VII. THE AGE OF DRYDEN

TIME-CHART OF THE CHIEF AUTHORS

The thick line shows the period of active literary work.

1650 1660 1670 1680 1690 1700 1710 | | | | | | | | |║[132] | | | |║ | Dryden |........|║===================================║ | (1631–1700) | | | | | | | | | ║[133] | ║ |║ | | | Butler |........|.║===========║...|║ | | | (1612–80) | | | | | | | | | | ║ ║ | | | | Wycherley |........|........|..║===║ |........|........|........| (1640–1715) | | | | | | | | | |║ | | ║[134]║| | Congreve | | |║.......|........|.║=====║|........| (1670–1729) | | | | | | | | |║ | ║[135]║| ║ | | | Bunyan |........|║=========║=====║|.....║ | | | (1628–1688) | | | ║ | | | | | |║ | | | | ║ | Evelyn |........|║======================================║ | (1620–1706) | | | | | | | | |║ | | | | ║ | Pepys |........|║=====================================║ | (1633–1703) |

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1660–1700)

Three historical events deeply influenced the literary movements of the time: the Restoration of the year 1660; the Roman Catholic controversy that raged during the latter half of Charles II’s reign; and the Revolution of the year 1688.

=1. The Restoration (1660).= The Restoration of Charles II brought about a revolution in our literature. With the collapse of the Puritan Government there sprang up activities that had been so long suppressed that they flew to violent excesses. The Commonwealth had insisted on gravity and decorum in all things; the Restoration encouraged a levity that often became immoral and indecent. Along with much that is sane and powerful, this latter tendency is prominent in the writing of the time, especially in the comedies.

=2. The Religious Question.= The strength of the religious-political passions of the time is reflected in the current literature. The religion of the King was suspect; that of his brother James was avowedly Papist; and James was the heir-apparent to the crown. There was a prevalent suspicion of the Catholics, which, though it might have been groundless, was of such depth and intensity that it colors all the writings of the time. The lies of Titus Oates added to the popular frenzy, so that when the Earl of Shaftesbury sought to exclude James from the throne and supplant him by the Duke of Monmouth it needed all the efforts of Charles (himself secretly a Roman Catholic) to save his brother. The famous poem of Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, is an outstanding example of a kind of poem that abounded during those troubled years.

=3. The Revolution (1688).= James succeeded to the throne in 1685; but so soon did he reveal his Roman Catholic prejudices that he was rejected in three years and was replaced by Protestant sovereigns. Henceforth religious passions diminish in intensity; and the literature of the succeeding years tends to emphasize the political rather than the religious side of public affairs.

THE NEW CLASSICISM

By the year 1660 Elizabethan romanticism had all but spent itself. Of the great figures of the earlier era only one survived, John Milton, and he had still to write Paradise Lost; but in everything Milton was of the past. At the Restoration he retired and worked in obscurity, and his great poem reveals no signs of the time in which his later years were cast.

At the Restoration the break with the past was almost absolute. It involved our literature in the deepest degree; subject and style took on a new spirit and outlook, a different attitude and aim. Hence a post-Restoration period is often set up as the converse and antithesis of the previous Elizabethan age. It is called classical, as opposed to the Elizabethan romanticism. Though the contrast between the two epochs need not be over-emphasized, yet the differences are very great. Let us see in what respects the new spirit is shown.

=1. Imitation of the Ancients.= Lacking the genius of the Elizabethans, the authors of the time turned to the great classical writers, in particular to the Latin writers, for guidance and inspiration. This habit, quite noticeable during the time of Dryden, deepened and hardened during the succeeding era of Pope--so much so that the latter laid down as a final test of excellence

Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy nature is to copy them.

=2. Imitation of the French.= Charles II had spent most of his years of exile in France, and when he returned to England he brought with him a new admiration for French literature. In particular the effects of this penetrated very deeply into the drama, especially into comedy, the most copious literary product of the Restoration. Of French comedy the great Molière was the outstanding exponent, and his influence was very great. In the more formal tragedy French and classical models were combined to produce a new type called the heroic play. The type is well represented by Dryden’s Tyrannic Love.

=3. The “Correct” School.= The Elizabethans too had drawn upon the ancients, but they used their gains freely and joyously, bending the work of the classical authors to their own wills. The imitative work of the new school was of a frigid and limited quality. The school of Dryden was loath to alter; the age of Pope abandoned freedom altogether. Pope puts it thus:

Those Rules of old, discovered, not devised, Are Nature still, but Nature methodised.

Thus they evolved a number of “rules,” which can usefully be summarized in the injunction “Be correct.” “Correctness” means avoidance of enthusiasm; modern opinions moderately expressed; strict care and accuracy in poetical technique; and humble imitation of the style of the Latin classics.

Dryden did not attain altogether to this ideal. Pope and his immediate successors called him “copious,” thus hinting at a lack of care and an unrestrained vigor that were survivals of an earlier virility. Yet Dryden has the new tendency very clearly marked. To him Dr. Johnson first applied the epithet “Augustan,” saying that Dryden did to English literature what Augustus did to Rome, which he “found of brick and left of marble.” Dryden is the first great exponent of the new ideas that were to dominate our literature till the end of the eighteenth century.

JOHN DRYDEN (1631–1700)

=1. His Life.= Dryden’s life was a long one. It was, in addition, an exceedingly fruitful one. For forty years he continued to produce an abundance of literary works of every kind--poems, plays, and prose works. The quality of it was almost unfailingly good, and at the end of his life his poetry was as fresh and vivacious as it had been in the prime of his manhood.

Of Dryden it can be said without qualification that he is representative of his age. Indeed, it has been urged as a fault against his character that he adapted himself with too facile a conscience to the changing fortunes of the times. His earliest work of any importance is pre-Restoration, and consists of a laudation of Oliver Cromwell. At the Restoration he changed his views, attaching himself to the fortunes of Charles II and to the Church of England. This loyalty brought its rewards in honors and pensions, so that for many years Dryden was easily the most considerable literary figure in the land. Yet his career was not without its thorns, for smaller men were busy with their slanders. On the accession of James II in 1685 Dryden changed his faith and political persuasion, becoming a Roman Catholic. To his new beliefs he adhered steadfastly, even when in 1688 the Revolution brought certain disasters to such public men as adhered to Catholicism. Thus Dryden lost his posts of Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal. The Laureateship was conferred on Shadwell, his most rancorous foe; and Dryden retired with dignity to sustain his last years with his literary labors. To this last period of his career we owe some of his finest translations and narrative poems. When he died in 1700 he was accorded a splendid funeral in Westminster Abbey, though it was many years before his grave was marked by a tombstone.

=2. His Poetry.= Dryden began his life’s work with poetry; he concluded it with poetry; and the years between are starred with the brightness of his greater poems. As early as February, 1664, Pepys records in his diary that he met “Mr. Dryden, the poet”; and he remained “Mr. Dryden, the poet,” till the day of his death. It is therefore as a poet that Dryden is chiefly to be judged.

His first published poem of any consequence was a series of heroic stanzas on the death of the Protector Oliver Cromwell (1659). It consists of thirty-seven quatrains of no particular merit. They move stiffly, and are quite uninspired by any political or personal enthusiasm, but they show a certain angular force and a little metrical dexterity. Two stanzas will show the art of the earliest Dryden:

His grandeur he derived from Heaven alone, For he was great, ere Fortune made him so; And wars, like mists that rise against the sun, Made him but greater seem, not greater grow.

No borrowed bays his temples did adorn, But to our crown he did fresh laurels bring; Nor was his virtue poisoned, soon as born, With the too early thoughts of being king.

In 1660 he made a great step forward in poetical craftsmanship by publishing Astrœa Redux, in celebration of Charles II’s return. The poem represents a complete reversal of the poet’s political opinions; but it is nevertheless a noteworthy literary advance. In its handling of the subject it shows a firmer grip and stronger common sense; in its style a new command of sonorous and dignified phrasing; and (as important a feature as any of the others) it is written in the heroic couplet.

Methinks I see those crowds on Dover’s strand, Who in their haste to welcome you to land Choked up the beach with their still growing store, And made a wilder torrent on the shore.

Here we see Dryden, though not yet at his best, coming to his own. The couplet marches with a steady but animated ring and swing. Its phrasing is apt and vivid; and it possesses a strength and music that are new. It marks the beginning of that adherence to the use of the couplet which was to be Dryden’s lifelong habit, and which was to mark a new epoch in our literature.

Two other poems of this year--one on the coronation and one addressed to the Chancellor, Clarendon,--resemble Astrœa Redux in their main features, and are little inferior.

In 1666 he produced Annus Mirabilis, dealing with the extraordinary events of the year, particularly the Fire of London and the Dutch war. The poem is long, and often dull. When he attempts “style” he is sometimes florid and ridiculous. Moreover, the meter returns to the quatrain. The work is inferior to those of 1660, but is still an advance on the stanzas to Cromwell.

For more than fifteen years succeeding this Dryden devoted himself almost entirely to the writing of plays. Then, about 1680, events both political and personal drove him back to the poetical medium, with results both splendid and astonishing. Political passions over the Exclusion Bills were at their height, and Dryden appeared as the chief literary champion of the monarchy in the famous satirical allegory Absalom and Achitophel (1681). Absalom is the Duke of Monmouth, the unfortunate aspirant to the succession; and Achitophel is his daring but injudicious counselor Shaftesbury. These two are surrounded by a cluster of lesser politicians, upon each of whom Dryden bestows a Biblical name of deadly aptness and transparency. The satire is of amazing force and range, rarely stooping to scurrility, but punishing its victims with devastating scorn and a wrathful aloofness; and it takes shape in the best quality of Dryden’s couplet. Long practice in dramatic couplet-writing had now given Dryden a new metrical facility, tightening and strengthening the measure, and giving it crispness and energy without allowing it to become violent and obscure. We give a specimen of this measure, which in many ways represents the summit of Dryden’s poetical achievement:

Of these the false Achitophel was first; A name to all succeeding ages curst: For close designs and crooked counsels fit; Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit; Restless, unfixed in principles and place; In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace: A fiery soul, which, working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o’er-informed the tenement of clay. A daring pilot in extremity; Pleased with the danger when the waves went high, He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide; Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest, Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? Punish a body which he could not please; Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease? And all to leave what with his toil he won, To that unfeathered two-legged thing--a son.

Of such satire as this Dryden himself says not unfairly, “It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough. I avoided the mention of great crimes, and applied myself to the representing of blind sides and little extravagances.” The hitting is hard, but not foul.

Next year he produced another political poem, The Medal, which called forth an answer from an old friend of Dryden’s, Shadwell. Dryden retorted in MacFlecknoe, a personal lampoon of gigantic power and ferocity, but degraded with much coarseness and personal spite. A similar poem is the second part of Absalom and Achitophel, to which poem Dryden contributed a violent attack on Shadwell, giving him the name of Og. The main part of the work was composed by Nahum Tate, a satellite of Dryden’s.

A new poetical development was manifest in Religio Laici (1682) and The Hind and the Panther (1687). The first poem is a thesis in support of the English Church; the second, written after the accession of James, is an allegorical defense of the Roman Catholic faith. Alterations like these in Dryden’s opinions gave free play to the gibes of his enemies. In spite of their difference in opinion, these poems have much in common: a clear light of argument, a methodical arrangement of ideas, and a mastery of the couplet that often lifts the drabness of the expository theme into passages of noble feeling and splendor. The allegorical treatment of The Hind and the Panther allows of a livelier handling; but the poem is very long, consisting of more than one part, and much of it is dogmatic assertion and tedious argument.

After the Revolution, when he was driven from his public appointments, Dryden occupied himself chiefly with translations. He once more used the couplet medium, turning Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio into English, and adapting Chaucer to the taste of his time. The translation is so free that much of it is Dryden’s own, and all of it teems with his own individuality. We give a passage to illustrate both the latest phase of his couplet and his power as a narrative poet:

Scarce the third glass of measured hours was run, When like a fiery meteor sunk the sun, The promise of a storm; the shifting gales Forsake by fits and fill the flagging sails; Hoarse murmurs of the main from far were heard, And night came on, not by degrees prepared, But all at once; at once the winds arise, The thunders roll, the forky lightning flies. In vain the master issues out commands, In vain the trembling sailors ply their hands; The tempest unforeseen prevents their care, And from the first they labour in despair. The giddy ship betwixt the winds and tides, Forced back and forwards, in a circle rides, Stunned with the different blows; then shoots amain, Till counterbuffed she stops, and sleeps again. Cymon and Iphigenia

Though it is small in bulk, Dryden’s lyrical poetry is of much importance. The longest and the best-known pieces of this class are his Song for St. Cecilia’s Day (1687) and Alexander’s Feast, written for the same anniversary in 1697. Both show Dryden as a master of melodious verse and of a varied and powerful style. The numerous lyrics that appear in his plays are charming. One stanza will illustrate this sweetly facile phase of the poet’s art:

On a bank, beside a willow, Heaven her covering, earth her pillow, Sad Amynta sighed alone; From the cheerless dawn of morning Till the dews of night returning, Singing thus she made her moan: “Hope is banished, Joys are vanished, Damon, my beloved, is gone!”

His numerous prologues and epilogues, written in couplets, show abundant wit and vivacity, yet they habitually appeal to the worst instincts of his audiences, being very often coarse and unmannerly.

=3. His Drama.= In his dramatic work, as elsewhere, Dryden is a faithful reflex of his time. His methods and objects vary as the public appreciation of them waxes and wanes, with the result that he gives us a historical summary of the popular fancy.

His first play was a comedy, The Wild Gallant (1663), which had but a very moderate success. It has the complicated plot of the popular Spanish comedies and the “humors” of Jonson’s. After this unsuccessful attempt at public favor Dryden turned to tragedy, which henceforth nearly monopolizes his dramatic work.

His tragedies fall into two main groups:

(a) The Heroic Play. This is a new type of the tragedy that became prominent after the Restoration, and of which Dryden is one of the earliest and most skillful exponents. The chief features of the new growth are the choice of a great heroic figure for the central personage; a succession of stage incidents of an exalted character, which often, through the inexpertness of the dramatist, became ridiculous; a loud and ranting style; and the rhymed couplet. Dryden’s Rival Ladies (1663) is a hybrid between the comic and heroic species of play; The Indian Emperor (1665), Tyrannic Love (1669), The Conquest of Granada (1670), and Aurengzebe (1675) show the heroic kind at its best and worst. Though Dryden is heavily weighted with the ponderous mechanism of the heroic play, his gigantic literary strength is often sufficient to give it an attraction and a kind of heavy-footed animation.

(b) His Blank-verse Tragedies. The heroic play was so easily parodied and made ridiculous, that the wits of the Restoration were not slow to make a butt of it. Their onslaughts were not without their effect on Dryden, for already in Aurengzebe a shamefaced weakening of the heroic mannerisms is apparent. In the prologue to this play Dryden fairly admits it, saying that he

Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rime. Passion’s too fierce to be in fetters bound, And Nature flies him like enchanted ground.

His next play, All for Love, or The World well Lost (1678), is in blank verse, and is considered to be his dramatic masterpiece. For subject he chose that of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. It was a daring thing to attempt what Shakespeare had already done; but Dryden, while following the earlier play somewhat closely, never actually copies it. He produces a play of a distinctly different nature, and of a high merit. The characters are well drawn and animated, and the style, though lacking the daimonic force of Shakespeare’s at his best, is noble and restrained. We give Dryden’s handling of the death of Cleopatra, a passage which should be compared with that of Shakespeare given on p. 121.

(_Antony is lying dead on the stage; Charmion and Iras, the Queen’s two handmaidens, are in attendance on her._)

Charmion. To what end These ensigns of your pomp and royalty?

Cleopatra. Dull that thou art! Why, ’tis to meet my love; As when I saw him first, on Cydnos’ bank, All sparkling, like a goddess.... Haste, haste, both, And dress the bride of Antony.

Charmion. ’Tis done.

Cleopatra. Now seat me by my lord; I claim this place.... Reach me the casket.

Iras. Underneath the fruit The aspic lies.

Cleopatra. Welcome, thou kind deceiver!

[Putting aside the leaves.

Thou best of thieves, who with an easy key Dost open life, and, unperceived by us, Even steal us from ourselves.... Haste, bare my arm, and rouse the serpent’s fury.

[Holds out her arm, and draws it back.

Coward flesh, Wouldst thou conspire with Cæsar to betray me, As thou wert none of mine? I’ll force thee to it, And not be sent by him, But bring, myself, my soul to Antony.

