During the second quarter of the century, Pope and his group remained
dominant in the realm of poetry; but their mood was no longer pacific.
Their work showed a growing seriousness and acerbity. Partly the change
was owing to disappointment: life had not become so highly cultured,
literature had not prospered so much, nor displayed so broad a diffusion
of intelligence and taste, as had been expected. Pope's _Dunciad, Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot_, and ironic satire on the state of literature under
"Augustus" (George II, the "snuffy old drone from the German hive"),
brilliantly express this indignation with the intellectual and literary
shortcomings of the times.
A cause of the change of mood which was to be of more lasting consequence
than the failure of the age to put the traditional ideal more generally
into practice, was the appearance of a distinctly new ideal,--one which
undermined the very foundations of the old. This new spirit may be termed
sentimentalism. In prose literature it had already been stirring for
about twenty-five years, changing the tone of comedy, entering into some
of the periodical essays, and assuming a philosophic character in the
works of Lord Shaftesbury. Its chief doctrines, rhapsodically promulgated
by this amiable and original enthusiast, were that the universe and all
its creatures constitute a perfect harmony; and that Man, owing to his
innate moral and aesthetic sense, needs no supernatural revelation of
religious or ethical truth, because if he will discard the prejudices
of tradition, he will instinctively, when face to face with Nature,
recognize the Spirit which dwells therein,--and, correspondingly, when
in the presence of a good deed he will recognize its morality. In other
words. God and Nature are one; and Man is instinctively good, his
cardinal virtue being the love of humanity, his true religion the love of
Nature. Be therefore of good cheer: evil merely appears to exist, sin is
a figment of false psychology; lead mankind to return to the natural, and
they will find happiness.
The poetical possibilities of sentimentalism were not grasped by any
noteworthy poet before Thomson. _The Seasons_ was an innovation, and
its novelty lay not so much in the choice of the subject as in the
interpretation. Didactic as well as descriptive, it was designed not
merely to present realistic pictures but to arouse certain explicitly
stated thoughts and feelings. Thomson had absorbed some of Shaftesbury's
ideas. Such sketches as that of the hardships which country folk suffer
in winter, contrasted with the thoughtless gayety of city revelers,
and inculcating the lesson of sympathy, are precisely in the vein that
sentimentalism encouraged. So, too, the tendency of Shaftesbury to deify
Nature appears in several ardent passages. The choice of blank verse
as the medium of this liberal and expansive train of thought was
appropriate. It should not be supposed, however, that Thomson accepted
sentimentalism in its entirety or fully understood its ultimate bearings.
The author of _Rule, Britannia_ praised many things,--like commerce
and industry and imperial power,--that are not favored by the thorough
sentimentalist. Often he was inconsistent: his _Hymn to Nature_ is
in part a pantheistic rhapsody, in part a monotheistic Hebrew psalm.
Essentially an indolent though receptive mind, he made no effort to trace
the new ideas to their consequences; he vaguely considered them not
irreconcilable with the old.
A keener mind fell into the same error. Pope, in the _Essay on Man_,
tried to harmonize the orthodox conception of human character with
sentimental optimism. As a collection of those memorable half-truths
called aphorisms, the poem is admirable; as an attempt to unite new
half-truths with old into a consistent scheme of life, it is fallacious.
No creature composed of such warring elements as Pope describes in the
superb antitheses that open Epistle II, can ever become in this world as
good and at the same time as happy as Epistle IV vainly asserts. Pope,
charged with heresy, did not repeat this endeavor to console mankind; he
returned to his proper element, satire. But his effort to unite the
new philosophy with the old psychology is striking evidence of the
attractiveness and growing vogue of Shaftesbury's theories.
It was minor poets who first expressed sentimental ideas without
inconsistency. As early as 1732, anonymous lines in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ advanced what must have seemed the outrageously paradoxical
thought that the savage in the wilderness was happier than civilized
man. Two years later Soame Jenyns openly assailed in verse the orthodox
doctrines of sin and retribution. These had long been assailed in prose;
and under the influence of the attacks, within the pale of the Church
itself, some ministers had suppressed or modified the sterner aspects of
the creed,--a movement which Young's satires had ridiculed in the person
of a lady of fashion who gladly entertained the notion that the Deity
was too well-bred to call a lady to account for her offenses. Jenyns
versified this effeminization of Christianity, charged orthodoxy with
attributing cruelty to God, and asserted that faith in divine and human
kindness would banish all wrong and discord from the world. In 1735 a far
more important poet of sentimentalism arose in Henry Brooke, an
undeservedly neglected pioneer, who, likewise drawing his inspiration
from Shaftesbury, developed its theories with unusual consistency and
fullness. His _Universal Beauty_ voiced his sense of the divine immanence
in every part of the cosmos, and emphasized the doctrine that animals,
because they unhesitatingly follow the promptings of Nature, are more
lovely, happy, and moral than Man, who should learn from them the
individual and social virtues, abandon artificial civilization, and
follow instinct. Brooke, in the prologue of his _Gustavus Vasa_, shows
that he foresaw the political bearings of this theory; it is, in his
opinion, peculiarly a people "guiltless of courts, untainted, and unread"
that, illumined by Nature, understands and upholds freedom: but this was
a thought too advanced to be general at this time even among Brooke's
fellow-sentimentalists.
