(1714-1739)
The death of Queen Anne opens a new period in the history of literature
and of politics. Under the first Georges we are in the very heart of the
eighteenth century; the century, as its enemies used to say, of coarse
utilitarian aims, of religious indifference and political corruption;
or, as I prefer to say, the century of sound common sense and growing
toleration, and of steady social and industrial development.
To us, to me at least, it presents something pleasant in retrospect.
There were then no troublesome people with philanthropic or political or
religious nostrums, proposing to turn the world upside down and
introduce an impromptu millennium. The history of periods when people
were cutting each other's throats for creeds is no doubt more exciting;
but we, who profess toleration, ought surely to remember that you
cannot have martyrs without bigots and persecutors; and that
fanaticism, though it may have its heroic aspects, has also a very ugly
side to it. At any rate, we who come after a century of revolutionary
changes, and are often told that the whole order of things may be upset
by some social earthquake, look back with regret to the days of quiet
solid progress, when everything seemed to have settled down to a quiet,
stable equilibrium. Wealth and comfort were growing--surely no bad
things; and John Bull--he had just received that name from
Arbuthnot--was waxing fat and complacently contemplating his own
admirable qualities. It is the period of the composition of 'Rule
Britannia' and 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' and of the settled
belief that your lusty, cudgel-playing, beer-drinking Briton was worth
three of the slaves who ate frogs and wore wooden shoes across the
Channel. The British constitution was the embodiment of perfect wisdom,
and, as such, was entitled to be the dread and envy of the world. To the
political historian it is the era of Walpole; the huge mass of solid
common sense, who combined the qualities of the sturdy country squire
and the thorough man of business; whose great aim was to preserve the
peace; to keep the country as much as might be out of the continental
troubles which it did not understand, and in which it had no concern;
and to carry on business upon sound commercial principles. It is of
course undeniable that his rule not only meant regard for the solid
material interests of the country, but too often appealed to the
interests of the ruling class. Philosophical historians who deal with
the might-have-been may argue that a man of higher character might have
worked by better means and have done something to purify the political
atmosphere. Walpole was not in advance of his day; but it is at least
too clear to need any exposition that under the circumstances corruption
was inevitable. When the House of Commons was the centre of political
authority, when so many boroughs were virtually private property, when
men were not stirred to the deeper issues by any great constitutional
struggle--party government had to be carried on by methods which
involved various degrees of jobbery and bribery. The disease was
certainly not peculiar to Walpole's age; though perhaps the symptoms
were more obvious and avowed more bluntly than usual. As Walpole's
masterful ways drove his old allies into opposition, they denounced the
system and himself; but unfortunately although they claimed to be
patriots and patterns of political virtue, they were made pretty much of
the same materials as the arch-corrupter. When the 'moneyed men,' upon
whom he had relied, came to be in favour of a warlike policy and were
roused by the story of Captain Jenkins' ear, Walpole fell, but no reign
of purity followed. The growing dissatisfaction, however, with the
Walpolean system implied some very serious conditions, and the cry
against corruption, in which nearly all the leading writers of the time
joined, had a very serious significance in literature and in the growth
of public opinion.
First, however, let me glance at the change as it immediately affected
the literary organ. The old club and coffee-house society broke up with
remarkable rapidity. While Oxford was sent to the Tower, and Bolingbroke
escaped to France, Swift retired to Dublin, and Prior, after being
imprisoned, passed the remainder of his life in retirement. Pope settled
down to translating Homer, and took up his abode at Twickenham, outside
the exciting and noisy London world in which the poor invalid had been
jostled. Addison soared into the loftier regions of politics and
married his Countess, and ceased to preside at Buttons'. Steele held on
for a time, but in declining prosperity and diminished literary
activity, till his retirement to Wales. No one appeared to fill the gaps
thus made in the ranks either of the Whigs' or the Tories' section of
literature. The change was obviously connected with the systematic
development of the party system. Swift bitterly denounced Walpole for
his indifference to literature! 'Bob the poet's foe' was guided by other
motives in disposing of his patronage. Places in the Customs were no
longer to be given to writers of plays or complimentary epistles in
verse, or even to promising young politicians, but to members of
parliament or the constituents in whom they were interested. The
placemen, who were denounced as one of the great abuses of the time,
were rewarded for voting power not for literary merit. The patron,
therefore, was disappearing; though one or two authors, such as Congreve
and Gay, might be still petted by the nobility; and Young somehow got a
pension out of Walpole, probably through Bubb Dodington, the very
questionable parson who still wished to be a Mæcenas. Meanwhile there
was a compensation. The bookseller was beginning to supersede the
patron. Tonson and Lintot were making fortunes; the first Longman was
founding the famous firm which still flourishes; and the career of the
disreputable and piratical Curll shows that at least the demand for
miscellaneous literature was growing. The anecdotes of the misery of
authors, of the translators who lay three in a bed in Curll's garret, of
Samuel Boyse, who had reduced his clothes to a single blanket, and
Savage sleeping on a bulk, are sometimes adduced to show that literature
was then specially depressed. But there never was a time when authors of
dissolute habits were not on the brink of starvation, and the
authorities of the Literary Fund could give us contemporary
illustrations of the fact. The real inference is, I take it, that the
demand which was springing up attracted a great many impecunious
persons, who became the drudges of the rising class of booksellers. No
doubt the journalist was often in a degrading position. The press was
active in all political struggles. The great men, Walpole, Bolingbroke,