[Turns aside, and then shows her arm bloody.

Take hence; the work is done....

Charmion. The next is ours.

Iras. Now, Charmion, to be worthy Of our great queen and mistress.

[They apply the aspics.

Cleopatra. Already, death, I feel thee in my veins: I go with such a will to find my lord, That we shall quickly meet. A heavy numbness creeps through every limb, And now ’tis at my head: my eyelids fall, And my dear love is vanquished in a mist. Where shall I find him, where? O turn me to him, And lay me on his breast! Cæsar, thy worst; Now part us, if thou canst. [Dies.

[Iras sinks down at her feet, and dies; Charmion stands behind her chair, as dressing her head.

After the Revolution he wrote Don Sebastian (1690), Cleomenes (1691), and Love Triumphant (1694). The last was a tragi-comedy and a failure. The other two, however, were quite up to the average of his plays. In addition, at various stages of his career he collaborated with Lee in two other tragedies, and attempted, with lamentable results, to improve upon Shakespeare’s Tempest and Troilus and Cressida.

=4. His Prose.= Dryden’s versatility is apparent when we observe that in prose, as well as in poetry and drama, he attains to primacy in his generation. In the case of prose he has one rival, John Bunyan. No single item of Dryden’s prose work is of very great length; but in his Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1668), in his numerous dedicatory epistles and prefaces, and in the scanty stock of his surviving letters we have a prose corpus of some magnitude. The general subject of his prose is literary criticism, and that of a sane and vigorous quality. The style is free, but not too free; there are slips of grammar, but they are not many. The Essay of Dramatic Poesie is his longest single prose work. It is cast into dialogue form, in which four characters, one of whom is Dryden himself, discuss such well-worked themes as ancients versus moderns and blank verse versus rhyme. Studded throughout the book are passages of rare ability, one of which is the following, which illustrates not only his prose style, but also his acute perception of literary values:

To begin, then, with Shakespeare. He was the man who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi. VIRG., Ecl., i, 26

RESTORATION COMEDY

In comedy alone Dryden showed a certain incapacity; his mind seemed to be too rugged and unresilient to catch the sharper moods of the current wit. Fortunately this weakness of his was atoned for by the activities of a brilliant group of dramatists who made Restoration comedy a thing apart in English literature.

The new comedy, of a slower growth than the new heroic play, owed much of its inspiration to French comedy. It marked a new stage in the civilization of England. The plays of the Shakespearian era were beginning to be thought out of date. In his diary Evelyn notes that “the old plays begin to disgust this refined age.” Though the age was no doubt refined in certain respects, it was also decadent, and this decadent spirit is reflected in its comedy.

The novel features of the type are:

(a) The theme is mainly of courtiers and their class, their vices and affectations, their love-intrigues and money-grabbing. The characters are still to a great extent those of the “humorsome” quality so common in the time of Jonson. Their names reveal their dispositions: Sir Fopling Flutter; Scrub (a servant); Colonel Bully; Sir John Brute; Squire Sullen; Gibbet (a highwayman); Lady Bountiful. Such characters as these are involved in plots of great and unnatural complication, with much bustle and unlimited love-intrigue. In rare cases, as in some of the plays of Shadwell, the characters are much more human and the conditions more natural; and then we obtain deeply interesting glimpses of the habits of the time. But in general the whole atmosphere of the comedies is artificial and unreal.

(b) The prevailing love-theme is treated in a characteristic fashion which is fortunately rare in English. It is not handled coarsely; indeed, the age shows a ridiculous squeamishness at the grosser forms of vice; but it is handled with a cool licentiousness and a vicious pleasure that are often exceedingly clever, but always repulsive. It is art, but art of a perverted kind.

(c) The style of the comedy suits the treatment. It is prose of a neat and brilliant kind: deft and forcible, clean-cut and precise. The style of Congreve, a specimen of which is given below, is a model of its kind.

=William Congreve (1670–1729).= Though Congreve is not the first in time, he is probably the first in merit among the comedy-writers. He had a long life, but a glance at the table at the head of the chapter will show that only a short period of his life was productive of literary work. His plays were produced between 1693 and 1700. The last play was not successful, and repeated attacks were forthcoming upon his defects, so he wrote no more.

His first comedy was The Old Bachelor (1693); then came The Double Dealer (1693 or 1694), Love for Love (1695), and The Way of the World (1700). In 1697 he produced one tragedy, The Mourning Bride, which had no success. The earlier plays have a slight touch of seriousness, which is rarer still in the later comedies.

All are marked by the same features. The characters are numerous, brilliant, and sharply defined. In each case, however, they are too one-sided to be real; but they fulfill their purpose in the plays. The plots are full of scandalous notions delicately adumbrated; and the style is as keen and deadly as a sharp sword.

The following is a passage from The Way of the World. Two gentleman are backbiting an acquaintance.

Fainall. He comes to town in order to equip himself for travel.

Mirabell. For travel! Why the man that I mean is above forty.

Fainall. No matter for that; ’tis for the honour of England, that all Europe should know that we have blockheads of all ages.

Mirabell. I wonder there is not an act of parliament to save the credit of the nation, and prohibit the exportation of fools.

Fainall. By no means, ’tis better as ’tis; ’tis better to trade with a little loss, than to be quite eaten up with being overstocked.

Mirabell. Pray, are the follies of this knight-errant, and those of the squire his brother, anything related?

Fainall. Not at all; Witwoud grows by the knight, like a medlar grafted on a crab. One will melt in your mouth, and t’other set your teeth on edge; one is all pulp, and the other all core.

Mirabell. So one will be rotten before he be ripe, and the other will be rotten without ever being ripe at all.

OTHER COMEDY-WRITERS

=1. William Wycherley (1640–1715).= The productive period of Wycherley’s life was brief but fruitful. He produced four plays in five years: Love in a Wood (1672), The Gentleman Dancing Master (1673), The Country Wife (1675), and The Plain Dealer (1677). He was a man of good family, and he was at Court, where he seems to have been no better than the average courtier of his time.

His contemporaries call his plays “manly.” By this they probably refer to a boisterous indecency that riots through his comedies, in which nearly every person is a fool, and every clever man a rogue and a rake. He is much coarser in the grain than Congreve, and cannot keep his work at such a high level. Yet he shows much wit in handling dialogue, and has a sharp, though distorted, vision for human weaknesses.

=2. George Etheredge (1635–91).= Not much is known regarding the life of Etheredge; but he appears to have been a courtier, and to have served abroad. If all stories about him are true, he had an ample share of the popular vices. He is said to have been killed by tumbling downstairs while drunk. His three plays are The Comical Revenge, or Love in a Tub (1664), She Would if She Could (1668), and The Man of Mode (1676). They are more uneven than Wycherley’s, and at their worst are grosser; but they are clever, and can be lively and amusing.

=3. Sir John Vanbrugh (1666–1726).= Vanbrugh’s career, though much of it is obscure, seems to have been a varied one, for at different times he was a soldier, a herald, and an architect. His best three comedies are The Relapse (1697), The Provoked Wife (1698), and The Confederacy (1705).

In the general opinion Vanbrugh is held to be a good second to Congreve, but his plays are exceedingly unequal. His wit is rather more genial than is common at this time, and sometimes his touch is firm and sure.

=4. Thomas Shadwell (1640–92).= Dryden’s abuse of Shadwell has given the latter a notoriety that he scarcely deserves. Little is known about his life except that he was created Poet Laureate at the deposition of Dryden in 1688. He wrote many plays, some of which were popular in their day. The best three are The Sullen Lovers (1668), The Squire of Alsatia (1688), and Bury Fair (1689).

Shadwell is coarse without being clever to atone for it. His characters are often wooden and unreal, but he has the knack of laying his hand on good material. His Squire of Alsatia is full of interesting information about the life of the time, and Scott drew largely upon it for The Fortunes of Nigel.

=5. George Farquhar (1678–1707).= He had an adventurous career, was in turn a clergyman, an actor, and a soldier, and died when he was thirty years old. The pathos of his early death has given him a fame of its own. He wrote seven plays, the best of which are the last two, viz., The Recruiting Officer (1706) and The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707).

Farquhar comes late among the Restoration dramatists, and by this time the cynical immorality of the age seems to have worn thin. His temper is certainly more genial, and his wit, though it has lapses, is more decorous. The Beaux’ Stratagem (see pp. 225–6) is a lively and ingenious comedy with a cleverly engineered plot.

RESTORATION TRAGEDY

With regard to tragedy, Dryden is amply representative of his age. The period is less rich in tragedy than it is in comedy, for several reasons. (a) The spirit of the time was too irresponsible and vivacious to provide a healthy breeding-ground for this type of play. (b) The average poetical standard was not high; and tragedy of a superior type needs a high level of poetic merit. (c) There was a lack of fresh models, the tragedians being dependent on the Elizabethan plays (which were not popular), and on the classical French tragedies. Yet there are a few tragedians who deserve a brief mention.

=1. Thomas Otway (1651–85).= As was so often the case with the dramatists of the time, Otway had a varied and troubled career, closed with a miserable death. His first play, Alcibiades, was produced about 1675; then followed Don Carlos (1676), The Orphan (1680), and his masterpiece, Venice Preserved (1682).

Venice Preserved (see p. 226) for long held the reputation of being the best tragedy outside Shakespeare, and that reputation has kept it in the forefront. It shows his work at its best. It has a rugged and somber force, and reveals a considerable skill in working out a dramatic situation. But Otway tends to lay on the horrors too thickly; his style is unreliable, and his comic passages are farce of the coarsest kind. If he is second to Shakespeare, he is a very bad second.

=2. Nathaniel Lee (1653–92).= Lee’s life is the usual tale of mishaps, miseries, and drunkenness, with a taint of madness as an additional calamity. He wrote many tragedies, some of which are Nero (1673), Sophonisba (1676), The Rival Queens (1677), and Mithridates (1678). He also collaborated with Dryden in the production of two plays.

During his own time Lee’s name became a byword to distinguish a kind of wild, raving style, which in part at least seems to have been a product of his madness. But he can write well when the spirit is in him; he has a command of pathos, and all through his work he has touches of real poetic quality.

=3. Elkanah Settle (1648–1724).= Settle was in some ways the butt of his literary friends, and Dryden has given him prominence by attacking him in his satires. In his day he obtained some popularity with a heroic play, The Empress of Morocco (1673). It is a poor specimen of its kind, but his other dramas are worse.

=4. John Crowne (1640–1703).= Crowne is another of the dramatists who attacked Dryden and who were in turn assailed by the bigger man. A voluminous playwright, Crowne’s best-known works are the tragedies of Caligula (1698), a heroic play, and Thyestes, in blank verse, and a comedy, Sir Courtly Nice (1685). Crowne is quite a good specimen of the average Restoration dramatist. The plays show considerable talent and a fair amount of skill in versification.

=5. Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718).= During his lifetime Rowe was a person of some importance, and was made Poet Laureate in 1714. His best-known plays are Tamerlane (1702), The Fair Penitent (1703), and the popular Jane Shore (1714). Johnson says of him, “His reputation comes from the reasonableness of some of his scenes, the elegance of his diction, and the suavity of his verse.”

POETRY

=Samuel Butler (1612–80).= Besides Dryden and the tragedy-writers the only considerable poet of the period is Samuel Butler, and his fame rests on one work, Hudibras.

As a middle-aged man Butler saw the rough and tumble of the Civil War, and was nearly fifty when the Restoration occurred. He seems to have been of humble birth and to have served as a kind of superior menial in a number of noble households. In the course of these several occupations he acquired the varied knowledge that he was to put to good use in his poem. In 1663 he published Hudibras, which was at once a success. Two other parts followed in 1664 and 1678 respectively.

Hudibras was topical, for it was a biting satire on the Puritans, who were the reverse of popular when the King returned. In general outline it is modeled upon the adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, who find their respective parallels in Sir Hudibras and his squire Ralpho. Sir Hudibras is a Puritan knight who undergoes many absurd adventures; but the poem lacks the real pathos and genuine insight of its great Spanish original. It is wholly, almost spitefully, satirical. The poem is composed artfully. The adventures are well chosen in order to throw the greatest amount of ridicule on the maladroit hero; the humor, though keen and caustic, is never absolutely brutal in expression; there is a freakish spattering of tropes and a mock-solemn parade of scholastic learning; and (a feature that added immeasurably to its success) it is cast in an odd jigging octosyllabic couplet. This meter of Hudibras is remarkable. It is varied and yet uniform, and it carries the tale with an easy relish. Though it is sometimes almost doggerel, it has always a kind of distinction, and each couplet is clenched with an ingenious rhyme that is the most amusing feature of all.

He was in logic a great critic, Profoundly drilled in analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A hair ’twixt south and south-west side; On either which he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute; He’d undertake to prove by force Of argument a man’s no horse; He’d prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl-- A calf, an alderman--a goose, a justice-- And rooks, committee-men and trustees.

He’d run in debt by disputation, And pay with ratiocination: All this by syllogism, true In mood and figure, he would do. For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth but out there flew a trope; And when he happened to break off I’ th’ middle of his speech, or cough, H’ had hard words, ready to show why. And tell what rules he did it by: Else, when with greatest art he spoke, You’d think he talked like other folk; For all a rhetorician’s rules Teach nothing but to name his tools.

PROSE-WRITERS

=1. John Bunyan (1628–88).= In the domain of Restoration prose Bunyan alone contests the supremacy of Dryden. And Bunyan stands in a class by himself.

The main facts of his life are well known. He himself has given them an imperishable shape in his Grace Abounding (1666), a kind of religious autobiography. Though the statements of this book need not be taken too literally, he seems to have misspent his youth. He draws a horrible picture of his own depravity; but as religious converts are well known to delight in depicting their original wickedness in the darkest colors, this need not be taken too seriously. He served as a soldier in the Civil War, and seems to have been no better than the ordinary soldier. Religious conversion came to him about 1656, saving him, according to his own account, from everlasting fire. In the flood of his new enlightenment he became a preacher, and, being unlicensed, was arrested. He was cast into Bedford jail, and remained there for twelve years (1660–72). He was released, and obtained a license; but this was canceled in 1675, and he was imprisoned for six months. Beginning with this latter period we have all his most famous works: The Pilgrim’s Progress (1677), The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), and The Holy War (1682). He was eventually set at liberty, and spent his last years preaching in peace.

Except for Grace Abounding, all Bunyan’s major works are allegorical. In each case the allegory is worked out with ease, force, and clearness. Readers of all ages enjoy the narrative, while they follow the double meaning without an effort. The allegorical personages--for example, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mrs. Diffidence, Giant Despair, Madame Wanton, My Lord Hategood, Mr. Standfast--are fresh and apt, and are full of an intense interest and a raw dramatic energy. Their individual adventures combine and react with a variety that keeps the story from monotony, and yet the simple idea of a forward journey is never lost. The plot, working upon the fortunes of the different characters, gives us the nearest approach to the pure novel that had so far been effected. The numerous natural descriptions are simply done, but they are full of a great unspoilt ability. Lastly, Bunyan’s style is unique in prose. Though it is undoubtedly based upon the great Biblical models, it is quite individual. It is homely, but not vulgar; strong, but not coarse; equable, but not monotonous; it is sometimes humorous, but it is never ribald; rarely pathetic, but never sentimental. It has remained the pattern of a plain style, and is one of the masterpieces of the English language.

The following extract gives us an idea of Bunyan’s narrative and descriptive power, and is a fair specimen of his masculine prose:

I saw them in my dream, so far as this valley reached, there was, on the right hand, a very deep ditch; that ditch it is into which the blind have led the blind in all ages, and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold, on the left hand, there was a very dangerous quag, into which even if a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his feet to stand on: into that quag King David once did fall, and had no doubt therein been smothered, had not He that is able plucked him out. The pathway was here also exceeding narrow, and therefore good Christian was the more put to it: for when he sought, in the dark, to shun the ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip over into the mire on the other; also, when he sought to escape the mire, without great carefulness he would be ready to fall into the ditch. Thus he went on, and I heard him here sigh bitterly; for besides the danger mentioned above, the pathway here was so dark, that oft-times when he lifted up his foot to set forward, he knew not where, or upon what, he should set it next. About the midst of the valley I perceived the mouth of Hell to be; and it stood also hard by the way-side. And ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with sparks and hideous noises, that he was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another weapon, called All-prayer. So he cried, in my hearing, “O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.” Thus he went on a great while, yet still the flames would be reaching towards him. Also he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and fro; so that sometimes he thought he should be torn to pieces or trodden down like mire in the streets. The Pilgrim’s Progress

=2. Lord Halifax (1633–95).= Halifax was an outstanding figure in the House of Lords during the exciting times of the Exclusion Bills, of which he was the chief opponent. He ranks high as an orator; as an author his fame rests on a small volume called Miscellanies. The book contains a number of political tracts, such as The Character of a Trimmer, and a piece of a more general character called Advice to a Daughter. In his writings Halifax adopts the manner and attitude of the typical man of the world: a moderation of statement, a cool and agreeably acid humor, and a style devoid of flourishes. In him we find a decided approach to the essay-manner of Addison.

