The circumstances under which the idea of his history first entered his

mind were highly dramatic, though his own account of the incident is brief

and colorless. He was sitting at vespers on the Capitoline Hill in Rome,

the center of ancient Roman greatness, and the barefooted Catholic friars

were singing the service of the hour in the shabby church which has long

since supplanted the Roman Capitol. Suddenly his mind was impressed with

the vast significance of the transformation, thus suggested, of the ancient

world into the modern one, a process which has rightly been called the

greatest of all historical themes. He straightway resolved to become its

historian, but it was not until five years later that he really began the

work. Then three years of steady application produced his first volume, in

1773, and fourteen years more the remaining five.

The first source of the greatness of Gibbon's work is his conscientious

industry and scholarship. With unwearied patience he made himself

thoroughly familiar with the great mass of materials, consisting largely of

histories and works of general literature in many languages, belonging to

the fourteen hundred years with which he dealt. But he had also the

constructive power which selects, arranges, and proportions, the faculty of

clear and systematic exposition, and the interpretative historical vision

which perceives and makes clear the broad tendencies in the apparent chaos

of mere events. Much new information has necessarily been discovered since

Gibbon wrote, but he laid his foundation so deep and broad that though his

work may be supplemented it can probably never be superseded, and stands in

the opinion of competent critics without an equal in the whole field of

history except perhaps for that of the Greek Thucydides. His one great

deficiency is his lack of emotion. By intellectual processes he realizes

and partly visualizes the past, with its dramatic scenes and moments, but

he cannot throw himself into it (even if the material afforded by his

authorities had permitted) with the passionate vivifying sympathy of later,

romantic, historians. There are interest and power in his narratives of

Julian's expedition into Assyria, of Zenobia's brilliant career, and of the

capture of Constantinople by the Turks, but not the stirring power of Green

or Froude or Macaulay. The most unfortunate result of this deficiency,

however, is his lack of appreciation of the immense meaning of spiritual

forces, most notoriously evident in the cold analysis, in his fifteenth

chapter, of the reasons for the success of Christianity.

His style possesses much of the same virtues and limitations as his

substance. He has left it on record that he composed each paragraph

mentally as a whole before committing any part of it to paper, balancing

and reshaping until it fully satisfied his sense of unity and rhythm.

Something of formality and ponderousness quickly becomes evident in his

style, together with a rather mannered use of potential instead of direct

indicative verb forms; how his style compares with Johnson's and how far it

should be called pseudo-classical, are interesting questions to consider.

One appreciative description of it may be quoted: 'The language of Gibbon

never flags; he walks forever as to the clash of arms, under an imperial

banner; a military music animates his magnificent descriptions of battles,

of sieges, of panoramic scenes of antique civilization.'

A longer eulogistic passage will sum up his achievement as a whole:

[Footnote: Edmund Gosse, 'History of Eighteenth Century Literature,' p.

350.]

'The historian of literature will scarcely reach the name of Edward Gibbon

without emotion. It is not merely that with this name is associated one of

the most splendid works which Europe produced in the eighteenth century,

but that the character of the author, with all its limitations and even

with all its faults, presents us with a typical specimen of the courage and

singleheartedness of a great man of letters. Wholly devoted to scholarship

without pedantry, and to his art without any of the petty vanity of the

literary artist, the life of Gibbon was one long sacrifice to the purest

literary enthusiasm. He lived to know, and to rebuild his knowledge in a

shape as durable and as magnificent as a Greek temple. He was content for

years and years to lie unseen, unheard of, while younger men rose past him

into rapid reputation. No unworthy impatience to be famous, no sense of the

uncertainty of life, no weariness or terror at the length or breadth of his

self-imposed task, could induce him at any moment of weakness to give way

to haste or discouragement in the persistent regular collection and

digestion of his material or in the harmonious execution of every part of

his design.... No man who honors the profession of letters, or regards with

respect the higher and more enlightened forms of scholarship, will ever

think without admiration of the noble genius of Gibbon.' It may be added

that Gibbon is one of the conspicuous examples of a man whose success was

made possible only by the possession and proper use of inherited wealth,

with the leisure which it brings.

EDMUND BURKE. The last great prose-writer of the eighteenth century, Edmund

Burke, is also the greatest of English orators. Burke is the only writer

primarily a statesman and orator who can be properly ranked among English

authors of the first class. The reasons, operating in substantially the

same way in all literature, are not hard to understand. The interests with

which statesmen and orators deal are usually temporary; the spirit and

style which give a spoken address the strongest appeal to an audience often

have in them something of superficiality; and it is hard for the orator

even to maintain his own mind on the higher level of rational thought and

disinterested purpose. Occasionally, however, a man appears in public life

who to the power of compelling speech and the personality on which it is

based adds intellect, a philosophic temperament, and the real literary,

poetic, quality. Such men were Demosthenes, Cicero, Webster, and at times

Lincoln, and beside them in England stands Burke. It is certainly an

interesting coincidence that the chief English representatives of four

outlying regions of literature should have been closely

contemporaneous--Johnson the moralist and hack writer, Boswell the

biographer, Gibbon the historian, and Burke the orator.

Burke was born in Dublin in 1729 of mixed English and Irish parentage. Both

strains contributed very important elements to his nature. As English we

recognize his indomitable perseverance, practical good sense, and devotion

to established principles; as largely Irish his spontaneous enthusiasm,

ardent emotion, and disinterested idealism. Always brilliant, in his

earlier years he was also desultory and somewhat lawless. From Trinity

College in Dublin he crossed over to London and studied law, which he soon

abandoned. In 1756 he began his career as an author with 'A Vindication of

Natural Society,' a skilful satire on the philosophic writings which

Bolingbroke (the friend of Swift and Pope) had put forth after his

political fall and which, while nominally expressing the deistic principles

of natural religion, were virtually antagonistic to all religious faith.

Burke's 'Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime

and Beautiful,' published the same year, and next in time after Dryden

among important English treatises on esthetics, has lost all authority with

the coming of the modern science of psychology, but it is at least sincere

and interesting. Burke now formed his connection with Johnson and his

circle. An unsatisfactory period as secretary to an official in Ireland

proved prolog to the gift of a seat in Parliament from a Whig lord, and

thus at the age of thirty-six Burke at last entered on the public life

which was his proper sphere of action. Throughout his life, however, he

continued to be involved in large debts and financial difficulties, the

pressure of which on a less buoyant spirit would have been a very serious

handicap.

As a politician and statesman Burke is one of the finest figures in English

history. He was always a devoted Whig, because he believed that the party

system was the only available basis for representative government; but he

believed also, and truly, that the Whig party, controlled though it was by

a limited and largely selfish oligarchy of wealthy nobles, was the only

effective existing instrument of political and social righteousness. To

this cause of public righteousness, especially to the championing of

freedom, Burke's whole career was dedicated; he showed himself altogether

possessed by the passion for truth and justice. Yet equally conspicuous was

his insistence on respect for the practicable. Freedom and justice, he

always declared, agreeing thus far with Johnson, must be secured not by

hasty violence but under the forms of law, government, and religion which

represent the best wisdom of past generations. Of any proposal he always

asked not only whether it embodied abstract principles of right but whether

it was workable and expedient in the existing circumstances and among

actual men. No phrase could better describe Burke's spirit and activity

than that which Matthew Arnold coined of him--'the generous application of

ideas to life.' It was England's special misfortune that, lagging far

behind him in both vision and sympathy, she did not allow him to save her

from the greatest disaster of her history. Himself she repaid with the

usual reformer's reward. Though he soon made himself 'the brains of the

Whig party,' which at times nothing but his energy and ability held

together, and though in consequence he was retained in Parliament virtually

to the end of his life, he was never appointed to any office except that of

Paymaster of the Forces, which he accepted after he had himself had the

annual salary reduced from £25,000 to £4,000, and which he held for only a

year.

During all the early part of his public career Burke steadily fought

against the attempts of the King and his Tory clique to entrench themselves

within the citadel of irresponsible government. At one time also he largely

devoted his efforts to a partly successful attack on the wastefulness and

corruption of the government; and his generous effort to secure just

treatment of Ireland and the Catholics was pushed so far as to result in

the loss of his seat as member of Parliament from Bristol. But the

permanent interest of his thirty years of political life consists chiefly

in his share in the three great questions, roughly successive in time, of

what may be called England's foreign policy, namely the treatment of the

English colonies in America, the treatment of the native population of the

English empire in India, and the attitude of England toward the French

Revolution. In dealing with the first two of these questions Burke spoke

with noble ardor for liberty and the rights of man, which he felt the

English government to be disregarding. Equally notable with his zeal for

justice, however, was his intellectual mastery of the facts. Before he

attempted to discuss either subject he had devoted to it many years of the

most painstaking study--in the case of India no less than fourteen years;

and his speeches, long and highly complicated, were filled with minute

details and exact statistics, which his magnificent memory enabled him to

deliver without notes.

