THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
1. +The Age of Prose.+-- The eighteenth century was an age of prose in
two senses. In the first place, it was a prosaic age; and, in the second
place, better prose than poetry was produced by its writers. One
remarkable fact may also be noted about the chief prose-writers of this
century-- and that is, that they were, most of them, not merely able
writers, not merely distinguished literary men, but also men of
affairs-- men well versed in the world and in matters of the highest
practical moment, while some were also statesmen holding high office.
Thus, in the first half of the century, we find Addison, Swift, and
Defoe either holding office or influencing and guiding those who held
office; while, in the latter half, we have men like Burke, Hume, and
Gibbon, of whom the same, or nearly the same, can be said. The poets, on
the contrary, of this eighteenth century, are all of them-- with the
very slightest exceptions-- men who devoted most of their lives to
poetry, and had little or nothing to do with practical matters. It may
also be noted here that the character of the eighteenth century becomes
more and more prosaic as it goes on-- less and less under the influence
of the spirit of poetry, until, about the close, a great reaction makes
itself felt in the persons of Cowper, Chatterton, and Burns, of Crabbe
and Wordsworth.
2. +The First Half.+-- The great prose-writers of the first half of the
eighteenth century are +Addison+ and +Steele+, +Swift+ and +Defoe+. All
of these men had some more or less close connection with the rise of
journalism in England; and one of them, Defoe, was indeed the founder of
the modern newspaper. By far the most powerful intellect of these four
was Swift. The greatest poets of the first half of the eighteenth
century were +Pope+, +Thomson+, +Collins+, and +Gray+. Pope towers above
all of them by a head and shoulders, because he was much more fertile
than any, and because he worked so hard and so untiringly at the labour
of the file-- at the task of polishing and improving his verses. But the
vein of poetry in the three others-- and more especially in Collins--
was much more pure and genuine than it was in Pope at any time of his
life-- at any period of his writing. Let us look at each of these
writers a little more closely.
3. DANIEL DEFOE (+1661-1731+), one of the most fertile writers that
England ever saw, and one who has been the delight of many generations
of readers, was born in the city of London in the year 1661. He was
educated to be a Dissenting minister; but he turned from that profession
to the pursuit of trade. He attempted several trades,-- was a hosier,
a hatter, a printer; and he is said also to have been a brick and tile
maker. In 1692 he failed in business; but, in no long time after, he
paid every one of his creditors to the uttermost farthing. Through all
his labours and misfortunes he was always a hard and careful reader,--
an omnivorous reader, too, for he was in the habit of reading almost
every book that came in his way. He made his first reputation by writing
political pamphlets. One of his pamphlets brought him into high favour
with King William; another had the effect of placing him in the pillory
and lodging him in prison. But while in Newgate, he did not idle away
his time or “languish”; he set to work, wrote hard, and started a
newspaper, +The Review+,-- the earliest genuine newspaper England had
seen up to his time. This paper he brought out two or three times
a-week; and every word of it he wrote himself. He continued to carry it
on single-handed for eight years. In 1706, he was made a member of the
Commission for bringing about the union between England and Scotland;
and his great knowledge of commerce and commercial affairs were of
singular value to this Commission. In 1715 he had a dangerous illness,
brought on by political excitement; and, on his recovery, he gave up
most of his political writing, and took to the composition of stories
and romances. Although now a man of fifty-four, he wrote with the vigour
and ease of a young man of thirty. His greatest imaginative work was
written in 1719-- when he was nearly sixty-- +The Life and Strange
Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner,... written
by Himself+. Within six years he had produced twelve works of a similar
kind. He is said to have written in all two hundred and fifty books in
the course of his lifetime. He died in 1731.
4. His best known-- and it is also his greatest-- work is +Robinson
Crusoe+; and this book, which every one has read, may be compared with
‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ for the purpose of observing how imaginative
effects are produced by different means and in different ways. Another
vigorous work of imagination by Defoe is the +Journal of the Plague+,
which appeared in 1722. There are three chief things to be noted
regarding Defoe and his writings. These are: first, that Defoe possessed
an unparalleled knowledge-- a knowledge wider than even Shakespeare’s--
of the circumstances and details of human life among all sorts, ranks,
and conditions of men; secondly, that he gains his wonderful realistic
effects by the freest and most copious use of this detailed knowledge in
his works of imagination; and thirdly, that he possessed a vocabulary of
the most wonderful wealth. His style is strong, homely, and vigorous,
but the sentences are long, loose, clumsy, and sometimes ungrammatical.
Like Sir Walter Scott, he was too eager to produce large and broad
effects to take time to balance his clauses or to polish his sentences.
