II

The first period of which I am to speak represents to the political

historian the Avatar of Whiggism. The glorious revolution has decided

the long struggle of the previous century; the main outlines of the

British Constitution are irrevocably determined; the political system is

in harmony with the great political forces, and the nation has settled,

as Carlyle is fond of saying, with the centre of gravity lowest, and

therefore in a position of stable equilibrium. For another century no

organic change was attempted or desired. Parliament has become

definitely the great driving-wheel of the political machinery; not, as a

century before, an intrusive body acting spasmodically and hampering

instead of regulating the executive power of the Crown. The last Stuart

kings had still fancied that it might be reduced to impotence, and the

illusion had been fostered by the loyalty which meant at least a fair

unequivocal desire to hold to the old monarchical traditions. But, in

fact, parliamentary control had been silently developing; the House of

Commons had been getting the power of the purse more distinctly into its

hands, and had taken very good care not to trust the Crown with the

power of the sword. Charles II. had been forced to depend on the help of

the great French monarchy to maintain his authority at home; and when

his successor turned out to be an anachronism, and found that the

loyalty of the nation would not bear the strain of a policy hostile to

the strongest national impulses, he was thrown off as an intolerable

incubus. The system which had been growing up beneath the surface was

now definitely put into shape and its fundamental principles embodied in

legislation. The one thing still needed was to work out the system of

party government, which meant that parliament should become an organised

body with a corporate body, which the ministers of the Crown had first

to consult and then to obey. The essential parts of the system had, in

fact, been established by the end of Queen Anne's reign; though the

change which had taken place in the system was not fully recognised

because marked by the retention of the old forms. This, broadly

speaking, meant the supremacy of the class which really controlled

Parliament: of the aristocratic class, led by the peers but including

the body of squires and landed gentlemen, and including also a growing

infusion of 'moneyed' men, who represented the rising commercial and

manufacturing interests. The division between Whig and Tory corresponded

mainly to the division between the men who inclined mainly to the Church

and squirearchy and those who inclined towards the mercantile and the

dissenting interests. If the Tory professed zeal for the monarchy, he

did not mean a monarchy as opposed to Parliament and therefore to his

own dearest privileges. Even the Jacobite movement was in great part

personal, or meant dislike to Hanover with no preference for arbitrary

power, while the actual monarchy was so far controlled by Parliament

that the Whig had no desire to limit it further. It was a useful

instrument, not an encumbrance.

We have to ask how these conditions affect the literary position. One

point is clear. The relation between the political and the literary

class was at this time closer than it had ever been. The alliance

between them marks, in fact, a most conspicuous characteristic of the

time. It was the one period, as authors repeat with a fond regret, in

which literary merit was recognised by the distributors of state

patronage. This gratifying phenomenon has, I think, been often a little

misinterpreted, and I must consider briefly what it really meant. And

first let us note how exclusively the literary society of the time was

confined to London. The great town--it would be even now a great

town--had half a million inhabitants. Macaulay, in his admirably graphic

description of the England of the preceding period, points out what a

chasm divided it from country districts; what miserable roads had to be

traversed by the nobleman's chariot and four, or by the ponderous

waggons or strings of pack-horses which supplied the wants of trade and

of the humbler traveller; and how the squire only emerged at intervals

to be jeered and jostled as an uncouth rustic in the streets of London.

He was not a great buyer of books. There were, of course, libraries at

Oxford and Cambridge, and here and there in the house of a rich prelate

or of one of the great noblemen who were beginning to form some of the

famous collections; but the squire was more than usually cultivated if

Baker's _Chronicle_ and Gwillim's _Heraldry_ lay on the window-seat of

his parlour, and one has often to wonder how the learned divines of the

period managed to get the books from which they quote so freely in their

discourses. Anyhow the author of the day must have felt that the

circulation of his books must be mainly confined to London, and

certainly in London alone could he meet with anything that could pass

for literary society or an appreciative audience. We have superabundant

descriptions of the audience and its meeting-places. One of the familiar

features of the day, we know, was the number of coffee-houses. In 1657,

we are told, the first coffee-house had been prosecuted as a nuisance.

In 1708 there were three thousand coffee-houses; and each coffee-house

had its habitual circle. There were coffee-houses frequented by

merchants and stock-jobbers carrying on the game which suggested the new

nickname bulls and bears: and coffee-houses where the talk was Whig and

Tory, of the last election and change of ministry: and literary resorts

such as the Grecian, where, as we are told, a fatal duel was provoked by

a dispute over a Greek accent, in which, let us hope, it was the worst

scholar who was killed; and Wills', where Pope as a boy went to look

reverently at Dryden; and Buttons', where, at a later period, Addison

met his little senate. Addison, according to Pope, spent five or six

hours a day lounging at Buttons'; while Pope found the practice and the

consequent consumption of wine too much for his health. Thackeray

notices how the club and coffee-house 'boozing shortened the lives and

enlarged the waistcoats of the men of those days.' The coffee-house

implied the club, while the club meant simply an association for

periodical gatherings. It was only by degrees that the body made a

permanent lodgment in the house and became first the tenants of the

landlord and then themselves the proprietors. The most famous show the

approximation between the statesmen and the men of letters. There was

the great Kit-cat Club, of which Tonson the bookseller was secretary; to

which belonged noble dukes and all the Whig aristocracy, besides

Congreve, Vanbrugh, Addison, Garth, and Steele. It not only brought

Whigs together but showed its taste by giving a prize for good comedies.

Swift, when he came into favour, helped to form the Brothers' Club,

which was especially intended to direct patronage towards promising

writers of the Tory persuasion. The institution, in modern slang,

differentiated as time went on. The more aristocratic clubs became

exclusive societies, occupying their own houses, more devoted to

gambling than to literature; while the older type, represented by

Jonson's famous club, were composed of literary and professional

classes.

The characteristic fraternisation of the politicians and the authors

facilitated by this system leads to the critical point. When we speak of

the nobility patronising literature, a reserve must be made. A list of

some twenty or thirty names has been made out, including all the chief

authors of the time, who received appointments of various kinds. But I

can only find two, Congreve and Rowe, upon whom offices were bestowed

simply as rewards for literary distinction; and both of them were sound

Whigs, rewarded by their party, though not for party services. The

typical patron of the day was Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax. As member

of a noble family he came into Parliament, where he distinguished

himself by his financial achievements in founding the Bank of England

and reforming the currency, and became a peer and a member of the great

Whig junto. At college he had been a chum of Prior, who joined him in a

literary squib directed against Dryden, and, as he rose, he employed

his friend in diplomacy. But the poetry by which Prior is known to us

was of a later growth, and was clearly not the cause but the consequence

of his preferment. At a later time, Halifax sent Addison abroad with the

intention of employing him in a similar way; and it is plain that

Addison was not--as the familiar but obviously distorted anecdote tells

us--preferred on account of his brilliant Gazette in rhyme, but really

in fulfilment of his patron's virtual pledge. Halifax has also the

credit of bestowing office upon Newton and patronising Congreve. As poet

and patron Halifax was carrying on a tradition. The aristocracy in

Charles's days had been under the impression that poetry, or at least

verse writing, was becoming an accomplishment for a nobleman. Pope's

'mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,' Rochester and Buckingham, Dorset

and Sedley, and the like, managed some very clever, if not very exalted,

performances and were courted by the men of letters represented by

Butler, Dryden, and Otway. As, indeed, the patrons were themselves

hangers-on of a thoroughly corrupt court, seeking to rise by court

intrigues, their patronage was apt to be degrading and involved the

mean flattery of personal dependence. The change at the Revolution meant

that the court no longer overshadowed society. The court, that is, was

beginning to be superseded by the town. The new race of statesmen were

coming to depend upon parliamentary influence instead of court favour.

