English literature in the eighteenth century

Preface

This volume contains the substance of a course of lectures delivered in Cambridge, and repeated in part in Philadelphia, during the winter of 1881-82. This statement will, it is hoped, incline the reader to overlook the direct appeals to his memory and attention, which may be permissible to one reading aloud to a friendly audience, although less pardonable in the formality of print.

In preparing this book for the press I have endeavored to make the references to the works of other writers as full and as exact as possible, but I would once more explicitly acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. J. A. Symonds, whose volumes on Italian literature have been of constant service ; to Mr. Leslie Stephen, whose " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century " is a thorough exposition of many subjects barely mentioned by me ; to Mr. Karl Hillebrand's profound " German Thought," and to Mr. Alexandre Beljame's " Le Public et les Hommes de Lettres." This last-mentioned book I have made use of continually, especially in the pages on the periodicals that preceded the Tatler, on Pope, and on Addison. Mr. Beljame's thoroughness and precision make his volume of inestimable value to vi Preface,

the student of the first half of the last century, and I am the more desirous of insisting in this place upon my obligations to him because his suggestiveness is so manifold that continual reference to his pages would have been monotonous. The literary histories of Hettner, Biedermann, Julian Schmidt, and Koberstein have been frequently consulted, and seldom in vain.

It will be noticed that this book is by no means a complete history of the literature of the last century : many important authoi's, like Prior and Smollett, have but a word given them ; Fielding receives no full discussion ; and many other writers are not even mentioned. My aim, however, has been rather to supplement the histories by pointing out, so far as I could, the more evident laws that govern literature. I have accordingly tried to show the principles that went to the formation of the literature of the last century, and also the causes of its overthrow. Many will doubtless be unwilling to subscribe to the belief that letters are controlled by laws. Mrs. Oliphant, a writer who deserves and receives the respect of all her many readers, affirms, in her admirable "Literary History of England in the End of the Eighteenth and the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century " (i. 7 and 8), that " every singer is a new miracle — created if nothing else is created — no growth developed out of precedent poets, but something sprung from an impulse which is not reducible to law." If this statement is correct, literature forms a singular exception to what has seemed a universal rule. When we consider Mrs. Oliphant's delightful novels we find them occupying a normal position in the development of fiction, with their exact drawing of life and avoidance of direct

Preface. vii

moral teaching. Mrs. Oliphant acknowledges the existence in society of " a slow progression, which, however faint, however deferred, yet gradually goes on, leaving one generation always a trifle better than that which preceded it, with some scrap of new possession, some right assured, some small inheritance gained. From age to age the advance may be small, yet it is appreciable. . . . J^ew modifications and conditions arise, the public sense is awakened, or it is cultivated, or at all events it is changed. . . . The reforms from which we hoped most, the advances for which we struggled most strenuously, do not produce all the good we expected ; but we cannot, nor would we, undo them. In everything there is a current onward, perhaps downward, but never back. . . . The principle indeed changes from time to time. It comes to a climax. . . . All is not absolute good or advantage to the human race ; but yet the race is stepping onward, it discovers new powers, it learns new ameliorations, and if it also makes proof of novel sufferings and dangers, it finds new defences and medicines for them. ... It is in fact a real progress through a thousand drawbacks, and every age leaves some foundation upon which the next can build." This lucid description of the gradual progress of society might, it seems to me, apply perfectly to literature, but this, and its application to art, Mrs. Oliphant denies, because we have not advanced upon Shakspere, Bacon, Chaucer, and Fra Angelico. This is, in brief, her reason for limiting the extent to which law may be afiirmed to exist. According to her, and to a very current opinion which she represents, literature and art are outside of law.

viii Preface.

