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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of English Literature and Society in the
+Eighteenth Century, by Leslie  Stephen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century
+
+Author: Leslie  Stephen
+
+Release Date: April 17, 2007 [EBook #21123]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LITERATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Martin
+Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY
+IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+FORD LECTURES, 1903
+
+_By_ LESLIE STEPHEN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+_DUCKWORTH and CO._
+
+3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+TO HERBERT FISHER
+
+NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
+
+
+My Dear Herbert,--I had prepared these Lectures for delivery, when a
+serious breakdown of health made it utterly impossible for me to appear
+in person. The University was then good enough to allow me to employ a
+deputy; and you kindly undertook to read the Lectures for me. I have
+every reason to believe that they lost nothing by the change.
+
+I need only explain that, although they had to be read in six sections,
+and are here divided into five chapters, no other change worth noticing
+has been made. Other changes probably ought to have been made, but my
+health has been unequal to the task of serious correction. The
+publication has been delayed from the same cause.
+
+Meanwhile, I wish to express my gratitude for your services. I doubt,
+too, whether I should have ventured to republish them, had it not been
+for your assertion that they have some interest. I would adopt the good
+old form of dedicating them to you, were it not that I can find no
+precedent for a dedication by an uncle to a nephew--uncles having, I
+fancy, certain opinions as to the light in which they are generally
+regarded by nephews. I will not say what that is, nor mention another
+reason which has its weight. I will only say that, though this is not a
+dedication, it is meant to express a very warm sense of gratitude due to
+you upon many grounds.
+--Your affectionate
+                                           LESLIE STEPHEN.
+
+_November 1903_.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' NOTE
+
+
+Owing to the ill-health of Sir Leslie Stephen the proofs have been
+passed for press by Mr. H. Fisher, Fellow of New College, who read the
+Lectures at Oxford on behalf of the Author.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+When I was honoured by the invitation to deliver this course of
+lectures, I did not accept without some hesitation. I am not qualified
+to speak with authority upon such subjects as have been treated by my
+predecessors--the course of political events or the growth of legal
+institutions. My attention has been chiefly paid to the history of
+literature, and it might be doubtful whether that study is properly
+included in the phrase 'historical.' Yet literature expresses men's
+thoughts and passions, which have, after all, a considerable influence
+upon their lives. The writer of a people's songs, as we are told, may
+even have a more powerful influence than the maker of their laws. He
+certainly reveals more directly the true springs of popular action. The
+truth has been admitted by many historians who are too much overwhelmed
+by state papers to find space for any extended application of the
+method. No one, I think, has shown more clearly how much light could be
+derived from this source than your Oxford historian J. R. Green, in some
+brilliant passages of his fascinating book. Moreover, if I may venture
+to speak of myself, my own interest in literature has always been
+closely connected with its philosophical and social significance.
+Literature may of course be studied simply for its own intrinsic merits.
+But it may also be regarded as one manifestation of what is called 'the
+spirit of the age.' I have, too, been much impressed by a further
+conclusion. No one doubts that the speculative movement affects the
+social and political--I think that less attention has been given to the
+reciprocal influence. The philosophy of a period is often treated as
+though it were the product of impartial and abstract
+investigation--something worked out by the great thinker in his study
+and developed by simple logical deductions from the positions
+established by his predecessors. To my mind, though I cannot now dwell
+upon the point, the philosophy of an age is in itself determined to a
+very great extent by the social position. It gives the solutions of the
+problems forced upon the reasoner by the practical conditions of his
+time. To understand why certain ideas become current, we have to
+consider not merely the ostensible logic but all the motives which led
+men to investigate the most pressing difficulties suggested by the
+social development. Obvious principles are always ready, like germs, to
+come to life when the congenial soil is provided. And what is true of
+the philosophy is equally, and perhaps more conspicuously, true of the
+artistic and literary embodiment of the dominant ideas which are
+correlated with the social movement.
+
+A recognition of the general principle is implied in the change which
+has come over the methods of criticism. It has more and more adopted the
+historical attitude. Critics in an earlier day conceived their function
+to be judicial. They were administering a fixed code of laws applicable
+in all times and places. The true canons for dramatic or epic poetry,
+they held, had been laid down once for all by Aristotle or his
+commentators; and the duty of the critic was to consider whether the
+author had infringed or conformed to the established rules, and to pass
+sentence accordingly. I will not say that the modern critic has
+abandoned altogether that conception of his duty. He seems to me not
+infrequently to place himself on the judgment-seat with a touch of his
+old confidence, and to sentence poor authors with sufficient airs of
+infallibility. Sometimes, indeed, the reflection that he is representing
+not an invariable tradition but the last new ęsthetic doctrine, seems
+even to give additional keenness to his opinions and to suggest no
+doubts of his infallibility. And yet there is a change in his position.
+He admits, or at any rate is logically bound to admit, the code which he
+administers requires modification in different times and places. The old
+critic spoke like the organ of an infallible Church, regarding all forms
+of art except his own as simply heretical. The modern critic speaks like
+the liberal theologian, who sees in heretical and heathen creeds an
+approximation to the truth, and admits that they may have a relative
+value, and even be the best fitted for the existing conditions. There
+are, undoubtedly, some principles of universal application; and the old
+critics often expounded them with admirable common-sense and force. But
+like general tenets of morality, they are apt to be commonplaces, whose
+specific application requires knowledge of concrete facts. When the
+critics assumed that the forms familiar to themselves were the only
+possible embodiments of those principles, and condemned all others as
+barbarous, they were led to pass judgments, such, for example, as
+Voltaire's view of Dante and Shakespeare, which strike us as strangely
+crude and unappreciative. The change in this, as in other departments of
+thought, means again that criticism, as Professor Courthope has said,
+must become thoroughly inductive. We must start from experience. We must
+begin by asking impartially what pleased men, and then inquire why it
+pleased them. We must not decide dogmatically that it ought to have
+pleased or displeased on the simple ground that it is or is not
+congenial to ourselves. As historical methods extend, the same change
+takes place in regard to political or economical or religious, as well
+as in regard to literary investigations. We can then become catholic
+enough to appreciate varying forms; and recognise that each has its own
+rules, right under certain conditions and appropriate within the given
+sphere. The great empire of literature, we may say, has many provinces.
+There is a 'law of nature' deducible from universal principles of reason
+which is applicable throughout, and enforces what may be called the
+cardinal virtues common to all forms of human expression. But
+subordinate to this, there is also a municipal law, varying in every
+province and determining the particular systems which are applicable to
+the different state of things existing in each region.
+
+This method, again, when carried out, implies the necessary connection
+between the social and literary departments of history. The adequate
+criticism must be rooted in history. In some sense I am ready to admit
+that all criticism is a nuisance and a parasitic growth upon literature.
+The most fruitful reading is that in which we are submitting to a
+teacher and asking no questions as to the secret of his influence.
+Bunyan had no knowledge of the 'higher criticism'; he read into the
+Bible a great many dogmas which were not there, and accepted rather
+questionable historical data. But perhaps he felt some essential
+characteristics of the book more thoroughly than far more cultivated
+people. No critic can instil into a reader that spontaneous sympathy
+with the thoughts and emotions incarnated in the great masterpieces
+without which all reading is cold and valueless. In spite of all
+differences of dialect and costume, the great men can place themselves
+in spiritual contact with men of most distant races and periods. Art, we
+are told, is immortal. In other words, is unprogressive. The great
+imaginative creations have not been superseded. We go to the last new
+authorities for our science and our history, but the essential thoughts
+and emotions of human beings were incarnated long ago with unsurpassable
+clearness. When FitzGerald published his _Omar Khayyam_, readers were
+surprised to find that an ancient Persian had given utterance to
+thoughts which we considered to be characteristic of our own day. They
+had no call to be surprised. The writer of the Book of Job had long
+before given the most forcible expression to thought which still moves
+our deepest feelings; and Greek poets had created unsurpassable
+utterance for moods common to all men in all ages.
+
+
+     'Still green with bays each ancient altar stands
+     Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,'
+
+
+as Pope puts it; and when one remembers how through all the centuries
+the masters of thought and expression have appealed to men who knew
+nothing of criticism, higher or lower, one is tempted to doubt whether
+the critic be not an altogether superfluous phenomenon.
+
+The critic, however, has become a necessity; and has, I fancy, his
+justification in his own sphere. Every great writer may be regarded in
+various aspects. He is, of course, an individual, and the critic may
+endeavour to give a psychological analysis of him; and to describe his
+intellectual and moral constitution and detect the secrets of his
+permanent influence without reference to the particular time and place
+of his appearance. That is an interesting problem when the materials are
+accessible. But every man is also an organ of the society in which he
+has been brought up. The material upon which he works is the whole
+complex of conceptions, religious, imaginative and ethical, which forms
+his mental atmosphere. That suggests problems for the historian of
+philosophy. He is also dependent upon what in modern phrase we call his
+'environment'--the social structure of which he forms a part, and which
+gives a special direction to his passions and aspirations. That suggests
+problems for the historian of political and social institutions. Fully
+to appreciate any great writer, therefore, it is necessary to
+distinguish between the characteristics due to the individual with
+certain idiosyncrasies and the characteristics due to his special
+modification by the existing stage of social and intellectual
+development. In the earliest period the discrimination is impossible.
+Nobody, I suppose, not even if he be Provost of Oriel, can tell us much
+of the personal characteristics of the author--if there was an
+author--of the _Iliad_. He must remain for us a typical Greek of the
+heroic age; though even so, the attempt to realise the corresponding
+state of society may be of high value to an appreciation of the poetry.
+In later times we suffer from the opposite difficulty. Our descendants
+will be able to see the general characteristics of the Victorian age
+better than we, who unconsciously accept our own peculiarities, like the
+air we breathe, as mere matters of course. Meanwhile a Tennyson and a
+Browning strike us less as the organs of a society than by the
+idiosyncrasies which belong to them as individuals. But in the normal
+case, the relation of the two studies is obvious. Dante, for example, is
+profoundly interesting to the psychologist, considered simply as a human
+being. We are then interested by the astonishing imaginative intensity
+and intellectual power and the vivid personality of the man who still
+lives for us as he lived in the Italy of six centuries ago. But as all
+competent critics tell us, the _Divina Commedia_ also reveals in the
+completest way the essential spirit of the Middle Ages. The two studies
+reciprocally enlighten each other. We know Dante and understand his
+position the more thoroughly as we know better the history of the
+political and ecclesiastical struggles in which he took part, and the
+philosophical doctrines which he accepted and interpreted; and
+conversely, we understand the period the better when we see how its
+beliefs and passions affected a man of abnormal genius and marked
+idiosyncrasy of character. The historical revelation is the more
+complete, precisely because Dante was not a commonplace or average
+person but a man of unique force, mental and moral. The remark may
+suggest what is the special value of the literary criticism or its
+bearing upon history. We may learn from many sources what was the
+current mythology of the day; and how ordinary people believed in devils
+and in a material hell lying just beneath our feet. The vision probably
+strikes us as repulsive and simply preposterous. If we proceed to ask
+what it meant and why it had so powerful a hold upon the men of the
+day, we may perhaps be innocent enough to apply to the accepted
+philosophers, especially to Aquinas, whose thoughts had been so
+thoroughly assimilated by the poet. No doubt that may suggest very
+interesting inquiries for the metaphysician; but we should find not only
+that the philosophy is very tough and very obsolete, and therefore very
+wearisome for any but the strongest intellectual appetites, but also
+that it does not really answer our question. The philosopher does not
+give us the reasons which determine men to believe, but the official
+justification of their beliefs which has been elaborated by the most
+acute and laborious dialecticians. The inquiry shows how a philosophical
+system can be hooked on to an imaginative conception of the universe;
+but it does not give the cause of the belief, only the way in which it
+can be more or less favourably combined with abstract logical
+principles. The great poet unconsciously reveals something more than the
+metaphysician. His poetry does not decay with the philosophy which it
+took for granted. We do not ask whether his reasoning be sound or false,
+but whether the vision be sublime or repulsive. It may be a little of
+both; but at any rate it is undeniably fascinating. That, I take it, is
+because the imagery which he creates may still be a symbol of thoughts
+and emotions which are as interesting now as they were six hundred years
+ago. This man of first-rate power shows us, therefore, what was the real
+charm of the accepted beliefs for him, and less consciously for others.
+He had no doubt that their truth could be proved by syllogising: but
+they really laid so powerful a grasp upon him because they could be made
+to express the hopes and fears, the loves and hatreds, the moral and
+political convictions which were dearest to him. When we see how the
+system could be turned to account by the most powerful imagination, we
+can understand better what it really meant for the commonplace and
+ignorant monks who accepted it as a mere matter of course. We begin to
+see what were the great forces really at work below the surface; and the
+issues which were being blindly worked out by the dumb agents who were
+quite unable to recognise their nature. If, in short, we wish to
+discover the secret of the great ecclesiastical and political struggles
+of the day, we should turn, not to the men in whose minds beliefs lie
+inert and instinctive, nor to the ostensible dialectics of the
+ostensible apologists and assailants, but to the great poet who shows
+how they were associated with the strongest passions and the most
+vehement convictions.
+
+We may hold that the historian should confine himself to giving a record
+of the objective facts, which can be fully given in dates, statistics,
+and phenomena seen from outside. But if we allow ourselves to
+contemplate a philosophical history, which shall deal with the causes of
+events and aim at exhibiting the evolution of human society--and perhaps
+I ought to apologise for even suggesting that such an ideal could ever
+be realised--we should also see that the history of literature would be
+a subordinate element of the whole structure. The political, social,
+ecclesiastical, and economical factors, and their complex actions and
+reactions, would all have to be taken into account, the literary
+historian would be concerned with the ideas which find utterance through
+the poet and philosopher, and with the constitution of the class which
+at any time forms the literary organ of the society. The critic who
+deals with the individual work would find such knowledge necessary to a
+full appreciation of his subject; and, conversely, the appreciation
+would in some degree help the labourer in other departments of history
+to understand the nature of the forces which are governing the social
+development. However far we may be from such a consummation, and
+reluctant to indulge in the magniloquent language which it suggests, I
+imagine that a literary history is so far satisfactory as it takes the
+facts into consideration and regards literature, in the perhaps too
+pretentious phrase, as a particular function of the whole social
+organism. But I gladly descend from such lofty speculations to come to a
+few relevant details; and especially, to notice some of the obvious
+limitations which have in any case to be accepted.
+
+And in the first place, when we try to be philosophical, we have a
+difficulty which besets us in political history. How much influence is
+to be attributed to the individual? Carlyle used to tell us in my youth
+that everything was due to the hero; that the whole course of human
+history depended upon your Cromwell or Frederick. Our scientific
+teachers are inclined to reply that no single person had much
+importance, and that an ideal history could omit all names of
+individuals. If, for example, Napoleon had been killed at the siege of
+Toulon, the only difference would have been that the dictator would have
+been called say Moreau. Possibly, but I cannot see that we can argue in
+the same way in literature. I see no reason to suppose that if
+Shakespeare had died prematurely, anybody else would have written
+_Hamlet_. There was, it is true, a butcher's boy at Stratford, who was
+thought by his townsmen to have been as clever a fellow as Shakespeare.
+We shall never know what we have lost by his premature death, and we
+certainly cannot argue that if Shakespeare had died, the butcher would
+have lived. It makes one tremble, says an ingenious critic, to reflect
+that Shakespeare and Cervantes were both liable to the measles at the
+same time. As we know they escaped, we need not make ourselves unhappy
+about the might-have-been; but the remark suggests how much the literary
+glory of any period depends upon one or two great names. Omit Cervantes
+and Shakespeare and Moličre from Spanish, English, and French
+literature, and what a collapse of glory would follow! Had Shakespeare
+died, it is conceivable perhaps that some of the hyperboles which have
+been lavished upon him would have been bestowed on Marlowe and Ben
+Jonson. But, on the whole, I fancy that the minor lights of the
+Elizabethan drama have owed more to their contemporary than he owed to
+them; and that, if this central sun had been extinguished, the whole
+galaxy would have remained in comparative obscurity. Now, as we are
+utterly unable to say what are the conditions which produce a genius, or
+to point to any automatic machinery which could replace him in case of
+accident, we must agree that this is an element in the problem which is
+altogether beyond scientific investigation. The literary historian must
+be content with a humble position. Still, the Elizabethan stage would
+have existed had Shakespeare never written; and, moreover, its main
+outline would have been the same. If any man ever imitated and gave full
+utterance to the characteristic ideas of his contemporaries it was
+certainly Shakespeare; and nobody ever accepted more thoroughly the form
+of art which they worked out. So far, therefore, as the general
+conditions of the time led to the elaboration of this particular genus,
+we may study them independently and assign certain general causes. What
+Shakespeare did was to show more fully the way in which that form could
+be turned to account; and, without him, it would have been a far less
+interesting phenomenon. Even the greatest man has to live in his own
+century. The deepest thinker is not really--though we often use the
+phrase--in advance of his day so much as in the line along which advance
+takes place. The greatest poet does not write for a future generation in
+the sense of not writing for his own; it is only that in giving the
+fullest utterance to its thoughts and showing the deepest insight into
+their significance, he is therefore the most perfect type of its general
+mental attitude, and his work is an embodiment of the thoughts which are
+common to men of all generations.
+
+When the critic began to perceive that many forms of art might be
+equally legitimate under different conditions, his first proceeding was
+to classify them in different schools. English poets, for example, were
+arranged by Pope and Gray as followers of Chaucer, Spenser, Donne,
+Dryden, and so forth; and, in later days, we have such literary genera
+as are indicated by the names classic and romantic or realist and
+idealist, covering characteristic tendencies of the various historical
+groups. The fact that literary productions fall into schools is of
+course obvious, and suggests the problem as to the cause of their rise
+and decline. Bagehot treats the question in his _Physics and Politics_.
+Why, he asks, did there arise a special literary school in the reign of
+Queen Anne--'a marked variety of human expression, producing what was
+then written and peculiar to it'? Some eminent writer, he replies, gets
+a start by a style congenial to the minds around him. Steele, a rough,
+vigorous, forward man, struck out the periodical essay; Addison, a wise,
+meditative man, improved and carried it to perfection. An unconscious
+mimicry is always producing countless echoes of an original writer.
+That, I take it, is undeniably true. Nobody can doubt that all authors
+are in some degree echoes, and that a vast majority are never anything
+else. But it does not answer why a particular form should be fruitful of
+echoes or, in Bagehot's words, be 'more congenial to the minds around.'
+Why did the _Spectator_ suit one generation and the _Rambler_ its
+successors? Are we incapable of giving any answer? Are changes in
+literary fashions enveloped in the same inscrutable mystery as changes
+in ladies' dresses? It is, and no doubt always will be, impossible to
+say why at one period garments should spread over a hoop and at another
+cling to the limbs. Is it equally impossible to say why the fashion of
+Pope should have been succeeded by the fashion of Wordsworth and
+Coleridge? If we were prepared to admit the doctrine of which I have
+spoken--the supreme importance of the individual--that would of course
+be all that could be said. Shakespeare's successors are explained as
+imitators of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is explained by his 'genius'
+or, in other words, is inexplicable. If, on the other hand,
+Shakespeare's originality, whatever it may have been, was shown by his
+power of interpreting the thoughts of his own age, then we can learn
+something from studying the social and intellectual position of his
+contemporaries. Though the individual remains inexplicable, the general
+characteristics of the school to which he belongs may be tolerably
+intelligible; and some explanation is in fact suggested by such
+epithets, for example, as romantic and classical. For, whatever
+precisely they mean,--and I confess to my mind the question of what they
+mean is often a very difficult one,--they imply some general tendency
+which cannot be attributed to individual influence. When we endeavour to
+approach this problem of the rise and fall of literary schools, we see
+that it is a case of a phenomenon which is very often noticed and which
+we are more ready to explain in proportion to the share of youthful
+audacity which we are fortunate enough to possess.
+
+In every form of artistic production, in painting and architecture, for
+example, schools arise; each of which seems to embody some kind of
+principle, and develops and afterwards decays, according to some
+mysterious law. It may resemble the animal species which is, somehow or
+other, developed and then stamped out in the struggle of existence by
+the growth of a form more appropriate to the new order. The epic poem,
+shall we say? is like the 'monstrous efts,' as Tennyson unkindly calls
+them, which were no doubt very estimable creatures in their day, but
+have somehow been unable to adapt themselves to recent geological
+epochs. Why men could build cathedrals in the Middle Ages, and why their
+power was lost instead of steadily developing like the art of
+engineering, is a problem which has occupied many writers, and of which
+I shall not attempt to offer a solution. That is the difference between
+artistic and scientific progress. A truth once discovered remains true
+and may form the nucleus of an independently interesting body of truths.
+But a special form of art flourishes only during a limited period, and
+when it decays and is succeeded by others, we cannot say that there is
+necessarily progress, only that for some reason or other the environment
+has become uncongenial. It is, of course, tempting to infer from the
+decay of an art that there must be a corresponding decay in the vitality
+and morality of the race. Ruskin, for example, always assumed in his
+most brilliant and incisive, but not very conclusive, arguments that men
+ceased to paint good pictures simply because they ceased to be good men.
+He did not proceed to prove that the moral decline really took place,
+and still less to show why it took place. But, without attacking these
+large problems, I shall be content to say that I do not see that any
+such sweeping conclusions can be made as to the kind of changes in
+literary forms with which we shall be concerned. That there is a close
+relation between the literature and the general social condition of a
+nation is my own contention. But the relation is hardly of this simple
+kind. Nations, it seems to me, have got on remarkably well, and made not
+only material but political and moral progress in the periods when they
+have written few books, and those bad ones; and, conversely, have
+produced some admirable literature while they were developing some very
+ugly tendencies. To say the truth, literature seems to me to be a kind
+of by-product. It occupies far too small a part in the whole activity of
+a nation, even of its intellectual activity, to serve as a complete
+indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral
+barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a
+condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying
+but not the less fallacious conclusions.
+
+The succession of literary species implies that some are always passing
+into the stage of 'survivals': and the most obvious course is to
+endeavour to associate them with the general philosophical movement.
+That suggests one obvious explanation of many literary developments. The
+great thriving times of literature have occurred when new intellectual
+horizons seemed to be suddenly opening upon the human intelligence; as
+when Bacon was taking his Pisgah sight of the promised land of science,
+and Shakespeare and Spenser were making new conquests in the world of
+the poetic imagination. A great intellectual shock was stimulating the
+parallel, though independent, outbursts of activity. The remark may
+suggest one reason for the decline as well as for the rise of the new
+genus. If, on the one hand, the man of genius is especially sensitive to
+the new ideas which are stirring the world, it is also necessary that he
+should be in sympathy with his hearers--that he should talk the language
+which they understand, and adopt the traditions, conventions, and
+symbols with which they are already more or less familiar. A generally
+accepted tradition is as essential as the impulse which comes from the
+influx of new ideas. But the happy balance which enables the new wine to
+be put into the old bottles is precarious and transitory. The new ideas
+as they develop may become paralysing to the imagery which they began by
+utilising. The legends of chivalry which Spenser turned to account
+became ridiculous in the next generation, and the mythology of Milton's
+great poem was incredible or revolting to his successors. The machinery,
+in the old phrase, of a poet becomes obsolete, though when he used it,
+it had vitality enough to be a vehicle for his ideas. The imitative
+tendency described by Bagehot clearly tends to preserve the old, as much
+as to facilitate the adoption of a new form. In fact, to create a really
+original and new form seems to exceed the power of any individual, and
+the greatest men must desire to speak to their own contemporaries. It is
+only by degrees that the inadequacy of the traditional form makes itself
+felt, and its successor has to be worked out by a series of tentative
+experiments. When a new style has established itself its representatives
+hold that the orthodoxy of the previous period was a gross superstition:
+and those who were condemned as heretics were really prophets of the
+true faith, not yet revealed. However that may be, I am content at
+present to say that in fact the development of new literary types is
+discontinuous, and implies a compromise between the two conditions which
+in literature correspond to conservatism and radicalism. The
+conservative work is apt to become a mere survival: while the radical
+may include much that has the crudity of an imperfect application of new
+principles. Another point may be briefly indicated. The growth of new
+forms is obviously connected not only with the intellectual development
+but with the social and political state of the nation, and there comes
+into close connection with other departments of history. Authors, so far
+as I have noticed, generally write with a view to being read. Moreover,
+the reading class is at most times a very small part of the population.
+A philosopher, I take it, might think himself unusually popular if his
+name were known to a hundredth part of the population. But even poets
+and novelists might sometimes be surprised if they could realise the
+small impression they make upon the mass of the population. There is,
+you know, a story of how Thackeray, when at the height of his reputation
+he stood for Oxford, found that his name was unknown even to highly
+respectable constituents. The author of _Vanity Fair_ they observed, was
+named John Bunyan. At the present day the number of readers has, I
+presume, enormously increased; but authors who can reach the lower
+strata of the great lower pyramid, which widens so rapidly at its base,
+are few indeed. The characteristics of a literature correspond to the
+national characteristics, as embodied in the characteristics of a very
+small minority of the nation. Two centuries ago the reading part of the
+nation was mainly confined to London and to certain classes of society.
+The most important changes which have taken place have been closely
+connected with the social changes which have entirely altered the limits
+of the reading class; and with the changes of belief which have been
+cause and effect of the most conspicuous political changes. That is too
+obvious to require any further exposition. Briefly, in talking of
+literary changes, considered as implied in the whole social development,
+I shall have, first, to take note of the main intellectual
+characteristics of the period; and secondly, what changes took place in
+the audience to which men of letters addressed themselves, and how the
+gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of the
+literature addressed to them.
+
+I hope and believe that I have said nothing original. I have certainly
+only been attempting to express the views which are accepted, in their
+general outline at least, by historians, whether of the political or
+literary kind. They have often been applied very forcibly to the various
+literary developments, and, by way of preface to my own special topic, I
+will venture to recall one chapter of literary history which may serve
+to illustrate what I have already said, and which has a bearing upon
+what I shall have to say hereafter.
+
+One of the topics upon which the newer methods of criticism first
+displayed their power was the school of the Elizabethan dramatists. Many
+of the earlier critics wrote like lovers or enthusiasts who exalted the
+merits of some of the old playwrights beyond our sober judgments, and
+were inclined to ignore the merits of other forms of the art. But we
+have come to recognise that the Elizabethans had their faults, and that
+the best apology for their weaknesses as well as the best explanation of
+their merits was to be found in a clearer appreciation of the whole
+conditions. It is impossible of course to overlook the connection
+between that great outburst of literary activity and the general
+movement of the time; of the period when many impulses were breaking up
+the old intellectual stagnation, and when the national spirit which took
+the great Queen for its representative was finding leaders in the
+Burleighs and Raleighs and Drakes. The connection is emphasised by the
+singular brevity of the literary efflorescence. Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_
+heralded its approach on the eve of the Spanish Armada: Shakespeare, to
+whom the lead speedily fell, had shown his highest power in _Henry IV._
+and _Hamlet_ before the accession of James I.: his great tragedies
+_Othello_, _Macbeth_ and _Lear_ were produced in the next two or three
+years; and by that time, Ben Jonson had done his best work. When
+Shakespeare retired in 1611, Chapman and Webster, two of the most
+brilliant of his rivals, had also done their best; and Fletcher
+inherited the dramatic throne. On his death in 1625, Massinger and Ford
+and other minor luminaries were still at work; but the great period had
+passed. It had begun with the repulse of the Armada and culminated some
+fifteen years later. If in some minor respects there may afterwards have
+been an advance, the spontaneous vigour had declined and deliberate
+attempts to be striking had taken the place of the old audacity. There
+can be no more remarkable instance of a curious phenomenon, of a
+volcanic outburst of literary energy which begins and reaches its
+highest intensity while a man is passing from youth to middle age, and
+then begins to decay and exhaust itself within a generation.
+
+A popular view used to throw the responsibility upon the wicked Puritans
+who used their power to close the theatres. We entered the
+'prison-house' of Puritanism says Matthew Arnold, I think, and stayed
+there for a couple of centuries. If so, the gaolers must have had some
+difficulty, for the Puritan (in the narrower sense, of course) has
+always been in a small and unpopular minority. But it is also plain
+that the decay had begun when the Puritan was the victim instead of the
+inflictor of persecution. When we note the synchronism between the
+political and the literary movement our conception of the true nature of
+the change has to be modified. The accession of James marks the time at
+which the struggle between the court and the popular party was beginning
+to develop itself: when the monarchy and its adherents cease to
+represent the strongest current of national feeling, and the bulk of the
+most vigorous and progressive classes have become alienated and are
+developing the conditions and passions which produced the civil war. The
+genuine Puritans are still an exception; they only form the left wing,
+the most thorough-going opponents of the court-policy; and their triumph
+afterwards is only due to the causes which in a revolution give the
+advantage to the uncompromising partisans, though their special creed is
+always regarded with aversion by a majority. But for the time, they are
+the van of the party which, for whatever reason, is gathering strength
+and embodying the main political and ecclesiastical impulses of the
+time. The stage, again, had been from the first essentially
+aristocratic: it depended upon the court and the nobility and their
+adherents, and was hostile both to the Puritans and to the whole class
+in which the Puritan found a congenial element. So long, as in
+Elizabeth's time, as the class which supported the stage also
+represented the strongest aspirations of the period, and a marked
+national sentiment, the drama could embody a marked national sentiment.
+When the unity was broken up and the court is opposed to the strongest
+current of political sentiment, the players still adhere to their
+patron. The drama comes to represent a tone of thought, a social
+stratum, which, instead of leading, is getting more and more opposed to
+the great bulk of the most vigorous elements of the society. The stage
+is ceasing to be a truly national organ, and begins to suit itself to
+the tastes of the unprincipled and servile courtiers, who, if they are
+not more immoral than their predecessors, are without the old heroic
+touch which ennobled even the audacious and unscrupulous adventurers of
+the Armada period. That is to say, the change is beginning which became
+palpable in the Restoration time, when the stage became simply the
+melancholy dependent upon the court of Charles II., and faithfully
+reflected the peculiar morality of the small circle over which it
+presided. Without taking into account this process by which the organ of
+the nation gradually became transformed into the organ of the class
+which was entirely alienated from the general body of the nation, it is,
+I think, impossible to understand clearly the transformation of the
+drama. It illustrates the necessity of accounting for the literary
+movement, not only by intellectual and general causes, but by noting how
+special social developments radically alter the relation of any
+particular literary genus to the general national movement. I shall soon
+have to refer to the case again.
+
+I have now only to say briefly what I propose to attempt in these
+lectures. The literary history, as I conceive it, is an account of one
+strand, so to speak, in a very complex tissue: it is connected with the
+intellectual and social development; it represents movements of thought
+which may sometimes check and be sometimes propitious to the existing
+forms of art; it is the utterance of a class which may represent, or
+fail to represent, the main national movement; it is affected more or
+less directly by all manner of religious, political, social, and
+economical changes; and it is dependent upon the occurrence of
+individual genius for which we cannot even profess to account. I propose
+to take the history of English literature in the eighteenth century. I
+do not aim at originality: I take for granted the ordinary critical
+judgments upon the great writers of whom so much has been said by judges
+certainly more competent than myself, and shall recall the same facts
+both of ordinary history and of the history of thought. What I hope is,
+that by bringing familiar facts together I may be able to bring out the
+nature of the connection between them; and, little as I can say that
+will be at all new, to illustrate one point of view, which, as I
+believe, it is desirable that literary histories should take into
+account more distinctly than they have generally done.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The first period of which I am to speak represents to the political
+historian the Avatar of Whiggism. The glorious revolution has decided
+the long struggle of the previous century; the main outlines of the
+British Constitution are irrevocably determined; the political system is
+in harmony with the great political forces, and the nation has settled,
+as Carlyle is fond of saying, with the centre of gravity lowest, and
+therefore in a position of stable equilibrium. For another century no
+organic change was attempted or desired. Parliament has become
+definitely the great driving-wheel of the political machinery; not, as a
+century before, an intrusive body acting spasmodically and hampering
+instead of regulating the executive power of the Crown. The last Stuart
+kings had still fancied that it might be reduced to impotence, and the
+illusion had been fostered by the loyalty which meant at least a fair
+unequivocal desire to hold to the old monarchical traditions. But, in
+fact, parliamentary control had been silently developing; the House of
+Commons had been getting the power of the purse more distinctly into its
+hands, and had taken very good care not to trust the Crown with the
+power of the sword. Charles II. had been forced to depend on the help of
+the great French monarchy to maintain his authority at home; and when
+his successor turned out to be an anachronism, and found that the
+loyalty of the nation would not bear the strain of a policy hostile to
+the strongest national impulses, he was thrown off as an intolerable
+incubus. The system which had been growing up beneath the surface was
+now definitely put into shape and its fundamental principles embodied in
+legislation. The one thing still needed was to work out the system of
+party government, which meant that parliament should become an organised
+body with a corporate body, which the ministers of the Crown had first
+to consult and then to obey. The essential parts of the system had, in
+fact, been established by the end of Queen Anne's reign; though the
+change which had taken place in the system was not fully recognised
+because marked by the retention of the old forms. This, broadly
+speaking, meant the supremacy of the class which really controlled
+Parliament: of the aristocratic class, led by the peers but including
+the body of squires and landed gentlemen, and including also a growing
+infusion of 'moneyed' men, who represented the rising commercial and
+manufacturing interests. The division between Whig and Tory corresponded
+mainly to the division between the men who inclined mainly to the Church
+and squirearchy and those who inclined towards the mercantile and the
+dissenting interests. If the Tory professed zeal for the monarchy, he
+did not mean a monarchy as opposed to Parliament and therefore to his
+own dearest privileges. Even the Jacobite movement was in great part
+personal, or meant dislike to Hanover with no preference for arbitrary
+power, while the actual monarchy was so far controlled by Parliament
+that the Whig had no desire to limit it further. It was a useful
+instrument, not an encumbrance.
+
+We have to ask how these conditions affect the literary position. One
+point is clear. The relation between the political and the literary
+class was at this time closer than it had ever been. The alliance
+between them marks, in fact, a most conspicuous characteristic of the
+time. It was the one period, as authors repeat with a fond regret, in
+which literary merit was recognised by the distributors of state
+patronage. This gratifying phenomenon has, I think, been often a little
+misinterpreted, and I must consider briefly what it really meant. And
+first let us note how exclusively the literary society of the time was
+confined to London. The great town--it would be even now a great
+town--had half a million inhabitants. Macaulay, in his admirably graphic
+description of the England of the preceding period, points out what a
+chasm divided it from country districts; what miserable roads had to be
+traversed by the nobleman's chariot and four, or by the ponderous
+waggons or strings of pack-horses which supplied the wants of trade and
+of the humbler traveller; and how the squire only emerged at intervals
+to be jeered and jostled as an uncouth rustic in the streets of London.
+He was not a great buyer of books. There were, of course, libraries at
+Oxford and Cambridge, and here and there in the house of a rich prelate
+or of one of the great noblemen who were beginning to form some of the
+famous collections; but the squire was more than usually cultivated if
+Baker's _Chronicle_ and Gwillim's _Heraldry_ lay on the window-seat of
+his parlour, and one has often to wonder how the learned divines of the
+period managed to get the books from which they quote so freely in their
+discourses. Anyhow the author of the day must have felt that the
+circulation of his books must be mainly confined to London, and
+certainly in London alone could he meet with anything that could pass
+for literary society or an appreciative audience. We have superabundant
+descriptions of the audience and its meeting-places. One of the familiar
+features of the day, we know, was the number of coffee-houses. In 1657,
+we are told, the first coffee-house had been prosecuted as a nuisance.
+In 1708 there were three thousand coffee-houses; and each coffee-house
+had its habitual circle. There were coffee-houses frequented by
+merchants and stock-jobbers carrying on the game which suggested the new
+nickname bulls and bears: and coffee-houses where the talk was Whig and
+Tory, of the last election and change of ministry: and literary resorts
+such as the Grecian, where, as we are told, a fatal duel was provoked by
+a dispute over a Greek accent, in which, let us hope, it was the worst
+scholar who was killed; and Wills', where Pope as a boy went to look
+reverently at Dryden; and Buttons', where, at a later period, Addison
+met his little senate. Addison, according to Pope, spent five or six
+hours a day lounging at Buttons'; while Pope found the practice and the
+consequent consumption of wine too much for his health. Thackeray
+notices how the club and coffee-house 'boozing shortened the lives and
+enlarged the waistcoats of the men of those days.' The coffee-house
+implied the club, while the club meant simply an association for
+periodical gatherings. It was only by degrees that the body made a
+permanent lodgment in the house and became first the tenants of the
+landlord and then themselves the proprietors. The most famous show the
+approximation between the statesmen and the men of letters. There was
+the great Kit-cat Club, of which Tonson the bookseller was secretary; to
+which belonged noble dukes and all the Whig aristocracy, besides
+Congreve, Vanbrugh, Addison, Garth, and Steele. It not only brought
+Whigs together but showed its taste by giving a prize for good comedies.
+Swift, when he came into favour, helped to form the Brothers' Club,
+which was especially intended to direct patronage towards promising
+writers of the Tory persuasion. The institution, in modern slang,
+differentiated as time went on. The more aristocratic clubs became
+exclusive societies, occupying their own houses, more devoted to
+gambling than to literature; while the older type, represented by
+Jonson's famous club, were composed of literary and professional
+classes.
+
+The characteristic fraternisation of the politicians and the authors
+facilitated by this system leads to the critical point. When we speak of
+the nobility patronising literature, a reserve must be made. A list of
+some twenty or thirty names has been made out, including all the chief
+authors of the time, who received appointments of various kinds. But I
+can only find two, Congreve and Rowe, upon whom offices were bestowed
+simply as rewards for literary distinction; and both of them were sound
+Whigs, rewarded by their party, though not for party services. The
+typical patron of the day was Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax. As member
+of a noble family he came into Parliament, where he distinguished
+himself by his financial achievements in founding the Bank of England
+and reforming the currency, and became a peer and a member of the great
+Whig junto. At college he had been a chum of Prior, who joined him in a
+literary squib directed against Dryden, and, as he rose, he employed
+his friend in diplomacy. But the poetry by which Prior is known to us
+was of a later growth, and was clearly not the cause but the consequence
+of his preferment. At a later time, Halifax sent Addison abroad with the
+intention of employing him in a similar way; and it is plain that
+Addison was not--as the familiar but obviously distorted anecdote tells
+us--preferred on account of his brilliant Gazette in rhyme, but really
+in fulfilment of his patron's virtual pledge. Halifax has also the
+credit of bestowing office upon Newton and patronising Congreve. As poet
+and patron Halifax was carrying on a tradition. The aristocracy in
+Charles's days had been under the impression that poetry, or at least
+verse writing, was becoming an accomplishment for a nobleman. Pope's
+'mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,' Rochester and Buckingham, Dorset
+and Sedley, and the like, managed some very clever, if not very exalted,
+performances and were courted by the men of letters represented by
+Butler, Dryden, and Otway. As, indeed, the patrons were themselves
+hangers-on of a thoroughly corrupt court, seeking to rise by court
+intrigues, their patronage was apt to be degrading and involved the
+mean flattery of personal dependence. The change at the Revolution meant
+that the court no longer overshadowed society. The court, that is, was
+beginning to be superseded by the town. The new race of statesmen were
+coming to depend upon parliamentary influence instead of court favour.
+They were comparatively, therefore, shining by their own light. They
+were able to dispose of public appointments; places on the various
+commissions which had been founded as parliament took control of the
+financial system--such as commissions for the wine-duties, for licensing
+hackney coaches, excise duties, and so forth--besides some of the other
+places which had formerly been the perquisites of the courtier. They
+could reward personal dependants at the cost of the public; which was
+convenient for both parties. Promising university students, like Prior
+and Addison, might be brought out under the wing of the statesman, and
+no doubt literary merit, especially in conjunction with the right
+politics, might recommend them to such men as Halifax or Somers. The
+political power of the press was meanwhile rapidly developing. Harley,
+Lord Oxford, was one of the first to appreciate its importance. He
+employed Defoe and other humble writers who belonged to Grub
+Street--that is, to professional journalism in its infancy--as well as
+Swift, whose pamphlets struck the heaviest blow at the Whigs in the last
+years of that period. Swift's first writings, we may notice, were not a
+help but the main hindrance to his preferment. The patronage of
+literature was thus in great part political in its character. It
+represents the first scheme by which the new class of parliamentary
+statesmen recruited their party from the rising talent, or rewarded men
+for active or effective service. The speedy decay of the system followed
+for obvious reasons. As party government became organised, the patronage
+was used in a different spirit. Offices had to be given to gratify
+members of parliament and their constituents, not to scholars who could
+write odes on victories or epistles to secretaries of state. It was the
+machinery for controlling votes. Meanwhile we need only notice that the
+patronage of authors did not mean the patronage of learned divines or
+historians, but merely the patronage of men who could use their pens in
+political warfare, or at most of men who produced the kind of literary
+work appreciated in good society.
+
+The 'town' was the environment of the wits who produced the literature
+generally called after Queen Anne. We may call it the literary organ of
+the society. It was the society of London, or of the region served by
+the new penny-post, which included such remote villages as Paddington
+and Brompton. The city was large enough, as Addison observes, to include
+numerous 'nations,' each of them meeting at the various coffee-houses.
+The clubs at which the politicians and authors met each other
+represented the critical tribunals, when no such things as literary
+journals existed. It was at these that judgment was passed upon the last
+new poem or pamphlet, and the writer sought for their good opinion as he
+now desires a favourable review. The tribunal included the rewarders as
+well as the judges of merit; and there was plenty of temptation to
+stimulate their generosity by flattery. Still the relation means a great
+improvement on the preceding state of things. The aristocrat was no
+doubt conscious of his inherent dignity, but he was ready on occasion to
+hail Swift as 'Jonathan' and, in the case of so highly cultivated a
+specimen as Addison, to accept an author's marriage to a countess. The
+patrons did not exact the personal subservience of the preceding
+period; and there was a real recognition by the more powerful class of
+literary merit of a certain order. Such a method, however, had obvious
+defects. Men of the world have their characteristic weaknesses; and one,
+to go no further, is significant. The Club in England corresponded more
+or less to the Salon which at different times had had so great an
+influence upon French literature. It differed in the marked absence of
+feminine elements. The clubs meant essentially a society of bachelors,
+and the conversation, one infers, was not especially suited for ladies.