They were comparatively, therefore, shining by their own light. They

were able to dispose of public appointments; places on the various

commissions which had been founded as parliament took control of the

financial system--such as commissions for the wine-duties, for licensing

hackney coaches, excise duties, and so forth--besides some of the other

places which had formerly been the perquisites of the courtier. They

could reward personal dependants at the cost of the public; which was

convenient for both parties. Promising university students, like Prior

and Addison, might be brought out under the wing of the statesman, and

no doubt literary merit, especially in conjunction with the right

politics, might recommend them to such men as Halifax or Somers. The

political power of the press was meanwhile rapidly developing. Harley,

Lord Oxford, was one of the first to appreciate its importance. He

employed Defoe and other humble writers who belonged to Grub

Street--that is, to professional journalism in its infancy--as well as

Swift, whose pamphlets struck the heaviest blow at the Whigs in the last

years of that period. Swift's first writings, we may notice, were not a

help but the main hindrance to his preferment. The patronage of

literature was thus in great part political in its character. It

represents the first scheme by which the new class of parliamentary

statesmen recruited their party from the rising talent, or rewarded men

for active or effective service. The speedy decay of the system followed

for obvious reasons. As party government became organised, the patronage

was used in a different spirit. Offices had to be given to gratify

members of parliament and their constituents, not to scholars who could

write odes on victories or epistles to secretaries of state. It was the

machinery for controlling votes. Meanwhile we need only notice that the

patronage of authors did not mean the patronage of learned divines or

historians, but merely the patronage of men who could use their pens in

political warfare, or at most of men who produced the kind of literary

work appreciated in good society.

The 'town' was the environment of the wits who produced the literature

generally called after Queen Anne. We may call it the literary organ of

the society. It was the society of London, or of the region served by

the new penny-post, which included such remote villages as Paddington

and Brompton. The city was large enough, as Addison observes, to include

numerous 'nations,' each of them meeting at the various coffee-houses.

The clubs at which the politicians and authors met each other

represented the critical tribunals, when no such things as literary

journals existed. It was at these that judgment was passed upon the last

new poem or pamphlet, and the writer sought for their good opinion as he

now desires a favourable review. The tribunal included the rewarders as

well as the judges of merit; and there was plenty of temptation to

stimulate their generosity by flattery. Still the relation means a great

improvement on the preceding state of things. The aristocrat was no

doubt conscious of his inherent dignity, but he was ready on occasion to

hail Swift as 'Jonathan' and, in the case of so highly cultivated a

specimen as Addison, to accept an author's marriage to a countess. The

patrons did not exact the personal subservience of the preceding

period; and there was a real recognition by the more powerful class of

literary merit of a certain order. Such a method, however, had obvious

defects. Men of the world have their characteristic weaknesses; and one,

to go no further, is significant. The Club in England corresponded more

or less to the Salon which at different times had had so great an

influence upon French literature. It differed in the marked absence of

feminine elements. The clubs meant essentially a society of bachelors,

and the conversation, one infers, was not especially suited for ladies.

The Englishman, gentle or simple, enjoyed himself over his pipe and his

bottle and dismissed his womenkind to their bed. The one author of the

time who speaks of the influence of women with really chivalrous

appreciation is the generous Steele, with his famous phrase about Lady

Elizabeth Hastings and a liberal education. The Clubs did not foster the

affectation of Molière's _Précieuses_; but the general tone had a

coarseness and occasional brutality which shows too clearly that they

did not enter into the full meaning of Steele's most admirable saying.

To appreciate the spirit of this society we must take into account the

political situation and the intellectual implication. The parliamentary

statesman, no longer dependent upon court favour, had a more independent

spirit and personal self-respect. He was fully aware of the fact that he

represented a distinct step in political progress. His class had won a

great struggle against arbitrary power and bigotry. England had become

the land of free speech, of religious toleration, impartial justice, and

constitutional order. It had shown its power by taking its place among

the leading European states. The great monarchy before which the English

court had trembled, and from which even patriots had taken bribes in the

Restoration period, was met face to face in a long and doubtful struggle

and thoroughly humbled in a war, in which an English General, in command

of an English contingent, had won victories unprecedented in our history

since the Middle Ages. Patriotic pride received a stimulus such as that

which followed the defeat of the Armada and preceded the outburst of the

Elizabethan literature. Those successes, too, had been won in the name

of 'liberty'--a vague if magical word which I shall not seek to define

at present. England, so sound Whigs at least sincerely believed, had

become great because it had adopted and carried out the true Whig

principles. The most intelligent Frenchmen of the coming generation

admitted the claim; they looked upon England as the land both of liberty

and philosophy, and tried to adopt for themselves the creed which had

led to such triumphant results. One great name may tell us sufficiently

what the principles were in the eyes of the cultivated classes, who

regarded themselves and their own opinions with that complacency in

which we are happily never deficient. Locke had laid down the

fundamental outlines of the creed, philosophical, religious, and

political, which was to dominate English thought for the next century.

Locke was one of the most honourable, candid, and amiable of men, if

metaphysicians have sometimes wondered at the success of his teaching.

He had not the logical thoroughness and consistency which marks a

Descartes or Spinoza, nor the singular subtlety which distinguishes

Berkeley and Hume; nor the eloquence and imaginative power which gave to

Bacon an authority greater than was due to his scientific requirements.

He was a thoroughly modest, prosaic, tentative, and sometimes clumsy

writer, who raises great questions without solving them or fully seeing

the consequences of his own position. Leaving any explanation of his

power to metaphysicians, I need only note the most conspicuous

condition. Locke ruled the thought of his own and the coming period

because he interpreted so completely the fundamental beliefs which had

been worked out at his time. He ruled, that is, by obeying. Locke

represents the very essence of the common sense of the intelligent

classes. I do not ask whether his simplicity covered really profound

thought or embodied superficial crudities; but it was most admirably

adapted to the society of which I have been speaking. The excellent

Addison, for example, who was no metaphysician, can adopt Locke when he

wishes to give a philosophical air to his amiable lectures upon arts and

morals. Locke's philosophy, that is, blends spontaneously with the

ordinary language of all educated men. To the historian of philosophy

the period is marked by the final disappearance of scholasticism. The

scholastic philosophy had of course been challenged generations before.

Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, however, in the preceding century had

still treated it as the great incubus upon intellectual progress, and it

was not yet exorcised from the universities. It had, however, passed

from the sphere of living thought. This implies a series of correlative

changes in the social and intellectual which are equally conspicuous in

the literary order, and which I must note without attempting to inquire

which are the ultimate or most fundamental causes of reciprocally

related developments. The changed position of the Anglican church is

sufficiently significant. In the time of Laud, the bishops in alliance

with the Crown endeavoured to enforce the jurisdiction of the

ecclesiastical courts upon the nation at large, and to suppress all

nonconformity by law. Every subject of the king is also amenable to

church discipline. By the Revolution any attempt to enforce such

discipline had become hopeless. The existence of nonconformist churches

has to be recognised as a fact, though perhaps an unpleasant fact. The

Dissenters can be worried by disqualifications of various kinds; but the

claim to toleration, of Protestant sects at least, is admitted; and the

persecution is political rather than ecclesiastical. They are not

regarded as heretics, but as representing an interest which is opposed

to the dominant class of the landed gentry. The Church as such has lost

the power of discipline and is gradually falling under the power of the

dominant aristocratic class. When Convocation tries to make itself

troublesome, in a few years, it will be silenced and drop into

impotence. Church-feeling indeed, is still strong, but the clergy have

become thoroughly subservient, and during the century will be mere

appendages to the nobility and squirearchy. The intellectual change is

parallel. The great divines of the seventeenth century speak as members

of a learned corporation condescending to instruct the laity. The

hearers are supposed to listen to the voice (as Donne puts it) as from

'angels in the clouds.' They are experts, steeped in a special science,

above the comprehension of the vulgar. They have been trained in the

schools of theology and have been thoroughly drilled in the art of

'syllogising.' They are walking libraries with the ancient fathers at

their finger-ends; they have studied Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and have

