the new learning took several channels. In literature we have the revival of the Romantic movement, leading to (_a_) research into archaic literary forms, such as the ballad, and (_b_) new editions of the older authors, such as Shakespeare and Chaucer. The publication of Bishop Percy’s _Reliques_ (1765) which contained some of the oldest and most beautiful specimens of ballad-literature, is a landmark in the history of the Romantic movement. Even Pope and Johnson were moved to edit Shakespeare, though they did it badly. The editions of Theobald and Warburton were examples of scholarly and enlightened research.

=4. The New Philosophy.= The spirit of the new thinking, which received its consummate expression in the works of Voltaire, was marked by keen skepticism and the zest for eager inquiry. Scotland very early took to it, the leading Scottish philosopher being Hume. It would seem, perhaps, that this destructive spirit of disbelief would injure the Romantic ideal, which delights in illusion. But finally the new spirit actually assisted the Romantic ideal by demolishing and clearing away heaps of the ancient mental lumber, and so leaving the ground clear for new and fresher creations.

=5. The Growth of Historical Research.= History appears late in our literature, for it presupposes a long apprenticeship of research and meditation. The eighteenth century witnessed the swift rise of historical literature to a place of great importance. Like so many other things we have mentioned, it was fostered in France, and it touched Scotland first. The historical school had a glorious leader in Gibbon, who was nearly as much at home in the French language as he was in English.

=6. The New Realism.= At first, as might be expected, the spirit of inquiry led to the suppression of romance; but it drew within the circle of literary endeavor all the ranks of mankind. Thus we have the astonishing development of the novel, which at first concerned itself with domestic incidents. Fielding and his kind dealt very faithfully with human life, and often were squalidly immersed in masses of sordid detail. In the widest sense of the word, however, the novelists were Romanticists, for in sympathy and freshness of treatment they were followers of the new ideal.

=7. The Decline of Political Writing.= With the partial decay of the party spirit the activity in pamphleteering was over; poets and satirists were no longer the favorites of Prime Ministers. Walpole, the greatest of contemporary ministers, openly despised the literary breed, for he did not need them. Hence writers had to depend on their public, which was not entirely an evil. This caused the rise of the man of letters, such as Johnson and Goldsmith, who wrote to satisfy a public demand. Later in the century, when the political temperature once again approached boiling-point, pamphlets began again to acquire an importance, which rose to a climax in the works of Junius and Burke.

SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709–84)

=1. His Life.= Johnson has a faithful chronicler in Boswell, whose _Life of Johnson_ makes us intimate with its subject to a degree rare in literature. But even the prying zeal of Boswell could not extort many facts regarding the great man’s early life. Johnson was born at Lichfield, the son of a bookseller, whose pronounced Tory views he inherited and steadfastly maintained. From his birth he was afflicted with a malignant skin-disease (for which he was unsuccessfully “touched” by Queen Anne) which all through his life affected his sight and hearing, and caused many of the physical peculiarities that astonished and amused the friends of his later years. After being privately educated, he proceeded to Oxford, where he experienced the miseries and indignities that are the lot of a poor scholar cursed with a powerful and aspiring mind. Leaving the university, he tried school-teaching, with no success; married a woman twenty years older than himself; and then in 1737 went to London and threw himself into the squalors and allurements of Grub Street.

In his _Essay on Johnson_ Macaulay has given an arresting description of the miseries endured by the denizens of Grub Street; and in this case even the natural exaggeration of Macaulay is not quite misplaced. We know next to nothing regarding the life of Johnson during this early period. It is certain that it was wretched enough to cause the sturdy old fellow, in after years, to glance at this period of his life with a shudder of loathing, and to quench the curiosity of Boswell with ultra-Johnsonian vehemence. Very slowly he won his way out of the gutter, fighting every step with bitter tenacity; for, as he puts it in his poem of _London_, with all the outstanding emphasis of capitals, SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY OPPRESSED. From the obscure position of a publisher’s hack he became a poet of some note by the publication of _London_ (1738), which was noticed by Pope; his _Dictionary_ (1747–55) advanced his fame; then somewhat incomprehensibly he appears in the limelight as one of the literary dictators of London, surrounded by a circle of brilliant men. In 1762 he received a pension from the State, and the last twenty years of his life were passed in the manner most acceptable to him: dawdling, visiting, conversing, yet _living_ with a gigantic vitality that made his fellows wonder.

It is in these latter years that we find him imperishably figured in the pages of Boswell. All his tricks of humor--his bearishness, his gruff goodwill, his silent and secret benevolences; his physical aberrations--his guzzlings, his grunts, his grimaces, his puffings and wallowings; his puerile superstitions; his deep and beautiful piety; his Tory prejudices, so often enormously vocal; his masterful and unsleeping common sense; the devouring immensity of his conversational powers: we find all these set out in _The Life of Doctor Johnson_.

=2. His Poetry.= He wrote little poetry, and none of it, though it has much merit, can be called first-class. His first poem, _London_ (1738), written in the heroic couplet, is of great and somber power. It depicts the vanities and the sins of city life viewed from the depressing standpoint of an embittered and penurious poet. His only other longish poem is _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ (1749). The poem, in imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, transfers to the activities of mankind in general the gloomy convictions raised ten years earlier by the spectacle of London. The meter is the same as in _London_, and there is the same bleak pessimism, but the weight and power of the emotion, the tremendous conviction and the stern immobility of the author, give the work a great value. There are many individual lines of solemn grandeur. The following passage shows all he has to offer to the young aspirant to literary fame:

When first the college rolls receive his name, The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame; Resistless burns the fever of renown, Caught from the strong contagion of the gown. O’er Bodley’s dome his future labours spread, And Bacon’s mansion trembles o’er his head. Are these thy views? Proceed, illustrious youth, And Virtue guard thee to the throne of Truth! Yet, should thy soul indulge the generous heat Till captive Science yields her last retreat; Should Reason guide thee with her brightest ray, And pour on misty Doubt resistless day; Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain, And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a letter’d heart; Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor Melancholy’s phantoms haunt thy shade; Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers’d for thee: Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters, to be wise; There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail. See nations, slowly wise, and meanly just, To buried merit raise the tardy bust. If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat’s life and Galileo’s end.

=3. His Drama.= When he first came to London in 1737 he brought the manuscript, in part, of _Irene_, a solemn and ponderous tragedy. In 1749, through the heroic exertions of his old pupil David Garrick, who was then manager of Drury Lane Theatre, it was given a hearing, and had a run of nine nights. Even Johnson’s best friends had to admit that it was no success, and it then utterly disappeared, taking with it Johnson’s sole claim to dramatic merit.

=4. His Prose.= Any claim that Johnson has to be called a first-rate writer must be based on the merit of his prose; but even his prose is small in bulk and strangely unsatisfying in kind. His earliest effort was contributed to Cave’s _Gentleman’s Magazine_, and comprised Parliamentary reporting, in which he fabricated the speeches of the legislators, to the great benefit of the legislators. Various hack-work followed; and then in 1747 he planned, and in eight years produced, his _Dictionary_. He also wrote _The Rambler_ (1750–52) and _The Idler_ (1758–60), which were periodicals in the manner of _The Spectator_, without the ease and variety of their original. To these he regularly contributed essays, which were quite popular in their day, though to modern notions they would be the reverse of acceptable. They treat mainly of abstract subjects, and are expressed in an extremely cumbrous style which soon came to be known as Johnsonese. This type of prose style is marked by a Latinized vocabulary, long and balanced sentences, and an abstract mode of expression. The passage given below illustrates these mannerisms, as well as a kind of elephantine skittishness with which Johnson was sometimes afflicted:

Another cause of the gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer, than that he who towers to the fifth story is whirled through more space by every circumrotation than another that grovels upon the ground-floor. The nations between the tropics are known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the utmost length of the earth’s diameter, they are carried about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; and therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle with the inconveniences of his country, whenever celerity and acuteness are requisite, we must actuate our languor by taking a few turns round the centre in a garret. _The Rambler_

He wrote _Rasselas_ (1759) in order to pay for his mother’s funeral. It was meant to be a philosophical novel, but it is really a number of _Rambler_ essays, written in Johnsonese, and strung together with the personality of an inquiring young prince called Rasselas. It is hardly a novel at all; the tale carries little interest, the characters are rudimentary, and there are many long, dull discussions. In the book, however, there are abundant shrewd comments and much of Johnson’s somber clarity of vision.

His later years were almost unproductive of literary work. Yet he kept himself deeply interested in the events of the day. For instance, he started a violent quarrel with Macpherson, whose _Ossian_ had startled the literary world. We give a letter that Johnson wrote to the Scotsman, which shows that he sometimes wrote as he spoke--crisply, clearly, and scathingly:

MR JAMES MACPHERSON, I have received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.

What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture: I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable; and what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. You may print this if you will. SAM. JOHNSON

His _Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland_ (1774), a travel book, shows the faculty of narrative, and contains passages of great skill. His last work of any consequence was _The Lives of the Poets_ (1779–81), a series of prefaces to a collection of poetical works. They are the best specimens of Johnson’s criticism, which is virile and sagacious, though it is influenced by the emotions of the classical school of Pope.

Thus when we come to estimate the value of his work we must arrive at the conclusion that the towering eminence which he held among really able men was due rather to the personality of the man than to the outstanding genius of the writer. Moreover, it is important to observe that he founded no school and left no literary following. He is the last of the old generation.

JAMES THOMSON (1700–48)

Thomson can hardly be called a great poet, yet in the history of literature he is unusual enough to be regarded (chronologically) as a freak. As such he is important, and it is necessary to give him some prominence.

=1. His Life.= Born near Kelso, close to some of the loveliest valleys on the Scottish side of the Border, Thomson early came to London (1725) to seek a patron and fame. His _Winter_ (1726), though its novelty embarrassed the critics, brought him recognition and afterward praise; he obtained the patronage of the great, and assiduously cultivated it; traveled as a tutor to a noble family; obtained Government places and emoluments; and passed a happy and prosperous life at his cottage near Richmond.

=2. His Poetry.= His _Winter_ was afterward quadrupled in size by including the other three seasons, and became _The Seasons_ (1730). It is a blank-verse poem, and consists of a long series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes, mainly those with which he was familiar during his youth on the Scottish Border. There is a great deal of padding, and the style is often marked by clumsy expressions; yet on the whole the treatment is exhilarating, full of concentrated observation and joy in the face of nature. Above all, it is real nature, obtained from the living sky and air, and not from books; and, coming when it did, the poem exerted a strong counter-influence against the artificial school of poetry.

Thomson also wrote _Liberty_ (1736), a gigantic poem in blank verse, intolerably dull. It had no success. As Johnson says, “The praises of Liberty were condemned to harbour spiders, and to gather dust.”

In the last year of his life he published _The Castle of Indolence_, which is even more remarkable than _The Seasons_. The poem is written in Spenserian stanzas, and in the true Spenserian fashion it gives a description of a lotus-land into which world-weary souls are invited to withdraw. The work is imitative, and so cannot claim to be of the highest class, but it is an imitation of the rarest merit. For languid suggestiveness, in dulcet and harmonious versification, and for subtly woven vowel-music it need not shirk comparison with the best of Spenser himself. We give three verses of this remarkable poem. Coming at such a period, and expressing as they do the essence of romantic idealism, the verses are well worth quoting:

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, aye 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-head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, For ever 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.

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. _The Castle of Indolence_

Thomson also wrote some dramas, including one bad tragedy, _Sophanisba_ (1729); and in collaboration with Mallet he produced the masque _Alfred_ (1740), which happens to contain the song _Rule, Britannia_. The song is usually said to be Thomson’s.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728–74)

As another typical example of the transition poet we take Goldsmith, whose work was produced a full generation after that of Thomson.

=1. His Life.= Much of Goldsmith’s early life is obscure, and our knowledge of it rests upon his own unsupported and hardly reliable evidence. He was born at Pallas, a small village in County Longford, in Ireland, and he was the son of the poor but admirable curate of the village. His father, the village, and various local features are duly registered, and unduly idealized, in the poem _The Deserted Village_. In 1745 Goldsmith proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin; graduated, after some misadventures; and then tried various careers in turn--law, medicine, and playing the flute--at various places, including Dublin, Edinburgh, Leyden, Venice, and Padua. At the last-mentioned place he graduated, according to his own account, as a doctor, and claimed title as such. In truth, a settled career was beyond Goldsmith’s capacity. He had all the amiable vices of the stage Irishman: he was shiftless and improvident, but generous and humane; unstable and pitifully puerile in mind, but with bright, piercing flashes of humor and insight. During his years of wandering he roved over Europe, playing the flute for a living; then in 1756 he returned to England, poor, unknown, but undaunted.

Then followed desperate attempts at making a living. In succession he was chemist, printer’s reader, usher in a school, and finally (the last refuge of the literary down-at-heels) publisher’s hack and a denizen of Grub Street. In time, however, by their sheer merit, his writings drew upon him the regard of famous persons, including Dr. Johnson and Charles James Fox, the eminent politician. Once recognition came, it came with a rush; money and praise poured in; but his feckless habits kept him poor, and he drifted about in mean London lodgings till his death in 1774. It was said that he brought his doom upon himself by prescribing for his own ailment. He left debts for two thousand pounds. During his latter years he was a member of Johnson’s famous club, where his artless ways--his bickerings, witticisms, and infantile vanity--were the cause of the mingled amusement, admiration, and contempt of his fellow-members.

=2. His Poetry.= Though his poetical production is not large, it is notable. His first poem, _The Traveller_ (1764), deals with his wanderings through Europe. The poem, about four hundred lines in length, is written in the heroic couplet, and is a series of descriptions and criticisms of the places and peoples of which he had experience. The descriptions, though often superficial and half-informed, are fired with the genius of the man, and are arresting and noteworthy. His critical comments, which require on his part clear thinking and some knowledge of social and economic facts, are of hardly any value. Similar drawbacks are seen in his only other poem of any length, _The Deserted Village_ (1770). In this poem, as he deals with the memories of his youth, the pathetic note is more freely expressed. His natural descriptions have charm and genuine feeling; but his remedies for the agricultural depression of Ireland are innocently empty of the slightest practical value.