His most important discussions of American affairs are the 'Speech on

American Taxation' (1774), the 'Speech on Conciliation with America'

(1775), both delivered in Parliament while the controversy was bitter but

before war had actually broken out, and 'A Letter to the Sheriffs of

Bristol' (1777). Burke's plea was that although England had a theoretical

constitutional right to tax the colonies it was impracticable to do so

against their will, that the attempt was therefore useless and must lead to

disaster, that measures of conciliation instead of force should be

employed, and that the attempt to override the liberties of Englishmen in

America, those liberties on which the greatness of England was founded,

would establish a dangerous precedent for a similar course of action in the

mother country itself. In the fulfilment of his prophecies which followed

the rejection of his argument Burke was too good a patriot to take

satisfaction.

In his efforts in behalf of India Burke again met with apparent defeat, but

in this case he virtually secured the results at which he had aimed. During

the seventeenth century the English East India Company, originally

organized for trade, had acquired possessions in India, which, in the

middle of the eighteenth century and later, the genius of Clive and Warren

Hastings had increased and consolidated into a great empire. The work which

these men had done was rough work and it could not be accomplished by

scrupulous methods; under their rule, as before, there had been much

irregularity and corruption, and part of the native population had suffered

much injustice and misery. Burke and other men saw the corruption and

misery without realizing the excuses for it and on the return of Hastings

to England in 1786 they secured his impeachment. For nine years Burke,

Sheridan, and Fox conducted the prosecution, vying with one another in

brilliant speeches, and Burke especially distinguished himself by the

warmth of sympathetic imagination with which he impressed on his audiences

the situation and sufferings of a far-distant and alien race. The House of

Lords ultimately acquitted Hastings, but at the bar of public opinion Burke

had brought about the condemnation and reform, for which the time was now

ripe, of the system which Hastings had represented.

While the trial of Hastings was still in progress all Europe was shaken by

the outbreak of the French Revolution, which for the remainder of his life

became the main and perturbing subject of Burke's attention. Here, with an

apparent change of attitude, for reasons which we will soon consider, Burke

ranged himself on the conservative side, and here at last he altogether

carried the judgment of England with him. One of the three or four greatest

movements in modern history, the French Revolution exercised a profound

influence on English thought and literature, and we must devote a few words

to its causes and progress. During the two centuries while England had been

steadily winning her way to constitutional government, France had past more

and more completely under the control of a cynically tyrannical despotism

and a cynically corrupt and cruel feudal aristocracy. [Footnote: The

conditions are vividly pictured in Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities' and

Carlyle's 'French Revolution.'] For a generation, radical French

philosophers had been opposing to the actual misery of the peasants the

ideal of the natural right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness, and at last in 1789 the people, headed by the lawyers and

thinkers of the middle class, arose in furious determination, swept away

their oppressors, and after three years established a republic. The

outbreak of the Revolution was hailed by English liberals with enthusiasm

as the commencement of an era of social justice; but as it grew in violence

and at length declared itself the enemy of all monarchy and of religion,

their attitude changed; and in 1793 the execution of the French king and

queen and the atrocities of the Reign of Terror united all but the radicals

in support of the war against France in which England joined with the other

European countries. During the twenty years of struggle that followed the

portentous figure of Napoleon soon appeared, though only as Burke was

dying, and to oppose and finally to suppress him became the duty of all

Englishmen, a duty not only to their country but to humanity.

At the outbreak of the Revolution Burke was already sixty, and the

inevitable tendency of his mind was away from the enthusiastic liberalism

which had so strongly moved him in behalf of the Americans and the Hindoos.

At the very outset he viewed the Revolution with distrust, and this

distrust soon changed to the most violent opposition. Of actual conditions

in France he had no adequate understanding. He failed to realize that the

French people were asserting their most elementary rights against an

oppression a hundred times more intolerable than anything that the

Americans had suffered; his imagination had long before been dazzled during

a brief stay in Paris by the external glitter of the French Court; his own

chivalrous sympathy was stirred by the sufferings of the queen; and most of

all he saw in the Revolution the overthrow of what he held to be the only

safe foundations of society--established government, law, social

distinctions, and religion--by the untried abstract theories which he had

always held in abhorrence. Moreover, the activity of the English supporters

of the French revolutionists seriously threatened an outbreak of anarchy in

England also. Burke, therefore, very soon began to oppose the whole

movement with all his might. His 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,'

published in 1790, though very one-sided, is a most powerful model of

reasoned denunciation and brilliant eloquence; it had a wide influence and

restored Burke to harmony with the great majority of his countrymen. His

remaining years, however, were increasingly gloomy. His attitude caused a

hopeless break with the liberal Whigs, including Fox; he gave up his seat

in Parliament to his only son, whose death soon followed to prostrate him;

and the successes of the French plunged him into feverish anxiety. After

again pouring out a flood of passionate eloquence in four letters entitled

'Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace' (with France) he died in

1797.

We have already indicated many of the sources of Burke's power as a speaker

and writer, but others remain to be mentioned. Not least important are his

faculties of logical arrangement and lucid statement. He was the first

Englishman to exemplify with supreme skill all the technical devices of

exposition and argument--a very careful ordering of ideas according to a

plan made clear, but not too conspicuous, to the hearer or reader; the use

of summaries, topic sentences, connectives; and all the others. In style he

had made himself an instinctive master of rhythmical balance, with

something, as contrasted with nineteenth century writing, of eighteenth

century formality. Yet he is much more varied, flexible, and fluent than

Johnson or Gibbon, with much greater variety of sentence forms and with far

more color, figurativeness and picturesqueness of phrase. In his most

eloquent and sympathetic passages he is a thorough poet, splendidly

imaginative and dramatic. J. R. Greene in his 'History of England' has well

spoken of 'the characteristics of his oratory--its passionate ardor, its

poetic fancy, its amazing prodigality of resources; the dazzling succession

in which irony, pathos, invective, tenderness, the most brilliant word

pictures, the coolest argument, followed each other.' Fundamental, lastly,

in Burke's power, is his philosophic insight, his faculty of correlating

facts and penetrating below this surface, of viewing events in the light of

their abstract principles, their causes and their inevitable results.

In spite of all this, in the majority of cases Burke was not a successful

speaker. The overwhelming logic and feeling of his speech 'On the Nabob of

Arcot's Debts' produced so little effect at its delivery that the ministers

against whom it was directed did not even think necessary to answer it. One

of Burke's contemporaries has recorded that he left the Parliament house

(crawling under the benches to avoid Burke's notice) in order to escape

hearing one of his speeches which when it was published he read with the

most intense interest. In the latter part of his life Burke was even called

'the dinner-bell of the House' because his rising to speak was a signal for

a general exodus of the other members. The reasons for this seeming paradox

are apparently to be sought in something deeper than the mere prejudice of

Burke's opponents. He was prolix, but, chiefly, he was undignified in

appearance and manner and lacked a good delivery. It was only when the

sympathy or interest of his hearers enabled them to forget these things

that they were swept away by the force of his reason or the contagion of

his wit or his emotion. On such occasions, as in his first speech in the

impeachment of Hastings, he was irresistible.

From what has now been said it must be evident that while Burke's

temperament and mind were truly classical in some of their qualities, as in

his devotion to order and established institutions, and in the clearness of

his thought and style, and while in both spirit and style he manifests a

regard for decorum and formality which connects him with the

pseudo-classicists, nevertheless he shared to at least as great a degree in

those qualities of emotion and enthusiasm which the pseudo-classic writers

generally lacked and which were to distinguish the romantic writers of the

nineteenth century. How the romantic movement had begun, long before Burke

came to maturity, and how it had made its way even in the midst of the

pseudo-classical period, we may now consider.

THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT. The reaction which was bound to accompany the

triumph of Pseudo-classicism, as a reassertion of those instincts in human

nature which Pseudo-classicism disregarded, took the form of a distinct

Romantic Revival. Beginning just about as Pope's reputation was reaching

its climax, and gathering momentum throughout the greater part of the

eighteenth century, this movement eventually gained a predominance as

complete as that which Pseudo-classicism had enjoyed, and became the chief

force, not only in England but in all Western Europe, in the literature of

the whole nineteenth century. The impulse was not confined to literature,

but permeated all the life of the time. In the sphere of religion,

especially, the second decade of the eighteenth century saw the awakening

of the English church from lethargy by the great revival of John and

Charles Wesley, whence, quite contrary to their original intention, sprang

the Methodist denomination. In political life the French Revolution was a

result of the same set of influences. Romanticism showed itself partly in

the supremacy of the Sentimental Comedy and in the great share taken by

Sentimentalism in the development of the novel, of both of which we shall

speak hereafter; but its fullest and most steadily progressive

manifestation was in non-dramatic poetry. Its main traits as they appear in

the eighteenth century are as clearly marked as the contrasting ones of

Pseudo-classicism, and we can enumerate them distinctly, though it must of

course be understood that they appear in different authors in very

different degrees and combinations.