=3. Sir William Temple (1628–99).= Temple also was a politician of some importance, filled diplomatic posts abroad, and was a moderate success in affairs at home. He is an example of the moneyed, leisured semi-amateur in literature. He wrote little and elegantly, as a gentleman should, and patronized authors of lesser fortune and greater genius. His best work is his Essay on Poetry. His style resembles that of Halifax in its mundane, cultured reticence; but at times he has higher flights, in which he shows some skill in the handling of melodious and rhythmic prose.

=4. John Tillotson (1630–94).= In Tillotson we have one of the popular preachers of the time, and his Sermons is mentioned by Addison as being a standard work of its class. He is a literary descendant of the great school of Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Fuller, but his style lacks their richness and melody, though it gains in clearness and crispness.

=5. The Diarists.= By a coincidence it happened that the two most famous diary-writers in English were working at the same time, and during this period. Not dissimilar in several respects, their works show both the drawbacks and the advantages of the diary manner. The books are private documents, and so have no formal pretensions to literary excellence in style, which is not an undiluted misfortune. Yet the style is often ragged and incoherent, and much reading at it produces a feeling of flatness and monotony. But, on the other hand, being private jottings, they are intimate, and so are interesting, full of information concerning public and personal affairs, and containing illuminating comments on people and incidents.

(a) Of the two =Samuel Pepys (1633–1703)= is the less worthy as a man, but his very human quality makes him the livelier and the more interesting. By occupation he was a kind of civil servant in the Admiralty, and prospered so well that he became a member of Parliament and Secretary to the Admiralty. His diary, which was meant to be strictly personal, was written in cipher, and the reading of it gives one the impression of surreptitiously peeping into his back window when the blinds are up. By a multitude of detail the book shows Pepys to have been mean and lustful; vain and trivial; ambitious, and yet without the resolution that should attend it. Yet withal he is intensely human and alive, full of a magpie alertness; and in addition he has the gift of inspiring in his readers the same vividness of curiosity. We could ill spare Pepys from among those mortals who have become immortal in their own despite.

May 1st, 1669--Up betimes. Called by my tailor, and here first put on a summer suit this year; but it was not my fine one of flowered tabby vest and coloured camelot tunic, because it was too fine with the gold lace at the bands, that I was afraid to be seen in it; but put on the stuff suit I made the last year, which is now repaired; and so did go to the office in it, and sat all the morning, the day looking as if it would be foul. At noon home to dinner, and there find my wife extraordinary fine, with her flowered tabby gown that she made two years ago, now laced exceeding pretty; and, indeed, was fine all over; and mighty earnest to go, though the day was very lowering; and she would have me put on my fine suit, which I did. And so anon we went alone through the town with our new liveries of serge, and the horses’ manes and tails tied with red ribbons, and the standards gilt with varnish, and all clean, and green reins, that people did mightily look upon us; and, the truth is, I did not see any coach more pretty, though more gay, than ours all the day.

(b) =John Evelyn (1620–1706)= is the other diarist, and is much more respectable and much less amusing than Pepys. His diary is a more finished production in the matter of style, and may have been produced with an eye on the public. The style is only moderate in quality, and has little of the freshness that distinguishes Pepys’. The diary, however, is full of accurate information, and in some of the more moving incidents, such as that of the Great Fire, it warms into something like real eloquence.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

Viewed as a whole, this period is seen to be one of transition; and, being so, it is to a large extent one of stagnation, time’s dead low-water. The Elizabethan fervor had spent itself, and the new classicism was still in the making. Yet the time is important in the development of literary forms and style.

=1. Poetry.= (a) The Lyric. The form of the lyric shows little change. In bulk it is inconsiderable, for the lyrical spirit is largely in abeyance. Outside Dryden, who is the best example of the lyrical bard, we have the slight work of the courtiers, the =Earl of Dorset (1637–1706)=, the =Earl of Rochester (1647–80)=, and =Sir Charles Sedley (16391701)=. These were fashionable men, taking their poetry with fashionable irresponsibility. Their poems, which nearly all deal with the love-theme in an artificial manner, have a decided charm and skill, being modeled on the Caroline poems that were the mode before the Civil War. Of real originality there is hardly a trace.

(b) The Ode. Once more Dryden towers pre-eminent in this class of poem. His two odes on the anniversary of St. Cecilia’s Day and his other ode on the death of Mrs. Anne Killigrew are among the best of any period. Written in the irregular Pindaric meter, they are full of the high passion that gives the artificial medium some real fire and energy. We give the opening lines of the elegiac poem:

Thou youngest Virgin-Daughter of the skies, Made in the last promotion of the blest; Whose palms, new plucked from Paradise, In spreading branches more sublimely rise, Rich with immortal green above the rest: Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star, Thou roll’st above us in thy wandering race, Or in procession fixed and regular Moved with the heaven’s majestic pace, Or called to more superior bliss, Thou tread’st with seraphim the vast abyss.

(c) The Satire. Several circumstances combined to make this age abound in satirical writing. It was a period of bitter political and personal contention, of easy morals and subdued enthusiasms, of sharp wit and acute discrimination. For these reasons satire acquired a new importance and a sharper edge.

The older satire, such as is represented in the poems of Donne and of Andrew Marvell (1621–78), was of a more general kind, and seemed to have been written with deliberate clumsiness and obscurity. These habits were repugnant to the ideals of the new age, whose satire is more personal and more vindictive. Its effect is immensely more incisive, and it obtains a new freshness and point by the use of the heroic couplet, in which it is almost wholly written. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel is an excellent example of the political satire, while his MacFlecknoe shows the personal type. Literary satire is also well represented in The Rehearsal (1671), which parodied the literary vices of the time, especially those of the heroic play. This work, which was reproduced year after year, with topical hits in every new edition, was the work of several hands, though the Duke of Buckingham receives the chief credit. Butler’s Hudibras is a satire on the Puritans. The miscellaneous satire of John Oldham (1653–83) had much of the earlier clumsiness.

(d) Narrative poetry. Dryden’s translations and adaptations of Chaucer, Virgil, Ovid, and Boccaccio are the chief examples of this form. Among others, he gives us Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, The Knight’s Tale, and several tales from Boccaccio. There is no fresh development to record. Butler’s Hudibras is narrative of a kind, though the chief interest is satirical.

=2. Drama.= The development of the drama is considerable. We summarize briefly what has already been indicated.

(a) In tragedy the most novel in the matter of form is the heroic play, whose peculiarities have already been pointed out on p. 199. There is little further development. The tragical faculty is weakening all through the period, even in comparison with the post-Shakespearian plays. This type of play is best represented by Dryden’s All for Love and Otway’s Venice Preserved. The characters are becoming more stagy, and the situations are made as horrible as the ingenuity of the dramatist can devise.

(b) In comedy the advance is noteworthy. The comedy of “humors” is dying out, though considerable traces of it are still visible. The influence of the French is giving the comedy a new “snap” and glitter, and the almost universal medium is prose. Congreve’s Way of the World (1700), Wycherley’s Country Wife (1675), and Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem (1707) are good examples.

=3. Prose.= With the exception of the work of Dryden and Bunyan, the prose work of the time is of little moment. Dryden’s prose is almost entirely devoted to literary criticism; Bunyan’s contribution shows a remarkable development of the prose allegory. The remainder of the prose-writers deal with political and miscellaneous subjects, with, in addition, some theological and historical writing.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE

The main tendency of the age, in all departments of literature, is toward a clear, plain, and forcible style.

=1. Poetry.= The new movement was seen most clearly in the development of the heroic couplet, which was soon to spread throughout poetry and through much of the drama. As we have seen (p. 182), in the previous age the couplet had become so loose that it resembled a cross between prose and verse. An exponent of such a measure is Chamberlayne (1619–89):

Poor love must dwell Within no climate but what’s parallel Unto our honoured births; the envied fate Of princes oft these burdens find from state When lowly swains, knowing no parent’s voice Of negative, make a free and happy choice.

This is a curious liquid measure. The pause is irregularly distributed, and the rhythm is light and easy.

Cowley and Denham likewise obtain much credit for the introduction of the new measure; but the chief innovator is Edmund Waller (1606–87). Dryden, in his dedication to The Rival Ladies says, “Rime has all the advantages of prose besides its own. But the excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr. Waller first taught it.” An extract from Waller will suffice:

While in this park I sing, the listening deer Attend my passion, and forget to fear; When to the beeches I report my flame, They bow their heads, as if they felt the same, To gods appealing, when I reach their bowers, With loud complaints, they answer me in showers.

The note here is quite different from that of the previous extract. The tread of the meter is steady and almost uniform, and the pauses cluster about the middle and the end of the lines. It must be noted, too, that a large proportion of Waller’s poetry took this form.

Dryden adopted the heroic couplet, but he improved upon the wooden respectability of his predecessors’ verse. While he retained all the couplet’s steadiness and force, he gave it an additional vigor, a sinewy elegance, and a noble rhythm and beauty. It is worth while giving another example of his couplet:

A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged, Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged; Without unspotted, innocent within, She feared no danger, for she knew no sin. Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds And Scythian shafts; and many winged wounds Aimed at her heart; was often forced to fly, And doomed to death, though fated not to die. DRYDEN, The Hind and the Panther

In its own fashion this passage is as melodious and powerful as some of the noblest lines of Milton.

In other forms of poetry the style contains little to be commented upon. The blank verse continues the disintegration that (with the exception of the verse of Milton) began with the death of Shakespeare. We give a good example of this Restoration blank verse:

Through a close lane as I pursued my journey, And meditating on the last night’s vision, I spied a wrinkled hag, with age grown double, Picking dry sticks, and mumbling to herself; Her eyes with scalding rheum were galled and red, And palsy shook her head; her hands seemed withered; And on her crooked shoulder had she wrapped The tattered remnant of an old striped hanging. OTWAY, The Orphan

In this passage we can observe the absence of the high poetic fire of the Elizabethans and the lack of the thunderous depth of Milton. Observe the regularity of the beat, the uniformity of the pauses, and the frequency of the hypermetrical ending. There is, nevertheless, a certain somber, dogged attraction about the style of the passage. The average blank verse of the time is much less regular, and much less attractive.

The lyric still shows a reflection of the Caroline manner, as can be seen in the following example:

Love still has something of the sea, From whence his mother rose; No time his slaves from doubt can free, Nor give their thoughts repose.

They are becalmed in clearest days, And in rough weather tossed; They wither under cold delays, Or are in tempests lost. SEDLEY (out of seven stanzas)

This lyric has an undoubted sweetness of expression, though it is artificial in thought.

=2. Prose.= Though the prose writing of the period is not great in bulk, it shows a profound change in style. Previous writers, such as Browne, Clarendon, and Hobbes, had done remarkable and beautiful work in prose, but their style had not yet found itself. It was wayward and erratic, often cumbrous and often obscure, and weighted with a Latinized construction and vocabulary. In Dryden’s time prose begins definitely to find its feet. It acquires a general utility and a permanence; it is smoothed and straightened, simplified and harmonized. This is the age of average prose, and prepares the way for the work of Swift and Addison, who stand on the threshold of the modern prose style. Less than forty years intervene between Dryden and Sir Thomas Browne; yet Dryden and his school seem to be nearer the twentieth century than they are to Browne.

Not that Dryden’s style is flawless. It is sometimes involved and obscure; there are little slips of grammar and many slips of expression; but on the average it is of high quality, and the impression that the reader receives is one of great freshness and abounding vitality. Further examples of this good average style will be found in the work of Temple and Halifax.

In the case of Bunyan the style becomes plainer still. But it is powerful and effective, and bears the narrative nobly. Pepys and Evelyn have no pretensions to style as such, but their work is admirably expressed, and Evelyn in especial has passages of more elevated diction.

In some authors of the period we find this desire for unornamented style degenerating into coarseness and ugliness. Such a one is =Jeremy Collier (1650–1726)=, whose Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (1698) caused a great commotion in its day. It attacked the vices of the stage with such vigor that it is said to have driven some of the playwrights from their evil courses. The style of this famous book is so colloquial that it becomes in places ungrammatical. =Thomas Sprat (1635–1713)= was another disciple of the same school. He wrote on the newly formed Royal Society, which demanded from its members, “a close, naked, natural way of speaking.” This expresses the new development quite well. A greater man than Sprat but a fellow-member of the Royal Society, was =John Locke (1632–1704)=, who in his famous Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690) put the principle into practice. Locke’s style is bare to baldness, but it is clear. We give an example:

Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery; others, for apologues, and apposite, diverting stories. This is apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either of them, never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is true, that at first some lucky hit, which took with somebody, and gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility in it without perceiving how; and that is attributed wholly to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never carries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westminster Hall to the Exchange, will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking; and one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of court.

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

In one prominent case we have a survival of the more elaborate style of the past, and that is in the history of =Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715)=, Bishop of Salisbury, whose History of his own Times was published after his death. The style of the book is modeled on that of Clarendon. Burnet’s style is not of the same class as that of his predecessor: it has lapses into colloquialism; its sentences are snipped into small pieces by means of frequent colons and semicolons; and he has not Clarendon’s command of vocabulary.

EXERCISES

1. The two following lyrics are respectively of the Restoration and the Caroline periods. Compare and contrast them in (a) subject, (b) style, and (c) meter. Summarize the effect of either of them, and say which you prefer and why you prefer it.

(1) Love in fantastic triumph sate, Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed, For whom fresh pains he did create, And strange tyrannic power he showed. From thy bright eyes he took his fires, Which round about in sport he hurled; But ’twas from mine he took desires Enough t’ undo the amorous world.

From me he took his sighs and tears, From thee his pride and cruelty; From me his languishment and fears, And every killing dart from thee: Thus thou, and I, the god have armed And set him up a deity; But my poor heart alone is harmed, While thine the victor is, and free. APHRA BEHN (1640–89)

(2) Fair Daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon: As yet the early-rising Sun Has not attain’d his noon. Stay, stay, Until the hasting day Has run But to the even-song; And, having pray’d together, we Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you, We have as short a Spring; As quick a growth to meet decay As you, or any thing. We die, As your hours do, and dry Away Like to the Summer’s rain; Or as the pearls of morning’s dew Ne’er to be found again. To Daffodils, HERRICK (1591–1674)

2. Write a brief criticism of the following passage of Dryden’s prose. Comment upon (a) the vocabulary, (b) the type of sentence, (c) any colloquialisms or slips of grammar, and (d) its value as literary criticism.

He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearned, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different; the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are several men, and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking, gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this; there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. ’Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that “Here is God’s plenty.” We have our forefathers and great-granddames all before us, as they were in Chaucer’s days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of monks and friars, and canons, and lady abbesses, and nuns; for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of Nature, though everything is altered. Preface to the “Fables”

3. The extracts given below illustrate the development of the stopped couplet. Point out briefly the change that comes over the meter, paying attention to (a) the regularity of the accent, (b) the pause, and (c) the cæsura.

(1) The sable mantle of the silent night Shut from the world the ever-joysome light. Care fled away, and softest slumbers please To leave the court for lowly cottages. Wild beasts forsook their dens on woody hills, And sleightful otters left the purling rills; Rooks to their nests in high woods now were flung, And with their spread wings shield their naked young. When thieves from thickets to the cross-ways stir, And terror frights the lonely passenger; When naught was heard but now and then the howl Of some vile cur, or whooping of the owl. WILLIAM BROWNE, 1620

(2) Oh, virtue’s pattern, glory of our times, Sent of past days to expiate the crimes; Great King, but better far than thou art great, Whom state not honours but who honours state; By wonder born, by wonder first installed, By wonder after to new kingdoms called; Young, kept by wonder from home-bred alarms, Old, saved by wonder from pale traitor’s harms, To be for this thy reign, which wonders brings, A king of wonder, wonder unto kings. If Pict, Dane, Norman, thy smooth yoke had seen, Pict, Dane, and Norman, had thy subjects been; If Brutus knew the bliss thy rule doth give, E’en Brutus joy would under thee to live. For thou thy people dost so dearly love, That they a father more than prince thee prove. DRUMMOND, 1630

(3) The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er; So, calm are we when passions are no more! For then we know how vain it was to boast Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost. Clouds of affection from our younger eyes Conceal that emptiness which age descries.