Like Sir Walter Scott, again, he possesses in the highest degree the art
of _particularising_.
5. JONATHAN SWIFT (+1667-1745+), the greatest prose-writer, in his own
kind, of the eighteenth century, and the opposite in most respects--
especially in style-- of Addison, was born in Dublin in the year 1667.
Though born in Ireland, he was of purely English descent-- his father
belonging to a Yorkshire family, and his mother being a Leicestershire
lady. His father died before he was born; and he was educated by the
kindness of an uncle. After being at a private school at Kilkenny, he
was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was plucked for his degree
at his first examination, and, on a second trial, only obtained his B.A.
“by special favour.” He next came to England, and for eleven years acted
as private secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired statesman and
ambassador, who lived at Moor Park, near Richmond-on-Thames. In 1692 he
paid a visit to Oxford, and there obtained the degree of M.A. In 1700 he
went to Ireland with Lord Berkeley as his chaplain, and while in that
country was presented with several livings. He at first attached himself
to the Whig party, but stung by this party’s neglect of his labours and
merits, he joined the Tories, who raised him to the Deanery of
St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. But, though nominally resident in
Dublin, he spent a large part of his time in London. Here he knew and
met everybody who was worth knowing, and for some time he was the most
imposing figure, and wielded the greatest influence in all the best
social, political, and literary circles of the capital. In 1714, on the
death of Queen Anne, Swift’s hopes of further advancement died out; and
he returned to his Deanery, settled in Dublin, and “commenced Irishman
for life.” A man of strong passions, he usually spent his birthday in
reading that chapter of the Book of Job which contains the verse, “Let
the day perish in which I was born.” He died insane in 1745, and left
his fortune to found a lunatic asylum in Dublin. One day, when taking a
walk with a friend, he saw a blasted elm, and, pointing to it, he said:
“I shall be like that tree, and die first at the top.” For the last
three years of his life he never spoke one word.
6. Swift has written verse; but it is his prose-works that give him his
high and unrivalled place in English literature. His most powerful work,
published in 1704, is the +Tale of a Tub+-- a satire on the disputes
between the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches. His
best known prose-work is the +Gulliver’s Travels+, which appeared in
1726. This work is also a satire; but it is a satire on men and women,--
on humanity. “The power of Swift’s prose,” it has been said by an able
critic, “was the terror of his own, and remains the wonder of after
times.” His style is strong, simple, straightforward; he uses the
plainest words and the homeliest English, and every blow tells. Swift’s
style-- as every genuine style does-- reflects the author’s character.
He was an ardent lover and a good hater. Sir Walter Scott describes him
as “tall, strong, and well made, dark in complexion, but with bright
blue eyes (Pope said they were “as azure as the heavens”), black and
bushy eyebrows, aquiline nose, and features which expressed the stern,
haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind.” He grew savage under the
slightest contradiction; and dukes and great lords were obliged to pay
court to him. His prose was as trenchant and powerful as were his
manners: it has been compared to “cold steel.” His own definition of a
good style is “proper words in proper places.”
7. JOSEPH ADDISON (+1672-1719+), the most elegant prose-writer-- as Pope
was the most polished verse-writer-- of the eighteenth century, was born
at Milston, in Wiltshire, in the year 1672. He was educated at
Charterhouse School, in London, where one of his friends and companions
was the celebrated Dick Steele-- afterwards Sir Richard Steele. He then
went to Oxford, where he made a name for himself by his beautiful
compositions in Latin verse. In 1695 he addressed a poem to King
William; and this poem brought him into notice with the Government of
the day. Not long after, he received a pension of £300 a-year, to enable
him to travel; and he spent some time in France and Italy. The chief
result of this tour was a poem entitled +A Letter from Italy+ to Lord
Halifax. In 1704, when Lord Godolphin was in search of a poet who should
celebrate in an adequate style the striking victory of Blenheim, Addison
was introduced to him by Lord Halifax. His poem called +The Campaign+
was the result; and one simile in it took and held the attention of all
English readers, and of “the town.” A violent storm had passed over
England; and Addison compared the calm genius of Marlborough, who was as
cool and serene amid shot and shell as in a drawing-room or at the
dinner-table, to the Angel of the Storm. The lines are these:--
“So when an Angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o’er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty’s orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.”
For this poem Addison was rewarded with the post of Commissioner of
Appeals. He rose, successively, to be Under Secretary of State;
Secretary for Ireland; and, finally, Secretary of State for England-- an
office which would correspond to that of our present Home Secretary. He
married the Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had been tutor; but it
was not a happy marriage. Pope says of him in regard to it, that--
“He married discord in a noble wife.”