+The Englishman, gentle or simple, enjoyed himself over his pipe and his
+bottle and dismissed his womenkind to their bed. The one author of the
+time who speaks of the influence of women with really chivalrous
+appreciation is the generous Steele, with his famous phrase about Lady
+Elizabeth Hastings and a liberal education. The Clubs did not foster the
+affectation of Moličre's _Précieuses_; but the general tone had a
+coarseness and occasional brutality which shows too clearly that they
+did not enter into the full meaning of Steele's most admirable saying.
+
+To appreciate the spirit of this society we must take into account the
+political situation and the intellectual implication. The parliamentary
+statesman, no longer dependent upon court favour, had a more independent
+spirit and personal self-respect. He was fully aware of the fact that he
+represented a distinct step in political progress. His class had won a
+great struggle against arbitrary power and bigotry. England had become
+the land of free speech, of religious toleration, impartial justice, and
+constitutional order. It had shown its power by taking its place among
+the leading European states. The great monarchy before which the English
+court had trembled, and from which even patriots had taken bribes in the
+Restoration period, was met face to face in a long and doubtful struggle
+and thoroughly humbled in a war, in which an English General, in command
+of an English contingent, had won victories unprecedented in our history
+since the Middle Ages. Patriotic pride received a stimulus such as that
+which followed the defeat of the Armada and preceded the outburst of the
+Elizabethan literature. Those successes, too, had been won in the name
+of 'liberty'--a vague if magical word which I shall not seek to define
+at present. England, so sound Whigs at least sincerely believed, had
+become great because it had adopted and carried out the true Whig
+principles. The most intelligent Frenchmen of the coming generation
+admitted the claim; they looked upon England as the land both of liberty
+and philosophy, and tried to adopt for themselves the creed which had
+led to such triumphant results. One great name may tell us sufficiently
+what the principles were in the eyes of the cultivated classes, who
+regarded themselves and their own opinions with that complacency in
+which we are happily never deficient. Locke had laid down the
+fundamental outlines of the creed, philosophical, religious, and
+political, which was to dominate English thought for the next century.
+Locke was one of the most honourable, candid, and amiable of men, if
+metaphysicians have sometimes wondered at the success of his teaching.
+He had not the logical thoroughness and consistency which marks a
+Descartes or Spinoza, nor the singular subtlety which distinguishes
+Berkeley and Hume; nor the eloquence and imaginative power which gave to
+Bacon an authority greater than was due to his scientific requirements.
+He was a thoroughly modest, prosaic, tentative, and sometimes clumsy
+writer, who raises great questions without solving them or fully seeing
+the consequences of his own position. Leaving any explanation of his
+power to metaphysicians, I need only note the most conspicuous
+condition. Locke ruled the thought of his own and the coming period
+because he interpreted so completely the fundamental beliefs which had
+been worked out at his time. He ruled, that is, by obeying. Locke
+represents the very essence of the common sense of the intelligent
+classes. I do not ask whether his simplicity covered really profound
+thought or embodied superficial crudities; but it was most admirably
+adapted to the society of which I have been speaking. The excellent
+Addison, for example, who was no metaphysician, can adopt Locke when he
+wishes to give a philosophical air to his amiable lectures upon arts and
+morals. Locke's philosophy, that is, blends spontaneously with the
+ordinary language of all educated men. To the historian of philosophy
+the period is marked by the final disappearance of scholasticism. The
+scholastic philosophy had of course been challenged generations before.
+Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, however, in the preceding century had
+still treated it as the great incubus upon intellectual progress, and it
+was not yet exorcised from the universities. It had, however, passed
+from the sphere of living thought. This implies a series of correlative
+changes in the social and intellectual which are equally conspicuous in
+the literary order, and which I must note without attempting to inquire
+which are the ultimate or most fundamental causes of reciprocally
+related developments. The changed position of the Anglican church is
+sufficiently significant. In the time of Laud, the bishops in alliance
+with the Crown endeavoured to enforce the jurisdiction of the
+ecclesiastical courts upon the nation at large, and to suppress all
+nonconformity by law. Every subject of the king is also amenable to
+church discipline. By the Revolution any attempt to enforce such
+discipline had become hopeless. The existence of nonconformist churches
+has to be recognised as a fact, though perhaps an unpleasant fact. The
+Dissenters can be worried by disqualifications of various kinds; but the
+claim to toleration, of Protestant sects at least, is admitted; and the
+persecution is political rather than ecclesiastical. They are not
+regarded as heretics, but as representing an interest which is opposed
+to the dominant class of the landed gentry. The Church as such has lost
+the power of discipline and is gradually falling under the power of the
+dominant aristocratic class. When Convocation tries to make itself
+troublesome, in a few years, it will be silenced and drop into
+impotence. Church-feeling indeed, is still strong, but the clergy have
+become thoroughly subservient, and during the century will be mere
+appendages to the nobility and squirearchy. The intellectual change is
+parallel. The great divines of the seventeenth century speak as members
+of a learned corporation condescending to instruct the laity. The
+hearers are supposed to listen to the voice (as Donne puts it) as from
+'angels in the clouds.' They are experts, steeped in a special science,
+above the comprehension of the vulgar. They have been trained in the
+schools of theology and have been thoroughly drilled in the art of
+'syllogising.' They are walking libraries with the ancient fathers at
+their finger-ends; they have studied Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and have
+shown their technical knowledge in controversies with the great Jesuits,
+Suarez and Bellarmine. They speak frankly, if not ostentatiously, as men
+of learning, and their sermons are overweighted with quotations, showing
+familiarity with the classics, and with the whole range of theological
+literature. Obviously the hearers are to be passive recipients not
+judges of the doctrine. But by the end of the century Tillotson has
+become the typical divine, whose authority was to be as marked in
+theology as that of Locke in philosophy. Tillotson has entirely
+abandoned any ostentatious show of learning. He addresses his hearers in
+language on a level with their capabilities, and assumes that they are
+not 'passive buckets to be pumped into' but reasonable men who have a
+right to be critics as well as disciples. It is taken for granted that
+the appeal must be to reason, and to the reason which has not gone
+through any special professional training. The audience, that is, to
+which the divine must address himself is one composed of the average
+laity who are quite competent to judge for themselves. That is the
+change that is meant when we are told that this was the period of the
+development of English prose. Dryden, one of its great masters,
+professed to have learned his style from Tillotson. The writer, that is,
+has to suit himself to the new audience which has grown up. He has to
+throw aside all the panoply of scholastic logic, the vast apparatus of
+professional learning, and the complex Latinised constructions, which,
+however admirable some of the effects produced, shows that the writer is
+thinking of well-read scholars, not of the ordinary man of the world.
+He has learned from Bacon and Descartes, perhaps, that his supposed
+science was useless lumber; and he has to speak to men who not only want
+plain language but are quite convinced that the pretensions of the old
+authority have been thoroughly exploded.
+
+Politically, the change means toleration, for it is assumed that the
+vulgar can judge for themselves; intellectually, it means rationalism,
+that is, an appeal to the reason common to all men; and, in literature
+it means the hatred of pedantry and the acceptance of such literary
+forms as are thoroughly congenial and intelligible to the common sense
+of the new audience. The hatred of the pedantic is the characteristic
+sentiment of the time. When Berkeley looked forward to a new world in
+America, he described it as the Utopia
+
+
+     'Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
+     The pedantry of Courts and Schools.'
+
+
+When he announced a metaphysical discovery he showed his understanding
+of the principle by making his exposition--strange as the proceeding
+appears to us--as short and as clear as the most admirable literary
+skill could contrive. That eccentric ambition dominates the writings of
+the times. In a purely literary direction it is illustrated by the
+famous but curiously rambling and equivocal controversy about the
+Ancients and Moderns begun in France by Perrault and Boileau. In England
+the most familiar outcome was Swift's _Battle of the Books_, in which he
+struck out the famous phrase about sweetness and light, 'the two noblest
+of things'; which he illustrated by ridiculing Bentley's criticism and
+Dryden's poetry. I may take for granted the motives which induced that
+generation to accept as their models the great classical masterpieces,
+the study of which had played so important a part in the revival of
+letters and the new philosophy. I may perhaps note, in passing, that we
+do not always remember what classical literature meant to that
+generation. In the first place, the education of a gentleman meant
+nothing then except a certain drill in Greek and Latin--whereas now it
+includes a little dabbling in other branches of knowledge. In the next
+place, if a man had an appetite for literature, what else was he to
+read? Imagine every novel, poem, and essay written during the last two
+centuries to be obliterated and further, the literature of the early
+seventeenth century and all that went before to be regarded as pedantic
+and obsolete, the field of study would be so limited that a man would be
+forced in spite of himself to read his _Homer_ and _Virgil_. The vice of
+pedantry was not very accurately defined--sometimes it is the ancient,
+sometimes the modern, who appears to be pedantic. Still, as in the
+_Battle of the Books_ controversy, the general opinion seems to be that
+the critic should have before him the great classical models, and regard
+the English literature of the seventeenth century as a collection of all
+possible errors of taste. When, at the end of this period, Swift with
+Pope formed the project of the Scriblerus Club, its aim was to be a
+joint-stock satire against all 'false tastes' in learning, art, and
+science. That was the characteristic conception of the most brilliant
+men of letters of the time.
+
+Here, then, we have the general indication of the composition of the
+literary organ. It is made up of men of the world--'Wits' is their
+favourite self-designation, scholars and gentlemen, with rather more of
+the gentlemen than the scholars--living in the capital, which forms a
+kind of island of illumination amid the surrounding darkness of the
+agricultural country--including men of rank and others of sufficient
+social standing to receive them on friendly terms--meeting at
+coffee-houses and in a kind of tacit confederation of clubs to compare
+notes and form the whole public opinion of the day. They are conscious
+that in them is concentrated the enlightenment of the period. The class
+to which they belong is socially and politically dominant--the advance
+guard of national progress. It has finally cast off the incubus of a
+retrograde political system; it has placed the nation in a position of
+unprecedented importance in Europe; and it is setting an example of
+ordered liberty to the whole civilised world. It has forced the Church
+and the priesthood to abandon the old claim to spiritual supremacy. It
+has, in the intellectual sphere, crushed the old authority which
+embodied superstition, antiquated prejudice, and a sham system of
+professional knowledge, which was upheld by a close corporation. It
+believes in reason--meaning the principles which are evident to the
+ordinary common sense of men at its own level. It believes in what it
+calls the Religion of Nature--the plain demonstrable truths obvious to
+every intelligent person. With Locke for its spokesman, and Newton as a
+living proof of its scientific capacity, it holds that England is the
+favoured nation marked out as the land of liberty, philosophy, common
+sense, toleration, and intellectual excellence. And with certain
+reserves, it will be taken at its own valuation by foreigners who are
+still in darkness and deplorably given to slavery, to say nothing of
+wooden shoes and the consumption of frogs. Let us now consider the
+literary result.
+
+I may begin by recalling a famous controversy which seems to illustrate
+very significantly some of the characteristic tendencies of the day. The
+stage, when really flourishing, might be expected to show most
+conspicuously the relations between authors and the society. The
+dramatist may be writing for all time; but if he is to fill a theatre,
+he must clearly adapt himself to the tastes of the living and the
+present. During the first half of the period of which I am now speaking,
+Dryden was still the dictator of the literary world; and Dryden had
+adopted Congreve as his heir, and abandoned to him the province of the
+drama--Congreve, though he ceased to write, was recognised during his
+life as the great man of letters to whom Addison, Swift, and Pope agreed
+in paying respect, and indisputably the leading writer of English
+Comedy. When the comic drama was unsparingly denounced by Collier,
+Congreve defended himself and his friends. In the judgment of
+contemporaries the pedantic parson won a complete triumph over the most
+brilliant of wits. Although Congreve's early abandonment of his career
+was not caused by Collier's attack alone, it was probably due in part to
+the general sentiment to which Collier gave utterance. I will ask what
+is implied as a matter of fact in regard to the social and literary
+characteristics of the time. The Shakespearian drama had behind it a
+general national impulse. With Fletcher, it began to represent a court
+already out of harmony with the strongest currents of national feeling.
+Dryden, in a familiar passage, gives the reason of the change from his
+own point of view. Two plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, he says in an
+often quoted passage, were acted (about 1668) for one of Shakespeare or
+Jonson. His explanation is remarkable. It was because the later
+dramatists 'understood the conversation of gentlemen much better,' whose
+wild 'debaucheries and quickness of wit no poet can ever paint as they
+have done.' In a later essay he explains that the greater refinement
+was due to the influence of the court. Charles II., familiar with the
+most brilliant courts of Europe, had roused us from barbarism and
+rebellion, and taught us to 'mix our solidity' with 'the air and gaiety
+of our neighbours'! I need not cavil at the phrases 'refinement' and
+'gentleman.' If those words can be fairly applied to the courtiers whose
+'wild debaucheries' disgusted Evelyn and startled even the respectable
+Pepys, they may no doubt be applied to the stage and the dramatic
+persons. The rake, or 'wild gallant,' had made his first appearance in
+Fletcher, and had shown himself more nakedly after the Restoration. This
+is the so-called reaction so often set down to the account of the
+unlucky Puritans. The degradation, says Macaulay, was the 'effect of the
+prevalence of Puritanism under the Commonwealth.' The attempt to make a
+'nation of saints' inevitably produced a nation of scoffers. In what
+sense, in the first place, was there a 'reaction' at all? The Puritans
+had suppressed the stage when it was already far gone in decay because
+it no longer satisfied the great bulk of the nation. The reaction does
+not imply that the drama regained its old position. When the rule of the
+saints or pharisees was broken down, the stage did not become again a
+national organ. A very small minority of the people can ever have seen a
+performance. There were, we must remember, only two theatres under
+Charles II., and there was a difficulty in supporting even two. Both
+depended almost exclusively on the patronage of the court and the
+courtiers. From the theatre, therefore, we can only argue directly to
+the small circle of the rowdy debauchees who gathered round the new
+king. It certainly may be true, but it was not proved from their
+behaviour, that the national morality deteriorated, and in fact I think
+nothing is more difficult than to form any trustworthy estimate of the
+state of morality in a whole nation, confidently as such estimates are
+often put forward. What may be fairly inferred, is that a certain class,
+who had got from under the rule of the Puritan, was now free from legal
+restraint and took advantage of the odium excited by pharisaical
+strictness, to indulge in the greater license which suited the taste of
+their patrons. The result is sufficiently shown when we see so great a
+man as Dryden pander to the lowest tastes, and guilty of obscenities of
+which he was himself ashamed, which would be now inexcusable in the
+lowest public haunts. The comedy, as it appears to us, must have been
+written by blackguards for blackguards. When Congreve became Dryden's
+heir he inherited the established tradition. Under the new order the
+'town' had become supreme; and Congreve wrote to meet the taste of the
+class which was gaining in self-respect and independence. He tells us in
+the dedication of his best play, _The Way of the World_, that his taste
+had been refined in the company of the Earl of Montagu. The claim is no
+doubt justifiable. So Horace Walpole remarks that Vanbrugh wrote so well
+because he was familiar with the conversation of the best circles. The
+social influences were favourable to the undeniable literary merits, to
+the force and point in which Congreve's dialogue is still superior to
+that of any English rival, the vigour of Vanbrugh and the vivacity of
+their chief ally, Farquhar. Moreover, although their moral code is
+anything but strict, these writers did not descend to some of the depths
+often sounded by Dryden and Wycherly. The new spirit might seem to be
+passing on with more literary vitality into the old forms. And yet the
+consequence, or certainly the sequel to Collier's attack, was the decay
+of the stage in every sense, from which there was no recovery till the
+time of Goldsmith and Sheridan.
+
+This is the phenomenon which we have to consider;--let us listen for a
+moment to the 'distinguished critics' who have denounced or defended the
+comedy of the time. Macaulay gives as a test of the morality of the
+Restoration stage that on it, for the first time, marriage becomes the
+topic of ridicule. We are supposed to sympathise with the adulterer, not
+with the deceived husband--a fault, he says, which stains no play
+written before the Civil War. Addison had already suggested this test in
+the _Spectator_, and proceeds to lament that 'the multitudes are shut
+out from this noble "diversion" by the immorality of the lessons
+inculcated.' Lamb, indulging in ingenious paradox, admires Congreve for
+'excluding from his scenes (with one exception) any pretensions to
+goodness or good feeling whatever.' Congreve, he says, spreads a
+'privation of moral light' over his characters, and therefore we can
+admire them without compunction. We are in an artificial world where we
+can drop our moral prejudices for the time being. Hazlitt more daringly
+takes a different position and asserts that one of Wycherly's coarsest
+plays is 'worth ten sermons'--which perhaps does not imply with him any
+high estimate of moral efficacy. There is, however, this much of truth,
+I take it, in Hazlitt's contention. Lamb's theory of the non-morality of
+the dramatic world will not stand examination. The comedy was in one
+sense thoroughly 'realistic'; and I am inclined to say, that in that lay
+its chief merit. There is some value in any truthful representation,
+even of vice and brutality. There would certainly be no difficulty in
+finding flesh and blood originals for the rakes and the fine ladies in
+the memoirs of Grammont or the diaries of Pepys. The moral atmosphere is
+precisely that of the dissolute court of Charles II., and the 'privation
+of moral light' required is a delicate way of expressing its
+characteristic feeling. In the worst performances we have not got to any
+unreal region, but are breathing for the time the atmosphere of the
+lowest resorts, where reference to pure or generous sentiment would
+undoubtedly have been received with a guffaw, and coarse cynicism be
+regarded as the only form of comic insight. At any rate the audiences
+for which Congreve wrote had just so much of the old leaven that we can
+quite understand why they were regarded as wicked by a majority of the
+middle classes. The doctrine that all playgoing was wicked was naturally
+confirmed, and the dramatists retorted by ridiculing all that their
+enemies thought respectable. Congreve was, I fancy, a man of better
+morality than his characters, only forced to pander to the tastes of the
+rake who had composed the dominant element of his audience. He writes
+not for mere blackguards, but for the fine gentleman, who affects
+premature knowledge of the world, professes to be more cynical than he
+really is, and shows his acuteness by deriding hypocrisy and pharisaic
+humbug in every claim to virtue. He dwells upon the seamy side of life,
+and if critics, attracted by his undeniable brilliance, have found his
+heroines charming, to me it seems that they are the kind of young women
+whom, if I adopted his moral code, I should think most desirable
+wives--for my friends.
+
+Though realistic in one sense, we may grant to Lamb that such comedy
+becomes 'artificial,' and so far Lamb is right, because it supposes a
+state of things such as happily was abnormal except in a small circle.
+The plots have to be made up of impossible intrigues, and imply a
+distorted theory of life. Marriage after all is not really ridiculous,
+and to see it continuously from this point of view is to have a false
+picture of realities. Life is not made up of dodges worthy of
+cardsharpers--and the whole mechanism becomes silly and disgusting. If
+comedy is to represent a full and fair portrait of life, the dramatist
+ought surely, in spite of Lamb, to find some space for generous and
+refined feeling. There, indeed, is a difficulty. The easiest way to be
+witty is to be cynical. It is difficult, though desirable, to combine
+good feeling with the comic spirit. The humourist has to expose the
+contrasts of life, to unmask hypocrisy, and to show selfishness lurking
+under multitudinous disguises. That, on Hazlitt's showing, was the
+preaching of Wycherly. I can't think that it was the impression made
+upon Wycherly's readers. Such comedy may be taken as satire; which was
+the excuse that Fielding afterwards made for his own performances. But I
+cannot believe that the actual audiences went to see vice exposed, or
+used Lamb's ingenious device of disbelieving in the reality. They simply
+liked brutal and immoral sentiment, spiced, if possible, with art. We
+may inquire whether there may not be a comedy which is enjoyable by the
+refined and virtuous, and in which the intrusion of good feeling does
+not jar upon us as a discord. An answer may be suggested by pointing to
+Moličre, and has been admirably set forth in Mr. George Meredith's essay
+on the 'Comic Spirit.' There are, after all, ridiculous things in the
+world, even from the refined and virtuous point of view. The saint, it
+is true, is apt to lose his temper and become too serious for such a
+treatment of life-problems. Still the sane intellect which sees things
+as they are can find a sphere within which it is fair and possible to
+apply ridicule to affectation and even to vice, and without simply
+taking the seat of the scorner or substituting a coarse laugh for a
+delicate smile. A hearty laugh, let us hope, is possible even for a
+fairly good man. Mr. Meredith's essay indicates the conditions under
+which the artist may appeal to such a cultivated and refined humour. The
+higher comedy, he says, can only be the fruit of a polished society
+which can supply both the model and the audience. Where the art of
+social intercourse has been carried to a high pitch, where men have
+learned to be at once courteous and incisive, to admire urbanity, and
+therefore really good feeling, and to take a true estimate of the real
+values of life, a high comedy which can produce irony without
+coarseness, expose shams without advocating brutality, becomes for the
+first time possible. It must be admitted that the condition is also very
+rarely fulfilled.
+
+This, I take it, is the real difficulty. The desirable thing, one may
+say, would have been to introduce a more refined and human art and to
+get rid of the coarser elements. The excellent Steele tried the
+experiment. But he had still to work upon the old lines, which would not
+lend themselves to the new purpose. His passages of moral exhortation
+would not supply the salt of the old cynical brutalities; they had a
+painful tendency to become insipid and sentimental, if not maudlin; and
+only illustrated the difficulty of using a literary tradition which
+developed spontaneously for one purpose to adapt itself to a wholly
+different aim. He produced at best not a new genus but an awkward
+hybrid. But behind this was the greater difficulty that a superior
+literature would have required a social elaboration, the growth of a
+class which could appreciate and present appropriate types. Now even the
+good society for which Congreve wrote had its merits, but certainly its
+refinement left much to be desired. One condition, as Mr. Meredith again
+remarks, of the finer comedy is such an equality of the sexes as may
+admit the refining influence of women. The women of the Restoration time
+hardly exerted a refining influence. They adopted the ingenious
+compromise of going to the play, but going in masks. That is, they
+tacitly implied that the brutality was necessary, and they submitted to
+what they could not openly approve. Throughout the eighteenth century a
+contempt for women was still too characteristic of the aristocratic
+character. Nor was there any marked improvement in the tastes of the
+playgoing classes. The plays denounced by Collier continued to hold the
+stage, though more or less expurgated, throughout the century. Comedy
+did not become decent. In 1729 Arthur Bedford carried on Collier's
+assault in a 'Remonstrance against the horrid blasphemies and
+improprieties which are still used in the English playhouses,' and
+collected seven thousand immoral sentiments from the plays (chiefly) of
+the last four years. I have not verified his statements. The inference,
+however, seems to be clear. Collier's attack could not reform the
+stage. The evolution took the form of degeneration. He could, indeed,
+give utterance to the disapproval of the stage in general, which we call
+Puritanical, though it was by no means confined to Puritans or even to
+Protestants. Bossuet could denounce the stage as well as Collier.
+Collier was himself a Tory and a High Churchman, as was William Law, of
+the _Serious Call_, who also denounced the stage. The sentiment was, in
+fact, that of the respectable middle classes in general. The effect was
+to strengthen the prejudice which held that playgoing was immoral in
+itself, and that an actor deserved to be treated as a 'vagrant'--the
+class to which he legally belonged. During the next half-century, at
+least, that was the prevailing opinion among the solid middle-class
+section of society.
+
+The denunciations of Collier and his allies certainly effected a reform,
+but at a heavy price. They did not elevate the stage or create a better
+type, but encouraged old prejudices against the theatre generally; the
+theatre was left more and more to a section of the 'town,' and to the
+section which was not too particular about decency. When Congreve
+retired, and Vanbrugh took to architecture, and Farquhar died, no
+adequate successors appeared. The production of comedies was left to
+inferior writers, to Mrs. Centlivre, and Colley Cibber, and Fielding in
+his unripe days, and they were forced by the disfavour into which their
+art had fallen to become less forcible rather than to become more
+refined. When a preacher denounces the wicked, his sermons seem to be
+thrown away because the wicked don't come to church. Collier could not
+convert his antagonists; he could only make them more timid and careful
+to avoid giving palpable offence. But he could express the growing
+sentiment which made the drama an object of general suspicion and
+dislike, and induced the ablest writers to turn to other methods for
+winning the favour of a larger public.
+
+The natural result, in fact, was the development of a new kind of
+literature, which was the most characteristic innovation of the period.
+The literary class of which I have hitherto spoken reflected the
+opinions of the upper social stratum. Beneath it was the class generally
+known as Grub Street. Grub Street had arisen at the time of the great
+civil struggle. War naturally generates journalism; it had struggled on
+through the Restoration and taken a fresh start at the Revolution and
+the final disappearance of the licensing system. The daily
+newspaper--meaning a small sheet written by a single author (editors as
+yet were not)--appeared at the opening of the eighteenth century. Now
+for Grub Street the wit of the higher class had nothing but dislike. The
+'hackney author,' as Dunton called him, in his curious _Life and
+Errors_, was a mere huckster, who could scarcely be said as yet to
+belong to a profession. A Tutchin or Defoe might be pilloried, or
+flogged, or lose his ears, without causing a touch of compassion from
+men like Swift, who would have disdained to call themselves brother
+authors. Yet politicians were finding him useful. He was the victim of
+one party, and might be bribed or employed as a spy by the other. The
+history of Defoe and his painful struggles between his conscience and
+his need of living, sufficiently indicates the result; Charles Leslie,
+the gallant nonjuror, for example, or Abel Boyer, the industrious
+annalist, or the laborious but cantankerous Oldmixon, were keeping their
+heads above water by journalism, almost exclusively, of course,
+political. Defoe showed a genius for the art, and his mastery of
+vigorous vernacular was hardly rivalled until the time of Paine and
+Cobbett. At any rate, it was plain that a market was now arising for
+periodical literature which might give a scanty support to a class below
+the seat of patrons. It was at this point that the versatile,
+speculative, and impecunious Steele hit upon his famous discovery. The
+aim of the _Tatler_, started in April 1709, was marked out with great
+accuracy from the first. Its purpose is to contain discourses upon all
+manner of topics--_quicquid agunt homines_, as his first motto put
+it--which had been inadequately treated in the daily papers. It is
+supposed to be written in the various coffee-houses, and it is suited to
+all classes, even including women, whose taste, he observes, is to be
+caught by the title. The _Tatler_, as we know, led to the _Spectator_,
+and Addison's co-operation, cordially acknowledged by his friend, was a
+main cause of its unprecedented success. The _Spectator_ became the
+model for at least three generations of writers. The number of
+imitations is countless: Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith, and many men of
+less fame tried to repeat the success; persons of quality, such as
+Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, condescended to write papers for the
+_World_--the 'Bow of Ulysses,' as it was called, in which they could
+test their strength. Even in the nineteenth century Hazlitt and Leigh
+Hunt carried on the form; as indeed, in a modified shape, many later
+essayists have aimed at a substantially similar achievement. To have
+contributed three or four articles was, as in the case of the excellent
+Henry Grove (a name, of course, familiar to all of you), to have
+graduated with honours in literature. Johnson exhorted the literary
+aspirant to give his days and nights to the study of Addison; and the
+_Spectator_ was the most indispensable set of volumes upon the shelves
+of every library where the young ladies described by Miss Burney and
+Miss Austen were permitted to indulge a growing taste for literature. I
+fear that young people of the present day discover, if they try the
+experiment, that their curiosity is easily satisfied. This singular
+success, however, shows that the new form satisfied a real need.
+Addison's genius must, of course, count for much in the immediate
+result; but it was plainly a case where genius takes up the function for
+which it is best suited, and in which it is most fully recognised. When
+we read him now we are struck by one fact. He claims in the name of the
+_Spectator_ to be a censor of manners and morals; and though he veils
+his pretensions under delicate irony, the claim is perfectly serious at
+bottom. He is really seeking to improve and educate his readers. He
+aims his gentle ridicule at social affectations and frivolities; and
+sometimes, though avoiding ponderous satire, at the grosser forms of
+vice. He is not afraid of laying down an ęsthetic theory. In a once
+famous series of papers on the Imagination, he speaks with all the
+authority of a recognised critic in discussing the merits of Chevy Chase
+or of _Paradise Lost_; and in a series of Saturday papers he preaches
+lay-sermons--which were probably preferred by many readers to the
+official discourses of the following day. They contain those striking
+poems (too few) which led Thackeray to say that he could hardly fancy a
+'human intellect thrilling with a purer love and admiration than Joseph
+Addison's.' Now, spite of the real charm which every lover of delicate
+humour and exquisite urbanity must find in Addison, I fancy that the
+_Spectator_ has come to mean for us chiefly Sir Roger de Coverley. It is
+curious, and perhaps painful, to note how very small a proportion of the
+whole is devoted to that most admirable achievement; and to reflect how
+little life there is in much that in kindness of feeling and grace of
+style is equally charming. One cause is obvious. When Addison talks of
+psychology or ęsthetics or ethics (not to speak of his criticism of
+epic poetry or the drama), he must of course be obsolete in substance;
+but, moreover, he is obviously superficial. A man who would speak upon
+such topics now must be a grave philosopher, who has digested libraries
+of philosophy. Addison, of course, is the most modest of men; he has not
+the slightest suspicion that he is going beyond his tether; and that is
+just what makes his unconscious audacity remarkable. He fully shares the
+characteristic belief of the day, that the abstract problems are soluble
+by common sense, when polished by academic culture and aided by a fine
+taste. It is a case of _sancta simplicitas_; of the charming, because
+perfectly unconscious, self-sufficiency with which the Wit, rejecting
+pedantry as the source of all evil, thinks himself obviously entitled to
+lay down the law as theologian, politician, and philosopher. His
+audience are evidently ready to accept him as an authority, and are
+flattered by being treated as capable of reason, not offended by any
+assumption of their intellectual inferiority.
+
+With whatever shortcomings, Addison, and in their degree Steele and his
+other followers, represent the stage at which the literary organ begins
+to be influenced by the demands of a new class of readers. Addison
+feels the dignity of his vocation and has a certain air of gentle
+condescension, especially when addressing ladies who cannot even
+translate his mottoes. He is a genuine prophet of what we now describe
+as Culture, and his exquisite urbanity and delicacy qualify him to be a
+worthy expositor of the doctrines, though his outlook is necessarily
+limited. He is therefore implicitly trying to solve the problem which
+could not be adequately dealt with on the stage; to set forth a view of
+the world and human nature which shall be thoroughly refined and noble,
+and yet imply a full appreciation of the humorous aspects of life. The
+inimitable Sir Roger embodies the true comic spirit; though Addison's
+own attempt at comedy was not successful.
+
+One obvious characteristic of this generation is the didacticism which
+is apt to worry us. Poets, as well as philosophers and preachers, are
+terribly argumentative. Fielding's remark (through Parson Adams), that
+some things in Steele's comedies are almost as good as a sermon, applies
+to a much wider range of literature. One is tempted by way of
+explanation to ascribe this to a primitive and ultimate instinct of the
+race. Englishmen--including of course Scotsmen--have a passion for
+sermons, even when they are half ashamed of it; and the British Essay,
+which flourished so long, was in fact a lay sermon. We must briefly
+notice that the particular form of this didactic tendency is a natural
+expression of the contemporary rationalism. The metaphysician of the
+time identifies emotions and passions with intellectual affirmations,
+and all action is a product of logic. In any case we have to do with a
+period in which the old concrete imagery has lost its hold upon the more
+intelligent classes, and instead of an imaginative symbolism we have a
+system of abstract reasoning. Diagrams take the place of concrete
+pictures: and instead of a Milton justifying the ways of Providence by
+the revealed history, we have a Blackmore arguing with Lucretius, and
+are soon to have a Pope expounding a metaphysical system in the _Essay
+on Man_. Sir Roger represents a happy exception to this method and
+points to the new development. Addison is anticipating the method of
+later novelists, who incarnate their ideals in flesh and blood. This,
+and the minor character sketches which are introduced incidentally,
+imply a feeling after a less didactic method. As yet the sermon is in
+the foreground, and the characters are dismissed as soon as they have
+illustrated the preacher's doctrine. Such a method was congenial to the
+Wit. He was, or aspired to be, a keen man of the world; deeply
+interested in the characteristics of the new social order; in the
+eccentricities displayed at clubs, or on the Stock Exchange, or in the
+political struggles; he is putting in shape the practical philosophy
+implied in the conversations at clubs and coffee-houses; he delights in
+discussing such psychological problems as were suggested by the worldly
+wisdom of Rochefoucauld, and he appreciates clever character sketches
+such as those of La Bruyére. Both writers were favourites in England.
+But he has become heartily tired of the old romance, and has not yet
+discovered how to combine the interest of direct observation of man with
+a thoroughly concrete form of presentation.
+
+The periodical essay represents the most successful innovation of the
+day; and, as I have suggested, because it represents the mode by which
+the most cultivated writer could be brought into effective relation with
+the genuine interests of the largest audience. Other writers used it
+less skilfully, or had other ways of delivering their message to
+mankind. Swift, for example, had already shown his peculiar vein. He
+gives a different, though equally characteristic, side of the
+intellectual attitude of the Wit. In the _Battle of the Books_ he had
+assumed the pedantry of the scholar; in the _Tale of a Tub_ with amazing
+audacity he fell foul of the pedantry of divines. His blows, as it
+seemed to the Archbishops, struck theology in general; he put that right
+by pouring out scorn upon Deists and all who were silly enough to
+believe that the vulgar could reason; and then in his first political
+writings began to expose the corrupt and selfish nature of
+politicians--though at present only of Whig politicians. Swift is one of
+the most impressive of all literary figures, and I will not even touch
+upon his personal peculiarities. I will only remark that in one respect
+he agrees with his friend Addison. He emphasises, of course, the aspect
+over which Addison passes lightly; he scorns fools too heartily to treat
+them tenderly and do justice to the pathetic side of even human folly.
+But he too believes in culture--though he may despair of its
+dissemination. He did his best, during his brief period of power, to
+direct patronage towards men of letters, even to Whigs; and tried,
+happily without success, to found an English Academy. His zeal was
+genuine, though it expressed itself by scorn for dunces and hostility to
+Grub Street. He illustrates one little peculiarity of the Wit. In the
+society of the clubs there was a natural tendency to form minor cliques
+of the truly initiated, who looked with sovereign contempt upon the
+hackney author. One little indication is the love of mystifications, or
+what were entitled 'bites.' All the Wits, as we know, combined to tease
+the unlucky fortune-teller, Partridge, and to maintain that their
+prediction of his death had been verified, though he absurdly pretended
+to be still alive. So Swift tells us in the journal to Stella how he had
+circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming to life again,
+and how footmen are sent out to inquire into its success. He made a hit
+by writing a sham account of Prior's mission to Paris supposed to come
+from a French valet. The inner circle chuckled over such performances,
+which would be impossible when their monopoly of information had been
+broken up. A similar satisfaction was given by the various burlesques
+and more or less ingenious fables which were to be fully appreciated by
+the inner circle; such as the tasteless narrative of Dennis's frenzy by
+which Pope professed to be punishing his victim for an attack upon
+Addison: or to such squibs as Arbuthnot's _John Bull_--a parable which
+gives the Tory view in a form fitted for the intelligent. The Wits, that
+is, form an inner circle, who like to speak with an affectation of
+obscurity even if the meaning be tolerably transparent, and show that
+they are behind the scenes by occasionally circulating bits of sham
+news. They like to form a kind of select upper stratum, which most fully
+believes in its own intellectual eminence, and shows a contempt for its
+inferiors by burlesque and rough sarcasm.
+
+It is not difficult (especially when we know the result) to guess at the
+canons of taste which will pass muster in such regions. Enthusiastical
+politicians of recent days have been much given to denouncing modern
+clubs, where everybody is a cynic and unable to appreciate the great
+ideas which stir the masses. It may be so; my own acquaintance with club
+life, though not very extensive, does not convince me that every member
+of a London club is a Mephistopheles; but I will admit that a certain
+excess of hard worldly wisdom may be generated in such resorts; and we
+find many conspicuous traces of that tendency in the clubs of Queen
+Anne's reign. Few of them have Addison's gentleness or his perception of
+the finer side of human nature. It was by a rare combination of
+qualities that he was enabled to write like an accomplished man of the
+world, and yet to introduce the emotional element without any jarring
+discord. The literary reformers of a later day denounce the men of this
+period as 'artificial'! a phrase the antithesis of which is 'natural.'
+Without asking at present what is meant by the implied distinction--an
+inquiry which is beset by whole systems of equivocations--I may just
+observe that in this generation the appeal to Nature was as common and
+emphatic as in any later time. The leaders of thought believe in reason,
+and reason sets forth the Religion of Nature and assumes that the Law of
+Nature is the basis of political theory. The corresponding literary
+theory is that Art must be subordinate to Nature. The critics' rules, as
+Pope says in the poem which most fully expresses the general doctrine,
+
+
+     'Are Nature still, but Nature methodised;
+     Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained
+     By the same laws which first herself ordained.'
+
+
+The Nature thus 'methodised' was the nature of the Wit himself; the set
+of instincts and prejudices which to him seemed to be so normal that
+they must be natural. Their standards of taste, if artificial to us,
+were spontaneous, not fictitious; the Wits were not wearing a mask, but
+were exhibiting their genuine selves with perfect simplicity. Now one
+characteristic of the Wit is always a fear of ridicule. Above all things
+he dreads making a fool of himself. The old lyric, for example, which
+came so spontaneously to the Elizabethan poet or dramatist, and of which
+echoes are still to be found in the Restoration, has decayed, or rather,
+has been transformed. When you have written a genuine bit of
+love-poetry, the last place, I take it, in which you think of seeking
+the applause of a congenial audience, would be the smoking-room of your
+club: but that is the nearest approach to the critical tribunal of Queen
+Anne's day. It is necessary to smuggle in poetry and passion in
+disguise, and conciliate possible laughter by stating plainly that you
+anticipate the ridicule yourself. In other words you write society
+verses like Prior, temper sentiment by wit, and if you do not express
+vehement passion, turn out elegant verses, salted by an irony which is
+a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had
+become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become
+extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in
+versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously,
+Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for
+his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the
+form by introducing real rustics and turning it into a burlesque. Then,
+as Johnson puts it, the 'effect of reality and truth became conspicuous,
+even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' _The
+Rape of the Lock_ is the masterpiece, as often noticed, of an
+unconscious allegory. The sylph, who was introduced with such curious
+felicity, is to be punished if he fails to do his duty, by imprisonment
+in a lady's toilet apparatus.
+
+
+     'Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
+     While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain.'
+
+
+Delicate fancy and real poetical fancy may be turned to account; but
+under the mask of the mock-heroic. We can be poetical still, it seems to
+say, only we must never forget that to be poetical in deadly earnest is
+to run the risk of being absurd. Even a Wit is pacified when he is thus
+dexterously coaxed into poetry disguised as mere playful exaggeration,
+and feels quite safe in following the fortune of a game of cards in
+place of a sanguinary Homeric battle. Ariel is still alive, but he
+adopts the costume of the period to apologise for his eccentricities.
+Poetry thus understood may either give a charm to the trivial or fall
+into mere burlesque; and though Pope's achievement is an undeniable
+triumph, there are blots in an otherwise wonderful performance which
+show an uncomfortable concession to the coarser tastes of his audience.
+
+I will not dwell further upon a tolerably obvious theme. I must pass to
+the more serious literature. The Wit had not the smallest notion that
+his attitude disqualified him for succession in the loftiest poetical
+endeavour. He thinks that his critical keenness will enable him to
+surpass the old models. He wishes, in the familiar phrase, to be
+'correct'; to avoid the gross faults of taste which disfigured the old
+Gothic barbarism of his forefathers. That for him is the very meaning of
+reason and nature. He will write tragedies which must get rid of the
+brutalities, the extravagance, the audacious mixture of farce and
+tragedy which was still attractive to the vulgar. He has, indeed, a kind
+of lurking regard for the rough vigour of the Shakespearian epoch; his
+patriotic prejudices pluck at him at intervals, and suggest that
+Marlborough's countrymen ought not quite to accept the yoke of the
+French Academy. When Ambrose Phillips produced the _Distrest
+Mother_--adapted from Racine--all Addison's little society was
+enthusiastic. Steele stated in the Prologue that the play was meant to
+combine French correctness with British force, and praised it in the
+_Spectator_ because it was 'everywhere Nature.' The town, he pointed
+out, would be able to admire the passions 'within the rules of decency,
+honour, and good breeding.' The performance was soon followed by _Cato_,
+unquestionably, as Johnson still declares, 'the noblest production of
+Addison's genius.' It presents at any rate the closest conformity to the
+French model; and falls into comic results, as old Dennis pointed out,
+from the so-called Unity of Place, and consequent necessity of
+transacting all manner of affairs, love-making to Cato's daughter, and
+conspiring against Cato himself, in Cato's own hall. Such tragedy,
+however, refused to take root. Cato, as I think no one can deny, is a
+good specimen of Addison's style, but, except a few proverbial phrases,
+it is dead. The obvious cause, no doubt, is that the British public
+liked to see battle, murder, and sudden death, and, in spite of
+Addison's arguments, enjoyed a mixture of tragic and comic. Shakespeare,
+though not yet an idol, had still a hold upon the stage, and was
+beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of
+commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign
+model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to
+moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes
+'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong,
+that a tragedy ought to be a work of art. The artist must observe
+certain rules; though I need not ask whether he was right in thinking
+that these rules were represented by the accepted interpreters of the
+teaching of Nature. What he did not perceive was that another essential
+condition was absent; namely, that the tragic mood should correspond to
+his own 'nature.' The tragic art can, like other arts, only flourish
+when it embodies spontaneously the emotions and convictions of the
+spectators; when the dramatist is satisfying a genuine demand, and is
+himself ready to see in human life the conflict of great passions and
+the scene of impressive catastrophes. Then the theatre becomes naturally
+the mirror upon which the imagery can be projected. But the society to
+which Addison and his fellows belonged was a society of good,
+commonplace, sensible people, who were fighting each other by pamphlets
+instead of by swords; who played a game in which they staked not life
+and death but a comfortable competency; who did not even cut off the
+head of a fallen minister, who no longer believed in great statesmen of
+heroic proportions rising above the vulgar herd; and who had a very
+hearty contempt for romantic extravagance. A society in which common
+sense is regarded as the cardinal intellectual virtue does not naturally
+suggest the great tragic themes. Cato is obviously contrived, not
+inspired; and the dramatist is thinking of obeying the rules of good
+taste, instead of having them already incorporated in his thought. This
+comes out in one chief monument in the literary movement, I mean Pope's
+_Homer_. Pope, as we know, made himself independent by that performance.