1. There is, among the Romanticists, a general breaking away not only from

the definite pseudo-classical principles, but from the whole idea of

submission to fixed authority. Instead there is a spirit of independence

and revolt, an insistence on the value of originality and the right of the

individual to express himself in his own fashion. 2. There is a strong

reassertion of the value of emotion, imagination, and enthusiasm. This

naturally involves some reaction against the pseudo-classic, and also the

true classic, regard for finished form. 3. There is a renewal of genuine

appreciation and love for external Nature, not least for her large and

great aspects, such as mountains and the sea. The contrast between the

pseudo-classical and the romantic attitude in this respect is clearly

illustrated, as has often been pointed out, by the difference between the

impressions recorded by Addison and by the poet Gray in the presence of the

Alps. Addison, discussing what he saw in Switzerland, gives most of his

attention to the people and politics. One journey he describes as 'very

troublesome,' adding: 'You can't imagine how I am pleased with the sight of

a plain.' In the mountains he is conscious chiefly of difficulty and

danger, and the nearest approach to admiration which he indicates is 'an

agreeable kind of horror.' Gray, on the other hand, speaks of the Grande

Chartreuse as 'one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most

astonishing scenes.... I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an

exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent,

nor a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry.' 4. The same

passionate appreciation extends with the Romanticists to all full and rich

beauty and everything grand and heroic. 5. This is naturally connected also

with a love for the remote, the strange, and the unusual, for mystery, the

supernatural, and everything that creates wonder. Especially, there is a

great revival of interest in the Middle Ages, whose life seemed to the men

of the eighteenth century, and indeed to a large extent really was,

picturesque and by comparison varied and adventurous. In the eighteenth

century this particular revival was called 'Gothic,' a name which the

Pseudo-classicists, using it as a synonym for 'barbarous,' had applied to

the Middle Ages and all their works, on the mistaken supposition that all

the barbarians who overthrew the Roman Empire and founded the medieval

states were Goths. 6. In contrast to the pseudo-classical preference for

abstractions, there is, among the Romanticists, a devotion to concrete

things, the details of Nature and of life. In expression, of course, this

brings about a return to specific words and phraseology, in the desire to

picture objects clearly and fully. 7. There is an increasing democratic

feeling, a breaking away from the interest in artificial social life and a

conviction that every human being is worthy of respect. Hence sprang the

sentiment of universal brotherhood and the interest in universal freedom,

which finally extended even to the negroes and resulted in the abolition of

slavery. But from the beginning there was a reawakening of interest in the

life of the common people--an impulse which is not inconsistent with the

love of the remote and unusual, but rather means the discovery of a

neglected world of novelty at the very door of the educated and literary

classes. 8. There is a strong tendency to melancholy, which is often

carried to the point of morbidness and often expresses itself in meditation

and moralizing on the tragedies of life and the mystery of death. This

inclination is common enough in many romantic-spirited persons of all

times, and it is always a symptom of immaturity or lack of perfect balance.

Among the earlier eighteenth century Romanticists there was a very

nourishing crop of doleful verse, since known from the place where most of

it was located, as the 'Graveyard poetry.' Even Gray's 'Elegy in a Country

Churchyard' is only the finest representative of this form, just as

Shakspere's 'Hamlet' is the culmination of the crude Elizabethan tragedy of

blood. So far as the mere tendency to moralize is concerned, the eighteenth

century Romanticists continue with scarcely any perceptible change the

practice of the Pseudo-classicists. 9. In poetic form, though the

Romanticists did not completely abandon the pentameter couplet for a

hundred years, they did energetically renounce any exclusive allegiance to

it and returned to many other meters. Milton was one of their chief

masters, and his example led to the revival of blank verse and of the

octo-syllabic couplet. There was considerable use also of the Spenserian

stanza, and development of a great variety of lyric stanza forms, though

not in the prodigal profusion of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period.

JAMES THOMSON. The first author in whom the new impulse found really

definite expression was the Scotsman James Thomson. At the age of

twenty-five, Thomson, like many of his countrymen during his century and

the previous one, came fortune-hunting to London, and the next year, 1726,

while Pope was issuing his translation of 'The Odyssey,' he published a

blank-verse poem of several hundred lines on 'Winter.' Its genuine though

imperfect appreciation and description of Nature as she appears on the

broad sweeps of the Scottish moors, combined with its novelty, gave it

great success, and Thomson went on to write also of Summer, Spring and

Autumn, publishing the whole work as 'The Seasons' in 1730. He was rewarded

by the gift of sinecure offices from the government and did some further

writing, including, probably, the patriotic lyric, 'Rule, Britannia,' and

also pseudo-classical tragedies; but his only other poem of much importance

is 'The Castle of Indolence' (a subject appropriate to his own

good-natured, easy-going disposition), which appeared just before his

death, in 1748. In it he employs Spenser's stanza, with real skill, but in

a half-jesting fashion which the later eighteenth-century Romanticists also

seem to have thought necessary when they adopted it, apparently as a sort

of apology for reviving so old-fashioned a form.

'The Seasons' was received with enthusiasm not only in England but in

France and Germany, and it gave an impulse for the writing of descriptive

poetry which lasted for a generation; but Thomson's romantic achievement,

though important, is tentative and incomplete, like that of all beginners.

He described Nature from full and sympathetic first-hand observation, but

there is still a certain stiffness about his manner, very different from

the intimate and confident familiarity and power of spiritual

interpretation which characterizes the great poets of three generations

later. Indeed, the attempt to write several thousand lines of pure

descriptive poetry was in itself ill-judged, since as the German critic

Lessing later pointed out, poetry is the natural medium not for description

but for narration; and Thomson himself virtually admitted this in part by

resorting to long dedications and narrative episodes to fill out his

scheme. Further, romantic as he was in spirit, he was not able to free

himself from the pseudo-classical mannerisms; every page of his poem

abounds with the old lifeless phraseology--'the finny tribes' for 'the

fishes,' 'the vapoury whiteness' for 'the snow' or 'the hard-won treasures

of the year' for 'the crops.' His blank verse, too, is comparatively

clumsy--padded with unnecessary words and the lines largely end-stopped.

WILLIAM COLLINS. There is marked progress in romantic feeling and power of

expression as we pass from Thomson to his disciple, the frail lyric poet,

William Collins. Collins, born at Chichester, was an undergraduate at

Oxford when he published 'Persian Eclogues' in rimed couplets to which the

warm feeling and free metrical treatment give much of romantic effect. In

London three years later (1746) Collins put forth his significant work in a

little volume of 'Odes.' Discouraged by lack of appreciation, always

abnormally high-strung and neurasthenic, he gradually lapsed into insanity,

and died at the age of thirty-seven. Collins' poems show most of the

romantic traits and their impetuous emotion often expresses itself in the

form of the false Pindaric ode which Cowley had introduced. His 'Ode on the

Popular Superstitions of the Highlands,' further, was one of the earliest

pieces of modern literature to return for inspiration to the store of

medieval supernaturalism, in this case to Celtic supernaturalism. But

Collins has also an exquisiteness of feeling which makes others of his

pieces perfect examples of the true classical style. The two poems in

'Horatian' ode forms, that is in regular short stanzas, the 'Ode Written in

the Year 1746' and the 'Ode to Evening' (unrimed), are particularly fine.

With all this, Collins too was not able to escape altogether from

pseudo-classicism. His subjects are often abstract--'The Passions,'

'Liberty,' and the like; his characters, too, in almost all his poems, are

merely the old abstract personifications, Fear, Fancy, Spring, and many

others; and his phraseology is often largely in the pseudo-classical

fashion. His work illustrates, therefore, in an interesting way the

conflict of poetic forces in his time and the influence of environment on a

poet's mind. The true classic instinct and the romanticism are both his

own; the pseudo-classicism belongs to the period.

THOMAS GRAY. Precisely the same conflict of impulses appears in the lyrics

of a greater though still minor poet of the same generation, a man of

perhaps still more delicate sensibilities than Collins, namely Thomas Gray.

Gray, the only survivor of many sons of a widow who provided for him by

keeping a millinery shop, was born in 1716. At Eton he became intimate with

Horace Walpole, the son of the Prime Minister, who was destined to become

an amateur leader in the Romantic Movement, and after some years at

Cambridge the two traveled together on the Continent. Lacking the money for

the large expenditure required in the study of law, Gray took up his

residence in the college buildings at Cambridge, where he lived as a

recluse, much annoyed by the noisy undergraduates. During his last three

years he held the appointment and salary of professor of modern history,

but his timidity prevented him from delivering any lectures. He died in

1771. He was primarily a scholar and perhaps the most learned man of his

time. He was familiar with the literature and history not only of the

ancient world but of all the important modern nations of western Europe,

with philosophy, the sciences of painting, architecture, botany, zoölogy,

gardening, entomology (he had a large collection of insects), and even

heraldry. He was himself an excellent musician. Indeed almost the only

subject of contemporary knowledge in which he was not proficient was

mathematics, for which he had an aversion, and which prevented him from

taking a college degree.