shown their technical knowledge in controversies with the great Jesuits,

Suarez and Bellarmine. They speak frankly, if not ostentatiously, as men

of learning, and their sermons are overweighted with quotations, showing

familiarity with the classics, and with the whole range of theological

literature. Obviously the hearers are to be passive recipients not

judges of the doctrine. But by the end of the century Tillotson has

become the typical divine, whose authority was to be as marked in

theology as that of Locke in philosophy. Tillotson has entirely

abandoned any ostentatious show of learning. He addresses his hearers in

language on a level with their capabilities, and assumes that they are

not 'passive buckets to be pumped into' but reasonable men who have a

right to be critics as well as disciples. It is taken for granted that

the appeal must be to reason, and to the reason which has not gone

through any special professional training. The audience, that is, to

which the divine must address himself is one composed of the average

laity who are quite competent to judge for themselves. That is the

change that is meant when we are told that this was the period of the

development of English prose. Dryden, one of its great masters,

professed to have learned his style from Tillotson. The writer, that is,

has to suit himself to the new audience which has grown up. He has to

throw aside all the panoply of scholastic logic, the vast apparatus of

professional learning, and the complex Latinised constructions, which,

however admirable some of the effects produced, shows that the writer is

thinking of well-read scholars, not of the ordinary man of the world.

He has learned from Bacon and Descartes, perhaps, that his supposed

science was useless lumber; and he has to speak to men who not only want

plain language but are quite convinced that the pretensions of the old

authority have been thoroughly exploded.

Politically, the change means toleration, for it is assumed that the

vulgar can judge for themselves; intellectually, it means rationalism,

that is, an appeal to the reason common to all men; and, in literature

it means the hatred of pedantry and the acceptance of such literary

forms as are thoroughly congenial and intelligible to the common sense

of the new audience. The hatred of the pedantic is the characteristic

sentiment of the time. When Berkeley looked forward to a new world in

America, he described it as the Utopia

'Where men shall not impose for truth and sense

The pedantry of Courts and Schools.'

When he announced a metaphysical discovery he showed his understanding

of the principle by making his exposition--strange as the proceeding

appears to us--as short and as clear as the most admirable literary

skill could contrive. That eccentric ambition dominates the writings of

the times. In a purely literary direction it is illustrated by the

famous but curiously rambling and equivocal controversy about the

Ancients and Moderns begun in France by Perrault and Boileau. In England

the most familiar outcome was Swift's _Battle of the Books_, in which he

struck out the famous phrase about sweetness and light, 'the two noblest

of things'; which he illustrated by ridiculing Bentley's criticism and

Dryden's poetry. I may take for granted the motives which induced that

generation to accept as their models the great classical masterpieces,

the study of which had played so important a part in the revival of

letters and the new philosophy. I may perhaps note, in passing, that we

do not always remember what classical literature meant to that

generation. In the first place, the education of a gentleman meant

nothing then except a certain drill in Greek and Latin--whereas now it

includes a little dabbling in other branches of knowledge. In the next

place, if a man had an appetite for literature, what else was he to

read? Imagine every novel, poem, and essay written during the last two

centuries to be obliterated and further, the literature of the early

seventeenth century and all that went before to be regarded as pedantic

and obsolete, the field of study would be so limited that a man would be

forced in spite of himself to read his _Homer_ and _Virgil_. The vice of

pedantry was not very accurately defined--sometimes it is the ancient,

sometimes the modern, who appears to be pedantic. Still, as in the

_Battle of the Books_ controversy, the general opinion seems to be that

the critic should have before him the great classical models, and regard

the English literature of the seventeenth century as a collection of all

possible errors of taste. When, at the end of this period, Swift with

Pope formed the project of the Scriblerus Club, its aim was to be a

joint-stock satire against all 'false tastes' in learning, art, and

science. That was the characteristic conception of the most brilliant

men of letters of the time.

Here, then, we have the general indication of the composition of the

literary organ. It is made up of men of the world--'Wits' is their

favourite self-designation, scholars and gentlemen, with rather more of

the gentlemen than the scholars--living in the capital, which forms a

kind of island of illumination amid the surrounding darkness of the

agricultural country--including men of rank and others of sufficient

social standing to receive them on friendly terms--meeting at

coffee-houses and in a kind of tacit confederation of clubs to compare

notes and form the whole public opinion of the day. They are conscious

that in them is concentrated the enlightenment of the period. The class

to which they belong is socially and politically dominant--the advance

guard of national progress. It has finally cast off the incubus of a

retrograde political system; it has placed the nation in a position of

unprecedented importance in Europe; and it is setting an example of

ordered liberty to the whole civilised world. It has forced the Church

and the priesthood to abandon the old claim to spiritual supremacy. It

has, in the intellectual sphere, crushed the old authority which

embodied superstition, antiquated prejudice, and a sham system of

professional knowledge, which was upheld by a close corporation. It

believes in reason--meaning the principles which are evident to the

ordinary common sense of men at its own level. It believes in what it

calls the Religion of Nature--the plain demonstrable truths obvious to

every intelligent person. With Locke for its spokesman, and Newton as a

living proof of its scientific capacity, it holds that England is the

favoured nation marked out as the land of liberty, philosophy, common

sense, toleration, and intellectual excellence. And with certain

reserves, it will be taken at its own valuation by foreigners who are

still in darkness and deplorably given to slavery, to say nothing of

wooden shoes and the consumption of frogs. Let us now consider the

literary result.

I may begin by recalling a famous controversy which seems to illustrate

very significantly some of the characteristic tendencies of the day. The

stage, when really flourishing, might be expected to show most

conspicuously the relations between authors and the society. The

dramatist may be writing for all time; but if he is to fill a theatre,

he must clearly adapt himself to the tastes of the living and the

present. During the first half of the period of which I am now speaking,

Dryden was still the dictator of the literary world; and Dryden had

adopted Congreve as his heir, and abandoned to him the province of the

drama--Congreve, though he ceased to write, was recognised during his

life as the great man of letters to whom Addison, Swift, and Pope agreed

in paying respect, and indisputably the leading writer of English

Comedy. When the comic drama was unsparingly denounced by Collier,

Congreve defended himself and his friends. In the judgment of

contemporaries the pedantic parson won a complete triumph over the most

brilliant of wits. Although Congreve's early abandonment of his career

was not caused by Collier's attack alone, it was probably due in part to

the general sentiment to which Collier gave utterance. I will ask what

is implied as a matter of fact in regard to the social and literary

characteristics of the time. The Shakespearian drama had behind it a

general national impulse. With Fletcher, it began to represent a court

already out of harmony with the strongest currents of national feeling.