+The method of publication is significant. He had no interest in the
+general sale, which was large enough to make his publisher's fortune.
+The publisher meanwhile supplied him gratuitously with the copies for
+which the subscribers paid him six guineas apiece. That means that he
+received a kind of commission from the upper class to execute the
+translation. The list of his subscribers seems to be almost a directory
+to the upper circle of the day; every person of quality has felt himself
+bound to promote so laudable an undertaking; the patron had been
+superseded by a kind of joint-stock body of collective patronage. The
+Duke of Buckingham, one of its accepted mouthpieces, had said in verse
+in his _Essay on Poetry_ that if you once read Homer, everything else
+will be 'mean and poor.'
+
+
+     Verse will seem prose; yet often in him look
+     And you will hardly need another book.'
+
+
+That was the correct profession of faith. Yet as a good many Wits found
+Greek an obstacle, a translation was needed. Chapman had become
+barbarous; Hobbes and Ogilvie were hopelessly flat; and Pope was
+therefore handsomely paid to produce a book which was to be the standard
+of the poetical taste. Pope was thus the chosen representative of the
+literary spirit. It is needless to point out that Pope's _Iliad_ is not
+Homer's. That was admitted from the first. When we read in a speech of
+Agamemnon exhorting the Greeks to abandon the siege,
+
+
+     'Love, duty, safety summon us away;
+     'Tis Nature's voice, and Nature we obey,'
+
+
+we hardly require to be told that we are not listening to Homer's
+Agamemnon but to an Agamemnon in a full-bottomed wig. Yet Pope's Homer
+had a success unparalleled by any other translation of profane poetry;
+for the rest of the century it was taken to be a masterpiece; it has
+been the book from which Byron and many clever lads first learned to
+enjoy what they at least took for Homer; and, as Mrs. Gallup has
+discovered, it was used by Bacon at the beginning of the seventeenth
+century, and by somebody at the beginning of the twentieth. That it has
+very high literary merits can, I think, be denied by no unprejudiced
+reader, but I have only to do with one point. Pope had the advantage--I
+take it to be an advantage--of having a certain style prescribed for him
+by the literary tradition inherited from Dryden. A certain diction and
+measure had to be adopted, and the language to be run into an accepted
+mould. The mould was no doubt conventional, and corresponded to a
+temporary phase of sentiment. Like the costume of the period, it strikes
+us now as 'artificial' because it was at the time so natural. It was
+worked out by the courtly and aristocratic class, and was fitted to give
+a certain dignity and lucidity, and to guard against mere greatness and
+triviality of utterance. At any rate it saved Pope from one enormous
+difficulty. The modern translator is aware that Homer lived a long time
+ago in a very different state of intellectual and social development,
+and yet feels bound to reproduce the impressions made upon the ancient
+Greek. The translator has to be an accurate scholar and to give the
+right shade of meaning for every phrase, while he has also to
+approximate to the metrical effect. The conclusion seems to be that the
+only language into which Homer could be adequately translated would be
+Greek, and that you must then use the words of the original. The actual
+result is that the translator is cramped by his fetters; that his use of
+archaic words savours of affectation, and that, at best, he has to
+emphasise the fact that his sentiments are fictitious. Pope had no
+trouble of that kind. He aims at giving something equivalent to Homer,
+not Homer himself, and therefore at something really practical. He has
+the same advantage as a man who accepts a living style of architecture
+or painting; he can exert all his powers of forcible expression in a
+form which will be thoroughly understood by his audience, and which
+saves him, though at a certain cost, from the difficulties of trying to
+reproduce the characteristics which are really incongruous.
+
+There are disadvantages. In his time the learned M. Bossu was the
+accepted authority upon the canons of criticism. Buckingham says he had
+explained the 'mighty magic' of Homer. One doctrine of his was that an
+epic poet first thinks of a moral and then invents a fable to illustrate
+it. The theory struck Addison as a little overstated, but it is an
+exaggeration of the prevalent view. According to Pope Homer's great
+merit was his 'invention'--and by this he sometimes appears to imply
+that Homer had even invented the epic poem. Poetry was, it seems, at a
+'low pitch' in Greece in Homer's time, as indeed were other arts and
+sciences. Homer, wishing to instruct his countrymen in all kinds of
+topics, devised the epic poem: made use of the popular mythology to
+supply what in the technical language was called his 'machinery';
+converted the legends into philosophical allegory, and introduced
+'strokes of knowledge from his whole circle of arts and sciences.' This
+'circle' includes for example geography, rhetoric, and history; and the
+whole poem is intended to inculcate the political moral that many evils
+sprang from the want of union among the Greeks. Not a doubt of it! Homer
+was in the sphere of poetry what Lycurgus was supposed to be in the
+field of legislation. He had at a single bound created poetry and made
+it a vehicle of philosophy, politics, and ethics. Upon this showing the
+epic poem is a form of art which does not grow out of the historical
+conditions of the period; but it is a permanent form of art, as good for
+the eighteenth century as for the heroic age of Greece; it may be
+adopted as a model, only requiring certain additional ornaments and
+refinements to adapt it to the taste of a more enlightened period. Yet,
+at the same time, Pope could clearly perceive some of the absurd
+consequences of M. Bossu's view. He ridiculed that authority very keenly
+in the 'Recipe to make an Epic Poem' which first appeared in the
+_Guardian_, while he was at work upon his own translation. Bossu's
+rules, he says, will enable us to make epic poems without genius or
+reading; and he proceeds to show how you are to work your 'machines,'
+and introduce your allegories and descriptions, and extract your moral
+out of the fable at leisure, 'only making it sure that you strain it
+sufficiently.'
+
+That was the point. The enlightened critic sees that the work of art
+embodies certain abstract rules; which may, and probably will--if he be
+a man of powerful intellectual power, be rational, and suggest
+instructive canons. But, as Pope sees, it does not follow that the
+inverse process is feasible; that is, that you construct your poem
+simply by applying the rules. To be a good cricketer you must apply
+certain rules of dynamics; but it does not follow that a sound knowledge
+of dynamics will enable you to play good cricket. Pope sees that
+something more than an acceptance of M. Bossu's or Aristotle's canons is
+requisite for the writer of a good epic poem. The something more,
+according to him, appears to be learning and genius. It is certainly
+true that at least genius must be one requisite. But then, there is the
+further point. Will the epic poem, which was the product of certain
+remote social and intellectual conditions, serve to express the thoughts
+and emotions of a totally different age? Considering the difference
+between Achilles and Marlborough, or the bards of the heroic age and the
+wits who frequented clubs and coffee-houses under Queen Anne, it was at
+least important to ask whether Homer and Pope--taking them to be alike
+in genius--would not find it necessary to adopt radically different
+forms. That is for us so obvious a suggestion that one wonders at the
+tacit assumption of its irrelevance. Pope, indeed, by taking the _Iliad_
+for a framework, a ready-made fabric which he could embroider with his
+own tastes, managed to construct a singularly spirited work, full of
+good rhetoric and not infrequently rising to real poetical excellence.
+But it did not follow that an original production on the same lines
+would have been possible. Some years later, Young complained of Pope for
+being imitative, and said that if he had dared to be original, he might
+have produced a modern epic as good as the _Iliad_ instead of a mere
+translation. That is not quite credible. Pope himself tried an epic poem
+too, which happily came to nothing; but a similar ambition led to such
+works as Glover's _Leonidas_ and _The Epigoniad_ of the Scottish Homer
+Wilkie. English poets as a rule seem to have suffered at some period of
+their lives from this malady and contemplated Arthuriads; but the
+constructional epic died, I take it, with Southey's respectable poems.
+
+We may consider, then, that any literary form, the drama, the epic poem,
+the essay, and so forth, is comparable to a species in natural history.
+It has, one may say, a certain organic principle which determines the
+possible modes of development. But the line along which it will actually
+develop depends upon the character and constitution of the literary
+class which turns it to account, for the utterance of its own ideas; and
+depends also upon the correspondence of those ideas with the most vital
+and powerful intellectual currents of the time. The literary class of
+Queen Anne's day was admirably qualified for certain formations: the
+Wits leading the 'town,' and forming a small circle accepting certain
+canons of taste, could express with admirable clearness and honesty the
+judgment of bright common sense; the ideas which commend themselves to
+the man of the world, and to a rationalism which was the embodiment of
+common sense. They produced a literature, which in virtue of its
+sincerity and harmonious development within certain limits could pass
+for some time as a golden age. The aversion to pedantry limited its
+capacity for the highest poetical creation, and made the imagination
+subservient to the prosaic understanding. The comedy had come to adapt
+itself to the tastes of the class which, instead of representing the
+national movement, was composed of the more disreputable part of the
+town. The society unable to develop it in the direction of refinement
+left it to second-rate writers. It became enervated instead of elevated.
+The epic and the tragic poetry, ceasing to reflect the really powerful
+impulses of the day, were left to the connoisseur and dilettante man of
+taste, and though they could write with force and dignity when
+renovating or imitating older masterpieces, such literature became
+effete and hopelessly artificial. It was at best a display of technical
+skill, and could not correspond to the strongest passions and conditions
+of the time. The invention of the periodical essay, meanwhile, indicated
+what was a condition of permanent vitality. There, at least, the Wit was
+appealing to a wide and growing circle of readers, and could utter the
+real living thoughts and impulses of the time. The problem for the
+coming period was therefore marked out. The man of letters had to
+develop a living literature by becoming a representative of the ideas
+which really interested the whole cultivated classes, instead of writing
+merely for the exquisite critic, or still less for the regenerating and
+obnoxious section of society. That indeed, I take it, is the general
+problem of literature; but I shall have to trace the way in which its
+solution was attempted in the next period.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+(1714-1739)
+
+
+The death of Queen Anne opens a new period in the history of literature
+and of politics. Under the first Georges we are in the very heart of the
+eighteenth century; the century, as its enemies used to say, of coarse
+utilitarian aims, of religious indifference and political corruption;
+or, as I prefer to say, the century of sound common sense and growing
+toleration, and of steady social and industrial development.
+
+To us, to me at least, it presents something pleasant in retrospect.
+There were then no troublesome people with philanthropic or political or
+religious nostrums, proposing to turn the world upside down and
+introduce an impromptu millennium. The history of periods when people
+were cutting each other's throats for creeds is no doubt more exciting;
+but we, who profess toleration, ought surely to remember that you
+cannot have martyrs without bigots and persecutors; and that
+fanaticism, though it may have its heroic aspects, has also a very ugly
+side to it. At any rate, we who come after a century of revolutionary
+changes, and are often told that the whole order of things may be upset
+by some social earthquake, look back with regret to the days of quiet
+solid progress, when everything seemed to have settled down to a quiet,
+stable equilibrium. Wealth and comfort were growing--surely no bad
+things; and John Bull--he had just received that name from
+Arbuthnot--was waxing fat and complacently contemplating his own
+admirable qualities. It is the period of the composition of 'Rule
+Britannia' and 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' and of the settled
+belief that your lusty, cudgel-playing, beer-drinking Briton was worth
+three of the slaves who ate frogs and wore wooden shoes across the
+Channel. The British constitution was the embodiment of perfect wisdom,
+and, as such, was entitled to be the dread and envy of the world. To the
+political historian it is the era of Walpole; the huge mass of solid
+common sense, who combined the qualities of the sturdy country squire
+and the thorough man of business; whose great aim was to preserve the
+peace; to keep the country as much as might be out of the continental
+troubles which it did not understand, and in which it had no concern;
+and to carry on business upon sound commercial principles. It is of
+course undeniable that his rule not only meant regard for the solid
+material interests of the country, but too often appealed to the
+interests of the ruling class. Philosophical historians who deal with
+the might-have-been may argue that a man of higher character might have
+worked by better means and have done something to purify the political
+atmosphere. Walpole was not in advance of his day; but it is at least
+too clear to need any exposition that under the circumstances corruption
+was inevitable. When the House of Commons was the centre of political
+authority, when so many boroughs were virtually private property, when
+men were not stirred to the deeper issues by any great constitutional
+struggle--party government had to be carried on by methods which
+involved various degrees of jobbery and bribery. The disease was
+certainly not peculiar to Walpole's age; though perhaps the symptoms
+were more obvious and avowed more bluntly than usual. As Walpole's
+masterful ways drove his old allies into opposition, they denounced the
+system and himself; but unfortunately although they claimed to be
+patriots and patterns of political virtue, they were made pretty much of
+the same materials as the arch-corrupter. When the 'moneyed men,' upon
+whom he had relied, came to be in favour of a warlike policy and were
+roused by the story of Captain Jenkins' ear, Walpole fell, but no reign
+of purity followed. The growing dissatisfaction, however, with the
+Walpolean system implied some very serious conditions, and the cry
+against corruption, in which nearly all the leading writers of the time
+joined, had a very serious significance in literature and in the growth
+of public opinion.
+
+First, however, let me glance at the change as it immediately affected
+the literary organ. The old club and coffee-house society broke up with
+remarkable rapidity. While Oxford was sent to the Tower, and Bolingbroke
+escaped to France, Swift retired to Dublin, and Prior, after being
+imprisoned, passed the remainder of his life in retirement. Pope settled
+down to translating Homer, and took up his abode at Twickenham, outside
+the exciting and noisy London world in which the poor invalid had been
+jostled. Addison soared into the loftier regions of politics and
+married his Countess, and ceased to preside at Buttons'. Steele held on
+for a time, but in declining prosperity and diminished literary
+activity, till his retirement to Wales. No one appeared to fill the gaps
+thus made in the ranks either of the Whigs' or the Tories' section of
+literature. The change was obviously connected with the systematic
+development of the party system. Swift bitterly denounced Walpole for
+his indifference to literature! 'Bob the poet's foe' was guided by other
+motives in disposing of his patronage. Places in the Customs were no
+longer to be given to writers of plays or complimentary epistles in
+verse, or even to promising young politicians, but to members of
+parliament or the constituents in whom they were interested. The
+placemen, who were denounced as one of the great abuses of the time,
+were rewarded for voting power not for literary merit. The patron,
+therefore, was disappearing; though one or two authors, such as Congreve
+and Gay, might be still petted by the nobility; and Young somehow got a
+pension out of Walpole, probably through Bubb Dodington, the very
+questionable parson who still wished to be a Męcenas. Meanwhile there
+was a compensation. The bookseller was beginning to supersede the
+patron. Tonson and Lintot were making fortunes; the first Longman was
+founding the famous firm which still flourishes; and the career of the
+disreputable and piratical Curll shows that at least the demand for
+miscellaneous literature was growing. The anecdotes of the misery of
+authors, of the translators who lay three in a bed in Curll's garret, of
+Samuel Boyse, who had reduced his clothes to a single blanket, and
+Savage sleeping on a bulk, are sometimes adduced to show that literature
+was then specially depressed. But there never was a time when authors of
+dissolute habits were not on the brink of starvation, and the
+authorities of the Literary Fund could give us contemporary
+illustrations of the fact. The real inference is, I take it, that the
+demand which was springing up attracted a great many impecunious
+persons, who became the drudges of the rising class of booksellers. No
+doubt the journalist was often in a degrading position. The press was
+active in all political struggles. The great men, Walpole, Bolingbroke,
+and Pulteney, wrote pamphlets or contributed papers to the _Craftsman_,
+while they employed inferior scribes to do the drudgery. Walpole paid
+large sums to the 'Gazetters,' whom Pope denounces; and men like
+Amherst of the _Craftsman_ or Gordon of the _Independent Whig_, carried
+on the ordinary warfare. The author by profession was beginning to be
+recognised. Thomson and Mallet came up from Scotland during this period
+to throw themselves upon literature; Ralph, friend of Franklin and
+collaborator of Fielding, came from New England; and Johnson was
+attracted from the country to become a contributor to the _Gentleman's
+Magazine_, started by Cave in 1731--an event which marked a new
+development of periodical literature. Though no one would then advise a
+young man who could do anything else to trust to authorship (it would be
+rash to give such advice now) the new career was being opened. There
+were hack authors of all varieties. The successful playwright gained a
+real prize in the lottery; and translations, satires, and essays on the
+_Spectator_ model enabled the poor drudge to make both ends meet, though
+too often in bondage to his employer to be, as I take it, better off
+than in the previous period, when the choice lay between risking the
+pillory and selling yourself as a spy.
+
+Before considering the effect produced under the changed conditions, I
+must note briefly the intellectual position. The period was that of the
+culmination of the deist controversy. In the previous period the
+rationalism of which Locke was the mouthpiece represented the dominant
+tendency. It was generally held on all sides that there was a religion
+of nature, capable of purely rational demonstration. The problem
+remained as to its relation to the revealed religion and the established
+creed. Locke himself was a sincere Christian, though he reduced the
+dogmatic element to a minimum. Some of his disciples, however, became
+freethinkers in the technical sense, and held that revelation was
+needless, and that in point of fact no supernatural revelation had been
+made. The orthodox, on the other hand, while admitting or declaring that
+faith should be founded on reason, and that reason could establish a
+'religion of nature,' admitted in various ways that a supernatural
+revelation was an essential corollary or a useful addition to the simple
+rational doctrine. The controversies which arose upon this issue, after
+being carried on very vigorously for a time, caused less interest as
+time went on, and were beginning to die out at the end of this period.
+It is often said in explanation that deism or the religion of nature, as
+then understood, was too vague and colourless a system to have any
+strong vitality. It faded into a few abstract logical propositions which
+had no relation to fact, and led to the optimistic formula, 'Whatever
+is, is right,' which could in the long-run satisfy no one with any
+strong perception of the darker elements of the world and human nature.
+This view may be emphasised by the most remarkable writings of the
+period. Butler's _Analogy_ (1736) has been regarded by many even of his
+strongest opponents as triumphant against the deistical optimism, and
+certainly emphasises the side of things to which that optimism is blind.
+Hume's _Treatise of Human Nature_, at the end of the period (1739),
+uttered the sceptical revolution which destroys the base of the
+deistical system. Another writer is notable: William Law's _Serious
+Call_ is one of the books which has made a turning-point in many men's
+lives. It specially affected Samuel Johnson and John Wesley, and many of
+those who sympathised more or less with Wesley's movement. Law was
+driven by his sense of the aspects of the rationalist theories to adopt
+a different position. He became a follower of Behmen, and his mysticism
+ended by repelling the thoroughly practical Wesley, as indeed mysticism
+in general seems to be uncongenial to the English mind. Law's position
+shows a difficulty which was felt by others. It means that while he
+holds that religion must be in the highest sense 'reasonable' it cannot
+be (as another author put it) 'founded upon argument.' Faith must be
+identified with the inner light, the direct voice of God to man, which
+appeals to the soul, and is not built upon syllogisms or allowed to
+depend upon the result of historical criticism. This view, I need hardly
+say, is opposed to the whole rationalist theory, whether of the deist or
+the orthodox variety: it was so opposed that it could find scarcely any
+sympathy at the time; and for that reason it indicates one
+characteristic of the contemporary thought. To omit the mystical element
+is to be cold and unsatisfactory in religious philosophy, and to be
+radically prosaic and unpoetical in the sphere of literature. Englishmen
+could never become mystics in the technical sense, but they were
+beginning to be discontented with the bare logical system of the
+religion of nature. They were ready for some utterance of the emotional
+and imaginative element in religion and philosophy which was left out of
+account by the wits and rationalists. I do not myself believe that the
+intellectual weakness of abstract deism gives a sufficient explanation
+of its decay. In fact, as accepted by Rousseau and by some of his
+English followers, it could ally itself with the ardent revolutionary
+enthusiasm which was to be the marked peculiarity of the latter part of
+the century. We must add another consideration. Locke and his
+contemporaries had laid down political and religious principles which,
+if logically developed, would lead to the revolutionary doctrines of
+1789. They did not develop them, and mainly, I take it, because the
+practical application excited no strong feeling. The spark did not find
+fuel ready to be lighted. The political and social conditions supply a
+sufficient explanation of the indifference. People were practically
+content with the existing order in Church and State. The deist
+controversies did not reach the enormous majority of the nation, who
+went quietly about their business in the old paths. The orthodox
+themselves were so rationalistic in principle that the whole discussion
+seemed to turn upon non-essential points. But moreover the Church was so
+thoroughly subordinated to the laity; it was so much a part of the
+regular comfortable system of things; so little able or inclined to set
+up as an independent power claiming special authority and enforcing
+discipline, that it excited no hostility. Parson and squire were part of
+the regular system which could not be attacked without upsetting the
+whole system; and there was as yet no general discontent with that
+system, or, indeed, any disposition whatever to reconstruct the
+machinery which was working so quietly and so thoroughly in accordance
+with the dumb instincts of the overwhelming majority.
+
+Now let us pass to the literary manifestation of this order. The
+literary society, as it existed under Queen Anne, had been broken up;
+two or three of the men who had already made their mark continued their
+activity, especially Pope and Swift. Swift, however, was living apart
+from the world, though he was still to come to the front on more than
+one remarkable occasion. Pope, meanwhile, became the acknowledged
+dictator. The literary movement may be called after Pope, as distinctly
+as the political after Walpole. He established his dynasty so thoroughly
+that in later days the attempt to upset him was regarded as a daring
+revolution. What was Pope? Poet or not, for his title to the name has
+been disputed, he had one power or weakness in which he has scarcely
+been rivalled. No writer, that is, reflects so clearly and completely
+the spirit of his own day. His want of originality means the extreme and
+even morbid sensibility which enabled him to give the fullest utterance
+to the ideas of his class, and of the nation, so far as the nation was
+really represented by the class. But the literary class was going
+through a process of differentiation, as the alliance of authors and
+statesmen broke up. Pope represents mainly the aristocratic movement. He
+had become independent--a fact of which he was a little too proud--and
+moved on the most familiar terms with the great men of the age. The Tory
+leaders were, of course, his special friends; but in later days he
+became a friend of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and of the politicians
+who broke off from Walpole; while even with Walpole he was on terms of
+civility. His poems give a long catalogue of the great men of whose
+intimacy he was so proud. Besides Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher,
+and friend,' he counts up nearly all the great men of his time. Somers
+and Halifax, and Granville and Congreve, Oxford and Atterbury, who had
+encouraged his first efforts; Pulteney, Chesterfield, Argyll, Wyndham,
+Cobham, Bathurst, Peterborough, Queensberry, who had become friends in
+later years, receive the delicate compliments which imply his excusable
+pride in their alliance. Pope, therefore, may be considered from one
+point of view as the authorised interpreter of the upper circle, which
+then took itself to embody the highest cultivation of the nation. We may
+appreciate Pope's poetry by comparing it with an independent
+manifestation of their morality. The most explicit summary of the
+general tone of the class-morality may, I think, be gathered from
+Chesterfield's _Letters_. Though written at a later period, they sum up
+the lesson he has imbibed from his experience at this time. Chesterfield
+was no mere fribble or rake. He was a singularly shrewd, impartial
+observer of life, who had studied men at first hand as well as from
+books. His letters deal with the problem: What are the conditions of
+success in public life? He treats it in the method of Machiavelli; that
+is to say, he inquires what actually succeeds, not what ought to
+succeed. An answer to that question given by a man of great ability is
+always worth studying. Even if it should appear that success in this
+world is not always won by virtue, the fact should be recognised,
+though we should get rid of the conclusion that virtue, when an
+encumbrance to success, should be discarded. Chesterfield's answer,
+however, is not simply cynical. His pupil is to study men and politics
+thoroughly; to know the constitutions of all European states, to read
+the history of modern times so far as it has a bearing upon business; to
+be thoroughly well informed as to the aims of kings and courts; to
+understand financial and diplomatic movements; briefly, as far as was
+then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature
+and appreciate art, though he was carefully to avoid the excess which
+makes the pedant or the virtuoso. He was to cultivate a good style in
+writing and speaking, and even to learn German. Chesterfield's prophecy
+of a revolution in France (though, I fancy, a little overpraised) shows
+at least that he was a serious observer of political phenomena. But
+besides these solid attainments, the pupil, we know, is to study the
+Graces. The excessive insistence upon this is partly due to the
+peculiarities of his hearer and his own quaint illusion that the way to
+put a man at his ease is to be constantly insisting upon his hopeless
+awkwardness. The theory is pushed to excess when he says that
+Marlborough and Pitt succeeded by the Graces, not by supreme business
+capacity or force of character; and argues from recent examples that a
+fool may succeed by dint of good manners, while a man of ability without
+them must be a failure. The exaggeration illustrates the position. The
+game of politics, that is, has become mainly personal. The diplomatist
+must succeed by making himself popular in courts, and the politician by
+winning popularity in the House of Commons. Social success--that is, the
+power of making oneself agreeable to the ruling class--is the essential
+pre-condition to all other success. The statesman does not make himself
+known as the advocate of great principles when no great principles are
+at stake, and the ablest man of business cannot turn his abilities to
+account unless he commends himself to employers who themselves are too
+good and great to be bothered with accounts. You must first of all be
+acceptable to your environment; and the environment means the upper ten
+thousand who virtually govern the world. The social qualities,
+therefore, come into the foreground. Undoubtedly this implies a cynical
+tone. You can't respect the victims of your cajolery. Chesterfield's
+favourite author is Rochefoucauld of whom (not the Bible) his son is to
+read a chapter every day. Men, that is, are selfish. Happily also they
+are silly, and can be flattered into helping you, little as they may
+care for you. 'Wriggle yourself into power' he says more than once. That
+is especially true of women, of whom he always speaks with the true
+aristocratic contempt. A man of sense will humour them and flatter them;
+he will never consult them seriously, nor really trust them, but he will
+make them believe that he does both. They are invaluable as tools,
+though contemptible in themselves. This, of course, represents the tone
+too characteristic of the epicurean British nobleman. Yet with all this
+cynicism, Chesterfield's morality is perfectly genuine in its way. He
+has the sense of honour and the patriotic feeling of his class. He has
+the good nature which is compatible with, and even congenial to, a
+certain cynicism. He is said to have achieved the very unusual success
+of being an admirable Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In fact he had the
+intellectual vigour which implies a real desire for good administration,
+less perhaps from purely philanthropic motives than from respect for
+efficiency.
+
+
+     'For forms of government let fools contest
+     Whate'er is best administered, is best,'
+
+
+says Pope, and that was Chesterfield's view. Like Frederick of Prussia,
+whom he admires above all rulers, he might not be over-scrupulous in his
+policy, but wishes the machinery for which he is responsible to be in
+thoroughly good working order. He most thoroughly sees the folly, if he
+does not sufficiently despise the motives, of the lower order of
+politicians to whom bribery and corruption represented the only
+political forces worth notice. In practice he might be forced to use
+such men, but he sees them to be contemptible, and appreciates the
+mischiefs resulting from their rule.
+
+The development of this morality in the aristocratic class, which was
+still predominant although the growing importance of the House of
+Commons was tending to shift the centre of political gravity to a lower
+point, is, I think, sufficiently intelligible to be taken for granted.
+Pope, I have said, represents the literary version. The problem, then,
+is how this view of life is to be embodied in poetry. One answer is the
+_Essay on Man_, in which Pope versified the deism which he learned from
+Bolingbroke, and which was characteristic of the upper circle
+generally. I need not speak of its shortcomings; didactic poetry of that
+kind is dreary enough, and the smart couplets often offend one's taste.
+I may say that here and there Pope manages to be really impressive, and
+to utter sentiments which really ennobled the deist creed; the aversion
+to narrow superstition; to the bigotry which 'dealt damnation round the
+land'; and the conviction that the true religion must correspond to a
+cosmopolitan humanity. I remember hearing Carlyle quote with admiration
+the Universal Prayer--
+
+
+     'Father of all, in every age,
+       In every clime adored,
+     By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage,
+       Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,'
+
+
+and it is the worthy utterance of one good legacy which the deist
+bequeathed to posterity. Pope himself was alarmed when he discovered
+that he had slipped unawares into heterodoxy. His creed was not
+congenial to the average mind, though it was to that of his immediate
+circle. Meanwhile, his most characteristic and successful work was of a
+different order. The answer, in fact, to the problem which I have just
+stated, is that the only kind of poetry that was congenial to his
+environment was satire--if satire can be called poetry. Pope's satires,
+the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' the 'Epilogue,' and some of the 'Imitations
+of Horace,' represent his best and most lasting achievement. There he
+gives the fullest expression to the general sentiment in the most
+appropriate form. His singular command of language, and, within his own
+limits, of versification, was turned to account by conscientious and
+unceasing labour in polishing his style. Particular passages, like the
+famous satire upon Addison, have been slowly elaborated; he has brooded
+over them for years; and, if the result of such methods is sometimes a
+mosaic rather than a continuous current of discourse, the extraordinary
+brilliance of some passages has made them permanently interesting and
+enriched our literature with many proverbial phrases. The art was
+naturally cultivated and its results appreciated in the circle formed by
+such men as Congreve, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield and the like, by
+whom witty conversation was cultivated as a fine art. Chesterfield tells
+us that he never spoke without trying to express himself as well as
+possible; and Pope carries out the principle in his poetry. The thorough
+polish has preserved the numerous phrases, still familiar, which have
+survived the general neglect of his work. Pope indeed manages to
+introduce genuine poetry, as in his famous compliments or his passage
+about his mother, in which we feel that he is really speaking from his
+heart. But no doubt Atterbury gave him judicious (if not very Christian)
+advice, when he told him to stick to the vein of the Addison verses. The
+main topic of the satires is a denunciation of an age when, as he puts
+it,
+
+
+     'Not to be corrupted is the shame.'
+
+
+He ascribes his own indignation to the 'strong antipathy of good to
+bad,' which is a satisfactory explanation to himself. But he was still
+interpreting the general sentiment and expressing the general discontent
+caused by the Walpole system. His friends, Bolingbroke and Wyndham, and
+the whole opposition, partially recruited from Walpole's supporters,
+were insisting upon the same theme. If, as I have said, some of them
+were really sincere in recognising the evil, and, like Bolingbroke in
+the _Patriot King_, trying to ascertain its source--we are troubled in
+this even by the doubt as to whether they objected to corruption or only
+to the corrupt influence of their antagonists. But Pope, as a poet,
+living outside the political circle, can take the denunciations quite
+seriously and be not only pointed but really dignified. He sincerely
+believes that vice can be seriously discouraged by lashing at it with
+epigrams. So far, he represented a general feeling of the literary
+class, explained in various ways by such men as Thomson, Fielding,
+Glover, and Johnson, who were, from very different points of view, in
+opposition to Walpole. Satire can only flourish under some such
+conditions as then existed. It supposes, among other things, the
+existence of a small cultivated class, which will fully appreciate the
+personalities, the dexterity of insinuation, and the cutting sarcasm
+which gives the spice to much of Pope's satire. Young, a singularly
+clever writer, was eclipsed by Pope because he kept to denoting general
+types and was not intimate with the actors on the social stage. Johnson,
+still more of an outsider, wrote a most effective and sonorous poem with
+the help of Juvenal; but it becomes a moral disquisition upon human
+nature which has not the special sting and sparkle of Pope. No later
+satirist has approached Pope, and the art has now become obsolete, or is
+adopted merely as a literary amusement. One obvious reason is the
+absence of the peculiar social backing which composed Pope's audience
+and supplied him with his readers.
+
+The growing sense that there was something wrong about the political
+system which Pope turned to account was significant of coming changes.
+The impression that the evil was entirely due to Walpole personally was
+one of the natural illusions of party warfare, and the disease was not
+extirpated when the supposed cause was removed. The most memorable
+embodiment of the sentiment was Swift. The concentrated scorn of
+corruption in the _Drapier's Letters_ was followed by the intense
+misanthropy of _Gulliver's Travels_. The singular way in which Swift
+blends personal aversion with political conviction, and the strange
+humour which conceals the misanthropist under a superficial playfulness,
+veils to some extent his real aim. But Swift showed with unequalled
+power and in an exaggerated form the conviction that there was something
+wrong in the social order, which was suggested by the conditions of the
+time and was to bear fruit in later days. Satire, however, is by its
+nature negative; it does not present a positive ideal, and tends to
+degenerate into mere hopeless pessimism. Lofty poetry can only spring
+from some inner positive enthusiasm.
+
+I turn to another characteristic of the literary movement. I have called
+attention to the fact that while the Queen Anne writers were never tired
+of appealing to nature, they came to be considered as prematurely
+'artificial.' The commonest meaning of 'natural' is that in which it is
+identified with 'normal,' We call a thing natural when its existence
+appears to us to be a matter of course, which again may simply mean that
+we are so accustomed to certain conditions that we do not remember that
+they are really exceptional. We take ourselves with all our
+peculiarities to be the 'natural' type or standard. An English traveller
+in France remarked that it was unnatural for soldiers to be dressed in
+blue; and then, remembering certain British cases, added, 'except,
+indeed, for the Artillery or the Blue Horse.' The English model, with
+all its variations, appeared to him to be ordained by Nature. This
+unconscious method of usurping a general name so as to cover a general
+meaning produces many fallacies. In any case, however, it was of the
+essence of Pope's doctrine that we should, as he puts it, 'Look through
+Nature up to Nature's God.' God, that is, is known through Nature, if it
+would not be more correct to say that God and Nature are identical. This
+Nature often means the world as not modified by human action, and
+therefore sharing the divine workmanship unspoilt by man's interference.
+Thus in the common phrase, the 'love of Nature' is generally taken to
+mean the love of natural scenery, of sea and sky and mountains, which
+are not altered or alterable by any human art. Yet it is said the want
+of any such love describes one of the most obvious deficiencies in
+Pope's poetry, of which Wordsworth so often complained. His famous
+preface asserts the complete absence of any imagery from Nature in the
+writings of the time. It was, however, at the period of which I am
+speaking that a change was taking place which was worth considering.
+
+One cause is obvious. The Wit utters the voice of the town. He agreed
+with the gentleman who preferred the smell of a flambeau in St. James
+Street to any abundance of violet and sweetbriar. But, as communications
+improved between town and country, the separation between the taste of
+classes became less marked. The great nobleman had always been in part
+an exalted squire, and had a taste for field-sports as well as for the
+opera. Bolingbroke and Walpole are both instances in point. Sir Roger de
+Coverley came up to town more frequently than his ancestors, but the
+_Spectator_ recorded his visits as those of a simple rustic. After the
+peace, the country gentleman begins regularly to visit the Continent.
+The 'grand tour' mostly common in the preceding century becomes a normal
+fact of the education of the upper classes. The foundation of the
+Dilettante Club in 1734 marks the change. The qualifications, says
+Horace Walpole, were drunkenness and a visit to Italy. The founders of
+it seem to have been jovial young men who had met each other abroad,
+where, with obsequious tutors and out of sight of domestic authority,
+they often learned some very queer lessons. But many of them learned
+more, and by degrees the Dilettante Club took not only to encouraging
+the opera in England, but to making really valuable archęological
+researches in Greece and elsewhere. The intelligent youth had great
+opportunities of mixing in the best foreign society, and began to bring
+home the pictures which adorn so many English country houses; to talk
+about the 'correggiosity of Correggio'; and in due time to patronise
+Reynolds and Gainsborough. The traveller began to take some interest
+even in the Alps, wrote stanzas to the 'Grande Chartreuse,' admired
+Salvator Rosa, and even visited Chamonix. Another characteristic change
+is more to the present purpose. A conspicuous mark of the time was a
+growing taste for gardening. The taste has, I suppose, existed ever
+since our ancestors were turned out of the Garden of Eden. Milton's
+description of that place of residence, and Bacon's famous essay, and
+Cowley's poems addressed to the great authority Evelyn, and most of all
+perhaps Maxwell's inimitable description of the very essence of garden,
+may remind us that it flourished in the seventeenth century. It is
+needless to say in Oxford how beautiful an old-fashioned garden might
+be. But at this time a change was taking place in the canons of taste.
+Temple in a well-known essay had praised the old-fashioned garden and
+had remarked how the regularity of English plantations seemed ridiculous
+to--of all people in the world--the Chinese. By the middle of the
+eighteenth century there had been what is called a 'reaction,' and the
+English garden, which was called 'natural,' was famous and often
+imitated in France. It is curious to remark how closely this taste was
+associated with the group of friends whom Pope has celebrated. The
+first, for example, of the four 'Moral Epistles,' is addressed to
+Cobham, who laid out the famous garden at Stowe, in which 'Capability
+Brown,' the most popular landscape gardener of the century, was brought
+up; the third is addressed to Bathurst, an enthusiastic gardener, who
+had shown his skill at his seat of Richings near Colnbrook; and the
+fourth to Burlington, whose house and gardens at Chiswick were laid out
+by Kent, the famous landscape gardener and architect--Brown's
+predecessor. In the same epistle Pope ridicules the formality of
+Chandos' grounds at Canons. A description of his own garden includes the
+familiar lines
+
+
+     'Here St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
+     The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
+     And he (Peterborough) whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines
+     Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines,
+     Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
+     Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.'
+
+
+Pope's own garden was itself a model. 'Pope,' says Horace Walpole, 'had
+twisted and twirled and rhymed and harmonised his little five acres
+till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening
+beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick impenetrable
+woods.' The taste grew as the century advanced. Now one impulse towards
+the new style is said to have come from articles in the _Spectator_ by
+Addison and in the _Guardian_ by Pope, ridiculing the old-fashioned mode
+of clipping trees, and so forth. Nature, say both, is superior to art,
+and the man of genius, as Pope puts it, is the first to perceive that
+all art consists of 'imitation and study of nature.' Horace Walpole in
+his essay upon gardening remarks a point which may symbolise the
+principle. The modern style, he says, sprang from the invention of the
+ha-ha by Bridgeman, one of the first landscape gardeners. The 'ha-ha'
+meant that the garden, instead of being enclosed by a wall, was laid out
+so as to harmonise with the surrounding country, from which it was only
+separated by an invisible fence. That is the answer to the problem; is
+it not a solecism for a lover of gardens to prefer nature to art? A
+garden is essentially a product of art? and supplants the moor and
+desert made by unassisted nature. The love of Nature as understood in a
+later period, by Byron for example, went to this extreme, in words at
+least, and becomes misanthropical in admiring the savage for its own
+sake. But the landscape gardener only meant that his art must be in some
+sense subordinate to nature; that he must not shut out the wider scenery
+but include it in his designs. He was apt to look upon mountains as a
+background to parks, as Telford thought that rivers were created to
+supply canals. The excellent Gilpin, who became an expounder of what he
+calls 'the theory of the picturesque,' travelled on the Wye in the same
+year as Gray; and amusingly criticises nature from this point of view.
+Nature, he says, works in a cold and singular style of composition, but
+has the merit of never falling into 'mannerism.' Nature, that is, is a
+sublime landscape gardener whose work has to be accepted, and to whom
+the gardener must accommodate himself. A quaint instance of this theory
+may be found in the lecture which Henry Tilney in _Mansfield Park_
+delivers to Catherine Morland. In Horace Walpole's theory, the evolution
+of the ha-ha, means that man and nature, the landowner and the country,
+are gradually forming an alliance, and it comes to the same thing
+whether one or the other assimilates his opposite.
+
+Briefly, this means one process by which the so-called love of nature
+was growing; it meant better roads and inns; the gradual reflux of town
+into country; and the growing sense already expressed by Cowley and
+Marvell, that overcrowded centres of population have their
+inconveniences, and that the citizen should have his periods of
+communion with unsophisticated nature. Squire and Wit are each learning
+to appreciate each other's tastes. The tourist is developed, and begins,
+as Gibbon tells us, to 'view the glaciers' now that he can view them
+without personal inconvenience. This, again, suggests that there is
+nothing radically new in the so-called love of nature. Any number of
+poets from Chaucer downwards may be cited to show that men were never
+insensible to natural beauty of scenery; to the outburst of spring, or
+the bloom of flowers, or the splendours of storms and sunsets. The
+indifference to nature of the Pope school was, so far, the temporary
+complacency of the new population focused in the metropolitan area in
+their own enlightenment and their contempt for the outside rustic. The
+love of field-sports was as strong as ever in the squire, and as soon as
+he began to receive some of the intellectual irradiation from the town
+Wit, he began to express the emotions which never found clearer
+utterance than in Walton's _Compleat Angler_. But there is a
+characteristic difference. With the old poets nature is in the
+background; it supplies the scenery for human action and is not itself
+consciously the object; they deal with concrete facts, with the delight
+of sport or rustic amusements: and they embody their feelings in the old
+conventions; they converse with imaginary shepherds: with Robin Hood or
+allegorical knights in romantic forests, who represent a love of nature
+but introduce description only as a set-off to the actors in masques or
+festivals. In Pope's time we have the abstract or metaphysical deity
+Nature, who can be worshipped with a distinct appreciation. The
+conventions have become obsolete, and if used at all, the poet himself
+is laughing in his sleeve. The serious aim of the poet is to give a
+philosophy of human nature; and the mere description of natural objects
+strikes him as silly unless tacked to a moral. Who could take offence,
+asks Pope, referring to his earlier poems, 'when pure description held
+the place of sense'? The poet, that is, who wishes to be 'sensible'
+above all, cannot condescend to give mere catalogues of trees and
+rivers and mountains. Nature, however, is beginning to put in a claim
+for attention, even in the sense in which Nature means the material
+world. In one sense this is a natural corollary from the philosophy of
+the time and of that religion of nature which it implied. Pope himself
+gives one version of it in the _Essay on Man_; and can expatiate
+eloquently upon the stars and upon the animal world. But the poem itself
+is essentially constructed out of a philosophical theory too purely
+argumentative to lend itself easily to poetry. A different, though
+allied, way of dealing with the subject appears elsewhere. If Pope
+learned mainly from Bolingbroke, he was also influenced by Shaftesbury
+of the _Characteristics_. I note, but cannot here insist upon,
+Shaftesbury's peculiar philosophical position. He inherited to some
+extent the doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists and repudiated the
+sensationalist doctrine of Locke and the metaphysical method of Clarke.
