POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL.
The Transition Period. James Thomson. The Seasons. The Castle of
Indolence. Mark Akenside. Pleasures of the Imagination. Thomas Gray.
The Elegy. The Bard. William Cowper. The Task. Translation of Homer.
Other Writers.
THE TRANSITION PERIOD.
The poetical standards of Dryden and Pope, as poetic examples and
arbiters, exercised tyrannical sway to the middle of the eighteenth
century, and continued to be felt, with relaxing influence, however, to a
much later period. Poetry became impatient of too close a captivity to
technical rules in rhythm and in subjects, and began once again to seek
its inspiration from the worlds of nature and of feeling. While seeking
this change, it passed through what has been properly called the period of
transition,--a period the writers of which are distinctly marked as
belonging neither to the artificial classicism of Pope, nor to the simple
naturalism of Wordsworth and the Lake school; partaking, indeed, in some
degree of the former, and preparing the way for the latter.
The excited condition of public feeling during the earlier period,
incident to the accession of the house of Hanover and the last struggles
of the Jacobites, had given a political character to every author, and a
political significance to almost every literary work. At the close of this
abnormal condition of things, the poets of the transition school began
their labors; untrammelled by the court and the town, they invoked the
muse in green fields and by babbling brooks; from materialistic
philosophy in verse they appealed through the senses to the hearts of men;
and appreciation and popularity rewarded and encouraged them.
JAMES THOMSON.--The first distinguished writer of this school was Thomson,
the son of a Scottish minister. He was born on the 11th of September,
1700, at Ednam in Roxburghshire. While a boy at school in Jedburgh, he
displayed poetical talent: at the University of Edinburgh he completed his
scholastic course, and studied divinity; which, however, he did not pursue
as a profession. Being left, by his father's death, without means, he
resolved to go to the great metropolis to try his fortunes. He arrived in
London in sorry plight, without money, and with ragged shoes; but through
the assistance of some persons of station, he procured occupation as tutor
to a lord's son, and thus earned a livelihood until the publication of his
first poem in 1726. That poem was _Winter_, the first of the series called
_The Seasons_: it was received with unusual favor. The first edition was
speedily exhausted, and with the publication of the second, his position
as a poet was assured. In 1727 he produced the second poem of the series,
_Summer_, and, with it, a proposal for issuing the _Four Seasons_, with a
_Hymn_ on their succession. In 1728 his _Spring_ appeared, and in the next
year an unsuccessful tragedy called _Sophonisba_, which owed its immediate
failure to the laughter occasioned by the line,
O Sophonisba, Sophonisba O!
This was parodied by some wag in these words:
O Jemmie Thomson, Jemmie Thomson O!
and the ridicule was so potent that the play was ruined.
The last of the seasons, _Autumn_, and the _Hymn_, were first printed in a
complete edition of _The Seasons_, in 1730. It was at once conceded that
he had gratified the cravings of the day, In producing a real and
beautiful English pastoral. The reputation which he thus gained caused him
to be selected as the mentor and companion of the son of Sir Charles
Talbot in a tour through France and Italy in 1730 and 1731.
In 1734 he published the first part of a poem called _Liberty_, the
conclusion of which appeared in 1736. It is designed to trace the progress
of Liberty through Italy, Greece, and Rome, down to her excellent
establishment in Great Britain, and was dedicated to Frederick, Prince of
Wales.
His tragedies _Agamemnon_ and _Edward and Eleanora_ are in the then
prevailing taste. They were issued in 1738-39. The latter is of political
significance, in that Edward was like Frederick the Prince of Wales--heir
apparent to the crown; and some of the passages are designed to strengthen
the prince in the favor of the people.