Yet if we are unwilling to regard art and literature as miraculous, may we not be justified in supposing that there is some confusion in thus limiting the rules that govern the human mind in its other relations? Does it follow from the proposition that literature is governed by law that there should be a regular gradation of genius ? that Dryden's plays should be superior to Shakspere's, and Dean Milman's to both ? If these expectations are disappointed, is the law of progress at fault? I think not. Those who agree with Mrs. Oliphant in finding progress in political history certainly cannot find, let us say, in the arguments uttered a few years affo in Cono^ress in favor of what was called the Force Law, an advance upon the position that was taken in Parliament, nearly two and a half centuries ago, against Charles I. ; yet no one will deny the general advance in ]3ersonal freedom throughout the civilized world since that day, and that in this country liberty is not a mere oratorical catch- word. The great literary glory of the reign of Elizabeth was but one expression of the same fervor that inspired Drake and Raleigh ; and in our own time, when literature appears to languish, Mrs. Oliphant's own novels are expressing the same wider interest in the people that in politics makes itself felt as the spread of democracy. The construction of an arrears - of - rent bill is less dramatic than was the attempt to arrest the five members of the House of Commons, just as Marlowe's '' Dr. Faustus " is more thrilling than any novel of the realists, but one is as much governed by law as the other, is equally the result of antecedent causes. To ask nothing but heroics of literature would be like demanding

Preface. ix

nothing but the expression of devotion in painting. May we not hope that the present interest in reality and distrust of literary conventions may in time help the production of masterpieces ? George Eliot's novels, for example, sliow us how far the province of literature has been enlarged, how great has been the addition to the material of writers, if the phrase may be allowed, within a century. There is no need of fearing that heroism is extinct, and it is not impossible that literature may yet flash into a brilliancy for which long years spent in studying real life shall have prepared writers and readers. At any rate, a genius, in the future as in the past and the present, is bound by the necessity of building on the' foundations that society is laying every day. Every apparently insignificant action of ours contributes its mite to the sum of circumstances which inspire the writer, whose vision may be dim or inaccurate, but who can see only what exists or may exist, and is limited by experience whether this be treated literally or be modified by the imagination. No writer can escape this limitation any more than he can imagine a sixth sense. If these statements are accurate, and a general, although not uniform, progress is acknowledged to exist in society, literature may also be said to be under the sway of law, or, rather, to move in accordance with law. We shall not expect every later writer to be greater than Shakspere, any more than we shall expect a greater enthusiasm for high truths in the birthplace of Daisy Miller than in the Athens of Pericles, Yet it may well be that, although the vivid genius is absent, there is a general widening of human interest and sympathies, which will be more apparent when it is crystal-

X Preface.

lized by some great writer than it is now, when, as Cottle sang of climbing Malvern Hills,

" It needs the evidence of close deduction To know that ever I shall reach the top."

Before closing, I wish to express mj^ gratitude to the trustees and the officials of the Boston Public Library for their unfailing kindness.

My hearty thanks are also due to my friend, Mr. George Pellew, for many valuable suggestions and for much assistance in correcting proofs.

Chapter I

Statement of Subject. — Modem Literature Appears to Begin with Time of Addison and Pope. , II. Beginnings of Modern Englisli Prose. Hobbes's " Leviathan."— Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy?'— Milton's Prose. — Change appears with Dryden. III. Definition of French Influence. — Predominance of Koman Influence in Renaissance. — French Estimate of Homer and Vergil— French Classical Literature. IV. Metaphysical Poets : Cowley, Donne, Waller.— The Couplet Succeeding the Stanza.— Davenant's " Gondibert." V. The Neglect of Milton Page 1

CHAPTER 11.

Number of Books Printed at End of Seventeenth Century. — Interest in Classics a Hundred Years Earlier.— The Civil Wars had Injured the Free Growth of Letters.— Butler's " Hudibras."— Misery of Writers. II. Satirical Poetry.— George Gascoigne's " Steele Glas." — Joseph Hall's " Satires."— Butler. III. Dryden's " Absalom and xichitophel," and " Medal."r-76is Readers.—" The Hind and the Panther."—" Mac Flecknoe."- DVyden's Modification of the Poetical Diction. IV. The New Spirit Denianding New Translations of Classics.— Chapman and Pope. V. Dryden's Versions of Chaucer.— His Clearness; Modern Obscurity.— Dryden's " Odes."— His Fauhs 38

CHAPTER m.