and Pulteney, wrote pamphlets or contributed papers to the _Craftsman_,
while they employed inferior scribes to do the drudgery. Walpole paid
large sums to the 'Gazetters,' whom Pope denounces; and men like
Amherst of the _Craftsman_ or Gordon of the _Independent Whig_, carried
on the ordinary warfare. The author by profession was beginning to be
recognised. Thomson and Mallet came up from Scotland during this period
to throw themselves upon literature; Ralph, friend of Franklin and
collaborator of Fielding, came from New England; and Johnson was
attracted from the country to become a contributor to the _Gentleman's
Magazine_, started by Cave in 1731--an event which marked a new
development of periodical literature. Though no one would then advise a
young man who could do anything else to trust to authorship (it would be
rash to give such advice now) the new career was being opened. There
were hack authors of all varieties. The successful playwright gained a
real prize in the lottery; and translations, satires, and essays on the
_Spectator_ model enabled the poor drudge to make both ends meet, though
too often in bondage to his employer to be, as I take it, better off
than in the previous period, when the choice lay between risking the
pillory and selling yourself as a spy.
Before considering the effect produced under the changed conditions, I
must note briefly the intellectual position. The period was that of the
culmination of the deist controversy. In the previous period the
rationalism of which Locke was the mouthpiece represented the dominant
tendency. It was generally held on all sides that there was a religion
of nature, capable of purely rational demonstration. The problem
remained as to its relation to the revealed religion and the established
creed. Locke himself was a sincere Christian, though he reduced the
dogmatic element to a minimum. Some of his disciples, however, became
freethinkers in the technical sense, and held that revelation was
needless, and that in point of fact no supernatural revelation had been
made. The orthodox, on the other hand, while admitting or declaring that
faith should be founded on reason, and that reason could establish a
'religion of nature,' admitted in various ways that a supernatural
revelation was an essential corollary or a useful addition to the simple
rational doctrine. The controversies which arose upon this issue, after
being carried on very vigorously for a time, caused less interest as
time went on, and were beginning to die out at the end of this period.
It is often said in explanation that deism or the religion of nature, as
then understood, was too vague and colourless a system to have any
strong vitality. It faded into a few abstract logical propositions which
had no relation to fact, and led to the optimistic formula, 'Whatever
is, is right,' which could in the long-run satisfy no one with any
strong perception of the darker elements of the world and human nature.
This view may be emphasised by the most remarkable writings of the
period. Butler's _Analogy_ (1736) has been regarded by many even of his
strongest opponents as triumphant against the deistical optimism, and
certainly emphasises the side of things to which that optimism is blind.
Hume's _Treatise of Human Nature_, at the end of the period (1739),
uttered the sceptical revolution which destroys the base of the
deistical system. Another writer is notable: William Law's _Serious
Call_ is one of the books which has made a turning-point in many men's
lives. It specially affected Samuel Johnson and John Wesley, and many of
those who sympathised more or less with Wesley's movement. Law was
driven by his sense of the aspects of the rationalist theories to adopt
a different position. He became a follower of Behmen, and his mysticism
ended by repelling the thoroughly practical Wesley, as indeed mysticism
in general seems to be uncongenial to the English mind. Law's position
shows a difficulty which was felt by others. It means that while he
holds that religion must be in the highest sense 'reasonable' it cannot
be (as another author put it) 'founded upon argument.' Faith must be
identified with the inner light, the direct voice of God to man, which
appeals to the soul, and is not built upon syllogisms or allowed to
depend upon the result of historical criticism. This view, I need hardly
say, is opposed to the whole rationalist theory, whether of the deist or
the orthodox variety: it was so opposed that it could find scarcely any
sympathy at the time; and for that reason it indicates one
characteristic of the contemporary thought. To omit the mystical element
is to be cold and unsatisfactory in religious philosophy, and to be
radically prosaic and unpoetical in the sphere of literature. Englishmen
could never become mystics in the technical sense, but they were
beginning to be discontented with the bare logical system of the
religion of nature. They were ready for some utterance of the emotional
and imaginative element in religion and philosophy which was left out of
account by the wits and rationalists. I do not myself believe that the
intellectual weakness of abstract deism gives a sufficient explanation
of its decay. In fact, as accepted by Rousseau and by some of his
English followers, it could ally itself with the ardent revolutionary
enthusiasm which was to be the marked peculiarity of the latter part of
the century. We must add another consideration. Locke and his
contemporaries had laid down political and religious principles which,
if logically developed, would lead to the revolutionary doctrines of
1789. They did not develop them, and mainly, I take it, because the
practical application excited no strong feeling. The spark did not find
fuel ready to be lighted. The political and social conditions supply a
sufficient explanation of the indifference. People were practically
content with the existing order in Church and State. The deist
controversies did not reach the enormous majority of the nation, who
went quietly about their business in the old paths. The orthodox
themselves were so rationalistic in principle that the whole discussion
seemed to turn upon non-essential points. But moreover the Church was so
thoroughly subordinated to the laity; it was so much a part of the
regular comfortable system of things; so little able or inclined to set
up as an independent power claiming special authority and enforcing
discipline, that it excited no hostility. Parson and squire were part of
the regular system which could not be attacked without upsetting the
whole system; and there was as yet no general discontent with that
system, or, indeed, any disposition whatever to reconstruct the
machinery which was working so quietly and so thoroughly in accordance
with the dumb instincts of the overwhelming majority.