He died at Holland House, Kensington, London, in the year 1719, at the
age of forty-seven.
8. But it is not at all as a poet, but as a prose-writer, that Addison
is famous in the history of literature. While he was in Ireland, his
friend Steele started +The Tatler+, in 1709; and Addison sent numerous
contributions to this little paper. In 1711, Steele began a still more
famous paper, which he called +The Spectator+; and Addison’s writings in
this morning journal made its reputation. His contributions are
distinguishable by being signed with some one of the letters of the name
_Clio_-- the Muse of History. A third paper, +The Guardian+, appeared a
few years after; and Addison’s contributions to it are designated by a
hand ([->]) at the foot of each. In addition to his numerous
prose-writings, Addison brought out the tragedy of +Cato+ in 1713. It
was very successful; but it is now neither read nor acted. Some of his
hymns, however, are beautiful, and are well known. Such are the hymn
beginning, “The spacious firmament on high;” and his version of the 23d
Psalm, “The Lord my pasture shall prepare.”
9. Addison’s prose style is inimitable, easy, graceful, full of humour--
full of good humour, delicate, with a sweet and kindly rhythm, and
always musical to the ear. He is the most graceful of social satirists;
and his genial creation of the character of +Sir Roger de Coverley+ will
live for ever. While his work in verse is never more than second-rate,
his writings in prose are always first-rate. Dr Johnson said of his
prose: “Whoever wishes to attain an English style-- familiar but not
coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious,-- must give his days and
nights to the study of Addison.” Lord Lytton also remarks: “His style
has that nameless urbanity in which we recognise the perfection of
manner; courteous, but not courtier-like; so dignified, yet so kindly;
so easy, yet high-bred. It is the most perfect form of English.” His
style, however, must be acknowledged to want force-- to be easy rather
than vigorous; and it has not the splendid march of Jeremy Taylor, or
the noble power of Savage Landor.
10. RICHARD STEELE (+1671-1729+), commonly called “Dick Steele,” the
friend and colleague of Addison, was born in Dublin, but of English
parents, in the year 1671. The two friends were educated at Charterhouse
and at Oxford together; and they remained friends, with some slight
breaks and breezes, to the close of life. Steele was a writer of plays,
essays, and pamphlets-- for one of which he was expelled from the House
of Commons; but his chief fame was earned in connection with the Society
Journals, which he founded. He started many-- such as +Town-Talk+, +The
Tea-Table+, +Chit-Chat+; but only the +Tatler+ and the +Spectator+ rose
to success and to fame. The strongest quality in his writing is his
pathos: the source of tears is always at his command; and, although
himself of a gay and even rollicking temperament, he seems to have
preferred this vein. The literary skill of Addison-- his happy art in
the choosing of words-- did not fall to the lot of Steele; but he is
more hearty and more human in his description of character. He died in
1729, ten years after the departure of his friend Addison.
11. ALEXANDER POPE (+1688-1744+), the greatest poet of the eighteenth
century, was born in Lombard Street, London, in the year of the
Revolution, 1688. His father was a wholesale linendraper, who, having
amassed a fortune, retired to Binfield, on the borders of Windsor
Forest. In the heart of this beautiful country young Pope’s youth was
spent. On the death of his father, Pope left Windsor and took up his
residence at Twickenham, on the banks of the Thames, where he remained
till his death in 1744. His parents being Roman Catholics, it was
impossible for young Pope to go either to a public school or to one of
the universities; and hence he was educated privately. At the early age
of eight, he met with a translation of Homer in verse; and this volume
became his companion night and day. At the age of ten, he turned some of
the events described in Homer into a play. The poems of Spenser, the
poets’ poet, were his next favourites; but the writer who made the
deepest and most lasting impression upon his mind was Dryden. Little
Pope began to write verse very early. He says of himself--
“As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.”
His +Ode to Solitude+ was written at the age of twelve; his +Pastorals+
when he was fifteen. His +Essay on Criticism+, which was composed in his
twentieth year, though not published till 1711, established his
reputation as a writer of neat, clear, sparkling, and elegant verse. The
+Rape of the Lock+ raised his reputation still higher. Macaulay
pronounced it his best poem. De Quincey declared it to be “the most
exquisite monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers.”
Another critic has called it the “perfection of the mock-heroic.” Pope’s
most successful poem-- if we measure it by the fame and the money it
brought him-- was his translation of the +Iliad+ of Homer. A great
scholar said of this translation that it was “a very pretty poem, but
not Homer.” The fact is that Pope did not translate directly from the
Greek, but from a French or a Latin version which he kept beside him.