The peculiar humor and pathos of Goldsmith are hard to analyze. Both emotions arise for simple situations, and are natural and free from any deep guile, yet they have a certain agreeable tartness of flavor, and show that Goldsmith was no fool in his observation of mankind. Often the humor is so dashed with pathos that the combined effect is attractive to a very high degree. The passage given below illustrates his artless emotion naturally expressed:

In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs--and God has given my share-- I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life’s taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose: I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,-- Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt, and all I saw; And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return--and die at home at last. _The Deserted Village_

Goldsmith’s miscellaneous poems are important, for they include some of his characteristic humorous and pathetic writing. The ballad called _The Hermit_ is done in the sentimental fashion, the witty _Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog_ is suggestive of Swift without Swift’s savage barb, and the fine lines beginning “When lovely woman stoops to folly” are among the best he ever wrote.

=3. His Drama.= Goldsmith wrote two prose comedies, both of which rank high among their class. The first, called _The Good-natured Man_ (1768), is not so good as the second, _She Stoops to Conquer_ (1773). Each, but especially the latter, is endowed with an ingenious and lively plot, a caste of excellent characters, and a vivacious and delightful style. Based on the Restoration comedy, they lack the Restoration grossness. The second play had an immense popularity, and even yet it is sometimes staged.

=4. His Prose.= The prose is of astonishing range and volume. Among his works of fiction we find _The Citizen of the World_ (1759), a series of imaginary letters from a Chinaman, whose comments on English society are both simple and shrewd. This series was contributed to _The Public Ledger_, a popular magazine. He wrote many other essays in the manner of Addison, almost as well done as those of Addison. His other important work of fiction is his novel _The Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766), which is in the first rank of the eighteenth-century novels. The plot of the novel is simple, but fairly well handled, the characters are human and attractive, and the book has all the Goldsmith qualities of humor and pathos.

We give an example of his style. The passage is taken from one of his essays, in which he sketches the character of a man who, while he pretends to be hard-hearted, is in reality of a generous disposition. The humor is typical; it is artless, but it is acute and pervading, and shows us quite plainly that the writer was by no means the zany that Boswell (who disliked Goldsmith) desired us to imagine in his _Life of Johnson_.

He was proceeding in this strain, earnestly to dissuade me from an imprudence of which I am seldom guilty, when an old man, who still had about him the remnants of tattered finery, implored our compassion. He assured us that he was no common beggar, but forced into the shameful profession, to support a dying wife, and five hungry children. Being prepossessed against such falsehoods, his story had not the least influence upon me; but it was quite otherwise with the man in black; I could see it visibly operate upon his countenance, and effectually interrupt his harangue. I could easily perceive that his heart burned to relieve the five starving children, but he seemed ashamed to discover his weakness to me. While he thus hesitated between compassion and pride, I pretended to look another way, and he seized the opportunity of giving the poor petitioner a piece of silver, bidding him at the same time, in order that I should hear, go work for his bread, and not tease passengers with such impertinent falsehoods for the future. _The Bee_

In addition, Goldsmith produced a great mass of hack-work, most of which is worthless as historical and scientific fact, but all of which is enlightened with the grace of his style and personality. Some of these works are _An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_ (1759), his first published book; _The History of England_ (1762); and _The History of Earth and Animated Nature_, a kind of text-book on natural history, which was unfinished when he died.

=5. Summary.= Goldsmith’s work is so varied and important that it is necessary to summarize briefly. The following are its main features:

(_a_) _Variety._ In his projected Latin epitaph on Goldsmith, Johnson gives prominence to the statement that Goldsmith touched on nearly every type of writing and adorned them all:

Qui nullum fere scribendi genus Non tetigit, Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.

(_b_) Its _high quality_ is also apparent. In matters of knowledge Goldsmith was deficient, but in grace, charm, and amiable good-humor he is in the first flight of our writers.

(_c_) As a _transitional poet_ he is worthy of careful observation. In the mechanics of poetry--such as meter, rhyme, and rhetorical devices--he follows the older tradition; but in his broad humanity of outlook, in his sympathetic treatment of natural scenes, and in the simplicity of his humor and pathos he is of the coming age.

OTHER TRANSITIONAL POETS

=1. Thomas Gray (1716–71).= Gray was born in London, the son of a money-scrivener, a kind of lawyer, who was in affluent circumstances. Gray, however, owed his education largely to the self-denial of his mother; he was educated at Eton and Cambridge, at the latter of which places he met Horace Walpole. With Walpole he toured Italy; then, returning to the university, he took his degree, finally settling down to a life that was little more than an elegant futility. He was offered the Laureateship, but refused it (1757); he obtained a professorship at Cambridge, but he never lectured. He wrote a little, traveled a little; but he was a man of shrinking and fastidious tastes, unapt for the rough shocks of the world, and, fortunately for himself, able to withdraw beyond them.

His first poem was the _Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College_ (1747), which contained gloomy moralizings on the approaching fate of those “little victims,” the schoolboys. Then, after years of revision and excision, appeared the famous _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_ (1751). This poem was smooth and graceful; it contained familiar sentiments turned into admirable, quotable phrases; and so, while it was agreeably familiar, it was fresh enough to be attractive. Its popularity has been maintained to the present day. His _Pindaric Odes_ (1757) were unsuccessful, being criticized for their obscurity. _The Bard_ and _The Progress of Poesy_, the two Pindaric Odes in the book, certainly require some elucidation, especially to readers not familiar with history and literature. At the first glance Gray’s odes are seen to have all the odic splendor of diction; in fact, the adornment is so thickly applied that it can almost stand alone, like a robe stiff with gems and gold lace. Yet the poems have energy and dignity. Johnson, who had a distaste for both the character and the work of Gray, cavils at the work, saying that it has a strutting dignity. “He is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible.”

The prose work of Gray is notable. It consists partly of letters written during his travels, describing the scenes he visits. In them he shows vigor of style, a sharp eye and a generous admiration for the real beauties of nature. His descriptions, such as those of the Lake District, are quite admirable, and well in advance of the general taste of his age.

In spite of its slender bulk, Gray’s achievement both in prose and verse is of great importance. He explored the origins of romance in the early Norse and Celtic legends; his sympathies with the poor and oppressed were genuine and emphatically expressed; and his treatment of nature was a great improvement upon that of his predecessors.

Johnson’s final estimate of Gray is not unfair, and we can leave the poet with it: “His mind had a large grasp; his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated; he was likely to love much where he loved at all, but he was fastidious and hard to please.”

=2. William Collins (1721–59).= Collins was born at Chichester, and was educated at Winchester and Oxford, but all his life he was weighted with the curse of insanity, and for this reason he had to take untimely leave of the university. He tried to follow a literary career in London, but with scant success, being arrested for debt. He was released by the generosity of his publishers, and a fortunate legacy relieved him from the worst of his financial terrors. He lapsed into a mild species of melancholia, finally dying in his native city at the early age of thirty-eight.

The work of Collins is very small in bulk, and even of this scanty stock a fair proportion shows only mediocre ability. His _Persian Eclogues_ (1742) are in the conventional style of Pope, and though they profess to deal with Persian scenes and characters, the Oriental setting shows no special information or inspiration. The book that gives him his place in literature is his _Odes_ (1747), a small octavo volume of fifty-two pages. The work is a collection of odes to Pity, Fear, Simplicity, Patriotism, and kindred abstract subjects. Some of the odes are overweighted with the cumbrous creaking machinery of the Pindaric; but the best of them, especially the _Ode to Evening_ (done in unrhymed verse), are instinct with a sweet tenderness, a subdued and shadowy pathos, and a magical enchantment of phrase. In the same book two short elegies, one beginning “How sleep the brave” and the other on James Thomson (“In yonder grave a Druid lies”), are as captivating, with their misty lights and murmuring echoes of melancholy, as the best of Keats. In the finest work of Collins, with his eager and wistful searching, with what Johnson morosely called his “flights of imagination that pass the bounds of nature,” we are ushered over the threshold of romance.

=3. William Cowper (1731–1800).= Cowper was born at Great Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, where his father was rector. He was to have been a barrister, and was actually called to the Bar (1754), but a great and morbid timidity of disposition, which increased till it became religious and suicidal mania, hampered him cruelly through life. Family influence obtained for him a good post on the clerical staff of the House of Lords, but his extreme shyness made him quite unfit for this semi-public appointment. The consequent disappointment disordered his wits, and he attempted suicide, but was fortunately prevented. The latter part of his life was spent chiefly at Olney, in Buckinghamshire, where his good friends the Unwins treated him with great kindness and good sense. His feeling of gratitude for their care, expressed or implicit in many of his poems and letters, is one of the most touching features in the literature of the time. This comparatively happy state of affairs did not last till the end, for the years immediately preceding his death were much clouded with extreme mental and bodily affliction.

Cowper’s poems were produced late in life, but in bulk the work is large. It is curiously mixed and attractive in its nature. His _Poems_ (1782) is his first attempt at authorship. The book contains little that is noteworthy. The bulk of it is taken up with a collection of set pieces in heroic couplets, quite in the usual manner, on such subjects as _The Progress of Error, Truth, Hope, and Charity_. At the very end of the volume a few miscellaneous short pieces are more encouraging as novelties. One of them is the well-known poem containing the reflections of Alexander Selkirk (“I am monarch of all I survey”). His next work is _The Task_ (1785), a long poem in blank verse, dealing with simple and familiar themes and containing many fine descriptions of country scenes. In places the style is marked by the prevailing artificial tricks, and as a whole the poem is seldom inspired with any deep or passionate feeling; but his observation is acute and humane, it includes the homeliest detail within its kindly scope, and he gives us real nature, like Thomson in _The Seasons_. At the end of this volume the ballad of _John Gilpin_ finds a place. It is an excellent example of Cowper’s prim but sprightly humor, an extraordinary gift for a man of his morbid temperament. Other short poems were added to later editions of his first volume. These include the _Epitaph on a Hare_, curiously and touchingly pathetic; lines _On the Receipt of my Mother’s Picture_, which reveal only too painfully the suppressed convulsions of grief and longing that were stirred within him by memories of the past; and _The Castaway_, written in a lucid interval just before the end, and sounding like the wail of a damned spirit. The poem gives a tragic finality to his life. It describes the doom of a poor wretch swept overboard in a storm, and concludes:

No poet wept him; but the page Of narrative sincere, That tells his name, his worth, his age, Is wet with Anson’s tear; And tears by bards or heroes shed Alike immortalise the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream, Descanting on his fate, To give the melancholy theme A more enduring date: But misery still delights to trace Its semblance in another’s case.

No voice divine the storm allay’d, No light propitious shone, When, snatch’d from all effectual aid, We perished, each alone: But I beneath a rougher sea, And whelm’d in deeper gulfs than he.

Cowper’s letters, private epistles addressed to various personal friends, are among the most delightful of their kind. They show the man at his best--almost jovial in a delicate fashion, keenly observant, and with a genuine gift for narrative. The style is so clear that the disposition of the writer shines through it with unruffled benignity.

Though Cowper comes late among the transition poets, he does not travel very far on the road to novelty. His mind is over-timorous, and he lacks robustness of temper. But in his feeling for nature, in the ease and versatility of his poetical work, in his undoubted lyrical gift (rarely expressed), his work marks an advance far beyond that of the classicists.

=4. George Crabbe (1754–1832).= Crabbe comes very late among the poets now under review, but in method he is largely of the eighteenth century. He was born in Suffolk, at Aldeburgh, where his father had been a schoolmaster and a collector of customs. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, but later left his native town to seek fame as an author in London (1780). He had little success at first, but gradually attracted attention. He fixed on a settled career by taking holy orders, and obtained the patronage of several influential men. Ultimately he obtained the valuable living of Trowbridge (1814), where he died as late as 1832, only a few months before Sir Walter Scott.

His chief poetical works are _The Library_ (1781), _The Village_ (1783), which made his name as a poet, _The Borough_ (1810), and _Tales in Verse_ (1812). The poems in their succession show little development, resembling each other closely both in subject and style. They are collections of tales, told in heroic couplets with much sympathy and a good deal of pathetic power, dealing with the lives of simple countryfolk such as Crabbe encountered in his own parish. There is a large amount of strong natural description, though it is subsidiary to the human interest in the stories themselves. Crabbe has often been criticized for being too gloomy and pessimistic; he is pessimistic in the sense that he is stubbornly alive to the miseries of the poor, and he is at a loss how to relieve them. His work was warmly recognized by Wordsworth and other thinkers who had the welfare of the poor at heart. Crabbe, however, cannot be classed as a great poet; he lacks the supreme poetic gift of transforming even squalor and affliction into things of splendor and appeal; but he is sympathetic, sincere, and an acute observer of human nature.

=5. Mark Akenside (1721–70).= Akenside was born at Newcastle, studied medicine at Edinburgh, and graduated at Leyden in 1744. He started practice at Northampton, but did not succeed. Later he had more success in London. In the capital he took to political writing, in which he was moderately proficient, and he obtained a pension as a reward. He was a well-known character, and is said to have been caricatured by Smollett in _Peregrine Pickle_.

His best political poem is his _Epistle to Curio_ (1744), which contains some brilliant invective against Pulteney. His best-known book is _The Pleasures of the Imagination_ (1744), a long and rambling blank-verse poem. The style is somewhat Miltonic in its energy and its turn of phrase, but it is deficient in the Miltonic genius. The poem has some loud but rather fine descriptive passages, especially those dealing with his native Tyne, for the beauties of which he shows a laudable enthusiasm.

=6. Christopher Smart (1722–71).= Smart was born in Kent, and was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated. He was a man of unbalanced mind, which, leading him into many extravagances, brought him finally to a madhouse and a miserable death in a debtor’s prison.

The poem connected with his name is _The Song to David_ (1763), which is said to have been partly written on the walls of the madhouse in which he was confined. The poem, consisting of nearly a hundred six-line stanzas, is a wild, rhapsodical effusion, full of extravagance and incoherence, but in places containing bursts of tremendous poetic power. The following stanzas, the last in the poem, give an idea of these poetical bomb-shells:

Glorious the sun in mid career; Glorious the assembled fires appear; Glorious the comet’s train: Glorious the trumpet and alarm; Glorious the Almighty’s stretched-out arm; Glorious the enraptured main:

Glorious the northern lights astream; Glorious the song, when God’s the theme; Glorious the thunder’s roar: Glorious hosanna from the den; Glorious the catholic amen; Glorious the martyr’s gore:

Glorious--more glorious is the crown Of Him that brought salvation down, By meekness called thy Son; Thou that stupendous truth believed, And now the matchless deed’s achieved, Determined, Dared, and Done.