The personal life of Thomson is not of much interest. From his first
residence in London, he supported, with his slender means, a brother, who
died young of consumption, and aided two maiden sisters, who kept a small
milliner-shop in Edinburgh. This is greatly to his praise, as he was at
one time so poor that he was arrested for debt and committed to prison. As
his reputation increased, his fortunes were ameliorated. In 1745 his play
_Tancred and Sigismunda_ was performed. It was founded upon a story
universally popular,--the same which appears in the episode of _The Fatal
Marriage_ in Gil Bias, and in one of the stories of Boccaccio. He enjoyed
for a short time a pension from the Prince of Wales, of which, however, he
was deprived without apparent cause; but he received the office of
Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, the duties of which he could
perform by deputy; after that he lived a lazy life at his cottage near
Richmond, which, if otherwise reprehensible, at least gave him the power
to write his most beautiful poem, _The Castle of Indolence_. It appeared
in 1748, and was universally admired; it has a rhetorical harmony similar
and quite equal to that of the _Lotos Eaters_ of Tennyson. The poet, who
had become quite plethoric, was heated by a walk from London, and, from a
check of perspiration, was thrown into a high fever, a relapse of which
caused his death on the 27th of August, 1748. His friend Lord Lyttleton
wrote the prologue to his play of _Coriolanus_, which was acted after the
poet's death, in which he says:
"--His chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest missions to inspire,
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
_One line which, dying, he could wish to blot_."
The praise accorded him in this much-quoted line is justly his due: it is
greater praise that he was opening a new pathway in English Literature,
and supplying better food than the preceding age had given. His _Seasons_
supplied a want of the age: it was a series of beautiful pastorals. The
descriptions of nature will always be read and quoted with pleasure; the
little episodes, if they affect the unity, relieve the monotony of the
subject, and, like figures introduced by the painter into his landscape,
take away the sense of loneliness, and give us a standard at once of
judgment, of measurement, and of sympathetic enjoyment; they display, too,
at once the workings of his own mind in his production, and the manners
and sentiments of the age in which he wrote. It was fitting that he who
had portrayed for us such beautiful gardens of English nature, should
people them instead of leaving them solitary.
THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE.--This is an allegory, written after the manner of
Spenser, and in the Spenserian stanza. He also employs archaic words, as
Spenser did, to give it greater resemblance to Spenser's poem. The
allegorical characters are well described, and the sumptuous adornings and
lazy luxuries of the castle are set forth _con amore_. The spell that
enchants the castle is broken by the stalwart knight _Industry_; but the
glamour of the poem remains, and makes the reader in love with
_Indolence_.
MARK AKENSIDE.--Thomson had restored or reproduced the pastoral from
Nature's self; Akenside followed in his steps. Thomson had invested blank
verse with a new power and beauty; Akenside produced it quite as
excellent. But Thomson was the original, and Akenside the copy. The one is
natural, the other artificial.
Akenside was the son of a butcher, and was born at New Castle, in 1721.
Educated at the University of Edinburgh, he studied medicine, and
received, at different periods, lucrative and honorable professional
appointments. His great work, and the only one to which we need refer, is
his _Pleasures of the Imagination_. Whether his view of the imagination is
always correct or not, his sentiments are always elevated; his language
high sounding but frequently redundant, and his versification correct and
pleasing. His descriptions of nature are cold but correct; his standard of
humanity is high but mortal. Grand and sonorous, he constructs his periods
with the manner of a declaimer; his ascriptions and apostrophes are like
those of a high-priest. The title of his poem, if nothing more, suggested
_The Pleasures-of Hope_ to Campbell, and _The Pleasures of Memory_ to
Rogers. As a man, Akenside was overbearing and dictatorial; as a hospital
surgeon, harsh in his treatment of poor patients. His hymn to the Naiads
has been considered the most thoroughly and correctly classical of
anything in English. He died on the 23rd of June, 1770.
THOMAS GRAY.--Among those who form a link between the school of Pope and
that of the modern poets, Gray occupies a distinguished place, both from
the excellence of his writings, and from the fact that, while he
unconsciously conduced to the modern, he instinctively resisted its
progress. He was in taste and intention an extreme classicist. Thomas Gray
was born in London on the 26th December, 1716. His father was a money
scrivener, and, to his family at least, a bad man; his mother, forced to
support herself, kept a linen-draper shop; and to her the poet owed his
entire education. He was entered at Eton College, and afterwards at
Cambridge, and found in early life such friendships as were of great
importance to him later in his career. Among his college friends were
Horace Walpole, West, the son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and
William Mason, who afterwards wrote the poet's life. After completing his
college course, he travelled on the continent with Walpole; but, on
account of incompatibility of temper, they quarrelled and parted, and Gray
returned home. Although Walpole took the blame upon himself, it would
appear that Gray was a somewhat captious person, whose serious tastes
interfered with the gayer pleasures of his friend. On his return, Gray
went to Cambridge, where he led the life of a retired student, devoting
himself to the ancient authors, to poetry, botany, architecture, and
heraldry. He was fastidious as to his own productions, which were very
few, and which he kept by him, pruning, altering, and polishing, for a
long time before he would let them see the light. His lines entitled _A
Distant Prospect of Eton College_ appeared in 1742, and were received with
great applause.