Dryden, in a familiar passage, gives the reason of the change from his

own point of view. Two plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, he says in an

often quoted passage, were acted (about 1668) for one of Shakespeare or

Jonson. His explanation is remarkable. It was because the later

dramatists 'understood the conversation of gentlemen much better,' whose

wild 'debaucheries and quickness of wit no poet can ever paint as they

have done.' In a later essay he explains that the greater refinement

was due to the influence of the court. Charles II., familiar with the

most brilliant courts of Europe, had roused us from barbarism and

rebellion, and taught us to 'mix our solidity' with 'the air and gaiety

of our neighbours'! I need not cavil at the phrases 'refinement' and

'gentleman.' If those words can be fairly applied to the courtiers whose

'wild debaucheries' disgusted Evelyn and startled even the respectable

Pepys, they may no doubt be applied to the stage and the dramatic

persons. The rake, or 'wild gallant,' had made his first appearance in

Fletcher, and had shown himself more nakedly after the Restoration. This

is the so-called reaction so often set down to the account of the

unlucky Puritans. The degradation, says Macaulay, was the 'effect of the

prevalence of Puritanism under the Commonwealth.' The attempt to make a

'nation of saints' inevitably produced a nation of scoffers. In what

sense, in the first place, was there a 'reaction' at all? The Puritans

had suppressed the stage when it was already far gone in decay because

it no longer satisfied the great bulk of the nation. The reaction does

not imply that the drama regained its old position. When the rule of the

saints or pharisees was broken down, the stage did not become again a

national organ. A very small minority of the people can ever have seen a

performance. There were, we must remember, only two theatres under

Charles II., and there was a difficulty in supporting even two. Both

depended almost exclusively on the patronage of the court and the

courtiers. From the theatre, therefore, we can only argue directly to

the small circle of the rowdy debauchees who gathered round the new

king. It certainly may be true, but it was not proved from their

behaviour, that the national morality deteriorated, and in fact I think

nothing is more difficult than to form any trustworthy estimate of the

state of morality in a whole nation, confidently as such estimates are

often put forward. What may be fairly inferred, is that a certain class,

who had got from under the rule of the Puritan, was now free from legal

restraint and took advantage of the odium excited by pharisaical

strictness, to indulge in the greater license which suited the taste of

their patrons. The result is sufficiently shown when we see so great a

man as Dryden pander to the lowest tastes, and guilty of obscenities of

which he was himself ashamed, which would be now inexcusable in the

lowest public haunts. The comedy, as it appears to us, must have been

written by blackguards for blackguards. When Congreve became Dryden's

heir he inherited the established tradition. Under the new order the

'town' had become supreme; and Congreve wrote to meet the taste of the

class which was gaining in self-respect and independence. He tells us in

the dedication of his best play, _The Way of the World_, that his taste

had been refined in the company of the Earl of Montagu. The claim is no

doubt justifiable. So Horace Walpole remarks that Vanbrugh wrote so well

because he was familiar with the conversation of the best circles. The

social influences were favourable to the undeniable literary merits, to

the force and point in which Congreve's dialogue is still superior to

that of any English rival, the vigour of Vanbrugh and the vivacity of

their chief ally, Farquhar. Moreover, although their moral code is

anything but strict, these writers did not descend to some of the depths

often sounded by Dryden and Wycherly. The new spirit might seem to be

passing on with more literary vitality into the old forms. And yet the

consequence, or certainly the sequel to Collier's attack, was the decay

of the stage in every sense, from which there was no recovery till the

time of Goldsmith and Sheridan.

This is the phenomenon which we have to consider;--let us listen for a

moment to the 'distinguished critics' who have denounced or defended the

comedy of the time. Macaulay gives as a test of the morality of the

Restoration stage that on it, for the first time, marriage becomes the

topic of ridicule. We are supposed to sympathise with the adulterer, not

with the deceived husband--a fault, he says, which stains no play

written before the Civil War. Addison had already suggested this test in

the _Spectator_, and proceeds to lament that 'the multitudes are shut

out from this noble "diversion" by the immorality of the lessons

inculcated.' Lamb, indulging in ingenious paradox, admires Congreve for

'excluding from his scenes (with one exception) any pretensions to

goodness or good feeling whatever.' Congreve, he says, spreads a

'privation of moral light' over his characters, and therefore we can

admire them without compunction. We are in an artificial world where we

can drop our moral prejudices for the time being. Hazlitt more daringly

takes a different position and asserts that one of Wycherly's coarsest

plays is 'worth ten sermons'--which perhaps does not imply with him any

high estimate of moral efficacy. There is, however, this much of truth,

I take it, in Hazlitt's contention. Lamb's theory of the non-morality of

the dramatic world will not stand examination. The comedy was in one

sense thoroughly 'realistic'; and I am inclined to say, that in that lay

its chief merit. There is some value in any truthful representation,

even of vice and brutality. There would certainly be no difficulty in

finding flesh and blood originals for the rakes and the fine ladies in

the memoirs of Grammont or the diaries of Pepys. The moral atmosphere is

precisely that of the dissolute court of Charles II., and the 'privation

of moral light' required is a delicate way of expressing its

characteristic feeling. In the worst performances we have not got to any

unreal region, but are breathing for the time the atmosphere of the

lowest resorts, where reference to pure or generous sentiment would

undoubtedly have been received with a guffaw, and coarse cynicism be

regarded as the only form of comic insight. At any rate the audiences

for which Congreve wrote had just so much of the old leaven that we can

quite understand why they were regarded as wicked by a majority of the

middle classes. The doctrine that all playgoing was wicked was naturally

confirmed, and the dramatists retorted by ridiculing all that their

enemies thought respectable. Congreve was, I fancy, a man of better

morality than his characters, only forced to pander to the tastes of the

rake who had composed the dominant element of his audience. He writes

not for mere blackguards, but for the fine gentleman, who affects

premature knowledge of the world, professes to be more cynical than he

really is, and shows his acuteness by deriding hypocrisy and pharisaic

humbug in every claim to virtue. He dwells upon the seamy side of life,

and if critics, attracted by his undeniable brilliance, have found his

heroines charming, to me it seems that they are the kind of young women

whom, if I adopted his moral code, I should think most desirable

wives--for my friends.

Though realistic in one sense, we may grant to Lamb that such comedy

becomes 'artificial,' and so far Lamb is right, because it supposes a

state of things such as happily was abnormal except in a small circle.

The plots have to be made up of impossible intrigues, and imply a

distorted theory of life. Marriage after all is not really ridiculous,

and to see it continuously from this point of view is to have a false

picture of realities. Life is not made up of dodges worthy of

cardsharpers--and the whole mechanism becomes silly and disgusting. If

comedy is to represent a full and fair portrait of life, the dramatist

ought surely, in spite of Lamb, to find some space for generous and

refined feeling. There, indeed, is a difficulty. The easiest way to be

witty is to be cynical. It is difficult, though desirable, to combine

good feeling with the comic spirit. The humourist has to expose the

contrasts of life, to unmask hypocrisy, and to show selfishness lurking

under multitudinous disguises. That, on Hazlitt's showing, was the

preaching of Wycherly. I can't think that it was the impression made

upon Wycherly's readers. Such comedy may be taken as satire; which was

the excuse that Fielding afterwards made for his own performances. But I

cannot believe that the actual audiences went to see vice exposed, or

used Lamb's ingenious device of disbelieving in the reality. They simply

liked brutal and immoral sentiment, spiced, if possible, with art. We

may inquire whether there may not be a comedy which is enjoyable by the

refined and virtuous, and in which the intrusion of good feeling does

not jar upon us as a discord. An answer may be suggested by pointing to

Molière, and has been admirably set forth in Mr. George Meredith's essay

on the 'Comic Spirit.' There are, after all, ridiculous things in the

world, even from the refined and virtuous point of view. The saint, it

is true, is apt to lose his temper and become too serious for such a

treatment of life-problems. Still the sane intellect which sees things

as they are can find a sphere within which it is fair and possible to

apply ridicule to affectation and even to vice, and without simply

taking the seat of the scorner or substituting a coarse laugh for a

delicate smile. A hearty laugh, let us hope, is possible even for a

fairly good man. Mr. Meredith's essay indicates the conditions under

which the artist may appeal to such a cultivated and refined humour. The

higher comedy, he says, can only be the fruit of a polished society

which can supply both the model and the audience. Where the art of

social intercourse has been carried to a high pitch, where men have

learned to be at once courteous and incisive, to admire urbanity, and

therefore really good feeling, and to take a true estimate of the real

values of life, a high comedy which can produce irony without

coarseness, expose shams without advocating brutality, becomes for the

first time possible. It must be admitted that the condition is also very

rarely fulfilled.