=7. William Shenstone (1714–63).= Born at the Leasowes, in Worcestershire, Shenstone was educated at Oxford. After leaving the university he retired to his estate, which he beautified in the fashion of the time. He was a man of an agreeable nature, but was shy and retiring, and spent nearly all his life in the country.

His published works consist chiefly of odes, elegies, and what he called _Levities, or Pieces of Humour_ (often dreary enough), and _The Schoolmistress_ (1742). His poems are largely pastoral, but they are by no means the artificial pastoral of Pope. He studies nature himself, and does not derive his notions from books. In this matter he resembles Cowper. _The Schoolmistress_, which by a notable advance is written in the Spenserian stanza, deals in rather a sentimental fashion with the teacher in his first school; it is sympathetic in treatment, and in style is an interesting example of the transition.

=8. Charles Churchill (1731–64).= Churchill was educated at Westminster School and at Cambridge, took orders (1756), and obtained a curacy. When he was about twenty-seven years old he suddenly started on a wild course of conduct, abandoned his curacy, took to politics and hack journalism, and to drinking and debauchery. He died at Boulogne at the age of thirty-three.

He lives in literature as a satirical poet, and the best of his work is in _The Rosciad_ (1761), a bitter attack on the chief political and social figures of the time. The poem, which is written in the Dryden heroic couplet, was greeted as the work of a new Dryden, but it has little of that poet’s superb elevation and contempt. It is vigorous and acute, but it is too often cheap and nasty. It had much popularity, but when the topical need for it was over it had no permanent value. Churchill continued to satirize the age in a wild indiscriminate fashion in poems called _Night_ (1761), _The Ghost_ (1763), and _The Prophecy of Famine_ (1763).

=9. Robert Blair (1699–1746).= Blair was born at Edinburgh, and became a clergyman in East Lothian. The poem that brought him his transitory reputation was _The Grave_ (1743). It is a long blank-verse poem of meditation on man’s mortality. It does not make cheerful reading, and the sentiments are quite ordinary. It has, however, a certain strength and dignity, and the versification shows skill and some degree of freshness. The poem is reminiscent of Young’s _Night Thoughts_.

ROBERT BURNS (1759–96)

In this section we shall deal with those poets who wrote in the middle and later years of the eighteenth century, and who abandoned the classical tradition. In their generation they came too early to be definitely included in the school of Wordsworth and Coleridge, but in their work they are often as romantically inclined as any of their great successors. We begin with Burns, one of the latest, and probably the greatest, of Wordsworth’s poetical forbears. With the appearance of Burns we can say that the day of Romanticism is come. There had been false dawns and deceptive premonitions, but with him we have, in the words of Swinburne,

A song too loud for the lark, A light too strong for a star.

=1. His Life.= He was born in a small clay-built cottage, the work of his father’s hands, in the district of Kyle, in Ayrshire. His father, a small farmer, was a man of an unbending disposition, and the boy had to toil with the rest of the family to wring subsistence from the soil. He had not much formal education, and all his life he tried spasmodically to improve it; but it was mainly the force of his own natural ability that permitted him to absorb the moderate amount of learning he did acquire. As he grew older he showed himself to be the possessor of a powerful and lively mind, which was often afflicted with spasms of acute mental depression. The audacity of his temper soon brought him into extravagances of conduct which were visited by the censure and punishment of the rigid Scottish Church. For Burns’s own sake it is unfortunate that his memory has been pursued with an infatuation of hero-worship that seeks to extenuate and even to deny facts that are grave and indisputable. One can only say that his chief weaknesses--drink and dissipation--were largely the faults of his time. He was no worse than many other men of his age; but his poetic gifts proclaimed and perhaps exaggerated his vices, of which he repented when he was sober and unwisely boasted when he was otherwise.

His life was hard and bitter; his different attempts at farming and at other occupations met with no success, and he determined to seek his fortune in the West Indies (1786). In the nick of time he learned that the small volume of verse that he had recently issued at Kilmarnock was attracting much attention, and he was persuaded to remain in Scotland and discover what fame had in store for him. The reputation of his poems rose with prodigious rapidity, and within a year there was a demand for an Edinburgh edition. He was in Edinburgh in 1787, where he became a nine days’ wonder to the lion-hunting society of the capital city. He then obtained a small post in the Excise, and, taking a farm near Dumfries, married and essayed to lead a regular life. He found this impossible, for fame brought added temptation. His farming was a failure, and the income from his poems and from his post in the Excise was insufficient to keep him decently. At the age of thirty-seven he died at Dumfries, of premature old age.

=2. His Poetry.= His sole poetical work of any magnitude is his volume of _Poems_ (1786), which he edited five times during his lifetime, with numerous additions and corrections on each occasion. At different times he contributed to _The Scots Musical Museum_ and to Thomson’s _Select Scottish Melodies_. After the poet’s death his literary editor, Dr. Currie, published (1800) a large number of additional pieces, along with a considerable amount of correspondence.

We have thus one tale, _Tam o’ Shanter_, which was included in the third edition of the poems, that of 1793; one longish descriptive piece, _The Cotter’s Saturday Night_; more than two hundred songs, ranging in quality from very good to middling; and a great number of short epistles, epigrams, elegies, and other types of miscellaneous verse.

=3. Features of his Poetry.= The poetry is of such a miscellaneous character, and its composition was often so haphazard in the matter of time, that it is almost impossible to give a detailed chronology of it. We shall therefore take it in the mass, and attempt the difficult task of giving an analysis of its various features.

(_a_) The best work of Burns was almost entirely _lyrical_ in motive. He is one of the rare examples, like Shelley, of the born singer who can give to human emotion a precious and imperishable utterance. He was essentially the inspired egoist: what interested him was vivid and quickening; what lay outside his knowledge and experience was without life or flavor. He thought of reviving the Scottish drama, but, even if he had entered on the project, it is doubtful if he would have succeeded, for he lacked the faculty of putting himself completely in another man’s place. His narrative gift, as it is revealed in _Tam o’ Shanter_, becomes fused with the heat of some lyrical emotion (in this case that of drunken jollity), and then it shines with a clear flame. But with the departure of the lyrical emotion the narrative impulse ends as well.

(_b_) While keeping within the limits of the lyric he traverses an _immense range_ of emotion and experience. The feelings he describes are those of the Scottish peasant, but the genius of the poet makes them germane to every member of the human race; he discovers the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. Here we have the “passion and apathy, and glory and shame” that are the inspiration of the lyrical poet, and we have them in rich abundance.

(_c_) His _humor and pathos_ are as copious and varied as his subject-matter. His wit can be rollicking to coarseness, as it is in _The Jolly Beggars_; and there are no poems richer in bacchanalian flavor than _Willie brewed a Peck o’ Maut_ and _Tam o’ Shanter_. He can run to the other extreme of emotion, and be graceful and sentimental, as in _Afton Water_ and _My Luve is like a Red, Red Rose_. We have beautiful homely songs in _John Anderson, my Jo_ and _O’ a’ the Airts_; and he can be bitter and scornful in such poems as _The Unco Guid_ and _The Holy Fair_. His pathos ranges from the piercing cry of _Ae Fond Kiss_, through the pensive pessimism of _Ye Banks and Braes_, to the tempered melancholy of _My Heart’s in the Hielands_. The facility of this precious lyrical gift became a positive weakness, for he wrote too freely, and much of his songwriting is of mediocre quality.

We give brief extracts to illustrate these features of his poetry. The first shows him in his mood of vinous elation; in the second he is acutely depressed and almost maudlin; the third for pure loveliness is almost unexcelled.

(1) O, Willie brewed a peck o’ maut, And Rob and Allan cam’ to see; Three blither hearts, that lee-lang night, Ye wad na find in Christendie.

_Chorus_

We are na fou, we’re nae that fou, But just a drappie in our ee; The cock may craw, the day may daw, And aye we’ll taste the barley bree.

Here are we met, three merry boys, Three merry boys, I trow, are we; And mony a night we’ve merry been, And mony mae we hope to be.

It is the moon--I ken her horn, That’s blinkin’ in the lift sae hie; She shines sae bright to wyle us hame, But, by my sooth, she’ll wait a wee!

(2) Thou ling’ring star, with less’ning ray, That lov’st to greet the early morn, Again thou usher’st in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary! dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? Seëst thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast?

* * * * *

Still o’er these scenes my mem’ry wakes, And fondly broods with miser care! Time but th’ impression stronger makes, As streams their channels deeper wear. My Mary, dear departed shade! Where is thy place of blissful rest? Seëst thou thy lover lowly laid? Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast? _To Mary in Heaven_

(3) O, my luve is like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June; O, my luve is like the melodie That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonny lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun: And I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only luve! And fare thee well a while! And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile.

(_d_) The poet’s _political and religious views_ have been given prominence by his admirers, but they scarcely deserve it. His politics, as expressed in such poems as _A Man’s a Man for a’ That_, are merely the natural utterances of a strong and sensitive mind deeply alive to the degradation of his native people. His religious views, in so far as they are colored by his unhappy personal experiences with the Scottish Church, are of value solely as the inspiration of capital satirical verse, but in _The Cotter’s Saturday Night_ Burns pays a spontaneous and beautiful tribute to the piety of the Scottish peasant. The following extract from _Holy Willie’s Prayer_ sufficiently reveals his personal bias:

Lord, bless Thy chosen in this place, For here Thou hast a chosen race: But God confound their stubborn face, And blast their name, Wha bring Thy elders to disgrace, And public shame.

Lord, mind Gaw’n Hamilton’s deserts, He drinks, and swears, and plays at cartes, Yet has sae mony takin’ arts, Wi’ great and sma’, Frae God’s ain priests the people’s hearts He steals awa’.

But, Lord, remember me and mine, Wi’ mercies temp’ral and divine, That I for gear and grace may shine, Excelled by nane, And a’ the glory shall be Thine. Amen, amen!

(_e_) His _style_ is noteworthy for the curious double tendency that is typical of the transition. When he writes in the “correct” manner he has all the petty vices of the early school. The opening lines of his _Address to Edinburgh_ are:

Edina! Scotia’s darling seat! All hail thy palaces and tow’rs, Where once beneath a monarch’s feet Sat Legislation’s sov’ran pow’rs!

Here we see a paltry classicism and a metrical scrupulousness (leadingto the mutilation of words like “pow’rs”) that were far below Burns’s notice. The latter vice will be seen even in such poems as _To Mary in Heaven_, quoted above. But when he shakes himself free from such trifling arts his style is full and strong, and as redolent of the soil as his own mountain daisy.

(_f_) As the _national poet_ of Scotland his position is unique. He is first, and the rest nowhere. His rod, like Aaron’s, has swallowed up the rods of the other Scottish poets; so that in the popular fancy he is the author of any striking Scottish song, such as _Annie Laurie_ or _Auld Robin Gray_. His dominating position is due to three factors:

(1) He has a matchless gift of catching traditional airs and wedding them to words of simple and searching beauty. It is almost impossible to think of _Auld Lang Syne_ or _Scots wha hae_ or _Green grow the Rashes, O!_ without their respective melodies being inevitably associated with them. And these tunes were born in the blood of the Scottish peasant.

(2) He rejoices in descriptions of Scottish scenery and customs. _The Cotter’s Saturday Night_ is packed with such features, and all through his work are glimpses of typical Scottish scenes. The opening stanzas of _A Winter Night_ are often quoted to show his descriptive power:

When biting Boreas, fell and doure, Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r; When Phœbus gives a short-liv’d glow’r, Far south the lift, Dim-dark’ning thro’ the flaky show’r, Or whirling drift:

Ae night the storm the steeples rocked, Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked, While burns, wi’ snawy wreeths up-choked, Wild-eddying swirl, Or thro’ the mining outlet bocked,[168] Down headlong hurl.

(3) Lastly, he came just at the time when the Scottish tongue, as a separate literary medium, was fast vanishing. The Edinburgh society that prided itself on being the equal of the literary society of London was soon to pass away with the greatest of Edinburgh writers. Burns captured the dialect of his fellows, and gave it permanence.

OTHER POETS OF THE NEW SCHOOL

=1. James Macpherson (1738–96).= This writer was born at Kingussie, in the county of Inverness, and was educated for the Church. He never became a regular minister, for at the age of twenty he was producing bad poetry, and soon after he definitely adopted a literary career. He traveled in the Highlands of Scotland and abroad, settled in London (1764), and meddled in the politics of the time. Then he entered Parliament, realized a handsome fortune, and died in his native parish.

After producing some worthless verse in the conventional fashion, in 1760 he issued something very different. It was called _Fragments of Ancient Poetry translated from the Gaelic_. The work received a large share of attention, and a subscription was raised to allow him to travel in the Highlands to glean further specimens of native poetry. The fruits of this were seen in _Fingal_ (1762) and _Temora_ (1763). Macpherson declared that the books were his translations of the poems of an ancient Celtic bard called Ossian. Immediately a violent dispute broke out, many people (including Johnson) alleging that the books were the original compositions of Macpherson himself. The truth is that he gave substance to a large mass of misty Gaelic tradition, and cast the stories into his peculiar prose style.

The controversy hardly matters to us here. What matters is that the tales deal largely with the romantic adventures of a mythical hero called Fingal. They include striking descriptions of wild nature, and they are cast in a rhythmic and melodious prose that is meant to reproduce the original Gaelic poetical measure. As an essay in the Romantic method these works are of very high value. (See p. 349.)

=2. Thomas Chatterton (1752–70).= Chatterton was born at Bristol, and was apprenticed to an attorney. At the age of eighteen he went to London to seek his fortune as a poet. Almost at once he lapsed into penury, and, being too proud to beg, poisoned himself with arsenic. He was eighteen years old.

The brevity and pathos of Chatterton’s career have invested it with a fame peculiar in our literature. He is held up as the martyr of genius, sacrificed by the callousness of the public. His fate, however, was largely due to his own vanity and recklessness, and his genius has perhaps been overrated. In 1768, while still at Bristol, he issued a collection of poems which seemed archaic in style and spelling. These, he said, he had found in an ancient chest lodged in a church in Bristol; and he further stated that most of them had been written by a monk of the fifteenth century, by name Thomas Rowley. The collection received the name of _The Rowley Poems_, and includes several ballads, one of which is _The Battle of Hastings_, and some descriptive and lyrical pieces, such as _Songs to Ælla_. A slight knowledge of Middle English reveals that they are forgeries thinly disguised with antique spelling and phraseology; but, especially after their author’s death, they gained much currency, and had some influence on their time. There is much rubbish in the poems, but in detached passages there is real beauty, along with a marvelous precocity of thought.