Though sentimental literature bore the seeds of revolution, its earliest
effect upon its devotees was to create, through flattery of human
character, a feeling of good-natured complacency. Against this optimism
the traditional school reacted in two ways,--derisive and hortatory.
Pope, Young, and Swift satirized with masterful skill the inherent
weaknesses and follies of mankind, the vigor of their strokes drawing
from the sentimentalist Whitehead the feeble but significant protest,
_On Ridicule_, deprecating satire as discouraging to benevolence. On the
other hand, Wesley's hymns fervently summoned to repentance and piety;
while Young's _Night Thoughts_, yielding to the new influence only in its
form (blank verse), reasserted the hollowness of earthly existence,
the justice of God's stern will, and the need of faith in heavenly
immortality as the only adequate satisfaction of the spiritual elements
in Man. The literary powers of Pope, Swift, and Young were far superior
to those of the opposed school, which might have been overborne had not a
second generation of sentimentalists arisen to voice its claims in a more
poetical manner.
These newcomers,--Akenside, J.G. Cooper, the Wartons, and Collins,--all
of them very young, appeared between 1744 and 1747; and each rendered
distinct service to their common cause. The least original of the group,
John Gilbert Cooper, versified in _The Power of Harmony_ Shaftesbury's
cosmogony. More independently, Mark Akenside developed out of the same
doctrine of universal harmony the theory of aesthetics that was to guide
the school,--the theory that the true poet is created not by culture and
discipline at all, but owes to the impress of Nature--that beauty which
is goodness--his imagination, his taste, and his moral vision. Though
comparatively ardent and free in manner, Akenside pursued the customary,
didactic method. Less abstract, more nearly an utterance of personal
feeling, was Joseph Warton's _Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature_,
historically a remarkable poem, which, through its expression of the
author's tastes and preferences, indicated briefly some of the most
important touchstones of the sentimentalism (_videlicet_, "romanticism")
of the future. Warton found odious such things as artificial gardens,
commercial interests, social and legal conventions, and a formal
Addisonian style; he yearned for mountainous wilds, unspoiled savages,
solitudes where the voice of Wisdom was heard above the storms, and
poetry that was "wildly warbled." His younger brother Thomas, who wrote
_The Pleasures of Melancholy_, and sonnets showing an interest in
non-classical antiquities, likewise felt the need of new literary gods to
sanction the practices of their school: Pope and Dryden were accordingly
dethroned; Spenser, Shakespeare, and the young Milton, all of whom were
believed to warble wildly, were invoked.
William Collins was the most gifted of this band of enthusiasts. His
general views were theirs: poetry is in his mind associated with wonder
and ecstacy; and it finds its true themes, as the _Ode on Popular
Superstitions_ shows, in the weird legends, the pathetic mischances, and
the blameless manners of a simple-minded folk remote from cities. Unlike
his fellows, Collins had moments of great lyric power, and gave posterity
a few treasured poems. His further distinction is that he desired really
to create that poetical world about which Akenside theorized and for
which the Wartons yearned. Unhappily, however, he too often peopled it
with allegorical figures who move in a hazy atmosphere; and his melody is
then more apparent than his meaning.
The hopeful spirit of these enthusiasts found little encouragement in the
poems with which the period closed,--Gray's _Ode on Eton_ and _Hymn to
Adversity_, and Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_.
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
wrote Gray, adding with the wisdom of disillusion,
Gay hopes are theirs, by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possessed.
He was speaking of schoolboys whose ignorance is bliss; but the general
tenor of his mind allows us to surmise that he also smiled pityingly upon
some of the aspirations of the youthful sentimentalists. Dr. Johnson's
hostility to them was, of course, outspoken. He laughed uproariously at
their ecstatic manner, and ridiculed the cant of sensibility; and in
solemn mood he struck in _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ another blow at the
heresy of optimism. In style the contrast between these poems and those
of the Wartons and Collins is marked. Heirs of the Augustans, Johnson and
Gray have perfect control over their respective diction and metres: here
are no obscurities or false notes; Johnson sustains with superb
dignity the tone of moral grandeur; Gray is ever felicitous. Up to the
mid-century then, despite assailants, the classical school held its
supremacy; for its literary art was incomparably more skillful than that
of its enemies.