Now let us pass to the literary manifestation of this order. The
literary society, as it existed under Queen Anne, had been broken up;
two or three of the men who had already made their mark continued their
activity, especially Pope and Swift. Swift, however, was living apart
from the world, though he was still to come to the front on more than
one remarkable occasion. Pope, meanwhile, became the acknowledged
dictator. The literary movement may be called after Pope, as distinctly
as the political after Walpole. He established his dynasty so thoroughly
that in later days the attempt to upset him was regarded as a daring
revolution. What was Pope? Poet or not, for his title to the name has
been disputed, he had one power or weakness in which he has scarcely
been rivalled. No writer, that is, reflects so clearly and completely
the spirit of his own day. His want of originality means the extreme and
even morbid sensibility which enabled him to give the fullest utterance
to the ideas of his class, and of the nation, so far as the nation was
really represented by the class. But the literary class was going
through a process of differentiation, as the alliance of authors and
statesmen broke up. Pope represents mainly the aristocratic movement. He
had become independent--a fact of which he was a little too proud--and
moved on the most familiar terms with the great men of the age. The Tory
leaders were, of course, his special friends; but in later days he
became a friend of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and of the politicians
who broke off from Walpole; while even with Walpole he was on terms of
civility. His poems give a long catalogue of the great men of whose
intimacy he was so proud. Besides Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher,
and friend,' he counts up nearly all the great men of his time. Somers
and Halifax, and Granville and Congreve, Oxford and Atterbury, who had
encouraged his first efforts; Pulteney, Chesterfield, Argyll, Wyndham,
Cobham, Bathurst, Peterborough, Queensberry, who had become friends in
later years, receive the delicate compliments which imply his excusable
pride in their alliance. Pope, therefore, may be considered from one
point of view as the authorised interpreter of the upper circle, which
then took itself to embody the highest cultivation of the nation. We may
appreciate Pope's poetry by comparing it with an independent
manifestation of their morality. The most explicit summary of the
general tone of the class-morality may, I think, be gathered from
Chesterfield's _Letters_. Though written at a later period, they sum up
the lesson he has imbibed from his experience at this time. Chesterfield
was no mere fribble or rake. He was a singularly shrewd, impartial
observer of life, who had studied men at first hand as well as from
books. His letters deal with the problem: What are the conditions of
success in public life? He treats it in the method of Machiavelli; that
is to say, he inquires what actually succeeds, not what ought to
succeed. An answer to that question given by a man of great ability is
always worth studying. Even if it should appear that success in this
world is not always won by virtue, the fact should be recognised,
though we should get rid of the conclusion that virtue, when an
encumbrance to success, should be discarded. Chesterfield's answer,
however, is not simply cynical. His pupil is to study men and politics
thoroughly; to know the constitutions of all European states, to read
the history of modern times so far as it has a bearing upon business; to
be thoroughly well informed as to the aims of kings and courts; to
understand financial and diplomatic movements; briefly, as far as was
then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature
and appreciate art, though he was carefully to avoid the excess which
makes the pedant or the virtuoso. He was to cultivate a good style in
writing and speaking, and even to learn German. Chesterfield's prophecy
of a revolution in France (though, I fancy, a little overpraised) shows
at least that he was a serious observer of political phenomena. But
besides these solid attainments, the pupil, we know, is to study the
Graces. The excessive insistence upon this is partly due to the
peculiarities of his hearer and his own quaint illusion that the way to
put a man at his ease is to be constantly insisting upon his hopeless
awkwardness. The theory is pushed to excess when he says that
Marlborough and Pitt succeeded by the Graces, not by supreme business
capacity or force of character; and argues from recent examples that a
fool may succeed by dint of good manners, while a man of ability without
them must be a failure. The exaggeration illustrates the position. The
game of politics, that is, has become mainly personal. The diplomatist
must succeed by making himself popular in courts, and the politician by
winning popularity in the House of Commons. Social success--that is, the
power of making oneself agreeable to the ruling class--is the essential
pre-condition to all other success. The statesman does not make himself
known as the advocate of great principles when no great principles are
at stake, and the ablest man of business cannot turn his abilities to
account unless he commends himself to employers who themselves are too
good and great to be bothered with accounts. You must first of all be
acceptable to your environment; and the environment means the upper ten
thousand who virtually govern the world. The social qualities,
therefore, come into the foreground. Undoubtedly this implies a cynical
tone. You can't respect the victims of your cajolery. Chesterfield's
favourite author is Rochefoucauld of whom (not the Bible) his son is to
read a chapter every day. Men, that is, are selfish. Happily also they
are silly, and can be flattered into helping you, little as they may
care for you. 'Wriggle yourself into power' he says more than once. That
is especially true of women, of whom he always speaks with the true
aristocratic contempt. A man of sense will humour them and flatter them;
he will never consult them seriously, nor really trust them, but he will
make them believe that he does both. They are invaluable as tools,
though contemptible in themselves. This, of course, represents the tone
too characteristic of the epicurean British nobleman. Yet with all this
cynicism, Chesterfield's morality is perfectly genuine in its way. He
has the sense of honour and the patriotic feeling of his class. He has
the good nature which is compatible with, and even congenial to, a
certain cynicism. He is said to have achieved the very unusual success
of being an admirable Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In fact he had the
intellectual vigour which implies a real desire for good administration,
less perhaps from purely philanthropic motives than from respect for
efficiency.