The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made; Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become As they draw near to their eternal home. Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new. WALLER, 1687

(4) See barbarous nations at thy gates attend, Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend; See thy bright altars thronged with prostrate kings, And heaped with products of Sabæan springs! For thee Idume’s spicy forests blow, And seeds of golden Ophir’s mountains glow. See heaven its sparkling portals wide display, And break upon thee in a flood of day. POPE, 1730

4. In the following extract from Bunyan explain carefully the literal meaning that lies behind the allegory. Remark upon (a) its clearness, (b) its appropriateness and beauty. Add a note on Bunyan’s style, especially with regard to its connection with the Bible.

But we will come again to this valley of humiliation. It is the best and most fruitful piece of ground in all these parts. It is fat ground, and, as you see, consisteth much in meadows; and if a man was to come here in summer-time, as we do now, if he knew not anything before thereof, and if he also delighted himself in the sight of his eyes, he might see that which would be delightful to him. Behold how green this valley is! also how beautiful with lilies! I have known many labouring men that have got good estates in this valley of humiliation. “For God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble”; for indeed it is a very fruitful soil, and doth bring forth handfuls. Some also have wished that the next way to their father’s house were here, that they might be troubled no more with either hills or mountains to go over; but the way is the way, and there’s an end.

5. The following extracts illustrate respectively Restoration comedy and tragedy:

(1) (This is part of a scene between Aimwell, a gentleman who is staying at an inn, and Gibbet, a highwayman, who is trying to insinuate himself into his company by calling himself a military officer.)

Enter GIBBET

Gibbet. Sir, I’m yours.

Aimwell. ’Tis more than I deserve, sir, for I don’t know you.

Gibbet. I don’t wonder at that, sir, for you never saw me before--[aside]--I hope.

Aimwell. And pray, sir, how came I by the honour of seeing you now?

Gibbet. Sir, I scorn to intrude upon any gentleman, but my landlord--

Aimwell. O sir, I ask your pardon, you’re the captain he told me of?

Gibbet. At your service, sir.

Aimwell. What regiment, may I be so bold?

Gibbet. A marching regiment, an old corps.

Aimwell [aside]. Very old, if your coat be regimental. [Aloud] You have served abroad, sir?

Gibbet. Yes, sir, in the plantations,’twas my lot to be sent into the worst service; I would have quitted it indeed, but a man of honour, you know--Besides, ’twas for the good of my country that I should be abroad: anything for the good of one’s country--I’m a Roman for that.

Aimwell. You found the West Indies very hot, sir?

Gibbet. Ay, sir, too hot for me.

Aimwell. Pray, sir, han’t I seen your face at Will’s coffee-house?

Gibbet. Yes, sir, and at White’s too.

Aimwell. And where is your company now, captain?

Gibbet. They an’t come yet.

Aimwell. Why, d’ye expect them here?

Gibbet. They’ll be here to-night, sir.

Aimwell. Which way do they march?

Gibbet. Across country. FARQUHAR, The Beaux’ Stratagem

Remark upon the style of the dialogue, and how it suits the situation.

(2) (_This extract occurs near the end of “Venice Preserved,” Otway’s famous tragedy. Pierre, a conspirator against the Venetian Senate, is about to be tortured publicly on the wheel. His friend Jaffier, who has wronged Pierre, has come to witness the execution._)

Officer. The day grows late, sir.

Pierre. I’ll make haste. O Jaffier! Though thou’st betrayed me, do me some way justice.

Jaffier. No more of that: thy wishes shall be satisfied....

[Going away, Pierre holds him.

Pierre. No--this--no more! [He whispers Jaffier.

Jaffier. Ha! is’t then so?

Pierre. Most certainly.

Jaffier. I’ll do’t.

Pierre. Remember.

Officer. Sir.

Pierre. Come, now I’m ready.

[He and Jaffier ascend the scaffold.

Captain, you should be a gentleman of honour. Keep off the rabble, that I may have room To entertain my fate and die with decency. Come!

[Takes off his gown. Executioner prepares to bind him.

Priest. Son!

Pierre. Hence, tempter!

Officer. Stand off, priest.

Pierre. I thank you, sir. You’ll think on’t. [To Jaffier.

Jaffier. ’Twon’t grow stale before to-morrow.

Pierre. Now, Jaffier! Now I am going. Now--

[Executioner having bound him.

Jaffier. Have at thee, thou honest heart! Then, here! [Stabs him. And this is well too! [Stabs himself.

Priest. Damnable deed!

Pierre. Now thou hast indeed been faithful. This was done nobly--we’ve deceived the Senate.

Jaffier. Bravely.

Pierre. Ha! Ha! Ha!--Oh! Oh!-- [Dies.

Jaffier. Now, you curs’d rulers, Thus of the blood ye’ve shed I make libation, And sprinkle it mingling; may it rest upon you, And all your race: be henceforth peace a stranger Within your walls; let plagues and famine waste Your generations--O poor Belvidera!... I’m sick--I’m quiet-- [Dies.

Remark upon the power of this scene, the skill shown in the variation of the speeches, the use of colloquialisms, and the climax. Does it strike you as being overdone? Add a note on the meter.

6. The following is Dryden’s character-sketch of the Duke of Buckingham, who receives the name of Zimri. (Dryden, in his Essay on Satire, says: “How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave without using any of these opprobrious names! There is a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place.... The character of Zimri, in my Absalom and Achitophel, is, in my opinion, worth the whole poem. It is not bloody, but it is ridiculous enough.”)

Some of their chiefs were princes of the land; In the first rank of these did Zimri stand, A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind’s epitome: Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts, and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy! Railing and praising were his usual themes, And both, to show his judgment, in extremes: So over violent or over civil That every man with him was God or Devil. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert. Beggared by fools whom still he found too late, He had his jest, and they had his estate. He laughed himself from Court; then sought relief By forming parties, but could ne’er be chief: For spite of him, the weight of business fell On Absalom and wise Achitophel; Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft, He left not faction, but of that was left.

From this passage quote the lines which hint that Buckingham is respectively “a fool, a blockhead, or a knave” without actually calling him so. Quote other lines that seem to be particularly effective. Remark upon the style of the couplet: the meter, the position of the pause, and the kind of rhyme. Finally, write a paragraph summarizing the effect the passage produces on the reader.

7. The passage given below is an extract from Dryden’s earliest printed poem (1658). Compare it with the passage given in the last exercise.

Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit, Who, rebel-like, with their own lord at strife, Thus made an insurrection ’gainst his life. Or were these gems sent to adorn his skin, The cabinet of a richer soul within? No comet need foretell his change drew on, Whose corpse might seem a constellation. Upon the Death of the Lord Hastings

8. Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march, the energy divine. POPE

From the passages already quoted give extracts to show the truth of the above statement.

9. Use the following quotation to sketch the development of English prose from the death of Shakespeare to the death of Dryden:

When we find Chapman, the Elizabethan translator of Homer, expressing himself in his preface thus: “Though truth in her very nakedness sits in so deep a pit, that from Gades to Aurora and Ganges few eyes can sound her, I hope yet those few here will so discover and confirm, that, the date being out of her darkness in this morning of our poet, he shall now gird his temples with the sun,”--we pronounce that such a prose is intolerable. When we find Milton writing: “And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem,”--we pronounce that such a prose has its own grandeur, but that it is obsolete and inconvenient. But when we find Dryden telling us: “What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all I write,” then we exclaim that here at last we have the true English prose, prose such as we would all gladly use if we only knew how. Yet Dryden was Milton’s contemporary. MATTHEW ARNOLD

10. “A good deal of the unconquerable individuality of the earlier part of the century survives in it, and prevents monotony. After Addison everybody tries to write like Addison; after Johnson almost everybody tries to write like Johnson. But after Dryden everybody dare not yet try to write like Dryden.” (Saintsbury.) Show how far this statement applies to the prose style of the age.

11. “The characteristic feature of The Pilgrim’s Progress is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest.” (Macaulay.) Show how Bunyan, in plot, characters, and style, arouses this “strong human interest” in his allegory. From this point of view compare him with Spenser, who, Macaulay says, does not arouse this interest.

12. The period of Dryden is often called “the Age of Satire.” Account for the prominence of satire in this period, and point out some of the effects it had on current and the succeeding writing.

13. What are the main features of Restoration drama?

14. “No man exercised so much influence on the age. The reason is obvious. On no man did the age exercise so much influence.” (Macaulay.) How far is this statement true of Dryden?

VIII. THE AGE OF POPE

TIME-CHART OF THE CHIEF AUTHORS

The thick line shows the period of active literary work

1700 1710 1720 1730 1740 1750 | ║ [142]║ | | | ║ | Pope |......║=======║================================║ | (1688–1744) | | ║ | | | | | ║ | | ║ | | | Prior |......║=================║ | | | (1664–1721) | | | | | | | | ║ | | | ║[143]║ | Young |..........|...║==============================║=====║..| (1683–1765) | | | | | | | ║ | | ║[144]| ║ | ║ | Swift |...║======================║============║...|.....║ | (1667–1745) | | | ║ | | | | ║ |║[145] ║ | | | | Addison |...║=======║======║ | | | | (1672–1719) | |║ | | | | | ║ |║[145] | ║ | | | Steele |.....║=====║=================║ | | | (1672–1729) | |║ | | | | |║ | ║[146] | ║ | | Defoe |║=================║===============║ | | (1659–1731) | | ║ | | | | | | | | | |

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1700–50)

In the beginning of the eighteenth century the old quarrels take on new features.

=1. The Rise of the Political Parties.= In the reign of Charles II the terms “Whig” and “Tory” first became current; by the year 1700 they were in everybody’s mouth. About that time domestic politicians became sharply cleft into two groups that were destined to become established as the basis of the British system. Domestic affairs, while they never approached the stage of bloodshed, took on a new acrimony that was to affect literature deeply. Actual points of political faith upon which the parties were divided are not of great importance to us here; but, generally speaking, we may say that the Whig party stood for the pre-eminence of personal freedom as opposed to the Tory view of royal divine right. Hence the Whigs supported the Hanoverian succession, whereas the Tories were Jacobites. The Tories, whose numbers were recruited chiefly from the landed classes, objected to the foreign war upon the score that they had to pay taxes to prolong it; and the Whigs, representing the trading classes generally, were alleged to be anxious to continue the war, as it brought them increased prosperity. In the matter of religion the Whigs were Low Churchmen and the Tories High Churchmen.

=2. The Foreign War.= This War of the Spanish Succession was brilliantly successful under the leadership of Marlborough, who, besides being a great general, was a prominent Tory politician. The Tories, as the war seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, supplanted (1710) the Whigs, with whom they had been co-operating in the earlier stages of the war, and in 1713 they concluded the war by the unfortunate Treaty of Utrecht. Contemporary literature is much concerned both with the war and the peace.

=3. The Succession.= When Anne ascended the throne the succession seemed to be safe enough, for she had a numerous family. Nevertheless, her children all died before her, and in 1701 it became necessary to pass the Act of Settlement, a Whig measure by which the crown was conferred upon the House of Hanover. On the death of Anne, in the year 1714, the succession took effect, in spite of the efforts of the Tories, who were anxious to restore the Stuarts. The events of this year 1714 deeply influenced the lives of Addison, Steele, Swift, and many other writers of lesser degree.

THE AGE OF PROSE

The age of Pope intensified the movement that, as we have seen, began after the Restoration. The drift away from poetical passion was more pronounced than ever, the ideals of “wit” and “common sense” were more zealously pursued, and the lyrical note was almost unheard. In its place we find in poetry the overmastering desire for neatness and perspicuity, for edge and point in style, and for correctness in the technique of the popular forms of poetry. These aims received expression in the almost crazy devotion to the heroic couplet, the aptest medium for the purpose. In this type of poetry the supreme master is Pope; yet even the most ardent admirer of Pope must admit his defects as a poet of the passions. Indeed, one of his most competent biographers[147] asserts that “most of his work may be fairly described as rhymed prose, differing from prose not in substance or in tone of feeling, but only in the form of expression.”

Thus the poet who is admitted to be far and away the most important of the age is considered to be largely prosaic. On the other hand, the only other great names of the period--Swift, Addison, Steele, Defoe--are those of prose-writers primarily, and prose-writers of a very high quality.

The main reason for this temporary predominance of prose is hard to discover. One can put it down only to the mysterious ebb and flow, the alternate coming and going, of the spirit of poetry. This alternation is noticeable through all the stages of our literary history, and nowhere is it more distinct than in the century we are discussing. The spirit of poetry was soaring to its culmination in the Elizabethan age; during the era of Dryden it was fluttering to earth; in Pope’s lifetime it was crouching “like veiled lightnings asleep”; but it was soon to arise with new and divine strength.

Some other outstanding conditions of the age remain to be considered. Most of them, it will be noticed, help to give prose its dominating position.

=1. Political Writing.= We have already noticed the rise of the two political parties, accompanied by an increased acerbity of political passion. This development gave a fresh importance to men of literary ability, for both parties competed for the assistance of their pens, bribed the authors with places and pensions (or promises of them), and admitted them more or less deeply into their counsels. In previous ages authors had had to depend on their patrons, often capricious beings, or upon the length of their subscription lists; they now acquired an independence and an importance that turned the heads of some of them. Hardly a writer of the time is free from the political bias. Swift became a virulent Tory, Addison a tepid Whig; Steele was Whig and Tory in turn. It was indeed the Golden Age of political pamphleteering, and the writers made the most of it.

=2. The Clubs and Coffee-houses.= Politicians are necessarily gregarious, and the increased activity in politics led to a great addition to the number of political clubs and coffee-houses, which became the foci of fashionable and public life. In the first number of The Tatler Steele announces as a matter of course that the activities of his new journal will be based upon the clubs. “All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure and Entertainment shall be under the article of White’s Chocolate-House; Poetry under that of Will’s Coffee-House; Learning under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from Saint James’ Coffee-House.” These coffee-houses became the “clearing-houses” for literary business, and from them branched purely literary associations such as the famous Scriblerus and Kit-Cat Clubs, those haunts of the fashionable writers which figure so prominently in the writings of the period.

=3. Periodical Writing.= The development of the periodical will be noticed elsewhere (see pp. 267–8). It is sufficient here to point out that the struggle for political mastery led both factions to issue a swarm of Examiners, Guardians, Freeholders, and similar publications. These journals were run by a band of vigorous and facile prose-writers, who in their differing degrees of excellence represent almost a new type in our literature.

=4. The New Publishing Houses.= The interest in politics, and probably the decline in the drama, caused a great increase in the size of the reading public. In its turn this aroused the activities of a number of men who became the forerunners of the modern publishing houses. Such were Edmund Curll (1675–1747), Jacob Tonson (1656–1736), and John Dunton (1659–1733). These men employed numbers of needy writers, who produced the translations, adaptations, and other popular works of the time. It is unwise to judge a publisher by what authors say of him, but the universal condemnation leveled against Curll and his kind compels the belief that they were a breed of scoundrels who preyed upon authors and public, and (what is more remarkable) upon one another. The miserable race of hack-writers--venomously attacked by Pope in The Dunciad--who existed on the scanty bounty of such men lived largely in a thoroughfare near Moorfields called Grub Street, the name of which has become synonymous with literary drudgery.

=5. The New Morality.= The immorality of the Restoration, which had been almost entirely a Court phenomenon and was largely the reaction against extreme Puritanism, soon spent itself. The natural process of time was hastened by opinion in high quarters. William III was a severe moralist, and Anne, his successor, was of the same character. Thus we soon see a new tone in the writing of the time, and a new attitude to life and morals. Addison, in an early number of The Spectator, puts the new fashion in his own admirable way: “I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.” Another development of the same spirit is seen in the revised opinion of women, who are treated with new respect and dignity. Much coarseness is still to be felt, especially in satirical writing, in which Swift, for instance, can be quite vile; but the general upward tendency is undoubtedly there.