Whatever its faults, and however great its deficiency as a
representation of the powerful and deep simplicity of the original
Greek, no one can deny the charm and finish of its versification, or the
rapidity, facility, and melody of the flow of the verse. These qualities
make this work unique in English poetry.
12. After finishing the +Iliad+, Pope undertook a translation of the
+Odyssey+ of Homer. This was not so successful; nor was it so well done.
In fact, Pope translated only half of it himself; the other half was
written by two scholars called Broome and Fenton. His next great poem
was the +Dunciad+,-- a satire upon those petty writers, carping critics,
and hired defamers who had tried to write down the reputation of Pope’s
Homeric work. “The composition of the ‘Dunciad’ revealed to Pope where
his true strength lay, in blending personalities with moral
reflections.”
13. Pope’s greatest works were written between 1730 and 1740; and they
consist of the +Moral Essays+, the +Essay on Man+, and the +Epistles and
Satires+. These poems are full of the finest thoughts, expressed in the
most perfect form. Mr Ruskin quotes the couplet--
“Never elated, while one man’s oppressed;
Never dejected, whilst another’s blessed,”--
as “the most complete, concise, and lofty expression of moral temper
existing in English words.” The poem of Pope which shows his best and
most striking qualities in their most characteristic form, is probably
the +Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot+ or +Prologue to the Satires+. In this poem
occur the celebrated lines about Addison-- which make a perfect
portrait, although it is far from being a true likeness.
His pithy lines and couplets have obtained a permanent place in
literature. Thus we have:--
“True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”
“Good-nature and good-sense must ever join.
To err is human, to forgive divine.”
“All seems infected that the infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundic’d eye.”
“Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;
Those best can bear reproof who merit praise.”
The greatest conciseness is visible in his epigrams and in his
compliments:--
“A vile encomium doubly ridicules:
There’s nothing blackens like the ink of fools.”
“And not a vanity is given in vain.”
“Would ye be blest? despise low joys, low gains,
Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains,
Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains.”
14. Pope is the foremost literary figure of his age and century; and he
is also the head of a school. He brought to perfection a style of
writing verse which was followed by hundreds of clever writers. Cowper
says of him:--
“But Pope-- his musical finesse was such,
So nice his ear, so delicate his touch,--
Made poetry a mere mechanic art,
And every warbler has his tune by heart.”
Pope was not the poet of nature or of humanity; he was the poet of “the
town,” and of the Court. He was greatly influenced by the neatness and
polish of French verse; and, from his boyhood, his great ambition was to
be “a correct poet.” He worked and worked, polished and polished, until
each idea had received at his hands its very neatest and most
epigrammatic expression. In the art of condensed, compact, pointed, and
yet harmonious and flowing verse, Pope has no equal. But, as a vehicle
for poetry-- for the love and sympathy with nature and man which every
true poet must feel, Pope’s verse is artificial; and its style of
expression has now died out. It was one of the chief missions of
Wordsworth to drive the Popian second-hand vocabulary out of existence.
15. JAMES THOMSON (+1700-1748+), the poet of +The Seasons+, was born at
Ednam in Roxburghshire, Scotland, in the year 1700. He was educated at
the grammar-school of Jedburgh, and then at the University of Edinburgh.
It was intended that he should enter the ministry of the Church of
Scotland; but, before his college course was finished, he had given up
this idea: poetry proved for him too strong a magnet. While yet a young
man, he had written his poem of +Winter+; and, with that in his pocket,
he resolved to try his fortune in London. While walking about the
streets, looking at the shops, and gazing at the new wonders of the vast
metropolis, his pocket was picked of his pocket-handkerchief and his
letters of introduction; and he found himself alone in London-- thrown
entirely on his own resources. A publisher was, however, in time found
for +Winter+; and the poem slowly rose into appreciation and popularity.
This was in 1726. Next year, +Summer+; two years after, +Spring+
appeared; while +Autumn+, in 1730, completed the +Seasons+. The +Castle
of Indolence+-- a poem in the Spenserian stanza-- appeared in 1748. In
the same year he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands,
though he never visited the scene of his duty, but had his work done by
deputy. He died at Kew in the year 1748.