+He had a marked influence on Hutcheson, Butler, and the common-sense
+philosophers of his day. For us, it is enough to say that he worships
+Nature but takes rather the ęsthetic than the dialectical point of view.
+The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are all one, as he constantly
+insists, and the universe impresses us not as a set of mechanical
+contrivances but as an artistic embodiment of harmony. He therefore
+restores the universal element which is apt to pass out of sight in
+Pope's rhymed arguments. He indulges his philosophical enthusiasm in
+what he calls _The Moralists, a Rhapsody_. It culminates in a prose hymn
+to a 'glorious Nature, supremely fair and sovereignly good; all-loving
+and all-lovely, all divine,' which ends by a survey of the different
+climates, where even in the moonbeams and the shades of the forests we
+find intimations of the mysterious being who pervades the universe. A
+love of beauty was, in this sense, a thoroughly legitimate development
+of the 'Religion of Nature.' Akenside in his philosophical poem _The
+Pleasures of Imagination_, written a little later, professed himself to
+be a disciple of Shaftesbury, and his version supplied many quotations
+for Scottish professors of philosophy. Henry Brooke's _Universal
+Beauty_, a kind of appendix to Pope's essay, is upon the same theme,
+though he became rather mixed in physiological expositions, which
+suggested, it is said, Darwin's _Botanic Garden_. The religious
+sentiment embodied in his _Fool of Quality_ charmed Wesley and was
+enthusiastically admired by Kingsley. Thomson, however, best illustrates
+this current of sentiment. The fine 'Hymn of Nature' appended to the
+_Seasons_, is precisely in the same vein as Shaftesbury's rhapsody. The
+descriptions of nature are supposed to suggest the commentary embodied
+in the hymn. He still describes the sea and sky and mountains with the
+more or less intention of preaching a sermon upon them. That is the
+justification of the 'pure description' which Pope condemned in
+principle, and which occupies the larger part of the poem. Thomson, when
+he wrote the sermons, was still fresh from Edinburgh and from
+Teviotdale. He had a real eye for scenery, and describes from
+observation. The English Wits had not, it seems, annexed Scotland, and
+Thomson had studied Milton and Spenser without being forced to look
+through Pope's spectacles. Still he cannot quite trust himself. He is
+still afraid, and not without reason, that pure description will fall
+into flat prose, and tries to 'raise his diction'--in the phrase of the
+day--by catching something of the Miltonic harmony and by speaking of
+fish as 'finny tribes' and birds as 'the feathered people.' The fact,
+however, that he could suspend his moralising to give realistic
+descriptions at full length, and that they became the most interesting
+parts of the poem, shows a growing interest in country life. The
+supremacy of the town Wit is no longer unquestioned; and there is an
+audience for the plain direct transcripts of natural objects for which
+the Wit had been too dignified and polished. Thomson had thus the merit
+of representing a growing sentiment--and yet he has not quite solved the
+problem. His philosophy is not quite fused with his observation. To make
+'Nature' really interesting you must have a touch of Wordsworthian
+pantheism and of Shelley's 'pathetic fallacy.' Thomson's facts and his
+commentary lie in separate compartments. To him, apparently, the
+philosophy is more important than the simple description. His
+masterpiece was to be the didactic and now forgotten poem on _Liberty_.
+It gives an interesting application; for there already we have the
+sentiment which was to become more marked in later years. 'Liberty'
+crosses the Alps and they suggest a fine passage on the beauty of
+mountains. Nature has formed them as a rampart for the homely republics
+which worship 'plain Liberty'; and are free from the corruption typified
+by Walpole. That obviously is the germ of the true Rousseau version of
+Nature worship. On the whole, however, Nature, as interpreted by the
+author of 'Rule Britannia,' is still very well satisfied with the
+British Constitution and looks upon the Revolution of 1688 as the avatar
+of the true goddess. 'Nature,' that is, has not yet come to condemn
+civilisation in general as artificial and therefore corrupt. As in
+practice, a lover of Nature did not profess to prefer the wilderness to
+fields, and looked upon mountains rather as a background to the
+nobleman's park than as a shelter for republics; so in politics it
+reflected no revolutionary tendency but rather included the true British
+system which has grown up under its protection. Nature has taken to
+lecturing, but she only became frankly revolutionary with Rousseau and
+misanthropic with Byron.
+
+I must touch one more characteristic. Pope, I have said, represents the
+aristocratic development of literature. Meanwhile the purely plebeian
+society was growing, and the toe of the clown beginning to gall the kibe
+of the courtier. Pope's 'war with the dunces' was the historical symptom
+of this most important social development. The _Dunciad_, which,
+whatever its occasional merits, one cannot read without spasms both of
+disgust and moral disapproval, is the literary outcome. Pope's morbid
+sensibility perverts his morals till he accepts the worst of
+aristocratic prejudices and treats poverty as in itself criminal. It led
+him, too, to attack some worthy people, and among others the 'earless'
+Defoe. Defoe's position is most significant. A journalist of supreme
+ability, he had an abnormally keen eye for the interesting. No one could
+feel the pulse of his audience with greater quickness. He had already
+learned by inference that nothing interests the ordinary reader so much
+as a straightforward narrative of contemporary facts. He added the
+remark that it did not in the least matter whether the facts had or had
+not happened; and secondly, that it saved a great deal of trouble to
+make your facts instead of finding them. The result was the inimitable
+_Robinson Crusoe_, which was, in that sense, a simple application of
+journalistic methods, not a conscious attempt to create a new variety of
+novel. Alexander Selkirk had very little to tell about his remarkable
+experience; and so Defoe, instead of confining himself like the ordinary
+interviewer to facts, proceeded to tell a most circumstantial and
+elaborate lie--for which we are all grateful. He was doing far more than
+he meant. Defoe, as the most thorough type of the English class to
+which he belonged, could not do otherwise than make his creation a
+perfect embodiment of his own qualities. _Robinson Crusoe_ became, we
+know, a favourite of Rousseau, and has supplied innumerable
+illustrations to writers on Political Economy. One reason is that Crusoe
+is the very incarnation of individualism: thrown entirely upon his own
+resources, he takes the position with indomitable pluck; adapts himself
+to the inevitable as quietly and sturdily as may be; makes himself
+thoroughly at home in a desert island, and, as soon as he meets a
+native, summarily annexes him, and makes him thoroughly useful. He comes
+up smiling after many years as if he had been all the time in a shop in
+Cheapside without a hair turned. This exemplary person not only embodies
+the type of middle class Briton but represents his most romantic
+aspirations. In those days the civilised world was still surrounded by
+the dim mysterious regions, where geographers placed elephants instead
+of towns, but where the adventurous Briton was beginning to push his way
+into strange native confines and to oust the wretched foreigner, Dutch,
+French, Spanish, and Portuguese, who had dared to anticipate him.
+Crusoe is the voice of the race which was to be stirred by the story of
+Jenkins' ear and lay the foundation of the Empire. Meanwhile, as a
+literary work, it showed most effectually the power of homely realism.
+There is no bother about dignity or attempt to reveal the eloquence of
+the polished Wit. It is precisely the plain downright English vernacular
+which is thoroughly intelligible to everybody who is capable of reading.
+The Wit, too, as Swift sufficiently proved, could be a consummate master
+of that kind of writing on occasion, and Gulliver probably showed
+something to Crusoe. But for us the interest is the development of a new
+class of readers, who won't bother about canons of taste or care for
+skill in working upon the old conventional methods, but can be
+profoundly interested in a straightforward narrative adapted to the
+simplest understandings. Pope's contempt for the dunces meant that the
+lower classes were the objects of supreme contempt to the aristocratic
+circle, whose culture they did not share. But Defoe was showing in a new
+sense of the word the advantage of an appeal to Nature; for the true
+life and vigour of the nation was coming to be embodied in the class
+which was spontaneously developing its own ideals and beginning to
+regard the culture of the upper circle as artificial in the
+objectionable sense. Outside the polished circle of wits we have the
+middle-class which is beginning to read, and will read, what it really
+likes without bothering about Aristotle or M. Bossu: as, in the other
+direction, the assimilation between town and country is incidentally
+suggesting a wider range of topics, and giving a new expression to
+conditions which had for some time been without expression.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+(1739-1763)
+
+
+I am now to speak of the quarter of a century which succeeded the fall
+of Walpole, and includes two singularly contrasted periods. Walpole's
+fall meant the accession to power of the heterogeneous body of statesmen
+whose virtuous indignation had been raised by his corrupt practices.
+Some of them, as Carteret, Pulteney, Chesterfield, were men of great
+ability; but, after a series of shifting combinations and personal
+intrigues, the final result was the triumph of the Pelhams--the
+grotesque Duke of Newcastle and his brother, who owed their success
+mainly to skill in the art of parliamentary management. The opposition
+had ousted Walpole by taking advantage of the dumb instinct which
+impelled us to go to war with Spain; and distracted by the interests of
+Hanover and the balance of power we had plunged into that complicated
+series of wars which lasted for some ten years, and passes all powers
+of the ordinary human intellect to understand or remember. For what
+particular reason Englishmen were fighting at Dettingen or Fontenoy or
+Lauffeld is a question which a man can only answer when he has been
+specially crammed for examination and his knowledge has not begun to
+ooze out; while the abnormal incapacity of our rulers was displayed at
+the attack upon Carthagena or during the Pretender's march into England.
+The history becomes a shifting chaos marked by no definite policy, and
+the ship of State is being steered at random as one or other of the
+competitors for rule manages to grasp the helm for a moment. Then after
+another period of aimless intrigues the nation seems to rouse itself;
+and finding at last a statesman who has a distinct purpose and can
+appeal to a great patriotic sentiment, takes the leading part in Europe,
+wins a series of victories, and lays the foundation of the British
+Empire in America and India. Under Walpole's rule the House of Commons
+had become definitely the dominant political body. The minister who
+could command it was master of the position. The higher aristocracy are
+still in possession of great influence, but they are ceasing to be the
+adequate representatives of the great political forces. They are in the
+comfortable position of having completely established their own
+privileges; and do not see any reason for extending privileges to
+others. Success depends upon personal intrigues among themselves and
+upon a proper manipulation of the Lower House which, though no overt
+constitutional change has taken place, is coming to be more decidedly
+influenced by the interests of the moneyed men and the growing middle
+classes. Pitt and Newcastle represent the two classes which are coming
+into distinct antagonism. Pitt's power rested upon the general national
+sentiment. 'You have taught me,' as George II. said to him, 'to look for
+the sense of my people in other places than the House of Commons.' The
+House of Commons, that is, should not derive its whole authority from
+the selfish interest of the borough-mongers but from the great outside
+current of patriotic sentiment and aspiration. But public opinion was
+not yet powerful enough to support the great minister without an
+alliance with the master of the small arts of intrigue. The general
+sentiments of discontent which had been raised by Walpole was therefore
+beginning to widen and deepen and to take a different form. The root of
+the evil, as people began to feel, was not in the individual Walpole but
+in the system which he represented. Brown's _Estimate_ is often noticed
+in illustration. Brown convinced his readers, as Macaulay puts it, that
+they were a race of cowards and scoundrels, who richly deserved the fate
+in store for them of being speedily enslaved by their enemies; and the
+prophecy was published (1757) on the eve of the most glorious war we had
+ever known. It represents also, as Macaulay observes, the indignation
+roused by the early failures of the war and the demand that Pitt should
+take the helm. Brown was a very clever, though not a very profound,
+writer. A similar and more remarkable utterance had been made some years
+before (1749) by the remarkable thinker, David Hartley. The world, he
+said, was in the most critical state ever known. He attributes the evil
+to the growth of infidelity in the upper classes; their general
+immorality; their sordid self-interest, which was almost the sole motive
+of action of the ministers; the contempt for authority of all their
+superiors; the worldly-mindedness of the clergy and the general
+carelessness as to education. These sentiments are not the mere
+platitudes, common to moralists in all ages. They are pointed and
+emphasised by the state of political and social life in the period.
+Besides the selfishness and want of principle of the upper classes, one
+fact upon which Hartley insists is sufficiently familiar. The Church it
+is obvious had been paralysed. It had no corporate activity; it was in
+thorough subjection to the aristocracy; the highest preferments were to
+be won by courting such men as Newcastle, and not by learning or by
+active discharge of duty; and the ordinary parson, though he might be
+thoroughly respectable and amiable, was dependant upon the squire as his
+superior upon the ministers. He took things easily enough to verify
+Hartley's remarks. We must infer from later history that a true
+diagnosis would not have been so melancholy as Hartley supposed. The
+nation was not corrupt at the core. It was full of energy; and rapidly
+developing in many directions. The upper classes, who had gained all
+they wanted, were comfortable and irresponsible; not yet seriously
+threatened by agitators; able to carry on a traffic in sinecures and
+pensions, and demoralised as every corporate body becomes demoralised
+which has no functions to discharge in proportion to capacities. The
+Church naturally shared the indolence of its rulers and patrons. Hartley
+exhorts the clergy to take an example from the energy of the Methodists
+instead of abusing them. Wesley had begun his remarkable missionary
+career in 1738, and the rapid growth of his following is a familiar
+proof on the one side of the indolence of the established authorities,
+and on the other of the strength of the demand for reform in classes to
+which he appealed. If, that is, the clergy were not up to their duties,
+Wesley's success shows that there was a strong sense of existing moral
+and social evils which only required an energetic leader to form a
+powerful organisation. I need not attempt to inquire into the causes of
+the Wesleyan and Evangelical movement, but must note one
+characteristic--it had not an intellectual but a sound moral origin.
+Wesley takes his creed for granted, and it was the creed, so far as they
+had one, of the masses of the nation. He is shocked by perjury,
+drunkenness, corruption, and so forth, but has not seriously to meet
+scepticism of the speculative variety. If Wesley did not, like the
+leader of another Oxford movement, feel bound to clear up the logical
+basis of his religious beliefs, he had of course to confront deism, but
+could set it down as a mere product of moral indifference. When Hartley,
+like Butler, speaks of the general unbelief of the day, he was no doubt
+correct within limits. In the upper social sphere the tone was
+sceptical. Not only Bolingbroke but such men as Chesterfield and Walpole
+were indifferent or contemptuous. They were prepared to go with
+Voltaire's development of the English rationalism. But the English
+sceptic of the upper classes was generally a Gallio. He had no desire to
+propagate his creed, still less to attack the Church, which was a
+valuable part of his property; it never occurred to him that scepticism
+might lead to a political as well as an ecclesiastical revolution.
+Voltaire was not intentionally destructive in politics, whatever the
+real effect of his teaching; but he was an avowed and bitter enemy of
+the Church and the orthodox creed. Hume, the great English sceptic, was
+not only a Tory in politics but had no desire to affect the popular
+belief. He could advise a clergyman to preach the ordinary doctrines,
+because it was paying far too great a compliment to the vulgar to be
+punctilious about speaking the truth to them. A similar indifference is
+characteristic of the whole position. The select classes were to be
+perfectly convinced that the accepted creed was superstitious; but they
+were not for that reason to attack it. To the statesman, as Gibbon was
+to point out, a creed is equally useful, true or false; and the English
+clergy, though bound to use orthodox language, were far too well in hand
+to be regarded as possible persecutors. Even in Scotland they made no
+serious attempt to suppress Hume; he had only to cover his opinions by
+some decent professions of belief. One symptom of the general state of
+mind is the dying out of the deist controversies. The one great divine,
+according to Brown's _Estimate_, was Warburton, the colossus, he says,
+who bestrides the world: and Warburton, whatever else he may have been,
+was certainly of all divines the one whose argument is most palpably
+fictitious, if not absolutely insincere. He marks, however, the tendency
+of the argument to become historical. Like a much acuter writer, Conyers
+Middleton, he is occupied with the curious problem: how do we reconcile
+the admission that miracles never happen with the belief that they once
+happened?--or are the two beliefs reconcilable? That means, is history
+continuous? But it also means that the problems of abstract theology
+were passing out of sight, and that speculation was turning to the
+historical and scientific problems. Hartley was expounding the
+association principle which became the main doctrine of the empirical
+school, and Hume was teaching ethics upon the same basis, and turning
+from speculation to political history. The main reason of this
+intellectual indifference was the social condition under which the
+philosophical theory found no strong current of political discontent
+with which to form an alliance. The middle classes, which are now
+growing in strength and influence, had been indifferent to the
+discussions going on above their heads. The more enlightened clergy had,
+of course, been engaged in the direct controversy, and had adopted a
+kind of mild common-sense rationalism which implied complete
+indifference to the dogmatic disputes of the preceding century. The
+Methodist movement produced a little revival of the Calvinist and
+Arminian controversy. But the beliefs of the great mass of the
+population were not materially affected: they held by sheer force of
+inertia to the old traditions, and still took themselves to be good
+orthodox Protestants, though they had been unconsciously more affected
+by the permeation of rationalism than they realised.
+
+So much must be said, because the literary work was being more and more
+distinctly addressed to the middle class. The literary profession is now
+taking more of the modern form. Grub Street is rapidly becoming
+respectable, and its denizens--as Beauclerk said of Johnson when he got
+his pension--will be able to 'purge and live cleanly like gentlemen.'
+Johnson's incomparable letter (1755) rejecting Chesterfield's attempt to
+impose his patronage, is the familiar indication of the change. Johnson
+had been labouring in the employment of the booksellers, and always,
+unlike some more querulous authors, declares that they were fair and
+liberal patrons--though it is true that he had to knock down one of them
+with a folio. Other writers of less fame can turn an honest penny by
+providing popular literature of the heavier kind. There is a demand for
+'useful information.' There was John Campbell, for example, the 'richest
+author,' said Johnson, who ever grazed 'the common of literature,' who
+contributed to the _Modern Universal History_, the _Biographica
+Britannica_, and wrote the _Lives of the Admirals_ and the _Political
+Survey of Great Britain_, and innumerable historical and statistical
+works; and the queer adventurer Sir John Hill, who turned out book after
+book with marvellous rapidity and impudence, and is said to have really
+had some knowledge of botany. The industrious drudges and clever
+charlatans could make a respectable income. Smollett is a superior
+example, whose 'literary factory,' as it has been said, 'was in full
+swing' at this period, and who, besides his famous novels, was
+journalist, historian, and author of all work, and managed to keep
+himself afloat, though he also contrived to exceed his income and was
+supported by a number of inferior 'myrmidons' who helped to turn out his
+hackwork. He describes the author's position in a famous passage in
+_Humphry Clinker_ (1756). Smollett also started the _Critical Review_ in
+rivalry to the _Monthly Review_, begun by Griffiths a few years before
+(1749), and these two were for a long time the only precursors to the
+_Edinburgh Review_, and marked an advance upon the old _Gentleman's
+Magazine_. In other words, we have the beginning of a new tribunal or
+literary Star Chamber. The author has not to inquire what is said of his
+performances in the coffee-houses, where the Wits gathered under the
+presidency of Addison or Swift. The professional critic has appeared
+who will make it his regular business to give an account of all new
+books, and though his reviews are still comparatively meagre and apt to
+be mere analyses, it is implied that a kind of public opinion is growing
+up which will decide upon his merits, and upon which his success or
+failure will depend. That means again that the readers to whom he is to
+appeal are mainly the middle class, who are not very highly cultivated,
+but who have at any rate reached the point of reading their newspaper
+and magazine regularly, and buy books enough to make it worth while to
+supply the growing demand. The nobleman has ceased to consider the
+patronage of authors as any part of his duty, and the tradition which
+made him consider writing poetry as a proper accomplishment is dying
+out. Since that time our aristocracy as such has been normally
+illiterate. Peers--Byron, for example--have occasionally written books;
+and more than one person of quality has, like Fox, kept up the interest
+in classical literature which he acquired at a public school, and added
+a charm to his parliamentary oratory. The great man, too, as I have
+said, could take his chance in political writing, and occasionally
+condescend to show his skill at an essay of the _Spectator_ model. But a
+certain contempt for the professional writer is becoming characteristic,
+even of men like Horace Walpole, who have a real taste for literature.
+He is inclined to say, as Chesterfield put it in a famous speech, 'We,
+my lords, may thank Heaven that we have something better than our brains
+to depend upon.' As literature becomes more of a regular profession,
+your noble wishes to show his independence of anything like a commercial
+pursuit. Walpole can speak politely to men like Gibbon, and even to
+Hume, who have some claim to be gentlemen as well as authors; but he
+feels that he is condescending even to them, and has nothing but
+contemptuous aversion for a Johnson, whose claim to consideration
+certainly did not include any special refinement. Johnson and his circle
+had still an odour of Grub street, which is only to be kept at a
+distance more carefully because it is in a position of comparative
+independence. Meanwhile, the author himself holds by the authority of
+Addison and Pope. They, he still admits for the most part, represent the
+orthodox church; their work is still taken to be the perfection of art,
+and the canons which they have handed down have a prestige which makes
+any dissenter an object of suspicion. Yet as the audience has really
+changed, a certain change also makes itself felt in the substance and
+the form of the corresponding literature.
+
+One remarkable book marks the opening of the period. The first part of
+Young's _Night Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, and the poem at once acquired
+a popularity which lasted at least through the century. Young had been
+more or less associated with the Addison and Pope circles, in the later
+part of Queen Anne's reign. He had failed to obtain any satisfactory
+share of the patronage which came to some of his fellows. He is still a
+Wit till he has to take orders for a college living as the old Wits'
+circle is decaying. He tried with little success to get something by
+attaching himself to some questionable patrons who were induced to carry
+on the practice, and the want of due recognition left him to the end of
+his life as a man with a grievance. He had tried poetical epistles, and
+satires, and tragedies with undeniable success and had shown undeniable
+ability. Yet somehow or other he had not, one may say, emerged from the
+second class till in the _Night Thoughts_ he opened a new vein which
+exactly met the contemporary taste. The success was no doubt due to some
+really brilliant qualities, but I need not here ask in what precise rank
+he should be placed, as an author or a moralist. His significance for us
+is simple. The _Night Thoughts_, as he tells us, was intended to supply
+an omission in Pope's _Essay on Man_. Pope's deistical position excluded
+any reference to revealed religion, to posthumous rewards and penalties,
+and expressed an optimistic philosophy which ignored the corruption of
+human nature. Young represents a partial revolt against the domination
+of the Pope circle. He had always been an outsider, and his life at
+Oxford had, you may perhaps hope, preserved his orthodoxy. He writes
+blank verse, though evidently the blank verse of a man accustomed to the
+'heroic couplets'; he uses the conventional 'poetic diction'; he strains
+after epigrammatic point in the manner of Pope, and the greater part of
+his poem is an elaborate argumentation to prove the immortality of
+man--chiefly by the argument from astronomy. But though so far accepting
+the old method, his success in introducing a new element marks an
+important change. He is elaborately and deliberately pathetic; he is
+always thinking of death, and calling upon the readers to sympathise
+with his sorrows and accept his consolations. The world taken by itself
+is, he maintains, a huge lunatic asylum, and the most hideous of sights
+is a naked human heart. We are, indeed, to find sufficient consolation
+from the belief in immortality. How far Young was orthodox or logical or
+really edifying is a question with which I am not concerned. The
+appetite for this strain of melancholy reflection is characteristic.
+Blair's _Grave_, representing another version of the sentiment, appeared
+simultaneously and independently. Blair, like Thomson, living in
+Scotland, was outside the Pope circle of wit, and had studied the old
+English authors instead of Pope and Dryden. He negotiated for the
+publication of his poem through Watts and Doddridge, each of whom was an
+eminent interpreter of the religious sentiment of the middle classes.
+Both wrote hymns still popular, and Doddridge's _Rise and Progress of
+Religion in the Soul_ has been a permanently valued manual. The Pope
+school had omitted religious considerations, and treated religion as a
+system of abstract philosophy. The new class of readers wants something
+more congenial to the teaching of their favourite ministers and
+chapels. Young and Blair thoroughly suited them. Wesley admired Young's
+poem, and even proposed to bring out an edition. In his _Further Appeal
+to Men of Reason and Religion_, Wesley, like Brown and Hartley, draws up
+a striking indictment of the manners of the time. He denounces the
+liberty and effeminacy of the nobility; the widespread immorality; the
+chicanery of lawyers; the jobbery of charities; the stupid
+self-satisfaction of Englishmen; the brutality of the Army; the
+indolence and preferment humbug of the Church--the true cause, as he
+says, of the 'contempt for the clergy' which had become proverbial. His
+remedy of course is to be found in a revival of true religion. He
+accepts the general sentiment that the times are out of joint, though he
+would seek for a deeper cause than that which was recognised by the
+political satirist. While Young was weeping at Welwyn, James Hervey was
+meditating among the tombs in Devonshire, and soon afterwards gave
+utterance to the result in language inspired by very bad taste, but
+showing a love of nature and expressing the 'sentimentalism' which was
+then a new discovery. It is said to have eclipsed Law's _Serious Call_,
+which I have already mentioned as giving, in admirable literary form,
+the view of the contemporary world which naturally found favour with
+religious thinkers.
+
+These symptoms indicate the tendencies of the rising class to which the
+author has mainly to address himself. It has ceased to be fully
+represented by the upper social stratum whose tastes are reflected by
+Pope. No distinct democratic sentiment had yet appeared; the
+aristocratic order was accepted as inevitable or natural; but there was
+a vague though growing sentiment that the rulers are selfish and
+corrupt. There is no strong sceptical or anti-religious sentiment; but a
+spreading conviction that the official pastors are scandalously careless
+in supplying the wants of their flocks. The philosophical and literary
+canons of the scholar and gentleman have become unsatisfactory; the
+vulgar do not care for the delicate finish appreciated by your
+Chesterfield and acquired in the conversations of polite society, and
+the indolent scepticism which leads to metaphysical expositions, and is
+not allied with any political or social passion, does not appeal to
+them. The popular books of the preceding generation had been the
+directly religious books: Baxter's _Saint's Rest_, and the _Pilgrim's
+Progress_--despised by the polite but beloved by the popular class in
+spite of the critics; and among the dissenters such a work as Boston's
+_Fourfold State_, or in the Church, Law's _Serious Call_. Your polite
+author had ignored the devil, and he plays a part in human affairs
+which, as Carlyle pointed out in later days, cannot be permanently
+overlooked. The old horned and hoofed devil, indeed, for whom Defoe had
+still a weakness, shown in his _History of the Devil_, was becoming a
+little incredible; witchcraft was dying out, though Wesley still felt
+bound to profess some belief in it; and the old Calvinistic dogmatism,
+though it could produce a certain amount of controversy among the
+Methodists, had been made obsolete by the growth of rationalism. Still
+the new public wanted something more savoury than its elegant teachers
+had given; and, if sermons had ceased to be so stimulating as of old, it
+could find it in secular moralisers. Defoe, always keenly alive to the
+general taste, had tried to supply the demand not only by his queer
+_History of the Devil_ but by appending a set of moral reflections to
+_Robinson Crusoe_ and other edifying works, which disgusted Charles Lamb
+by their petty tradesman morality, and which hardly represent a very
+lofty ideal. But the recognised representative of the moralists was the
+ponderous Samuel Johnson. It is hard when reading the _Rambler_ to
+recognise the massive common sense and deep feeling struggling with the
+ponderous verbiage and elephantine facetiousness; yet it was not only a
+treasure of wisdom to the learned ladies, Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs.
+Elizabeth Carter and the like, who were now beginning to appear, but was
+received, without provoking ridicule, by the whole literary class.
+_Rasselas_, in spite of its formality, is still a very impressive book.
+The literary critic may amuse himself with the question how Johnson came
+to acquire the peculiar style which imposed upon contemporaries and
+excited the ridicule of the next generation. According to Boswell, it
+was due to his reading of Sir Thomas Browne, and a kind of reversion to
+the earlier period in which the Latinisms of Browne were still natural,
+when the revolt to simple prose had not begun. Addison, at any rate, as
+Boswell truly remarks, writes like a 'companion,' and Johnson like a
+teacher. He puts on his academical robes to deliver his message to
+mankind, and is no longer the Wit, echoing the coffee-house talk, but
+the moralist, who looks indeed at actual life, but stands well apart
+and knows many hours of melancholy and hypochondria. He preaches the
+morality of his time--the morality of Richardson and Young--only
+tempered by a hearty contempt for cant, sentimentalism, and all
+unreality, and expressing his deeper and stronger nature. The style,
+however acquired, has the idiosyncrasy of the man himself; but I shall
+have to speak of the Johnsonian view in the next period, when he became
+the acknowledged literary dictator and expressed one main tendency of
+the period.
+
+Meanwhile Richardson, as Johnson put it, had been teaching the passions
+to move at the command of virtue. In other words, Richardson had
+discovered an incomparably more effective way of preaching a popular
+sermon. He had begun, as we know, by writing a series of edifying
+letters to young women; and expounded the same method in _Pamela_, and
+afterwards in the famous _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_.
+All his books are deliberate attempts to embody his ideal in model
+representatives of the society of his day. He might have taken a
+suggestion from Bunyan; who besides his great religious allegory and the
+curious life of _Mr. Badman_, couched a moral lesson in a description
+of the actual tradesman of his time. Allegory was now to be supplanted
+by fiction. The man was to take the place of the personified virtue and
+vice. Defoe had already shown the power of downright realistic
+storytelling; and Richardson perhaps learnt something from him when he
+was drawing his minute and vivid portraits of the people who might at
+any rate pass for being realities. I must take for granted that
+Richardson was a man of genius, without adding a word as to its precise
+quality. I need only repeat one familiar remark. Richardson was a
+typical tradesman of the period; he was the industrious apprentice who
+marries his master's daughter; he lived between Hammersmith and
+Salisbury Court as a thorough middle-class cockney, and had not an idea
+beyond those common to his class; he accepted the ordinary creeds and
+conventions; he looked upon freethinkers with such horror that he will
+not allow even his worst villains to be religious sceptics; he shares
+the profound reverence of the shopkeepers for the upper classes who are
+his customers, and he rewards virtue with a coach and six. And yet this
+mild little man, with the very narrowest intellectual limitations,
+writes a book which makes a mark not only in England but in Europe, and
+is imitated by Rousseau in the book which set more than one generation
+weeping; _Clarissa Harlowe_, moreover, was accepted as the masterpiece
+of its kind, and she moved not only Englishmen but Germans and Frenchmen
+to sympathetic tears. One explanation is that Richardson is regarded as
+the inventor of 'sentimentalism.' The word, as one of his correspondents
+tells him, was a novelty about 1749, and was then supposed to include
+anything that was clever and agreeable. I do not myself believe that
+anybody invented the mode of feeling; but it is true that Richardson was
+the first writer who definitely turned it to account for a new literary
+genus. Sentimentalism, I suppose, means, roughly speaking, indulgence in
+emotion for its own sake. The sentimentalist does not weep because
+painful thoughts are forced upon him but because he finds weeping
+pleasant in itself. He appreciates the 'luxury of grief.' (The phrase is
+used in Brown's _Barbarossa_; I don't know who invented it.) Certainly
+the discovery was not new. The charms of melancholy had been recognised
+by Jaques in the forest of Arden and sung by various later poets; but
+sentimentalism at the earlier period naturally took the form of
+religious meditation upon death and judgment. Young and Hervey are
+religious sentimentalists, who have also an eye to literary elegance.
+Wesley was far too masculine and sensible to be a sentimentalist; his
+emotions impel him to vigorous action; and are much too serious to be
+cultivated for their own sakes or to be treated aesthetically. But the
+general sense that something is not in order in the general state of
+things, without as yet any definite aim for the vague discontent, was
+shared by the true sentimentalist. Richardson's sentimentalism is partly
+unconscious. He is a moralist very much in earnest, preaching a very
+practical and not very exalted morality. It is his moral purpose, his
+insistence upon the edifying point of view, his singular fertility in
+finding illustrations for his doctrines, which makes him a
+sentimentalist. I will confess that the last time I read _Clarissa
+Harlowe_ it affected me with a kind of disgust. We wonder sometimes at
+the coarse nerves of our ancestors, who could see on the stage any
+quantity of murders and ghosts and miscellaneous horrors. Richardson
+gave me the same shock from the elaborate detail in which he tells the
+story of Clarissa; rubbing our noses, if I may say so, in all her
+agony, and squeezing the last drop of bitterness out of every incident.
+I should have liked some symptom that he was anxious to turn his eyes
+from the tragedy instead of giving it so minutely as to suggest that he
+enjoys the spectacle. Books sometimes owe part of their success, as I
+fear we must admit, to the very fact that they are in bad taste. They
+attract the contemporary audience by exaggerating and over-weighting the
+new vein of sentiment which they have discovered. That, in fact, seems
+to be the reason why in spite of all authority, modern readers find it
+difficult to read Richardson through. We know, at any rate, how it
+affected one great contemporary. This incessant strain upon the moral in
+question (a very questionable moral it is) struck Fielding as mawkish
+and unmanly. Richardson seemed to be a narrow, straitlaced preacher, who
+could look at human nature only from the conventional point of view, and
+thought that because he was virtuous there should be no more cakes and
+ale.
+
+Fielding's revolt produced his great novels, and the definite creation
+of an entirely new form of art which was destined to a long and
+vigorous life. He claimed to be the founder of a new province in
+literature, and saw with perfect clearness what was to be its nature.
+The old romances which had charmed the seventeenth century were still
+read occasionally: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, and Dr.
+Johnson had enjoyed them, and Chesterfield, at a later period, has to
+point out to his son that Calprenčde's _Cassandra_ has become
+ridiculous. The short story, of which Mrs. Behn was the last English
+writer, was more or less replaced by the little sketches in the
+_Spectator_; and Defoe had shown the attractiveness of a downright
+realistic narrative of a series of adventures. But whatever precedents
+may be found, our unfortunate ancestors had not yet the true modern
+novel. Fielding had, like other hack authors, written for the stage and
+tried to carry on the Congreve tradition. But the stage had declined.
+The best products, perhaps, were the _Beggar's Opera_ and
+_Chrononhotonthologos_ and Fielding's own _Tom Thumb_. When Fielding
+tried to make use of the taste for political lampoons, the result was
+the Act of Parliament which in 1737 introduced the licensing system. The
+Shakespearian drama, it is true, was coming into popularity with the
+help of Fielding's great friend, Garrick; but no new Shakespeare
+appeared to write modern _Hamlets_ and _Othellos_; Johnson tried to
+supply his place with the ponderous _Irene_, and John Home followed with
+_Douglas_ of 'My name is Norval' fame. The tragedies were becoming more
+dreary. Characteristic of Fielding was his admiration of Lillo, whose
+_George Barnwell_ (1730) and _Fatal Curiosity_ (about 1736), the last of
+them brought out under Fielding's own management, were remarkable
+attempts to revive tragedies by going to real life. It is plain,
+however, that the theatre is no longer the appropriate organ of the
+reading classes. The licensing act seems to have expressed the general
+feeling which, if we call it Puritan, must be Puritan in a sense which
+described the general middle-class prejudices. The problem which
+Fielding had to solve was to find a literary form which should meet the
+tastes of the new public, who could not be drawn to the theatre, and
+which yet should have some of the characteristics which had hitherto
+been confined to the dramatic form. That was the problem which was
+triumphantly solved by _Tom Jones_. The story is no longer a mere series
+of adventures, such as that which happened to Crusoe or Gil Blas,
+connected by the fact that they happen to the same person; nor a
+prolonged religious or moral tract, showing how evil will be punished
+and virtue rewarded. It implies a dramatic situation which can be
+developed without being hampered by the necessities of
+stage-representation; and which can give full scope to a realistic
+portrait of nature as it is under all the familiar circumstances of time
+and place. This novel, which fulfilled those conditions, has ever since
+continued to flourish; although a long time was to elapse before any one
+could approach the merits of the first inventor. In all ages, I suppose,
+the great artist, whether dramatist or epic poet or novelist, has more
+or less consciously had the aim which Fielding implicitly claims for
+himself; that is, to portray human nature. Every great artist, again,
+must, in one sense, be thoroughly 'realistic.' The word has acquired an
+irrelevant connotation: but I mean that his vision of the world must
+correspond to the genuine living convictions of his time. He only ceases
+to be a realist in that wide sense of the word when he deliberately
+affects beliefs which have lost their vitality and uses the old
+mythology, for example, as convenient machinery, when it has ceased to
+have any real hold upon the minds of their contemporaries. So far Defoe
+and Richardson and Fielding were perfectly right and deservedly
+successful because they described the actual human beings whom they saw
+before them, instead of regarding a setting forth of plain facts as
+something below the dignity of the artist. Every new departure in
+literature thrives in proportion as it abandons the old conventions
+which have become mere survivals. Each of them, in his way, felt the
+need of appealing to the new class of readers by direct portraiture of
+the readers themselves, Fielding's merit is his thorough appreciation of
+this necessity. He will give you men as he sees them, with perfect
+impartiality and photographic accuracy. His hearty appreciation of
+genuine work is characteristic. He admires Lillo, as I have said, for
+giving George Barnwell instead of the conventional stage hero; and his
+friend Hogarth, who was in pictorial art what he was in fiction, and
+paints the 'Rake's Progress' without bothering about old masters or the
+grand style; and he is enthusiastic about Garrick because he makes
+Hamlet's fear of the ghost so natural that Partridge takes it for a
+mere matter of course. Downright, forcible appeals to fact--contempt for
+the artificial and conventional--are his strength, though they also
+imply his weakness. Fielding, in fact, is the ideal John Bull; the 'good
+buffalo,' as Taine calls him, the big, full-blooded, vigorous mass of
+roast-beef who will stand no nonsense, and whose contempt for the
+fanciful and arbitrary tends towards the coarse and materialistic. That
+corresponds to the contrast between Richardson and Fielding; and may
+help to explain why the sentimentalism which Fielding despised yet
+corresponded to a vague feeling after a real element of interest. But,
+in truth, our criticism, I think, applies as much to Richardson as to
+Fielding. Realism, taken in what I should call the right sense, is not
+properly opposed to 'idealism'; it points to one of the two poles
+towards which all literary art should be directed. The artist is a
+realist so far as he deals with the actual life and the genuine beliefs
+of his time; but he is an idealist so far as he sees the most essential
+facts and utters the deepest and most permanent truths in his own
+dialect. His work should be true to life and give the essence of actual
+human nature, and also express emotions and thoughts common to the men
+of all times. Now that is the weak side of the fiction of this period.
+We may read _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Tom Jones_ with unstinted
+admiration; but we feel that we are in a confined atmosphere. There are
+regions of thought and feeling which seem to lie altogether beyond their
+province. Fielding, in his way, was a bit of a philosopher, though he is
+too much convinced that Locke and Hoadley have said the last words in
+theology and philosophy. Parson Adams is a most charming person in his
+way, but his intellectual outlook is decidedly limited. That may not
+trouble us much; but we have also the general feeling that we are living
+in a little provincial society which somehow takes its own special
+arrangements to be part of the eternal order of nature. The worthy
+Richardson is aware that there are a great many rakes and infamous
+persons about; but it never occurs to him that there can be any
+speculation outside the Thirty-nine Articles; and though Fielding
+perceives a great many abuses in the actual administration of the laws
+and the political system, he regards the social order, with its squires
+and parsons and attorneys as the only conceivable state of things. In
+other words they, and I might add their successor Smollett, represent
+all the prejudices and narrow assumptions of the quiet, respectable, and
+in many ways worthy and domestically excellent, middle-class of the day;
+which, on the whole, is determined not to look too deeply into awkward
+questions, but to go along sturdily working out its own conceptions and
+plodding along on well-established lines.
+
+Another literary movement is beginning which is to lead to the sense of
+this deficiency. The nobleman, growing rich and less absorbed in the
+political world, has time and leisure to cultivate his tastes, becomes,
+as I have said, a dilettante, and sends his son to make the grand tour
+as a regular part of his education. Some demon whispers to him, as Pope
+puts it, Visto, have a taste! He buys books and pictures, takes to
+architecture and landscape-gardening, and becomes a 'collector.' The
+instinct of 'collecting' is, I suppose, natural, and its development is
+connected with some curious results. One of the favourite objects of
+ridicule of the past essayists was the virtuoso. There was something to
+them inexpressibly absurd in a passion for buying odds and ends. Pope,
+Arbuthnot, and Gay made a special butt of Dr. Woodward, possessor of a
+famous ancient shield and other antiquities. Equally absurd, they
+thought, was his passion for fossils. He made one of the first
+collections of such objects, saw that they really had a scientific
+interest, and founded at Cambridge the first professorship of geology.