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667–1745)

=1. His Life.= Swift was born in Dublin, and, though both his parents were English, his connection with Ireland was to be maintained more or less closely till the day he died. His father dying before Jonathan’s birth, the boy was thrown upon the charity of an uncle, who paid for his education in Ireland. He seems to have been very wretched both at his school at Kilkenny and at Trinity College, Dublin, where his experiences went to confirm in him that savage melancholia that was to endure all his life. Much of this distemper was due to purely physical causes, for he suffered from an affection of the ear that ultimately touched his brain and caused insanity. In 1686, at the age of nineteen, he left Trinity College (it is said in disgrace), and in 1689 entered the household of his famous kinsman Sir William Temple, under whose encouragement he took holy orders, and on the death of Temple in 1699 obtained other secretarial and ecclesiastical appointments. His real chance came in 1710, when the Tories overthrew the Marlborough faction and came into office. To them Swift devoted the gigantic powers of his pen, became a political star of some magnitude, and, after the manner of the time, hoped for substantial rewards. He might have become a bishop, but it is said that Queen Anne objected to the vigor of his early writings; and in the wreck of the Tory party in 1715 all he could save was the Deanery of St. Patrick’s, in Dublin. An embittered man, he spent the last thirty years of his life in gloom, and largely in retirement. He was involved in obscure but not dishonorable philanderings with Esther Johnson (Stella) and Esther Vanhomrigh (Vanessa), whose names figure prominently in his personal writings. His last years were passed in silence and lunacy, and he expired (in Johnson’s words) “a driveller and a show.”

=2. His Poetry.= Swift would have been among the first to smile at any claim being advanced for him on the score of his being a great poet, yet in bulk his verse is considerable, and in quality it is striking. His poems were to a large extent recreations: odd verses (sometimes humorously doggerel) to his friends; squibs and lampoons on his political and private enemies, including the famous one on Partridge, the quack astrologer; and one longish one, Cadenus and Vanessa (1730), which deals with his fancy for Esther Vanhomrigh. In his poems he is as a rule lighter of touch and more placable in humor than he is in his prose. His favorite meter is the octosyllabic couplet, which he handles with a dexterity that reminds the reader of Butler in Hudibras. He has lapses of taste, when be becomes coarse and vindictive; and sometimes the verse, through mere indifference, is badly strung and colloquially expressed.

The following is from some bitter verses he wrote (1735) on his own death just before the final night of madness descended. Note the fierce misery inadequately screened with savage scorn.

Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak: “See, how the Dean begins to break! Poor gentleman, he droops apace! You’ll plainly find it in his face. That old vertigo in his head Will never leave him, till he’s dead. Besides, his memory decays: He recollects not what he says; He cannot call his friends to mind; Forgets the place where last he dined; Plies you with stories o’er and o’er; He told them fifty times before. How does he fancy we can sit To hear his out-of-fashion wit? But he takes up with younger folks, Who for his wine will bear his jokes. Faith, he must make his stories shorter, Or change his comrades once a quarter: In half the time he talks them round, There must another set be found.”

=3. His Prose.= Almost in one bound Swift attained to a mastery of English prose, and then maintained an astonishing level of excellence. His first noteworthy book was The Battle of the Books, published in 1704. The theme of this work is a well-worn one, being the dispute between ancient and modern authors. At the time Swift wrote it his patron, Sir William Temple, was engaged in the controversy, and Swift’s tract was in support of his kinsman’s views. Swift gives the theme a half allegorical, mock-heroic setting, in which the books in a library at length literally contend with one another. The handling is vigorous and illuminating, and refreshed with many happy remarks and allusions. The famous passage where a bee, accidentally blundering into a spider’s web, argues down the bitter remarks of the spider, is one of Swift’s happiest efforts.

The Tale of a Tub, also published in 1704, though it was written as early as 1696, is regarded by many as Swift’s best work. It certainly reveals his power at its highest. It is a religious allegory, perhaps suggested by the work of Bunyan, on three men: Peter, who stands for the Roman Catholic Church; Jack, who represents the extreme Protestant sects; and Martin, the personification of the Anglican and Lutheran Churches. Each of the three has a coat left to him by his father, and they have many experiences, beginning with the changes that they make on the coats that have been left to them. As a narrative the book soon loses clearness and coherence; but later a ferocious assault is developed by Swift upon Peter and Jack. Martin escapes more lightly than the others, and this is unusually discriminating on the part of the author. The chief interest in the book lies in Swift’s uncanny penetration of intellect, which thrusts itself into all manner of human activities, and also in the weight and blighting scorn of his comment upon those activities. The satire is irresistible. Nothing escapes it; nothing can resist it. When he has finished we feel he has made a wilderness of everything we call sacred and beautiful.

The great strength of Swift’s satiric method lies in its cosmic elemental force. Unlike that of Pope, it is never paltry or mean. It has a terrifying intensity, caused by an aloofness that is inflexible, dominating, and unchallengeable. Yet The Tale of a Tub, while it fully reveals the power that stamps him as a writer of the first rank, throws into prominence the faults that seriously mar his achievement. His satire is too indiscriminate, lashing out at whatever comes in the way, whether it be good or bad. Secondly, it is often violent and revoltingly cruel. Thirdly, it can be coarse and indecent. These flaws, partly the common vices of the time, are likewise the fruit of his mental malady, and they deepen as he grows older.

The following extract shows the suggestiveness of his allegory, the corrosive power of his satire, and his redoubtable style:

Whenever it happened that any rogue of Newgate was condemned to be hanged, Peter would offer him a pardon for a certain sum of money; which when the poor caitiff had made all shifts to scrape up, and send, his lordship would return a piece of paper in this form:

“To all mayors, sheriffs, jailors, constables, bailiffs, hangmen, etc. Whereas we are informed that A. B. remains in the hands of some of you, under the sentence of death: We will and command you, upon sight hereof to let the said prisoner depart to his own habitation whether he stands condemned for murder, etc., etc., for which this shall be your sufficient warrant; and if you fail hereof, God damn you and yours to all eternity; and so we bid you heartily farewell. Your most humble man’s man, Emperor Peter.”

The wretches, trusting to this, lost their lives and money too. Peter, however, became outrageously proud. He has been seen to take three old high-crowned hats and clap them on his head three-storey high, with a huge bunch of keys at his girdle, and an angling-rod in his hand. In which guise, whoever went to take him by the hand in the way of salutation, Peter, with much grace, like a well-educated spaniel, would present them with his foot; and if they refused his civility, then he would raise it as high as their chops, and give them a damned kick in the mouth, which has ever since been called a salute. The Tale of a Tub

The next period of his life (1704–14) was occupied mainly in the composition of political tracts, some of which are of great power. Several of them were written for The Examiner, a Tory journal. They include Remarks on the Barrier Treaty (1712) and The Public Spirit of the Whigs (1714). To this period also belongs the Journal to Stella, which is a kind of informal private log-book written by him and sent regularly to Esther Johnson. It has all Swift’s shrewdness and vivacity, without much of the usual scorn and coarseness. It is not as intimate and revealing as the diary of Pepys, yet it gives us many glimpses of the inner man: vain and arrogant, ambitious and crafty, but none the less a generous and considerate friend and a loyal ally.

During the third period--that of his final stay in Ireland--the shadow deepens. The earlier years produce one of the most compelling efforts of his pen. He supported the Irish in their revolt against “Wood’s halfpence,” writing in their cause his Drapier’s Letters (1724). This gained for him an almost embarrassing popularity. Then followed some miscellaneous political work, and then his longest and most famous book, Gulliver’s Travels (1726). The main idea of this book is an old one, being at least as old as the time of Lucian, a Greek writer of the second century: it deals with imaginary voyages, in Gulliver’s case among the pigmies (Lilliputians), the giants (Brobdingnagians), the moonstruck philosophers (Laputans), and the race of horses, with their human serfs the Yahoos.

Gulliver’s Travels resembles its fellow-allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress in its popularity and human interest; but in temper the two books are worlds apart. Bunyan views human failings with a discerning eye, but he accepts them with a benign quiescence, and with a tempered faith in man’s ultimate redemption. Swift, on the other hand, said to Pope, “I heartily hate and detest that animal called man,” and this book is an elaboration of that attitude. He magnifies man into a giant, and then he diminishes him into a mannikin, and he finds him wicked and insolent and mean; he regards man in his wisdom, and he finds him a fool; in despair, in the last book of the Travels, he turns from man altogether, and in the brute creation he discovers a charity and sagacity before which humanity grovels as a creature beastly beyond measure. The last stages of the book are morbid and revolting to the point of insanity.

The two earlier stages of the Travels have a charm and vivacity that delight old and young. The bitterness of the satire lurks in the allegory, but it is so delicately tinseled over that it does not repel. The crowded incidents are plausible and lively, and they are often spiced with a quaint and alluring humor; his comments upon mankind are shrewd and arresting, as well as satirical, and are yet not brutal nor obscene. The style is Swift’s best: not mannered or labored; clean, powerful, and tireless; easy without being slovenly, and as clear as summer noonday.

The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me whether I understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health. I answered, that I understood both very well; for although my proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often upon a pinch I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man-of-war among us, and such a boat as I could manage would never live in any of their rivers. Her majesty said, if I would contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for me to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and, by my instructions, in ten days finished a pleasure-boat, with all its tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans. When it was finished, the queen was so delighted that she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put in a cistern full of water with me in it by way of trial; where I could not manage my two sculls, or little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before contrived another project. She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep, which being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half an hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the ladies gave me a gale with their fans; and when they were weary, some of the pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while I showed my art by steering starboard or larboard, as I pleased. When I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back my boat into her closet, and hung it on a nail to dry.

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672–1718)

=1. His Life.= Educated at the Charterhouse, Addison went to Oxford, where he became a Fellow of Magdalen College. He early made his mark as a serious and accomplished scholar, and seems to have attracted the notice of the Whig leaders, who marked him out as a future literary prop of their faction. He obtained a traveling scholarship of three hundred pounds a year, and saw much of Europe under favorable conditions. Then the misfortunes of the Whigs in 1703 reduced him to poverty. In 1704, it is said at the instigation of the leaders of the Whigs, he wrote the poem The Campaign, praising the war policy of the Whigs in general and the worthiness of Marlborough in particular. This poem brought him fame and fortune. He obtained many official appointments and pensions, married a dowager countess (1716), and became a Secretary of State (1717). Two years later he died, at the age of forty-seven.

=2. His Poetry.= In his Latin verses Addison attained early distinction. These verses were highly praised at a time when praise for proficiency in such a medium was of some significance. Then his Campaign in 1704 gave him a reputation as one of the major poets of the age. The poem is poor enough. It is written in the heroic couplet, and with some truth it has been called a “rhymed gazette.” The story is little more than a pompous catalogue of places and persons; the style is but mediocre, and warms only when it is feebly stirred by the ignorant enthusiasm that a sedentary civilian feels for the glory of war. The hero is Marlborough, who is drawn on a scale of epic grandeur. The most famous passage of the work is that comparing the general to the angel that rides the storm. The poem literally made Addison’s fortune; for after reading it the Whig Lord Treasurer Godolphin gave him the valuable appointment of Commissioner of Appeals.

’Twas then great Marlbro’s mighty soul was prov’d, That, in the shock of charging hosts unmov’d, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examin’d all the dreadful scenes of war; In peaceful thought the field of death survey’d, To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, Inspir’d repuls’d battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. So when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o’er pale Britannia past, Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And pleas’d th’ Almighty’s orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

His only other poetical works worthy of notice are his hymns, which are melodious, scholarly, and full of a cheerful piety. The one that begins “The spacious firmament on high” is among the best.

=3. His Drama.= Addison was lucky in his greatest dramatic effort, just as he was lucky in his longest poem. In 1713 he produced the tragedy of Cato, part of which had been in manuscript as early as 1703. It is of little merit, and shows that Addison, whatever his other qualities may be, is no dramatist. It is written in laborious blank verse, in which wooden characters declaim long, dull speeches. But it caught the ear of the political parties, both of which in the course of the play saw pithy references to the inflamed passions of the time. The play had the remarkable run of thirty-five nights, and was revived with much success. Addison also attempted an opera, Rosamond (1706), which was a failure; and the prose comedy of The Drummer (about 1715) is said, with some reason, to be his also. If it is, it adds nothing to his reputation.

=4. His Prose.= Several political pamphlets are ascribed to Addison, but as a pamphleteer he is not impressive. He lacked the brutal directness of Swift, whose pen was a terror to his opponents. It is in fact almost entirely as an essayist that Addison is justly famed.

These essays began almost casually. On April 12, 1709, Steele published the first number of The Tatler, a periodical that was to appear thrice weekly. Addison, who was a school and college friend of Steele, saw and liked the new publication, and offered his services as a contributor. His offer was accepted, and his first contribution, a semi-political one, appeared in No. 18. Henceforward Addison wrote regularly for the paper, contributing 42 numbers, which may be compared with Steele’s share of 188. The Tatler finished in January, 1711; then in March of the same year Steele began The Spectator, which was issued daily. The paper had some variations of fortune, price, and time of issue, but eventually it ran until December, 1712; obtained an unprecedented popularity (it was said that in its palmiest days it sold ten thousand copies of each issue), and exercised a great influence upon the reading public of the period. In The Spectator Addison rapidly became the dominating spirit, wrote 274 essays out of a complete total of 555, and wholly shaped its policy when Steele tired of the project. Steele wrote 236 essays. In March, 1713, Addison assisted Steele with The Guardian, which Steele began. It was only a moderate success, and terminated after 175 numbers, Addison contributing 53.

In all, we thus have from Addison’s pen nearly four hundred essays, which are of nearly uniform length, of almost unvarying excellence of style, and of a wide diversity of subject. He set out to be a mild censor of the morals of the time, and most of his compositions deal with topical subjects--fashions, headdresses, practical jokes, polite conversation. Deeper themes were handled in a popular and sketchy fashion--immorality, jealousy, prayer, death, and drunkenness. Politics were touched, but gingerly. Sometimes he adopted the allegory as a means of throwing his ideas vividly before his readers; and so we have the popular Vision of Mirza and the political allegory of Public Credit. Literary criticism, of a mild and cautious kind, found a prominent place in the essays, as well as many half-personal, half-jocular editorial communications to the readers. And, lastly, there was the famous series dealing with the Spectator Club.

It is certain that Steele first hit on the idea of Sir Roger de Coverley, an imaginary eccentric old country knight who frequented the Spectator Club in London. Around the knight were grouped a number of contrasted characters, also members of the mythical club. Such were Will Honeycomb, a middle-aged beau; Sir Andrew Freeport, a city merchant; Captain Sentry, a soldier; and Mr. Spectator, a shy, reticent person, who bears a resemblance to Addison himself. Addison seized upon the idea of the club; gave it life, interest, and adventure; cast over it the charm of his pleasantly sub-acid humor; and finished up by making the knight die with affecting deliberation and decorum. Sandwiched between essays on other topics, this series appeared at intervals in the pages of The Spectator, and added immensely to the popularity of the journal. In literature it has an added value. If Addison had pinned the Coverley papers together with a stronger plot; if, instead of only referring to the widow who had stolen the knight’s affections, he had introduced a definite love-theme; if he had introduced some important female characters, we should have had the first regular novel in our tongue. As it is, this essay-series brings us within measurable distance of the genuine eighteenth-century novel.

We give an extract to illustrate both his humor and his style. His humor is of a rare order. It is delicate, almost furtive; sometimes it nearly descends to a snigger, but it seldom reveals anything that is not gentlemanly, tolerant, and urbane. To Swift, with his virile mind, such a temper seemed effeminate and priggish. “I will not meddle with The Spectator,” he wrote to Stella; “let him fair sex it to the world’s end.”

His style has often been deservedly praised. It is the pattern of the middle style, never slipshod, or obscure, or unmelodious. He has an infallible instinct for the proper word, and an infallible ear for a subdued and graceful rhythm. In this fashion his prose moves with a demure and pleasing grace, in harmony with his subject, with his object, and with himself.

As I was yesterday morning walking with Sir Roger before his house, a country fellow brought him a huge fish, which, he told him, Mr William Wimble had caught that very morning; and that he presented it with his service to him, and intended to come and dine with him. At the same time he delivered a letter, which my friend read to me as soon as the messenger left him.