'For forms of government let fools contest
Whate'er is best administered, is best,'
says Pope, and that was Chesterfield's view. Like Frederick of Prussia,
whom he admires above all rulers, he might not be over-scrupulous in his
policy, but wishes the machinery for which he is responsible to be in
thoroughly good working order. He most thoroughly sees the folly, if he
does not sufficiently despise the motives, of the lower order of
politicians to whom bribery and corruption represented the only
political forces worth notice. In practice he might be forced to use
such men, but he sees them to be contemptible, and appreciates the
mischiefs resulting from their rule.
The development of this morality in the aristocratic class, which was
still predominant although the growing importance of the House of
Commons was tending to shift the centre of political gravity to a lower
point, is, I think, sufficiently intelligible to be taken for granted.
Pope, I have said, represents the literary version. The problem, then,
is how this view of life is to be embodied in poetry. One answer is the
_Essay on Man_, in which Pope versified the deism which he learned from
Bolingbroke, and which was characteristic of the upper circle
generally. I need not speak of its shortcomings; didactic poetry of that
kind is dreary enough, and the smart couplets often offend one's taste.
I may say that here and there Pope manages to be really impressive, and
to utter sentiments which really ennobled the deist creed; the aversion
to narrow superstition; to the bigotry which 'dealt damnation round the
land'; and the conviction that the true religion must correspond to a
cosmopolitan humanity. I remember hearing Carlyle quote with admiration
the Universal Prayer--
'Father of all, in every age,
In every clime adored,
By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,'
and it is the worthy utterance of one good legacy which the deist
bequeathed to posterity. Pope himself was alarmed when he discovered
that he had slipped unawares into heterodoxy. His creed was not
congenial to the average mind, though it was to that of his immediate
circle. Meanwhile, his most characteristic and successful work was of a
different order. The answer, in fact, to the problem which I have just
stated, is that the only kind of poetry that was congenial to his
environment was satire--if satire can be called poetry. Pope's satires,
the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' the 'Epilogue,' and some of the 'Imitations
of Horace,' represent his best and most lasting achievement. There he
gives the fullest expression to the general sentiment in the most
appropriate form. His singular command of language, and, within his own
limits, of versification, was turned to account by conscientious and
unceasing labour in polishing his style. Particular passages, like the
famous satire upon Addison, have been slowly elaborated; he has brooded
over them for years; and, if the result of such methods is sometimes a
mosaic rather than a continuous current of discourse, the extraordinary
brilliance of some passages has made them permanently interesting and
enriched our literature with many proverbial phrases. The art was
naturally cultivated and its results appreciated in the circle formed by
such men as Congreve, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield and the like, by
whom witty conversation was cultivated as a fine art. Chesterfield tells
us that he never spoke without trying to express himself as well as
possible; and Pope carries out the principle in his poetry. The thorough
polish has preserved the numerous phrases, still familiar, which have
survived the general neglect of his work. Pope indeed manages to
introduce genuine poetry, as in his famous compliments or his passage
about his mother, in which we feel that he is really speaking from his
heart. But no doubt Atterbury gave him judicious (if not very Christian)
advice, when he told him to stick to the vein of the Addison verses. The
main topic of the satires is a denunciation of an age when, as he puts
it,
'Not to be corrupted is the shame.'