+Another remarkable collector was Sir Hans Sloane, who had brought home a
+great number of plants from Jamaica and founded the botanic garden at
+Chelsea. His servant, James Salter, set up the famous Don Saltero's
+museum in the same place, containing, as Steele tell us, '10,000
+gimcracks, including a "petrified crab" from China and Pontius Pilate's
+wife's chambermaid's sister's hat.' Don Saltero and his master seemed
+equally ridiculous; and Young in his satires calls Sloane 'the foremost
+toyman of his time,' and describes him as adoring a pin of Queen
+Elizabeth's. Sloane's collections were bought for the nation and became
+the foundation of the British Museum; when (1753) Horace Walpole remarks
+that they might be worth £80,000 for anybody who loved hippopotamuses,
+sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese. Scientific research,
+that is, revealed itself to contemporaries as a childish and absurd
+monomania, unworthy of a man of sense. John Hunter had not yet begun to
+form the unequalled museum of physiology, and even the scientific
+collectors could have but a dim perception of the importance of a minute
+observation of natural phenomena. The contempt for such collections
+naturally accompanied a contempt for the antiquary, another variety of
+the same species. The study of old documents and ancient buildings
+seemed to be a simple eccentricity. Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary,
+was a typical case. He devoted himself to the study of old records and
+published a series of English Chronicles which were of essential service
+to English historians. To his contemporaries this study seemed to be as
+worthless as Woodward's study of fossils. Like other monomaniacs he
+became crusty and sour for want of sympathy. His like-minded
+contemporary, Carte, ruined the prospects of his history by letting out
+his belief in the royal power of curing by touch. Antiquarianism, though
+providing invaluable material for history, seemed to be a silly
+crotchet, and to imply a hatred to sound Whiggism and modern
+enlightenment, so long as the Wit and the intelligent person of quality
+looked upon the past simply as the period of Gothic barbarism. But an
+approximation is beginning to take place. The relation is indicated by
+the case of Horace Walpole, a man whose great abilities have been
+concealed by his obvious affectations. Two of Walpole's schoolfellows at
+Eton were Gray and William Cole. Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, who
+tried to do for his own university what Woodward had done for Oxford,
+was all but a Catholic, and in political sympathies agreed with Hearne
+and Carte. Walpole was a thorough Whig and a freethinker, so long, at
+least, as freethinking did not threaten danger to comfortable sinecures
+bestowed upon the sons of Whig ministers. But Cole became Walpole's
+antiquarian oracle. When Walpole came back from the grand tour, with
+nothing particular to do except spend his income, he found one amusement
+in dabbling in antiquarian research. He discovered, among other things,
+that even a Gothic cathedral could be picturesque, and in 1750 set about
+building a 'little Gothic Castle' at Strawberry Hill. The Gothic was of
+course the most superficial imitation; but it became the first of a long
+line of similar imitations growing gradually more elaborate with results
+of which we all have our own opinion. To Walpole himself Strawberry Hill
+was a mere plaything, and he would not have wished to be taken too
+seriously; as his romance of the _Castle of Otranto_ was a literary
+squib at which he laughed himself, though it became the forefather of a
+great literary school. The process may be regarded as logical: the
+previous generation, rejoicing in its own enlightenment, began to
+recognise the difference between present and past more clearly than its
+ancestors had done; but generally inferred that the men of old had been
+barbarians. The Tory and Jacobite who clings to the past praises its
+remains with blind affection, and can see nothing in the present but
+corruption and destruction of the foundations of society. The
+indifferent dilettante, caring little for any principles and mainly
+desirous of amusement, discovers a certain charm in the old institutions
+while he professes to despise them in theory. That means one of the
+elements of the complex sentiment which we describe as romanticism. The
+past is obsolete, but it is pretty enough to be used in making new
+playthings. The reconciliation will be reached when the growth of
+historical inquiry leads men to feel that past and present are parts of
+a continuous series, and to look upon their ancestors neither as simply
+ridiculous nor as objects of blind admiration. The historical sense was,
+in fact, growing: and Walpole's other friend, Gray, may represent the
+literary version. The Queen Anne school, though it despised the older
+literature, had still a certain sneaking regard for it. Addison, for
+example, pays some grudging compliments to Chaucer and Spenser, though
+he is careful to point out the barbarism of their taste. Pope, like all
+poets, had loved Spenser in his boyhood and was well read in English
+poetry. It was mighty simple of Rowe, he said, to try to write in the
+style of Shakespeare, that is, in the style of a bad age. Yet he became
+one of the earliest, and far from one of the worst, editors of
+Shakespeare; and the growth of literary interest in Shakespeare is one
+of the characteristic symptoms of the period. Pope had contemplated a
+history of English poetry which was taken up by Gray and finally
+executed by Warton. The development of an interest in literary history
+naturally led to new departures. The poets of the period, Gray and
+Collins and the Wartons, are no longer members of the little circle with
+strict codes of taste. They are scholars and students not shut up within
+the metropolitan area. There has been a controversy as to whether Gray's
+unproductiveness is partly to be ascribed to his confinement to a narrow
+and, it seems, to a specially stupid academical circle at Cambridge.
+Anyway, living apart from the world of politicians and fine gentlemen,
+he had the opportunity to become the most learned of English poets and
+to be at home in a wide range of literature representing a great variety
+of models. As the antiquary begins to rise to the historian, the
+poetical merits recognised in the less regular canons become manifest.
+Thomson, trying to write a half-serious imitation of Spenser, made his
+greatest success by a kind of accident in the _Castle of Indolence_
+(1748); Thomas Warton's Observation on the _Faery Queene_ in 1757 was an
+illustration of the influence of historical criticism. I need not say
+how Collins was interested by Highland superstition and Gray impressed
+by Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, and how in other directions the
+labours of the antiquarian were beginning to provide materials for the
+poetical imagination. Gray and Collins still held to the main Pope
+principles. They try to be clear and simple and polished, and their
+trick of personifying abstract qualities indicates the philosophical
+doctrine which was still acceptable. The special principle, however,
+which they were beginning to recognise is that indicated by Joseph
+Warton's declaration in his _Essay on Pope_ (1757). 'The fashion of
+moralising in verse,' he said, had been pushed too far, and he proceeded
+to startle the orthodox by placing Spenser above Pope. The heresy gave
+so much offence, it is said, that he did not venture to bring out his
+second volume for twenty-five years. The point made by Warton marks, in
+fact, the critical change. The weak side of the Pope school had been the
+subordination of the imagination to the logical theory. Poetry tends to
+become rhymed prose because the poet like the preacher has to expound
+doctrines and to prove by argument. He despises the old mythology and
+the romantic symbolism because the theory was obviously absurd to a man
+of the world, and to common sense. He believes that Homer was
+deliberately conveying an allegory: and an allegory, whether of Homer or
+of Spenser, is a roundabout and foolish way of expressing the truth. A
+philosopher--and a poem is versified philosophy--should express himself
+as simply and directly as possible. But, as soon as you begin to
+appreciate the charm of ancient poetry, to be impressed by Scandinavian
+Sagas or Highland superstition or Welsh bards, or allow yourself to
+enjoy Spenser's idealised knights and ladies in spite of their total
+want of common sense, or to appreciate _Paradise Lost_ although you no
+longer accept Milton's scheme of theology, it becomes plain that the
+specially poetic charm must consist in something else; that it can
+appeal to the emotions and the imagination, though the doctrine which it
+embodies is as far as possible from convincing your reason. The
+discovery has a bearing upon what is called the love of Nature. Even
+Thomson and his followers still take the didactic view of Nature. They
+are half ashamed of their interest in mere dead objects, but can treat
+skies and mountains as a text for discourses upon Natural Theology. But
+Collins and Gray and Warton are beginning to perceive that the pleasure
+which we receive from a beautiful prospect, whether of a mountain or of
+an old abbey, is something which justifies itself and may be expressed
+in poetry without tagging a special moral to its tail. Yet the sturdy
+common sense represented by Fielding and Johnson is slow to accept this
+view, and the romantic view of things has still for him a touch of
+sentimentalism and affectation, and indicates the dilettante rather than
+the serious thinker, and Pope still represents the orthodox creed though
+symptoms of revolt are slowly showing themselves.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+(1763-1788)
+
+
+I now come to the generation which preceded the outbreak of the French
+Revolution. Social and political movements are beginning to show
+themselves in something of their modern form, and suggest most
+interesting problems for the speculative historian. At the same time, if
+we confine ourselves to the purely literary region, it is on the whole a
+period of stagnation. Johnson is the acknowledged dictator, and Johnson,
+the 'last of the Tories,' upholds the artistic canons of Dryden and
+Pope, though no successor arises to produce new works at all comparable
+with theirs. The school, still ostensibly dominant, has lost its power
+of stimulating genius; and as yet no new school has arisen to take its
+place. Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott were still at college, and
+Byron in the nursery, at the end of the period. There is a kind of
+literary interregnum, though not a corresponding stagnation of
+speculative and political energy.
+
+Looking, in the first place, at the active world, the great fact of the
+time is the series of changes to which we give the name of the
+industrial revolution. The growth of commercial and manufacturing
+enterprise which had been going on quietly and continuously had been
+suddenly accelerated. Glasgow and Liverpool and Manchester and
+Birmingham were becoming great towns, and the factory system was being
+developed, profoundly modifying the old relation of the industrial
+classes. England was beginning to aim at commercial supremacy, and
+politics were to be more than ever dominated by the interests of the
+'moneyed man,' or, as we now call them, 'capitalists.' Essentially
+connected with these changes is another characteristic development.
+Social problems were arising. The growth of the manufactory system and
+the accumulation of masses of town population, for example, forced
+attention to the problem of pauperism, and many attempts of various
+kinds were being made to deal with it. The same circumstances were
+beginning to rouse an interest in education; it had suddenly struck
+people that on Sundays, at least, children might be taught their
+letters so far as to enable them to spell out their Bible. The
+inadequacy of the police and prison systems to meet the new requirements
+roused the zeal of many, and led to some reforms. As the British Empire
+extended we began to become sensible of certain correlative duties; the
+impeachment of Warren Hastings showed that we had scruples about
+treating India simply as a place where 'nabobs' are to accumulate
+fortunes; and the slave-trade suggested questions of conscience which at
+the end of the period were to prelude an agitation in some ways
+unprecedented.
+
+In the political world again we have the first appearance of a
+distinctly democratic movement. The struggle over Wilkes during the
+earlier years began a contest which was to last through generations. The
+American War of Independence emphasised party issues, and in some sense
+heralded the French Revolution. I only note one point. The British
+'Whig' of those days represented two impulses which gradually diverged.
+There was the home-bred Whiggism of Wilkes and Horne Tooke--the Whiggism
+of which the stronghold was in the city of London, with such heroes as
+Lord Mayor Beckford, whose statue in the Guildhall displays him hurling
+defiance at poor George III. This party embodies the dissatisfaction of
+the man of business with the old system which cramped his energies. In
+the name of liberty he demands 'self-government'; not greater vigour in
+the Executive but less interference and a freer hand for the capitalist.
+He believes in individual enterprise. He accepts the good old English
+principle that the man who pays taxes should have a voice in spending
+them; but he appeals not to an abstract political principle but to
+tradition. The reformer, as so often happens, calls himself a restorer;
+his political bible begins with the great charter and comes down to the
+settlement of 1688. Meanwhile the true revolutionary
+movement--represented by Paine and Godwin, appeals to the doctrines of
+natural equality and the rights of man. It is unequivocally democratic,
+and implies a growing cleavage between the working man and the
+capitalists. It repudiates all tradition, and aspires to recast the
+whole social order. Instead of proposing simply to diminish the
+influence of government, it really tends to centralisation and the
+transference of power to the lower classes. This genuine revolutionary
+principle did not become conspicuous in England until it was introduced
+by the contagion from France, and even then it remained an exotic. For
+the present the Whig included all who opposed the Toryism of George III.
+The difference between the Whig and the Radical was still latent, though
+to be manifested in the near future. When the 'new Whigs,' as Burke
+called them, Fox and Sheridan, welcomed the French Revolution in 1789,
+they saw in it a constitutional movement of the English type and not a
+thorough-going democratic movement which would level all classes, and
+transfer the political supremacy to a different social stratum.
+
+This implies a dominant characteristic of the English political
+movement. It was led, to use a later phrase, by Whigs not Radicals; by
+men who fully accepted the British constitution, and proposed to remove
+abuses, not to recast the whole system. The Whig wished to carry out
+more thoroughly the platform accepted in 1688, to replace decaying by
+sound timbers; but not to reconstruct from the base or to override
+tradition by abstract and obsolete theories. His desire for change was
+limited by a strong though implicit conservatism. This characteristic
+is reflected in the sphere of speculative activity. Philosophy was
+represented by the Scottish school whose watchword was common sense.
+Reid opposed the scepticism of Hume which would lead, as he held, to
+knocking his head against a post--a course clearly condemned by common
+sense; but instead of soaring into transcendental and ontological
+regions, he stuck to 'Baconian induction' and a psychology founded upon
+experience. Hume himself, as I have said, had written for the
+speculative few not for the vulgar; and he had now turned from the chase
+of metaphysical refinements to historical inquiry. Interest in history
+had become characteristic of the time. The growth of a stable, complex,
+and continuous social order implies the formation of a corporate memory.
+Masses of records had already been accumulated by antiquaries who had
+constructed rather annals than history, in which the series of events
+was given without much effort to arrange them in literary form or trace
+the causal connection. In France, however, Montesquieu had definitely
+established the importance of applying the historical method to
+political problems; and Voltaire had published some of his brilliant
+surveys which attempt to deal with the social characteristics as well
+as the mere records of battles and conquests. Hume's _History_,
+admirably written, gave Englishmen the first opportunity of enjoying a
+lucid survey of the conspicuous facts previously embedded in ponderous
+antiquarian phrases. Hume was one of the triumvirate who produced the
+recognised masterpieces of contemporary literature. Robertson's theories
+are, I take it, superseded: but his books, especially the _Charles V._,
+not only gave broad surveys but suggested generalisations as to the
+development of institutions, which, like most generalisations, were
+mainly wrong, but stimulated further inquiry. Gibbon, the third of the
+triumvirate, uniting the power of presenting great panoramas of history
+with thorough scholarship and laborious research, produced the great
+work which has not been, if it ever can be, superseded. A growing
+interest in history thus led to some of the chief writings of the time,
+as we can see that it was the natural outgrowth of the intellectual
+position. The rapid widening of the historical horizon made even a bare
+survey useful, and led to some recognition of the importance of guiding
+and correcting political and social theory by careful investigation of
+past experience. The historian began to feel an ambition to deal in
+philosophical theories. He was, moreover, touched by the great
+scientific movement. A complete survey of the intellectual history of
+the time would of course have to deal with the great men who were laying
+the foundations of the modern physical sciences; such as Black, and
+Priestley, and Cavendish, and Hunter. It would indeed, have to point out
+how small was the total amount of such knowledge in comparison with the
+vast superstructure which has been erected in the last century. The
+foundation of the Royal Institution at the end of the eighteenth century
+marks, perhaps, the point at which the importance of physical science
+began to impress the popular imagination. But great thinkers had long
+recognised the necessity of applying scientific method in the sphere of
+social and political investigation. Two men especially illustrate the
+tendency and the particular turn which it took in England. Adam Smith's
+great book in 1776 applied scientific method to political economy. Smith
+is distinguished from his French predecessors by the historical element
+of his work; by his careful study, that is, of economic history, and his
+consequent presentation of his theory not as a body of absolute and
+quasi-mathematical truth, but as resting upon the experience and
+applicable to the concrete facts of his time. His limitation is equally
+characteristic. He investigated the play of the industrial mechanism
+with too little reference to the thorough interdependence of economic
+and other social conditions. Showing how that mechanism adapts itself to
+supply and demand, he comes to hold that the one thing necessary is to
+leave free play to competition, and that the one essential force is the
+individual's desire for his own material interests. He became,
+therefore, the prophet of letting things alone. That doctrine--whatever
+its merits or defects--implies acquiescence in the existing order, and
+is radically opposed to a demand for a reconstruction of society. This
+is most clearly illustrated by the other thinker Jeremy Bentham.
+Bentham, unlike Smith, shared the contempt for history of the absolute
+theorists, and was laying down a theory conceived in the spirit of
+absolutism which became the creed of the uncompromising political
+radicals of the next generation. But it is characteristic that Bentham
+was not, during the eighteenth century, a Radical at all. He altogether
+repudiated and vigorously denounced the 'Rights of Men' doctrines of
+Rousseau and his followers, and regarded the Declaration of
+Independence in which they were embodied as a mere hotchpotch of
+absurdity. He is determined to be thoroughly empirical--to take men as
+he found them. But his utilitarianism supposed that men's views of
+happiness and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was
+wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached.
+Then, he thought, rulers and subjects would be equally ready to apply
+his principles. He fully accepted Adam Smith's theory of
+non-interference in economical matters; and his view of philosophy in
+the lump was that there was no such thing, only a heap of obsolete
+fallacies and superstitions which would be easily dispersed by the
+application of a little downright common sense. Bentham's
+utilitarianism, again, is congenial to the whole intellectual movement.
+His ethical theory was substantially identical with that of Paley--the
+most conspicuous writer upon theology of the generation,--and Paley is
+as thoroughly empirical in his theology as in his ethics, and makes the
+truth of religion essentially a question of historical and scientific
+evidence.
+
+It follows that neither in practice nor in speculative questions were
+the English thinkers of the time prescient of any coming revolution.
+They denounced abuses, but they had regarded abuses as removable
+excrescences on a satisfactory system. They were content to appeal to
+common sense, and to leave philosophers to wrangle over ultimate
+results. They might be, and in fact were, stirring questions which would
+lead to far more vital disputes; but for the present they were
+unconscious of the future, and content to keep the old machinery going
+though desiring to improve its efficiency. The characteristic might be
+elucidated by comparison with the other great European literatures. In
+France, Voltaire had begun about 1762 his crusade against orthodoxy, or,
+as he calls it, his attempt to crush the infamous. He was supported by
+his allies, the Encyclopędists. While Helvétius and Holbach were
+expounding materialism and atheism, Rousseau had enunciated the
+political doctrines which were to be applied to the Revolution, and
+elsewhere had uttered that sentimental deism which was to be so dear to
+many of his readers. Our neighbours, in short, after their
+characteristic fashion, were pushing logic to its consequences, and
+fully awake to the approach of an impending catastrophe. In Germany the
+movement took the philosophical and literary shape. Lessing's critical
+writings had heralded the change. Goethe, after giving utterance to
+passing phases of thought, was rising to become the embodiment of a new
+ideal of intellectual culture. Schiller passed through the storm and
+stress period and developed into the greatest national dramatist. Kant
+had awakened from his dogmatic theory, and the publication of the
+_Critique of Pure Reason_ in 1781 had awakened the philosophical world
+of Germany. In both countries the study of earlier English literature,
+of the English deists and freethinkers, of Shakespeare and of
+Richardson, had had great influence, and had been the occasion of new
+developments. But it seemed as though England had ceased to be the
+originator of ideas, and was for the immediate future at least to
+receive political and philosophical impulses from France and Germany. To
+explain the course taken in the different societies, to ask how far it
+might be due to difference of characteristics, and of political
+constitutions, of social organism and individual genius, would be a very
+pretty but rather large problem. I refer to it simply to illustrate the
+facts, to emphasise the quiet, orderly, if you will, sleepy movement of
+English thought which, though combined with great practical energy and
+vigorous investigation of the neighbouring departments of inquiry,
+admitted of comparative indifference to the deeper issues involved. It
+did not generate that stimulus to literary activity due to the dawning
+of new ideas and the opening of wide vistas of speculation. When the
+French Revolution broke out, it took Englishmen, one may say, by
+surprise, and except by a few keen observers or rare disciples of
+Rousseau, was as unexpected as the earthquake of Lisbon.
+
+Let us glance, now, at the class which was to carry on the literary
+tradition. It is known to us best through Boswell, and its
+characteristics are represented by Johnson's favourite club. In one of
+his talks with Boswell the great man amused himself by showing how the
+club might form itself into a university. Every branch of knowledge and
+thought might, he thought, be represented, though it must be admitted
+that some of the professors suggested were scarcely up to the mark. The
+social variety is equally remarkable. Among the thirty or forty members
+elected before Johnson's death, there were the lights of literature;
+Johnson himself and Goldsmith, Adam Smith and Gibbon, and others of
+less fame. The aristocratic element was represented by Beauclerk and by
+half a dozen peers, such as the amiable Lord Charlemont; Burke, Fox,
+Sheridan, and Wyndham represent political as well as literary eminence;
+three or four bishops represent Church authority; legal luminaries
+included Dunning, William Scott (the famous Lord Stowell), Sir Robert
+Chambers, and the amazingly versatile Sir William Jones. Boswell and
+Langton are also cultivated country gentlemen; Sir Joseph Banks stood
+for science, and three other names show the growing respect for art. The
+amiable Dr. Burney was a musician who had raised the standard of his
+calling; Garrick had still more conspicuously gained social respect for
+the profession of actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the representative
+of the English school of painters, whose works still impress upon us the
+beauty of our great-grandmothers and the charm of their children, and
+suggest the existence of a really dignified and pure domestic life in a
+class too often remembered by the reckless gambling and loose morality
+of the gilded youth of the day. To complete the picture of the world in
+which Johnson was at home we should have to add from the outer sphere
+such types as Thrale, the prosperous brewer, and the lively Mrs. Thrale
+and Mrs. Montague, who kept a salon and was president of the 'Blues.'
+The feminine society which was beginning to write our novels was
+represented by Miss Burney and Hannah More; and the thriving booksellers
+who were beginning to become publishers, such as Strahan and the Dillys,
+at whose house he had the famous meeting with the reprobate Wilkes. To
+many of us, I suppose, an intimacy with that Johnsonian group has been a
+first introduction to an interest in English literature. Thanks to
+Boswell, we can hear its talk more distinctly than that of any later
+circle. When we compare it to the society of an earlier time, one or two
+points are conspicuous. Johnson's club was to some extent a continuation
+of the clubs of Queen Anne's time. But the Wits of the earlier period
+who met at taverns to drink with the patrons were a much smaller and
+more dependent body. What had since happened had been the growth of a
+great comfortable middle-class--meaning by middle-class the upper
+stratum, the professional men, the lawyers, clergymen, physicians, the
+merchants who had been enriched by the growth of commerce and
+manufactures; the country gentlemen whose rents had risen, and who could
+come to London and rub off their old rusticity. The aristocracy is still
+in possession of great wealth and political power, but beneath it has
+grown up an independent society which is already beginning to be the
+most important social stratum and the chief factor in political and
+social development. It has sufficient literary cultivation to admit the
+distinguished authors and artists who are becoming independent enough to
+take their place in its ranks and appear at its tables and rule the
+conversation. The society is still small enough to have in the club a
+single representative body and one man for dictator. Johnson succeeded
+in this capacity to Pope, Dryden, and his namesake Ben, but he was the
+last of the race. Men like Carlyle and Macaulay, who had a similar
+distinction in later days, could only be leaders of a single group or
+section in the more complex society of their time, though it was not yet
+so multitudinous and chaotic as the literary class has become in our
+own. Talk could still be good, because the comparatively small society
+was constantly meeting, and each prepared to take his part in the game,
+and was not being swept away distractedly into a miscellaneous vortex
+of all sorts and conditions of humanity. Another fact is conspicuous.
+The environment, we may say, of the man of letters was congenial. He
+shared and uttered the opinions of the class to which he belonged.
+Buckle gives a striking account of the persecution to which the French
+men of letters were exposed at this period; Voltaire, Buffon, and
+Rousseau, Diderot, Marmontel, and Morellet, besides a whole series of
+inferior authors, had their books suppressed and were themselves either
+exiled or imprisoned. There was a state of war in which almost the whole
+literary class attacked the established creed while the rulers replied
+by force instead of argument. In England men of letters were allowed,
+with a few exceptions, to say what they thought, and simply shared the
+average beliefs of their class and their rulers. If some leant towards
+freethinking, the general tendency of the Johnson circle was harshly
+opposed to any revolutionary movement, and authors were satisfied with
+the creeds as with the institutions amid which they lived.
+
+The English literary class was thus content to utter the beliefs
+prevalent in the social stratum to which the chief writers belonged--a
+stratum which had no special grievances and no revolutionary impulses,
+and which could make its voice sufficiently heard though by methods
+which led to no explicit change in the constitution, and suggests only a
+change in the forces which really lay behind them. The chief political
+changes mean for the present that 'public opinion' was acquiring more
+power; that the newspaper press as its organ was especially growing in
+strength; that Parliament was thrown open to the reporter, and speeches
+addressed to the constituencies as well as to the Houses of Parliament,
+and therefore the authority of the legislation becoming more amenable to
+the opinions of the constituency. That is to say, again, that the
+journalist and orator were growing in power and a corresponding
+direction given to literary talent. The Wilkes agitation led to the
+_Letters of Junius_--one of the most conspicuous models of the style of
+the period; and some of the newspapers which were to live through the
+next century began to appear in the following years. This period again
+might almost be called the culminating period of English rhetoric. The
+speeches of Pitt and Burke and Fox and Sheridan in the House of Commons
+and at the impeachment of Warren Hastings must be regarded from the
+literary as well as the political point of view, though in most cases
+the decay of the temporary interests involved has been fatal to their
+permanence. The speeches are still real speeches, intended to affect the
+audience addressed, and yet partly intended also for the reporters. When
+the audience becomes merely the pretext, and the real aim is to address
+the public, the speech tends to become a pamphlet in disguise and loses
+its rhetorical character. I may remark in passing that almost the only
+legal speeches which, so far as my knowledge goes, are still readable,
+were those of Erskine, who, after trying the careers of a sailor and a
+soldier, found the true application for his powers in oratory. Though
+his legal knowledge is said to have been slight, the conditions of the
+time enabled him in addressing a British jury to put forward a political
+manifesto and to display singular literary skill. Burke, however, is the
+typical figure. Had he been a German he might have been a Lessing, and
+the author of the _Sublime and Beautiful_ might, like the author of
+_Laokoon_, have stimulated his countrymen by literary criticism. Or he
+might have obtained a professorship or a court preachership and, like
+Herder, have elaborated ideas towards the future of a philosophy of
+history. In England he was drawn into the political vortex, and in that
+capacity delivered speeches which also appeared as pamphlets, and which
+must rank among the great masterpieces of English literature. I need not
+inquire whether he lost more by giving to party what was meant for
+mankind, or whether his philosophy did not gain more by the necessity of
+constant application to the actual facts of the time. That necessity no
+doubt limited both the amount and the systematic completeness of his
+writings, though it also emphasised some of their highest merits. The
+English political order tended in any case to divert a great deal of
+literary ability into purely political channels--a peculiarity which it
+has not yet lost. Burke is the typical instance of this combination, and
+illustrates most forcibly the point to which I have already adverted.
+Johnson, as we know, was a mass of obstinate Tory prejudice, and held
+that the devil was the first Whig. He held at bottom, I think, that
+politics touched only the surface of human life; that 'kings or laws,'
+as he put it, can cause or cure only a small part of the evils which we
+suffer, and that some authority is absolutely necessary, and that it
+matters little whether it be the authority of a French monarch or an
+English parliament. The Whig he thought objected to authority on
+principle, and was therefore simply subversive. Something of the same
+opinion was held by Johnson's circle in general. They were conservative
+both in politics and theology, and English politics and theological
+disputes did not obviously raise the deeper issues. Even the
+devil-descended Whig--especially the variety represented by Burke--was
+as far as possible from representing what he took for the diabolic
+agency. Burke represents above all things the political application of
+the historical spirit of the period. His hatred for metaphysics, for
+discussions of abstract rights instead of practical expediency; his
+exaltation of 'prescription' and 'tradition'; his admiration for
+Montesquieu and his abhorrence of Rousseau; his idolatry of the British
+constitution, and in short his whole political doctrine from first to
+last, implies the profound conviction of the truth of the principles
+embodied in a thorough historical method. Nobody, I think, was ever more
+consistent in his first principles, though his horror of the Revolution
+no doubt led him so to exaggerate one side of his teaching that he was
+led to denounce some of the consequences which naturally followed from
+other aspects of his doctrine. The schism between the old and the new
+Whigs was not to be foreseen during this period, nor the coming into the
+foreground of the deeper problems involved.
+
+I may now come to the purely literary movement. I have tried to show
+that neither in philosophy, theology, nor political and social strata,
+was there any belief in the necessity of radical changes, or prescience
+of a coming alteration of the intellectual atmosphere. Speculation, like
+politics, could advance quietly along the old paths without fearing that
+they might lead to a precipice; and society, in spite of very vigorous
+and active controversy upon the questions which decided it was in the
+main self-satisfied, complacent, and comfortable. Adherence to the old
+system is after all the general rule, and it is of the change not the
+persistence that we require some account. At the beginning of our
+period, Pope's authority was still generally admitted, although many
+symptoms of discontent had appeared, and Warton was proposing to lower
+him from the first to the second rank. The two most brilliant writers
+who achieved fame in the early years of George III., Goldsmith and
+Sterne, mark a characteristic moment in the literary development.
+Goldsmith's poems the _Traveller_ (1765) and the _Deserted Village_
+(1770), and the _Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766), are still on the old lines.
+The poetry adopts Pope's versification, and implies the same ideal; the
+desire for lucidity, sympathy, moderation, and the qualities which would
+generally be connoted by classical. The substance, distinguished from
+the style, shows the sympathy with sentimentalism of which Rousseau was
+to be the great exponent. Goldsmith is beginning to denounce luxury--a
+characteristic mark of the sentimentalist--and his regret for the period
+when 'every rood of earth maintained its man' is one side of the
+aspiration for a return to the state of nature and simplicity of
+manners. The inimitable Vicar recalls Sir Roger de Coverley and the
+gentle and delicate touch of Addison. But the Vicar is beginning to take
+an interest in philanthropy. He is impressed by the evils of the old
+prison system which had already roused Oglethorpe (who like
+Goldsmith--as I may notice--disputed with Johnson as to the evils of
+luxury) and was soon to arouse Howard. The greatest attraction of the
+Vicar is due to the personal charm of Goldsmith's character, but his
+character makes him sympathise with the wider social movements and the
+growth of genuine philanthropic sentiment. Goldsmith, in his remarks
+upon the _Present State of Polite Learning_ (1759), explains the decay
+of literature (literature is always decaying) by the general enervation
+which accompanies learning and the want of originality caused by the
+growth of criticism. That was not an unnatural view at a time when the
+old forms are beginning to be inadequate for the new thoughts which are
+seeking for utterance. As yet, however, Goldsmith's own work proves
+sufficiently that the new motive could be so far adapted to the old form
+as to produce an artistic masterpiece. Sterne may illustrate a similar
+remark. He represents, no doubt, a kind of sham sentimentalism with an
+insincerity which has disgusted many able critics. He was resolved to
+attract notice at any price--by putting on cap and bells, and by the
+pruriency which stains his best work. Like many contemporaries he was
+reading old authors and turned them to account in a way which exposed
+him to the charge of plagiarism. He valued them for their quaintness.
+They enabled him to satisfy his propensity for being deliberately
+eccentric which made Horace Walpole call _Tristram Shandy_ the 'dregs of
+nonsense,' and the learned Dr. Farmer prophesied that in twenty years it
+would be necessary to search antiquarian shops for a copy. Sterne's
+great achievement, however, was not in the mere buffoonery but in the
+passages where he continued the Addison tradition. Uncle Toby is a
+successor of Sir Roger, and the famous death of Lefevre is told with
+inimitable simplicity and delicacy of touch. Goldsmith and Sterne work
+upon the old lines, but make use of the new motives and materials which
+are beginning to interest readers, and which will in time call for
+different methods of treatment.
+
+I must briefly indicate one other point. The society of which Garrick
+was a member, and which was both reading Shakespeare and seeing his
+plays revived, might well seem fitted to maintain a drama. Goldsmith
+complains of the decay of the stage, which he attributes partly to the
+exclusion of new pieces by the old Shakespearian drama. On that point he
+agrees as far as he dares with Voltaire. He ridiculed Home's _Douglas_,
+one of the last tragedies which made even a temporary success, and which
+certainly showed that the true impulse was extinct. But Goldsmith and
+his younger contemporary Sheridan succeeded for a time in restoring
+vigour to comedy. Their triumph over the sentimentalists Kelly and
+Cumberland showed, as Johnson put it, that they could fill the aim of
+the comedian, namely, making an audience merry. _She Stoops to Conquer_
+and _The School for Scandal_ remain among genuine literary masterpieces.
+They are revivals of the old Congreve method, and imply the growth of a
+society more decent and free from the hard cynical brutality which
+disgraced the earlier writers. I certainly cannot give a sufficient
+reason why the society of Johnson and Reynolds, full of shrewd common
+sense, enjoying humour, and with a literary social tradition, should not
+have found other writers capable of holding up the comic mirror. I am
+upon the verge of a discussion which seems to be endless, the causes of
+the decay of the British stage. I must give it a wide berth, and only
+note that, as a fact, Sheridan took to politics, and his mantle fell on
+no worthy successor. The next craze (for which he was partly
+responsible) was the German theatre of Kotzebue, which represented the
+intrusion of new influences and the production of a great quantity of
+rubbish. After Goldsmith the poetic impulse seems to have decayed
+entirely. After the _Deserted Village_ (1770) no striking work appeared
+till Crabbe published his first volume (1781), and was followed by his
+senior Cowper in 1782. Both of them employed the metre of Pope, though
+Cowper took to blank verse; and Crabbe, though he had read and admired
+Spenser, was to the end of his career a thorough disciple of Pope.
+Johnson read and revised his _Village_, which was thoroughly in harmony
+with the old gentleman's poetic creed. Yet both Cowper and Crabbe
+stimulate what may be called in some sense 'a return to nature'; though
+not in such a way as to announce a literary revolution. Each was
+restrained by personal conditions. Cowper's poetical aims were
+profoundly affected by his religious views. The movement which we call
+Methodist was essentially moral and philanthropic. It agreed so far with
+Rousseau's sentimentalism that it denounced the corruptions of the
+existing order; but instead of attributing the evils to the departure
+from the ideal state of nature, expressed them by the theological
+doctrine of the corruption of the human heart. That implied in some
+senses a fundamental difference. But there was a close coincidence in
+the judgment of actual motives. Cowper fully agreed with Rousseau that
+our rulers had become selfish and luxurious; that war was kept up to
+satisfy the ambition of kings and courtiers; that vice flourished
+because the aims of our rulers and teachers were low and selfish, and
+that slavery was a monstrous evil supported by the greed of traders.
+Brown's _Estimate_, he said, was thoroughly right as to our degeneracy,
+though Brown had not perceived the deepest root of the evil. Cowper's
+satire has lost its salt because he had retired too completely from the
+world to make a telling portrait. But he succeeds most admirably when he
+finds relief from the tortures of insanity by giving play to the
+exquisite playfulness and tenderness which was never destroyed by his
+melancholy. He delights us by an unconscious illustration of the simple
+domestic life in the quiet Olney fields, which we see in another form in
+the charming White of Selborne. He escapes from the ghastly images of
+religious insanity when he has indulged in the innocent play of tender
+and affectionate emotions, which finds itself revealed in tranquillising
+scenery. The literary result is a fresh appreciation of 'Nature.' Pope's
+Nature has become for him artificial and conventional. From a religious
+point of view it represents 'cold morality,' and the substitution of
+logical argumentation for the language of the heart. It suggests the
+cynicism of the heartless fine gentleman who sneers at Wesley and
+Bunyan, and covers his want of feeling by a stilted deism. Cowper tried
+unsuccessfully to supersede Pope's _Homer_; in trying to be simple he
+became bald; but he also tried most successfully to express with
+absolute sincerity the simple and deep emotions of an exquisitely tender
+character.
+
+Crabbe meanwhile believed in Pope, and had a sturdy solid contempt for
+Methodism. Cowper's guide, Newton, would have passed with him for a
+nuisance and a fanatic. Crabbe is a thorough realist. In some ways he
+may be compared to his contemporary Malthus. Malthus started, as we
+know, by refuting the sentimentalism of Rousseau; Crabbe's _Village_ is
+a protest against the embodiment of the same spirit in Goldsmith. He is
+determined to see things as they are, with no rose-coloured mist. Crabbe
+replies to critics that if his realism was unpoetical, the criterion
+suggested would condemn much of Dryden and Pope as equally unpoetical.
+He was not renouncing but carrying on the tradition, and was admired by
+Byron in his rather wayward mood of Pope-worship as the last
+representative of the legitimate school. The position is significant.
+Crabbe condemns Goldsmith's 'Nature' because it is 'unnatural.' It means
+the Utopian ideal of Rousseau which never did and never can exist. It
+belongs to the world of old-fashioned pastoral poetry, in which Corydon
+and Thyrsis had their being. He will paint British squires and farmers
+and labourers as he has seen them with his own eyes. The wit has become
+for him the mere fop, whose poetry is an arbitrary convention, a mere
+plaything for the fine ladies and gentlemen detached from the living
+interests of mankind. The Pope tradition is still maintained, but is to
+be revised by being brought down again to contact with solid earth.
+Therefore on the one hand he is thoroughly in harmony with Johnson, the
+embodiment of common sense, and on the other, excited the enthusiasm of
+Wordsworth and Scott, who, though leaders of a new movement, heartily
+sympathised with his realism and rejection of the old conventionalism.
+Though Crabbe regards Cowper's religion as fanaticism, they are so far
+agreed that both consider that poetry has become divorced from reality
+and reflects the ugly side of actual human nature. They do not propose a
+revolution in its methods, but to put fresh life into it by seeing
+things as they are. And both of them, living in the country, apply the
+principle to 'Nature' in the sense of scenery. Cowper gives interest to
+the flat meadows of the Ouse; and Crabbe, a botanist and lover of
+natural history, paints with unrivalled fidelity and force the flat
+shores and tideways of his native East Anglia. They are both therefore
+prophets of a love of Nature, in one of the senses of the Protean word.
+Cowper, who prophesied the fall of the Bastille and denounced luxury,
+was to some extent an unconscious ally of Rousseau, though he regarded
+the religious aspects of Rousseau's doctrine as shallow and
+unsatisfactory. Crabbe shows the attitude of which Johnson is the most
+characteristic example. Johnson was thoroughly content with the old
+school in so far as it meant that poetry must be thoroughly rational and
+sensible. His hatred of cant and foppery was so far congenial to the
+tradition; but it implied a difference. To him Pope's metaphysical
+system was mere foppery, and the denunciation of luxury mere cant. He
+felt mere contempt for Goldsmith's flirtation with that vein of
+sentiment. His dogged conservatism prevented him from recognising the
+strength of the philosophical movements which were beginning to clothe
+themselves in Rousseauism. Burke, if he condemned the revolutionary
+doctrine as wicked, saw distinctly how potent a lesson it was becoming.
+Johnson, showing the true British indifference, could treat the movement
+with contempt--Hume's scepticism was a mere 'milking the bull'--a love
+of paradox for its own sake--and Wilkes and the Whigs, though wicked in
+intention, were simple and superficial dealers in big words. In the
+literary application the same sturdy common sense was opposed to the
+Pope tradition so far as that tradition opposed common sense.
+Conventional diction, pastorals, and twaddle about Nature belonged to
+the nonsensical side. He entirely sympathised with Crabbe's substitution
+of the real living brutish clown for the unreal swain of Arcadia; that
+is, for developing poetry by making it thoroughly realistic even at the
+cost of being prosaic.
+
+So far the tendency to realism was thoroughly congenial to the
+matter-of-fact utilitarian spirit of the time, and was in some sense in
+harmony with a 'return to Nature.' But it was unconsciously becoming
+divorced from some of the great movements of thought, of which it failed
+to perceive the significance. A new inspiration was showing itself, to
+which critics have done at least ample justice. The growth of history
+had led to renewed interest in much that had been despised as mere
+curiosities or ridiculed as implying the barbarism of our ancestors. I
+have already noticed the dilettantism of the previous generation, and
+the interest of Gray and Collins and Warton and Walpole in antiquarian
+researches. Gothic had ceased to be a simple term of reproach. The old
+English literature is beginning to be studied seriously. Pope and
+Warburton and Johnson had all edited Shakespeare; Garrick had given him
+fresh popularity, and the first edition of _Old Plays_ by Dodsley
+appeared in 1744. Similar studies were extending in many directions.
+Mallet in his work upon Denmark (1755) gave a translation of the _Eddas_
+which called attention to Scandinavian mythology. Bodmer soon
+afterwards published for the first time the _Nibelungen Lied_.
+Macpherson startled the literary world in 1762 by what professed to be
+an epic poem from the Gaelic. Chatterton's career (1752-1770) was a
+proof not only of unique poetical precocity, but of a singular facility
+in divining the tastes of the literary world at the time. Percy's
+_Reliques_ appeared in 1765. Percy, I may note, had begun oddly enough
+by publishing a Chinese novel (1761), and a translation of Icelandic
+poetry (1763). Not long afterwards Sir William Jones published
+translations of Oriental poetry. Briefly, as historical, philological,
+and antiquarian research extended, the man of letters was also beginning
+to seek for new 'motives,' and to discover merits in old forms of
+literature. The importance of this new impulse cannot be over-estimated,
+but it may be partly misinterpreted. It is generally described as a
+foretaste of what is called the Romantic movement. The word is no doubt
+very useful--though exceedingly vague. The historian of literature is
+sometimes given to speak as though it meant the revelation of a new and
+definite creed. He speaks, that is, like the historian of science, who
+accepts Darwinism as the revelation of a new principle transfusing the
+old conceptions, and traces the various anticipations, the seminal idea;
+or like the Protestant theologian who used to regard Luther as having
+announced the full truth dimly foreseen by Wicliff or the Albigenses.
+Romanticism, that is, is treated as a single movement; while the men who
+share traces of the taste are supposed to have not only foreseen the new
+doctrine but to have been the actual originators. Yet I think that all
+competent writers will also agree that Romanticism is a name which has
+been applied to a number of divergent or inconsistent schools. It seems
+to mean every impulse which tended to find the old clothing inadequate
+for the new thoughts, which caused dissatisfaction with the old
+philosophical and religious or political systems and aspirations, and
+took a corresponding variety of literary forms. It is far too complex a
+phenomenon to be summed up in any particular formula. The mischief is
+that to take the literary evolution as an isolated phenomenon is to miss
+an essential clue to such continuity and unity as it really possesses.