The bulk of Gray's poetry is very small, no larger, in fact, than that of

Collins. Matthew Arnold argued in a famous essay that his productivity was

checked by the uncongenial pseudo-classic spirit of the age, which, says

Arnold, was like a chill north wind benumbing his inspiration, so that 'he

never spoke out.' The main reason, however, is really to be found in Gray's

own over-painstaking and diffident disposition. In him, as in Hamlet,

anxious and scrupulous striving for perfection went far to paralyze the

power of creation; he was unwilling to write except at his best, or to

publish until he had subjected his work to repeated revisions, which

sometimes, as in the case of his 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,'

extended over many years. He is the extreme type of the academic poet. His

work shows, however, considerable variety, including real appreciation for

Nature, as in the 'Ode on the Spring,' delightful quiet humor, as in the

'Ode on a Favorite Cat,' rather conventional moralizing, as in the 'Ode on

a Distant Prospect of Eton College,' magnificent expression of the

fundamental human emotions, as in the 'Elegy,' and warlike vigor in the

'Norse Ode' translated from the 'Poetic Edda' in his later years. In the

latter he manifests his interest in Scandinavian antiquity, which had then

become a minor object of romantic enthusiasm. The student should consider

for himself the mingling of the true classic, pseudo-classic, and romantic

elements in the poems, not least in the 'Elegy,' and the precise sources of

their appeal and power. In form most of them are regular 'Horatian' odes,

but 'The Bard' and 'The Progress of Poesy' are the best English examples of

the genuine Pindaric ode.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Next in order among the romantic poets after Gray, and

more thoroughly romantic than Gray, was Oliver Goldsmith, though, with

characteristic lack of the power of self-criticism, he supposed himself to

be a loyal follower of Johnson and therefore a member of the opposite camp.

Goldsmith, as every one knows, is one of the most attractive and lovable

figures in English literature. Like Burke, of mixed English and Irish

ancestry, the son of a poor country curate of the English Church in

Ireland, he was born in 1728. Awkward, sensitive, and tender-hearted, he

suffered greatly in childhood from the unkindness of his fellows. As a poor

student at the University of Dublin he was not more happy, and his lack of

application delayed the gaining of his degree until two years after the

regular time. The same Celtic desultoriness characterized all the rest of

his life, though it could not thwart his genius. Rejected as a candidate

for the ministry, he devoted three years to the nominal study of medicine

at the Universities of Edinburgh and Leyden (in Holland). Next he spent a

year on a tramping trip through Europe, making his way by playing the flute

and begging. Then, gravitating naturally to London, he earned his living by

working successively for a druggist, for the novelist-printer Samuel

Richardson, as a teacher in a boys' school, and as a hack writer. At last

at the age of thirty-two he achieved success with a series of periodical

essays later entitled 'The Citizen of the World,' in which he criticized

European politics and society with skill and insight. Bishop Percy now

introduced him to Johnson, who from this time watched over him and saved

him from the worst results of his irresponsibility. He was one of the

original members of 'The Club.' In 1764 occurred the well-known and

characteristic incident of the sale of 'The Vicar of Wakefield.' Arrested

for debt at his landlady's instance, Goldsmith sent for Johnson and showed

him the manuscript of the book. Johnson took it to a publisher, and though

without much expectation of success asked and received £60 for it. It was

published two years later. Meanwhile in 1764 appeared Goldsmith's

descriptive poem, 'The Traveler,' based on his own experiences in Europe.

Six years later it was followed by 'The Deserted Village,' which was

received with the great enthusiasm that it merited.

Such high achievement in two of the main divisions of literature was in

itself remarkable, especially as Goldsmith was obliged to the end of his

life to spend much of his time in hack writing, but in the later years of

his short life he turned also with almost as good results to the drama

(comedy). We must stop here for the few words of general summary which are

all that the eighteenth century drama need receive in a brief survey like

the present one. During the first half of the century, as we have seen, an

occasional pseudo-classical tragedy was written, none of them of any

greater excellence than Addison's 'Cato' and Johnson's 'Irene' (above,

pages 205 and 217). The second quarter of the century was largely given

over to farces and burlesques, which absorbed the early literary activity

of the novelist Henry Fielding, until their attacks on Walpole's government

led to a severe licensing act, which suppressed them. But the most

distinctive and predominant forms of the middle and latter half of the

century were, first, the Sentimental Comedy, whose origin may be roughly

assigned to Steele, and, second, the domestic melodrama, which grew out of

it. In the Sentimental Comedy the elements of mirth and romance which are

the legitimate bases of comedy were largely subordinated to exaggerated

pathos, and in the domestic melodrama the experiences of insignificant

persons of the middle class were presented for sympathetic consideration in

the same falsetto fashion. Both forms (indeed, they were one in spirit)

were extreme products of the romantic return to sentiment and democratic

feeling. Both were enormously popular and, crossing the Channel, like

Thomson's poetic innovation, exerted a great influence on the drama of

France and Germany (especially in the work of Lessing), and in general on

the German Romantic Movement. Goldsmith was inferior to no one in genuine

sentiment, but he was disgusted at the sentimental excesses of these plays.

His 'Good Natured Man,' written with the express purpose of opposing them,

and brought out in 1768, was reasonably successful, and in 1771 his far

superior 'She Stoops to Conquer' virtually put an end to Sentimental

Comedy. This is one of the very few English comedies of a former generation

which are still occasionally revived on the stage to-day. Goldsmith's

comedies, we may add here for completeness, were shortly followed by the

more brilliant ones of another Irish-Englishman, Richard Brinsley Sheridan,

who displayed Congreve's wit without his cynicism. These were 'The Rivals,'

produced in 1775, when Sheridan was only twenty-four, and 'The School for

Scandal,' 1777. Sheridan, a reckless man of fashion, continued most of his

life to be owner of Drury Lane Theater, but he soon abandoned playwriting

to become one of the leaders of the Whig party. With Burke and Fox, as we

have seen, he conducted the impeachment of Hastings.

'She Stoops to Conquer' was Goldsmith's last triumph. A few months later,

in 1774, he died at the age of only forty-five, half submerged, as usual,

in foolish debts, but passionately mourned not only by his acquaintances in

the literary and social worlds, but by a great army of the poor and needy

to whom he had been a benefactor. In the face of this testimony to his

human worth his childish vanities and other weaknesses may well be

pardoned. All Goldsmith's literary work is characterized by one main

quality, a charming atmosphere of optimistic happiness which is the

expression of the best side of his own nature. The scene of all his most

important productions, very appropriately, is the country--the idealized

English country. Very much, to be sure, in all his works has to be conceded

to the spirit of romance. Both in 'The Vicar of Wakefield' and in 'She

Stoops to Conquer' characterization is mostly conventional, and events are

very arbitrarily manipulated for the sake of the effects in rather

free-and-easy disregard of all principles of motivation. But the kindly

knowledge of the main forces in human nature, the unfailing sympathy, and

the irrepressible conviction that happiness depends in the last analysis on

the individual will and character make Goldsmith's writings, especially

'The Vicar,' delightful and refreshing. All in all, however, 'The Deserted

Village' is his masterpiece, with its romantic regret, verging on tragedy

but softened away from it, and its charming type characterizations, as

incisive as those of Chaucer and Dryden, but without any of Dryden's biting

satire. In the choice of the rimed couplet for 'The Traveler' and 'The

Deserted Village' the influence of pseudo-classicism and of Johnson

appears; but Goldsmith's treatment of the form, with his variety in pauses

and his simple but fervid eloquence, make it a very different thing from

the rimed couplet of either Johnson or Pope. 'The Deserted Village,' it

should be added, is not a description of any actual village, but a

generalized picture of existing conditions. Men of wealth in England and

Ireland were enlarging their sheep pastures and their hunting grounds by

buying up land and removing villages, and Goldsmith, like Sir Thomas More,

two hundred years earlier, and likewise patriots of all times, deeply

regretted the tendency.

PERCY, MACPHERSON, AND CHATTERTON. The appearance of Thomson's 'Winter' in

1726 is commonly taken as conveniently marking the beginning of the

Romantic Movement. Another of its conspicuous dates is 1765, the year of

the publication of the 'Reliques [pronounced Relics] of Ancient English

Poetry' of the enthusiastic antiquarian Thomas (later Bishop) Percy. Percy

drew from many sources, of which the most important was a manuscript

volume, in which an anonymous seventeenth century collector had copied a

large number of old poems and which Percy rescued just in the nick of time,

as the maids in the house of one of his friends were beginning to use it as

kindling for the fires. His own book consisted of something less than two

hundred very miscellaneous poems, ranging in date from the fourteenth

century to his own day. Its real importance, however, lies in the fact that

it contained a number of the old popular ballads (above, pp. 74 ff).