He ascribes his own indignation to the 'strong antipathy of good to
bad,' which is a satisfactory explanation to himself. But he was still
interpreting the general sentiment and expressing the general discontent
caused by the Walpole system. His friends, Bolingbroke and Wyndham, and
the whole opposition, partially recruited from Walpole's supporters,
were insisting upon the same theme. If, as I have said, some of them
were really sincere in recognising the evil, and, like Bolingbroke in
the _Patriot King_, trying to ascertain its source--we are troubled in
this even by the doubt as to whether they objected to corruption or only
to the corrupt influence of their antagonists. But Pope, as a poet,
living outside the political circle, can take the denunciations quite
seriously and be not only pointed but really dignified. He sincerely
believes that vice can be seriously discouraged by lashing at it with
epigrams. So far, he represented a general feeling of the literary
class, explained in various ways by such men as Thomson, Fielding,
Glover, and Johnson, who were, from very different points of view, in
opposition to Walpole. Satire can only flourish under some such
conditions as then existed. It supposes, among other things, the
existence of a small cultivated class, which will fully appreciate the
personalities, the dexterity of insinuation, and the cutting sarcasm
which gives the spice to much of Pope's satire. Young, a singularly
clever writer, was eclipsed by Pope because he kept to denoting general
types and was not intimate with the actors on the social stage. Johnson,
still more of an outsider, wrote a most effective and sonorous poem with
the help of Juvenal; but it becomes a moral disquisition upon human
nature which has not the special sting and sparkle of Pope. No later
satirist has approached Pope, and the art has now become obsolete, or is
adopted merely as a literary amusement. One obvious reason is the
absence of the peculiar social backing which composed Pope's audience
and supplied him with his readers.
The growing sense that there was something wrong about the political
system which Pope turned to account was significant of coming changes.
The impression that the evil was entirely due to Walpole personally was
one of the natural illusions of party warfare, and the disease was not
extirpated when the supposed cause was removed. The most memorable
embodiment of the sentiment was Swift. The concentrated scorn of
corruption in the _Drapier's Letters_ was followed by the intense
misanthropy of _Gulliver's Travels_. The singular way in which Swift
blends personal aversion with political conviction, and the strange
humour which conceals the misanthropist under a superficial playfulness,
veils to some extent his real aim. But Swift showed with unequalled
power and in an exaggerated form the conviction that there was something
wrong in the social order, which was suggested by the conditions of the
time and was to bear fruit in later days. Satire, however, is by its
nature negative; it does not present a positive ideal, and tends to
degenerate into mere hopeless pessimism. Lofty poetry can only spring
from some inner positive enthusiasm.
I turn to another characteristic of the literary movement. I have called
attention to the fact that while the Queen Anne writers were never tired
of appealing to nature, they came to be considered as prematurely
'artificial.' The commonest meaning of 'natural' is that in which it is
identified with 'normal,' We call a thing natural when its existence
appears to us to be a matter of course, which again may simply mean that
we are so accustomed to certain conditions that we do not remember that
they are really exceptional. We take ourselves with all our
peculiarities to be the 'natural' type or standard. An English traveller
in France remarked that it was unnatural for soldiers to be dressed in
blue; and then, remembering certain British cases, added, 'except,
indeed, for the Artillery or the Blue Horse.' The English model, with
all its variations, appeared to him to be ordained by Nature. This
unconscious method of usurping a general name so as to cover a general
meaning produces many fallacies. In any case, however, it was of the
essence of Pope's doctrine that we should, as he puts it, 'Look through
Nature up to Nature's God.' God, that is, is known through Nature, if it
would not be more correct to say that God and Nature are identical. This
Nature often means the world as not modified by human action, and
therefore sharing the divine workmanship unspoilt by man's interference.
Thus in the common phrase, the 'love of Nature' is generally taken to
mean the love of natural scenery, of sea and sky and mountains, which
are not altered or alterable by any human art. Yet it is said the want
of any such love describes one of the most obvious deficiencies in
Pope's poetry, of which Wordsworth so often complained. His famous
preface asserts the complete absence of any imagery from Nature in the
writings of the time. It was, however, at the period of which I am
speaking that a change was taking place which was worth considering.
One cause is obvious. The Wit utters the voice of the town. He agreed
with the gentleman who preferred the smell of a flambeau in St. James
Street to any abundance of violet and sweetbriar. But, as communications
improved between town and country, the separation between the taste of
classes became less marked. The great nobleman had always been in part
an exalted squire, and had a taste for field-sports as well as for the
opera. Bolingbroke and Walpole are both instances in point. Sir Roger de
Coverley came up to town more frequently than his ancestors, but the
_Spectator_ recorded his visits as those of a simple rustic. After the
peace, the country gentleman begins regularly to visit the Continent.