+When we omit the social factor, the solidarity which exists between
+contemporaries occupied with the same problem and sharing certain common
+beliefs, each school appears as an independent unit, implying a
+discontinuity or a simple relation of contrariety, and we explain the
+succession by such a verbal phrase as 'reaction.' The real problem is,
+what does the reaction mean? and that requires us to take into account
+the complex and variously composed currents of thought and reason which
+are seeking for literary expression. The popularity of _Ossian_ for
+example, is a curious phenomenon. At the first sight we are disposed to
+agree with Johnson that any man could write such stuff if he would
+abandon his mind to it, and to add that if any one would write it no one
+could read it. Yet we know that _Ossian_ appealed to the gigantic
+intellects of Goethe and Napoleon. That is a symptom of deep
+significance; _Ossian_ suited Goethe in the _Werther_ period and
+Napoleon took it with him when he was dreaming of rivalling Alexander's
+conquests in the East. We may perhaps understand why the gigantesque
+pictures in _Ossian_ of the northern mountains and scenery--with all its
+vagueness, incoherence, and bombast, was somehow congenial to minds
+dissatisfied, for different reasons, with the old ideals. To explain the
+charm more precisely is a very pretty problem for the acute critic.
+_Ossian_, it is clear, fell in with the mood characteristic of the
+time. But when we ask what effect it produced in English literature, the
+answer must surely be, 'next to none.' Gray was enthusiastic and tried
+to believe in its authenticity. Scots, like Blair and even the sceptical
+Hume--though Hume soon revolted--defended _Ossian_ out of patriotic
+prejudice, and Burns professed to admire. But nobody in Great Britain
+took to writing Ossianesque. Wordsworth was simply disgusted by the
+unreality, and nothing could be less in the _Ossian_ vein than Burns.
+The _Ossian_ craze illustrates the extension of historical interest, of
+which I have spoken, and the vague discontent of Wertherism. But I do
+not see how the publication can be taken as the cause of a new
+departure, although it was an indication of the state of mind which led
+to a new departure. Percy's _Reliques_, again, is often mentioned as an
+'epoch-making' book. Undoubtedly it was a favourite with Scott and many
+other readers of his generation. But how far did it create any change of
+taste? The old ballad was on one side congenial to the classical school,
+as Addison showed by his criticism of _Chevy Chase_ for its simple
+version of a heroic theme. Goldsmith tried his hand at a ballad about
+the same time with Percy, and both showed that they were a little too
+much afraid that simplicity might degenerate into childishness, and gain
+Johnson's contempt. But there was nothing in the old school incompatible
+with a rather patronising appreciation of the popular poetry. It gained
+fresh interest when the historical tendency gave a newer meaning to the
+old society in which ballad poetry had flourished.
+
+This suggests the last remark which I have room to make. One
+characteristic of the period is a growth of provincial centres of some
+intellectual culture. As manufactures extended, and manufacturers began
+to read, circles of some literary pretensions sprang up in Norwich,
+Birmingham, Bristol, and Manchester; and most conspicuously in
+Edinburgh. Though the Scot was coming south in numbers which alarmed
+Johnson, there were so many eminent Scots at home during this time that
+Edinburgh seems at least to have rivalled London as an intellectual
+centre. The list of great men includes Hume and Adam Smith, Robertson
+and Hailes and Adam Ferguson, Kames, Monboddo, and Dugald Stewart among
+philosophers and historians; John Home, Blair, G. Campbell, Beattie, and
+Henry Mackenzie among men of letters; Hutton, Black, Cullen, and
+Gregory among scientific leaders. Scottish patriotism then, as at other
+periods, was vigorous, and happily ceasing to be antagonistic to
+unionist sentiment. The Scot admitted that he was touched by
+provincialism; but he retained a national pride, and only made the
+modest and most justifiable claim that he was intrinsically superior to
+the Southron. He still preserved intellectual and social traditions, and
+cherished them the more warmly, which marked him as a distinct member of
+the United Kingdom. In Scotland the rapid industrial development had
+given fresh life to the whole society without obliterating its
+distinctive peculiarities. Song and ballad and local legends were still
+alive, and not merely objects of literary curiosity. It was under such
+conditions that Burns appeared, the greatest beyond compare of all the
+self-taught poets. Now there can be no explanation whatever of the
+occurrence of a man of genius at a given time and place. For anything we
+can say, Burns was an accident; but given the genius, his relation was
+clear, and the genius enabled him to recognise it with unequalled
+clearness. Burns became, as he has continued, the embodiment of the
+Scottish genius. Scottish patriotic feeling animates some of his
+noblest poems, and whether as an original writer--and no one could be
+more original--or as adapting and revising the existing poetry, he
+represents the essential spirit of the Scottish peasant. I need not
+point out that this implies certain limitations, and some failings worse
+than limitation. But it implies also the spontaneous and masculine
+vigour which we may call poetic inspiration of the highest kind. He had
+of course read the English authors such as Addison and Pope. So far as
+he tried to imitate the accepted form he was apt to lose his fire. He is
+inspired when he has a nation behind him and is the mouthpiece of
+sentiments, traditional, but also living and vigorous. He represents,
+therefore, a new period. The lyrical poetry seemed to have died out in
+England. It suddenly comes to life in Scotland and reaches unsurpassable
+excellence within certain limits, because a man of true genius rises to
+utter the emotions of a people in their most natural form without
+bothering about canons of literary criticism. The society and the
+individual are in thorough harmony, and that, I take it, is the
+condition of really great literature at all times.
+
+This must suggest my concluding moral. The watchword of every literary
+school may be brought under the formula 'Return to Nature': though
+'Nature' receives different interpretations. To be natural, on the one
+hand, is to be sincere and spontaneous; to utter the emotions natural to
+you in the forms which are also natural, so far as the accepted canons
+are not rules imposed by authority but have been so thoroughly
+assimilated as to express your own instinctive impulses. On the other
+side, it means that the literature must be produced by the class which
+embodies the really vital and powerful currents of thought which are
+moulding society. The great author must have a people behind him; utter
+both what he really thinks and feels and what is thought and felt most
+profoundly by his contemporaries. As the literature ceases to be truly
+representative, and adheres to the conventionalism of the former period,
+it becomes 'unnatural' and the literary forms become a survival instead
+of a genuine creation. The history of eighteenth century literature
+illustrates this by showing how as the social changes give new influence
+to the middle classes and then to the democracy, the aristocratic class
+which represented the culture of the opening stage is gradually pushed
+aside; its methods become antiquated and its conventions cease to
+represent the ideals of the most vigorous part of the population. The
+return to Nature with Pope and Addison and Swift meant, get rid of
+pedantry, be thoroughly rational, and take for your guide the bright
+common sense of the Wit and the scholar. During Pope's supremacy the Wit
+who represents the aristocracy produces some admirably polished work;
+but the development of journalism and Grub Street shows that he is
+writing to satisfy the popular interests so keenly watched by Defoe in
+Grub Street. In the period of Richardson and Fielding Nature has become
+the Nature of the middle-class John Bull. The old romances have become
+hopelessly unnatural, and they will give us portraits of living human
+beings, whether Clarissa or Tom Jones. The rationalism of the higher
+class strikes them as cynical, and the generation which listens to
+Wesley must have also a secular literature, which, whether sentimental
+as with Richardson or representing common sense with Fielding, must at
+any rate correspond to solid substantial matter-of-fact motives,
+intelligible to the ordinary Briton of the time. In the last period, the
+old literary conventions, though retaining their old literary prestige,
+are becoming threadbare while preserving the old forms. Even the
+Johnsonian conservatism implies hatred for cant, for mere foppery and
+sham sentimentalism; and though it uses them, insists with Crabbe upon
+keeping in contact with fact. We must be 'realistic,' though we can
+retain the old literary forms. The appeal to Nature, meanwhile, has come
+with Rousseau and the revolutionists to mean something different--the
+demand, briefly, for a thorough-going reconstruction of the whole
+philosophical and social fabric. To the good old Briton, Whig or Tory,
+that seemed to be either diabolical or mere Utopian folly. To him the
+British constitution is still thoroughly congenial and 'natural.'
+Meanwhile intellectual movement has introduced a new element. The
+historical sense is being developed, as a settled society with a complex
+organisation becomes conscious at once of its continuity and of the slow
+processes of growth by which it has been elaborated. The fusion of
+English and Scottish nations stimulates the patriotism of the smaller
+though better race, and generates a passionate enthusiasm for the old
+literature which represents the characteristic genius of the smaller
+community. Burns embodies the sentiment, though without any conscious
+reference to theories philosophical or historical. The significance was
+to be illustrated by Scott--an equally fervid patriot. He tells Crabbe
+how oddly a passage in the _Village_ was associated in his memory with
+border-riding ballads and scraps of old plays. 'Nature' for Scott meant
+'his honest grey hills' speaking in every fold of old traditional lore.
+That meant, in one sense, that Scott was not only romantic but
+reactionary. That was his weakness. But if he was the first to make the
+past alive, he was also the first to make the present historical. His
+masterpieces are not his descriptions of medięval knights so much as the
+stories in which he illuminates the present by his vivid presentation of
+the present order as the outgrowth from the old, and makes the Scottish
+peasant or lawyer or laird interesting as a product and a type of social
+conditions. Nature therefore to him includes the natural processes by
+which society has been developed under the stress of circumstances.
+Nothing could be more unnatural for him than the revolutionary principle
+which despises tradition and regards the patriotic sentiment as
+superfluous and irrational. Wordsworth represents again another sense of
+Nature. He announced as his special principle that poetry should speak
+the language of Nature, and therefore, as he inferred, of the ordinary
+peasant and uneducated man. The hills did not speak to him of legend or
+history but of the sentiment of the unsophisticated yeoman or
+'statesman.' He sympathised enthusiastically with the French Revolution
+so long as he took it to utter the simple republican sentiment congenial
+to a small society of farmers and shepherds. He abandoned it when he
+came to think that it really meant the dissolution of the religious and
+social sentiments which correspond to the deepest instincts which bound
+such men together. Coleridge represents a variation. He was the first
+Englishman to be affected by the philosophical movement of Germany. He
+had been an ardent revolutionist in the days when he adopted the
+metaphysics of Hartley and Priestley, which fell in with the main
+eighteenth-century current of scepticism. He came to think that the
+movement represented a perversion of the intellect. It meant materialism
+and scepticism, or interpreted Nature as a mere dead mechanism. It
+omitted, therefore, the essential element which is expressed by what we
+may roughly call the mystical tendency in philosophy. Nature must be
+taken as the embodiment of a divine idea. Nature, therefore, in his
+poetry, is regarded not from Scott's point of view as subordinate to
+human history, or from Wordsworth's as teaching the wisdom of
+unsophisticated mankind, but rather as a symbolism legible to the higher
+imagination. Though his fine critical sense made him keep his philosophy
+and his poetry distinct, that is the common tendency which gives unity
+to his work and which made his utterances so stimulating to congenial
+intellects. His criticism of the 'Nature' of Pope and Bolingbroke would
+be substantially, that in their hands the reason which professed to
+interpret Nature became cold and materialistic, because its logic left
+out of account the mysterious but essential touches revealed only to the
+heart, or, in his language, to the reason but not to the understanding.
+Meanwhile, though the French revolutionary doctrines were preached in
+England, they only attracted the literary leaders for a time, and it was
+not till the days of Byron and Shelley that they found thorough-going
+representatives in English poetry. On that, however, I must not speak.
+I have tried to indicate briefly how Scott and Wordsworth and Coleridge,
+the most eminent leaders of the new school, partly represented movements
+already obscurely working in England, and how they were affected by the
+new ideas which had sprung to life elsewhere. They, like their
+predecessors, are essentially trying to cast aside the literary
+'survivals' of effete conditions, and succeed so far as they could find
+adequate expression for the great ideas of their time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of English Literature And Society In The Eighteenth Century, by Leslie Stephen.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of English Literature and Society in the
+Eighteenth Century, by Leslie  Stephen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century
+
+Author: Leslie  Stephen
+
+Release Date: April 17, 2007 [EBook #21123]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LITERATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Martin
+Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<h1>ENGLISH<br />LITERATURE AND SOCIETY</h1>
+
+<h3>IN THE</h3>
+
+<h1>EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</h1>
+
+<h3>FORD LECTURES, 1903</h3>
+
+<h2><i>By</i> LESLIE STEPHEN</h2>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><img src="images/001.png" width='150' height='162' alt="logo" /></p>
+
+<p class="tbrk">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>LONDON<br /><i>DUCKWORTH and CO.</i></h3>
+
+<h4>3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.<br />1904</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#TO_HERBERT_FISHER">TO HERBERT FISHER</a></li>
+<li><a href="#PUBLISHERS_NOTE">PUBLISHERS' NOTE</a></li>
+<li><a href="#I">I.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#II">II.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#III">III.</a></li>
+<li>(1714-1739)</li>
+<li><a href="#IV">IV.</a></li>
+<li>(1739-1763)</li>
+<li><a href="#V">V.</a></li>
+<li>(1763-1788)</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="TO_HERBERT_FISHER" id="TO_HERBERT_FISHER"></a>TO HERBERT FISHER</h2>
+
+<h3>NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">My Dear Herbert</span>,&mdash;I had prepared these Lectures for delivery, when a
+serious breakdown of health made it utterly impossible for me to appear
+in person. The University was then good enough to allow me to employ a
+deputy; and you kindly undertook to read the Lectures for me. I have
+every reason to believe that they lost nothing by the change.</p>
+
+<p>I need only explain that, although they had to be read in six sections,
+and are here divided into five chapters, no other change worth noticing
+has been made. Other changes probably ought to have been made, but my
+health has been unequal to the task of serious correction. The
+publication has been delayed from the same cause.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, I wish to express my gratitude for your services. I doubt,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>too, whether I should have ventured to republish them, had it not been
+for your assertion that they have some interest. I would adopt the good
+old form of dedicating them to you, were it not that I can find no
+precedent for a dedication by an uncle to a nephew&mdash;uncles having, I
+fancy, certain opinions as to the light in which they are generally
+regarded by nephews. I will not say what that is, nor mention another
+reason which has its weight. I will only say that, though this is not a
+dedication, it is meant to express a very warm sense of gratitude due to
+you upon many grounds.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;Your affectionate</p>
+
+<p class="right">LESLIE STEPHEN.</p>
+
+<p><i>November 1903</i>.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="PUBLISHERS_NOTE" id="PUBLISHERS_NOTE"></a>PUBLISHERS' NOTE</h2>
+
+<p>Owing to the ill-health of Sir Leslie Stephen the proofs have been
+passed for press by Mr. H. Fisher, Fellow of New College, who read the
+Lectures at Oxford on behalf of the Author.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+<p>When I was honoured by the invitation to deliver this course of
+lectures, I did not accept without some hesitation. I am not qualified
+to speak with authority upon such subjects as have been treated by my
+predecessors&mdash;the course of political events or the growth of legal
+institutions. My attention has been chiefly paid to the history of
+literature, and it might be doubtful whether that study is properly
+included in the phrase 'historical.' Yet literature expresses men's
+thoughts and passions, which have, after all, a considerable influence
+upon their lives. The writer of a people's songs, as we are told, may
+even have a more powerful influence than the maker of their laws. He
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>certainly reveals more directly the true springs of popular action. The
+truth has been admitted by many historians who are too much overwhelmed
+by state papers to find space for any extended application of the
+method. No one, I think, has shown more clearly how much light could be
+derived from this source than your Oxford historian J. R. Green, in some
+brilliant passages of his fascinating book. Moreover, if I may venture
+to speak of myself, my own interest in literature has always been
+closely connected with its philosophical and social significance.
+Literature may of course be studied simply for its own intrinsic merits.
+But it may also be regarded as one manifestation of what is called 'the
+spirit of the age.' I have, too, been much impressed by a further
+conclusion. No one doubts that the speculative movement affects the
+social and political&mdash;I think that less attention has been given to the
+reciprocal influence. The philosophy of a period is often treated as
+though it were the product of impartial and abstract
+investigation&mdash;something worked out by the great thinker in his study
+and developed by simple logical deductions from the positions
+established by his predecessors. To my mind, though I cannot now dwell
+upon the point, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> philosophy of an age is in itself determined to a
+very great extent by the social position. It gives the solutions of the
+problems forced upon the reasoner by the practical conditions of his
+time. To understand why certain ideas become current, we have to
+consider not merely the ostensible logic but all the motives which led
+men to investigate the most pressing difficulties suggested by the
+social development. Obvious principles are always ready, like germs, to
+come to life when the congenial soil is provided. And what is true of
+the philosophy is equally, and perhaps more conspicuously, true of the
+artistic and literary embodiment of the dominant ideas which are
+correlated with the social movement.</p>
+
+<p>A recognition of the general principle is implied in the change which
+has come over the methods of criticism. It has more and more adopted the
+historical attitude. Critics in an earlier day conceived their function
+to be judicial. They were administering a fixed code of laws applicable
+in all times and places. The true canons for dramatic or epic poetry,
+they held, had been laid down once for all by Aristotle or his
+commentators; and the duty of the critic was to consider whether the
+author had infringed or conformed to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> established rules, and to pass
+sentence accordingly. I will not say that the modern critic has
+abandoned altogether that conception of his duty. He seems to me not
+infrequently to place himself on the judgment-seat with a touch of his
+old confidence, and to sentence poor authors with sufficient airs of
+infallibility. Sometimes, indeed, the reflection that he is representing
+not an invariable tradition but the last new &aelig;sthetic doctrine, seems
+even to give additional keenness to his opinions and to suggest no
+doubts of his infallibility. And yet there is a change in his position.
+He admits, or at any rate is logically bound to admit, the code which he
+administers requires modification in different times and places. The old
+critic spoke like the organ of an infallible Church, regarding all forms
+of art except his own as simply heretical. The modern critic speaks like
+the liberal theologian, who sees in heretical and heathen creeds an
+approximation to the truth, and admits that they may have a relative
+value, and even be the best fitted for the existing conditions. There
+are, undoubtedly, some principles of universal application; and the old
+critics often expounded them with admirable common-sense and force. But
+like general tenets of morality, they are apt to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> commonplaces, whose
+specific application requires knowledge of concrete facts. When the
+critics assumed that the forms familiar to themselves were the only
+possible embodiments of those principles, and condemned all others as
+barbarous, they were led to pass judgments, such, for example, as
+Voltaire's view of Dante and Shakespeare, which strike us as strangely
+crude and unappreciative. The change in this, as in other departments of
+thought, means again that criticism, as Professor Courthope has said,
+must become thoroughly inductive. We must start from experience. We must
+begin by asking impartially what pleased men, and then inquire why it
+pleased them. We must not decide dogmatically that it ought to have
+pleased or displeased on the simple ground that it is or is not
+congenial to ourselves. As historical methods extend, the same change
+takes place in regard to political or economical or religious, as well
+as in regard to literary investigations. We can then become catholic
+enough to appreciate varying forms; and recognise that each has its own
+rules, right under certain conditions and appropriate within the given
+sphere. The great empire of literature, we may say, has many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> provinces.
+There is a 'law of nature' deducible from universal principles of reason
+which is applicable throughout, and enforces what may be called the
+cardinal virtues common to all forms of human expression. But
+subordinate to this, there is also a municipal law, varying in every
+province and determining the particular systems which are applicable to
+the different state of things existing in each region.</p>
+
+<p>This method, again, when carried out, implies the necessary connection
+between the social and literary departments of history. The adequate
+criticism must be rooted in history. In some sense I am ready to admit
+that all criticism is a nuisance and a parasitic growth upon literature.
+The most fruitful reading is that in which we are submitting to a
+teacher and asking no questions as to the secret of his influence.
+Bunyan had no knowledge of the 'higher criticism'; he read into the
+Bible a great many dogmas which were not there, and accepted rather
+questionable historical data. But perhaps he felt some essential
+characteristics of the book more thoroughly than far more cultivated
+people. No critic can instil into a reader that spontaneous sympathy
+with the thoughts and emotions incarnated in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> great masterpieces
+without which all reading is cold and valueless. In spite of all
+differences of dialect and costume, the great men can place themselves
+in spiritual contact with men of most distant races and periods. Art, we
+are told, is immortal. In other words, is unprogressive. The great
+imaginative creations have not been superseded. We go to the last new
+authorities for our science and our history, but the essential thoughts
+and emotions of human beings were incarnated long ago with unsurpassable
+clearness. When FitzGerald published his <i>Omar Khayyäm</i>, readers were
+surprised to find that an ancient Persian had given utterance to
+thoughts which we considered to be characteristic of our own day. They
+had no call to be surprised. The writer of the Book of Job had long
+before given the most forcible expression to thought which still moves
+our deepest feelings; and Greek poets had created unsurpassable
+utterance for moods common to all men in all ages.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Still green with bays each ancient altar stands</div>
+<div>Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>as Pope puts it; and when one remembers how through all the centuries
+the masters of thought and expression have appealed to men who knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+nothing of criticism, higher or lower, one is tempted to doubt whether
+the critic be not an altogether superfluous phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>The critic, however, has become a necessity; and has, I fancy, his
+justification in his own sphere. Every great writer may be regarded in
+various aspects. He is, of course, an individual, and the critic may
+endeavour to give a psychological analysis of him; and to describe his
+intellectual and moral constitution and detect the secrets of his
+permanent influence without reference to the particular time and place
+of his appearance. That is an interesting problem when the materials are
+accessible. But every man is also an organ of the society in which he
+has been brought up. The material upon which he works is the whole
+complex of conceptions, religious, imaginative and ethical, which forms
+his mental atmosphere. That suggests problems for the historian of
+philosophy. He is also dependent upon what in modern phrase we call his
+'environment'&mdash;the social structure of which he forms a part, and which
+gives a special direction to his passions and aspirations. That suggests
+problems for the historian of political and social institutions. Fully
+to appreciate any great writer, therefore, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> is necessary to
+distinguish between the characteristics due to the individual with
+certain idiosyncrasies and the characteristics due to his special
+modification by the existing stage of social and intellectual
+development. In the earliest period the discrimination is impossible.
+Nobody, I suppose, not even if he be Provost of Oriel, can tell us much
+of the personal characteristics of the author&mdash;if there was an
+author&mdash;of the <i>Iliad</i>. He must remain for us a typical Greek of the
+heroic age; though even so, the attempt to realise the corresponding
+state of society may be of high value to an appreciation of the poetry.
+In later times we suffer from the opposite difficulty. Our descendants
+will be able to see the general characteristics of the Victorian age
+better than we, who unconsciously accept our own peculiarities, like the
+air we breathe, as mere matters of course. Meanwhile a Tennyson and a
+Browning strike us less as the organs of a society than by the
+idiosyncrasies which belong to them as individuals. But in the normal
+case, the relation of the two studies is obvious. Dante, for example, is
+profoundly interesting to the psychologist, considered simply as a human
+being. We are then interested by the astonishing imaginative intensity
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> intellectual power and the vivid personality of the man who still
+lives for us as he lived in the Italy of six centuries ago. But as all
+competent critics tell us, the <i>Divina Commedia</i> also reveals in the
+completest way the essential spirit of the Middle Ages. The two studies
+reciprocally enlighten each other. We know Dante and understand his
+position the more thoroughly as we know better the history of the
+political and ecclesiastical struggles in which he took part, and the
+philosophical doctrines which he accepted and interpreted; and
+conversely, we understand the period the better when we see how its
+beliefs and passions affected a man of abnormal genius and marked
+idiosyncrasy of character. The historical revelation is the more
+complete, precisely because Dante was not a commonplace or average
+person but a man of unique force, mental and moral. The remark may
+suggest what is the special value of the literary criticism or its
+bearing upon history. We may learn from many sources what was the
+current mythology of the day; and how ordinary people believed in devils
+and in a material hell lying just beneath our feet. The vision probably
+strikes us as repulsive and simply preposterous. If we proceed to ask
+what it meant and why it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> had so powerful a hold upon the men of the
+day, we may perhaps be innocent enough to apply to the accepted
+philosophers, especially to Aquinas, whose thoughts had been so
+thoroughly assimilated by the poet. No doubt that may suggest very
+interesting inquiries for the metaphysician; but we should find not only
+that the philosophy is very tough and very obsolete, and therefore very
+wearisome for any but the strongest intellectual appetites, but also
+that it does not really answer our question. The philosopher does not
+give us the reasons which determine men to believe, but the official
+justification of their beliefs which has been elaborated by the most
+acute and laborious dialecticians. The inquiry shows how a philosophical
+system can be hooked on to an imaginative conception of the universe;
+but it does not give the cause of the belief, only the way in which it
+can be more or less favourably combined with abstract logical
+principles. The great poet unconsciously reveals something more than the
+metaphysician. His poetry does not decay with the philosophy which it
+took for granted. We do not ask whether his reasoning be sound or false,
+but whether the vision be sublime or repulsive. It may be a little of
+both; but at any rate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> it is undeniably fascinating. That, I take it, is
+because the imagery which he creates may still be a symbol of thoughts
+and emotions which are as interesting now as they were six hundred years
+ago. This man of first-rate power shows us, therefore, what was the real
+charm of the accepted beliefs for him, and less consciously for others.
+He had no doubt that their truth could be proved by syllogising: but
+they really laid so powerful a grasp upon him because they could be made
+to express the hopes and fears, the loves and hatreds, the moral and
+political convictions which were dearest to him. When we see how the
+system could be turned to account by the most powerful imagination, we
+can understand better what it really meant for the commonplace and
+ignorant monks who accepted it as a mere matter of course. We begin to
+see what were the great forces really at work below the surface; and the
+issues which were being blindly worked out by the dumb agents who were
+quite unable to recognise their nature. If, in short, we wish to
+discover the secret of the great ecclesiastical and political struggles
+of the day, we should turn, not to the men in whose minds beliefs lie
+inert and instinctive, nor to the ostensible dialectics of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>ostensible apologists and assailants, but to the great poet who shows
+how they were associated with the strongest passions and the most
+vehement convictions.</p>
+
+<p>We may hold that the historian should confine himself to giving a record
+of the objective facts, which can be fully given in dates, statistics,
+and phenomena seen from outside. But if we allow ourselves to
+contemplate a philosophical history, which shall deal with the causes of
+events and aim at exhibiting the evolution of human society&mdash;and perhaps
+I ought to apologise for even suggesting that such an ideal could ever
+be realised&mdash;we should also see that the history of literature would be
+a subordinate element of the whole structure. The political, social,
+ecclesiastical, and economical factors, and their complex actions and
+reactions, would all have to be taken into account, the literary
+historian would be concerned with the ideas which find utterance through
+the poet and philosopher, and with the constitution of the class which
+at any time forms the literary organ of the society. The critic who
+deals with the individual work would find such knowledge necessary to a
+full appreciation of his subject; and, conversely, the appreciation
+would in some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> degree help the labourer in other departments of history
+to understand the nature of the forces which are governing the social
+development. However far we may be from such a consummation, and
+reluctant to indulge in the magniloquent language which it suggests, I
+imagine that a literary history is so far satisfactory as it takes the
+facts into consideration and regards literature, in the perhaps too
+pretentious phrase, as a particular function of the whole social
+organism. But I gladly descend from such lofty speculations to come to a
+few relevant details; and especially, to notice some of the obvious
+limitations which have in any case to be accepted.</p>
+
+<p>And in the first place, when we try to be philosophical, we have a
+difficulty which besets us in political history. How much influence is
+to be attributed to the individual? Carlyle used to tell us in my youth
+that everything was due to the hero; that the whole course of human
+history depended upon your Cromwell or Frederick. Our scientific
+teachers are inclined to reply that no single person had much
+importance, and that an ideal history could omit all names of
+individuals. If, for example, Napoleon had been killed at the siege of
+Toulon, the only difference would have been that the dictator would have
+been called say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> Moreau. Possibly, but I cannot see that we can argue in
+the same way in literature. I see no reason to suppose that if
+Shakespeare had died prematurely, anybody else would have written
+<i>Hamlet</i>. There was, it is true, a butcher's boy at Stratford, who was
+thought by his townsmen to have been as clever a fellow as Shakespeare.
+We shall never know what we have lost by his premature death, and we
+certainly cannot argue that if Shakespeare had died, the butcher would
+have lived. It makes one tremble, says an ingenious critic, to reflect
+that Shakespeare and Cervantes were both liable to the measles at the
+same time. As we know they escaped, we need not make ourselves unhappy
+about the might-have-been; but the remark suggests how much the literary
+glory of any period depends upon one or two great names. Omit Cervantes
+and Shakespeare and Moli&egrave;re from Spanish, English, and French
+literature, and what a collapse of glory would follow! Had Shakespeare
+died, it is conceivable perhaps that some of the hyperboles which have
+been lavished upon him would have been bestowed on Marlowe and Ben
+Jonson. But, on the whole, I fancy that the minor lights of the
+Elizabethan drama have owed more to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> their contemporary than he owed to
+them; and that, if this central sun had been extinguished, the whole
+galaxy would have remained in comparative obscurity. Now, as we are
+utterly unable to say what are the conditions which produce a genius, or
+to point to any automatic machinery which could replace him in case of
+accident, we must agree that this is an element in the problem which is
+altogether beyond scientific investigation. The literary historian must
+be content with a humble position. Still, the Elizabethan stage would
+have existed had Shakespeare never written; and, moreover, its main
+outline would have been the same. If any man ever imitated and gave full
+utterance to the characteristic ideas of his contemporaries it was
+certainly Shakespeare; and nobody ever accepted more thoroughly the form
+of art which they worked out. So far, therefore, as the general
+conditions of the time led to the elaboration of this particular genus,
+we may study them independently and assign certain general causes. What
+Shakespeare did was to show more fully the way in which that form could
+be turned to account; and, without him, it would have been a far less
+interesting phenomenon. Even the greatest man has to live in his own
+century.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> The deepest thinker is not really&mdash;though we often use the
+phrase&mdash;in advance of his day so much as in the line along which advance
+takes place. The greatest poet does not write for a future generation in
+the sense of not writing for his own; it is only that in giving the
+fullest utterance to its thoughts and showing the deepest insight into
+their significance, he is therefore the most perfect type of its general
+mental attitude, and his work is an embodiment of the thoughts which are
+common to men of all generations.</p>
+
+<p>When the critic began to perceive that many forms of art might be
+equally legitimate under different conditions, his first proceeding was
+to classify them in different schools. English poets, for example, were
+arranged by Pope and Gray as followers of Chaucer, Spenser, Donne,
+Dryden, and so forth; and, in later days, we have such literary genera
+as are indicated by the names classic and romantic or realist and
+idealist, covering characteristic tendencies of the various historical
+groups. The fact that literary productions fall into schools is of
+course obvious, and suggests the problem as to the cause of their rise
+and decline. Bagehot treats the question in his <i>Physics and Politics</i>.
+Why, he asks, did there arise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> a special literary school in the reign of
+Queen Anne&mdash;'a marked variety of human expression, producing what was
+then written and peculiar to it'? Some eminent writer, he replies, gets
+a start by a style congenial to the minds around him. Steele, a rough,
+vigorous, forward man, struck out the periodical essay; Addison, a wise,
+meditative man, improved and carried it to perfection. An unconscious
+mimicry is always producing countless echoes of an original writer.
+That, I take it, is undeniably true. Nobody can doubt that all authors
+are in some degree echoes, and that a vast majority are never anything
+else. But it does not answer why a particular form should be fruitful of
+echoes or, in Bagehot's words, be 'more congenial to the minds around.'
+Why did the <i>Spectator</i> suit one generation and the <i>Rambler</i> its
+successors? Are we incapable of giving any answer? Are changes in
+literary fashions enveloped in the same inscrutable mystery as changes
+in ladies' dresses? It is, and no doubt always will be, impossible to
+say why at one period garments should spread over a hoop and at another
+cling to the limbs. Is it equally impossible to say why the fashion of
+Pope should have been succeeded by the fashion of Wordsworth and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+Coleridge? If we were prepared to admit the doctrine of which I have
+spoken&mdash;the supreme importance of the individual&mdash;that would of course
+be all that could be said. Shakespeare's successors are explained as
+imitators of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is explained by his 'genius'
+or, in other words, is inexplicable. If, on the other hand,
+Shakespeare's originality, whatever it may have been, was shown by his
+power of interpreting the thoughts of his own age, then we can learn
+something from studying the social and intellectual position of his
+contemporaries. Though the individual remains inexplicable, the general
+characteristics of the school to which he belongs may be tolerably
+intelligible; and some explanation is in fact suggested by such
+epithets, for example, as romantic and classical. For, whatever
+precisely they mean,&mdash;and I confess to my mind the question of what they
+mean is often a very difficult one,&mdash;they imply some general tendency
+which cannot be attributed to individual influence. When we endeavour to
+approach this problem of the rise and fall of literary schools, we see
+that it is a case of a phenomenon which is very often noticed and which
+we are more ready to explain in proportion to the share of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> youthful
+audacity which we are fortunate enough to possess.</p>
+
+<p>In every form of artistic production, in painting and architecture, for
+example, schools arise; each of which seems to embody some kind of
+principle, and develops and afterwards decays, according to some
+mysterious law. It may resemble the animal species which is, somehow or
+other, developed and then stamped out in the struggle of existence by
+the growth of a form more appropriate to the new order. The epic poem,
+shall we say? is like the 'monstrous efts,' as Tennyson unkindly calls
+them, which were no doubt very estimable creatures in their day, but
+have somehow been unable to adapt themselves to recent geological
+epochs. Why men could build cathedrals in the Middle Ages, and why their
+power was lost instead of steadily developing like the art of
+engineering, is a problem which has occupied many writers, and of which
+I shall not attempt to offer a solution. That is the difference between
+artistic and scientific progress. A truth once discovered remains true
+and may form the nucleus of an independently interesting body of truths.
+But a special form of art flourishes only during a limited period, and
+when it decays and is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>succeeded by others, we cannot say that there is
+necessarily progress, only that for some reason or other the environment
+has become uncongenial. It is, of course, tempting to infer from the
+decay of an art that there must be a corresponding decay in the vitality
+and morality of the race. Ruskin, for example, always assumed in his
+most brilliant and incisive, but not very conclusive, arguments that men
+ceased to paint good pictures simply because they ceased to be good men.
+He did not proceed to prove that the moral decline really took place,
+and still less to show why it took place. But, without attacking these
+large problems, I shall be content to say that I do not see that any
+such sweeping conclusions can be made as to the kind of changes in
+literary forms with which we shall be concerned. That there is a close
+relation between the literature and the general social condition of a
+nation is my own contention. But the relation is hardly of this simple
+kind. Nations, it seems to me, have got on remarkably well, and made not
+only material but political and moral progress in the periods when they
+have written few books, and those bad ones; and, conversely, have
+produced some admirable literature while they were developing some very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+ugly tendencies. To say the truth, literature seems to me to be a kind
+of by-product. It occupies far too small a part in the whole activity of
+a nation, even of its intellectual activity, to serve as a complete
+indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral
+barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a
+condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying
+but not the less fallacious conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>The succession of literary species implies that some are always passing
+into the stage of 'survivals': and the most obvious course is to
+endeavour to associate them with the general philosophical movement.
+That suggests one obvious explanation of many literary developments. The
+great thriving times of literature have occurred when new intellectual
+horizons seemed to be suddenly opening upon the human intelligence; as
+when Bacon was taking his Pisgah sight of the promised land of science,
+and Shakespeare and Spenser were making new conquests in the world of
+the poetic imagination. A great intellectual shock was stimulating the
+parallel, though independent, outbursts of activity. The remark may
+suggest one reason for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> decline as well as for the rise of the new
+genus. If, on the one hand, the man of genius is especially sensitive to
+the new ideas which are stirring the world, it is also necessary that he
+should be in sympathy with his hearers&mdash;that he should talk the language
+which they understand, and adopt the traditions, conventions, and
+symbols with which they are already more or less familiar. A generally
+accepted tradition is as essential as the impulse which comes from the
+influx of new ideas. But the happy balance which enables the new wine to
+be put into the old bottles is precarious and transitory. The new ideas
+as they develop may become paralysing to the imagery which they began by
+utilising. The legends of chivalry which Spenser turned to account
+became ridiculous in the next generation, and the mythology of Milton's
+great poem was incredible or revolting to his successors. The machinery,
+in the old phrase, of a poet becomes obsolete, though when he used it,
+it had vitality enough to be a vehicle for his ideas. The imitative
+tendency described by Bagehot clearly tends to preserve the old, as much
+as to facilitate the adoption of a new form. In fact, to create a really
+original and new form seems to exceed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> the power of any individual, and
+the greatest men must desire to speak to their own contemporaries. It is
+only by degrees that the inadequacy of the traditional form makes itself
+felt, and its successor has to be worked out by a series of tentative
+experiments. When a new style has established itself its representatives
+hold that the orthodoxy of the previous period was a gross superstition:
+and those who were condemned as heretics were really prophets of the
+true faith, not yet revealed. However that may be, I am content at
+present to say that in fact the development of new literary types is
+discontinuous, and implies a compromise between the two conditions which
+in literature correspond to conservatism and radicalism. The
+conservative work is apt to become a mere survival: while the radical
+may include much that has the crudity of an imperfect application of new
+principles. Another point may be briefly indicated. The growth of new
+forms is obviously connected not only with the intellectual development
+but with the social and political state of the nation, and there comes
+into close connection with other departments of history. Authors, so far
+as I have noticed, generally write with a view to being read.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> Moreover,
+the reading class is at most times a very small part of the population.
+A philosopher, I take it, might think himself unusually popular if his
+name were known to a hundredth part of the population. But even poets
+and novelists might sometimes be surprised if they could realise the
+small impression they make upon the mass of the population. There is,
+you know, a story of how Thackeray, when at the height of his reputation
+he stood for Oxford, found that his name was unknown even to highly
+respectable constituents. The author of <i>Vanity Fair</i> they observed, was
+named John Bunyan. At the present day the number of readers has, I
+presume, enormously increased; but authors who can reach the lower
+strata of the great lower pyramid, which widens so rapidly at its base,
+are few indeed. The characteristics of a literature correspond to the
+national characteristics, as embodied in the characteristics of a very
+small minority of the nation. Two centuries ago the reading part of the
+nation was mainly confined to London and to certain classes of society.
+The most important changes which have taken place have been closely
+connected with the social changes which have entirely altered the limits
+of the reading class;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> and with the changes of belief which have been
+cause and effect of the most conspicuous political changes. That is too
+obvious to require any further exposition. Briefly, in talking of
+literary changes, considered as implied in the whole social development,
+I shall have, first, to take note of the main intellectual
+characteristics of the period; and secondly, what changes took place in
+the audience to which men of letters addressed themselves, and how the
+gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of the
+literature addressed to them.</p>
+
+<p>I hope and believe that I have said nothing original. I have certainly
+only been attempting to express the views which are accepted, in their
+general outline at least, by historians, whether of the political or
+literary kind. They have often been applied very forcibly to the various
+literary developments, and, by way of preface to my own special topic, I
+will venture to recall one chapter of literary history which may serve
+to illustrate what I have already said, and which has a bearing upon
+what I shall have to say hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>One of the topics upon which the newer methods of criticism first
+displayed their power was the school of the Elizabethan dramatists. Many
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> earlier critics wrote like lovers or enthusiasts who exalted the
+merits of some of the old playwrights beyond our sober judgments, and
+were inclined to ignore the merits of other forms of the art. But we
+have come to recognise that the Elizabethans had their faults, and that
+the best apology for their weaknesses as well as the best explanation of
+their merits was to be found in a clearer appreciation of the whole
+conditions. It is impossible of course to overlook the connection
+between that great outburst of literary activity and the general
+movement of the time; of the period when many impulses were breaking up
+the old intellectual stagnation, and when the national spirit which took
+the great Queen for its representative was finding leaders in the
+Burleighs and Raleighs and Drakes. The connection is emphasised by the
+singular brevity of the literary efflorescence. Marlowe's <i>Tamburlaine</i>
+heralded its approach on the eve of the Spanish Armada: Shakespeare, to
+whom the lead speedily fell, had shown his highest power in <i>Henry IV.</i>
+and <i>Hamlet</i> before the accession of James I.: his great tragedies
+<i>Othello</i>, <i>Macbeth</i> and <i>Lear</i> were produced in the next two or three
+years; and by that time, Ben Jonson had done his best work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> When
+Shakespeare retired in 1611, Chapman and Webster, two of the most
+brilliant of his rivals, had also done their best; and Fletcher
+inherited the dramatic throne. On his death in 1625, Massinger and Ford
+and other minor luminaries were still at work; but the great period had
+passed. It had begun with the repulse of the Armada and culminated some
+fifteen years later. If in some minor respects there may afterwards have
+been an advance, the spontaneous vigour had declined and deliberate
+attempts to be striking had taken the place of the old audacity. There
+can be no more remarkable instance of a curious phenomenon, of a
+volcanic outburst of literary energy which begins and reaches its
+highest intensity while a man is passing from youth to middle age, and
+then begins to decay and exhaust itself within a generation.</p>
+
+<p>A popular view used to throw the responsibility upon the wicked Puritans
+who used their power to close the theatres. We entered the
+'prison-house' of Puritanism says Matthew Arnold, I think, and stayed
+there for a couple of centuries. If so, the gaolers must have had some
+difficulty, for the Puritan (in the narrower sense, of course) has
+always been in a small and unpopular<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> minority. But it is also plain
+that the decay had begun when the Puritan was the victim instead of the
+inflictor of persecution. When we note the synchronism between the
+political and the literary movement our conception of the true nature of
+the change has to be modified. The accession of James marks the time at
+which the struggle between the court and the popular party was beginning
+to develop itself: when the monarchy and its adherents cease to
+represent the strongest current of national feeling, and the bulk of the
+most vigorous and progressive classes have become alienated and are
+developing the conditions and passions which produced the civil war. The
+genuine Puritans are still an exception; they only form the left wing,
+the most thorough-going opponents of the court-policy; and their triumph
+afterwards is only due to the causes which in a revolution give the
+advantage to the uncompromising partisans, though their special creed is
+always regarded with aversion by a majority. But for the time, they are
+the van of the party which, for whatever reason, is gathering strength
+and embodying the main political and ecclesiastical impulses of the
+time. The stage, again, had been from the first essentially
+aristocratic: it depended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> upon the court and the nobility and their
+adherents, and was hostile both to the Puritans and to the whole class
+in which the Puritan found a congenial element. So long, as in
+Elizabeth's time, as the class which supported the stage also
+represented the strongest aspirations of the period, and a marked
+national sentiment, the drama could embody a marked national sentiment.