Neither Percy himself nor any one else in his time understood the real

nature of these ballads and their essential difference from other poetry,

and Percy sometimes tampered with the text and even filled out gaps with

stanzas of his own, whose sentimental style is ludicrously inconsistent

with the primitive vigor of the originals. But his book, which attained

great popularity, marks the beginning of the special study of the ballads

and played an important part in the revival of interest in medieval life.

Still greater interest was aroused at the time by the Ossianic poems of

James Macpherson. From 1760 to 1763 Macpherson, then a young Highland Scots

schoolmaster, published in rapid succession certain fragments of Gaelic

verse and certain more extended works in poetical English prose which, he

asserted, were part of the originals, discovered by himself, and

translations, of the poems of the legendary Scottish bard Ossian, of the

third Christian century. These productions won him substantial material

rewards in the shape of high political offices throughout the rest of his

long life. About the genuineness of the compositions, however, a violent

controversy at once arose, and Dr. Johnson was one of the skeptics who

vigorously denounced Macpherson as a shameless impostor. The general

conviction of scholars of the present day is that while Macpherson may have

found some fragments of very ancient Gaelic verse in circulation among the

Highlanders, he fabricated most of what he published. These works, however,

'Fingal' and the rest, certainly contributed to the Romantic Movement; and

they are not only unique productions, but, in small quantities, still

interesting. They can best be described as reflections of the misty scenes

of Macpherson's native Highlands--vague impressionistic glimpses,

succeeding one another in purposeless repetition, of bands of marching

warriors whose weapons intermittently flash and clang through the fog, and

of heroic women, white-armed and with flowing hair, exhorting the heroes to

the combat or lamenting their fall.

A very minor figure, but one of the most pathetic in the history of English

literature, is that of Thomas Chatterton. While he was a boy in Bristol,

Chatterton's imagination was possessed by the medieval buildings of the

city, and when some old documents fell into his hands he formed the idea of

composing similar works in both verse and prose and passing them off as

medieval productions which he had discovered. To his imaginary author he

gave the name of Thomas Rowley. Entirely successful in deceiving his

fellow-townsmen, and filled with a great ambition, Chatterton went to

London, where, failing to secure patronage, he committed suicide as the

only resource against the begging to which his proud spirit could not

submit. This was in 1770, and he was still only eighteen years old.

Chatterton's work must be viewed under several aspects. His imitation of

the medieval language was necessarily very imperfect and could mislead no

one to-day; from this point of view the poems have no permanent

significance. The moral side of his action need not be seriously weighed,

as Chatterton never reached the age of responsibility and if he had lived

would soon have passed from forgery to genuine work. That he might have

achieved much is suggested by the evidences of real genius in his boyish

output, which probably justify Wordsworth's description, of him as 'the

marvelous boy.' That he would have become one of the great English poets,

however, is much more open to question.

WILLIAM COWPER. Equally pathetic is the figure of William Cowper

(pronounced either Cowper or Cooper), whose much longer life (1731-1800)

and far larger literary production give him a more important actual place

than can be claimed for Chatterton, though his natural ability was far less

and his significance to-day is chiefly historical. Cowper's career, also,

was largely frustrated by the same physical weaknesses which had ruined

Collins, present in the later poet in still more distressing degree. Cowper

is clearly a transition poet, sharing largely, in a very mild fashion, in

some of the main romantic impulses, but largely pseudo-classical in his

manner of thought and expression. His life may be briefly summarized.

Morbid timidity and equally morbid religious introspection, aggravated by

disappointments in love, prevented him as a young man from accepting a very

comfortable clerkship in the House of Lords and drove him into intermittent

insanity, which closed more darkly about him in his later years. He lived

the greater part of his mature life in the household of a Mrs. Unwin, a

widow for whom he had a deep affection and whom only his mental affliction

prevented him from marrying. A long residence in the wretched village of

Olney, where he forced himself to cooperate in all phases of religious work

with the village clergyman, the stern enthusiast John Newton, produced

their joint collection of 'Olney Hymns,' many of which deservedly remain

among the most popular in our church song-books; but it inevitably

increased Cowper's disorder. After this he resigned himself to a perfectly

simple life, occupied with the writing of poetry, the care of pets,

gardening, and carpentry. The bulk of his work consists of long moralizing

poems, prosy, prolix, often trivial, and to-day largely unreadable. Same of

them are in the rimed couplet and others in blank verse. His blank-verse

translation of Homer, published in 1791, is more notable, and 'Alexander

Selkirk' and the humorous doggerel 'John Gilpin' are famous; but his most

significant poems are a few lyrics and descriptive pieces in which he

speaks out his deepest feelings with the utmost pathetic or tragic power.

In the expression of different moods of almost intolerable sadness 'On the

Receipt of My Mother's Picture' and 'To Mary' (Mrs. Unwin) can scarcely be

surpassed, and 'The Castaway' is final as the restrained utterance of

morbid religious despair. Even in his long poems, in his minutely loving

treatment of Nature he is the most direct precursor of Wordsworth, and he

is one of the earliest outspoken opponents of slavery and cruelty to

animals. How unsuited in all respects his delicate and sensitive nature was

to the harsh experiences of actual life is suggested by Mrs. Browning with

vehement sympathy in her poem, 'Cowper's Grave.'

WILLIAM BLAKE. Still another utterly unworldly and frankly abnormal poet,

though of a still different temperament, was William Blake (1757-1827), who

in many respects is one of the most extreme of all romanticists. Blake, the

son of a London retail shopkeeper, received scarcely any book education,

but at fourteen he was apprenticed to an engraver, who stimulated his

imagination by setting him to work at making drawings in Westminster Abbey

and other old churches. His training was completed by study at the Royal

Academy of Arts, and for the rest of his life he supported himself, in

poverty, with the aid of a devoted wife, by keeping a print-and-engraving

shop. Among his own engravings the best known is the famous picture of

Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, which is not altogether free from the weird

strangeness that distinguished most of his work in all lines. For in spite

of his commonplace exterior life Blake was a thorough mystic to whom the

angels and spirits that he beheld in trances were at least as real as the

material world. When his younger brother died he declared that he saw the

released soul mount through the ceiling, clapping its hands in joy. The

bulk of his writing consists of a series of 'prophetic books' in verse and

prose, works, in part, of genius, but of unbalanced genius, and virtually

unintelligible. His lyric poems, some of them composed when he was no more

than thirteen years old, are unlike anything else anywhere, and some of

them are of the highest quality. Their controlling trait is childlikeness;

for Blake remained all his life one of those children of whom is the

Kingdom of Heaven. One of their commonest notes is that of childlike

delight in the mysterious joy and beauty of the world, a delight sometimes

touched, it is true, as in 'The Tiger,' with a maturer consciousness of the

wonderful and terrible power behind all the beauty. Blake has intense

indignation also for all cruelty and everything which he takes for cruelty,

including the shutting up of children in school away from the happy life of

out-of-doors. These are the chief sentiments of 'Songs of Innocence.' In

'Songs of Experience' the shadow of relentless fact falls somewhat more

perceptibly across the page, though the prevailing ideas are the same.

Blake's significant product is very small, but it deserves much greater

reputation than it has actually attained. One characteristic external fact

should be added. Since Blake's poverty rendered him unable to pay for

having his books printed, he himself performed the enormous labor of

_engraving_ them, page by page, often with an ornamental margin about

the text.

ROBERT BURNS. Blake, deeply romantic as he is by nature, virtually stands

by himself, apart from any movement or group, and the same is equally true

of the somewhat earlier lyrist in whom eighteenth century poetry

culminates, namely Robert Burns. Burns, the oldest of the seven children of

two sturdy Scotch peasants of the best type, was born in 1759 in Ayrshire,

just beyond the northwest border of England. In spite of extreme poverty,

the father joined with some of his neighbors in securing the services of a

teacher for their children, and the household possessed a few good books,

including Shakspere and Pope, whose influence on the future poet was great.

But the lot of the family was unusually hard. The father's health failed

early and from childhood the boys were obliged to do men's work in the

field. Robert later declared, probably with some bitter exaggeration, that

his life had combined 'the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing

moil of a galley slave.' His genius, however, like his exuberant spirit,

could not be crushed out. His mother had familiarized him from the

beginning with the songs and ballads of which the country was full, and

though he is said at first to have had so little ear for music that he

could scarcely distinguish one tune from another, he soon began to compose

songs (words) of his own as he followed the plough. In the greatness of his

later success his debt to the current body of song and music should not be

overlooked. He is only the last of a long succession of rural Scottish

song-writers; he composed his own songs to accompany popular airs; and many

of them are directly based on fragments of earlier songs. None the less his

work rises immeasurably above all that had gone before it.