French Stage as a Model for English Writers. II. Prynne's " Histrio- Ma3tix."-^The Puritans Close the Theatres. III. Theatres After the Restoration.— The Heroic Plays.— The Heroic Romances.— Pastoral Poetry.— The Tales of Chivalry.— Scorn of Elizabethan Drama.— Dryden's Plays.— His " State of Innocence."— Lee's Plays.— Otway's. IV. Songs of the Restoration. V. Collier's Onslaught on the Stage '^^ xii Contents.

CHAPTER lY.

I. Addison's Early Poems. — The Current Opinions of his Day. — His "Blenheim," and John Philips's Poem on the Same Subject. IT. Addison's Comments on Gothic Architecture. — The Opinions of his Contemporaries.— Addison on Mountain Scenery. — His Agreement with the Men of his Generation. III. Condition of Society. lY. Steele's Life. — Early Periodicals. — Dunton's Athenian Gazette. — The Tatler. — The Spectator. V. The Papers on Milton. — The Authority of Aristotle. — Addison on Ballads. — Influence of Addison's Criticisms in Germany ; Gottsched, Bodmer, and Breitinger. — Influence on English Novel. — Moral Teaching of the Spectator. — Imitations of the Spectator Page 130

CHAPTER Y.

The Three Unities. — Conditions Necessary for the Drama. — Early Italian Tragedy ; Trissino. — The Unities in France ; Mairet. — Aristotle on Tragedy. — Corneille on the Unities; Voltaire; Lessing. — Fall of the Unities.— Addison's " Cato." 182

CHAPTER YI.

Definition of Poetry. — Prosperous Condition of Men of Letters. — The Change in Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole. — Steele; Savage; Swift. — Pope ; the Position of Roman Catholics. — Pope's " Pastorals," and their Predecessors. — Ambrose Philips ; Gay. II. The " Essay on Criticism ;" Roscommon's " Essay on Translated Yerse ;" Sheffield's " Essay on Poetry." — Didactic Spirit of the Period. — Pope's "Windsor Forest."— The Love of Nature.— The "Rape of the Lock."— His Translation of Homer. — Relations of Men of Letters to Patrons ; Dedications. III. The " Dunciad." — Pope's Yirulence. lY. Free Thought in England. — Pope's " Essay on Man." — His " Satires " and *' Epistles." 205

CHAPTER YH.

The Mediaeval Romances and Tales. — The Picaresque Novels. — The " Lazarillo de Tormes." — " Guzman de Alfarache." — "Paul the Sharper." — " The Enghsh Rogue." — Defoe's Novels: " Robinson Crusoe ;" "Colonel Jack." — Grimmelshausen's " Simplicissimus." — Richardson's " Pamela." — Marivaux's " Marianne." 282

Contents. xiii

CHAPTER YIII.

Parodies of the Heroic Plays : Fielding's " Tom Thumb " and Carey's " Chrononhotonthologos." — Lillo's " George Barnwell." — Its Influence in France: Diderot. — ^Lessing. — The Growth of Sensibility. — Richardson's " Sir Charles Grandison." — Fielding's " Joseph Andrews."-^ Sterne. II. Appearance of Romanticism : Walpole's " Castle of Otranto." III. The Poetry. — New Edition of Spenser. — Br. Young's Poems. — Dr. Blair. — Boyse. IV. Didactic Poets: Grainger, Armstrong, Dyer. — Milton's Influence Denounced. Y. Thomson's "Seasons."— Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd." — Gray's "Elegy." — Love of Mountain Scenery. — Collins Page 323

CHAPTER IX.

I. Goldsmith's Prose and Verse. — Conservative Teachings of the Critics. — V. Knox and Dr. Johnson. — The Rambler, — Johnson's " Irene," — Boswell's " Life." II. Ossian. III. Chatterton's Poems. — Percy's " Reliques." IV. German Literature in the Eighteenth Century : Canitz, Besser. — Goethe's " Werther." — English Judgments of German Writers. — Coleridge. — Lamb. — The Anti- Jacobin Review. V. Burns. — Cowper. — Thomson. — Goldsmith. — Wordsworth's Early Poems. VI. Conclusion 396

INDEX 443

ENGLISH LlTEPiATUPtE

IN

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

I. Whatevek the period that may be chosen as the starting-point in the study of literature, and especially of modern literature, it is necessary to go back to find out the origin of the theories and the formulas then existing, to see what influences were at work, and to learn the general current of the thought of the time. Even if these lectures began with Chaucer, it is obvious that we should have to study Chaucer's indebtedness to Italian models and to mediaeval literature before we could fully comprehend his precise position ; and in beginning with the writers of the Restoration period, while we shall have to study briefly those authors who went before as well as some of those who lived in other countries, we have as a sort of excuse for choosing this as a starting-point that with these writers what we feel to be modern literature beo-ins.