This, I take it, is the real difficulty. The desirable thing, one may

say, would have been to introduce a more refined and human art and to

get rid of the coarser elements. The excellent Steele tried the

experiment. But he had still to work upon the old lines, which would not

lend themselves to the new purpose. His passages of moral exhortation

would not supply the salt of the old cynical brutalities; they had a

painful tendency to become insipid and sentimental, if not maudlin; and

only illustrated the difficulty of using a literary tradition which

developed spontaneously for one purpose to adapt itself to a wholly

different aim. He produced at best not a new genus but an awkward

hybrid. But behind this was the greater difficulty that a superior

literature would have required a social elaboration, the growth of a

class which could appreciate and present appropriate types. Now even the

good society for which Congreve wrote had its merits, but certainly its

refinement left much to be desired. One condition, as Mr. Meredith again

remarks, of the finer comedy is such an equality of the sexes as may

admit the refining influence of women. The women of the Restoration time

hardly exerted a refining influence. They adopted the ingenious

compromise of going to the play, but going in masks. That is, they

tacitly implied that the brutality was necessary, and they submitted to

what they could not openly approve. Throughout the eighteenth century a

contempt for women was still too characteristic of the aristocratic

character. Nor was there any marked improvement in the tastes of the

playgoing classes. The plays denounced by Collier continued to hold the

stage, though more or less expurgated, throughout the century. Comedy

did not become decent. In 1729 Arthur Bedford carried on Collier's

assault in a 'Remonstrance against the horrid blasphemies and

improprieties which are still used in the English playhouses,' and

collected seven thousand immoral sentiments from the plays (chiefly) of

the last four years. I have not verified his statements. The inference,

however, seems to be clear. Collier's attack could not reform the

stage. The evolution took the form of degeneration. He could, indeed,

give utterance to the disapproval of the stage in general, which we call

Puritanical, though it was by no means confined to Puritans or even to

Protestants. Bossuet could denounce the stage as well as Collier.

Collier was himself a Tory and a High Churchman, as was William Law, of

the _Serious Call_, who also denounced the stage. The sentiment was, in

fact, that of the respectable middle classes in general. The effect was

to strengthen the prejudice which held that playgoing was immoral in

itself, and that an actor deserved to be treated as a 'vagrant'--the

class to which he legally belonged. During the next half-century, at

least, that was the prevailing opinion among the solid middle-class

section of society.

The denunciations of Collier and his allies certainly effected a reform,

but at a heavy price. They did not elevate the stage or create a better

type, but encouraged old prejudices against the theatre generally; the

theatre was left more and more to a section of the 'town,' and to the

section which was not too particular about decency. When Congreve

retired, and Vanbrugh took to architecture, and Farquhar died, no

adequate successors appeared. The production of comedies was left to

inferior writers, to Mrs. Centlivre, and Colley Cibber, and Fielding in

his unripe days, and they were forced by the disfavour into which their

art had fallen to become less forcible rather than to become more

refined. When a preacher denounces the wicked, his sermons seem to be

thrown away because the wicked don't come to church. Collier could not

convert his antagonists; he could only make them more timid and careful

to avoid giving palpable offence. But he could express the growing

sentiment which made the drama an object of general suspicion and

dislike, and induced the ablest writers to turn to other methods for

winning the favour of a larger public.

The natural result, in fact, was the development of a new kind of

literature, which was the most characteristic innovation of the period.

The literary class of which I have hitherto spoken reflected the

opinions of the upper social stratum. Beneath it was the class generally

known as Grub Street. Grub Street had arisen at the time of the great

civil struggle. War naturally generates journalism; it had struggled on

through the Restoration and taken a fresh start at the Revolution and

the final disappearance of the licensing system. The daily

newspaper--meaning a small sheet written by a single author (editors as

yet were not)--appeared at the opening of the eighteenth century. Now

for Grub Street the wit of the higher class had nothing but dislike. The

'hackney author,' as Dunton called him, in his curious _Life and

Errors_, was a mere huckster, who could scarcely be said as yet to

belong to a profession. A Tutchin or Defoe might be pilloried, or

flogged, or lose his ears, without causing a touch of compassion from

men like Swift, who would have disdained to call themselves brother

authors. Yet politicians were finding him useful. He was the victim of

one party, and might be bribed or employed as a spy by the other. The

history of Defoe and his painful struggles between his conscience and

his need of living, sufficiently indicates the result; Charles Leslie,

the gallant nonjuror, for example, or Abel Boyer, the industrious

annalist, or the laborious but cantankerous Oldmixon, were keeping their

heads above water by journalism, almost exclusively, of course,

political. Defoe showed a genius for the art, and his mastery of

vigorous vernacular was hardly rivalled until the time of Paine and

Cobbett. At any rate, it was plain that a market was now arising for

periodical literature which might give a scanty support to a class below

the seat of patrons. It was at this point that the versatile,

speculative, and impecunious Steele hit upon his famous discovery. The

aim of the _Tatler_, started in April 1709, was marked out with great

accuracy from the first. Its purpose is to contain discourses upon all

manner of topics--_quicquid agunt homines_, as his first motto put

it--which had been inadequately treated in the daily papers. It is

supposed to be written in the various coffee-houses, and it is suited to

all classes, even including women, whose taste, he observes, is to be

caught by the title. The _Tatler_, as we know, led to the _Spectator_,

and Addison's co-operation, cordially acknowledged by his friend, was a

main cause of its unprecedented success. The _Spectator_ became the

model for at least three generations of writers. The number of

imitations is countless: Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith, and many men of

less fame tried to repeat the success; persons of quality, such as

Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, condescended to write papers for the

_World_--the 'Bow of Ulysses,' as it was called, in which they could

test their strength. Even in the nineteenth century Hazlitt and Leigh

Hunt carried on the form; as indeed, in a modified shape, many later

essayists have aimed at a substantially similar achievement. To have

contributed three or four articles was, as in the case of the excellent

Henry Grove (a name, of course, familiar to all of you), to have

graduated with honours in literature. Johnson exhorted the literary

aspirant to give his days and nights to the study of Addison; and the

_Spectator_ was the most indispensable set of volumes upon the shelves

of every library where the young ladies described by Miss Burney and

Miss Austen were permitted to indulge a growing taste for literature. I

fear that young people of the present day discover, if they try the

experiment, that their curiosity is easily satisfied. This singular

success, however, shows that the new form satisfied a real need.