The story of Burns' mature life is the pathetic one of a very vigorous

nature in which genius, essential manliness, and good impulses struggled

against and were finally overcome by violent passions, aggravated by the

bitterness of poverty and repeated disappointments. His first effort, at

eighteen, to better his condition, by the study of surveying at a

neighboring town, resulted chiefly in throwing him into contact with bad

companions; a venture in the business of flax-dressing ended in disaster;

and the same ill-fortune attended the several successive attempts which he

made at general farming. He became unfortunately embroiled also with the

Church, which (the Presbyterian denomination) exercised a very strict

control in Scotland. Compelled to do public penance for some of his

offenses, his keen wit could not fail to be struck by the inconsistency

between the rigid doctrines and the lives of some of the men who were

proceeding against him; and he commemorated the feud in his series of

overwhelming but painfully flippant satires.

His brief period of dazzling public success dawned suddenly out of the

darkest moment of his fortunes. At the age of twenty-seven, abandoning the

hope which he had already begun to cherish of becoming the national poet of

Scotland, he had determined in despair to emigrate to Jamaica to become an

overseer on a plantation. (That this chief poet of democracy, the author of

'A Man's a Man for a' That,' could have planned to become a slave-driver

suggests how closely the most genuine human sympathies are limited by habit

and circumstances.) To secure the money for his voyage Burns had published

his poems in a little volume. This won instantaneous and universal

popularity, and Burns, turning back at the last moment, responded to the

suggestion of some of the great people of Edinburgh that he should come to

that city and see what could be done for him. At first the experiment

seemed fortunate, for the natural good breeding with which this untrained

countryman bore himself for a winter as the petted lion of the society of

fashion and learning (the University) was remarkable. None the less the

situation was unnatural and necessarily temporary, and unluckily Burns

formed associations also with such boon companions of the lower sort as had

hitherto been his undoing. After a year Edinburgh dropped him, thus

supplying substantial fuel for his ingrained poor man's jealousy and rancor

at the privileged classes. Too near his goal to resume the idea of

emigrating, he returned to his native moors, rented another farm, and

married Jean Armour, one of the several heroines of his love-poems. The

only material outcome of his period of public favor was an appointment as

internal revenue collector, an unpopular and uncongenial office which he

accepted with reluctance and exercised with leniency. It required him to

occupy much of his time in riding about the country, and contributed to his

final failure as a farmer. After the latter event he removed to the

neighboring market-town of Dumfries, where he again renewed his

companionship with unworthy associates. At last prospects for promotion in

the revenue service began to open to him, but it was too late; his

naturally robust constitution had given way to over-work and dissipation,

and he died in 1796 at the age of thirty-seven.

Burns' place among poets is perfectly clear. It is chiefly that of a

song-writer, perhaps the greatest songwriter of the world. At work in the

fields or in his garret or kitchen after the long day's work was done, he

composed songs because he could not help it, because his emotion was

irresistibly stirred by the beauty and life of the birds and flowers, the

snatch of a melody which kept running through his mind, or the memory of

the girl with whom he had last talked. And his feelings expressed

themselves with spontaneous simplicity, genuineness, and ease. He is a

thoroughly romantic poet, though wholly by the grace of nature, not at all

from any conscious intention--he wrote as the inspiration moved him, not in

accordance with any theory of art. The range of his subjects and emotions

is nearly or quite complete--love; comradeship; married affection, as in

'John Anderson, My Jo'; reflective sentiment; feeling for nature; sympathy

with animals; vigorous patriotism, as in 'Scots Wha Hae' (and Burns did

much to revive the feeling of Scots for Scotland); deep tragedy and pathos;

instinctive happiness; delightful humor; and the others. It should be

clearly recognized, however, that this achievement, supreme as it is in its

own way, does not suffice to place Burns among the greatest poets. The

brief lyrical outbreaks of the song-writer are no more to be compared with

the sustained creative power and knowledge of life and character which make

the great dramatist or narrative poet than the bird's song is to be

compared with an opera of Wagner. But such comparisons need not be pressed;

and the song of bird or poet appeals instantly to every normal hearer,

while the drama or narrative poem requires at least some special

accessories and training. Burns' significant production, also, is not

altogether limited to songs. 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' (in Spenser's

stanza) is one of the perfect descriptive poems of lyrical sentiment; and

some of Burns' meditative poems and poetical epistles to acquaintances are

delightful in a free-and-easy fashion. The exuberant power in the religious

satires and the narrative 'Tam o' Shanter' is undeniable, but they belong

to a lower order of work.

Many of Burns' poems are in the Lowland Scots dialect; a few are wholly in

ordinary English; and some combine the two idioms. It is an interesting

question whether Burns wins distinctly greater success in one than in the

other. In spite of his prevailing literary honesty, it may be observed, his

English shows some slight traces of the effort to imitate Pope and the

feeling that the pseudo-classical style with its elegance was really the

highest--a feeling which renders some of his letters painfully affected.

[Footnote: For the sake of brevity the sternly realistic poet George Crabbe

is here omitted.]

THE NOVEL. We have traced the literary production of the eighteenth century

in many different forms, but it still remains to speak of one of the most

important, the novel, which in the modern meaning of the word had its

origin not long before 1750. Springing at that time into apparently sudden

popularity, it replaced the drama as the predominant form of literature and

has continued such ever since. The reasons are not hard to discover. The

drama is naturally the most popular literary form in periods like the

Elizabethan when the ability (or inclination) to read is not general, when

men are dominated by the zest for action, and when cities have become

sufficiently large to keep the theaters well filled. It is also the natural

form in such a period as that of the Restoration, when literary life

centers about a frivolous upper class who demand an easy and social form of

entertainment. But the condition is very different when, as in the

eighteenth and still more in the nineteenth century, the habit of reading,

and some recognition of its educating influence, had spread throughout

almost all classes and throughout the country, creating a public far too

large, too scattered, and too varied to gain access to the London and

provincial theaters or to find all their needs supplied by a somewhat

artificial literary form. The novel, on the other hand, gives a much fuller

portrayal of life than does the drama, and allows the much more detailed

analysis of characters and situations which the modern mind has come more

and more to demand.

The novel, which for our present purpose must be taken to include the

romance, is, of course, only a particular and highly developed kind of long

story, one of the latest members of the family of fiction, or the larger

family of narrative, in prose and verse. The medieval romances, for

example, included most of the elements of the novel, even, sometimes,

psychological analysis; but the romances usually lacked the unity, the

complex and careful structure, the thorough portrayal of character, and the

serious attention to the real problems of life which in a general way

distinguish the modern novel. Much the same is true of the Elizabethan

'novels,' which, besides, were generally short as well as of small

intellectual and ethical caliber. During the Restoration period and a

little later there began to appear several kinds of works which perhaps

looked more definitely toward the later novel. Bunyan's religious

allegories may likely enough have had a real influence on it, and there

were a few English tales and romances of chivalry (above, pages 184-5), and

a few more realistic pieces of fiction. The habit of journal writing and

the letters about London life sent by some persons in the city to their

friends in the country should also be mentioned. The De Coverly papers in

'The Spectator' approach distinctly toward the novel. They give real

presentation of both characters and setting (social life) and lack only

connected treatment of the story (of Sir Roger). Defoe's fictions,

picaresque tales of adventure, come still closer, but lack the deeper

artistic and moral purpose and treatment suggested a moment ago. The case

is not very different with Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels,' which, besides, is

primarily a satire. Substantially, therefore, all the materials were now

ready, awaiting only the fortunate hand which should arrange and shape them

into a real novel. This proved to be the hand of a rather unlikely person,

the outwardly commonplace printer, Samuel Richardson.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON. It is difficult, because of the sentimental nature of

the period and the man, to tell the story of Richardson's career without an

appearance of farcical burlesque. Born in 1689, in Derbyshire, he early

gave proof of his special endowments by delighting his childish companions

with stories, and, a little later, by becoming the composer of the love

letters of various young women. His command of language and an insistent

tendency to moralize seemed to mark him out for the ministry, but his

father was unable to pay for the necessary education and apprenticed him to

a London printer. Possessed of great fidelity and all the quieter virtues,

he rose steadily and became in time the prosperous head of his own printing

house, a model citizen, and the father of a large family of children.

Before he reached middle life he was a valetudinarian. His household

gradually became a constant visiting place for a number of young ladies

toward whom he adopted a fatherly attitude and who without knowing it were

helping him to prepare for his artistic success.

When he was not quite fifty his great reputation among his acquaintances as

a letter-writer led some publishers to invite him to prepare a series of

'Familiar [that is, Friendly] Letters' as models for inexperienced young

people. Complying, Richardson discovered the possibilities of the letter

form as a means of telling stories, and hence proceeded to write his first

novel, 'Pamela, [Footnote: He wrongly placed the accent on the first

syllable.] or Virtue Rewarded,' which was published in 1740. It attained

enormous success, which he followed up by writing his masterpiece,

'Clarissa Harlowe' (1747-8), and then 'The History of Sir Charles

Grandison' (1753). He spent his latter years, as has been aptly said, in a

sort of perpetual tea-party, surrounded by bevies of admiring ladies, and

largely occupied with a vast feminine correspondence, chiefly concerning

his novels. He died of apoplexy in 1761.

At this distance of time it is easy to summarize the main traits of

Richardson's novels.