16. Thomson’s place as a poet is high in the second rank. His +Seasons+
have always been popular; and, when Coleridge found a well-thumbed and
thickly dog’s-eared copy lying on the window-sill of a country inn, he
exclaimed “This is true fame!” His +Castle of Indolence+ is, however,
a finer piece of poetical work than any of his other writings. The first
canto is the best. But the +Seasons+ have been much more widely read;
and a modern critic says: “No poet has given the special pleasure which
poetry is capable of giving to so large a number of persons in so large
a measure as Thomson.” Thomson is very unequal in his style. Sometimes
he rises to a great height of inspired expression; at other times he
sinks to a dull dead level of pedestrian prose. His power of describing
scenery is often very remarkable. Professor Craik says: “There is no
other poet who surrounds us with so much of the truth of nature;” and he
calls the +Castle of Indolence+ “one of the gems of the language.”
17. THOMAS GRAY (+1716-1771+), the greatest elegiac poet of the century,
was born in London in 1716. His father was a “money-scrivener,” as it
was called; in other words, he was a stock-broker. His mother’s brother
was an assistant-master at Eton; and at Eton, under the care of this
uncle, Gray was brought up. One of his schoolfellows was the famous
Horace Walpole. After leaving school, Gray proceeded to Cambridge; but,
instead of reading mathematics, he studied classical literature,
history, and modern languages, and never took his degree. After some
years spent at Cambridge, he entered himself of the Inner Temple; but he
never gave much time to the study of law. His father died in 1741; and
Gray, soon after, gave up the law and went to live entirely at
Cambridge. The first published of his poems was the +Ode on a Distant
Prospect of Eton College+. The +Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard+
was handed about in manuscript before its publication in 1750; and it
made his reputation at once. In 1755 the +Progress of Poesy+ was
published; and the ode entitled +The Bard+ was begun. In 1768 he was
appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge; but, though he
studied hard, he never lectured. He died at Cambridge, at the age of
fifty-four, in the year 1771. Gray was never married. He was said by
those who knew him to be the most learned man of his time in Europe.
Literature, history, and several sciences-- all were thoroughly known to
him. He had read everything in the world that was best worth reading;
while his knowledge of botany, zoology, and entomology was both wide and
exact.
18. Gray’s +Elegy+ took him seven years to write; it contains thirty-two
stanzas; and Mr Palgrave says “they are perhaps the noblest stanzas in
the language.” General Wolfe, when sailing down to attack Quebec,
recited the Elegy to his officers, and declared, “Now, gentlemen,
I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec.” Lord Byron
called the Elegy “the corner-stone of Gray’s poetry.” Gray ranks with
Milton as the most finished workman in English verse; and certainly he
spared no pains. Gray said himself that “the style he aimed at was
extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical;”
and this style, at which he aimed, he succeeded fully in achieving. One
of the finest stanzas in the whole Elegy is the last, which the writer
omitted in all the later editions:--
“There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The red-breast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.”
19. WILLIAM COLLINS (+1721-1759+), one of the truest lyrical poets of
the century, was born at Chichester on Christmas-day, 1721. He was
educated at Winchester School; afterwards at Queen’s, and also at
Magdalen College, Oxford. Before he left school he had written a set of
poems called +Persian Eclogues+. He left the university with a
reputation for ability and for indolence; went to London “with many
projects in his head and little money in his pocket;” and there found a
kind and fast friend in Dr Johnson. His +Odes+ appeared in 1747. The
volume fell stillborn from the press: not a single copy was sold; no one
bought, read, or noticed it. In a fit of furious despair, the unhappy
author called in the whole edition and burnt every copy with his own
hands. And yet it was, with the single exception of the songs of Burns,
the truest poetry that had appeared in the whole of the eighteenth
century. A great critic says: “In the little book there was hardly a
single false note: there was, above all things, a purity of music,
a clarity of style, to which I know of no parallel in English verse from
the death of Andrew Marvell to the birth of William Blake.” Soon after
this great disappointment he went to live at Richmond, where he formed a
friendship with Thomson and other poets. In 1749 he wrote the +Ode on
the Death of Thomson+, beginning--
“In yonder grave a Druid lies”--
one of the finest of his poems. Not long after, he was attacked by a
disease of the brain, from which he suffered, at intervals, during the
remainder of his short life. He died at Chichester in 1759, at the age
of thirty-eight.
20. Collins’s best poem is the +Ode to Evening+; his most elaborate, the
+Ode on the Passions+; and his best known, the +Ode+ beginning--
“How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blessed!”
His latest and best critic says of his poems: “His range of flight was
perhaps the narrowest, but assuredly the highest, of his generation. He
could not be taught singing like a finch, but he struck straight upward
for the sun like a lark.... The direct sincerity and purity of their
positive and straightforward inspiration will always keep his poems
fresh and sweet in the senses of all men. He was a solitary song-bird
among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more
spirit of colour into a single stroke, more breath of music into a
single note, than could all the rest of his generation into all the
labours of their lives.”