“SIR ROGER, “I desire you to accept of a jack, which is the best I have caught this season. I intend to come and stay with you a week, and see how the perch bite in the Black river. I observed with some concern, the last time I saw you upon the bowling-green, that your whip wanted a lash to it; I will bring half a dozen with me that I twisted last week, which I hope will serve you all the time you are in the country. I have not been out of the saddle for six days last past, having been at Eton with Sir John’s eldest son. He takes to his learning hugely. “I am, Sir, your humble servant, “WILL WIMBLE”

This extraordinary letter, and message that accompanied it, made me very curious to know the character and quality of the gentleman who sent them; which I found to be as follow:--Will Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, and descended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He is now between forty and fifty; but being bred to no business and born to no estate, he generally lives with his eldest brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts a pack of dogs better than any man in the country, and is very famous for finding out a hare. He is extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an idle man. He makes a May-fly to a miracle; and furnishes the whole country with angle-rods. As he is a good-natured, officious fellow, and very much esteemed on account of his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, and keeps up a good correspondence among all the gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip root in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends, that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the country. He now and then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to their mothers or sisters; and raises a great deal of mirth among them, by inquiring as often as he meets them, how they wear? These gentleman-like manufactures and obliging little humours make Will the darling of the country. The Spectator

SIR RICHARD STEELE (1672–1729)

=1. His Life.= Steele had a varied and rather an unfortunate career, due largely to his own ardent disposition. Like Addison, he was educated at the Charterhouse, and then proceeded to Oxford, leaving without taking a degree. His next exploit was to enter the army as a cadet; then he took to politics, became a member of Parliament, and wrote for the Whigs. Steele, however, was too impetuous to be a successful politician, and he was expelled from the House of Commons. He became a Tory; quarreled with Addison on private and public grounds; issued a number of periodicals; and died ten years after his fellow-essayist.

=2. His Drama.= Steele wrote some prose comedies, the best of which are The Funeral (1701), The Lying Lover (1703), The Tender Husband (1705), and The Conscious Lovers (1722). They follow in general scheme the Restoration comedies, but are without the grossness and impudence of their models. They have, indeed, been criticized as being too moral; yet in places they are lively, and reflect much of Steele’s amiability of temper.

=3. His Essays.= It is as a miscellaneous essayist that Steele finds his place in literature. He was a man fertile in ideas, but he lacked the application that is always so necessary to carry those ideas to fruition. Thus he often sowed in order that other men might reap. He started The Tatler in 1709, The Spectator in 1711, and several other short-lived periodicals, such as The Guardian (1713), The Reader (1714), The Englishman (1715), and The Plebeian (1718). After the rupture with Addison the loss of the latter’s steadying influence was acutely felt, and nothing that Steele attempted had any stability.

Steele’s working alliance with Addison was so close and so constant that the comparison between them is almost inevitable. Of the two writers, some critics assert that Steele is the worthier. In versatility and in originality he is at least Addison’s equal. His humor has none of Addison’s simpering prudishness; it is broader and less restrained, with a naïve, pathetic touch about it that is reminiscent of Goldsmith. His pathos is more attractive and more humane. But Steele’s very virtues are only his weaknesses sublimed; they are emotional, not intellectual; of the heart, and not of the head. He is incapable of irony; he lacks penetration and power; and much of his moralizing is cheap and obvious. He lacks Addison’s care and suave ironic insight; he is reckless in style and inconsequent in method. And so, in the final estimate, as the greater artist he fails.

The passage given illustrates Steele’s easy style, the unconstrained sentences, the fresh and almost colloquial vocabulary, and the genial humor.

(_Mr Bickerstaff, the Mr Spectator of “The Tatler,” visits an old friend._)

As soon as we were alone, he took me by the hand. “Well, my good friend,” says he, “I am heartily glad to see thee; I was afraid you would never have seen all the company that dined with you to-day again. Do not you think the good woman of the house a little altered since you followed her from the playhouse, to find out who she was, for me?” I perceived a tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little. But, to turn the discourse, said I, “She is not indeed quite that creature she was, when she returned me the letter I carried from you; and told me, she hoped as I was a gentleman I would be employed no more to trouble her, who had never offended me; but would be so much the gentleman’s friend as to dissuade him from a pursuit which he could never succeed in. You may remember I thought her in earnest; and you were compelled to employ your cousin Will, who made his sister get acquainted with her, for you. You cannot expect her to be for ever fifteen.” “Fifteen!” replied my good friend: “Ah! you little understand, you that have lived a bachelor, how great, how exquisite a pleasure there is in being really beloved! It is impossible that the most beauteous face in nature should raise in me such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watching with me in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which had like to have carried her off last winter. I tell you sincerely, I have so many obligations to her that I cannot, with any sort of moderation, think of her present state of health. But as to what you say of fifteen, she gives me every day pleasures beyond what I ever knew in the possession of her beauty, when I was in the vigour of youth. Every moment of her life brings me fresh instances of her complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw it; there is no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for my welfare and interests.”

DANIEL DEFOE (1659–1731)

=1. His Life.= Much of Defoe’s life is still undetermined, but it is certain that he was born, lived, and died in poor and somewhat disreputable circumstances. He was born in London, became a soldier, and then took to journalism. He is one of the earliest, and in some ways the greatest, of the Grub Street hacks. He entered the service of the Whigs, by whom he was frequently employed in obscure and questionable work. He died in London, a fugitive from the law, and in great distress.

=2. His Prose.= This is of amazing bulk and variety, and for convenience can be divided into two groups.

(a) Political Writings. Like most of the other writers of his time, Defoe turned out a mass of political tracts and pamphlets. Many of them appeared in his own journal, The Review, which, issued in 1704, is in several ways the forerunner of The Tatler and The Spectator. His Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702) brought upon him official wrath, and caused him to be fined and pilloried. He wrote one or two of his political tracts in rough verses which are more remarkable for their vigor than for their elegance. The best known of this class is The True-born Englishman (1701). In all his propaganda Defoe is vigorous and acute, and he has a fair command of irony and invective.

(b) His Fiction. His works in fiction were all produced in the latter part of his life, at almost incredible speed. First came Robinson Crusoe (1719); then Duncan Campbell, Memoirs of a Cavalier, and Captain Singleton, all three books in 1720; in 1722 appeared Moll Flanders, A Journal of the Plague Year, and Colonel Jack; then Roxana (1724) and A New Voyage round the World (1725).

This great body of fiction has grave defects, largely due to the immense speed with which it was produced. The general plan of the novel in each case is slatternly and unequal; as, for example, in Robinson Crusoe, where the incomparable effect of the story of the island is marred by long and sometimes tedious narratives of other lands. Then the style is unpolished to the verge of rudeness. In homely and direct narrative this may not be a grave drawback, but it shuts Defoe out from a large province of fiction in which he might have done valuable work.

But at its best, as in the finest parts of Robinson Crusoe, his writing has a realism that is rarely approached by the most ardent of modern realists. This is achieved by Defoe’s grasp of details and his unerring sense of their supreme literary value, a swift and resolute narrative method, and a plain and matter-of-fact style that inevitably lays incredulity asleep. To the development of the novel Defoe’s contribution is priceless.

In the passage now given note Defoe’s completely unadorned style, the loosely constructed sentences, and the almost laughable attention to the minutest detail:

I went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put a stop to my own inquiries into it, by this foolish answer: Let us first make it: I warrant I will find some way or other to get it along when it is done.

This was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar-tree, and I question much, whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple at Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two feet, where it lessened, and then parted into branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree; I was twenty days hacking and hewing at the bottom, and fourteen more getting the branches and limbs and the vast spreading head of it cut off; after this it cost me a month to shape it and dub it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat, that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it: this I did indeed without fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dint of hard labour, till I had brought it to be a very handsome periagua, and big enough to have carried six-and-twenty men, and consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo. Robinson Crusoe

OTHER PROSE-WRITERS

=1. John Arbuthnot (1667–1735).= Arbuthnot was born in Kincardineshire, Scotland, studied medicine at Oxford, and spent the latter part of his life in London, where he became acquainted with Pope and Swift. His writings are chiefly political, and include the Memoirs of Scriblerus (1709), which, though published in the works of Pope, is thought to be his; The History of John Bull (1712 or 1713), ridiculing the war-policy of the Whigs; and The Art of Political Lying (1712).

Arbuthnot writes with wit and vivacity, and with many pointed allusions. At his best he somewhat resembles Swift, though he lacks the great devouring flame of the latter’s personality.

=2. Lord Bolingbroke (1678–1751).= Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was one of the chief political figures of the period. At the age of twenty-six he was Secretary for War in the Tory Government; was thereafter implicated in Jacobite plots; was compelled to flee to France; was pardoned, and permitted to return to England in 1723; had once more to return to France in 1735; then, after seven years’ exile, was finally restored to his native land.

Bolingbroke prided himself on being both a patron of letters and a man of letters. He influenced Pope, not always to the latter’s advantage. In 1753 appeared his Letter to Windham (written in 1717); then in 1749 he produced Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism and The Idea of a Patriot King. These reflect the Tory sentiments of their author, are written with a vigor that is often near to coarseness, and have all the tricks and vices of the rhetorician.

=3. George Berkeley (1685–1753).= Born in Ireland, Berkeley was educated at Dublin, where he distinguished himself in mathematics. Taking holy orders, he went to London (1713), and became acquainted with Swift and other wits. He was a man of noble and charitable mind, and interested himself in many worthy schemes. He was appointed a dean, and then was made Bishop of Cloyne in 1734. He was a man of great and enterprising mind, and wrote with much charm on a diversity of scientific, philosophical, and metaphysical subjects.

Among his books are The Principles of Human Knowledge, a notable effort in the study of the human mind that appeared in 1710, Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous (1713), and Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1733). He is among the first, both in time and in quality, of the English philosophers who have dressed their ideas in language of literary distinction. He writes with delightful ease, disdaining ornament or affectation, and his command of gentle irony is capable and sure.

=4. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762).= This lady, famous in her day for her masculine force of character, was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Kingston. In 1712 she married Edward Wortley Montagu, and moved in the highest literary and social circles. In 1716 her husband was appointed ambassador at Constantinople, and while she was in the East she corresponded regularly with many friends, both literary and personal. She is the precursor of the great letter-writers of the later portion of the century. Her Letters are written shrewdly and sensibly, often with a frankness that is a little staggering. She had a vivid interest in her world, and to a certain extent she can communicate her interest to her reader.

=5. Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713).= Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, is another example of the aristocratic dilettante man of letters. He had little taste for the politics of the time, and aspired to be famous as a great writer. He traveled much, and died at Naples in 1713.

His books are written with great care and exactitude, and are pleasant and lucid without being particularly striking. His Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times (1716), though it contains nothing very original or profound, suited the taste of the time and was widely popular. Pope drew upon it for much of his matter in his Essay on Man.

ALEXANDER POPE (1688–1744)

=1. His Life.= Pope was born in London, the only child of a considerable city tradesman. From his birth two conditions were to influence very deeply the career of the future poet: first, he was puny and delicate, and, secondly, he was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith. His bodily infirmity, which amounted almost to deformity, caused him to be privately educated; and to the end of his life his knowledge had that extensive range, joined to the liability to make the grossest blunders, which is so often the mark of an eager and precocious intelligence imperfectly trained. Pope’s religious faith, though he was never excessively devout as a Roman Catholic, closed to him all the careers, professional and political, in which a man of his keen intelligence might have been expected to succeed. He was thus forced into the pursuit of letters as his only road to fame. From his earliest youth we find him passionately desirous of making his name as an author.

His youth was passed at Binfield, his father’s small estate near Windsor Forest. Before he was twenty years old he got into touch with Wycherley, now old and besotted. Through him Pope became acquainted with Addison, Swift, and Steele, whose friendship he eagerly cultivated. His early verses, admirably attuned to the ear of the age, brought him recognition and applause; his translation of Homer brought him wealth; and from that point he never looked back. He became the dominating poetical personality of the day. In 1718 he removed to his house at Twickenham, whose pinchbeck beauties became the wonder, envy, and derision of literary and social London. It remained his home till “that long disease, his life,” was finished in 1744.

=2. His Character.= In this book it is fortunately seldom that we are called upon to analyze the character of an English writer in any detail, but in the case of Pope it is necessary. With no man more than Pope are such personal considerations relevant and cogent; for in no writings more than in Pope’s do we find the author’s vices and his weaknesses--as well as his virtues--so fully portrayed.

By the time he was thirty Pope’s hands were full of the gifts of fortune, but he was far from being happy. He was so easily stung that his numerous detractors were irresistibly impelled to sting him; and his agonies, his vicious petulance, and his wild retaliation were so pathetic and yet so ludicrous that his foes were incited to try his temper again. Hence much of Pope’s life was a series of skirmishes with friends and foes alike. His disposition, too, had so many flaws that it trembled at the pressure of a finger. His stinginess, though he was rich beyond the dreams of a poet’s avarice, was a byword. His snobbishness was extreme; he fawned before lords, and he assailed his less fortunate poetical brethren with a rancor whose very coarseness blunts its edge. His vanity was egregious, and shrank from criticism as a raw nerve shrinks from fire. His nature stooped to actions so tortuous and reprehensible that his biographers confess, with a sigh of relief, that they cannot get quite to the bottom of them. His procedure in the publication of some of his work almost stupefies the investigator with its combination of duplicity, bad faith, and sheer cross-grained perversion of the truth.

Yet he had his virtues, to which his friends testified with a curious half-laughing mixture of contempt and admiration. He could sometimes be generous in a crabbed, distorted fashion; and if only his friends allowed for his weaknesses, he repaid their consideration with a devoted cordiality that defied the shocks of fortune. At bottom his nature was not unkindly, but it was corroded and overlaid with the effects of his physical weakness, with his natural vanity, and with a shrinking self-criticism. And, above all, he was an artist. He lived for his art; everything he wrote was stamped with the joy of creation and his desire for perfection and permanency; and it is as an artist that he will finally be judged.

=3. His Poetry.= “I lisped in numbers,” he tells us. But his earliest work of any importance is his Pastorals. According to his own statement (which need not be believed) they were begun when he was sixteen years old. They appeared in 1709, when he was twenty-one. They contain the usual trumpery of “sylvan strains,” “warbling Philomel,” and other expressions that are the bane of the artificial pastoral. Yet though the work is immature in some respects, it shows that Pope has found his feet with regard to his metrical method. The poem is written in the heroic couplet, which is neat, effective, and melodious in a namby-pamby fashion. We give a specimen of his earliest numbers:

And yet my numbers please the rural throng, Rough satyrs dance, and Pan applauds the song: The nymphs, forsaking ev’ry cave and spring, Their early fruit, and milk-white turtles bring; Each am’rous nymph prefers her gifts in vain, On you their gifts are all bestowed again. For you the swains the fairest flow’rs design, And in one garland all their beauties join; Accept the wreath which you deserve alone, In whom all beauties are compris’d in one.

In 1711 appeared the Essay on Criticism, also written in heroic couplets. The poem professes to set forth the gospel of “wit” and “nature” as it applies to the literature of the period. The work is clearly immature. There is nothing novel in its theories, which are conventionality itself; but it dresses the aged theories so neatly and freshly that the poem is a lasting monument to the genius of the writer. It is full of apt, quotable lines that have become imbedded in the language:

A little learning is a dangerous thing!... And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art.... To err is human: to forgive, divine.... True wit is nature to advantage dressed....

Windsor Forest (1713) is another pastoral in the familiar meter. Artificial still, it nevertheless shows a broader treatment, and a still stronger grip of the stopped couplet.

By this time Pope was well known, and he set about his ambitious scheme of translating the Iliad, which was eventually issued in 1720. For the book, as he was zealously assisted by his literary friends, he was successful in compiling a phenomenal subscription list, which (with the additional translation of the Odyssey) brought him more than ten thousand pounds. Such a triumph produced the inevitable reaction on the part of his critics, who maintained that Pope knew little Latin and less Greek, and that the translation was no translation at all. It certainly bears no close resemblance to the original Greek. Bentley, the famous classical scholar, remarked to the chagrined author, “A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” The line of Pope has none of the great lift of the Homeric line, but it is often vigorous and picturesque, and answers with fair facility to the demands he makes upon it.

The troops exulting sat in order round, And beaming fires illumined all the ground. As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O’er heaven’s pure azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene, Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumber’d gild the glowing pole, O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain’s head: Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies; The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.