1. He gave form to the modern novel by shaping it according to a definite

plot with carefully selected incidents which all contributed directly to

the outcome. In this respect his practice was decidedly stricter than that

of most of his English successors down to the present time. Indeed, he

avowedly constructed his novels on the plan of dramas, while later

novelists, in the desire to present a broader picture of life, have

generally allowed themselves greater range of scenes and a larger number of

characters. In the instinct for suspense, also, no one has surpassed

Richardson; his stories are intense, not to say sensational, and once

launched upon them we follow with the keenest interest to the outcome.

2. Nevertheless, he is always prolix. That the novels as published varied

in length from four to eight volumes is not really significant, since these

were the very small volumes which (as a source of extra profit) were to be

the regular form for novels until after the time of Scott. Even 'Clarissa,'

the longest, is not longer than some novels of our own day. Yet they do

much exceed the average in length and would undoubtedly gain by

condensation. Richardson, it may be added, produced each of them in the

space of a few months, writing, evidently, with the utmost fluency, and

with little need for revision.

3. Most permanently important, perhaps, of all Richardson's contributions,

was his creation of complex characters, such as had thitherto appeared not

in English novels but only in the drama. In characterization Richardson's

great strength lay with his women--he knew the feminine mind and spirit

through and through. His first heroine, Pamela, is a plebeian serving-maid,

and his second, Clarissa, a fine-spirited young lady of the wealthy class,

but both are perfectly and completely true and living, throughout all their

terribly complex and trying experiences. Men, on the other hand, those

beyond his own particular circle, Richardson understood only from the

outside. Annoyed by criticisms to this effect, he attempted in the hero of

his last book to present a true gentleman, but the result is only a

mechanical ideal figure of perfection whose wooden joints creak painfully

as he moves slowly about under the heavy load of his sternly self-conscious

goodness and dignity.

4. Richardson's success in his own time was perhaps chiefly due to his

striking with exaggerated emphasis the note of tender sentiment to which

the spirit of his generation was so over-ready to respond. The substance of

his books consists chiefly of the sufferings of his heroines under

ingeniously harrowing persecution at the hands of remorseless scoundrels.

Pamela, with her serving-maid's practical efficiency, proves able to take

care of herself, but the story of the high-bred and noble-minded Clarissa

is, with all possible deductions, one of the most deeply-moving tragedies

ever committed to paper. The effect in Richardson's own time may easily be

imagined; but it is also a matter of record that his novels were commonly

read aloud in the family circle (a thing which some of their incidents

would render impossible at the present day) and that sometimes when the

emotional strain became too great the various listeners would retire to

their own rooms to cry out their grief. Richardson appealed directly, then,

to the prevailing taste of his generation, and no one did more than he to

confirm its hold on the next generation, not only in England, but also in

France and Germany.

5. We have not yet mentioned what according to Richardson's own reiterated

statement was his main purpose in writing, namely, the conveying of moral

and religious instruction. He is extremely anxious to demonstrate to his

readers that goodness pays and that wickedness does not, generally even in

this world (though in 'Clarissa' his artistic sense refuses to be turned

aside from the inevitable tragic outcome). The spiritual vulgarity of the

doctrine, so far as material things are concerned, is clearly illustrated

in the mechanically virtuous Pamela, who, even in the midst of the most

outrageous besetments of Squire B----, is hoping with all her soul for the

triumph which is actually destined for her, of becoming his wife and so

rising high above her original humble station. Moreover, Richardson often

goes far and tritely out of his way in his preaching. At their worst,

however, his sentimentality and moralizing were preferable to the

coarseness which disgraced the works of some of his immediate successors.

6. Lastly must be mentioned the form of his novels. They all consist of

series of letters, which constitute the correspondence between some of the

principal characters, the great majority being written in each case by the

heroine. This method of telling a story requires special concessions from

the reader; but even more than the other first-personal method, exemplified

in 'Robinson Crusoe,' it has the great advantage of giving the most

intimate possible revelation of the imaginary writer's mind and situation.

Richardson handles it with very great skill, though in his anxiety that his

chief characters may not be misunderstood he occasionally commits the

artistic blunder of inserting footnotes to explain their real motives.

Richardson, then, must on the whole be called the first of the great

English novelists--a striking case of a man in whom one special endowment

proved much weightier than a large number of absurdities and littlenesses.

HENRY FIELDING. Sharply opposed to Richardson stands his later contemporary

and rival, Henry Fielding. Fielding was born of an aristocratic family in

Somersetshire in 1707. At Eton School and the University of Leyden (in

Holland) he won distinction, but at the age of twenty he found himself, a

vigorous young man with instincts for fine society, stranded in London

without any tangible means of support. He turned to the drama and during

the next dozen years produced many careless and ephemeral farces,

burlesques, and light plays, which, however, were not without value as

preparation for his novels. Meanwhile he had other activities--spent the

money which his wife brought him at marriage in an extravagant experiment

as gentleman-farmer; studied law and was admitted to the bar; and conducted

various literary periodicals. His attacks on the government in his plays

helped to produce the severe licensing act which put an end to his dramatic

work and that of many other light playwrights. When Richardson's 'Pamela'

appeared Fielding was disgusted with what seemed to him its hypocritical

silliness, and in vigorous artistic indignation he proceeded to write 'The

History of Joseph Andrews,' representing Joseph as the brother of Pamela

and as a serving-man, honest, like her, in difficult circumstances.

Beginning in a spirit of sheer burlesque, Fielding soon became interested

in his characters, and in the actual result produced a rough but masterful

picture of contemporary life. The coarse Parson Trulliber and the admirable

Parson Adams are among the famous characters of fiction. But even in the

later part of the book Fielding did not altogether abandon his ridicule of

Richardson. He introduced among the characters the 'Squire B----' of

'Pamela,' only filling out the blank by calling him 'Squire Booby,' and

taking pains to make him correspondingly ridiculous.

Fielding now began to pay the penalty for his youthful dissipations in

failing health, but he continued to write with great expenditure of time

and energy. 'The History of Jonathan Wild the Great,' a notorious ruffian

whose life Defoe also had narrated, aims to show that great military

conquerors are only bandits and cutthroats really no more praiseworthy than

the humbler individuals who are hanged without ceremony. Fielding's

masterpiece, 'The History of Tom Jones,' followed hard after Richardson's

'Clarissa,' in 1749. His last novel, 'Amelia,' is a half autobiographic

account of his own follies. His second marriage, to his first wife's maid,

was intended, as he frankly said, to provide a nurse for himself and a

mother for his children, but his later years were largely occupied with

heroic work as a police justice in Westminster, where, at the sacrifice of

what health remained to him, he rooted out a specially dangerous band of

robbers. Sailing for recuperation, but too late, to Lisbon, he died there

at the age of forty-seven, in 1754.

The chief characteristics of Fielding's nature and novels, mostly directly

opposite or complementary to those of Richardson, are these:

1. He is a broad realist, giving to his romantic actions a very prominent

background of actual contemporary life. The portrayal is very illuminating;

we learn from Fielding a great deal, almost everything, one is inclined to

say, about conditions in both country and city in his time--about the state

of travel, country inns, city jails, and many other things; but with his

vigorous masculine nature he makes abundant use of the coarser facts of

life and character which a finer art avoids. However, he is extremely human

and sympathetic; in view of their large and generous naturalness the

defects of his character and works are at least pardonable.

2. His structure is that of the rambling picaresque story of adventure, not

lacking, in his case, in definite progress toward a clearly-designed end,

but admitting many digressions and many really irrelevant elements. The

number of his characters, especially in 'Tom Jones,' is enormous. Indeed,

the usual conception of a novel in his day, as the word 'History,' which

was generally included in the title, indicates, was that of the complete

story of the life of the hero or heroine, at least up to the time of

marriage. It is virtually the old idea of the chronicle-history play.

Fielding himself repeatedly speaks of his masterpiece as an 'epic.'

3. His point of view is primarily humorous. He avowedly imitates the manner

of Cervantes in 'Don Quixote' and repeatedly insists that he is writing a

_mock_-epic. His very genuine and clear-sighted indignation at social

abuses expresses itself through his omnipresent irony and satire, and

however serious the situations he almost always keeps the ridiculous side

in sight. He offends some modern readers by refusing to take his art in any

aspect over-seriously; especially, he constantly asserts and exercises his

'right' to break off his story and chat quizzically about questions of art

or conduct in a whole chapter at a time.

4. His knowledge of character, that of a generous-hearted man of the world,

is sound but not subtile, and is deeper in the case of men than of women,

especially in the case of men who resemble himself. Tom Jones is virtually

Henry Fielding in his youth and is thoroughly lifelike, but Squire

Allworthy, intended as an example of benevolent perfection, is no less of a

pale abstraction than Sir Charles Grandison. The women, cleverly as their

typical feminine traits are brought out, are really viewed only from

without.