+When the unity was broken up and the court is opposed to the strongest
+current of political sentiment, the players still adhere to their
+patron. The drama comes to represent a tone of thought, a social
+stratum, which, instead of leading, is getting more and more opposed to
+the great bulk of the most vigorous elements of the society. The stage
+is ceasing to be a truly national organ, and begins to suit itself to
+the tastes of the unprincipled and servile courtiers, who, if they are
+not more immoral than their predecessors, are without the old heroic
+touch which ennobled even the audacious and unscrupulous adventurers of
+the Armada period. That is to say, the change is beginning which became
+palpable in the Restoration time, when the stage became simply the
+melancholy dependent upon the court of Charles II., and faithfully
+reflected the peculiar morality of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> small circle over which it
+presided. Without taking into account this process by which the organ of
+the nation gradually became transformed into the organ of the class
+which was entirely alienated from the general body of the nation, it is,
+I think, impossible to understand clearly the transformation of the
+drama. It illustrates the necessity of accounting for the literary
+movement, not only by intellectual and general causes, but by noting how
+special social developments radically alter the relation of any
+particular literary genus to the general national movement. I shall soon
+have to refer to the case again.</p>
+
+<p>I have now only to say briefly what I propose to attempt in these
+lectures. The literary history, as I conceive it, is an account of one
+strand, so to speak, in a very complex tissue: it is connected with the
+intellectual and social development; it represents movements of thought
+which may sometimes check and be sometimes propitious to the existing
+forms of art; it is the utterance of a class which may represent, or
+fail to represent, the main national movement; it is affected more or
+less directly by all manner of religious, political, social, and
+economical changes; and it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> is dependent upon the occurrence of
+individual genius for which we cannot even profess to account. I propose
+to take the history of English literature in the eighteenth century. I
+do not aim at originality: I take for granted the ordinary critical
+judgments upon the great writers of whom so much has been said by judges
+certainly more competent than myself, and shall recall the same facts
+both of ordinary history and of the history of thought. What I hope is,
+that by bringing familiar facts together I may be able to bring out the
+nature of the connection between them; and, little as I can say that
+will be at all new, to illustrate one point of view, which, as I
+believe, it is desirable that literary histories should take into
+account more distinctly than they have generally done.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+<p>The first period of which I am to speak represents to the political
+historian the Avatar of Whiggism. The glorious revolution has decided
+the long struggle of the previous century; the main outlines of the
+British Constitution are irrevocably determined; the political system is
+in harmony with the great political forces, and the nation has settled,
+as Carlyle is fond of saying, with the centre of gravity lowest, and
+therefore in a position of stable equilibrium. For another century no
+organic change was attempted or desired. Parliament has become
+definitely the great driving-wheel of the political machinery; not, as a
+century before, an intrusive body acting spasmodically and hampering
+instead of regulating the executive power of the Crown. The last Stuart
+kings had still fancied that it might be reduced to impotence, and the
+illusion had been fostered by the loyalty which meant at least a fair
+unequivocal desire to hold to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> old monarchical traditions. But, in
+fact, parliamentary control had been silently developing; the House of
+Commons had been getting the power of the purse more distinctly into its
+hands, and had taken very good care not to trust the Crown with the
+power of the sword. Charles II. had been forced to depend on the help of
+the great French monarchy to maintain his authority at home; and when
+his successor turned out to be an anachronism, and found that the
+loyalty of the nation would not bear the strain of a policy hostile to
+the strongest national impulses, he was thrown off as an intolerable
+incubus. The system which had been growing up beneath the surface was
+now definitely put into shape and its fundamental principles embodied in
+legislation. The one thing still needed was to work out the system of
+party government, which meant that parliament should become an organised
+body with a corporate body, which the ministers of the Crown had first
+to consult and then to obey. The essential parts of the system had, in
+fact, been established by the end of Queen Anne's reign; though the
+change which had taken place in the system was not fully recognised
+because marked by the retention of the old forms. This, broadly
+speaking,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> meant the supremacy of the class which really controlled
+Parliament: of the aristocratic class, led by the peers but including
+the body of squires and landed gentlemen, and including also a growing
+infusion of 'moneyed' men, who represented the rising commercial and
+manufacturing interests. The division between Whig and Tory corresponded
+mainly to the division between the men who inclined mainly to the Church
+and squirearchy and those who inclined towards the mercantile and the
+dissenting interests. If the Tory professed zeal for the monarchy, he
+did not mean a monarchy as opposed to Parliament and therefore to his
+own dearest privileges. Even the Jacobite movement was in great part
+personal, or meant dislike to Hanover with no preference for arbitrary
+power, while the actual monarchy was so far controlled by Parliament
+that the Whig had no desire to limit it further. It was a useful
+instrument, not an encumbrance.</p>
+
+<p>We have to ask how these conditions affect the literary position. One
+point is clear. The relation between the political and the literary
+class was at this time closer than it had ever been. The alliance
+between them marks, in fact, a most conspicuous characteristic of the
+time. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> was the one period, as authors repeat with a fond regret, in
+which literary merit was recognised by the distributors of state
+patronage. This gratifying phenomenon has, I think, been often a little
+misinterpreted, and I must consider briefly what it really meant. And
+first let us note how exclusively the literary society of the time was
+confined to London. The great town&mdash;it would be even now a great
+town&mdash;had half a million inhabitants. Macaulay, in his admirably graphic
+description of the England of the preceding period, points out what a
+chasm divided it from country districts; what miserable roads had to be
+traversed by the nobleman's chariot and four, or by the ponderous
+waggons or strings of pack-horses which supplied the wants of trade and
+of the humbler traveller; and how the squire only emerged at intervals
+to be jeered and jostled as an uncouth rustic in the streets of London.
+He was not a great buyer of books. There were, of course, libraries at
+Oxford and Cambridge, and here and there in the house of a rich prelate
+or of one of the great noblemen who were beginning to form some of the
+famous collections; but the squire was more than usually cultivated if
+Baker's <i>Chronicle</i> and Gwillim's <i>Heraldry</i> lay on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> window-seat of
+his parlour, and one has often to wonder how the learned divines of the
+period managed to get the books from which they quote so freely in their
+discourses. Anyhow the author of the day must have felt that the
+circulation of his books must be mainly confined to London, and
+certainly in London alone could he meet with anything that could pass
+for literary society or an appreciative audience. We have superabundant
+descriptions of the audience and its meeting-places. One of the familiar
+features of the day, we know, was the number of coffee-houses. In 1657,
+we are told, the first coffee-house had been prosecuted as a nuisance.
+In 1708 there were three thousand coffee-houses; and each coffee-house
+had its habitual circle. There were coffee-houses frequented by
+merchants and stock-jobbers carrying on the game which suggested the new
+nickname bulls and bears: and coffee-houses where the talk was Whig and
+Tory, of the last election and change of ministry: and literary resorts
+such as the Grecian, where, as we are told, a fatal duel was provoked by
+a dispute over a Greek accent, in which, let us hope, it was the worst
+scholar who was killed; and Wills', where Pope as a boy went to look
+reverently at Dryden;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> and Buttons', where, at a later period, Addison
+met his little senate. Addison, according to Pope, spent five or six
+hours a day lounging at Buttons'; while Pope found the practice and the
+consequent consumption of wine too much for his health. Thackeray
+notices how the club and coffee-house 'boozing shortened the lives and
+enlarged the waistcoats of the men of those days.' The coffee-house
+implied the club, while the club meant simply an association for
+periodical gatherings. It was only by degrees that the body made a
+permanent lodgment in the house and became first the tenants of the
+landlord and then themselves the proprietors. The most famous show the
+approximation between the statesmen and the men of letters. There was
+the great Kit-cat Club, of which Tonson the bookseller was secretary; to
+which belonged noble dukes and all the Whig aristocracy, besides
+Congreve, Vanbrugh, Addison, Garth, and Steele. It not only brought
+Whigs together but showed its taste by giving a prize for good comedies.
+Swift, when he came into favour, helped to form the Brothers' Club,
+which was especially intended to direct patronage towards promising
+writers of the Tory persuasion. The institution, in modern slang,
+differentiated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> as time went on. The more aristocratic clubs became
+exclusive societies, occupying their own houses, more devoted to
+gambling than to literature; while the older type, represented by
+Jonson's famous club, were composed of literary and professional
+classes.</p>
+
+<p>The characteristic fraternisation of the politicians and the authors
+facilitated by this system leads to the critical point. When we speak of
+the nobility patronising literature, a reserve must be made. A list of
+some twenty or thirty names has been made out, including all the chief
+authors of the time, who received appointments of various kinds. But I
+can only find two, Congreve and Rowe, upon whom offices were bestowed
+simply as rewards for literary distinction; and both of them were sound
+Whigs, rewarded by their party, though not for party services. The
+typical patron of the day was Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax. As member
+of a noble family he came into Parliament, where he distinguished
+himself by his financial achievements in founding the Bank of England
+and reforming the currency, and became a peer and a member of the great
+Whig junto. At college he had been a chum of Prior, who joined him in a
+literary squib<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> directed against Dryden, and, as he rose, he employed
+his friend in diplomacy. But the poetry by which Prior is known to us
+was of a later growth, and was clearly not the cause but the consequence
+of his preferment. At a later time, Halifax sent Addison abroad with the
+intention of employing him in a similar way; and it is plain that
+Addison was not&mdash;as the familiar but obviously distorted anecdote tells
+us&mdash;preferred on account of his brilliant Gazette in rhyme, but really
+in fulfilment of his patron's virtual pledge. Halifax has also the
+credit of bestowing office upon Newton and patronising Congreve. As poet
+and patron Halifax was carrying on a tradition. The aristocracy in
+Charles's days had been under the impression that poetry, or at least
+verse writing, was becoming an accomplishment for a nobleman. Pope's
+'mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,' Rochester and Buckingham, Dorset
+and Sedley, and the like, managed some very clever, if not very exalted,
+performances and were courted by the men of letters represented by
+Butler, Dryden, and Otway. As, indeed, the patrons were themselves
+hangers-on of a thoroughly corrupt court, seeking to rise by court
+intrigues, their patronage was apt to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> degrading and involved the
+mean flattery of personal dependence. The change at the Revolution meant
+that the court no longer overshadowed society. The court, that is, was
+beginning to be superseded by the town. The new race of statesmen were
+coming to depend upon parliamentary influence instead of court favour.
+They were comparatively, therefore, shining by their own light. They
+were able to dispose of public appointments; places on the various
+commissions which had been founded as parliament took control of the
+financial system&mdash;such as commissions for the wine-duties, for licensing
+hackney coaches, excise duties, and so forth&mdash;besides some of the other
+places which had formerly been the perquisites of the courtier. They
+could reward personal dependants at the cost of the public; which was
+convenient for both parties. Promising university students, like Prior
+and Addison, might be brought out under the wing of the statesman, and
+no doubt literary merit, especially in conjunction with the right
+politics, might recommend them to such men as Halifax or Somers. The
+political power of the press was meanwhile rapidly developing. Harley,
+Lord Oxford, was one of the first to appreciate its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> importance. He
+employed Defoe and other humble writers who belonged to Grub
+Street&mdash;that is, to professional journalism in its infancy&mdash;as well as
+Swift, whose pamphlets struck the heaviest blow at the Whigs in the last
+years of that period. Swift's first writings, we may notice, were not a
+help but the main hindrance to his preferment. The patronage of
+literature was thus in great part political in its character. It
+represents the first scheme by which the new class of parliamentary
+statesmen recruited their party from the rising talent, or rewarded men
+for active or effective service. The speedy decay of the system followed
+for obvious reasons. As party government became organised, the patronage
+was used in a different spirit. Offices had to be given to gratify
+members of parliament and their constituents, not to scholars who could
+write odes on victories or epistles to secretaries of state. It was the
+machinery for controlling votes. Meanwhile we need only notice that the
+patronage of authors did not mean the patronage of learned divines or
+historians, but merely the patronage of men who could use their pens in
+political warfare, or at most of men who produced the kind of literary
+work appreciated in good society.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p><p>The 'town' was the environment of the wits who produced the literature
+generally called after Queen Anne. We may call it the literary organ of
+the society. It was the society of London, or of the region served by
+the new penny-post, which included such remote villages as Paddington
+and Brompton. The city was large enough, as Addison observes, to include
+numerous 'nations,' each of them meeting at the various coffee-houses.
+The clubs at which the politicians and authors met each other
+represented the critical tribunals, when no such things as literary
+journals existed. It was at these that judgment was passed upon the last
+new poem or pamphlet, and the writer sought for their good opinion as he
+now desires a favourable review. The tribunal included the rewarders as
+well as the judges of merit; and there was plenty of temptation to
+stimulate their generosity by flattery. Still the relation means a great
+improvement on the preceding state of things. The aristocrat was no
+doubt conscious of his inherent dignity, but he was ready on occasion to
+hail Swift as 'Jonathan' and, in the case of so highly cultivated a
+specimen as Addison, to accept an author's marriage to a countess. The
+patrons did not exact the personal subservience of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> preceding
+period; and there was a real recognition by the more powerful class of
+literary merit of a certain order. Such a method, however, had obvious
+defects. Men of the world have their characteristic weaknesses; and one,
+to go no further, is significant. The Club in England corresponded more
+or less to the Salon which at different times had had so great an
+influence upon French literature. It differed in the marked absence of
+feminine elements. The clubs meant essentially a society of bachelors,
+and the conversation, one infers, was not especially suited for ladies.
+The Englishman, gentle or simple, enjoyed himself over his pipe and his
+bottle and dismissed his womenkind to their bed. The one author of the
+time who speaks of the influence of women with really chivalrous
+appreciation is the generous Steele, with his famous phrase about Lady
+Elizabeth Hastings and a liberal education. The Clubs did not foster the
+affectation of Moli&egrave;re's <i>Pr&eacute;cieuses</i>; but the general tone had a
+coarseness and occasional brutality which shows too clearly that they
+did not enter into the full meaning of Steele's most admirable saying.</p>
+
+<p>To appreciate the spirit of this society we must take into account the
+political situation and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> intellectual implication. The parliamentary
+statesman, no longer dependent upon court favour, had a more independent
+spirit and personal self-respect. He was fully aware of the fact that he
+represented a distinct step in political progress. His class had won a
+great struggle against arbitrary power and bigotry. England had become
+the land of free speech, of religious toleration, impartial justice, and
+constitutional order. It had shown its power by taking its place among
+the leading European states. The great monarchy before which the English
+court had trembled, and from which even patriots had taken bribes in the
+Restoration period, was met face to face in a long and doubtful struggle
+and thoroughly humbled in a war, in which an English General, in command
+of an English contingent, had won victories unprecedented in our history
+since the Middle Ages. Patriotic pride received a stimulus such as that
+which followed the defeat of the Armada and preceded the outburst of the
+Elizabethan literature. Those successes, too, had been won in the name
+of 'liberty'&mdash;a vague if magical word which I shall not seek to define
+at present. England, so sound Whigs at least sincerely believed, had
+become great because it had adopted and carried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> out the true Whig
+principles. The most intelligent Frenchmen of the coming generation
+admitted the claim; they looked upon England as the land both of liberty
+and philosophy, and tried to adopt for themselves the creed which had
+led to such triumphant results. One great name may tell us sufficiently
+what the principles were in the eyes of the cultivated classes, who
+regarded themselves and their own opinions with that complacency in
+which we are happily never deficient. Locke had laid down the
+fundamental outlines of the creed, philosophical, religious, and
+political, which was to dominate English thought for the next century.
+Locke was one of the most honourable, candid, and amiable of men, if
+metaphysicians have sometimes wondered at the success of his teaching.
+He had not the logical thoroughness and consistency which marks a
+Descartes or Spinoza, nor the singular subtlety which distinguishes
+Berkeley and Hume; nor the eloquence and imaginative power which gave to
+Bacon an authority greater than was due to his scientific requirements.
+He was a thoroughly modest, prosaic, tentative, and sometimes clumsy
+writer, who raises great questions without solving them or fully seeing
+the consequences of his own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> position. Leaving any explanation of his
+power to metaphysicians, I need only note the most conspicuous
+condition. Locke ruled the thought of his own and the coming period
+because he interpreted so completely the fundamental beliefs which had
+been worked out at his time. He ruled, that is, by obeying. Locke
+represents the very essence of the common sense of the intelligent
+classes. I do not ask whether his simplicity covered really profound
+thought or embodied superficial crudities; but it was most admirably
+adapted to the society of which I have been speaking. The excellent
+Addison, for example, who was no metaphysician, can adopt Locke when he
+wishes to give a philosophical air to his amiable lectures upon arts and
+morals. Locke's philosophy, that is, blends spontaneously with the
+ordinary language of all educated men. To the historian of philosophy
+the period is marked by the final disappearance of scholasticism. The
+scholastic philosophy had of course been challenged generations before.
+Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, however, in the preceding century had
+still treated it as the great incubus upon intellectual progress, and it
+was not yet exorcised from the universities. It had, however, passed
+from the sphere of living<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> thought. This implies a series of correlative
+changes in the social and intellectual which are equally conspicuous in
+the literary order, and which I must note without attempting to inquire
+which are the ultimate or most fundamental causes of reciprocally
+related developments. The changed position of the Anglican church is
+sufficiently significant. In the time of Laud, the bishops in alliance
+with the Crown endeavoured to enforce the jurisdiction of the
+ecclesiastical courts upon the nation at large, and to suppress all
+nonconformity by law. Every subject of the king is also amenable to
+church discipline. By the Revolution any attempt to enforce such
+discipline had become hopeless. The existence of nonconformist churches
+has to be recognised as a fact, though perhaps an unpleasant fact. The
+Dissenters can be worried by disqualifications of various kinds; but the
+claim to toleration, of Protestant sects at least, is admitted; and the
+persecution is political rather than ecclesiastical. They are not
+regarded as heretics, but as representing an interest which is opposed
+to the dominant class of the landed gentry. The Church as such has lost
+the power of discipline and is gradually falling under the power of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+dominant aristocratic class. When Convocation tries to make itself
+troublesome, in a few years, it will be silenced and drop into
+impotence. Church-feeling indeed, is still strong, but the clergy have
+become thoroughly subservient, and during the century will be mere
+appendages to the nobility and squirearchy. The intellectual change is
+parallel. The great divines of the seventeenth century speak as members
+of a learned corporation condescending to instruct the laity. The
+hearers are supposed to listen to the voice (as Donne puts it) as from
+'angels in the clouds.' They are experts, steeped in a special science,
+above the comprehension of the vulgar. They have been trained in the
+schools of theology and have been thoroughly drilled in the art of
+'syllogising.' They are walking libraries with the ancient fathers at
+their finger-ends; they have studied Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and have
+shown their technical knowledge in controversies with the great Jesuits,
+Suarez and Bellarmine. They speak frankly, if not ostentatiously, as men
+of learning, and their sermons are overweighted with quotations, showing
+familiarity with the classics, and with the whole range of theological
+literature. Obviously the hearers are to be passive recipients<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> not
+judges of the doctrine. But by the end of the century Tillotson has
+become the typical divine, whose authority was to be as marked in
+theology as that of Locke in philosophy. Tillotson has entirely
+abandoned any ostentatious show of learning. He addresses his hearers in
+language on a level with their capabilities, and assumes that they are
+not 'passive buckets to be pumped into' but reasonable men who have a
+right to be critics as well as disciples. It is taken for granted that
+the appeal must be to reason, and to the reason which has not gone
+through any special professional training. The audience, that is, to
+which the divine must address himself is one composed of the average
+laity who are quite competent to judge for themselves. That is the
+change that is meant when we are told that this was the period of the
+development of English prose. Dryden, one of its great masters,
+professed to have learned his style from Tillotson. The writer, that is,
+has to suit himself to the new audience which has grown up. He has to
+throw aside all the panoply of scholastic logic, the vast apparatus of
+professional learning, and the complex Latinised constructions, which,
+however admirable some of the effects produced, shows that the writer is
+thinking of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> well-read scholars, not of the ordinary man of the world.
+He has learned from Bacon and Descartes, perhaps, that his supposed
+science was useless lumber; and he has to speak to men who not only want
+plain language but are quite convinced that the pretensions of the old
+authority have been thoroughly exploded.</p>
+
+<p>Politically, the change means toleration, for it is assumed that the
+vulgar can judge for themselves; intellectually, it means rationalism,
+that is, an appeal to the reason common to all men; and, in literature
+it means the hatred of pedantry and the acceptance of such literary
+forms as are thoroughly congenial and intelligible to the common sense
+of the new audience. The hatred of the pedantic is the characteristic
+sentiment of the time. When Berkeley looked forward to a new world in
+America, he described it as the Utopia</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Where men shall not impose for truth and sense</div>
+<div>The pedantry of Courts and Schools.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When he announced a metaphysical discovery he showed his understanding
+of the principle by making his exposition&mdash;strange as the proceeding
+appears to us&mdash;as short and as clear as the most admirable literary
+skill could contrive. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> eccentric ambition dominates the writings of
+the times. In a purely literary direction it is illustrated by the
+famous but curiously rambling and equivocal controversy about the
+Ancients and Moderns begun in France by Perrault and Boileau. In England
+the most familiar outcome was Swift's <i>Battle of the Books</i>, in which he
+struck out the famous phrase about sweetness and light, 'the two noblest
+of things'; which he illustrated by ridiculing Bentley's criticism and
+Dryden's poetry. I may take for granted the motives which induced that
+generation to accept as their models the great classical masterpieces,
+the study of which had played so important a part in the revival of
+letters and the new philosophy. I may perhaps note, in passing, that we
+do not always remember what classical literature meant to that
+generation. In the first place, the education of a gentleman meant
+nothing then except a certain drill in Greek and Latin&mdash;whereas now it
+includes a little dabbling in other branches of knowledge. In the next
+place, if a man had an appetite for literature, what else was he to
+read? Imagine every novel, poem, and essay written during the last two
+centuries to be obliterated and further, the literature of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> early
+seventeenth century and all that went before to be regarded as pedantic
+and obsolete, the field of study would be so limited that a man would be
+forced in spite of himself to read his <i>Homer</i> and <i>Virgil</i>. The vice of
+pedantry was not very accurately defined&mdash;sometimes it is the ancient,
+sometimes the modern, who appears to be pedantic. Still, as in the
+<i>Battle of the Books</i> controversy, the general opinion seems to be that
+the critic should have before him the great classical models, and regard
+the English literature of the seventeenth century as a collection of all
+possible errors of taste. When, at the end of this period, Swift with
+Pope formed the project of the Scriblerus Club, its aim was to be a
+joint-stock satire against all 'false tastes' in learning, art, and
+science. That was the characteristic conception of the most brilliant
+men of letters of the time.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, we have the general indication of the composition of the
+literary organ. It is made up of men of the world&mdash;'Wits' is their
+favourite self-designation, scholars and gentlemen, with rather more of
+the gentlemen than the scholars&mdash;living in the capital, which forms a
+kind of island of illumination amid the surrounding darkness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> the
+agricultural country&mdash;including men of rank and others of sufficient
+social standing to receive them on friendly terms&mdash;meeting at
+coffee-houses and in a kind of tacit confederation of clubs to compare
+notes and form the whole public opinion of the day. They are conscious
+that in them is concentrated the enlightenment of the period. The class
+to which they belong is socially and politically dominant&mdash;the advance
+guard of national progress. It has finally cast off the incubus of a
+retrograde political system; it has placed the nation in a position of
+unprecedented importance in Europe; and it is setting an example of
+ordered liberty to the whole civilised world. It has forced the Church
+and the priesthood to abandon the old claim to spiritual supremacy. It
+has, in the intellectual sphere, crushed the old authority which
+embodied superstition, antiquated prejudice, and a sham system of
+professional knowledge, which was upheld by a close corporation. It
+believes in reason&mdash;meaning the principles which are evident to the
+ordinary common sense of men at its own level. It believes in what it
+calls the Religion of Nature&mdash;the plain demonstrable truths obvious to
+every intelligent person. With Locke for its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> spokesman, and Newton as a
+living proof of its scientific capacity, it holds that England is the
+favoured nation marked out as the land of liberty, philosophy, common
+sense, toleration, and intellectual excellence. And with certain
+reserves, it will be taken at its own valuation by foreigners who are
+still in darkness and deplorably given to slavery, to say nothing of
+wooden shoes and the consumption of frogs. Let us now consider the
+literary result.</p>
+
+<p>I may begin by recalling a famous controversy which seems to illustrate
+very significantly some of the characteristic tendencies of the day. The
+stage, when really flourishing, might be expected to show most
+conspicuously the relations between authors and the society. The
+dramatist may be writing for all time; but if he is to fill a theatre,
+he must clearly adapt himself to the tastes of the living and the
+present. During the first half of the period of which I am now speaking,
+Dryden was still the dictator of the literary world; and Dryden had
+adopted Congreve as his heir, and abandoned to him the province of the
+drama&mdash;Congreve, though he ceased to write, was recognised during his
+life as the great man of letters to whom Addison, Swift, and Pope agreed
+in paying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> respect, and indisputably the leading writer of English
+Comedy. When the comic drama was unsparingly denounced by Collier,
+Congreve defended himself and his friends. In the judgment of
+contemporaries the pedantic parson won a complete triumph over the most
+brilliant of wits. Although Congreve's early abandonment of his career
+was not caused by Collier's attack alone, it was probably due in part to
+the general sentiment to which Collier gave utterance. I will ask what
+is implied as a matter of fact in regard to the social and literary
+characteristics of the time. The Shakespearian drama had behind it a
+general national impulse. With Fletcher, it began to represent a court
+already out of harmony with the strongest currents of national feeling.
+Dryden, in a familiar passage, gives the reason of the change from his
+own point of view. Two plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, he says in an
+often quoted passage, were acted (about 1668) for one of Shakespeare or
+Jonson. His explanation is remarkable. It was because the later
+dramatists 'understood the conversation of gentlemen much better,' whose
+wild 'debaucheries and quickness of wit no poet can ever paint as they
+have done.' In a later essay he explains that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> greater refinement
+was due to the influence of the court. Charles II., familiar with the
+most brilliant courts of Europe, had roused us from barbarism and
+rebellion, and taught us to 'mix our solidity' with 'the air and gaiety
+of our neighbours'! I need not cavil at the phrases 'refinement' and
+'gentleman.' If those words can be fairly applied to the courtiers whose
+'wild debaucheries' disgusted Evelyn and startled even the respectable
+Pepys, they may no doubt be applied to the stage and the dramatic
+persons. The rake, or 'wild gallant,' had made his first appearance in
+Fletcher, and had shown himself more nakedly after the Restoration. This
+is the so-called reaction so often set down to the account of the
+unlucky Puritans. The degradation, says Macaulay, was the 'effect of the
+prevalence of Puritanism under the Commonwealth.' The attempt to make a
+'nation of saints' inevitably produced a nation of scoffers. In what
+sense, in the first place, was there a 'reaction' at all? The Puritans
+had suppressed the stage when it was already far gone in decay because
+it no longer satisfied the great bulk of the nation. The reaction does
+not imply that the drama regained its old position. When the rule of the
+saints or pharisees was broken down,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> the stage did not become again a
+national organ. A very small minority of the people can ever have seen a
+performance. There were, we must remember, only two theatres under
+Charles II., and there was a difficulty in supporting even two. Both
+depended almost exclusively on the patronage of the court and the
+courtiers. From the theatre, therefore, we can only argue directly to
+the small circle of the rowdy debauchees who gathered round the new
+king. It certainly may be true, but it was not proved from their
+behaviour, that the national morality deteriorated, and in fact I think
+nothing is more difficult than to form any trustworthy estimate of the
+state of morality in a whole nation, confidently as such estimates are
+often put forward. What may be fairly inferred, is that a certain class,
+who had got from under the rule of the Puritan, was now free from legal
+restraint and took advantage of the odium excited by pharisaical
+strictness, to indulge in the greater license which suited the taste of
+their patrons. The result is sufficiently shown when we see so great a
+man as Dryden pander to the lowest tastes, and guilty of obscenities of
+which he was himself ashamed, which would be now inexcusable in the
+lowest public haunts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> The comedy, as it appears to us, must have been
+written by blackguards for blackguards. When Congreve became Dryden's
+heir he inherited the established tradition. Under the new order the
+'town' had become supreme; and Congreve wrote to meet the taste of the
+class which was gaining in self-respect and independence. He tells us in
+the dedication of his best play, <i>The Way of the World</i>, that his taste
+had been refined in the company of the Earl of Montagu. The claim is no
+doubt justifiable. So Horace Walpole remarks that Vanbrugh wrote so well
+because he was familiar with the conversation of the best circles. The
+social influences were favourable to the undeniable literary merits, to
+the force and point in which Congreve's dialogue is still superior to
+that of any English rival, the vigour of Vanbrugh and the vivacity of
+their chief ally, Farquhar. Moreover, although their moral code is
+anything but strict, these writers did not descend to some of the depths
+often sounded by Dryden and Wycherly. The new spirit might seem to be
+passing on with more literary vitality into the old forms. And yet the
+consequence, or certainly the sequel to Collier's attack, was the decay
+of the stage in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> every sense, from which there was no recovery till the
+time of Goldsmith and Sheridan.</p>
+
+<p>This is the phenomenon which we have to consider;&mdash;let us listen for a
+moment to the 'distinguished critics' who have denounced or defended the
+comedy of the time. Macaulay gives as a test of the morality of the
+Restoration stage that on it, for the first time, marriage becomes the
+topic of ridicule. We are supposed to sympathise with the adulterer, not
+with the deceived husband&mdash;a fault, he says, which stains no play
+written before the Civil War. Addison had already suggested this test in
+the <i>Spectator</i>, and proceeds to lament that 'the multitudes are shut
+out from this noble "diversion" by the immorality of the lessons
+inculcated.' Lamb, indulging in ingenious paradox, admires Congreve for
+'excluding from his scenes (with one exception) any pretensions to
+goodness or good feeling whatever.' Congreve, he says, spreads a
+'privation of moral light' over his characters, and therefore we can
+admire them without compunction. We are in an artificial world where we
+can drop our moral prejudices for the time being. Hazlitt more daringly
+takes a different position and asserts that one of Wycherly's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> coarsest
+plays is 'worth ten sermons'&mdash;which perhaps does not imply with him any
+high estimate of moral efficacy. There is, however, this much of truth,
+I take it, in Hazlitt's contention. Lamb's theory of the non-morality of
+the dramatic world will not stand examination. The comedy was in one
+sense thoroughly 'realistic'; and I am inclined to say, that in that lay
+its chief merit. There is some value in any truthful representation,
+even of vice and brutality. There would certainly be no difficulty in
+finding flesh and blood originals for the rakes and the fine ladies in
+the memoirs of Grammont or the diaries of Pepys. The moral atmosphere is
+precisely that of the dissolute court of Charles II., and the 'privation
+of moral light' required is a delicate way of expressing its
+characteristic feeling. In the worst performances we have not got to any
+unreal region, but are breathing for the time the atmosphere of the
+lowest resorts, where reference to pure or generous sentiment would
+undoubtedly have been received with a guffaw, and coarse cynicism be
+regarded as the only form of comic insight. At any rate the audiences
+for which Congreve wrote had just so much of the old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> leaven that we can
+quite understand why they were regarded as wicked by a majority of the
+middle classes. The doctrine that all playgoing was wicked was naturally
+confirmed, and the dramatists retorted by ridiculing all that their
+enemies thought respectable. Congreve was, I fancy, a man of better
+morality than his characters, only forced to pander to the tastes of the
+rake who had composed the dominant element of his audience. He writes
+not for mere blackguards, but for the fine gentleman, who affects
+premature knowledge of the world, professes to be more cynical than he
+really is, and shows his acuteness by deriding hypocrisy and pharisaic
+humbug in every claim to virtue. He dwells upon the seamy side of life,
+and if critics, attracted by his undeniable brilliance, have found his
+heroines charming, to me it seems that they are the kind of young women
+whom, if I adopted his moral code, I should think most desirable
+wives&mdash;for my friends.</p>
+
+<p>Though realistic in one sense, we may grant to Lamb that such comedy
+becomes 'artificial,' and so far Lamb is right, because it supposes a
+state of things such as happily was abnormal except in a small circle.
+The plots have to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> made up of impossible intrigues, and imply a
+distorted theory of life. Marriage after all is not really ridiculous,
+and to see it continuously from this point of view is to have a false
+picture of realities. Life is not made up of dodges worthy of
+cardsharpers&mdash;and the whole mechanism becomes silly and disgusting. If
+comedy is to represent a full and fair portrait of life, the dramatist
+ought surely, in spite of Lamb, to find some space for generous and
+refined feeling. There, indeed, is a difficulty. The easiest way to be
+witty is to be cynical. It is difficult, though desirable, to combine
+good feeling with the comic spirit. The humourist has to expose the
+contrasts of life, to unmask hypocrisy, and to show selfishness lurking
+under multitudinous disguises. That, on Hazlitt's showing, was the
+preaching of Wycherly. I can't think that it was the impression made
+upon Wycherly's readers. Such comedy may be taken as satire; which was
+the excuse that Fielding afterwards made for his own performances. But I
+cannot believe that the actual audiences went to see vice exposed, or
+used Lamb's ingenious device of disbelieving in the reality. They simply
+liked brutal and immoral sentiment, spiced, if possible,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> with art. We
+may inquire whether there may not be a comedy which is enjoyable by the
+refined and virtuous, and in which the intrusion of good feeling does
+not jar upon us as a discord. An answer may be suggested by pointing to
+Moli&egrave;re, and has been admirably set forth in Mr. George Meredith's essay
+on the 'Comic Spirit.' There are, after all, ridiculous things in the
+world, even from the refined and virtuous point of view. The saint, it
+is true, is apt to lose his temper and become too serious for such a
+treatment of life-problems. Still the sane intellect which sees things
+as they are can find a sphere within which it is fair and possible to
+apply ridicule to affectation and even to vice, and without simply
+taking the seat of the scorner or substituting a coarse laugh for a
+delicate smile. A hearty laugh, let us hope, is possible even for a
+fairly good man. Mr. Meredith's essay indicates the conditions under
+which the artist may appeal to such a cultivated and refined humour. The
+higher comedy, he says, can only be the fruit of a polished society
+which can supply both the model and the audience. Where the art of
+social intercourse has been carried to a high pitch, where men have
+learned to be at once courteous and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> incisive, to admire urbanity, and
+therefore really good feeling, and to take a true estimate of the real
+values of life, a high comedy which can produce irony without
+coarseness, expose shams without advocating brutality, becomes for the
+first time possible. It must be admitted that the condition is also very
+rarely fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>This, I take it, is the real difficulty. The desirable thing, one may
+say, would have been to introduce a more refined and human art and to
+get rid of the coarser elements. The excellent Steele tried the
+experiment. But he had still to work upon the old lines, which would not
+lend themselves to the new purpose. His passages of moral exhortation
+would not supply the salt of the old cynical brutalities; they had a
+painful tendency to become insipid and sentimental, if not maudlin; and
+only illustrated the difficulty of using a literary tradition which
+developed spontaneously for one purpose to adapt itself to a wholly
+different aim. He produced at best not a new genus but an awkward
+hybrid. But behind this was the greater difficulty that a superior
+literature would have required a social elaboration, the growth of a
+class which could appreciate and present appropriate types. Now even the
+good<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> society for which Congreve wrote had its merits, but certainly its
+refinement left much to be desired. One condition, as Mr. Meredith again
+remarks, of the finer comedy is such an equality of the sexes as may
+admit the refining influence of women. The women of the Restoration time
+hardly exerted a refining influence. They adopted the ingenious
+compromise of going to the play, but going in masks. That is, they
+tacitly implied that the brutality was necessary, and they submitted to
+what they could not openly approve. Throughout the eighteenth century a
+contempt for women was still too characteristic of the aristocratic
+character. Nor was there any marked improvement in the tastes of the
+playgoing classes. The plays denounced by Collier continued to hold the
+stage, though more or less expurgated, throughout the century. Comedy
+did not become decent. In 1729 Arthur Bedford carried on Collier's
+assault in a 'Remonstrance against the horrid blasphemies and
+improprieties which are still used in the English playhouses,' and
+collected seven thousand immoral sentiments from the plays (chiefly) of
+the last four years. I have not verified his statements. The inference,
+however, seems to be clear. Collier's attack could not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> reform the
+stage. The evolution took the form of degeneration. He could, indeed,
+give utterance to the disapproval of the stage in general, which we call
+Puritanical, though it was by no means confined to Puritans or even to
+Protestants. Bossuet could denounce the stage as well as Collier.
+Collier was himself a Tory and a High Churchman, as was William Law, of
+the <i>Serious Call</i>, who also denounced the stage. The sentiment was, in
+fact, that of the respectable middle classes in general. The effect was
+to strengthen the prejudice which held that playgoing was immoral in
+itself, and that an actor deserved to be treated as a 'vagrant'&mdash;the
+class to which he legally belonged. During the next half-century, at
+least, that was the prevailing opinion among the solid middle-class
+section of society.</p>
+
+<p>The denunciations of Collier and his allies certainly effected a reform,
+but at a heavy price. They did not elevate the stage or create a better
+type, but encouraged old prejudices against the theatre generally; the
+theatre was left more and more to a section of the 'town,' and to the
+section which was not too particular about decency. When Congreve
+retired, and Vanbrugh took to architecture, and Farquhar died, no
+adequate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> successors appeared. The production of comedies was left to
+inferior writers, to Mrs. Centlivre, and Colley Cibber, and Fielding in
+his unripe days, and they were forced by the disfavour into which their
+art had fallen to become less forcible rather than to become more
+refined. When a preacher denounces the wicked, his sermons seem to be
+thrown away because the wicked don't come to church. Collier could not
+convert his antagonists; he could only make them more timid and careful
+to avoid giving palpable offence. But he could express the growing
+sentiment which made the drama an object of general suspicion and
+dislike, and induced the ablest writers to turn to other methods for
+winning the favour of a larger public.</p>
+
+<p>The natural result, in fact, was the development of a new kind of
+literature, which was the most characteristic innovation of the period.
+The literary class of which I have hitherto spoken reflected the
+opinions of the upper social stratum. Beneath it was the class generally
+known as Grub Street. Grub Street had arisen at the time of the great
+civil struggle. War naturally generates journalism; it had struggled on
+through the Restoration and taken a fresh start at the Revolution and
+the final disappearance of the licensing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> system. The daily
+newspaper&mdash;meaning a small sheet written by a single author (editors as
+yet were not)&mdash;appeared at the opening of the eighteenth century. Now
+for Grub Street the wit of the higher class had nothing but dislike. The
+'hackney author,' as Dunton called him, in his curious <i>Life and
+Errors</i>, was a mere huckster, who could scarcely be said as yet to
+belong to a profession. A Tutchin or Defoe might be pilloried, or
+flogged, or lose his ears, without causing a touch of compassion from
+men like Swift, who would have disdained to call themselves brother
+authors. Yet politicians were finding him useful. He was the victim of
+one party, and might be bribed or employed as a spy by the other. The
+history of Defoe and his painful struggles between his conscience and
+his need of living, sufficiently indicates the result; Charles Leslie,
+the gallant nonjuror, for example, or Abel Boyer, the industrious
+annalist, or the laborious but cantankerous Oldmixon, were keeping their
+heads above water by journalism, almost exclusively, of course,
+political. Defoe showed a genius for the art, and his mastery of
+vigorous vernacular was hardly rivalled until the time of Paine and
+Cobbett. At any rate, it was plain that a market was now arising<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> for
+periodical literature which might give a scanty support to a class below
+the seat of patrons. It was at this point that the versatile,
+speculative, and impecunious Steele hit upon his famous discovery. The
+aim of the <i>Tatler</i>, started in April 1709, was marked out with great
+accuracy from the first. Its purpose is to contain discourses upon all
+manner of topics&mdash;<i>quicquid agunt homines</i>, as his first motto put
+it&mdash;which had been inadequately treated in the daily papers. It is
+supposed to be written in the various coffee-houses, and it is suited to
+all classes, even including women, whose taste, he observes, is to be
+caught by the title. The <i>Tatler</i>, as we know, led to the <i>Spectator</i>,
+and Addison's co-operation, cordially acknowledged by his friend, was a
+main cause of its unprecedented success. The <i>Spectator</i> became the
+model for at least three generations of writers. The number of
+imitations is countless: Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith, and many men of
+less fame tried to repeat the success; persons of quality, such as
+Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, condescended to write papers for the
+<i>World</i>&mdash;the 'Bow of Ulysses,' as it was called, in which they could
+test their strength. Even in the nineteenth century Hazlitt and Leigh
+Hunt carried on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> form; as indeed, in a modified shape, many later
+essayists have aimed at a substantially similar achievement. To have
+contributed three or four articles was, as in the case of the excellent
+Henry Grove (a name, of course, familiar to all of you), to have
+graduated with honours in literature. Johnson exhorted the literary
+aspirant to give his days and nights to the study of Addison; and the
+<i>Spectator</i> was the most indispensable set of volumes upon the shelves
+of every library where the young ladies described by Miss Burney and
+Miss Austen were permitted to indulge a growing taste for literature. I
+fear that young people of the present day discover, if they try the
+experiment, that their curiosity is easily satisfied. This singular
+success, however, shows that the new form satisfied a real need.