Addison's genius must, of course, count for much in the immediate

result; but it was plainly a case where genius takes up the function for

which it is best suited, and in which it is most fully recognised. When

we read him now we are struck by one fact. He claims in the name of the

_Spectator_ to be a censor of manners and morals; and though he veils

his pretensions under delicate irony, the claim is perfectly serious at

bottom. He is really seeking to improve and educate his readers. He

aims his gentle ridicule at social affectations and frivolities; and

sometimes, though avoiding ponderous satire, at the grosser forms of

vice. He is not afraid of laying down an æsthetic theory. In a once

famous series of papers on the Imagination, he speaks with all the

authority of a recognised critic in discussing the merits of Chevy Chase

or of _Paradise Lost_; and in a series of Saturday papers he preaches

lay-sermons--which were probably preferred by many readers to the

official discourses of the following day. They contain those striking

poems (too few) which led Thackeray to say that he could hardly fancy a

'human intellect thrilling with a purer love and admiration than Joseph

Addison's.' Now, spite of the real charm which every lover of delicate

humour and exquisite urbanity must find in Addison, I fancy that the

_Spectator_ has come to mean for us chiefly Sir Roger de Coverley. It is

curious, and perhaps painful, to note how very small a proportion of the

whole is devoted to that most admirable achievement; and to reflect how

little life there is in much that in kindness of feeling and grace of

style is equally charming. One cause is obvious. When Addison talks of

psychology or æsthetics or ethics (not to speak of his criticism of

epic poetry or the drama), he must of course be obsolete in substance;

but, moreover, he is obviously superficial. A man who would speak upon

such topics now must be a grave philosopher, who has digested libraries

of philosophy. Addison, of course, is the most modest of men; he has not

the slightest suspicion that he is going beyond his tether; and that is

just what makes his unconscious audacity remarkable. He fully shares the

characteristic belief of the day, that the abstract problems are soluble

by common sense, when polished by academic culture and aided by a fine

taste. It is a case of _sancta simplicitas_; of the charming, because

perfectly unconscious, self-sufficiency with which the Wit, rejecting

pedantry as the source of all evil, thinks himself obviously entitled to

lay down the law as theologian, politician, and philosopher. His

audience are evidently ready to accept him as an authority, and are

flattered by being treated as capable of reason, not offended by any

assumption of their intellectual inferiority.

With whatever shortcomings, Addison, and in their degree Steele and his

other followers, represent the stage at which the literary organ begins

to be influenced by the demands of a new class of readers. Addison

feels the dignity of his vocation and has a certain air of gentle

condescension, especially when addressing ladies who cannot even

translate his mottoes. He is a genuine prophet of what we now describe

as Culture, and his exquisite urbanity and delicacy qualify him to be a

worthy expositor of the doctrines, though his outlook is necessarily

limited. He is therefore implicitly trying to solve the problem which

could not be adequately dealt with on the stage; to set forth a view of

the world and human nature which shall be thoroughly refined and noble,

and yet imply a full appreciation of the humorous aspects of life. The

inimitable Sir Roger embodies the true comic spirit; though Addison's

own attempt at comedy was not successful.

One obvious characteristic of this generation is the didacticism which

is apt to worry us. Poets, as well as philosophers and preachers, are

terribly argumentative. Fielding's remark (through Parson Adams), that

some things in Steele's comedies are almost as good as a sermon, applies

to a much wider range of literature. One is tempted by way of

explanation to ascribe this to a primitive and ultimate instinct of the

race. Englishmen--including of course Scotsmen--have a passion for

sermons, even when they are half ashamed of it; and the British Essay,

which flourished so long, was in fact a lay sermon. We must briefly

notice that the particular form of this didactic tendency is a natural

expression of the contemporary rationalism. The metaphysician of the

time identifies emotions and passions with intellectual affirmations,

and all action is a product of logic. In any case we have to do with a

period in which the old concrete imagery has lost its hold upon the more

intelligent classes, and instead of an imaginative symbolism we have a

system of abstract reasoning. Diagrams take the place of concrete

pictures: and instead of a Milton justifying the ways of Providence by

the revealed history, we have a Blackmore arguing with Lucretius, and

are soon to have a Pope expounding a metaphysical system in the _Essay

on Man_. Sir Roger represents a happy exception to this method and

points to the new development. Addison is anticipating the method of

later novelists, who incarnate their ideals in flesh and blood. This,

and the minor character sketches which are introduced incidentally,

imply a feeling after a less didactic method. As yet the sermon is in

the foreground, and the characters are dismissed as soon as they have

illustrated the preacher's doctrine. Such a method was congenial to the

Wit. He was, or aspired to be, a keen man of the world; deeply

interested in the characteristics of the new social order; in the

eccentricities displayed at clubs, or on the Stock Exchange, or in the

political struggles; he is putting in shape the practical philosophy

implied in the conversations at clubs and coffee-houses; he delights in

discussing such psychological problems as were suggested by the worldly

wisdom of Rochefoucauld, and he appreciates clever character sketches

such as those of La Bruyére. Both writers were favourites in England.

But he has become heartily tired of the old romance, and has not yet

discovered how to combine the interest of direct observation of man with

a thoroughly concrete form of presentation.

The periodical essay represents the most successful innovation of the

day; and, as I have suggested, because it represents the mode by which

the most cultivated writer could be brought into effective relation with

the genuine interests of the largest audience. Other writers used it

less skilfully, or had other ways of delivering their message to

mankind. Swift, for example, had already shown his peculiar vein. He

gives a different, though equally characteristic, side of the

intellectual attitude of the Wit. In the _Battle of the Books_ he had

assumed the pedantry of the scholar; in the _Tale of a Tub_ with amazing

audacity he fell foul of the pedantry of divines. His blows, as it

seemed to the Archbishops, struck theology in general; he put that right

by pouring out scorn upon Deists and all who were silly enough to

believe that the vulgar could reason; and then in his first political

writings began to expose the corrupt and selfish nature of

politicians--though at present only of Whig politicians. Swift is one of

the most impressive of all literary figures, and I will not even touch

upon his personal peculiarities. I will only remark that in one respect

he agrees with his friend Addison. He emphasises, of course, the aspect

over which Addison passes lightly; he scorns fools too heartily to treat

them tenderly and do justice to the pathetic side of even human folly.

But he too believes in culture--though he may despair of its

dissemination. He did his best, during his brief period of power, to

direct patronage towards men of letters, even to Whigs; and tried,

happily without success, to found an English Academy. His zeal was

genuine, though it expressed itself by scorn for dunces and hostility to

Grub Street. He illustrates one little peculiarity of the Wit. In the

society of the clubs there was a natural tendency to form minor cliques

of the truly initiated, who looked with sovereign contempt upon the

hackney author. One little indication is the love of mystifications, or

what were entitled 'bites.' All the Wits, as we know, combined to tease

the unlucky fortune-teller, Partridge, and to maintain that their

prediction of his death had been verified, though he absurdly pretended

to be still alive. So Swift tells us in the journal to Stella how he had

circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming to life again,

and how footmen are sent out to inquire into its success. He made a hit

by writing a sham account of Prior's mission to Paris supposed to come

from a French valet. The inner circle chuckled over such performances,

which would be impossible when their monopoly of information had been

broken up. A similar satisfaction was given by the various burlesques

and more or less ingenious fables which were to be fully appreciated by

the inner circle; such as the tasteless narrative of Dennis's frenzy by

which Pope professed to be punishing his victim for an attack upon

Addison: or to such squibs as Arbuthnot's _John Bull_--a parable which

gives the Tory view in a form fitted for the intelligent. The Wits, that

is, form an inner circle, who like to speak with an affectation of

obscurity even if the meaning be tolerably transparent, and show that

they are behind the scenes by occasionally circulating bits of sham

news. They like to form a kind of select upper stratum, which most fully

believes in its own intellectual eminence, and shows a contempt for its

inferiors by burlesque and rough sarcasm.

It is not difficult (especially when we know the result) to guess at the

canons of taste which will pass muster in such regions. Enthusiastical

politicians of recent days have been much given to denouncing modern

clubs, where everybody is a cynic and unable to appreciate the great

ideas which stir the masses. It may be so; my own acquaintance with club

life, though not very extensive, does not convince me that every member

of a London club is a Mephistopheles; but I will admit that a certain

excess of hard worldly wisdom may be generated in such resorts; and we

find many conspicuous traces of that tendency in the clubs of Queen

Anne's reign. Few of them have Addison's gentleness or his perception of

the finer side of human nature. It was by a rare combination of

qualities that he was enabled to write like an accomplished man of the

world, and yet to introduce the emotional element without any jarring

discord. The literary reformers of a later day denounce the men of this

period as 'artificial'! a phrase the antithesis of which is 'natural.'