The 'grand tour' mostly common in the preceding century becomes a normal
fact of the education of the upper classes. The foundation of the
Dilettante Club in 1734 marks the change. The qualifications, says
Horace Walpole, were drunkenness and a visit to Italy. The founders of
it seem to have been jovial young men who had met each other abroad,
where, with obsequious tutors and out of sight of domestic authority,
they often learned some very queer lessons. But many of them learned
more, and by degrees the Dilettante Club took not only to encouraging
the opera in England, but to making really valuable archæological
researches in Greece and elsewhere. The intelligent youth had great
opportunities of mixing in the best foreign society, and began to bring
home the pictures which adorn so many English country houses; to talk
about the 'correggiosity of Correggio'; and in due time to patronise
Reynolds and Gainsborough. The traveller began to take some interest
even in the Alps, wrote stanzas to the 'Grande Chartreuse,' admired
Salvator Rosa, and even visited Chamonix. Another characteristic change
is more to the present purpose. A conspicuous mark of the time was a
growing taste for gardening. The taste has, I suppose, existed ever
since our ancestors were turned out of the Garden of Eden. Milton's
description of that place of residence, and Bacon's famous essay, and
Cowley's poems addressed to the great authority Evelyn, and most of all
perhaps Maxwell's inimitable description of the very essence of garden,
may remind us that it flourished in the seventeenth century. It is
needless to say in Oxford how beautiful an old-fashioned garden might
be. But at this time a change was taking place in the canons of taste.
Temple in a well-known essay had praised the old-fashioned garden and
had remarked how the regularity of English plantations seemed ridiculous
to--of all people in the world--the Chinese. By the middle of the
eighteenth century there had been what is called a 'reaction,' and the
English garden, which was called 'natural,' was famous and often
imitated in France. It is curious to remark how closely this taste was
associated with the group of friends whom Pope has celebrated. The
first, for example, of the four 'Moral Epistles,' is addressed to
Cobham, who laid out the famous garden at Stowe, in which 'Capability
Brown,' the most popular landscape gardener of the century, was brought
up; the third is addressed to Bathurst, an enthusiastic gardener, who
had shown his skill at his seat of Richings near Colnbrook; and the
fourth to Burlington, whose house and gardens at Chiswick were laid out
by Kent, the famous landscape gardener and architect--Brown's
predecessor. In the same epistle Pope ridicules the formality of
Chandos' grounds at Canons. A description of his own garden includes the
familiar lines
'Here St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
And he (Peterborough) whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines
Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines,
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.'
Pope's own garden was itself a model. 'Pope,' says Horace Walpole, 'had
twisted and twirled and rhymed and harmonised his little five acres
till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening
beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick impenetrable
woods.' The taste grew as the century advanced. Now one impulse towards
the new style is said to have come from articles in the _Spectator_ by
Addison and in the _Guardian_ by Pope, ridiculing the old-fashioned mode
of clipping trees, and so forth. Nature, say both, is superior to art,
and the man of genius, as Pope puts it, is the first to perceive that
all art consists of 'imitation and study of nature.' Horace Walpole in
his essay upon gardening remarks a point which may symbolise the
principle. The modern style, he says, sprang from the invention of the
ha-ha by Bridgeman, one of the first landscape gardeners. The 'ha-ha'
meant that the garden, instead of being enclosed by a wall, was laid out
so as to harmonise with the surrounding country, from which it was only
separated by an invisible fence. That is the answer to the problem; is
it not a solecism for a lover of gardens to prefer nature to art? A
garden is essentially a product of art? and supplants the moor and
desert made by unassisted nature. The love of Nature as understood in a
later period, by Byron for example, went to this extreme, in words at
least, and becomes misanthropical in admiring the savage for its own
sake. But the landscape gardener only meant that his art must be in some
sense subordinate to nature; that he must not shut out the wider scenery
but include it in his designs. He was apt to look upon mountains as a
background to parks, as Telford thought that rivers were created to
supply canals. The excellent Gilpin, who became an expounder of what he
calls 'the theory of the picturesque,' travelled on the Wye in the same
year as Gray; and amusingly criticises nature from this point of view.
Nature, he says, works in a cold and singular style of composition, but
has the merit of never falling into 'mannerism.' Nature, that is, is a
sublime landscape gardener whose work has to be accepted, and to whom
the gardener must accommodate himself. A quaint instance of this theory
may be found in the lecture which Henry Tilney in _Mansfield Park_
delivers to Catherine Morland. In Horace Walpole's theory, the evolution
of the ha-ha, means that man and nature, the landowner and the country,
are gradually forming an alliance, and it comes to the same thing
whether one or the other assimilates his opposite.