Of course, this is not a scientific division. By no stretch of language can Shakspere oV Ben Jonson be numbered among ancient authors : all that I mean is this, that Addison and Pope are the first writers of whom we feel that they are, so to speak, our fellow-citizens rather than remote beings whom we admire for their intellectual gifts. As Vernon Lee puts it, in speaking of the Italian writers of the last century : " It is in dealing with them that we first find that Ave have to do no longer with our remote ancestors living in castellated houses, travelling on horseback, fighting in the streets, and carousing at banquets,but with the grandfathers of our grandfathers, steady, formal, hypocritical people, paying visits in coaches, going to operas, giving dinner-parties, and litigating and slandering rather than assassinating and poisoning." *

This feeling is due to many causes. The fact that civilization was then firmly settled gave a different tone to literature. Earlier, the joyous pride in the possession of national life, which was strongly felt in the time of Elizabeth, on account of the awakening of that age to the consciousness of new powers ; the great discoveries in physical science ; the opening of unknown lands ; the revelation of the beauties of classical literature ; the unaccustomed religious freedom — all these things inspired the writers of what we call the Elizabethan period Avith a sort of primal fire and energy which make them seem remote from our cooler, critical days.

They appeared even more remote to our ancestors at the time of Queen Anne. Then the pride of national life had faded into political rancor, and the early enthusiasm for science had been succeeded by a period of patient research and examination of detail. The Royal Society was founded in 1JI62^ and it had formed a nucleus for the reception and dissemination of ncAV discoA^eries. What had been Avidesprcad superstitions gaA^e Avay before neAv

* "Stuilies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy," p. 10.

truths : astrology, for instance, lost its hold on the teachers of the people ; witchcraft ceased to be believed in. The world was freed from a dead weight of idle terrors. Bacon's influence, too, helped to turn the current of men's thoughts to material progress, so that what we feel to be the underlying principles of modern civilization began to be fixed towards the end of the seventeenth century. Admiration for intellectual greatness does not produce this feeling of kinship so surely as does agreement in looking at practical questions, and our full comprehension of the past, and our consequent sympathy with it, begin practically with the generation to which Dryden belonged. All before then seems to belong to the imagination ; he and his contemporaries appear to be the first to fall within the range of our observation. Then, too, not only is the sequence of thought unbroken since that time — for, it must be distinctly borne in mind, this sequence cannot be broken— but we have abundant material from which to study its advance ; and the whole intellectual life of the present century is the direct outcome of what was hoped or feared, taught or denounced, in the last century. It is time that we cease to repeat one of its faults, and learn to treat our predecessors with the respect they deserve.

This is particularly our duty now when we boast our ability to enjoy all varieties of literary work, when we have a kind word for every man who has any claim to greatness. Of one thing we may be sure, that this universal taste accompanies meagre performance in the way of creation, l^ow, for instance, when the English drama is entirely a thing of the past, the taste of the reading public is exceedingly catholic ; but if at the present time real plays were written which interested us, our feelings would be enlisted in behalf of any older dramatist who seemed to support our theory of how plays should bo

4 Englis?t Literature.

written, and against those who did not. At the time of the Restoration, Shakspere's fame had greatly diminished ; yet there was considerable interest in the drama, and the qualities that were most admired were very different from those of the Elizabethan era : the zeal which animated the playwrights after 1660, their eagerness for correctness, rendered them only more sensitive to what seemed to them to be Shakspere's roughness. Moreover, to take the dramatic literature alone, the original native vigor had gone out, giving place, as we shall see more at length hereafter, to a form of dramatic composition which substituted a very artificial mode of composition for the wild luxuriousness of the great play-writers. The time had become a critical one : people had begun to study methods and workmanship, to make comparisons between different theories, and to let observation replace inspiration. This, too, is another point of resemblance between that time and our own.