In 1712, in a volume of Lintot’s Miscellanies, appeared The Rape of the Lock, one of the most brilliant poems in the language. The occasion of it was trivial enough. A Lord Petre had offended a Miss Fermor by cutting off a lock of her hair; dissensions between the families had followed, and Pope set about to laugh both parties back into good-humor. He makes of the incident a mock-heroic poem, and, rather unwisely, invents elaborate machinery of sylphs, gnomes, and other airy beings that take part in the mortals’ misdemeanors. The length becomes disproportionate to the theme, but the effect is quite dazzling. The style is highly artificial and mannered; but we must remember that Pope is jocular all through, and that he is purposely pitching his style as high as the subject permits. It abounds in rhetorical devices, such as climax, antithesis, and apostrophe. The effect produced is like that of a crackle of colored fireworks; smart epigrams explode in almost every line, and conceits dazzle with their brilliance. Yet so great an artist is Pope that by sheer skill he prevents the work from being flashy or vulgar: the workmanship is too delicate and precise.

But when to mischief mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill! Just then, Clarissa drew, with tempting grace, A two-edged weapon from her shining case; So ladies, in romance, assist their knight, Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. He takes the gift with reverence, and extends The little engine on his fingers’ ends; This just behind Belinda’s neck he spread, As o’er the fragrant steams she bent her head. Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair! And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear; Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near. Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought The close recesses of the virgin’s thought: As on the nosegay in her breast reclined, He watched the ideas rising in her mind, Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art, An earthly lover lurking at her heart. Amazed, confused, he found his power expired, Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired. The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide To enclose the lock; now joins it, to divide. E’en then, before the fatal engine closed, A wretched sylph too fondly interposed; Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain (But airy substance soon unites again), The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!

The Dunciad appeared in 1728, with many subterfuges to conceal the authorship, and it reappeared in a larger, though not in an improved form, in 1742. In this poem he turns to rend the host of minor writers who had been making his life a misery with their pin-pricks. It shows his satirical powers at their best and at their worst. It is charged with a stinging wit, but is too spiteful and venomous, and confounds the good with the bad. Yet here as elsewhere Pope has many fine passages. The conclusion is probably the noblest that he ever composed:

In vain, in vain--the all-composing hour Resistless falls: the Muse obeys the Power. She comes! She comes! The sable throne behold Of Night primeval and of Chaos old! Before her, Fancy’s gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.... See skulking Truth to her old cavern fled, Mountains of casuistry heaped o’er her head!... See Mystery to Mathematics fly! In vain! They gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die. Religion blushing veils her sacred fires, And unawares Morality expires.... Lo! thy dread empire, CHAOS! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.

The last years of his life were occupied chiefly in the composition of poetical epistles and satires (1731–35). Some of these are of great power, and show Pope’s art at its best. The Epistle to Arbuthnot contains the famous satirical portrait of Addison, with whom Pope had quarreled:

Peace to all such; but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging, that he ne’er obliged; Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; While wits and templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise:-- Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?

In this passage, though he does not perceive it, Pope is holding up a glass to his own method. Observe how he “damns with faint praise”; how he is “willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike.” Nearly the whole extract might be applied to its author.

The last considerable poem is the Essay on Man (1734), which owes much to the suggestions of Bolingbroke. At the beginning of the poem he says “The proper study of mankind is man,” and then proceeds with a long and confused treatment of man and his place in the universe. As a contribution to philosophy it is contemptible, but from it we can detach clusters of passages full of force and beauty. The verse has all its author’s care and lucidity. In some places, indeed, the style is cut to the very bone, as it is in the well-known line, “Man never is but always to be blessed.”

=4. His Prose.= As a writer of prose Pope is of secondary importance. His Letters, published under a cloud of devious tricks, clearly are written with an eye on the public. They are addressed chiefly to notable persons, such as Swift and Gay, and consist of pompous essays upon abstract subjects. Sometimes in other letters he forgets himself, and writes easily and brightly, especially when he is telling of his own experiences.

=5. Summary.= It is now useful to draw together the various features of the work of this important poet.

(a) Both in subject and in style his poems are limited. They take people of his own social class, and they deal with their common experiences and their common interests and aspirations. Pope rarely dips below the surface, and when he does so he is not at his best. With regard to his style, we have seen that it is almost wholly restricted to the heroic couplet, used in a narrative and didactic subject. He is almost devoid of the lyrical faculty, and the higher artistic emotions--“passion and apathy, and glory and shame”--are beyond his artistic grasp.

(b) Within these limits his work is powerful and effective. The wit is keen; the satire burns like acid; and his zeal is unshakable. In serious topics, as in the Essay on Man, he can give imperishable shape to popular opinions.

(c) His work is careful and almost fastidious, and thus confers an enormous benefit upon English poetry. He cured poetry of the haphazard methods of the earlier ages. With inspiration lacking, care was more than ever necessary, and in this Pope led the way. His verse reads so easily owing to the great care he took with it.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. Essay on Criticism

(d) His meter is among the most discussed in our literature. Its merits and demerits are quite clear to view. Against it we can urge its artificiality, its lack of originality, and the vile creeping paralysis that it communicated to the other metrical forms. Yet in its favor we must recognize its strength, unbreakable and pliable, like a strong bow, its clearness, point, and artistic brevity, and its incomparable excellence in some forms of satire and narrative. It is unprofitable to compare it with blank verse and other forms. We must recognize it as in a class apart.

OTHER POETS

=1. Matthew Prior (1664–1721).= Born in Dorsetshire, Prior studied at Cambridge, and was early engaged in writing on behalf of the Tories, from whom he received several valuable appointments. In 1701 he entered the House of Commons; and in 1715, becoming involved in Jacobite intrigues, he was imprisoned. He was liberated in 1717, and died in 1721.

His first long work is The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (1687), written in collaboration with Charles Montagu, and ridiculing The Hind and the Panther. Other longer works are Alma (1716) and Solomon (1718). The first imitates Butler in Hudibras, and with fair success; the second, written in the heroic couplet, aims at being a serious poem, but its seriousness is often marred with levity, and it shows no wisdom or insight.

Prior’s chief distinction lies in his miscellaneous verse, which is varied, bulky, and of a high quality. In some respects it resembles the verses of Swift, for much of it is composed in the octosyllabic couplet, and it has a fair amount of Swift’s force and dexterity. Prior lacks Swift’s deadly power and passion, but he surpasses the Dean in versatility, in an easy wit and impudence, and in sentimentality. In this pleasant ease of verse and sentiment he is rarely approached. Some of the best of his shorter pieces are The Chameleon, The Thief and the Cordelier, and To Chloe.

=2. John Gay (1685–1732).= Gay was born in humble circumstances, and was apprenticed to a silk-mercer; but, being ambitious, he entered the service of the Duchess of Monmouth (1713). His poems having brought him some fame, he sought a public appointment. He was only moderately successful in this search, and his lazy and indifferent habits spoiled the chances that came in his way. He died in London, an amiable and shiftless idler.

His chief works are Rural Sports (1713), written in the heroic couplet, and resembling Pope’s Pastorals, The Shepherd’s Week (1714), and What d’Ye Call it? (1715), a pastoral farce. Trivia, or The Art of Walking the Streets of London (1715) is a witty parody of the heroic style, and it contains bright descriptions of London streets; then came two plays, Acis and Galatea and The Beggar’s Opera (1728). This last play had a great success, which has lasted to the present day. It became the rage, and ran for sixty-two performances. It deserved its success, for it contains some pretty songs and much genuine though boisterous humor. Gay had the real lyrical gift, which was all the more valuable considering the age he lived in. His ballad Black-eyed Susan is still popular.

=3. Edward Young (1683–1765).= Young had a long life, and produced a large amount of literary work of variable quality. He was born in Hampshire, went to Oxford, and late in life (about 1730) entered the Church. He lived much in retirement, though in his later years he received a public appointment.

His major works are The Last Day (1713) and The Force of Religion (1714), which are moralizings written in the heroic couplet; The Love of Fame (1724), which shows an advance in the use of the couplet; and a poem in blank verse, The Complaint, or Night Thoughts (1742). This last poem, which was inspired by the death of his wife, had a great and long-enduring popularity, which has now vanished. Like Young’s other poems, it shows some power of expression and somber satisfaction at his own misery. In the history of literature it is of some consequence, for the blank verse is of considerable strength, and as a reaction against the dominance of the couplet its value is undeniable.

=4. Sir Samuel Garth (1661–1719).= Garth was an older man than most of the other poets mentioned in this chapter. He was a popular physician, assisted Pope in the young man’s first efforts, and was knighted when George I ascended the throne.

The Dispensary, published in 1699, is the one work which gives him his place. It deals with a long-defunct squabble between physicians and apothecaries, and its importance is due to its being written in a kind of heroic couplet that is a link in style between Dryden and Pope.

=5. Richard Savage (1697–1743).= Savage’s melancholy fate, and his early friendship with Johnson, have given him a prominence that he scarcely deserves. He was born in London, and, according to his own story, was the child of Richard Savage, Earl Rivers. Savage passed his youth in miserable circumstances, took to hack-work with the publishers, besotted himself with drink and debauchery, and died in a debtor’s prison in Bristol.

His two chief poems are The Bastard (1728) and The Wanderer (1729). Both are written in the heroic couplet, and consist of long frenzied moralizings of his own unhappy lot. These works have much energy and some power of expression, but they are diffuse and rhetorical in style. Savage cannot rid himself of his personal grievances, which, inflamed by his dissipations, produce a morbid extravagance that ruins his work as poetry.

=6. Lady Winchilsea (1661–1720).= Born in Hampshire, the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill, Anne, Countess of Winchilsea, passed most of her life in London, where she became acquainted with Pope and other literary notables. Some of her poems, which were of importance in their day, are The Spleen (1701), a Pindaric ode; The Prodigy (1706); and Miscellany Poems (1714), containing the Nocturnal Reverie.

Wordsworth says, “It is remarkable that, excepting the Nocturnal Reverie and a passage or two in Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new image of nature.” This statement is perhaps an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that Lady Winchilsea had the gift of producing smooth and melodious verse, and she had a discerning eye for the beauties of nature.

=7. Ambrose Philips (1675–1749).= Philips was a Shropshire man, was educated at Cambridge, and became a considerable figure in the literary world. He was a friend of Pope, and wrote Pastorals (1709), which Pope damned with faint praise. The two poets quarreled, and Pope gave the other immortality in The Dunciad. Philips obtained several posts under the Government, and passed a happy and prosperous life.

He wrote three tragedies, the best of which is The Distressed Mother (1712). He produced a fair amount of prose for the periodicals, and his miscellaneous verse, of a light and agreeable kind, was popular in its day. His poetry was called “namby-pamby,” from his Christian name; and the word has survived in its general application.

=8. Sir Richard Blackmore (1650–1729).= Blackmore was an industrious physician, and an industrious and unsuccessful poet. His name became a byword by reason of his huge, dreary epics, which he composed in his spare time. Some of them are Prince Arthur (1695), Job (1700), and The Creation (1712). They are written in tolerable heroic couplets.

=9. Thomas Parnell (1679–1718).= Parnell was born in Ireland, entered the Church, became an archdeacon, and prospered in his post. His poems consist of miscellaneous work, and were extremely popular in their day. The best of his work is contained in The Hermit (1710), which is written in heroic couplets, and in places reminds the reader of The Deserted Village. He shows skill as a versifier, and he has a genuine regard for nature.

=10. Allan Ramsay (1686–1758).= Born in Lanarkshire, Ramsay came to Edinburgh at the age of fifteen, and became a wig-maker. He soon took to writing verses, which admitted him into the society of the Edinburgh wits. He started a bookseller’s shop in the city, and became a kind of local unofficial Poet Laureate. His ballads became very popular, and he brought upon himself the notice of the leaders of the literary world in London.

Ramsay published much miscellaneous writing, of which a large amount was issued to satisfy a passing demand. The quality can be poor enough; but some of it is more meritorious. A piece like Lochaber No More is quite noteworthy, and others reveal his freakish and pleasing sense of humor. His Gentle Shepherd (1725), a pastoral drama, has many of the vices of its species; but on the other hand it contains pleasing natural descriptions, some delightful though sentimental characters, and a few charming lyrics. As a literary ancestor of Burns, Ramsay is important. He influenced the poetry of the Ayrshire man, who freely acknowledged the aid he obtained. Ramsay also shows how the natural genius of Scotland, while bowing to the supremacy of the school of Pope, nevertheless diverged on lines natural to itself.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

The period under review marks a hardening of the process discernible in the last chapter. The secession from romanticism is complete; the ideals of classicism reign supreme. Yet so unsleeping is the sense of progress in our literature that, even at the lowest ebb of the romantic spirit, a return to nature is feebly beginning. In the next chapter we shall notice this new movement, for in the next period we shall see it becoming full and strong.

=1. Poetry.= In no department of literature is the triumph of classicism seen more fully than in poetry.

(a) The lyric almost disappears. What remains is of a light and artificial nature. The best lyrics are found in some of Prior’s shorter pieces, in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, and in Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd.

(b) The ode still feebly survives in the Pindaric form. Pope wrote a few with poor success, one of them being On St. Cecilia’s Day, in imitation of Dryden’s ode. Lady Winchilsea was another mediocre exponent of the same form.

(c) The satiric type is common, and of high quality. The best example is Pope’s Dunciad, a personal satire. Of political satire in poetry we have nothing to compare with Dryden’s. Satire tends to be lighter, brighter, and more cynical. It is spreading to other forms of verse besides the heroic couplet, and we can observe it in the octosyllabic couplet in the poems of Swift, Prior, and Gay. A slight development is the epistolary form of the satire, of which Pope became fond in his latter years. Such is his Epistles of Horace Imitated.

(d) Narrative Poetry. This is of considerable bulk, and contains some of the best productions of the period. Pope’s translation of Homer is a good example, and of the poorer sort are Blackmore’s abundant epics. We have also to notice a slight revival of the ballad, which was imitated by Gay and Prior. Their imitations are bloodless things, but they are worth noticing because they show that the interest is there.

(e) The Pastoral. The artificial type of the pastoral was highly popular, for several reasons. It gave an air of rusticity to the most formal of compositions; it was thought to be elegant; it was easily written; and it had the approval of the ancients, who made free use of the type. Pope and Philips have been mentioned as examples of the pastoral poets.

=2. Drama.= Here there is almost a blank. The brilliant and exotic flower of Restoration comedy has withered, and nothing of any merit takes its place. In tragedy Addison’s Cato is almost the only passable example. In comedy Steele’s plays are an expurgated survival of the Restoration type. The only advance in the drama is shown in The Beggar’s Opera, whose robust vitality, sprightly music, and charming songs make it stand alone in its generation.

=3. Prose.= In prose we have to chronicle a distinct advance. For the first time we have periodical literature occupying a prominent place in the writing of the time. At this point, therefore, it is convenient to summarize the rise of periodical literature.

(a) The Rise of the Periodical Press. The first periodical published in Europe was the Gazetta (1536), in Venice. This was a manuscript newspaper which was read publicly in order to give the Venetians information regarding their war with the Turks. In England news-sheets were published during the reign of Elizabeth, but they were irregular in their appearance, being issued only when some notable event, such as a great flood or fire, made their sale secure. The first regular English paper was The Weekly Newes (1622), issued by Nathaniel Butter. The sheet contained some items of news from abroad, and was devoid of editorial comment or literary matter.

During the Civil War of the middle of the seventeenth century both Royalists and Roundheads issued their newspapers, which appeared spasmodically and seldom survived for any length of time. A Royalist journal was the Mercurius Anglicus, which was succeeded by several others of somewhat similar names. The Roundhead publications were the Mercurius Pragmaticus, the Mercurius Politicus, and others. After the Restoration newspaper-writing became so popular and so troublesome that the Government in 1662 suspended all private sheets and issued in their place the one official organ, The Public Intelligencer. This became The Oxford Gazette (1665), and finally The London Gazette (1666). The office of Gazetteer became an official appointment, and Steele held it for a time.

In 1682 the freedom of the Press was restored, and large numbers of Mercuries and other periodicals appeared and flourished in their different fashions. Advertisements began to be a feature of the papers. In The Jockey’s Intelligencer (1683) the charge is “a shilling for a horse or coach, for notification, and sixpence for renewing.” In 1702 The Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper, was published, and it survived until 1735. Then in the early years of the eighteenth century the fierce contests between the Whigs and the Tories brought a rapid expansion of the Press. The most famous of the issues were Defoe’s Review (1704), a Whig organ whose writings brought its editor into disrepute; and its opponent The Examiner, the Tory paper to which men like Swift and Prior contributed regularly. These newspapers are almost entirely political, but they contain satirical work of much merit.