Briefly, this means one process by which the so-called love of nature
was growing; it meant better roads and inns; the gradual reflux of town
into country; and the growing sense already expressed by Cowley and
Marvell, that overcrowded centres of population have their
inconveniences, and that the citizen should have his periods of
communion with unsophisticated nature. Squire and Wit are each learning
to appreciate each other's tastes. The tourist is developed, and begins,
as Gibbon tells us, to 'view the glaciers' now that he can view them
without personal inconvenience. This, again, suggests that there is
nothing radically new in the so-called love of nature. Any number of
poets from Chaucer downwards may be cited to show that men were never
insensible to natural beauty of scenery; to the outburst of spring, or
the bloom of flowers, or the splendours of storms and sunsets. The
indifference to nature of the Pope school was, so far, the temporary
complacency of the new population focused in the metropolitan area in
their own enlightenment and their contempt for the outside rustic. The
love of field-sports was as strong as ever in the squire, and as soon as
he began to receive some of the intellectual irradiation from the town
Wit, he began to express the emotions which never found clearer
utterance than in Walton's _Compleat Angler_. But there is a
characteristic difference. With the old poets nature is in the
background; it supplies the scenery for human action and is not itself
consciously the object; they deal with concrete facts, with the delight
of sport or rustic amusements: and they embody their feelings in the old
conventions; they converse with imaginary shepherds: with Robin Hood or
allegorical knights in romantic forests, who represent a love of nature
but introduce description only as a set-off to the actors in masques or
festivals. In Pope's time we have the abstract or metaphysical deity
Nature, who can be worshipped with a distinct appreciation. The
conventions have become obsolete, and if used at all, the poet himself
is laughing in his sleeve. The serious aim of the poet is to give a
philosophy of human nature; and the mere description of natural objects
strikes him as silly unless tacked to a moral. Who could take offence,
asks Pope, referring to his earlier poems, 'when pure description held
the place of sense'? The poet, that is, who wishes to be 'sensible'
above all, cannot condescend to give mere catalogues of trees and
rivers and mountains. Nature, however, is beginning to put in a claim
for attention, even in the sense in which Nature means the material
world. In one sense this is a natural corollary from the philosophy of
the time and of that religion of nature which it implied. Pope himself
gives one version of it in the _Essay on Man_; and can expatiate
eloquently upon the stars and upon the animal world. But the poem itself
is essentially constructed out of a philosophical theory too purely
argumentative to lend itself easily to poetry. A different, though
allied, way of dealing with the subject appears elsewhere. If Pope
learned mainly from Bolingbroke, he was also influenced by Shaftesbury
of the _Characteristics_. I note, but cannot here insist upon,
Shaftesbury's peculiar philosophical position. He inherited to some
extent the doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists and repudiated the
sensationalist doctrine of Locke and the metaphysical method of Clarke.
He had a marked influence on Hutcheson, Butler, and the common-sense
philosophers of his day. For us, it is enough to say that he worships
Nature but takes rather the æsthetic than the dialectical point of view.
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are all one, as he constantly
insists, and the universe impresses us not as a set of mechanical
contrivances but as an artistic embodiment of harmony. He therefore
restores the universal element which is apt to pass out of sight in
Pope's rhymed arguments. He indulges his philosophical enthusiasm in
what he calls _The Moralists, a Rhapsody_. It culminates in a prose hymn
to a 'glorious Nature, supremely fair and sovereignly good; all-loving
and all-lovely, all divine,' which ends by a survey of the different
climates, where even in the moonbeams and the shades of the forests we
find intimations of the mysterious being who pervades the universe. A
love of beauty was, in this sense, a thoroughly legitimate development
of the 'Religion of Nature.' Akenside in his philosophical poem _The
Pleasures of Imagination_, written a little later, professed himself to
be a disciple of Shaftesbury, and his version supplied many quotations
for Scottish professors of philosophy. Henry Brooke's _Universal
Beauty_, a kind of appendix to Pope's essay, is upon the same theme,
though he became rather mixed in physiological expositions, which
suggested, it is said, Darwin's _Botanic Garden_. The religious
sentiment embodied in his _Fool of Quality_ charmed Wesley and was
enthusiastically admired by Kingsley. Thomson, however, best illustrates
this current of sentiment. The fine 'Hymn of Nature' appended to the
_Seasons_, is precisely in the same vein as Shaftesbury's rhapsody. The
descriptions of nature are supposed to suggest the commentary embodied
in the hymn. He still describes the sea and sky and mountains with the
more or less intention of preaching a sermon upon them. That is the
justification of the 'pure description' which Pope condemned in
principle, and which occupies the larger part of the poem. Thomson, when
he wrote the sermons, was still fresh from Edinburgh and from
Teviotdale. He had a real eye for scenery, and describes from
observation. The English Wits had not, it seems, annexed Scotland, and
Thomson had studied Milton and Spenser without being forced to look
through Pope's spectacles. Still he cannot quite trust himself. He is
still afraid, and not without reason, that pure description will fall
into flat prose, and tries to 'raise his diction'--in the phrase of the
day--by catching something of the Miltonic harmony and by speaking of
fish as 'finny tribes' and birds as 'the feathered people.' The fact,
however, that he could suspend his moralising to give realistic
descriptions at full length, and that they became the most interesting
parts of the poem, shows a growing interest in country life. The
supremacy of the town Wit is no longer unquestioned; and there is an
audience for the plain direct transcripts of natural objects for which
the Wit had been too dignified and polished. Thomson had thus the merit
of representing a growing sentiment--and yet he has not quite solved the
problem. His philosophy is not quite fused with his observation. To make
'Nature' really interesting you must have a touch of Wordsworthian
pantheism and of Shelley's 'pathetic fallacy.' Thomson's facts and his
commentary lie in separate compartments. To him, apparently, the
philosophy is more important than the simple description. His
masterpiece was to be the didactic and now forgotten poem on _Liberty_.