It was at this time that he also began his _Elegy in a Country
Churchyard_; which, however, did not appear until seven or eight years
later, and which has made him immortal. The grandeur of its language, the
elevation of its sentiments, and the sympathy of its pathos, commend it to
all classes and all hearts; and of its kind of composition it stands alone
in English literature.
The ode on the progress of poetry appeared in 1755. Like the _Elegy_, his
poem of _The Bard_ was for several years on the literary easel, and he was
accidentally led to finish it by hearing a blind harper performing on a
Welsh harp.
On the death of Cibber, Gray was offered the laureate's crown, which he
declined, to avoid its conspicuousness and the envy of his brother poets.
In 1762, he applied for the professorship of modern history at Cambridge,
but failed to obtain the position. He was more fortunate in 1768, when it
again became vacant; but he held it as a sinecure, doing none of its
duties. He died in 1770, on the 3d of July, of gout in the stomach. His
habits were those of a recluse; and whether we agree or not, with Adam
Smith, in saying that nothing is wanting to render him perhaps the first
poet in the English language, but to have written a little more, it is
astonishing that so great and permanent a reputation should have been
founded on so very little as he wrote. Gray has been properly called the
finest lyric poet in the language; and his lyric power strikes us as
intuitive and original; yet he himself, adhering strongly to the
artificial school, declared, if there was any excellence in his own
numbers, he had learned it wholly from Dryden. His archæological tastes
are further shown by his enthusiastic study of heraldry, and by his
surrounding himself with old armor and other curious relics of the past.
Mr. Mitford, in a curious dissection of the _Elegy_, has found numerous
errors of rhetoric, and even of grammar.
His _Bard_ is founded on a tradition that Edward I., when he conquered
Wales, ordered all the bards to be put to death, that they might not, by
their songs, excite the Welsh people to revolt. The last one who figures
in his story, sings a lament for his brethren, prophesies the downfall of
the usurper, and then throws himself over the cliff:
"Be thine despair and sceptered care,
To triumph and to die are mine!"
He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height,
Deep in the roaring tide, he plunged to endless night.
WILLIAM COWPER.--Next in the catalogue of the transition school occurs the
name of one who, like Gray, was a recluse, but with a better reason and a
sadder one. He was a gentle hypochondriac, and, at intervals, a maniac,
who literally turned to poetry, like Saul to the harper, for relief from
his sufferings. William Cowper, the eldest son of the Rector of
Berkhampsted in Hertfordshire, was born on the 15th of November, 1731. He
was a delicate and sensitive child, and was seriously affected by the loss
of his mother when he was six years old. At school, he was cruelly treated
by an older boy, which led to his decided views against public schools,
expressed in his poem called _Tirocinium_. His morbid sensitiveness
increased upon him as he grew older, and interfered with his legal studies
and advancement. His depression of spirits took a religious turn; and we
are glad to think that religion itself brought the balm which gave him
twelve years of unclouded mind, devoted to friendship and to poetry. He
was offered, by powerful friends, eligible positions connected with the
House of Lords, in 1762; but as the one of these which he accepted was
threatened with a public examination, he abandoned it in horror; not,
however, before the fearful suspense had unsettled his brain, so that he
was obliged to be placed, for a short time, in an asylum for the insane.
When he left this asylum, he went to Huntingdon, where he became
acquainted with the Rev. William Unwin, who, with his wife and son, seem
to have been congenial companions to his desolate heart. On the death of
Mr. Unwin, in 1767, he removed with the widow to Olney, and there formed
an intimate acquaintance with another clergyman, the Rev. William Newton.