=3. William Blake (1757–1827).= Blake was a Londoner, being born the son of a City hosier. At the age of ten he was an artist; at the age of twelve he was a poet; and thereafter his father apprenticed him to an engraver. All his life Blake saw visions and dreamed dreams, hovering on the brink of insanity; and his mental peculiarities are abundantly revealed in the two arts that he made his own. His engravings and his poems, conceived on wild and fantastic lines, kept him fully occupied all his life, though they brought him neither money nor fame. But his desires were easily satisfied, and he died poor and unknown, but cheerful and serene, in the city of his birth.

His chief poetical works are _Poetical Sketches_ (1783), _Songs of Innocence_ (1789), and _Songs of Experience_ (1794). They are extraordinary compositions, full of unearthly visions, charming simplicity, and baffling obscurity. His genius is undoubted, but it is wayward and fitful, the sport of his unbalanced mind. His astonishing lines on the tiger are well known, and are a good specimen of his poetical gifts:

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

* * * * *

And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet?

* * * * *

When the stars threw down their spears, And water’d heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee?

=4. Robert Fergusson (1750–74).= Fergusson was born in Edinburgh, and received his education at the university of that city, but soon fell into loose and disreputable habits. He contributed much to the local press, and acquired some reputation as a poet of the vernacular. His irregular habits led to the madhouse, in which he died at the early age of twenty-four.

Fergusson is chiefly notable as the forerunner of Burns, who was generous in his praise of the earlier poet. His best poems are short descriptive pieces dealing with Scottish life, such as _The King’s Birthday_, _To the Tron Kirk_, and _The Farmer’s Ingle_. This last poem perhaps suggested Burns’s _Cotter’s Saturday Night_. Fergusson gives clear and accurate descriptions, and his use of the vernacular Scots tongue is vigorous and natural, thus providing Burns with a model for his best style. (See p. 346.)

SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689–1761)

=1. His Life.= Richardson was born in Derbyshire, the son of a joiner, by whom he was apprenticed to a London printer. Richardson was an industrious youth, and in the course of time rose high in the pursuit of his occupation. He became a master-printer, produced the journals of the House of Commons, and became printer to the King. He was a man of retiring and almost effeminate habits, but was generous and well liked.

=2. His Novels.= Richardson’s first attempts at writing fiction began at the age of thirteen, when he was the confidant of three illiterate young women, for whom he wrote love-letters. This practice afterward stood him in good stead. He was over fifty years old before he printed a novel of his own, called _Pamela_ (1740). The book, which takes the form of a series of fictitious letters, deals with the fortunes of Pamela, a poor and virtuous maid of low degree, who marries and afterward reforms her wicked master. The work was instantly successful, exhausting five editions during the first year of its issue. The characters, especially the chief female character, slowly but accurately fabricated during the gradual evolution of the simple plot, were new to the readers of the time, and mark a great step forward in the history of the English novel. Richardson’s next novel, which was also constructed in the form of letters, was _Clarissa Harlowe_ (1749). This treats of characters higher in the social scale, with indifferent success, and the end is made tragical. The heroine is a young lady of rank and fortune who is persecuted by a villain called Lovelace, and who dies finally of a broken heart. His third and last novel, also in letter-form, was _Sir Charles Grandison_ (1753), dealing chiefly with persons still higher in the social world. Richardson contemplated calling the book _A Good Man_, for he intended the hero to be the perfection of the manly virtues. But Sir Charles is too good, and succeeds only in being tedious and unreal. The character of the social _milieu_ in which the action is cast also weighs heavily upon Richardson, with the result that this book, which he intended to be his masterpiece, is the hollowest of the three.

=3. Features of his Novels.= Richardson’s works are largely the reflection of the man himself, and, in spite of their faults and limitations, are of immense importance in the development of the novel.

(_a_) Their most prominent feature is their _immense length_. In the last two works this is most noticeable.

(_b_) In spite of the great length of the books, the _plots_ have little complexity; the length is due to an enormous accumulation of detail, both of character and incident, which is ingenious, but clogs the course of the story. He is really an adept in the minute analysis of motive and emotion, which gradually evolves a character that is entire and convincing, and he fills in his sketch with a multitude of tiny strokes.

(_c_) His novels convey the general impression of a certain kind of bloodlessness--a literary anemia--that is due to several causes. His themes are those of love-making; they are handled with a great parade of morality, but have nevertheless a simpering prudishness that conveys a stealthy suggestion of immorality. Then his good people are laboriously virtuous; his villains are stuffily vile; he is devoid of humor; the action is too frequently indoors; the sentiment is protracted and sickly. After a spell of reading such work one is glad to escape into the open air.

(_d_) Yet his merits are very real, and the cumbrous machinery of the letter-series assists him. His character-drawing is among the best of his time, and is still among the most remarkable in English; he is specially happy in his treatment of feminine characters; his use of dialogue shows an advance, though it might be even more frequently employed. He gives a good start to the modern novel, though it is still a long distance from maturity.

HENRY FIELDING (1707–54)

=1. His Life.= A cadet of an ancient family, Fielding was born in Somersetshire, was educated at Eton, and studied law at Leyden. Lack of funds stopped his legal studies for a time; he took to writing plays for a living, but the plays were of little merit; then, having married, he resumed his studies and was called to the Bar. After some time in practice he was appointed (1749) Bow Street magistrate, a post which brought him a small income (“of the dirtiest money on earth,” as he said) and much hard work. His magisterial duties, however, had their compensations, for they gave him a close view of many types of human criminality which was of much use to him in his novels. Fielding himself was no Puritan, and his own excesses helped to undermine his constitution. In the hope that it would improve his health, he took a voyage to Portugal (1754); but he died some months after landing, and was buried at Lisbon.

=2. His Novels.= In 1742 appeared _Joseph Andrews_, which begins in a loud guffaw of laughter--not unkind, but not very delicate--at the namby-pamby Pamela of Richardson. In the story Joseph Andrews, the hero, is a footman, and the brother of Pamela. Along with a poor and simple curate called Abraham Adams he survives numerous ridiculous adventures. In a short time Fielding forgets about the burlesque, becomes interested in his own story, and we then see a novel of a new and powerful kind. From the very beginning we get the Fielding touch: the complete rejection of the letter-method; the bustle and sweep of the tale; the broad and vivacious humor; the genial and half-contemptuous insight into human nature; and the forcible and pithy prose style. His next works were _A Journey from this World to the Next_ (1743) and _Jonathan Wild the Great_ (1743). _Jonathan Wild_ is the biography of the famous thief and highwayman who was hanged at Newgate. The story is one long ironical comment upon human action. In it Fielding deliberately turns morality inside out, calling good by the name of evil, and evil by the name of good. In the hands of a lesser writer such a method would at length become teasing and troublesome; but Fielding, through the intensity of his ironic insight, gives us new and piercing glimpses of the ruffian’s mentality. We give an extract to illustrate Fielding’s ironic power, which in several respects resembles that of Swift:

In Wild everything was truly great, almost without alloy, as his imperfections (for surely some small ones he had) were only such as served to denominate him a human creature, of which kind none ever arrived at consummate excellence. Indeed, while greatness consists in power, pride, insolence, and doing mischief to mankind--to speak out--while a great man and a great rogue are synonymous terms, so long shall Wild stand unrivalled on the pinnacle of GREATNESS. Nor must we omit here, as the finishing of his character, what indeed ought to be remembered on his tomb or his statue, the conformity above mentioned of his death to his life; and that Jonathan Wild the Great, after all his mighty exploits was, what so few GREAT men can accomplish--hanged by the neck till he was dead. _Jonathan Wild the Great_

His greatest novel, _Tom Jones_ (1749), completes and perfects his achievement. In the book we have all his previous virtues (and some of his weaknesses), with the addition of greater symmetry of plot, clearer and steadier vision into human life and human frailty, and a broader and more thickly peopled stage. His last novel, _Amelia_ (1751), had as the original of the heroine Fielding’s first wife, and the character of the erring husband Booth is based upon that of Fielding himself. This novel, though possessing power and interest, lacks the spontaneity of its great predecessor. The last work he produced was his _Voyage to Lisbon_, a diary written during his last journey. It possesses a painful interest, for it reveals a strong and patient mind, heavy with bodily affliction, yet still lively in its perception of human affairs.

=3. Features of his Novels.= (_a_) Like Richardson, Fielding had a genius for sounding the emotions of the human heart, but his methods are different. Richardson pores over human weaknesses with puckered brow and with many a sigh; Fielding looks, laughs, and passes on. He does not seek to analyze or over-refine; and so his characters possess a breadth, humanity, and attraction denied to Richardson’s. Even a sneaking rogue like Blifil in _Tom Jones_ has a Shakespearian roundness of contour that keeps him from being quite revolting.

(_b_) Fielding is breezy, bustling, and energetic in his _narrative_. He shows us life on the highway, in the cottage, and among the streets of London. Coleridge truly said that to take up Fielding after Richardson is like emerging from the sick-room on to the open lawn.

(_c_) Fielding’s _humor_ is boisterous and broad to the point of coarseness--a kind of over-fed jollity. But it is frank and open, with none of the stealthy suggestiveness of Richardson. In dealing with this aspect of Fielding’s work (an aspect frequently repulsive to the more squeamish taste of the moderns) we must make allowance for the fashion of his time, which united a frankness of incident with a curious decorum of speech. He had also in him a freakishness of wit, the excess of his grosser mood, which led to fantastic interludes and digressions in his novels. For instance, in describing the numerous scuffles among his characters, he frequently adopts an elaborate mock-heroic style not quite in accordance with later taste. Fielding’s comic characters, such as Partridge, the humble companion of Tom Jones, are numerous, diversified, and exceedingly likeable and lively.

(_d_) A word must be given to his _style_. He breaks away from the mannered, artificial style of the earlier novelists, and gives us the good “hodden grey” of his own period. His style has a slight touch of archaism in the use of words like “hath,” but otherwise it is fresh and clear. His use of dialogue and conversation is of a similar nature.

We add an extract to illustrate Fielding’s easy style, his almost haphazard cast of sentence, and his use of natural dialogue:

As soon as the play, which was _Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, began, Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the entrance of the ghost; upon which he asked Jones: “What man that was in the strange dress; something,” said he, “like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it’s not armour, is it?” Jones answered: “That is the ghost.” To which Partridge replied, with a smile: “Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though I can’t say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him better than that comes to. No, no, sir; ghosts don’t appear in such dresses as that neither.” In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbourhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue till the scene between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the stage. “O la! sir,” said he, “I perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of anything, for I know it is but a play; and if it was really a ghost, it could do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much company; and yet if I was frightened, I am not the only person.” “Why, who,” cries Jones; “dost thou take me to be such a coward here besides thyself?” “Nay, you may call me coward if you will; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! Ay, to be sure! Who’s fool, then? Will you? Who ever saw such foolhardiness? Whatever happens, it is good enough for you. Oh! here he is again! No further! No, you’ve gone far enough already; further than I’d have gone for all the king’s dominions!” Jones offered to speak, but Partridge cried: “Hush, hush, dear sir; don’t you hear him?” And during the whole speech of the ghost, he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost, and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same passions, which succeeded each other in Hamlet, succeeding likewise in him. _Tom Jones_

OTHER NOVELISTS

=1. Tobias Smollett (1721–71).= Smollett was a Scotsman, being born in Dumbartonshire. Though he came of a good family, from an early age he had to work for a living. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, and, becoming a surgeon’s mate on board a man-of-war, saw some fighting and much of the world. He thus stored up abundant raw material for the novels that were to follow. When he published _Roderick Random_ (1748) the book was so successful that he settled in London; and the remainder of his life is mainly the chronicle of his works.

_Roderick Random_ is an example of the “picaresque” novel: the hero is a roving dog, of little honesty and considerable roguery; he traverses many lands, undergoing many tricks of fortune, both good and bad. The story lacks symmetry, but it is nearly always lively, though frequently coarse, and the minor characters, such as the seaman Tom Bowling, are of considerable interest. His other novels are _Peregrine Pickle_ (1751), _Ferdinand_, _Count Fathom_ (1753), _Sir Launcelot Greaves_ (1762), and _The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker_ (1771).

The later books follow the plan of the first with some fidelity. Most of the characters are disreputable; the plots are as a rule formless narratives of travel and adventure; and a coarse and brutal humor is present all through. Smollett, however, brings variety into his novels by the endless shifting of the scenes, which cover nearly all the globe, by his wide knowledge and acute perception of local manners and customs, and by his use of a plain and vigorous narrative style. His characters, especially his female characters, are crudely managed, but his naval men--comprising Commodore Trunnion, Lieutenant Hatchway, and Boatswain Pipes--form quite a considerable gallery of figures. Smollett is the first of our novelists to introduce the naval type.

=2. Laurence Sterne (1713–68).= Sterne was born at Clonmel, was educated at Cambridge, took orders, and obtained a living in Yorkshire (1740). His habits were decidedly unclerical, even though we judge them by the easy standard of the time. He temporarily left his living for London to publish _Tristram Shandy_ (1759). Then he toured abroad, returned to England to write his second novel, and died in London while visiting the city on business connected with the production of his book.

His two novels are _Tristram Shandy_ (1759–67) and _A Sentimental Journey_ (1768). The first made him famous, and rather turned his head, confirming him in some of his worst mannerisms. Both novels are bundles of episodes and digressions, often irritatingly prolonged. The characters are elaborately handled, caressed, and bewept. Perhaps the most famous of them is “my uncle Toby,” with his Corporal Trim. Both books are saturated with a sentiment that modern taste can only call sloppiness. This sentiment, however, does not prevent a sniggering indecency from appearing in the narrative. The style is distinguished by many antics, such as exclamation, inversion, and unfinished sentences. These mannerisms have long made Sterne distasteful to all but highly trained palates, but no one can deny him great ingenuity and industry, which can gradually unswathe characters and incidents from their trappings of talk and digression, an acute perception of character, and an immense opinion of his own importance.

The following is an exciting incident that occurred just after the birth of Tristram Shandy. Susannah, the serving-maid, rouses Mr. Shandy with the news that the child is in a fit. Observe the staccato dialogue and the ingenious variation of the paragraph. The humor is typical of Sterne.