Without asking at present what is meant by the implied distinction--an

inquiry which is beset by whole systems of equivocations--I may just

observe that in this generation the appeal to Nature was as common and

emphatic as in any later time. The leaders of thought believe in reason,

and reason sets forth the Religion of Nature and assumes that the Law of

Nature is the basis of political theory. The corresponding literary

theory is that Art must be subordinate to Nature. The critics' rules, as

Pope says in the poem which most fully expresses the general doctrine,

'Are Nature still, but Nature methodised;

Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained

By the same laws which first herself ordained.'

The Nature thus 'methodised' was the nature of the Wit himself; the set

of instincts and prejudices which to him seemed to be so normal that

they must be natural. Their standards of taste, if artificial to us,

were spontaneous, not fictitious; the Wits were not wearing a mask, but

were exhibiting their genuine selves with perfect simplicity. Now one

characteristic of the Wit is always a fear of ridicule. Above all things

he dreads making a fool of himself. The old lyric, for example, which

came so spontaneously to the Elizabethan poet or dramatist, and of which

echoes are still to be found in the Restoration, has decayed, or rather,

has been transformed. When you have written a genuine bit of

love-poetry, the last place, I take it, in which you think of seeking

the applause of a congenial audience, would be the smoking-room of your

club: but that is the nearest approach to the critical tribunal of Queen

Anne's day. It is necessary to smuggle in poetry and passion in

disguise, and conciliate possible laughter by stating plainly that you

anticipate the ridicule yourself. In other words you write society

verses like Prior, temper sentiment by wit, and if you do not express

vehement passion, turn out elegant verses, salted by an irony which is

a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had

become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become

extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in

versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously,

Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for

his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the

form by introducing real rustics and turning it into a burlesque. Then,

as Johnson puts it, the 'effect of reality and truth became conspicuous,

even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' _The

Rape of the Lock_ is the masterpiece, as often noticed, of an

unconscious allegory. The sylph, who was introduced with such curious

felicity, is to be punished if he fails to do his duty, by imprisonment

in a lady's toilet apparatus.

'Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,

While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain.'

Delicate fancy and real poetical fancy may be turned to account; but

under the mask of the mock-heroic. We can be poetical still, it seems to

say, only we must never forget that to be poetical in deadly earnest is

to run the risk of being absurd. Even a Wit is pacified when he is thus

dexterously coaxed into poetry disguised as mere playful exaggeration,

and feels quite safe in following the fortune of a game of cards in

place of a sanguinary Homeric battle. Ariel is still alive, but he

adopts the costume of the period to apologise for his eccentricities.

Poetry thus understood may either give a charm to the trivial or fall

into mere burlesque; and though Pope's achievement is an undeniable

triumph, there are blots in an otherwise wonderful performance which

show an uncomfortable concession to the coarser tastes of his audience.

I will not dwell further upon a tolerably obvious theme. I must pass to

the more serious literature. The Wit had not the smallest notion that

his attitude disqualified him for succession in the loftiest poetical

endeavour. He thinks that his critical keenness will enable him to

surpass the old models. He wishes, in the familiar phrase, to be

'correct'; to avoid the gross faults of taste which disfigured the old

Gothic barbarism of his forefathers. That for him is the very meaning of

reason and nature. He will write tragedies which must get rid of the

brutalities, the extravagance, the audacious mixture of farce and

tragedy which was still attractive to the vulgar. He has, indeed, a kind

of lurking regard for the rough vigour of the Shakespearian epoch; his

patriotic prejudices pluck at him at intervals, and suggest that

Marlborough's countrymen ought not quite to accept the yoke of the

French Academy. When Ambrose Phillips produced the _Distrest

Mother_--adapted from Racine--all Addison's little society was

enthusiastic. Steele stated in the Prologue that the play was meant to

combine French correctness with British force, and praised it in the

_Spectator_ because it was 'everywhere Nature.' The town, he pointed

out, would be able to admire the passions 'within the rules of decency,

honour, and good breeding.' The performance was soon followed by _Cato_,

unquestionably, as Johnson still declares, 'the noblest production of

Addison's genius.' It presents at any rate the closest conformity to the

French model; and falls into comic results, as old Dennis pointed out,

from the so-called Unity of Place, and consequent necessity of

transacting all manner of affairs, love-making to Cato's daughter, and

conspiring against Cato himself, in Cato's own hall. Such tragedy,

however, refused to take root. Cato, as I think no one can deny, is a

good specimen of Addison's style, but, except a few proverbial phrases,

it is dead. The obvious cause, no doubt, is that the British public

liked to see battle, murder, and sudden death, and, in spite of

Addison's arguments, enjoyed a mixture of tragic and comic. Shakespeare,

though not yet an idol, had still a hold upon the stage, and was

beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of

commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign

model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to

moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes

'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong,

that a tragedy ought to be a work of art. The artist must observe

certain rules; though I need not ask whether he was right in thinking

that these rules were represented by the accepted interpreters of the

teaching of Nature. What he did not perceive was that another essential

condition was absent; namely, that the tragic mood should correspond to

his own 'nature.' The tragic art can, like other arts, only flourish

when it embodies spontaneously the emotions and convictions of the

spectators; when the dramatist is satisfying a genuine demand, and is

himself ready to see in human life the conflict of great passions and

the scene of impressive catastrophes. Then the theatre becomes naturally

the mirror upon which the imagery can be projected. But the society to

which Addison and his fellows belonged was a society of good,

commonplace, sensible people, who were fighting each other by pamphlets

instead of by swords; who played a game in which they staked not life

and death but a comfortable competency; who did not even cut off the

head of a fallen minister, who no longer believed in great statesmen of

heroic proportions rising above the vulgar herd; and who had a very

hearty contempt for romantic extravagance. A society in which common

sense is regarded as the cardinal intellectual virtue does not naturally

suggest the great tragic themes. Cato is obviously contrived, not

inspired; and the dramatist is thinking of obeying the rules of good

taste, instead of having them already incorporated in his thought. This

comes out in one chief monument in the literary movement, I mean Pope's

_Homer_. Pope, as we know, made himself independent by that performance.

The method of publication is significant. He had no interest in the

general sale, which was large enough to make his publisher's fortune.

The publisher meanwhile supplied him gratuitously with the copies for

which the subscribers paid him six guineas apiece. That means that he

received a kind of commission from the upper class to execute the

translation. The list of his subscribers seems to be almost a directory

to the upper circle of the day; every person of quality has felt himself

bound to promote so laudable an undertaking; the patron had been

superseded by a kind of joint-stock body of collective patronage. The

Duke of Buckingham, one of its accepted mouthpieces, had said in verse

in his _Essay on Poetry_ that if you once read Homer, everything else

will be 'mean and poor.'

Verse will seem prose; yet often in him look

And you will hardly need another book.'