II, Another reason why this period seems closely connected with the present is, that it was then that English prose began to be written — a prose which we can understand without difficulty, which, except that it is much more intelligible, is practically the prose of the present day. This may be better illustrated by a few examples than it can be described in many pages. Thus, to study some of the earlier prose * in Hobbes's " Leviathan " (1651), we find this method of writing (p. 170) : "And as to Rebellion in particular against Monarchy ; one of the most frequent causes of it, is the Reading of the books of Policy, and Histories of the ancient Greeks, and Romans ; from which, young men, and all others that are unprovided

* Nathanael Ingelo's " Bentivoglio and Urania," 1650, is exceptionally well written* of the Antidote of solid Keason, receiving a strong and delightful impression of the great exploits of war, atchieved by the Conductors of their Armies, receive withal a pleasing Idea of all they have done besides ; and imagine their great prosperity not to have proceeded from the semulation of particular men, but from the vertue of their popular form of government ; not considering the frequent Seditions, and Civil wars, produced by the imperfection of their Policy. From the reading, I say, of such books, men have undertaken to kill their Kings, because the Greek and Latin writers, in their books and discourses of Policy, make it lawful and laudable, for any man so to do ; provided before he do it, he call him Tyrant. For they say not Regicide, that is, killing of a king, but Tyrannicide, that is, killing of a Tyrant, is lawfulL From the same books, they that live under a Monarch conceive an opinion, that the Subjects in a Popular Common-wealth enjoy Liberty; but that in a Monarchy they are all slaves. I say they that live under a Monarchy conceive such an opinion ; not they that live under a Popular Government: for they find no such matter. In summe, I cannot imagine how anything can be more prejudicial to a Monarchy, than the allowing of such things to be publiquely read, without present applying of such correctives of discreet Masters, as are fit to take away their Venome : Which Venome I will not doubt \to compare to the biting of a mad Dog, which is a disease the Physicians call Hydrophobia, or fear of Water. For as he that is so bitten, has a continual torment of thirst, and yet abhorreth water ; and is in such an estate, as if the poyson endeavoured to convert him into a Dog : So when a Monarchy is once bitten to the quick, by those Democratical writers, that continually snarle at that estate ; it wanteth nothing more than a strong Monarch, which nevertheless, out of a certain Tyrannophohia, or fear of being strongly governed, when they have him, they ahhorre."

Another example may be taken from Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy" (1621) : "Chess-play is a good and witty exercise of the mind for some kind of men, and fit for such melancholy, Rhasis holds, as are idle, and have extravagant, impertinent thoughts, or troubled with cares, nothing better to distract their mind, and alter their meditations : invented (some say) by the general of an army in a famine, to keep soldiers from mutiny : but if it proceed from overmuch study, in such a case it may do more harm than good ; it is a game too troublesome for some men's brains, too full of anxiety, all out as bad as study ; besides it is a testy, choleric game, and very offensive to him that loseth the mate. William the Conqueror, in his younger years, playing at chess with a Prince of France (Dauphine was not annexed to that crown in those days), losing a mate, knocked the chess-board about his pate, which was a cause afterward of much enmity between them."

Perhaps more characteristic is this : " He that shall but see that geometrical tower of Garezenda at Bologna in Italy, the steeple and clock at Strasburg, will admire the effects of art, or that engine of Arcliimedes, to remove the earth itself, if he had but a place to fasten his instrument : Archimedis Cochlea, and rare devices to corrivate waters, musical instruments, and tri-syllable echoes, again, again, and again repeated, with myriads of such. What vast tomes are extant in law, physic, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose, etc. ! their names alone are the subject of whole volumes, we have thousands of authors of all sorts, many great libraries full well furnished like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates ; and he is a very block that is affected with none of them."