“Bless me, sir,” said Susannah, “the child’s in a fit”--“And where’s Mr Yorick?”--“Never where he should be,” said Susannah, “but his curate’s in the dressing-room, with the child upon his arm, waiting for the name--and my mistress bid me run as fast as I could to know, as Captain Shandy is the godfather, whether it should not be called after him.”

“Were one sure,” said my father to himself, scratching his eyebrow, “that the child was expiring, one might as well compliment my brother Toby as not--and ’t would be a pity in such a case, to throw away so great a name as Trismegistus upon him--But he may recover.”

“No, no”--said my father to Susannah, “I’ll get up”--“There’s no time,” cried Susannah, “the child’s as black as my shoe.” “Trismegistus,” said my father--“But stay--thou art a leaky vessel, Susannah,” added my father; “can’st thou carry Trismegistus in thy head the length of the gallery without scattering?”--“Can I?” cried Susannah, shutting the door in a huff--“If she can, I’ll be shot,” said my father, bouncing out of bed in the dark, and groping for his breeches.

Susannah ran with all speed along the gallery.

My father made all possible speed to find his breeches.

=3. Horace Walpole (1717–97).= Walpole was the son of Sir Robert Walpole, the famous Whig minister. He touched upon several kinds of literature, his letters being among the best of their kind. His one novel, _The Castle of Otranto_ (1764), is of importance, for it was the first of the productions of a large school (sometimes called the “terror school”) of novelists who dealt with the grisly and supernatural as their subject. Walpole’s novel, which he published almost furtively, saying, like Chatterton, that the work was of medieval origin, described a ghostly castle, in which we have walking skeletons, pictures that move out of their frames, and other blood-curdling incidents. The ghostly machinery is often cumbrous, but the work is creditably done, and as a return to the romantic elements of mystery and fear the book is noteworthy.

=4. Other Terror Novelists.= (_a_) =William Beckford (1759–1844).= The one novel now associated with Beckford’s name is _Vathek_ (1784). Beckford, who was a man of immense wealth and crazy habits, drew largely upon _The Arabian Nights_ for material for the book. The central figure of the novel is a colossal creature, something like a vampire in disposition, who preys upon mankind and finally meets his doom with suitable impressiveness. Beckford had a wild, almost staggering, magnificence of imagination, and his story, though crude and violent in places, does not lack a certain reality.

(_b_) =Mrs. Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823).= This lady was the most popular of the terror novelists, and published quite a large number of books that followed a fairly regular plan. Among such were her _A Sicilian Romance_ (1790), _The Romance of the Forest_ (1791), and the most popular of them all, _The Mysteries of Udolpho_ (1794). Her stories took on almost a uniform plot, involving mysterious manuscripts, haunted castles, clanking chains, and cloaked and saturnine strangers. At the end of all the horrors Mrs. Radcliffe rather spoils the effect by giving away the secrets of them, and revealing the fact that the terrors were only illusions after all. Nowadays the novels appear tame, but they showed the way to a large number of other writers, for they were fresh to the public of their time.

(_c_) =Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775–1818).= Lewis is perhaps the crudest of the terror school, and only one book of his, _The Monk_ (1795), is worth recording. Lewis, who is lavish with his horrors, does not try to explain them. His imagination is grimmer and fiercer than that of any of the other writers of the same class, and his book is probably the “creepiest” of its kind.

=5. Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831).= This novelist is the most considerable of the sentimental school, who took Sterne for their master. His best-known work is _The Man of Feeling_ (1771), in which maudlin sentiment has free play. To his contemporaries Mackenzie was known as “the Man of Feeling.”

=6. Frances Burney (1752–1840)=, whose married name was =Madame d’Arblay=, is rather an important figure, for she exercised a considerable influence on her age. Her diaries and letters are clever and informative, and her two best novels, _Evelina_ (1778) and _Cecilia_ (1782), are lively and acute representations of fashionable society. Johnson, with his heavy jocularity, called her a “character-monger,” meaning that her chief effects were obtained in the portraying of character. In the construction of _Evelina_ she returns to the clumsy letter-method of Richardson, but she has a wit of an agreeably acid flavor. She is no mean predecessor of Jane Austen. (See p. 354.)

EDWARD GIBBON (1737–94)

=1. His Life.= Gibbon, who was born at Putney, was a sickly child, and, according to his own grateful acknowledgment, he owed his life to the exertions of his aunt, Catherine Porten. He had little regular schooling, but from his early years he was an eager reader of history. At the age of fifteen he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, an institution of which he always spoke afterward with aversion and contempt. “To the University of Oxford,” he writes, “I acknowledge no obligation, and she will as readily renounce me as a son, as I am willing to disclaim her as a mother.” His private historical studies led him to become a Roman Catholic when he was sixteen years old, to the great horror of his father, and resulted in his expulsion from the university. His father packed him off to Lausanne, in Switzerland, in the hope that the Protestant atmosphere of the place would wean him from his new faith.

From his stay in Lausanne began Gibbon’s long and affectionate acquaintance with French language and learning, two sources from which he was to draw the chief inspiration for his masterpiece. He returned to England in 1758, and had a brief and mixed experience in the Militia; afterward he toured the Continent, visiting the famous _salons_ of Paris and seeing Rome. Returning to England after some years, he entered Parliament (1774), hoping for political preferment. In this he was only moderately successful, for he was a lukewarm and rather cynical politician. He returned to Lausanne, where he completed his great work in June 1787. He finally came back to England, and died in lodgings in London.

=2. His Works.= His first projected book, _A History of Switzerland_ (1770), was never finished. Then appeared the first volume of _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (1776). At nearly regular intervals of two years each of the other five volumes was produced, the last appearing in 1788. His _Autobiography_, which contains valuable material concerning his life, is his only other work of any importance, and it is written with all his usual elegance and suave, ironic humor.

To most judges _The Decline and Fall_ ranks as one of the greatest of historical works, and is a worthy example of what a history ought to be. In time it covers more than a thousand years, and in scope it includes all the nations of Europe. It sketches the events leading up to the dissolution of the Roman Empire, and traces the rise of the states and nations that previously formed the component parts of the Roman world, concluding with the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century. For this great task Gibbon’s knowledge is adequate; recent specialized research has rarely been able to pick holes in his narrative. Moreover, he had also that infallible sense of proportion which is the mark of the born historian: he knows what and when to omit, to condense, or give in full. In consequence his gigantic narrative has the balance and the beauty that result from a single and indivisible _mind_ directing it, and suggests in plan and workmanship a vast cathedral.

Exception has been taken to Gibbon’s humor, and with some reason. His skeptical bias, the product of his studies in French, pervades the entire work. This mental attitude need be no disadvantage to the historian, for it leads him to scrutinize his evidence very severely. But in the case of Gibbon it is troublesome at times, especially when he deals with the rise of the Christian faith. In the chapters devoted to the early Christians he sets the facts down solemnly, but all the time he is subtly and sneeringly ironical, a characteristic that aroused the great indignation of Johnson. At many other points when recording disagreeable incidents Gibbon reveals a sniggering nastiness of humor unworthy of so great a writer.

His prose style, deliberately cultivated as being most suited to his subject, is peculiar to himself. It is lordly and commanding, with a full, free, and majestic rhythm. Admirably appropriate to its gigantic subject, the style has nevertheless some weaknesses. Though it never flags, and rarely stumbles, the very perfection of it tends to monotony, for it lacks ease and variety. The extract shows the elaborate construction of the sentences and the rolling character of the rhythm:

Three days Mahomet and his companion were concealed in the cave of Thor, at the distance of a league from Mecca; and in the close of each evening, they received from the son and daughter of Abubeker a secret supply of intelligence and food. The diligence of the Koreish explored every haunt in the neighbourhood of the city; they arrived at the entrance of the cavern; but the providential deceit of a spider’s web and a pigeon’s nest is supposed to convince them that the place was solitary and inviolate. “We are only two,” said the trembling Abubeker. “There is a third,” replied the prophet; “it is God himself.” No sooner was the pursuit abated, than the two fugitives issued from the rock, and mounted their camels; on the road to Medina they were overtaken by the emissaries of the Koreish; they redeemed themselves with prayers and promises from their hands. In this eventful moment the lance of an Arab might have changed the history of the world. The flight of the prophet from Mecca to Medina has fixed the memorable era of the Hegira, which, at the end of twelve centuries, still discriminates the lunar years of the Mahometan nations.

OTHER HISTORIANS

=1. David Hume (1711–76).= Born and educated at Edinburgh, Hume first distinguished himself as a philosopher, publishing the _Treatise on Human Nature_ (1739–40) and _Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary_ (1741). Later he turned to historical work, writing _The History of England_, in six volumes, which appeared between the years 1754 and 1762. At first the work was coldly received, for it traversed the popular Whig notions, but in time the book raised Hume to the position of the leading historian of the day. He died in the same year that witnessed the issue of the first volume of _The Decline and Fall_.

As a historian Hume makes no pretense at profound research, so that his work has little permanent value as history. He possesses a clear and logical mind and a swift and brilliant narrative style. In the history of literature his work is of importance as being the first of the popular and literary histories of the country.

=2. William Robertson (1721–93).= Robertson also was a Scot, being born in the country of Midlothian. After leaving the university he entered the Scottish Church. He had an active and successful career as a historian, producing among other works _The History of Scotland_ (1759), _The History of Charles V_ (1769), and _The History of America_ (1777).

The range of Robertson’s subject-matter shows that he could have been no deep student of any particular epoch of history. He aimed at a plain and businesslike narrative of events, taking the average man’s view of the facts he chronicled, and, with perhaps the exception of his pronounced bias in favor of Mary Queen of Scots, he is never conspicuously personal in his opinions.

=3. James Boswell (1740–95)= was born in Edinburgh of a good Scottish family. He studied law, but his chief delight was the pursuit of great men, whose acquaintance he greedily cultivated.

He lives in literature by his supreme effort, _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ (1791), which ranks as one of the best biographies in existence. Boswell sought and obtained Johnson’s friendship; endured any humiliation for the sake of improving it; and for twenty-one years, by means of an astonishing amount of patience, pertinacity, and sheer thick-skinned imperviousness to slight and insult, obtained an intimate personal knowledge of Johnson’s life and habits. Boswell has suffered at the hands of Macaulay, who has pictured him as being a knavish buffoon. No doubt he had glaring faults; but on the other hand he had great native shrewdness, a vigorous memory, a methodical and tireless industry which made him note down and preserve many details of priceless value, and a natural genius for seizing upon points of supreme literary importance. All these gifts combine to make his book a masterpiece.

The following extract illustrates Boswell’s acute perception, his eye for detail, and his limpid and vivacious style:

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 half a 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. _The Life of Samuel Johnson._

EDMUND BURKE (1729–97)

Burke shares with Gibbon the place of the greatest prose stylist of the period now under review. He is, moreover, recognized as one of the masters of English prose.

=1. His Life.= Born in Dublin, Burke was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and then removed to London to study law in the Middle Temple. He soon showed that his real bent lay toward politics and literature, and it was not long before he published some books that attracted a good deal of attention and admitted him into the famous Johnson Club. In politics he attached himself to the Whig party, obtained some small appointments, and became member for Wendover (1765). Both as an orator and as a pamphleteer he was a powerful advocate for his party, and very soon his splendid gifts won for him a leading place in the House of Commons. His style of oratory, often labored, rhetorical, and theatrical, exposed him to much censure and ridicule, and his speeches were frequently prolonged to the point of dullness. But at its best his eloquence was powerful in attack and magnificent in appeal, rising to the very summit of the orator’s art. When the Whigs attained to office in 1783 Burke was appointed Paymaster of the Forces. He was leader in the prosecution of Warren Hastings, making a speech of immense length and power (1788). On the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 he left his party and attacked the revolutionaries with all his great energy. In 1794, broken in health, he retired from Parliament, but continued to publish pamphlets till his death in 1797.

=2. His Works.= The considerable sum of Burke’s achievement can for the sake of convenience be divided into two groups: his purely philosophical writings, and his political pamphlets and speeches.

(_a_) His philosophical writings, which comprise the smaller division of his product, were composed in the earlier portion of his career. _A Vindication of Natural Society_ (1756) is a parody of the style and ideas of Bolingbroke, and, though it possesses much ingenuity, it has not much importance as an original work. _A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful_ (1756) is his most considerable attempt at philosophy. As philosophy the book is only middling, for its theory and many of its examples are questionable, but it has the sumptuous dressing of Burke’s language and style.

(_b_) His political works are by far his most substantial claim to fame. In variety, breadth of view, and illuminating power of vision they are unsurpassed in the language. The chief of the many works are _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_ (1770), a resounding attack on the Tory Government then in power; _Reflections on the French Revolution_ (1790), which marked his departure from his old party and his fierce challenge to the extreme revolutionary policy; _Letter to a Noble Lord_ (1796); and _Letters on a Regicide Peace_ (1797). In addition we have much purely oratorical work, such as the notable speeches on the American question and his great philippic against Warren Hastings.

=3. Features of his Work.= Though the occasion of Burke’s political writings has vanished, the books can still be read with profit and pleasure. Burke was the practical politician, applying to the problems of his day the light of a clear and forcible intelligence; yet, above this, he had an almost supreme faculty for discerning the eternal principles lying behind the shifting and troubled scenes of his time. He could distill from the muddy liquid of contemporary party strife the clear wine of wisdom, and so deduce ideas of unshakable permanence. Thus pages of his disquisition, scores of his dicta, can still be applied almost without qualification to the problems of any civilized state and time. A good deal of the writing is of an inferior quality; it can be flashy, labored, and dull; but as a whole it possesses the foundations of sanity and wisdom.

We have in addition the permanent attraction of Burke’s style. His prose is marked by all the devices of the orator: much repetition, careful arrangement and balance of parts, copious use of the rhetorical figures (such as metaphor, simile, epigram, and exclamation), variation of the sentence, homely illustrations, and a swift but steady rhythm. When he overdoes these devices he is garish and vulgar, but for the most part his style impresses the reader with an effect of elevation, strength, and noble perspicuity.

In the extract now given, note that the actual vocabulary does not abound in long Latinized words as in the case of Johnsonese. The ornate effect is produced rather by the elevation of the sentiment and the sweeping cadence of the style.