That was the correct profession of faith. Yet as a good many Wits found

Greek an obstacle, a translation was needed. Chapman had become

barbarous; Hobbes and Ogilvie were hopelessly flat; and Pope was

therefore handsomely paid to produce a book which was to be the standard

of the poetical taste. Pope was thus the chosen representative of the

literary spirit. It is needless to point out that Pope's _Iliad_ is not

Homer's. That was admitted from the first. When we read in a speech of

Agamemnon exhorting the Greeks to abandon the siege,

'Love, duty, safety summon us away;

'Tis Nature's voice, and Nature we obey,'

we hardly require to be told that we are not listening to Homer's

Agamemnon but to an Agamemnon in a full-bottomed wig. Yet Pope's Homer

had a success unparalleled by any other translation of profane poetry;

for the rest of the century it was taken to be a masterpiece; it has

been the book from which Byron and many clever lads first learned to

enjoy what they at least took for Homer; and, as Mrs. Gallup has

discovered, it was used by Bacon at the beginning of the seventeenth

century, and by somebody at the beginning of the twentieth. That it has

very high literary merits can, I think, be denied by no unprejudiced

reader, but I have only to do with one point. Pope had the advantage--I

take it to be an advantage--of having a certain style prescribed for him

by the literary tradition inherited from Dryden. A certain diction and

measure had to be adopted, and the language to be run into an accepted

mould. The mould was no doubt conventional, and corresponded to a

temporary phase of sentiment. Like the costume of the period, it strikes

us now as 'artificial' because it was at the time so natural. It was

worked out by the courtly and aristocratic class, and was fitted to give

a certain dignity and lucidity, and to guard against mere greatness and

triviality of utterance. At any rate it saved Pope from one enormous

difficulty. The modern translator is aware that Homer lived a long time

ago in a very different state of intellectual and social development,

and yet feels bound to reproduce the impressions made upon the ancient

Greek. The translator has to be an accurate scholar and to give the

right shade of meaning for every phrase, while he has also to

approximate to the metrical effect. The conclusion seems to be that the

only language into which Homer could be adequately translated would be

Greek, and that you must then use the words of the original. The actual

result is that the translator is cramped by his fetters; that his use of

archaic words savours of affectation, and that, at best, he has to

emphasise the fact that his sentiments are fictitious. Pope had no

trouble of that kind. He aims at giving something equivalent to Homer,

not Homer himself, and therefore at something really practical. He has

the same advantage as a man who accepts a living style of architecture

or painting; he can exert all his powers of forcible expression in a

form which will be thoroughly understood by his audience, and which

saves him, though at a certain cost, from the difficulties of trying to

reproduce the characteristics which are really incongruous.

There are disadvantages. In his time the learned M. Bossu was the

accepted authority upon the canons of criticism. Buckingham says he had

explained the 'mighty magic' of Homer. One doctrine of his was that an

epic poet first thinks of a moral and then invents a fable to illustrate

it. The theory struck Addison as a little overstated, but it is an

exaggeration of the prevalent view. According to Pope Homer's great

merit was his 'invention'--and by this he sometimes appears to imply

that Homer had even invented the epic poem. Poetry was, it seems, at a

'low pitch' in Greece in Homer's time, as indeed were other arts and

sciences. Homer, wishing to instruct his countrymen in all kinds of

topics, devised the epic poem: made use of the popular mythology to

supply what in the technical language was called his 'machinery';

converted the legends into philosophical allegory, and introduced

'strokes of knowledge from his whole circle of arts and sciences.' This

'circle' includes for example geography, rhetoric, and history; and the

whole poem is intended to inculcate the political moral that many evils

sprang from the want of union among the Greeks. Not a doubt of it! Homer

was in the sphere of poetry what Lycurgus was supposed to be in the

field of legislation. He had at a single bound created poetry and made

it a vehicle of philosophy, politics, and ethics. Upon this showing the

epic poem is a form of art which does not grow out of the historical

conditions of the period; but it is a permanent form of art, as good for

the eighteenth century as for the heroic age of Greece; it may be

adopted as a model, only requiring certain additional ornaments and

refinements to adapt it to the taste of a more enlightened period. Yet,

at the same time, Pope could clearly perceive some of the absurd

consequences of M. Bossu's view. He ridiculed that authority very keenly

in the 'Recipe to make an Epic Poem' which first appeared in the

_Guardian_, while he was at work upon his own translation. Bossu's

rules, he says, will enable us to make epic poems without genius or

reading; and he proceeds to show how you are to work your 'machines,'

and introduce your allegories and descriptions, and extract your moral

out of the fable at leisure, 'only making it sure that you strain it

sufficiently.'

That was the point. The enlightened critic sees that the work of art

embodies certain abstract rules; which may, and probably will--if he be

a man of powerful intellectual power, be rational, and suggest

instructive canons. But, as Pope sees, it does not follow that the

inverse process is feasible; that is, that you construct your poem

simply by applying the rules. To be a good cricketer you must apply

certain rules of dynamics; but it does not follow that a sound knowledge

of dynamics will enable you to play good cricket. Pope sees that

something more than an acceptance of M. Bossu's or Aristotle's canons is

requisite for the writer of a good epic poem. The something more,

according to him, appears to be learning and genius. It is certainly

true that at least genius must be one requisite. But then, there is the

further point. Will the epic poem, which was the product of certain

remote social and intellectual conditions, serve to express the thoughts

and emotions of a totally different age? Considering the difference

between Achilles and Marlborough, or the bards of the heroic age and the

wits who frequented clubs and coffee-houses under Queen Anne, it was at

least important to ask whether Homer and Pope--taking them to be alike

in genius--would not find it necessary to adopt radically different

forms. That is for us so obvious a suggestion that one wonders at the

tacit assumption of its irrelevance. Pope, indeed, by taking the _Iliad_

for a framework, a ready-made fabric which he could embroider with his

own tastes, managed to construct a singularly spirited work, full of

good rhetoric and not infrequently rising to real poetical excellence.

But it did not follow that an original production on the same lines

would have been possible. Some years later, Young complained of Pope for

being imitative, and said that if he had dared to be original, he might

have produced a modern epic as good as the _Iliad_ instead of a mere

translation. That is not quite credible. Pope himself tried an epic poem

too, which happily came to nothing; but a similar ambition led to such

works as Glover's _Leonidas_ and _The Epigoniad_ of the Scottish Homer

Wilkie. English poets as a rule seem to have suffered at some period of

their lives from this malady and contemplated Arthuriads; but the

constructional epic died, I take it, with Southey's respectable poems.

We may consider, then, that any literary form, the drama, the epic poem,

the essay, and so forth, is comparable to a species in natural history.

It has, one may say, a certain organic principle which determines the

possible modes of development. But the line along which it will actually

develop depends upon the character and constitution of the literary

class which turns it to account, for the utterance of its own ideas; and

depends also upon the correspondence of those ideas with the most vital

and powerful intellectual currents of the time. The literary class of

Queen Anne's day was admirably qualified for certain formations: the

Wits leading the 'town,' and forming a small circle accepting certain

canons of taste, could express with admirable clearness and honesty the

judgment of bright common sense; the ideas which commend themselves to

the man of the world, and to a rationalism which was the embodiment of

common sense. They produced a literature, which in virtue of its

sincerity and harmonious development within certain limits could pass

for some time as a golden age. The aversion to pedantry limited its

capacity for the highest poetical creation, and made the imagination

subservient to the prosaic understanding. The comedy had come to adapt

itself to the tastes of the class which, instead of representing the

national movement, was composed of the more disreputable part of the

town. The society unable to develop it in the direction of refinement

left it to second-rate writers. It became enervated instead of elevated.

The epic and the tragic poetry, ceasing to reflect the really powerful

impulses of the day, were left to the connoisseur and dilettante man of

taste, and though they could write with force and dignity when

renovating or imitating older masterpieces, such literature became

effete and hopelessly artificial. It was at best a display of technical

skill, and could not correspond to the strongest passions and conditions

of the time. The invention of the periodical essay, meanwhile, indicated

what was a condition of permanent vitality. There, at least, the Wit was

appealing to a wide and growing circle of readers, and could utter the

real living thoughts and impulses of the time. The problem for the

coming period was therefore marked out. The man of letters had to

develop a living literature by becoming a representative of the ideas

which really interested the whole cultivated classes, instead of writing

merely for the exquisite critic, or still less for the regenerating and

obnoxious section of society. That indeed, I take it, is the general

problem of literature; but I shall have to trace the way in which its

solution was attempted in the next period.