THE OTHER SENTIMENTALISTS AND REALISTS. Richardson and Fielding set in

motion two currents, of sentimentalism and realism, respectively, which

flowed vigorously in the novel during the next generation, and indeed

(since they are of the essence of life), have continued, with various

modifications, down to our own time. Of the succeeding realists the most

important is Tobias Smollett, a Scottish ex-physician of violent and brutal

nature, who began to produce his picaresque stories of adventure during the

lifetime of Fielding. He made ferociously unqualified attacks on the

statesmen of his day, and in spite of much power, the coarseness of his

works renders them now almost unreadable. But he performed one definite

service; in 'Roderick Random,' drawing on his early experiences as a ship's

surgeon, he inaugurated the out-and-out sea story, that is the story which

takes place not, like 'Robinson Crusoe,' in small part, but mainly, on

board ship. Prominent, on the other hand, among the sentimentalists is

Laurence Sterne, who, inappropriately enough, was a clergyman, the author

of 'Tristram Shandy.' This book is quite unlike anything else ever written.

Sterne published it in nine successive volumes during almost as many years,

and he made a point of almost complete formlessness and every sort of

whimsicality. The hero is not born until the third volume, the story mostly

relates to other people and things, pages are left blank to be filled out

by the reader--no grotesque device or sudden trick can be too fantastic for

Sterne. But he has the gift of delicate pathos and humor, and certain

episodes in the book are justly famous, such as the one where Uncle Toby

carefully puts a fly out of the window, refusing to 'hurt a hair of its

head,' on the ground that 'the world surely is wide enough to hold both

thee and me.' The best of all the sentimental stories is Goldsmith's 'Vicar

of Wakefield' (1766), of which we have already spoken (above, page 244).

With its kindly humor, its single-hearted wholesomeness, and its delightful

figure of Dr. Primrose it remains, in spite of its artlessness, one of the

permanent landmarks of English fiction.

HISTORICAL AND 'GOTHIC' ROMANCES. Stories which purported to reproduce the

life of the Past were not unknown in England in the seventeenth century,

but the real beginning of the historical novel and romance belongs to the

later part of the eighteenth century. The extravagance of romantic writers

at that time, further, created a sort of subspecies called in its day and

since the 'Gothic' romance. These 'Gothic' stories are nominally located in

the Middle Ages, but their main object is not to give an accurate picture

of medieval life, but to arouse terror in the reader, by means of a

fantastic apparatus of gloomy castles, somber villains, distressed and

sentimental heroines, and supernatural mystery. The form was inaugurated by

Horace Walpole, the son of the former Prime Minister, who built near

Twickenham (Pope's home) a pseudo-medieval house which he named Strawberry

Hill, where he posed as a center of the medieval revival. Walpole's 'Castle

of 'Otranto,' published in 1764, is an utterly absurd little story, but its

novelty at the time, and the author's prestige, gave it a great vogue. The

really best 'Gothic' romances are the long ones written by Mrs. Ann

Radcliffe in the last decade of the century, of which 'The Mysteries of

Udolpho,' in particular, was popular for two generations. Mrs. Radcliffe's

books overflow with sentimentality, but display real power, especially in

imaginative description. Of the more truly historical romances the best

were the 'Thaddeus of Warsaw' and 'Scottish Chiefs' of Miss Jane Porter,

which appeared in the first decade of the nineteenth century. None of all

these historical and 'Gothic' romances attains the rank of great or

permanent literature, but they were historically important, largely because

they prepared the way for the novels of Walter Scott, which would hardly

have come into being without them, and which show clear signs of the

influence of even their most exaggerated features.

NOVELS OF PURPOSE. Still another sort of novel was that which began to be

written in the latter part of the century with the object of exposing some

particular abuse in society. The first representatives of the class aimed,

imitating the French sentimentalist Rousseau, to improve education, and in

accordance with the sentimental Revolutionary misconception which held that

all sin and sorrow result from the corruptions of civilization, often held

up the primitive savage as a model of all the kindly virtues. The most

important of the novels of purpose, however, were more thorough-going

attacks on society composed by radical revolutionists, and the least

forgotten is the 'Caleb Williams' of William Godwin (1794), which is

intended to demonstrate that class-distinctions result in hopeless moral

confusion and disaster.

MISS BURNEY AND THE FEMININE NOVEL OF MANNERS. The most permanent results

of the latter part of the century in fiction were attained by three women

who introduced and successively continued the novel which depicts, from the

woman's point of view, with delicate satire, and at first in the hope of

accomplishing some reform, or at least of showing the beauty of virtue and

morality, the contemporary manners of well-to-do 'society.' The first of

these authoresses was Miss Frances Burney, who later became Madame

D'Arblay, but is generally referred to familiarly as Fanny Burney.

The unassuming daughter of a talented and much-esteemed musician,

acquainted in her own home with many persons of distinction, such as

Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and given from girlhood to the private

writing of stories and of a since famous Diary, Miss Burney composed her

'Evelina' in leisure intervals during a number of years, and published it

when she was twenty-five, in 1778. It recounts, in the Richardsonian letter

form, the experiences of a country girl of good breeding and ideally fine

character who is introduced into the life of London high society, is

incidentally brought into contact with disagreeable people of various

types, and soon achieves a great triumph by being acknowledged as the

daughter of a repentant and wealthy man of fashion and by marrying an

impossibly perfect young gentleman, also of great wealth. Structure and

substance in 'Evelina' are alike somewhat amateurish in comparison with the

novels of the next century; but it does manifest, together with some lack

of knowledge of the real world, genuine understanding of the core, at

least, of many sorts of character; it presents artificial society life with

a light and pleasing touch; and it brought into the novel a welcome

atmosphere of womanly purity and delicacy. 'Evelina' was received with

great applause and Miss Burney wrote other books, but they are without

importance. Her success won her the friendship of Dr. Johnson and the

position of one of the Queen's waiting women, a sort of gilded slavery

which she endured for five years. She was married in middle-age to a French

emigrant officer, Monsieur D'Arblay, and lived in France and England until

the age of nearly ninety, latterly an inactive but much respected figure

among the writers of a younger generation.

MISS EDGEWORTH. Much more voluminous and varied was the work of Miss

Burney's successor, Maria Edgeworth, who devoted a great part of her long

life (1767-1849) to active benevolence and to attendance on her father, an

eccentric and pedantic English gentleman who lived mostly on his estate in

Ireland and who exercised the privilege of revising or otherwise meddling

with most of her books. In the majority of her works Miss Edgeworth

followed Miss Burney, writing of the experiences of young ladies in

fashionable London life. In these novels her purpose was more obviously

moral than Miss Burney's--she aimed to make clear the folly of frivolity

and dissipation; and she also wrote moral tales for children which though

they now seem old-fashioned were long and widely popular. Since she had a

first-hand knowledge of both Ireland and England, she laid the scenes of

some of her books partly in both countries, thereby creating what was later

called 'the international novel.' Her most distinctive achievement,

however, was the introduction of the real Irishman (as distinct from the

humorous caricature) into fiction. Scott testified that it was her example

that suggested to him the similar portrayal of Scottish character and life.

JANE AUSTEN. Much the greatest of this trio of authoresses is the last,

Jane Austen, who perhaps belongs as much to the nineteenth century as the

eighteenth. The daughter of a clergyman, she past an absolutely uneventful

life of forty-two years (1775-1817) in various villages and towns in

Southern England. She had finished her masterpiece, 'Pride and Prejudice,'

at the age of twenty-two, but was unable for more than a dozen years to

find a publisher for this and her other earlier works. When at last they

were brought out she resumed her writing, but the total number of her

novels is only six. Her field, also, is more limited than that of any other

great English novelist; for she deliberately restricted herself, with

excellent judgment, to portraying what she knew at first-hand, namely the

life of the well-to-do classes of her own 'provincial' region. Moreover,

her theme is always love; desirable marriage for themselves or their

children seems to be the single object of almost all her characters; and

she always conducts her heroine successfully to this goal. Her artistic

achievement, like herself, is so well-bred and unobtrusive that a hasty

reader may easily fail to appreciate it. Her understanding of character is

almost perfect, her sense for structure and dramatic scenes (quiet ones)

equally good, and her quiet and delightful humor and irony all-pervasive.

Scott, with customary generosity, praised her 'power of rendering ordinary

things and characters interesting from the truth of her portrayal,' in

favorable contrast with his own facility in 'the Big Bow-Wow strain.'

Nevertheless the assertion of some present-day critics that she is the

greatest of all English authoresses is certainly extravagant. Her novels,

though masterly in their own field and style, do not have the fulness of

description or the elaboration of action which add beauty and power to most

later ones, and her lack of a sense for the greater issues of life denies

her legitimate comparison with such a writer as George Eliot.

SUMMARY. The variety of the literary influences in eighteenth century

England was so great that the century can scarcely be called a literary

unit; yet as a whole it contrasts clearly enough both with that which goes

before and with that which follows. Certainly its total contribution to

English literature was great and varied.