On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings, and which is as void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all taste and elegance, laws are to be supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which each individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spare to them from his own private interests. In the groves of _their_ Academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows! Nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the commonwealth. On the principles of this mechanic philosophy, our institutions can never be embodied, if I may use the expression, in persons, so as to create in us love, veneration, admiration, or attachment. But that sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids, to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems is equally true as to states: “Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto.” There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely. _Reflections on the French Revolution_

OTHER PROSE-WRITERS

=1. Adam Smith (1723–90).= This author was born at Kirkcaldy, in Fifeshire, and completed his education at Glasgow and Oxford. He was appointed professor at Glasgow University, whence he issued his famous book _The Wealth of Nations_ (1776).

In the history of economics the work is epoch-making, for it lays the foundations of modern economic theory. In the history of literature it is noteworthy because it is another example of that spirit of research and inquiry that was abroad at this time, playing havoc with literary convention as well as with many other ideas. The book is also a worthy example of the use of a plain businesslike style in the development of theories of far-reaching importance.

=2. William Paley (1743–1805)= may be taken as the typical theological writer of the age. He was a brilliant Cambridge scholar, and obtained high offices in the Church, finally becoming an archdeacon. His chief books are _Moral and Political Philosophy_ (1785), _Horæ Paulinæ_ (1790), and _A View of the Evidences of Christianity_ (1794). His style is lively and attractive, and he possessed much vigor of character and intellect.

=3. The Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773)= was of the famous Stanhope family. In his day he was an illustrious wit and man of fashion, and held high political offices. He is an example of the aristocratic amateur in literature, and he wrote elegant articles for the fashionable journals, such as _The World_.

His _Letters to his Son_, which were published shortly after his death in 1773, caused a great flutter. They appeared diabolically cynical and immoral, and as such they were denounced by Johnson. No doubt they affect the tired cynicism of the man of the world, but that does not prevent them from being keen and clever, and underneath their bored indifference to morality they reveal a shrewd judgment of men and manners. (See p. 342.)

=4. William Godwin (1756–1836)= is a prominent example of the revolutionary man of letters of the time. He was the son of a dissenting minister, and intended to follow the same profession, but very soon drifted away from it. He then devoted himself to the pursuit of letters, in which he developed his extreme views on religion, politics, sociology, and other important themes. His _Political Justice_ (1793) was deeply tinged with revolutionary ideas, and had a great effect on many young and ardent spirits of the age, including Shelley. His novel _Caleb Williams_ (1794) was a dressing of the same theories in the garb of fiction. Godwin is worth notice because he reveals the spread of the revolutionary doctrines that were so strongly opposed by Burke.

=5. Gilbert White (1720–93)= deserves mention as the first naturalist who cast his observations into genuine literary form. He was born at Selborne, Hampshire, studied at Oxford, and took holy orders. He settled at his native place, and published _The Natural History of Selborne_ (1789). The book is a series of genuine letters written to correspondents who are interested in the natural history of the place. White reveals much closeness and sympathy of observation, and he can command a sweet and readable style. He shows the “return to nature” in a practical and praiseworthy form. (See p. 355.)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

This, being an age of transition, is an age of unrest, of advance and retreat, of half-lights and dubious victories. But if we bring together the different types of literature, and mark how they have developed during the period, we can see that the trend of the age is quite clear.

=1. Poetry.= In 1740 we have Pope still alive and powerful, and Johnson an aspiring junior; in 1800, with Burns and Blake, Romanticism has unquestionably arrived. This great change came gradually, but its stages can be observed with some precision.

(_a_) The first symptom of the coming change was the _decline of the heroic couplet_, the dominance of which passed away with its greatest exponent, Pope. Toward the middle of the century a large number of other poetical forms can be observed creeping back into favor.

(_b_) The change was first seen in the free use of the _Pindaric ode_ in the works of Gray and Collins, which appeared in the middle years of the century. The Pindaric ode is a useful medium for the transitional stage, for it has the double advantage of being “classical” and of being free from the more formal rules of couplet and stanza. Gray’s _The Bard_ (1757) and Collins’s ode _The Passions_ (1747) are among the best of the type.

(_c_) Another omen was the revival of the _ballad_, which was due to renewed interest in the older kinds of literature. The revived species, as seen in Goldsmith’s _The Hermit_ and Cowper’s _John Gilpin_, has not the grimness and crude narrative force of the genuine ballad, but it is lively and often humorous. Another ballad-writer was =Thomas Percy (1729–1811)=, who, in addition to collecting the _Reliques_ (1765), composed ballads of his own, such as _The Friar of Orders Grey_. Chatterton’s _Bristowe Tragedy_ has much of the fire and somberness of the old ballads.

(_d_) The _descriptive and narrative poems_ begin with the old-fashioned _London_ (1738) of Johnson; the development is seen in Goldsmith’s _Traveller_ (1764) and _Deserted Village_ (1770), in which the heroic couplet is quickened and transformed by a real sympathy for nature and the poor; the advance is carried still further by the blank-verse poems of Cowper (_The Task_) and Crabbe (_The Village_) and the Spenserian stanzas of minor poets like Shenstone (_The Schoolmistress_).

(_e_) Finally there is the rise of the _lyric_. The Pindarics of Collins and Gray are lyrics in starch and buckram; the works of Chatterton, Smart, Macpherson, Cowper, and, lastly, of Burns and Blake show in order the lyrical spirit struggling with its bonds, shaking itself free, and finally soaring in triumph. Romanticism has arrived.

=2. Drama.= In this period nothing is more remarkable than the poverty of its dramatic literature. Of this no real explanation can be given. The age was simply not a dramatic one; for the plays that the age produced, with the exceptions of a few notable examples of comedy, are hardly worth noticing.

Tragedy comes off worst of all. The sole tragedy hitherto mentioned in this chapter is Johnson’s _Irene_ (1749), which only the reputation of its author has preserved from complete oblivion. A tragedy which had a great vogue was _Douglas_ (1754), by =John Home (1722–1808)=. It is now almost forgotten. =Joanna Baillie (1762–1851)= produced some historical blank-verse tragedies, such as _Count Basil_ (1798) and _De Montfort_ (1798). Her plays make fairly interesting reading, and some of their admirers, including Scott, said that she was Shakespeare revived.

Among the comedies we have the sprightly plays of Goldsmith, already noticed, Fielding’s _Tom Thumb_, and the work of =Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816)=.

Sheridan was an Irishman, and became a prominent wit and politician. His wit is admirably revealed in his three brilliant prose comedies. _The Rivals_ (1775), _The School for Scandal_ (1777), and _The Critic_ (1779). The three all resemble the best of the Restoration comedies, without the immorality that taints their models. The plots are ingenious and effective, though they depend largely on a stagy complexity of intrigue; the characters, among whom are the immortal figures of Mrs. Malaprop, Bob Acres, and Sir Fretful Plagiary, are stage types, but they are struck off with daring skill; and the dialogue is often a succession of brilliant repartees. The worst that can be said against the plays is that they are artificial, and that the very cleverness of them becomes fatiguing. With the work of Sheridan the artificial comedy reaches its climax.

=3. Prose.= The prose product of the period is bulky, varied, and of great importance. The importance of it is clear enough when we recollect that it includes, among many other things, possibly the best novel in the language (_Tom Jones_), the best history (_The Decline and Fall_), and the best biography (_The Life of Doctor Johnson_).

(_a_) _The Rise of the Novel._ There are two main classes of fictional prose narratives, namely, the tale or romance and the novel. The distinction between the two need not be drawn too fine, for there is a large amount of prose narrative that can fall into either group; but, broadly speaking, we may say that the tale or romance depends for its chief interest on incident and adventure, whereas the novel depends more on the display of character and motive. In addition, the story (or _plot_, or _fable_) of the novel tends to be more complicated than that of the tale, and it often leads to what were called by the older writers “revolutions and discoveries”--that is, unexpected developments in the narrative, finishing with an explanation that is called the _dénouement_. The tale, moreover, can be separated from the romance: the plot of the tale is commonly matter-of-fact, while that of the romance is often wonderful and fantastic.

There is little doubt that the modern novel has its roots in the medieval romances, such as _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ and those dealing with the legends of King Arthur. Another source of the novel were the collections of ballads telling of the adventures of popular heroes of the type of Robin Hood. These romances were written in verse; they were supplied with stock characters, like the wandering knight, the distressed damsel, and the wicked wizard; they had stock incidents, connected with enchanted castles, fiery dragons, and perilous ambushes; and their story rambled on almost interminably. They were necessary to satisfy the human craving for fiction, and they were often fiction of a picturesque and lively kind.

The age of Elizabeth saw the rise of the prose romance. We have examples in the _Euphues_ (1579) of Lyly and the _Arcadia_ of Sidney. As fiction these tales are weighed down with their fantastic prose styles, and with their common desire to expound a moral lesson. Their characters are rudimentary, and there is little attempt at a plot and love-theme. Yet they represent an advance, for they are fiction.

They are interesting from another viewpoint. They show us that curious diffidence that was to be a drag on the production of the novel even as late as the time of Scott. Authors were shy of being novelists for two main reasons: first, there was thought to be something almost immoral in the writing of fiction, as it was but the glorification of a pack of lies; and, secondly, the liking for fiction was considered to be the craving of diseased or immature intellects, and so the production of it was unworthy of reasonable men. Thus if a man felt impelled to write fiction he had to conceal the narrative with some moral or allegorical dressing.

A new type of embryo novel began to appear at the end of the sixteenth century, and, becoming very popular during the seventeenth, retained its popularity till the days of Fielding and Smollett.

This class is known as the _picaresque_ novel, a name derived from the Spanish word _picaron_, which means a wandering rogue. As the name implies, it is of Spanish origin. For hero it takes a rascal who leads a wandering life, and has many adventures, most of them of a scandalous kind. The hero is the sole link between the different incidents, and there is much digression and the interposing of other short narratives. In Spain the picaresque type originated in parodies of the old romances, and of such parodies the greatest is the _Don Quixote_ (1604) of Cervantes. In France the type became common, the most famous example of it being the _Gil Blas_ (1735) of Le Sage.

In England the picaresque novel had an early start in _Jack Wilton, or The Unfortunate Traveller_, by Nash, (1567–1601), whose work often suggests that of Defoe. Nash’s work is crude, but it has vigor and some wit. A later effort in the same kind is _The English Rogue_ (1665), by Richard Head. The book is gross and scandalous to an extreme degree, but it has energy, and, as it takes the hero to many places on the globe, the reader obtains interesting glimpses of life in foreign parts.

Another type that came into favor was the heroic romance. This was based on the similar French romances of Mademoiselle Scudéri (1607–1701) and others. This class of fiction was the elegant variety of the grosser picaresque novel, and it was much duller. The hero of a heroic romance was usually of high degree, and he underwent a long series of romantic adventures, many of them supernatural. There was much love-making, involving long speeches containing “noble sentiments, elegantly expressed.” The length of these romances was enormous; the _Grand Cyrus_ of Mademoiselle Scudéri ran to ten large volumes. Popular English specimens were Ford’s _Parismus, Prince of Bohemia_ (1598) and _Parthenissa_ (1654), by Roger Boyle. It is worth noting that the artificial heroic romance collapsed about the end of the seventeenth century, whereas the picaresque class, which in spite of its grave faults was a human and interesting type of fiction, survived and influenced the novel in later centuries.

By the end of the seventeenth century the novel is dimly taking shape. =Aphra Behn (1640–89)= wrote stories that had some claims to plot, character-drawing, and dialogue. Her _Orinooko, or The Royal Slave_ shows some power in describing the persecution of a noble negro, a kind of Othello, at the hands of brutal white men. The work of Bunyan (1628–88) was forced to be allegorical, for the Puritans, of whom he was one, abhorred the idea of writing fiction, which they regarded as gilded lies. Yet _The Pilgrim’s Progress_ abounds in qualities that go to make a first-rate novel: a strong and smoothly working plot, troops of human and diverse characters, impressive descriptive passages, and simple dialogue dramatically sound. His other works, notably _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_, are also very close to the novel proper.

In the eighteenth century we see another development in the Coverley papers (1711) of Steele and Addison. There is little plot in this essay-series, and only a rudimentary love-theme; but the allegorical fabric is gone, there is much entertaining character-sketching, and the spice of delicate humor. We should note also that we have here the beginnings of the society and domestic novel, for the papers deal with ordinary people and incidents.

The genuine novel is very near indeed in the works of Defoe (1659–1731). His novels are of the picaresque type in the case of _Captain Singleton_ (1720), _Moll Flanders_ (1722), and _Colonel Jack_ (1722). They have many of the faults of their kind: the characters are weakly drawn, the plots are shaky and sprawling, and much of the incident is indecorous; yet they have a virile and sustaining interest that is most apparent in the best parts of _Robinson Crusoe_ (1719).

Then, toward the middle of the century, came the swift and abundant blossoming of the novel, raising the type to the rank of one of the major species of literature. The time was ripe for it. The drama, which had helped to satisfy the natural human desire for a story, was moribund, and something had to take its place. Here we can only summarize very shortly the work of the novelists already discussed in this chapter. Richardson’s _Pamela_ (1740) had the requisites of plot, characters, and dialogue, and these of high merit; but the diffidence of the early fiction-writer possessed him, and he had to conceal the novel-method under the clumsy disguise of a series of letters. Fielding’s robust common sense had no such scruples, and his _Tom Jones_ (1749) shows us the novel in its maturity. Later novelists could only modify and improve in detail; with Fielding the principles of the novel were established.

The modifications of Fielding’s immediate successors can be briefly noticed. Smollett reverted to the picaresque manner, but he added the professional sailor to fiction, and gave it types of Scottish character that Scott was to improve upon; Sterne made the novel sentimental and fantastic, and founded a sentimental school; the Radcliffe novels, popular toward the end of the century, made fiction terrific; while in _The Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766) Goldsmith showed us what the novel can do in respect of a simple yet effective plot, human and lovable personages, dialogue of a dramatic kind, and a tender and graceful humor. Johnson’s _Rasselas_ (1759), which reverted to the methods of _Euphues_, was pure reaction, but it possesses an interest as a reversion to a long-dead type.

(_b_) _The Rise of the Historical Work._ The development of history came late, but almost necessarily so. The two main requirements of the serious historian are knowledge of his subject and maturity of judgment. Before the year 1750 no great historical work had appeared in any modern language. Raleigh’s _History of the World_ (1614) is not a real history; it is only the fruit of the mental exertions of an imprisoned man who seeks relaxation. Clarendon’s _History of the Great Rebellion_, which was not published till 1704, is largely the record of his own personal experiences and opinions. He makes little attempt at an impartial and considered judgment or at placing the rebellion in its proper perspective.