Here, and in this society, the remainder of the poet's life was passed in
writing letters, which have been considered the best ever written in
England; in making hymns, in conjunction with Mr. Newton, which have ever
since been universal favorites; and in varied poetic attempts, which give
him high rank in the literature of the day. The first of his larger pieces
was a poem entitled, _The Progress of Error_, which appeared in 1783, when
the author had reached the advanced age of 52. Then followed _Truth_ and
_Expostulation_, which, according to the poet himself, did much towards
diverting his melancholy thoughts. These poems would not have fixed his
fame; but Lady Austen, an accomplished woman with whom he became
acquainted in 1781, deserves our gratitude for having proposed to him the
subjects of those poems which have really made him famous, namely, _The
Task, John Gilpin_, and the translation of _Homer_. Before, however,
undertaking these, he wrote poems on _Hope_, _Charity_, _Conversation_ and
_Retirement_. The story of _John Gilpin_--a real one as told him by Lady
Austen--made such an impression upon him, that he dashed off the ballad at
a sitting.
THE TASK.--The origin of _The Task_ is well known. In 1783, Lady Austen
suggested to him to write a poem in blank verse: he said he would, if she
would suggest the subject. Her answer was, "Write on _this sofa_." The
poem thus begun was speedily expanded into those beautiful delineations of
varied nature, domestic life, and religious sentiment which rivalled the
best efforts of Thomson. The title that connects them is _The Task.
Tirocinium_ or _the Review of Schools_, appeared soon after, and excited
considerable attention in a country where public education has been the
rule of the higher social life. Cowper began the translation of Homer in
1785, from a feeling of the necessity of employment for his mind. His
translations of both Iliad and Odyssey, which occupied him for five years,
and which did not entirely keep off his old enemy, were published in 1791.
They are correct in scholarship and idiom, but lack the nature and the
fire of the old Grecian bard.
The rest of his life was busy, but sad--a constant effort to drive away
madness by incessant labor. The loss of his friend, Mrs. Unwin, in 1796,
affected him deeply, and the clouds settled thicker and thicker upon his
soul. In the year before his death, he published that painfully touching
poem, _The Castaway_, which gives an epitome of his own sufferings in the
similitude of a wretch clinging to a spar in a stormy night upon the
Atlantic.
His minor and fugitive poems are very numerous; and as they were
generally inspired by persons and scenes around him, they are truly
literary types of the age in which he lived. In his _Task_, he resembles
Thomson and Akenside; in his didactic poems, he reminds us of the essays
of Pope; in his hymns he catered successfully to the returning piety of
the age; in his translations of Homer and of Ovid, he presented the
ancients to moderns in a new and acceptable dress; and in his Letters he
sets up an epistolary model, which may be profitably studied by all who
desire to express themselves with energy, simplicity, and delicate taste.
OTHER WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL.
_James Beattie_, 1735-1803: he was the son of a farmer, and was educated
at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he was afterwards professor of
natural philosophy. For four years he taught a village school. His first
poem, _Retirement_, was not much esteemed; but in 1771 appeared the first
part of _The Minstrel_, a poem at once descriptive, didactic, and
romantic. This was enthusiastically received, and gained for him the favor
of the king, a pension of £200 per annum, and a degree from Oxford. The
second part was published in 1774. _The Minstrel_ is written in the
Spenserian stanza, and abounds in beautiful descriptions of nature,
marking a very decided progress from the artificial to the natural school.
The character of Edwin, the young minstrel, ardent in search for the
beautiful and the true, is admirably portrayed; as is also that of the
hermit who instructs the youth. The opening lines are very familiar:
Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar;
and the description of the morning landscape has no superior in the
language:
But who the melodies of morn can tell?
The wild brook babbling down the mountain side;
The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell;
The pipe of early shepherd dim descried
In the lone valley.
Beattie wrote numerous prose dissertations and essays, one of which was in
answer to the infidel views of Hume--_Essay on the Nature and
Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism_. Beattie
was of an excitable and sensitive nature, and his polemical papers are
valued rather for the beauty of their language, than for acuteness of
logic.
_William Falconer_, 1730-1769: first a sailor in the merchant service, he
afterwards entered the navy. He is chiefly known by his poem _The
Shipwreck_, and for its astonishing connection with his own fortunes and
fate. He was wrecked off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, before he
was eighteen; and this misfortune is the subject of his poem. Again, in
1760, he was cast away in the Channel. In 1769, the Aurora frigate, of
which he was the purser, foundered in Mozambique Channels, and he, with
all others on board, went down with her. The excellence of his nautical
directions and the vigor of his descriptions establish the claims of his
poem; but it has the additional interest attaching to his curious
experience--it is his autobiography and his enduring monument. The picture
of the storm is very fine; but in the handling of his verse there is more
of the artificial than of the romantic school.