There is no need of many such mstances to prove the general rule that English prose is a modern acquirement. Even Milton, with his wonderful ear for rhythm, was often as clumsy as the others when he undertook to write prose, which was the work, as he said, of his left hand. For instance (" The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty," lib. i. chap, i.) : " To come within the narrowness of Household Government, observation will shew us many deep Counsellors of State and Judges do demean themselves incorruptly in the settled course of affairs, and many worthy Preachers upright in their Lives, powerful in their Audience ; but look upon either of these Men where they are left to their own disciplining at home, and you shall soon perceive, for all their single knowledge and uprightness, how deficient they are in the regulating of their own Family ; not only in what may concern the virtuous and decent composure of their minds in their several places, but that which is of a lower and easier performance, the right possessing of the outward Vessel, their Body, in Health or Sickness, Rest or Labour, Diet or Abstinence, whereby to render it more pliant to the Soul, and useful to the Common-wealth: when if men were but as good to discipline themselves, as some are to tutor their Horses and Hawks, it could not be so gross in most households."

These extracts are not intended to throw doubts on Hobbes's humor. Burton's learning, or Milton's eloquence ; and I pass over Bacon's simplicity, Hooker's fine harmonies, and Jeremy Taylor's poetical prose, contenting myself with showing that before the Restoration there was no practical, every-day prose. Milton, when, as he said, he wished " to soar a little," had a magnificent abundance of words at his command, and at times he broke out into a rich poetical prose. But when he had to write some plain description, his prose lumbered as clumsily as a heavy cart over rough paving-stones. The same man who could write

such lines as

" From morn To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, A summer's day ; and with the setting sun Dropt from the zenith like a falling star,"

seemed when he was writing prose to have lost all knowledge of syntax, and all appreciation of the balance of a sentence. The trouble was that the writers before Dryden would weigh down their prose with numberless parentheses, side-remarks, and let their sentences involve themselves inextricably. Only when their prose took on a poetical form could they command it. Of Bunyan, on the other hand, who knew nothing of the classicisms which so often embarrassed his more learned contemporaries, but who was the master of a true colloquial style, I shall speak later. That this awkward form of writing should have lasted long, need not be wondered at. In the first place, there was no great reading public that sliould demand clearness. Milton's pam23hlets were read by scholars who probably thought that in reading English instead of Latin they were making sufficient sacrifice to indolence ; and the practice of writing awkward Latin made them tolerant of clumsy English. Then, what we see of the present condition of the German language may serve to show us that it is only by a great deal of attrition that a simple style is produced. We never open a German book without noticing the artificial construction and shapeless form of the German sentence, both of which are sure to disappear in time as the language is more used. If we read Plattdeutsch, we find perfectly simple constructions ; and so, in the books that were read by the populace in the middle of the seventeenth century, we find a style which is readily intelligible to us nowadays. It was pedantry

English Literature. g

that injured the English style then, just as it does the German now. Howell's "Letters," to be sure (1618-1650), were written in an easy, graceful manner ; but then he not only could boast that he was able to pray in a separate language for every day of the week and in seven on Sunday, but he also was familiar with foreign literatures, and doubtless copied Balzac, the famous letter- writer who had really nothing to say, and so devoted himself to saying that very well.

What produced the change in writing English prose we may take to have been, as Mr. Saintsbury has said in his life of Dryden, in the " English Men of Letters " series, " the influences of the pulpit, of political discussion, of miscellaneous writing — partly fictitious, partly discursive— and, lastly, of literary criticism." All of these things, we may notice, were different varieties of the one great cause, practice. When only scholars read, the theatre supplied the literary pabulum of the great majority of the people ; the Puritans read the Bible, and but little else — and the "Pilgrim's Progress" shows how the populace had made the phraseology of the Bible their own ; but as political matters became of more general interest, the pamphlets adapted themselves to the wants of readers.

There can, too, be but little doubt that those who were accustomed to listening rather than to reading acquired a tolerance for spoken words which those who are mainly accustomed to reading do not enjoy. As Dr. Johnson said when he snatched the book from some one who began to read aloud to him, we can read much more easily with our eyes than with our ears : and so doubtless we have lost to some extent the possibility of comprehending at once the long sentences of plays which our ancestors grasped at once. This may to some extent explain, what is otherwise not very clear, why ignorant audiences enjoyed, for