The general advance in knowledge and the research into national affairs which were the features of eighteenth-century culture quickly brought the study of history into prominence. France led the way, and the Scots, traditionally allied to the French, were the first in Britain to feel the influence. Hence we have Hume’s _History of England_ (1754) and the works of Robertson. These books excelled in ease and sense, but the knowledge displayed in them was not yet sufficient to make them epoch-making. Gibbon’s _Decline and Fall_ (1776) in knowledge, in method, and in literary style is as near perfection as human frailty can attain. Thus within twenty or thirty years the art of writing history in English advanced from a state of tutelage to complete development.

(_c_) _Letter-writing._ The habit of writing letters became very popular during the eighteenth century, and flourished till well into the nineteenth, when the institution of the penny post made letter-writing a convenience and not an art. It was this popularity of the letter that helped Richardson’s _Pamela_ into public favor.

A favorite form of the letter was a long communication, sometimes written from abroad, discussing some topic of general interest. Such a letter was semi-public in nature, and was meant to be handed round a circle of acquaintances. Frequently a series of letters was bound into book-form. Collections of this kind were the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), written to Pope and others from Constantinople, and of Thomas Gray, from the Lake District and the Continent. Sometimes the letters contain comments on political and social matters, as in the famous compositions of Lord Chesterfield to his son, which we have already noticed. We give an extract from one of Chesterfield’s letters, for it is valuable as an example of witty and polished prose. A letter of the type of Chesterfield’s is really an essay which is given a slightly epistolary form.

LONDON, _May 27, 1753_ ... You are now but nineteen, an age at which most of your countrymen are illiberally getting drunk in Port at the University. You have greatly got the start of them in learning; and, if you can equally get the start of them in the knowledge and manners of the world, you may be very sure of outrunning them in Court and Parliament, as you set out so much earlier than they. They generally begin but to see the world at one-and-twenty; you will by that age have seen all Europe. They set out upon their travels unlicked cubs; and in their travels they only lick one another, for they seldom go into any other company. They know nothing but the English world, and the worst part of that too, and generally very little of any but the English language; and they come home, at three or four-and-twenty, refined and polished (as is said in one of Congreve’s plays) like Dutch skippers from a whale-fishing. The care which has been taken of you, and (to do you justice) the care you have taken of yourself, has left you, at the age of nineteen only, nothing to acquire but the knowledge of the world, manners, address, and those exterior accomplishments. But they are great and necessary acquisitions, to those who have sense enough to know their true value; and your getting them before you are one-and-twenty, and before you enter upon the active and shining scene of life, will give you such an advantage over all your contemporaries, that they cannot overtake you: they must be distanced. You may probably be placed about a young prince, who will probably be a young king. There all the various arts of pleasing, the engaging address, the versatility of manners, the brilliant, the Graces, will outweigh and yet outrun all solid knowledge and unpolished merit. Oil yourself therefore, and be both supple and shining, for that race, if you would be first, or early, at the goal.

A type of letter which is frankly a work written for publication is well represented by the famous _Letters of Junius_, which caused a great stir in their day. They are what are called “open letters”--that is, they are for general perusal, while they gain additional point by being addressed to some well-known personage. The public, as it were, has the satisfaction of looking over the shoulder of the man to whom they are addressed. “Junius” is now supposed to have been =Sir Philip Francis (1740–1818)=, though the identity of the writer was long concealed. They began to appear in _The Public Advertiser_ in 1769, and by their immensely destructive power they shook the Government to its base. In force and fury they resemble Swift’s _Drapier’s Letters_, but they tend to become petty and spiteful.

The more intimate and private letters of this period, of which there is a large and interesting collection, are of a deeper significance to us now, for they contain a human interest by revealing the nature of the people who wrote them. In _The Life of Doctor Johnson_ Boswell published many of Johnson’s letters, the most famous of which is that containing the snub to Chesterfield. It is quoted in the exercises attached to this chapter. Horace Walpole, as we have already noted (p. 323), left a voluminous correspondence which for wit, vivacity, and urbane and shallow common sense is quite remarkable. The private letters of Cowper are attractive for their easy and unaffected grace and their gentle and pervasive humor. We add an extract from a letter by Cowper. The style of it should be compared with that of Chesterfield.

(_To William Hayley._)

WESTON, _February 24, 1793_ ... Oh! you rogue! what would you give to have such a dream about Milton, as I had about a week since? I dreamed that being in a house in the city, and with much company, looking toward the lower end of the room from the upper end of it, I descried a figure which I immediately knew to be Milton’s. He was very gravely, but very neatly attired in the fashion of his day, and had a countenance which filled me with those feelings which an affectionate child has for a beloved father, such, for instance, as Tom has for you. My first thought was wonder, where he could have been concealed so many years; my second, a transport of joy to find him still alive; my third, another transport to find myself in his company; and my fourth, a resolution to accost him. I did so, and he received me with a complacence, in which I saw equal sweetness and dignity. I spoke of his _Paradise Lost_, as every man must, who is worthy to speak of it at all, and told him a long story of the manner in which it affected me, when I first discovered it, being at that time a schoolboy. He answered me by a smile and a gentle inclination of his head. He then grasped my hand affectionately, and with a smile that charmed me, said, “Well, you for your part will do well also”; at last recollecting his great age (for I understood him to be two hundred years old), I feared that I might fatigue him by much talking; I took my leave, and he took his, with an air of the most perfect good breeding. His person, his features, his manner, were all so perfectly characteristic, that I am persuaded an apparition of him could not present him more completely. This may be said to have been one of the dreams of Pindus,[169] may it not?... With Mary’s kind love, I must now conclude myself, my dear brother, ever yours, LIPPUS[170]

(_d_) _The Periodical Essay._ Compared with the abundance of the earlier portion of the century, the amount produced later seems of little importance. The number of periodicals, however, was as great as ever. Johnson wrote _The Rambler_ and _The Idler_, and contributed also to _The Adventurer_ and others; Goldsmith assisted _The Bee_ during its brief career. _The Connoisseur_, to which Cowper contributed for a space, _The Mirror_ and _The Lounger_, published in Edinburgh by Mackenzie, “the Man of Feeling,” _The Observer_ and _The Looker On_ all imitated _The Spectator_ with moderate success, but show no important development in manner or matter.

(_e_) _Miscellaneous Prose._ The amount of miscellaneous prose is very great indeed, and a fair proportion of it is of high merit. We have already given space to the political and philosophical writings of Burke, whose work is of the highest class, as represented in _The Sublime and Beautiful_ and _Reflections on the French Revolution_. Political writing of a different aim is seen in Godwin’s _Political Justice_; and the religious writings of Paley, the critical writings of Percy, and the natural history of Gilbert White are all to be included in this class.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE

=1. Poetry.= In poetical style the transitional features are well marked. The earlier authors reveal many artificial mannerisms--for example, extreme regularity of meter and the frequent employment of the more formal figures of speech, such as personification and apostrophe. The Pindaric odes of Gray and Collins are examples of the transitional style:

Ye distant spires! ye antique towers! That crown the watery glade, Where grateful Science still adores Her Henry’s holy shade; And ye that from the stately brow Of Windsor’s heights the expanse below Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey, Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among Wanders the hoary Thames along His silver-winding way. GRAY, _Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College_

In this verse there are the conventional personifications of Science and the Thames, and such stock phrases as “the watery glade.” The whole poem, however, is infused with a new spirit of mingled energy and meditation.

As the century draws to a close we have many of the newer styles appearing: the more regular blank verse of Cowper; the lighter heroic couplet of Goldsmith; the archaic medley of Chatterton; and the intense simplicity of Burns and Blake. As a further example of the new manner we quote a few stanzas from a poem by Fergusson, who, dying in the year 1774 (ten years before the death of Johnson), wrote as naturally as Burns himself:

As simmer rains bring simmer flowers, And leaves to cleed the birken bowers; Sae beauty gets by caller showers Sae rich a bloom, As for estate, or heavy dowers Aft stands in room.

What makes auld Reekie’s dames so fair It canna be the halesome air; But caller burn, beyond compare, The best o’ ony, That gars them a’ sic graces skair[171] An’ blink sae bonny.

On Mayday, in a fairy ring, We’ve seen them roun’ Saint Anthon’s spring, Frae grass the caller dew-draps wring, To weet their e’en, An’ water, clear as crystal spring, To synd[172] them clean. _Caller Water_

=2. Prose.= As in poetry, we have in prose many men and many manners. The simplest prose of the period is found chiefly in the works of the novelists, of whom Fielding and Smollett are good examples. Smollett’s prose, as in the following example, is almost colloquial in its native directness.

After we had been all entered upon the ship’s books, I inquired of one of my shipmates where the surgeon was, that I might have my wounds dressed, and had actually got as far as the middle deck (for our ship carried eighty guns) in my way to the cockpit, when I was met by the same midshipman, who had used me so barbarously in the tender: he, seeing me free from my chains, asked, with an insolent air, who had released me? To this question, I foolishly answered with a countenance that too plainly declared the state of my thoughts; “Whoever did it, I am persuaded did not consult you in the affair.” I had no sooner uttered these words, than he cried, “Damn you, I’ll teach you to talk so to your officer.” So saying, he bestowed on me several severe stripes, with a supple jack he had in his hand: and going to the commanding officer, made such a report of me, that I was immediately put in irons by the master-at-arms, and a sentinel placed over me. _Roderick Random_

The excellent middle style of Addison, the prose-of-all-work, survives, and will continue to survive, for it is indispensable to all manner of miscellaneous work. Goldsmith’s prose is one of the best examples of the middle style, and so is the later work of Johnson, as well as the writings of the authors of miscellaneous prose already mentioned in this chapter. The following passage from Goldsmith shows his graceful turn of sentence and his command of vocabulary. The style is clearness itself.

The next that presented for a place, was a most whimsical figure indeed. He was hung round with papers of his own composing, not unlike those who sing ballads in the streets, and came dancing up to the door with all the confidence of instant admittance. The volubility of his motion and address prevented my being able to read more of his cargo than the word _Inspector_, which was written in great letters at the top of some of the papers. He opened the coach-door himself without any ceremony, and was just slipping in, when the coachman, with as little ceremony, pulled him back. Our figure seemed perfectly angry at this repulse, and demanded gentleman’s satisfaction. “Lord, sir!” replied the coachman, “instead of proper luggage, by your bulk you seem loaded for a West India voyage. You are big enough, with all your papers, to crack twenty stage-coaches. Excuse me, indeed, sir, for you must not enter.” _The Bee_

The more ornate class of prose is represented by the _Rambler_ essays of Johnson and the writings of Gibbon and Burke. Of the three Johnsonese is the most cumbrous, being overloaded with long words and complicated sentences, though it has a massive strength of its own. Gibbon bears his mantle with ease and dignity, and Burke has so much natural vitality that his style hardly weighs upon him at all; he does stumble, but rarely, whereas it is sometimes urged as a fault of the prose of Gibbon that it is so uniformly good that the perfection of it becomes deadening.

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

+----+----------------------------------------------+-------------------------+----------------------------------------+ | | POETRY | DRAMA | PROSE | | +----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+ |DATE| | | Satirical | | | | | | | | Lyrical |Narrative-Descriptive| and | Comedy | Tragedy | Novel | Essay |Miscellaneous| | | | | Didactic | | | | | | +----+----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+ | | | |Johnson[173] | | |Richardson[174]| |Hume | | | | Shenstone | | | |Fielding[175] | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Collins | | | | | | | | | | | Thomson[176] | | | |Smollett | | | |1750| | |Johnson[177] | |Johnson[178]| | | | +----+----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+ | | | | | | | |Johnson[179]| | | | | Gray[180] | | |Hume | | | | | | | | | | | | | Burke | | | | | | | |Johnson[181] | | | |1760| | | | | |Sterne |Goldsmith | Robertson | +----+----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Churchill[182]| | |Walpole | | | | | |Goldsmith[183] | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Goldsmith[184]| | | | |Chatterton|Chatterton | |Goldsmith[185]| | | | | |1770| | | | | | | | | +----+----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+ | | |Ferguson | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Mackenzie | | | | | | | |Sheridan | | | | | | | | | | | |Burney | |Gibbon[186] | |1780| | | | | | | | Cowper | +----+----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | |Crabbe | | | | | | | | |Blake | | | | |Beckford | | | | | |Cowper[187] | | | | | | | | |Burns | | | | | | | | |1790| | | | | | | |White | +----+----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+ | | | | | | |Radcliffe | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Godwin | | | | | | | | | | | |1800| | | | |Baillie | | | | +----+----------+---------------------+-------------+------------+------------+--------------+-----------+-------------+

A fresh and highly interesting style is the poetic prose of Macpherson’s _Ossian_. Macpherson’s style is not ornate, for it is drawn from the simplest elements; it possesses a solemnity of expression, and so decided a rhythm and cadence, that the effect is almost lyrical. In the passage now given the reader should note that the sentences are nearly of uniform length, and that they could easily be written as separate lines of irregular verse:

Her voice came over the sea. Arindal my son descended from the hill; rough in spoils of the chase. His arrows rattled by his side; his bow was in his hand; five dark grey dogs attend his steps. He saw fierce Erath on the shore; he seized and bound him to an oak. Thick wind the thongs of the hide around his limbs; he loads the wind with his groans. Arindal ascends the deep in his boat, to bring Daura to land. Amar came in his wrath, and let fly the grey-feathered shaft. It sunk, it sunk in thy heart, O Arindal my son; for Erath the traitor thou diedst. The oar is stopped at once; he panted on the rock and expired. What is thy grief, O Daura, when round thy feet is poured thy brother’s blood! The boat is broken in twain. Amar plunges into the sea, to rescue his Daura, or die. Sudden a blast from the hill came over the waves. He sunk, and he rose no more.

EXERCISES

1. The first extract given below is in Johnsonese, the second is written in Johnson’s later manner. Compare the two with regard to their vocabulary and sentence-construction, and say which is the more ornate and which is the clearer and more vigorous. Which of the two do you prefer?

(1) In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amid inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection. JOHNSON, _Preface to “Dictionary,”_ 1755

(2) It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs he has not better poems. Dryden’s performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden’s fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope’s the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_, 1780

2. Compare the following passage with the example of Johnsonese given in the last question. Which is the more abstract, and which is the more ornate? Is there any resemblance between the two in sentence-construction and vocabulary?