_William Shenstone_, 1714-1763: his principal work is _The
Schoolmistress_, a poem in the stanza of Spenser, which is pleasing from
its simple and sympathizing description of the village school, kept by a
dame; with the tricks and punishment of the children, and many little
traits of rural life and character. It is pitched in so low a key that it
commends itself to the world at large. Shenstone is equally known for his
mania in landscape gardening, upon which he spent all his means. His
place, _The Leasowes_ in Shropshire, has gained the greater notoriety
through the descriptions of Dodsley and Goldsmith. The natural simplicity
of _The Schoolmistress_ allies it strongly to the romantic school, which
was now about to appear.
_William Collins_, 1720-1756: this unfortunate poet, who died at the early
age of thirty-six, deserves particular mention for the delicacy of his
fancy and the beauty of his diction. His _Ode on the Passions_ is
universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the
bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair
to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the
sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His _Ode on the Death of Thomson_
is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the _Dirge on Cymbeline_.
Everybody knows and admires the short ode beginning
How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest!
His _Oriental Eclogues_ please by the simplicity of the colloquies, the
choice figures of speech, and the fine descriptions of nature. But of all
his poems, the most finished and charming is the _Ode to Evening_. It
contains thirteen four-lined stanzas of varied metre, and in blank verse
so full of harmony that rhyme would spoil it. It presents a series of
soft, dissolving views, and stands alone in English poetry, with claims
sufficient to immortalize the poet, had he written nothing else. The
latter part of his life was clouded by mental disorders, not unsuggested
to the reader by the pathos of many of his poems. Like Gray, he wrote
little, but every line is of great merit.
_Henry Kirke White_, 1785-1806: the son of a butcher, this gifted youth
displayed, in his brief life, such devotion to study, and such powers of
mind, that his friends could not but predict a brilliant future for him,
had he lived. Nothing that he produced is of the highest order of poetic
merit, but everything was full of promise. Of a weak constitution, he
could not bear the rigorous study which he prescribed to himself, and
which hastened his death. With the kind assistance of Mr. Capel Lofft and
the poet Southey, he was enabled to leave the trade to which he had been
apprenticed and go to Cambridge. His poems have most of them a strongly
devotional cast. Among them are _Gondoline_, _Clifton Grove_, and the
_Christiad_, in the last of which, like the swan, he chants his own
death-song. His memory has been kept green by Southey's edition of his
_Remains_, and by the beautiful allusion of Byron to his genius and his
fate in _The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. His sacred piece called
_The Star of Bethlehem_ has been a special favorite:
When marshalled on the nightly plain
The glittering host bestud the sky,
One star alone of all the train
Can fix the sinner's wandering eye.
_Bishop Percy_, 1728-1811: Dr. Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, deserves
particular notice in a sketch of English Literature not so much for his
own works,--although he was a poet,--as for his collection of ballads,
made with great research and care, and published in 1765. By bringing
before the world these remains of English songs and idyls, which lay
scattered through the ages from the birth of the language, he showed
England the true wealth of her romantic history, and influenced the
writers of the day to abandon the artificial and reproduce the natural,
the simple, and the romantic. He gave the impulse which produced the
minstrelsy of Scott and the simple stories of Wordsworth. Many of these
ballads are descriptive of the border wars between England and Scotland;
among the greatest favorites are _Chevy Chase, The Battle of Otterburne,
The Death of Douglas_, and the story of _Sir Patrick Spens_.
_Anne Letitia Barbauld_, 1743-1825: the hymns and poems of Mrs. Barbauld
are marked by an adherence to the artificial school in form and manner;
but something of feminine tenderness redeems them from the charge of being
purely mechanical. Her _Hymns in Prose for Children_ have been of value in
an educational point of view; and the tales comprised in _Evenings at
Home_ are entertaining and instructive. Her _Ode to Spring_, which is an
imitation of Collins's _Ode to Evening_, in the same measure and
comprising the same number of stanzas, is her best poetic effort, and
compares with Collins's piece as an excellent copy compares with the
picture of a great master.