Then in 1709 Steele published The Tatler. At first it was Steele’s intention to make it entirely a news-paper; but under the pressure of his own genius and of that of Addison its literary features were accentuated till the daily essay became the feature of leading interest. The Spectator, begun in March, 1711, carried the tendency still farther. The literary journal has come to stay. Steele’s Plebeian (1718) is an early example of the political periodical.

(b) The Rise of the Essay. Johnson defines an essay as “a loose sally of the mind, an irregular indigested piece, not a regular or orderly performance.” This definition is not quite complete, for it does not cover such an elaborate work as Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding. But for the miscellaneous prose essay, which it is our immediate business to consider here, the definition will do. An essay, therefore, must in other words be short, unmethodical, personal, and written in a style that is literary, easy, and elegant.

The English essay has its roots in the Elizabethan period, in the miscellaneous work of Lodge, Lyly, and Greene, and other literary free-lances (see p. 142). Sir Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie, published about 1580, is a pamphlet that attains a rudimentary essay-form. But the first real essayist in English is Francis Bacon (1561–1626), who published a short series of essays in 1597, enlarged in two later editions (1612 and 1625). His work follows that of the French writer Montaigne, whose essays appeared about 1580. In Bacon we have the miscellany of theme and the brevity, but we lack the intimacy of treatment and of style. Bacon’s essays are rather the disconnected musings of the philosopher than the personal opinions of the literary executant.

The defects of Bacon were remedied by Abraham Cowley (1618–67), who writes on such subjects as Myself, The Garden, and other familiar themes. His style is somewhat heavy, but he has a pleasant discursive manner, different from the dry and distant attitude of Bacon. He provides the link between Addison and Bacon. Another advance is marked by a group of character-writers who flourished in the first half of the seventeenth century. They gave short character-sketches, often very acute and humorous, of various types of people. The best known of such writers are Joseph Hall (1574–1656), John Earle (1601–65), and Sir Thomas Overbury (1581–1613). Overbury wrote short accounts of such types as the Tinker, the Milkmaid, and the Franklin. His sketches are short, are pithily expressed, and reveal considerable knowledge and insight.

During the Restoration period we have Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1666), Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), and Temple’s Essay on Poetry (1685). The two first works are too long to be called essays proper, and fall rather under the name of treatises. Temple’s essay, one of many that he published, is rather long and formal, but it is nearer the type we are here considering.

With the development of the periodical press the short essay takes a great stride forward. It becomes varied, and acquires character, suppleness, and strength. The work of Addison and Steele has already been noticed at some length. In The Tatler (1709) and The Spectator (1711) they laid down the lines along which the essay was to be developed by their great successors. Other essayists of the time were Swift and Pope, who contributed to the periodicals, and Defoe, whose miscellaneous work is of wide range and of considerable importance.

(c) Prose Narrative. Much of the narrative is still disguised as allegory, as in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Addison’s Vision of Mirza. In his method Swift shows some advance, for he subordinates the allegory and adds to the interest in the satire and the narrative. The prominence given to fiction is still more noticeable in the novels of Defoe, such as Robinson Crusoe. We are now in touch with the novel proper, which will be treated in the next chapter.

(d) Miscellaneous Prose. There is a large body of religious, political and philosophical work. Much of it is satirical. In political prose Swift is the outstanding figure, with such books as the Drapier’s Letters; and in religious writing his Tale of a Tub has a sinister importance. Other examples are Bolingbroke’s Spirit of Patriotism (political), Berkeley’s Alciphron (philosophical), and Steele’s The Christian Hero (religious).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY STYLE

=1. Poetry.= In poetry we have to chronicle the domination of the heroic couplet. This meter produced a close, clear, and almost prosaic style, as we have noticed in the work of Pope. Blank verse is still found in Young’s Night Thoughts. Another example of blank verse is found in the mock epic of =John Philips (1676–1708)= called The Splendid Shilling (1703). The use of blank verse at this time is important, for it marks both a resistance to the use of the couplet and a promise of the revival of the freer forms of verse. The following is a fair example of the blank verse of the period. In style it is quite uninspired, and is philosophically dull, but it is metrically accurate and has a certain dignity and force.

Amidst my list of blessings infinite Stands this the foremost, “That my heart has bled.” ’Tis Heaven’s last effort of goodwill to man; When pain can’t bless, Heaven quits us in despair. Who fails to grieve, when just occasion calls, Or grieves too much, deserves not to be blest; Inhuman, or effeminate, his heart: Reason absolves the grief, which reason ends. May Heaven ne’er trust my friend with happiness, Till it has taught him how to bear it well, By previous pain; and made it safe to smile! YOUNG, Night Thoughts

The lyric still survives as a pale reflection of the Caroline species. A short specimen will suffice to show the facile versification and the lack of real passion that marks the treatment of the almost universal love-theme:

Blessed as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee all the while, Softly speak, and sweetly smile.

’Twas this deprived my soul of rest, And raised such tumults in my breast; For while I gazed, in transport tossed, My breath was gone, my voice was lost. AMBROSE PHILIPS, Sappho

The only other kind of meter of any consequence is the octosyllabic couplet, which is largely employed in occasional and satirical compositions. Its style is neat, sharp, and dexterous, as can be observed in Swift’s and Prior’s verses.

=2. Prose.= In prose the outstanding feature is the emergence of the middle style. Of this the chief exponent is Addison, of whom Johnson says, “His prose is of the middle style, always equable, and always easy, without glowing words and pointed sentences.” We now find established a prose suitable for miscellaneous purposes--for newspaper and political work, for the essay, for history and biography. The step is of immense importance, for we can say that with Addison the modern era of prose is begun.

Along with this went the temporary disappearance of ornate prose. Prose of this style, though it had its beauties, was yet liable to be full of flaws, and was unacceptable to the taste of the age of Pope. It was therefore avoided. When ornate prose re-emerged later in the work of Johnson and Gibbon it was purged of its technical weaknesses, a development largely due to the period of maturing that it had undergone in the time we are now considering.

While the school of Addison represents the middle style, the plainer style is represented in the work of Swift and Defoe. Swift reveals the style at its best--sure, clean, and strong. Defoe’s writing is even plainer, and often descends to carelessness and inaccuracy. This is due almost entirely to the haste with which he wrote. We give an example of this colloquial style:

“Well,” said I, “honest man, that is a great mercy, as things go now with the poor. But how do you live then, and how are you kept from the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?” “Why, sir,” says he, “I am a waterman, and there is my boat,” says he, “and the boat serves me for a house; I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night, and what I get I lay it down upon that stone,” says he, showing me a broad stone on the other side of the street, a good way from his house; “and then,” says he, “I halloo and call to them till I make them hear, and they come and fetch it.” DEFOE, A Journal of the Plague Year

TABLE TO ILLUSTRATE THE DEVELOPMENT OF LITERARY FORMS

EXERCISES

1. Compare the two following passages as examples of satire. They represent the bitterest passages from Dryden and Pope respectively. Remark upon the two methods--whether they are personal or general, vindictive or magnanimous. Add a note on the style of Dryden contrasted with that of Pope, and compare their handling of the heroic couplet. Say which passage you prefer, and why you prefer it.

(1) Doeg,[160] though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in; Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And, in one word, heroically mad, He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, But faggoted his notions as they fell, And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well. Spiteful he is not, though he wrote a satire, For there still goes some thinking to ill-nature; He needs no more than birds and beasts to think, All his occasions are to eat and drink. If he call rogue and rascal from a garret, He means you no more mischief than a parrot; The words for friend and foe alike were made, To fetter them in verse is all his trade. DRYDEN, Absalom and Achitophel (Part II)

(2) Pope. A lash like mine no honest man shall dread, But all such babbling blockheads in his stead. Let Sporus[161] tremble--

Arbuthnot. What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk? Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Pope. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys: So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way: Whether in florid impotence he speaks, And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit, all see-saw between that and this, Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! that, acting either part, The trifling head or the corrupted heart, Fop at the toilet, flatt’rer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have exprest, A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust; Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. POPE, Epistle to Arbuthnot

2. The two following extracts are from love-lyrics of the period. Comment upon the treatment of the theme, paying attention to the strength of feeling expressed, and the naturalness of the expression. Is the English or the Scottish poem the more natural? Write a note on the style of each, and say if it suits the subject.

(1) All in the downs the fleet was moored, The streamers waving in the wind, When black-eyed Susan came aboard, “Oh! where shall I my true-love find? Tell me, ye jovial sailors, tell me true, If my sweet William sails among the crew?”

William, who high upon the yard Rocked with the billow to and fro, Soon as her well-known voice he heard, He sighed, and cast his eyes below: The cord slides swiftly through his glowing hands, And, quick as lightning, on the deck he stands.

* * * * *

“O Susan, Susan, lovely dear, My vows shall ever true remain; Let me kiss off that falling tear; We only part to meet again. Change as ye list, ye winds! my heart shall be The faithful compass that still points to thee.”

* * * * *

The boatswain gave the dreadful word, The sails their swelling bosom spread; No longer must she stay aboard; They kissed, she sighed, he hung his head. Her lessening boat unwilling rows to land, “Adieu!” she cries, and waved her lily hand. GAY, Black-eyed Susan

(2) Hear me, ye nymphs, and every swain, I’ll tell how Peggy grieves me; Though thus I languish and complain, Alas! she ne’er believes me. My vows and sighs, like silent air, Unheeded, never move her; At the bonnie bush aboon Traquair, ’Twas there I first did love her.

* * * * *

Yet now she scornful flies the plain, The fields we then frequented; If e’er we meet she shows disdain, She looks as ne’er acquainted. The bonnie bush bloomed fair in May, Its sweets I’ll aye remember; But now her frowns make it decay-- It fades as in December.

Ye rural powers, who hear my strains, Why thus should Peggy grieve me? Oh, make her partner in my pains, Then let her smiles relieve me! If not, my love will turn despair, My passion no more tender; I’ll leave the bush aboon Traquair-- To lonely wilds I’ll wander. ROBERT CRAWFORD (died 1733)

3. The following three extracts are from the works of Swift, Addison, and Defoe. Ascribe each piece to its author, in each case giving distinctly your reasons for the selection of the authorship.

(1) When we were arrived upon the verge of his estate, we stopped at a little inn to rest ourselves and our horses. The man of the house had it seems been formerly a servant in the knight’s family; and to do honour to his old master, had some time since, unknown to Sir Roger, put him up in a sign-post before the door; so that the knight’s head had hung out upon the road about a week before he himself knew anything of the matter. As soon as Sir Roger was acquainted with it, finding that his servant’s indiscretion proceeded wholly from affection and goodwill, he only told him that he had made him too high a compliment; and when the fellow seemed to think that could hardly be, added with a more decisive look, That it was too great an honour for any man under a duke; but told him at the same time, that it might be altered with a very few touches, and that he himself would be at the charge of it.

(2) I turned away over the fields, from Bow to Bromley, and down to Blackwall, to the stairs that are there for landing or taking water.

Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank or sea-wall, as they call it, by himself. I walked awhile also about, seeing the houses all shut up; at last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man. First I asked him how people did there-abouts? “Alas! sir,” says he, “almost desolate; all dead or sick: here are very few families in this part, or in that village,” pointing at Poplar, “where half of them are not dead already, and the rest sick.” Then pointing to one house, “There they are all dead,” said he, “and the house stands open; nobody dares go into it. A poor thief,” says he, “ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard too, last night.”

(3) I arrived at the fleet in less than half an hour. The enemy was so frightened when they saw me that they leapt out of their ships, and swam to shore, where there could not be fewer than thirty thousand souls. I then took my tackling, and fastening a hook to the hole at the prow of each, I tied all the cords together at the end. While I was thus employed, the enemy discharged several thousand arrows, many of which stuck in my hands and face; and besides the excessive smart, gave me much disturbance in my work. My greatest apprehension was for my eyes, which I should have infallibly lost, if I had not suddenly thought of an expedient.

4. We give two extracts, one dramatic and one non-dramatic, from the blank verse of the time. Does the verse strike you as being passionate, interesting, or profound? How would you describe it? Discuss the meter--its regularity, melody, and power.

(1) It must be so--Plato, thou reason’st well, Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread and inward horror Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself and startles at destruction? --’Tis the Divinity that stirs within us; ’Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates Eternity to man. ADDISON, Cato

(2) Be wise to-day: ’tis madness to defer; Next day the fatal precedent will plead; Thus on, till wisdom is push’d out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time; Year after year it steals till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene. If not so frequent, would not this be strange? That ’tis so frequent, this is stranger still. YOUNG, Night Thoughts

5. What is the object of Swift in the following satirical passage? How does he achieve it? How are the style, figures of speech, and meter suited to his purpose? Compare this extract with that from Hudibras given on pp. 208–9. Which is the wittier and more deadly? How is the superiority gained?

Hobbes clearly proves that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature. The greater for the smallest watch, But meddle seldom with their match. A whale of moderate size will draw A shoal of herrings down his maw: A fox with geese his belly crams; A wolf destroys a thousand lambs: But search among the rhyming race, The brave are worried by the base. If on Parnassus’ top you sit, You rarely bite, are always bit. Each poet of inferior size On you shall rail and criticise, And strive to tear you limb from limb; While others do as much for him. The vermin only tease and pinch Their foes superior by an inch. So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite ’em, And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet in his kind Is bit by him that comes behind: Who, though too little to be seen, Can tease, and gall, and give the spleen. Rhapsody on Poetry

6. We give an example of Swift’s prose satire, a passage in which he describes the progress of a political lie. What is the figure of speech underlying the passage, and how does it assist his purpose? Compare this passage with the poetical one given in the last exercise: do the two passages correspond in style, figurativeness, and force? Which strikes you as being the more effective?

No wonder if an infant so miraculous in its birth should be destined for great adventures: and accordingly we see it hath been the guardian spirit of a prevailing party for almost twenty years. It can conquer kingdoms without fighting, and sometimes with the loss of a battle. It gives and resumes employments; can sink a mountain to a mole-hill, and raise a mole-hill to a mountain; hath presided for many years at committees of elections; can wash a blackmoor white; make a saint of an atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign ministers with intelligence, and raise or let fall the credit of the nation. This goddess flies with a huge looking-glass in her hands, to dazzle the crowd, and make them see, according as she turns it, their ruin in their interest, and their interest in their ruin. In this glass you will behold your best friends, clad in coats powdered with fleurs de lis, and triple crowns; their girdles hung round with chains, and beads, and wooden shoes; and your worst enemies adorned with the ensigns of liberty, property, indulgence, moderation, and a cornucopia in their hands. Her large wings, like those of a flying-fish, are of no use but while they are moist; she therefore dips them in mud, and soaring aloft scatters it in the eyes of the multitude, flying with great swiftness; but at every turn is forced to stoop in dirty ways for new supplies. The Examiner

7. “The bulk of your natives appear to me to be the most pernicious race of odious little vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the face of the earth.” The King of Brobdingnag says this to Gulliver. How far does this represent Swift’s attitude in Gulliver’s Travels, and how far does he succeed in conveying this impression?

8. “I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid: I was undone by my auxiliary; when I had once called him in, I could not subsist without dependence on him.” This is Steele’s own estimate of Addison’s contribution to The Tatler and The Spectator. As far as you can, estimate the share of each writer in the production of the two periodicals, and apportion their relative importance.

9. How much of their personal peculiarities and weaknesses appears in the writings of Swift, Pope, and Steele? How far does the nature of their literary work drive them to this self-revelation?

10. Account for the decline of the drama during the first half of the eighteenth century.

11. From an examination of the table given on p. 273 answer the following questions: What branches of poetry are most weakly represented during the age of Pope? Why is that so? What branch of prose-writing is the strongest? Why is that so?

12. Why is the period of Pope called “the Age of Prose”? Does this description of the time need modification?

13. Give reasons for the rise of periodical literature during this period.

14. The humor of Addison “is that of a gentleman, in which the quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly tempered by good nature and good breeding.... He preserves a look of demure serenity.... The mirth of Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles.... Swift moves laughter, but never joins in it.” (Macaulay.) Compare the humor of Swift with that of Addison. Which of the two does Pope more closely resemble in humor?

15. “Fancy, provided she knows her place, is tolerated; but Imagination is kept at a distance.” (Saintsbury.) Show how far this statement applies to the poetry of this time.

VII. THE AGE OF DRYDEN…

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VII. THE AGE OF DRYDEN

VIII. THE AGE OF POPE