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 scarce 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 an uniform judgment with regard to her conduct. Her vigour, her constancy, her magnanimity, her penetration, vigilance, address, are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any person who 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 all 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. HUME, _The History of England_

3. The following poetical extracts, which are arranged in chronological order, are meant to show the transition from the classical to Romantic methods. In each examine the subject, style, and the attitude of the author, and explain how the transition is revealed.

(1) For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned, The berries crackle, and the mill turns round: On shining altars of Japan they raise The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze: From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, While China’s earth receives the smoking tide; At once they gratify their scent and taste, And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. Straight hover round the fair her airy band: Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned; Some o’er her lap their careful plumes displayed, Trembling and conscious of the rich brocade. POPE, _The Rape of the Lock_, 1712

(2) In elbow-chair, like that of Scottish stem, By the sharp tooth of cank’ring eld defaced, In which, when he receives his diadem, Our sov’reign prince and liefest liege is placed, The matron sate; and some with rank she grac’d, (The source of children’s and of courtier’s pride!) Redress’d affronts, for vile affronts there pass’d; And warn’d them not the fretful to deride, But love each other dear, whatever them betide.

Right well she knew each temper to decry; To thwart the proud, and the submiss to raise; Some with vile copper-prize exalt on high, And some entice with pittance small of praise; And other some with baleful sprig she frays; Ev’n absent, she the reins of power doth hold, While with quaint arts the giddy crowd she sways; Forewarn’d, if little bird their pranks behold, ’Twill whisper in her ear, and all the scene unfold. SHENSTONE, _The Schoolmistress_, 1742

(3) But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair, What was thy delighted measure? Still it whisper’d promis’d pleasure, And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail; Still would her touch the strain prolong; And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, She call’d on Echo still, through all the song: And, where her sweetest theme she chose, A soft responsive voice was heard at every close, And Hope enchanted smil’d, and wav’d her golden hair. COLLINS, _The Passions_, 1747

(4) There often wanders one, whom better days Saw better clad, in cloak of satin trimmed With lace, and hat with splendid riband bound. A serving-maid was she, and fell in love With one who left her, went to sea, and died. Her fancy followed him through foaming waves To distant shores, and she would sit and weep At what a sailor suffers; fancy, too, Delusive most where warmest wishes are, Would oft anticipate his glad return, And dream of transports she was not to know. She heard the doleful tidings of his death, And never smiled again. COWPER, _The Task_, 1785

(5) How sweet I roamed from field to field, And tasted all the summer’s pride; Till I the Prince of Love beheld, Who in the sunny beams did glide.

He showed me lilies for my hair, And blushing roses for my brow: He led me through his gardens fair, Where all his golden pleasures grow.

With sweet May-dews my wings were wet, And Phœbus fired my vocal rage; He caught me in his silken net, And shut me in his golden cage.

He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty. BLAKE, _Songs of Innocence_, 1789

4. (_a_) Classify the styles of the following extracts into plain, ornate, or middle, and give reasons for your classification in each case. (_b_) How far does the style of each suit the subject? (_c_) Give a short account of each of the authors represented. (_d_) How far does the style in each case reveal the character of the author?

(1) Sir, your throne cannot stand secure upon the principles of unconditional submission and passive obedience; on powers exercised without the concurrence of the people to be governed; on Acts made in defiance of their prejudices and habits; on acquiescence procured by foreign mercenary troops, and secured by standing armies. These may possibly be the foundation of other thrones; they must be the subversion of yours. It was not to passive principles in our ancestors, that we owe the honour of appearing before a sovereign, who cannot feel that he is a prince without knowing that we ought to be free. The Revolution was a departure from the ancient course of the descent of this monarchy. The people, at that time, re-entered into their original rights; and it was not because a positive law authorised what was then done, but because the freedom and safety of the subject, the origin and cause of all laws, required a proceeding paramount and superior to them. At that ever-memorable and instructive period, the letter of the law was superseded in favour of the substance of liberty. To the free choice, therefore, of the people, without either king or parliament, we owe that happy establishment, out of which both King and Parliament were regenerated. From that great principle of liberty have originated the statutes, confirming and ratifying the establishment from which your majesty derives your right to rule over us. Those statutes have not given us our liberties; our liberties have produced them. Every hour of your majesty’s reign your title stands upon the very same foundation, on which it was at first laid; and we do not know a better, on which it can possibly be placed. BURKE, _Address to the King_

(2) (_Evelina, a demure young miss, is describing her experiences in a letter to her friend Miss Mirvan._)

I burst into tears: with difficulty I had so long restrained them; for my heart, while it glowed with tenderness and gratitude, was oppressed with a sense of its own unworthiness. “You are all, all goodness!” cried I, in a voice scarce audible; “little as I deserve,--unable as I am to repay, such kindness,--yet my whole soul feels,--thanks you for it!”

“My dearest child,” cried he, “I cannot bear to see thy tears;--for my sake dry them; such a sight is too much for me; think of that, Evelina, and take comfort, I charge thee!”

“Say then,” cried I, kneeling at his feet, “say then that you forgive me! that you pardon my reserve,--that you will again suffer me to tell you my most secret thoughts, and rely upon my promise never more to forfeit your confidence!--my father!--my protector!--my ever-honoured,--ever-loved--my best and only friend!--say you forgive your Evelina, and she will study better to deserve your goodness!”

He raised, he embraced me: he called me his sole joy, his only earthly hope, and the child of his bosom! He folded me to his heart: and while I wept from the fulness of mine, with words of sweetest kindness and consolation, he soothed and tranquillised me.

Dear to my remembrance will ever be that moment when, banishing the reserve I had so foolishly planned, and so painfully supported, I was restored to the confidence of the best of men! BURNEY, _Evelina_

(3) (_The courtship of Tom Jones and Sophia Western is interrupted by the entrance of Sophia’s father, a bluff old squire._)

At this instant, Western, who had stood some time listening, burst into the room, and with his hunting voice and phrase, cried out, “To her, boy, to her, go to her.---- That’s it, little honeys, O that’s it! Well! what, is it all over? Hath she appointed the day, boy? What, shall it be to-morrow or next day? It shan’t be put off a minute longer than next day, I am resolved.” “Let me beseech you, sir,” says Jones, “don’t let me be the occasion”---- “Beseech--,” cries Western. “I thought thou hadst been a lad of higher mettle than to give way to a parcel of maidenish tricks.---- I tell thee ’tis all flimflam. Zoodikers! she’d have the wedding to-night with all her heart. Would’st not, Sophy? Come, confess, and be an honest girl for once. What, art dumb? Why dost not speak?” “Why should I confess, sir?” says Sophia, “since it seems you are so well acquainted with my thoughts?”---- “That’s a good girl,” cries he, “and dost consent then?” “No, indeed, sir,” says Sophia, “I have given no such consent.”--“And wunt not ha un then to-morrow, nor next day?” says Western.---- “Indeed, sir,” says she, “I have no such intention.” “But I can tell thee,” replied he, “why hast nut; only because thou dost love to be disobedient, and to plague and vex thy father.”--“Pray, sir,” said Jones, interfering---- “I tell thee thou art a puppy,” cries he. “When I forbid her, then it was all nothing but sighing and whining, and languishing and writing; now I am vor thee, she is against thee. All the spirit of contrary, that’s all. She is above being guided and governed by her father, that is the whole truth on’t. It is only to disoblige and contradict me.” “What would my papa have me do?” cries Sophia. “What would I ha thee do?” says he, “why gi’ un thy hand this moment.”---- “Well, sir,” says Sophia. “I will obey you.--There is my hand, Mr Jones.” FIELDING, _Tom Jones_

(4) Thus kites and buzzards sail round in circles with wings expanded and motionless; and it is from their gliding manner that the former are still called in the north of England gleads, from the Saxon verb _glidan_ to glide. The kestrel, or windhover, has a peculiar mode of hanging in the air in one place, his wings all the while being briskly agitated. Hen-harriers fly low over heaths or fields of corn and beat the ground regularly like a pointer or setting-dog. Owls move in a buoyant manner, as if lighter than the air; they seem to want ballast. There is a peculiarity belonging to ravens that must draw the attention even of the most incurious--they spend all their leisure time in striking and cuffing each other on the wing in a kind of playful skirmish; and, when they move from one place to another, frequently turn on their backs with a loud croak and seem to be falling to the ground. When this odd gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the centre of gravity. Rooks sometimes dive and tumble in a frolicsome manner; crows and daws swagger in their walk; wood-peckers fly _volatu undoso_, opening and closing their wings at every stroke, and so are always rising or falling in curves. WHITE, _The Natural History of Selborne_

5. The following are three examples of the heroic couplet, arranged in chronological order. Examine the meter, vocabulary, and subject of each, and state if any development is noticeable.

(1) Enlarge my life with multitude of days! In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o’er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy: In vain their gifts the bounteous seasons pour, The fruit autumnal and the vernal flow’r; With listless eyes the dotard views the store: He views, and wonders that they please no more. Now pall the tasteless meats and joyless wines, And Luxury with sighs her slave resigns. JOHNSON, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_, 1749

(2) Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden flower grows wild: There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher’s modest mansion rose. A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a-year; Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor e’er had changed, nor wished to change, his place; Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power, By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour; Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise. GOLDSMITH, _The Deserted Village_, 1770

(3) When Plenty smiles--alas! she smiles for few-- And those who taste not, yet behold her store, Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore-- The wealth around them makes them doubly poor. Or will you deem them amply paid in health, Labour’s fair child, that languishes with wealth? Go, then! and see them rising with the sun, Through a long course of daily toil to run; See them beneath the Dog-star’s raging heat, When the knees tremble and the temples beat; Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o’er The labour past, and toils to come explore; See them alternate suns and showers engage, And hoard up aches and anguish for their age; Then own that labour may as fatal be To these thy slaves, as thine excess to thee. CRABBE, _The Village_, 1783

6. We give first Johnson’s famous letter in which he refuses to accept the tardy patronage of Lord Chesterfield. Show how the style is appropriate to the subject, and how the letter reveals the life and character of Johnson. Compare the style and temper of this letter with those of the one that follows. In this extract Horace Walpole describes the burial of George II. From this brief extract, what can you tell of the character of Walpole?

(1) _February 7, 1755_

MY LORD, I have been lately informed, by the proprietor of _The World_, that two papers, in which my _Dictionary_ is recommended to the public, were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive or in what terms to acknowledge.

When, with some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself _le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_,--that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your Lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

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 of 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 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 confess obligations when 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.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, My Lord, Your Lordship’s most humble, most obedient Servant, SAM. JOHNSON

(2) ARLINGTON STREET, _November 13, 1760_ ... Do you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying t’other night; I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it was, the easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The Prince’s Chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that chamber. The procession through a line of foot-guards, every seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside, their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback, the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute guns, all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the Abbey, where we were received by the Dean and Chapter in rich copes, the choir and almsmen all bearing torches; the whole Abbey so illuminated, that one saw it to greater advantage than by day; the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof, all appearing distinctly, and with the happiest chiaroscuro. There wanted nothing but incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct--yet one could not complain of its not being catholic enough. I had been in dread of being coupled with some boy of ten years old--but the heralds were not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and older enough to keep me in countenance. WALPOLE

7. From a scrutiny of the subject and style of the following extracts assign the authorship of each. State clearly the reasons that lead you to select the particular author. Write a brief appreciation of the style of each extract.

(1) Mr Davies mentioned my name; and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, “Don’t tell where I come from.”--“From Scotland,” cried Davies, roguishly. “Mr Johnson,” said I, “I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.” I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression “come from Scotland,” which I used in the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had said that I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, “That, sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.” This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might come next.

(2) I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen I took several turns in a _berceau_, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

(3) An’ now, auld Cloots,[188] I ken ye’re thinkin, A certain Bardie’s rantin, drinkin, Some luckless hour will send him linkin,[189] To your black pit; But, faith! he’ll turn a corner jinkin, An’ cheat you yet.

But, fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben! O wad ye tak a thought an’ men’! Ye aiblins[190] might--I dinna ken-- Still hae a stake-- I’m wae to think upo’ yon den, E’en for your sake!

(4) “I fought just as well,” continued the Corporal, “when the regiment called me Trim, as when they called me James Butler.” ... “And for my own part,” said my uncle Toby, “though I should blush to boast of myself, Trim;--yet, had my name been Alexander, I could have done no more at Namur than my duty.” ... “Bless your Honour!” cried Trim, advancing three steps as he spoke, “does a man think of his Christian name when he goes upon the attack?” ... “Or when he stands in the trench, Trim?” cried my uncle Toby, looking firm.... “Or when he enters a breach?” said Trim, pushing in between two chairs.... “Or forces the lines?” cried my uncle, rising up, and pushing his crutch like a pike.... “Or facing a platoon?” cried Trim presenting his stick like a firelock.... “Or when he marches up the glacis?” cried my uncle Toby, looking warm and setting his foot upon his stool.

8. How far are the statements in the following passage correct? Give examples of what Macaulay refers to, and say if his remarks are exaggerated in any form.

Johnson came up to London precisely at the time when the condition of a man of letters was most miserable and degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days.... A writer had little to hope from the patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage of the public did not yet furnish the means of comfortable subsistence.... If he had lived thirty years earlier he would have sat in parliament, and would have been entrusted with embassies to the High Allies. MACAULAY

9. State how far the principles set out in the passage below are followed in the novel of the eighteenth century.

A novel is a large diffused picture, comprehending the characters of life, disposed in different groups and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purposes of an uniform plan. This plan cannot be executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene, by virtue of his own importance. SMOLLETT, _Ferdinand, Count Fathom_

10. “The eighteenth century established a prose style.” (Craik.) Discuss this statement on some such lines as the following: (_a_) Was there no “established” style in prose before the eighteenth century? (_b_) Who “established” it then? (_c_) What are the peculiarities of the new prose style? (_d_) What are the purposes for which it was used? (_e_) Has it been perpetuated? (_f_) Who has used it?

11. Matthew Arnold calls Burns “a beast with splendid gleams.” Why a “beast”? And what does he mean by the “gleams”? Is the criticism fair to Burns?

12. Account for the great development of the novel during the eighteenth century.

13. Who are most obviously the “transitional” poets of the century? In what sense are they transitional?

14. Give a historical account of the rise of the lyric during the eighteenth century.

15. Estimate the influence of French learning and literature upon English literature during the eighteenth century.

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