It gives an interesting application; for there already we have the
sentiment which was to become more marked in later years. 'Liberty'
crosses the Alps and they suggest a fine passage on the beauty of
mountains. Nature has formed them as a rampart for the homely republics
which worship 'plain Liberty'; and are free from the corruption typified
by Walpole. That obviously is the germ of the true Rousseau version of
Nature worship. On the whole, however, Nature, as interpreted by the
author of 'Rule Britannia,' is still very well satisfied with the
British Constitution and looks upon the Revolution of 1688 as the avatar
of the true goddess. 'Nature,' that is, has not yet come to condemn
civilisation in general as artificial and therefore corrupt. As in
practice, a lover of Nature did not profess to prefer the wilderness to
fields, and looked upon mountains rather as a background to the
nobleman's park than as a shelter for republics; so in politics it
reflected no revolutionary tendency but rather included the true British
system which has grown up under its protection. Nature has taken to
lecturing, but she only became frankly revolutionary with Rousseau and
misanthropic with Byron.
I must touch one more characteristic. Pope, I have said, represents the
aristocratic development of literature. Meanwhile the purely plebeian
society was growing, and the toe of the clown beginning to gall the kibe
of the courtier. Pope's 'war with the dunces' was the historical symptom
of this most important social development. The _Dunciad_, which,
whatever its occasional merits, one cannot read without spasms both of
disgust and moral disapproval, is the literary outcome. Pope's morbid
sensibility perverts his morals till he accepts the worst of
aristocratic prejudices and treats poverty as in itself criminal. It led
him, too, to attack some worthy people, and among others the 'earless'
Defoe. Defoe's position is most significant. A journalist of supreme
ability, he had an abnormally keen eye for the interesting. No one could
feel the pulse of his audience with greater quickness. He had already
learned by inference that nothing interests the ordinary reader so much
as a straightforward narrative of contemporary facts. He added the
remark that it did not in the least matter whether the facts had or had
not happened; and secondly, that it saved a great deal of trouble to
make your facts instead of finding them. The result was the inimitable
_Robinson Crusoe_, which was, in that sense, a simple application of
journalistic methods, not a conscious attempt to create a new variety of
novel. Alexander Selkirk had very little to tell about his remarkable
experience; and so Defoe, instead of confining himself like the ordinary
interviewer to facts, proceeded to tell a most circumstantial and
elaborate lie--for which we are all grateful. He was doing far more than
he meant. Defoe, as the most thorough type of the English class to
which he belonged, could not do otherwise than make his creation a
perfect embodiment of his own qualities. _Robinson Crusoe_ became, we
know, a favourite of Rousseau, and has supplied innumerable
illustrations to writers on Political Economy. One reason is that Crusoe
is the very incarnation of individualism: thrown entirely upon his own
resources, he takes the position with indomitable pluck; adapts himself
to the inevitable as quietly and sturdily as may be; makes himself
thoroughly at home in a desert island, and, as soon as he meets a
native, summarily annexes him, and makes him thoroughly useful. He comes
up smiling after many years as if he had been all the time in a shop in
Cheapside without a hair turned. This exemplary person not only embodies
the type of middle class Briton but represents his most romantic
aspirations. In those days the civilised world was still surrounded by
the dim mysterious regions, where geographers placed elephants instead
of towns, but where the adventurous Briton was beginning to push his way
into strange native confines and to oust the wretched foreigner, Dutch,
French, Spanish, and Portuguese, who had dared to anticipate him.
Crusoe is the voice of the race which was to be stirred by the story of
Jenkins' ear and lay the foundation of the Empire. Meanwhile, as a
literary work, it showed most effectually the power of homely realism.
There is no bother about dignity or attempt to reveal the eloquence of
the polished Wit. It is precisely the plain downright English vernacular
which is thoroughly intelligible to everybody who is capable of reading.
The Wit, too, as Swift sufficiently proved, could be a consummate master
of that kind of writing on occasion, and Gulliver probably showed
something to Crusoe. But for us the interest is the development of a new
class of readers, who won't bother about canons of taste or care for
skill in working upon the old conventional methods, but can be
profoundly interested in a straightforward narrative adapted to the
simplest understandings. Pope's contempt for the dunces meant that the
lower classes were the objects of supreme contempt to the aristocratic
circle, whose culture they did not share. But Defoe was showing in a new
sense of the word the advantage of an appeal to Nature; for the true
life and vigour of the nation was coming to be embodied in the class
which was spontaneously developing its own ideals and beginning to
regard the culture of the upper circle as artificial in the
objectionable sense. Outside the polished circle of wits we have the
middle-class which is beginning to read, and will read, what it really
likes without bothering about Aristotle or M. Bossu: as, in the other
direction, the assimilation between town and country is incidentally
suggesting a wider range of topics, and giving a new expression to
conditions which had for some time been without expression.