+Addison's genius must, of course, count for much in the immediate
+result; but it was plainly a case where genius takes up the function for
+which it is best suited, and in which it is most fully recognised. When
+we read him now we are struck by one fact. He claims in the name of the
+<i>Spectator</i> to be a censor of manners and morals; and though he veils
+his pretensions under delicate irony, the claim is perfectly serious at
+bottom. He is really seeking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> to improve and educate his readers. He
+aims his gentle ridicule at social affectations and frivolities; and
+sometimes, though avoiding ponderous satire, at the grosser forms of
+vice. He is not afraid of laying down an &aelig;sthetic theory. In a once
+famous series of papers on the Imagination, he speaks with all the
+authority of a recognised critic in discussing the merits of Chevy Chase
+or of <i>Paradise Lost</i>; and in a series of Saturday papers he preaches
+lay-sermons&mdash;which were probably preferred by many readers to the
+official discourses of the following day. They contain those striking
+poems (too few) which led Thackeray to say that he could hardly fancy a
+'human intellect thrilling with a purer love and admiration than Joseph
+Addison's.' Now, spite of the real charm which every lover of delicate
+humour and exquisite urbanity must find in Addison, I fancy that the
+<i>Spectator</i> has come to mean for us chiefly Sir Roger de Coverley. It is
+curious, and perhaps painful, to note how very small a proportion of the
+whole is devoted to that most admirable achievement; and to reflect how
+little life there is in much that in kindness of feeling and grace of
+style is equally charming. One cause is obvious. When Addison talks of
+psychology or &aelig;sthetics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> or ethics (not to speak of his criticism of
+epic poetry or the drama), he must of course be obsolete in substance;
+but, moreover, he is obviously superficial. A man who would speak upon
+such topics now must be a grave philosopher, who has digested libraries
+of philosophy. Addison, of course, is the most modest of men; he has not
+the slightest suspicion that he is going beyond his tether; and that is
+just what makes his unconscious audacity remarkable. He fully shares the
+characteristic belief of the day, that the abstract problems are soluble
+by common sense, when polished by academic culture and aided by a fine
+taste. It is a case of <i>sancta simplicitas</i>; of the charming, because
+perfectly unconscious, self-sufficiency with which the Wit, rejecting
+pedantry as the source of all evil, thinks himself obviously entitled to
+lay down the law as theologian, politician, and philosopher. His
+audience are evidently ready to accept him as an authority, and are
+flattered by being treated as capable of reason, not offended by any
+assumption of their intellectual inferiority.</p>
+
+<p>With whatever shortcomings, Addison, and in their degree Steele and his
+other followers, represent the stage at which the literary organ begins
+to be influenced by the demands of a new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> class of readers. Addison
+feels the dignity of his vocation and has a certain air of gentle
+condescension, especially when addressing ladies who cannot even
+translate his mottoes. He is a genuine prophet of what we now describe
+as Culture, and his exquisite urbanity and delicacy qualify him to be a
+worthy expositor of the doctrines, though his outlook is necessarily
+limited. He is therefore implicitly trying to solve the problem which
+could not be adequately dealt with on the stage; to set forth a view of
+the world and human nature which shall be thoroughly refined and noble,
+and yet imply a full appreciation of the humorous aspects of life. The
+inimitable Sir Roger embodies the true comic spirit; though Addison's
+own attempt at comedy was not successful.</p>
+
+<p>One obvious characteristic of this generation is the didacticism which
+is apt to worry us. Poets, as well as philosophers and preachers, are
+terribly argumentative. Fielding's remark (through Parson Adams), that
+some things in Steele's comedies are almost as good as a sermon, applies
+to a much wider range of literature. One is tempted by way of
+explanation to ascribe this to a primitive and ultimate instinct of the
+race. Englishmen&mdash;including of course <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>Scotsmen&mdash;have a passion for
+sermons, even when they are half ashamed of it; and the British Essay,
+which flourished so long, was in fact a lay sermon. We must briefly
+notice that the particular form of this didactic tendency is a natural
+expression of the contemporary rationalism. The metaphysician of the
+time identifies emotions and passions with intellectual affirmations,
+and all action is a product of logic. In any case we have to do with a
+period in which the old concrete imagery has lost its hold upon the more
+intelligent classes, and instead of an imaginative symbolism we have a
+system of abstract reasoning. Diagrams take the place of concrete
+pictures: and instead of a Milton justifying the ways of Providence by
+the revealed history, we have a Blackmore arguing with Lucretius, and
+are soon to have a Pope expounding a metaphysical system in the <i>Essay
+on Man</i>. Sir Roger represents a happy exception to this method and
+points to the new development. Addison is anticipating the method of
+later novelists, who incarnate their ideals in flesh and blood. This,
+and the minor character sketches which are introduced incidentally,
+imply a feeling after a less didactic method. As yet the sermon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> is in
+the foreground, and the characters are dismissed as soon as they have
+illustrated the preacher's doctrine. Such a method was congenial to the
+Wit. He was, or aspired to be, a keen man of the world; deeply
+interested in the characteristics of the new social order; in the
+eccentricities displayed at clubs, or on the Stock Exchange, or in the
+political struggles; he is putting in shape the practical philosophy
+implied in the conversations at clubs and coffee-houses; he delights in
+discussing such psychological problems as were suggested by the worldly
+wisdom of Rochefoucauld, and he appreciates clever character sketches
+such as those of La Bruy&eacute;re. Both writers were favourites in England.
+But he has become heartily tired of the old romance, and has not yet
+discovered how to combine the interest of direct observation of man with
+a thoroughly concrete form of presentation.</p>
+
+<p>The periodical essay represents the most successful innovation of the
+day; and, as I have suggested, because it represents the mode by which
+the most cultivated writer could be brought into effective relation with
+the genuine interests of the largest audience. Other writers used it
+less skilfully, or had other ways of delivering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> their message to
+mankind. Swift, for example, had already shown his peculiar vein. He
+gives a different, though equally characteristic, side of the
+intellectual attitude of the Wit. In the <i>Battle of the Books</i> he had
+assumed the pedantry of the scholar; in the <i>Tale of a Tub</i> with amazing
+audacity he fell foul of the pedantry of divines. His blows, as it
+seemed to the Archbishops, struck theology in general; he put that right
+by pouring out scorn upon Deists and all who were silly enough to
+believe that the vulgar could reason; and then in his first political
+writings began to expose the corrupt and selfish nature of
+politicians&mdash;though at present only of Whig politicians. Swift is one of
+the most impressive of all literary figures, and I will not even touch
+upon his personal peculiarities. I will only remark that in one respect
+he agrees with his friend Addison. He emphasises, of course, the aspect
+over which Addison passes lightly; he scorns fools too heartily to treat
+them tenderly and do justice to the pathetic side of even human folly.
+But he too believes in culture&mdash;though he may despair of its
+dissemination. He did his best, during his brief period of power, to
+direct patronage towards men of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> letters, even to Whigs; and tried,
+happily without success, to found an English Academy. His zeal was
+genuine, though it expressed itself by scorn for dunces and hostility to
+Grub Street. He illustrates one little peculiarity of the Wit. In the
+society of the clubs there was a natural tendency to form minor cliques
+of the truly initiated, who looked with sovereign contempt upon the
+hackney author. One little indication is the love of mystifications, or
+what were entitled 'bites.' All the Wits, as we know, combined to tease
+the unlucky fortune-teller, Partridge, and to maintain that their
+prediction of his death had been verified, though he absurdly pretended
+to be still alive. So Swift tells us in the journal to Stella how he had
+circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming to life again,
+and how footmen are sent out to inquire into its success. He made a hit
+by writing a sham account of Prior's mission to Paris supposed to come
+from a French valet. The inner circle chuckled over such performances,
+which would be impossible when their monopoly of information had been
+broken up. A similar satisfaction was given by the various burlesques
+and more or less ingenious fables which were to be fully appreciated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> by
+the inner circle; such as the tasteless narrative of Dennis's frenzy by
+which Pope professed to be punishing his victim for an attack upon
+Addison: or to such squibs as Arbuthnot's <i>John Bull</i>&mdash;a parable which
+gives the Tory view in a form fitted for the intelligent. The Wits, that
+is, form an inner circle, who like to speak with an affectation of
+obscurity even if the meaning be tolerably transparent, and show that
+they are behind the scenes by occasionally circulating bits of sham
+news. They like to form a kind of select upper stratum, which most fully
+believes in its own intellectual eminence, and shows a contempt for its
+inferiors by burlesque and rough sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>It is not difficult (especially when we know the result) to guess at the
+canons of taste which will pass muster in such regions. Enthusiastical
+politicians of recent days have been much given to denouncing modern
+clubs, where everybody is a cynic and unable to appreciate the great
+ideas which stir the masses. It may be so; my own acquaintance with club
+life, though not very extensive, does not convince me that every member
+of a London club is a Mephistopheles; but I will admit that a certain
+excess of hard worldly wisdom may be generated in such resorts;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> and we
+find many conspicuous traces of that tendency in the clubs of Queen
+Anne's reign. Few of them have Addison's gentleness or his perception of
+the finer side of human nature. It was by a rare combination of
+qualities that he was enabled to write like an accomplished man of the
+world, and yet to introduce the emotional element without any jarring
+discord. The literary reformers of a later day denounce the men of this
+period as 'artificial'! a phrase the antithesis of which is 'natural.'
+Without asking at present what is meant by the implied distinction&mdash;an
+inquiry which is beset by whole systems of equivocations&mdash;I may just
+observe that in this generation the appeal to Nature was as common and
+emphatic as in any later time. The leaders of thought believe in reason,
+and reason sets forth the Religion of Nature and assumes that the Law of
+Nature is the basis of political theory. The corresponding literary
+theory is that Art must be subordinate to Nature. The critics' rules, as
+Pope says in the poem which most fully expresses the general doctrine,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Are Nature still, but Nature methodised;</div>
+<div>Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained</div>
+<div>By the same laws which first herself ordained.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span></p><p>The Nature thus 'methodised' was the nature of the Wit himself; the set
+of instincts and prejudices which to him seemed to be so normal that
+they must be natural. Their standards of taste, if artificial to us,
+were spontaneous, not fictitious; the Wits were not wearing a mask, but
+were exhibiting their genuine selves with perfect simplicity. Now one
+characteristic of the Wit is always a fear of ridicule. Above all things
+he dreads making a fool of himself. The old lyric, for example, which
+came so spontaneously to the Elizabethan poet or dramatist, and of which
+echoes are still to be found in the Restoration, has decayed, or rather,
+has been transformed. When you have written a genuine bit of
+love-poetry, the last place, I take it, in which you think of seeking
+the applause of a congenial audience, would be the smoking-room of your
+club: but that is the nearest approach to the critical tribunal of Queen
+Anne's day. It is necessary to smuggle in poetry and passion in
+disguise, and conciliate possible laughter by stating plainly that you
+anticipate the ridicule yourself. In other words you write society
+verses like Prior, temper sentiment by wit, and if you do not express
+vehement passion, turn out elegant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> verses, salted by an irony which is
+a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had
+become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become
+extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in
+versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously,
+Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for
+his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the
+form by introducing real rustics and turning it into a burlesque. Then,
+as Johnson puts it, the 'effect of reality and truth became conspicuous,
+even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' <i>The
+Rape of the Lock</i> is the masterpiece, as often noticed, of an
+unconscious allegory. The sylph, who was introduced with such curious
+felicity, is to be punished if he fails to do his duty, by imprisonment
+in a lady's toilet apparatus.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,</div>
+<div>While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Delicate fancy and real poetical fancy may be turned to account; but
+under the mask of the mock-heroic. We can be poetical still, it seems to
+say, only we must never forget that to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> poetical in deadly earnest is
+to run the risk of being absurd. Even a Wit is pacified when he is thus
+dexterously coaxed into poetry disguised as mere playful exaggeration,
+and feels quite safe in following the fortune of a game of cards in
+place of a sanguinary Homeric battle. Ariel is still alive, but he
+adopts the costume of the period to apologise for his eccentricities.
+Poetry thus understood may either give a charm to the trivial or fall
+into mere burlesque; and though Pope's achievement is an undeniable
+triumph, there are blots in an otherwise wonderful performance which
+show an uncomfortable concession to the coarser tastes of his audience.</p>
+
+<p>I will not dwell further upon a tolerably obvious theme. I must pass to
+the more serious literature. The Wit had not the smallest notion that
+his attitude disqualified him for succession in the loftiest poetical
+endeavour. He thinks that his critical keenness will enable him to
+surpass the old models. He wishes, in the familiar phrase, to be
+'correct'; to avoid the gross faults of taste which disfigured the old
+Gothic barbarism of his forefathers. That for him is the very meaning of
+reason and nature. He will write tragedies which must get rid of the
+brutalities,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> the extravagance, the audacious mixture of farce and
+tragedy which was still attractive to the vulgar. He has, indeed, a kind
+of lurking regard for the rough vigour of the Shakespearian epoch; his
+patriotic prejudices pluck at him at intervals, and suggest that
+Marlborough's countrymen ought not quite to accept the yoke of the
+French Academy. When Ambrose Phillips produced the <i>Distrest
+Mother</i>&mdash;adapted from Racine&mdash;all Addison's little society was
+enthusiastic. Steele stated in the Prologue that the play was meant to
+combine French correctness with British force, and praised it in the
+<i>Spectator</i> because it was 'everywhere Nature.' The town, he pointed
+out, would be able to admire the passions 'within the rules of decency,
+honour, and good breeding.' The performance was soon followed by <i>Cato</i>,
+unquestionably, as Johnson still declares, 'the noblest production of
+Addison's genius.' It presents at any rate the closest conformity to the
+French model; and falls into comic results, as old Dennis pointed out,
+from the so-called Unity of Place, and consequent necessity of
+transacting all manner of affairs, love-making to Cato's daughter, and
+conspiring against Cato himself, in Cato's own hall. Such tragedy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+however, refused to take root. Cato, as I think no one can deny, is a
+good specimen of Addison's style, but, except a few proverbial phrases,
+it is dead. The obvious cause, no doubt, is that the British public
+liked to see battle, murder, and sudden death, and, in spite of
+Addison's arguments, enjoyed a mixture of tragic and comic. Shakespeare,
+though not yet an idol, had still a hold upon the stage, and was
+beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of
+commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign
+model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to
+moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes
+'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong,
+that a tragedy ought to be a work of art. The artist must observe
+certain rules; though I need not ask whether he was right in thinking
+that these rules were represented by the accepted interpreters of the
+teaching of Nature. What he did not perceive was that another essential
+condition was absent; namely, that the tragic mood should correspond to
+his own 'nature.' The tragic art can, like other arts, only flourish
+when it embodies spontaneously the emotions and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>convictions of the
+spectators; when the dramatist is satisfying a genuine demand, and is
+himself ready to see in human life the conflict of great passions and
+the scene of impressive catastrophes. Then the theatre becomes naturally
+the mirror upon which the imagery can be projected. But the society to
+which Addison and his fellows belonged was a society of good,
+commonplace, sensible people, who were fighting each other by pamphlets
+instead of by swords; who played a game in which they staked not life
+and death but a comfortable competency; who did not even cut off the
+head of a fallen minister, who no longer believed in great statesmen of
+heroic proportions rising above the vulgar herd; and who had a very
+hearty contempt for romantic extravagance. A society in which common
+sense is regarded as the cardinal intellectual virtue does not naturally
+suggest the great tragic themes. Cato is obviously contrived, not
+inspired; and the dramatist is thinking of obeying the rules of good
+taste, instead of having them already incorporated in his thought. This
+comes out in one chief monument in the literary movement, I mean Pope's
+<i>Homer</i>. Pope, as we know, made himself independent by that performance.
+The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> method of publication is significant. He had no interest in the
+general sale, which was large enough to make his publisher's fortune.
+The publisher meanwhile supplied him gratuitously with the copies for
+which the subscribers paid him six guineas apiece. That means that he
+received a kind of commission from the upper class to execute the
+translation. The list of his subscribers seems to be almost a directory
+to the upper circle of the day; every person of quality has felt himself
+bound to promote so laudable an undertaking; the patron had been
+superseded by a kind of joint-stock body of collective patronage. The
+Duke of Buckingham, one of its accepted mouthpieces, had said in verse
+in his <i>Essay on Poetry</i> that if you once read Homer, everything else
+will be 'mean and poor.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>Verse will seem prose; yet often in him look</div>
+<div>And you will hardly need another book.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That was the correct profession of faith. Yet as a good many Wits found
+Greek an obstacle, a translation was needed. Chapman had become
+barbarous; Hobbes and Ogilvie were hopelessly flat; and Pope was
+therefore handsomely paid to produce a book which was to be the standard
+of the poetical taste. Pope was thus the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> chosen representative of the
+literary spirit. It is needless to point out that Pope's <i>Iliad</i> is not
+Homer's. That was admitted from the first. When we read in a speech of
+Agamemnon exhorting the Greeks to abandon the siege,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Love, duty, safety summon us away;</div>
+<div>'Tis Nature's voice, and Nature we obey,'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>we hardly require to be told that we are not listening to Homer's
+Agamemnon but to an Agamemnon in a full-bottomed wig. Yet Pope's Homer
+had a success unparalleled by any other translation of profane poetry;
+for the rest of the century it was taken to be a masterpiece; it has
+been the book from which Byron and many clever lads first learned to
+enjoy what they at least took for Homer; and, as Mrs. Gallup has
+discovered, it was used by Bacon at the beginning of the seventeenth
+century, and by somebody at the beginning of the twentieth. That it has
+very high literary merits can, I think, be denied by no unprejudiced
+reader, but I have only to do with one point. Pope had the advantage&mdash;I
+take it to be an advantage&mdash;of having a certain style prescribed for him
+by the literary tradition inherited from Dryden. A certain diction and
+measure had to be adopted, and the language to be run into an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> accepted
+mould. The mould was no doubt conventional, and corresponded to a
+temporary phase of sentiment. Like the costume of the period, it strikes
+us now as 'artificial' because it was at the time so natural. It was
+worked out by the courtly and aristocratic class, and was fitted to give
+a certain dignity and lucidity, and to guard against mere greatness and
+triviality of utterance. At any rate it saved Pope from one enormous
+difficulty. The modern translator is aware that Homer lived a long time
+ago in a very different state of intellectual and social development,
+and yet feels bound to reproduce the impressions made upon the ancient
+Greek. The translator has to be an accurate scholar and to give the
+right shade of meaning for every phrase, while he has also to
+approximate to the metrical effect. The conclusion seems to be that the
+only language into which Homer could be adequately translated would be
+Greek, and that you must then use the words of the original. The actual
+result is that the translator is cramped by his fetters; that his use of
+archaic words savours of affectation, and that, at best, he has to
+emphasise the fact that his sentiments are fictitious. Pope had no
+trouble of that kind. He aims at giving something <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>equivalent to Homer,
+not Homer himself, and therefore at something really practical. He has
+the same advantage as a man who accepts a living style of architecture
+or painting; he can exert all his powers of forcible expression in a
+form which will be thoroughly understood by his audience, and which
+saves him, though at a certain cost, from the difficulties of trying to
+reproduce the characteristics which are really incongruous.</p>
+
+<p>There are disadvantages. In his time the learned M. Bossu was the
+accepted authority upon the canons of criticism. Buckingham says he had
+explained the 'mighty magic' of Homer. One doctrine of his was that an
+epic poet first thinks of a moral and then invents a fable to illustrate
+it. The theory struck Addison as a little overstated, but it is an
+exaggeration of the prevalent view. According to Pope Homer's great
+merit was his 'invention'&mdash;and by this he sometimes appears to imply
+that Homer had even invented the epic poem. Poetry was, it seems, at a
+'low pitch' in Greece in Homer's time, as indeed were other arts and
+sciences. Homer, wishing to instruct his countrymen in all kinds of
+topics, devised the epic poem: made use of the popular mythology to
+supply what in the technical language was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> called his 'machinery';
+converted the legends into philosophical allegory, and introduced
+'strokes of knowledge from his whole circle of arts and sciences.' This
+'circle' includes for example geography, rhetoric, and history; and the
+whole poem is intended to inculcate the political moral that many evils
+sprang from the want of union among the Greeks. Not a doubt of it! Homer
+was in the sphere of poetry what Lycurgus was supposed to be in the
+field of legislation. He had at a single bound created poetry and made
+it a vehicle of philosophy, politics, and ethics. Upon this showing the
+epic poem is a form of art which does not grow out of the historical
+conditions of the period; but it is a permanent form of art, as good for
+the eighteenth century as for the heroic age of Greece; it may be
+adopted as a model, only requiring certain additional ornaments and
+refinements to adapt it to the taste of a more enlightened period. Yet,
+at the same time, Pope could clearly perceive some of the absurd
+consequences of M. Bossu's view. He ridiculed that authority very keenly
+in the 'Recipe to make an Epic Poem' which first appeared in the
+<i>Guardian</i>, while he was at work upon his own translation. Bossu's
+rules, he says, will enable us to make epic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> poems without genius or
+reading; and he proceeds to show how you are to work your 'machines,'
+and introduce your allegories and descriptions, and extract your moral
+out of the fable at leisure, 'only making it sure that you strain it
+sufficiently.'</p>
+
+<p>That was the point. The enlightened critic sees that the work of art
+embodies certain abstract rules; which may, and probably will&mdash;if he be
+a man of powerful intellectual power, be rational, and suggest
+instructive canons. But, as Pope sees, it does not follow that the
+inverse process is feasible; that is, that you construct your poem
+simply by applying the rules. To be a good cricketer you must apply
+certain rules of dynamics; but it does not follow that a sound knowledge
+of dynamics will enable you to play good cricket. Pope sees that
+something more than an acceptance of M. Bossu's or Aristotle's canons is
+requisite for the writer of a good epic poem. The something more,
+according to him, appears to be learning and genius. It is certainly
+true that at least genius must be one requisite. But then, there is the
+further point. Will the epic poem, which was the product of certain
+remote social and intellectual conditions, serve to express the thoughts
+and emotions of a totally different age? Considering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> the difference
+between Achilles and Marlborough, or the bards of the heroic age and the
+wits who frequented clubs and coffee-houses under Queen Anne, it was at
+least important to ask whether Homer and Pope&mdash;taking them to be alike
+in genius&mdash;would not find it necessary to adopt radically different
+forms. That is for us so obvious a suggestion that one wonders at the
+tacit assumption of its irrelevance. Pope, indeed, by taking the <i>Iliad</i>
+for a framework, a ready-made fabric which he could embroider with his
+own tastes, managed to construct a singularly spirited work, full of
+good rhetoric and not infrequently rising to real poetical excellence.
+But it did not follow that an original production on the same lines
+would have been possible. Some years later, Young complained of Pope for
+being imitative, and said that if he had dared to be original, he might
+have produced a modern epic as good as the <i>Iliad</i> instead of a mere
+translation. That is not quite credible. Pope himself tried an epic poem
+too, which happily came to nothing; but a similar ambition led to such
+works as Glover's <i>Leonidas</i> and <i>The Epigoniad</i> of the Scottish Homer
+Wilkie. English poets as a rule seem to have suffered at some period of
+their lives from this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> malady and contemplated Arthuriads; but the
+constructional epic died, I take it, with Southey's respectable poems.</p>
+
+<p>We may consider, then, that any literary form, the drama, the epic poem,
+the essay, and so forth, is comparable to a species in natural history.
+It has, one may say, a certain organic principle which determines the
+possible modes of development. But the line along which it will actually
+develop depends upon the character and constitution of the literary
+class which turns it to account, for the utterance of its own ideas; and
+depends also upon the correspondence of those ideas with the most vital
+and powerful intellectual currents of the time. The literary class of
+Queen Anne's day was admirably qualified for certain formations: the
+Wits leading the 'town,' and forming a small circle accepting certain
+canons of taste, could express with admirable clearness and honesty the
+judgment of bright common sense; the ideas which commend themselves to
+the man of the world, and to a rationalism which was the embodiment of
+common sense. They produced a literature, which in virtue of its
+sincerity and harmonious development within certain limits could pass
+for some time as a golden age. The aversion to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> pedantry limited its
+capacity for the highest poetical creation, and made the imagination
+subservient to the prosaic understanding. The comedy had come to adapt
+itself to the tastes of the class which, instead of representing the
+national movement, was composed of the more disreputable part of the
+town. The society unable to develop it in the direction of refinement
+left it to second-rate writers. It became enervated instead of elevated.
+The epic and the tragic poetry, ceasing to reflect the really powerful
+impulses of the day, were left to the connoisseur and dilettante man of
+taste, and though they could write with force and dignity when
+renovating or imitating older masterpieces, such literature became
+effete and hopelessly artificial. It was at best a display of technical
+skill, and could not correspond to the strongest passions and conditions
+of the time. The invention of the periodical essay, meanwhile, indicated
+what was a condition of permanent vitality. There, at least, the Wit was
+appealing to a wide and growing circle of readers, and could utter the
+real living thoughts and impulses of the time. The problem for the
+coming period was therefore marked out. The man of letters had to
+develop a living literature by becoming a representative of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> the ideas
+which really interested the whole cultivated classes, instead of writing
+merely for the exquisite critic, or still less for the regenerating and
+obnoxious section of society. That indeed, I take it, is the general
+problem of literature; but I shall have to trace the way in which its
+solution was attempted in the next period.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h3>(1714-1739)</h3>
+
+<p>The death of Queen Anne opens a new period in the history of literature
+and of politics. Under the first Georges we are in the very heart of the
+eighteenth century; the century, as its enemies used to say, of coarse
+utilitarian aims, of religious indifference and political corruption;
+or, as I prefer to say, the century of sound common sense and growing
+toleration, and of steady social and industrial development.</p>
+
+<p>To us, to me at least, it presents something pleasant in retrospect.
+There were then no troublesome people with philanthropic or political or
+religious nostrums, proposing to turn the world upside down and
+introduce an impromptu millennium. The history of periods when people
+were cutting each other's throats for creeds is no doubt more exciting;
+but we, who profess toleration, ought surely to remember that you
+cannot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> have martyrs without bigots and persecutors; and that
+fanaticism, though it may have its heroic aspects, has also a very ugly
+side to it. At any rate, we who come after a century of revolutionary
+changes, and are often told that the whole order of things may be upset
+by some social earthquake, look back with regret to the days of quiet
+solid progress, when everything seemed to have settled down to a quiet,
+stable equilibrium. Wealth and comfort were growing&mdash;surely no bad
+things; and John Bull&mdash;he had just received that name from
+Arbuthnot&mdash;was waxing fat and complacently contemplating his own
+admirable qualities. It is the period of the composition of 'Rule
+Britannia' and 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' and of the settled
+belief that your lusty, cudgel-playing, beer-drinking Briton was worth
+three of the slaves who ate frogs and wore wooden shoes across the
+Channel. The British constitution was the embodiment of perfect wisdom,
+and, as such, was entitled to be the dread and envy of the world. To the
+political historian it is the era of Walpole; the huge mass of solid
+common sense, who combined the qualities of the sturdy country squire
+and the thorough man of business; whose great aim was to preserve the
+peace; to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> keep the country as much as might be out of the continental
+troubles which it did not understand, and in which it had no concern;
+and to carry on business upon sound commercial principles. It is of
+course undeniable that his rule not only meant regard for the solid
+material interests of the country, but too often appealed to the
+interests of the ruling class. Philosophical historians who deal with
+the might-have-been may argue that a man of higher character might have
+worked by better means and have done something to purify the political
+atmosphere. Walpole was not in advance of his day; but it is at least
+too clear to need any exposition that under the circumstances corruption
+was inevitable. When the House of Commons was the centre of political
+authority, when so many boroughs were virtually private property, when
+men were not stirred to the deeper issues by any great constitutional
+struggle&mdash;party government had to be carried on by methods which
+involved various degrees of jobbery and bribery. The disease was
+certainly not peculiar to Walpole's age; though perhaps the symptoms
+were more obvious and avowed more bluntly than usual. As Walpole's
+masterful ways drove his old allies into opposition, they denounced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> the
+system and himself; but unfortunately although they claimed to be
+patriots and patterns of political virtue, they were made pretty much of
+the same materials as the arch-corrupter. When the 'moneyed men,' upon
+whom he had relied, came to be in favour of a warlike policy and were
+roused by the story of Captain Jenkins' ear, Walpole fell, but no reign
+of purity followed. The growing dissatisfaction, however, with the
+Walpolean system implied some very serious conditions, and the cry
+against corruption, in which nearly all the leading writers of the time
+joined, had a very serious significance in literature and in the growth
+of public opinion.</p>
+
+<p>First, however, let me glance at the change as it immediately affected
+the literary organ. The old club and coffee-house society broke up with
+remarkable rapidity. While Oxford was sent to the Tower, and Bolingbroke
+escaped to France, Swift retired to Dublin, and Prior, after being
+imprisoned, passed the remainder of his life in retirement. Pope settled
+down to translating Homer, and took up his abode at Twickenham, outside
+the exciting and noisy London world in which the poor invalid had been
+jostled. Addison soared into the loftier regions of politics and
+married<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> his Countess, and ceased to preside at Buttons'. Steele held on
+for a time, but in declining prosperity and diminished literary
+activity, till his retirement to Wales. No one appeared to fill the gaps
+thus made in the ranks either of the Whigs' or the Tories' section of
+literature. The change was obviously connected with the systematic
+development of the party system. Swift bitterly denounced Walpole for
+his indifference to literature! 'Bob the poet's foe' was guided by other
+motives in disposing of his patronage. Places in the Customs were no
+longer to be given to writers of plays or complimentary epistles in
+verse, or even to promising young politicians, but to members of
+parliament or the constituents in whom they were interested. The
+placemen, who were denounced as one of the great abuses of the time,
+were rewarded for voting power not for literary merit. The patron,
+therefore, was disappearing; though one or two authors, such as Congreve
+and Gay, might be still petted by the nobility; and Young somehow got a
+pension out of Walpole, probably through Bubb Dodington, the very
+questionable parson who still wished to be a M&aelig;cenas. Meanwhile there
+was a compensation. The bookseller was beginning to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>supersede the
+patron. Tonson and Lintot were making fortunes; the first Longman was
+founding the famous firm which still flourishes; and the career of the
+disreputable and piratical Curll shows that at least the demand for
+miscellaneous literature was growing. The anecdotes of the misery of
+authors, of the translators who lay three in a bed in Curll's garret, of
+Samuel Boyse, who had reduced his clothes to a single blanket, and
+Savage sleeping on a bulk, are sometimes adduced to show that literature
+was then specially depressed. But there never was a time when authors of
+dissolute habits were not on the brink of starvation, and the
+authorities of the Literary Fund could give us contemporary
+illustrations of the fact. The real inference is, I take it, that the
+demand which was springing up attracted a great many impecunious
+persons, who became the drudges of the rising class of booksellers. No
+doubt the journalist was often in a degrading position. The press was
+active in all political struggles. The great men, Walpole, Bolingbroke,
+and Pulteney, wrote pamphlets or contributed papers to the <i>Craftsman</i>,
+while they employed inferior scribes to do the drudgery. Walpole paid
+large sums to the 'Gazetters,' whom Pope denounces; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> men like
+Amherst of the <i>Craftsman</i> or Gordon of the <i>Independent Whig</i>, carried
+on the ordinary warfare. The author by profession was beginning to be
+recognised. Thomson and Mallet came up from Scotland during this period
+to throw themselves upon literature; Ralph, friend of Franklin and
+collaborator of Fielding, came from New England; and Johnson was
+attracted from the country to become a contributor to the <i>Gentleman's
+Magazine</i>, started by Cave in 1731&mdash;an event which marked a new
+development of periodical literature. Though no one would then advise a
+young man who could do anything else to trust to authorship (it would be
+rash to give such advice now) the new career was being opened. There
+were hack authors of all varieties. The successful playwright gained a
+real prize in the lottery; and translations, satires, and essays on the
+<i>Spectator</i> model enabled the poor drudge to make both ends meet, though
+too often in bondage to his employer to be, as I take it, better off
+than in the previous period, when the choice lay between risking the
+pillory and selling yourself as a spy.</p>
+
+<p>Before considering the effect produced under the changed conditions, I
+must note briefly the intellectual position. The period was that of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+culmination of the deist controversy. In the previous period the
+rationalism of which Locke was the mouthpiece represented the dominant
+tendency. It was generally held on all sides that there was a religion
+of nature, capable of purely rational demonstration. The problem
+remained as to its relation to the revealed religion and the established
+creed. Locke himself was a sincere Christian, though he reduced the
+dogmatic element to a minimum. Some of his disciples, however, became
+freethinkers in the technical sense, and held that revelation was
+needless, and that in point of fact no supernatural revelation had been
+made. The orthodox, on the other hand, while admitting or declaring that
+faith should be founded on reason, and that reason could establish a
+'religion of nature,' admitted in various ways that a supernatural
+revelation was an essential corollary or a useful addition to the simple
+rational doctrine. The controversies which arose upon this issue, after
+being carried on very vigorously for a time, caused less interest as
+time went on, and were beginning to die out at the end of this period.
+It is often said in explanation that deism or the religion of nature, as
+then understood, was too vague and colourless a system to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> have any
+strong vitality. It faded into a few abstract logical propositions which
+had no relation to fact, and led to the optimistic formula, 'Whatever
+is, is right,' which could in the long-run satisfy no one with any
+strong perception of the darker elements of the world and human nature.
+This view may be emphasised by the most remarkable writings of the
+period. Butler's <i>Analogy</i> (1736) has been regarded by many even of his
+strongest opponents as triumphant against the deistical optimism, and
+certainly emphasises the side of things to which that optimism is blind.
+Hume's <i>Treatise of Human Nature</i>, at the end of the period (1739),
+uttered the sceptical revolution which destroys the base of the
+deistical system. Another writer is notable: William Law's <i>Serious
+Call</i> is one of the books which has made a turning-point in many men's
+lives. It specially affected Samuel Johnson and John Wesley, and many of
+those who sympathised more or less with Wesley's movement. Law was
+driven by his sense of the aspects of the rationalist theories to adopt
+a different position. He became a follower of Behmen, and his mysticism
+ended by repelling the thoroughly practical Wesley, as indeed mysticism
+in general seems to be uncongenial to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> English mind. Law's position
+shows a difficulty which was felt by others. It means that while he
+holds that religion must be in the highest sense 'reasonable' it cannot
+be (as another author put it) 'founded upon argument.' Faith must be
+identified with the inner light, the direct voice of God to man, which
+appeals to the soul, and is not built upon syllogisms or allowed to
+depend upon the result of historical criticism. This view, I need hardly
+say, is opposed to the whole rationalist theory, whether of the deist or
+the orthodox variety: it was so opposed that it could find scarcely any
+sympathy at the time; and for that reason it indicates one
+characteristic of the contemporary thought. To omit the mystical element
+is to be cold and unsatisfactory in religious philosophy, and to be
+radically prosaic and unpoetical in the sphere of literature. Englishmen
+could never become mystics in the technical sense, but they were
+beginning to be discontented with the bare logical system of the
+religion of nature. They were ready for some utterance of the emotional
+and imaginative element in religion and philosophy which was left out of
+account by the wits and rationalists. I do not myself believe that the
+intellectual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> weakness of abstract deism gives a sufficient explanation
+of its decay. In fact, as accepted by Rousseau and by some of his
+English followers, it could ally itself with the ardent revolutionary
+enthusiasm which was to be the marked peculiarity of the latter part of
+the century. We must add another consideration. Locke and his
+contemporaries had laid down political and religious principles which,
+if logically developed, would lead to the revolutionary doctrines of
+1789. They did not develop them, and mainly, I take it, because the
+practical application excited no strong feeling. The spark did not find
+fuel ready to be lighted. The political and social conditions supply a
+sufficient explanation of the indifference. People were practically
+content with the existing order in Church and State. The deist
+controversies did not reach the enormous majority of the nation, who
+went quietly about their business in the old paths. The orthodox
+themselves were so rationalistic in principle that the whole discussion
+seemed to turn upon non-essential points. But moreover the Church was so
+thoroughly subordinated to the laity; it was so much a part of the
+regular comfortable system of things; so little able or inclined to set
+up as an independent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> power claiming special authority and enforcing
+discipline, that it excited no hostility. Parson and squire were part of
+the regular system which could not be attacked without upsetting the
+whole system; and there was as yet no general discontent with that
+system, or, indeed, any disposition whatever to reconstruct the
+machinery which was working so quietly and so thoroughly in accordance
+with the dumb instincts of the overwhelming majority.</p>
+
+<p>Now let us pass to the literary manifestation of this order. The
+literary society, as it existed under Queen Anne, had been broken up;
+two or three of the men who had already made their mark continued their
+activity, especially Pope and Swift. Swift, however, was living apart
+from the world, though he was still to come to the front on more than
+one remarkable occasion. Pope, meanwhile, became the acknowledged
+dictator. The literary movement may be called after Pope, as distinctly
+as the political after Walpole. He established his dynasty so thoroughly
+that in later days the attempt to upset him was regarded as a daring
+revolution. What was Pope? Poet or not, for his title to the name has
+been disputed, he had one power or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> weakness in which he has scarcely
+been rivalled. No writer, that is, reflects so clearly and completely
+the spirit of his own day. His want of originality means the extreme and
+even morbid sensibility which enabled him to give the fullest utterance
+to the ideas of his class, and of the nation, so far as the nation was
+really represented by the class. But the literary class was going
+through a process of differentiation, as the alliance of authors and
+statesmen broke up. Pope represents mainly the aristocratic movement. He
+had become independent&mdash;a fact of which he was a little too proud&mdash;and
+moved on the most familiar terms with the great men of the age. The Tory
+leaders were, of course, his special friends; but in later days he
+became a friend of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and of the politicians
+who broke off from Walpole; while even with Walpole he was on terms of
+civility. His poems give a long catalogue of the great men of whose
+intimacy he was so proud. Besides Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher,
+and friend,' he counts up nearly all the great men of his time. Somers
+and Halifax, and Granville and Congreve, Oxford and Atterbury, who had
+encouraged his first efforts; Pulteney, Chesterfield, Argyll, Wyndham,
+Cobham,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Bathurst, Peterborough, Queensberry, who had become friends in
+later years, receive the delicate compliments which imply his excusable
+pride in their alliance. Pope, therefore, may be considered from one
+point of view as the authorised interpreter of the upper circle, which
+then took itself to embody the highest cultivation of the nation. We may
+appreciate Pope's poetry by comparing it with an independent
+manifestation of their morality. The most explicit summary of the
+general tone of the class-morality may, I think, be gathered from
+Chesterfield's <i>Letters</i>. Though written at a later period, they sum up
+the lesson he has imbibed from his experience at this time. Chesterfield
+was no mere fribble or rake. He was a singularly shrewd, impartial
+observer of life, who had studied men at first hand as well as from
+books. His letters deal with the problem: What are the conditions of
+success in public life? He treats it in the method of Machiavelli; that
+is to say, he inquires what actually succeeds, not what ought to
+succeed. An answer to that question given by a man of great ability is
+always worth studying. Even if it should appear that success in this
+world is not always won by virtue, the fact should be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> recognised,
+though we should get rid of the conclusion that virtue, when an
+encumbrance to success, should be discarded. Chesterfield's answer,
+however, is not simply cynical. His pupil is to study men and politics
+thoroughly; to know the constitutions of all European states, to read
+the history of modern times so far as it has a bearing upon business; to
+be thoroughly well informed as to the aims of kings and courts; to
+understand financial and diplomatic movements; briefly, as far as was
+then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature
+and appreciate art, though he was carefully to avoid the excess which
+makes the pedant or the virtuoso. He was to cultivate a good style in
+writing and speaking, and even to learn German. Chesterfield's prophecy
+of a revolution in France (though, I fancy, a little overpraised) shows
+at least that he was a serious observer of political phenomena. But
+besides these solid attainments, the pupil, we know, is to study the
+Graces. The excessive insistence upon this is partly due to the
+peculiarities of his hearer and his own quaint illusion that the way to
+put a man at his ease is to be constantly insisting upon his hopeless
+awkwardness. The theory is pushed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> excess when he says that
+Marlborough and Pitt succeeded by the Graces, not by supreme business
+capacity or force of character; and argues from recent examples that a
+fool may succeed by dint of good manners, while a man of ability without
+them must be a failure. The exaggeration illustrates the position. The
+game of politics, that is, has become mainly personal. The diplomatist
+must succeed by making himself popular in courts, and the politician by
+winning popularity in the House of Commons. Social success&mdash;that is, the
+power of making oneself agreeable to the ruling class&mdash;is the essential
+pre-condition to all other success. The statesman does not make himself
+known as the advocate of great principles when no great principles are
+at stake, and the ablest man of business cannot turn his abilities to
+account unless he commends himself to employers who themselves are too
+good and great to be bothered with accounts. You must first of all be
+acceptable to your environment; and the environment means the upper ten
+thousand who virtually govern the world. The social qualities,
+therefore, come into the foreground. Undoubtedly this implies a cynical
+tone. You can't respect the victims of your cajolery. Chesterfield's
+favourite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> author is Rochefoucauld of whom (not the Bible) his son is to
+read a chapter every day. Men, that is, are selfish. Happily also they
+are silly, and can be flattered into helping you, little as they may
+care for you. 'Wriggle yourself into power' he says more than once. That
+is especially true of women, of whom he always speaks with the true
+aristocratic contempt. A man of sense will humour them and flatter them;
+he will never consult them seriously, nor really trust them, but he will
+make them believe that he does both. They are invaluable as tools,
+though contemptible in themselves. This, of course, represents the tone
+too characteristic of the epicurean British nobleman. Yet with all this
+cynicism, Chesterfield's morality is perfectly genuine in its way. He
+has the sense of honour and the patriotic feeling of his class. He has
+the good nature which is compatible with, and even congenial to, a
+certain cynicism. He is said to have achieved the very unusual success
+of being an admirable Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In fact he had the
+intellectual vigour which implies a real desire for good administration,
+less perhaps from purely philanthropic motives than from respect for
+efficiency.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span><div>'For forms of government let fools contest</div>
+<div>Whate'er is best administered, is best,'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>says Pope, and that was Chesterfield's view. Like Frederick of Prussia,
+whom he admires above all rulers, he might not be over-scrupulous in his
+policy, but wishes the machinery for which he is responsible to be in
+thoroughly good working order. He most thoroughly sees the folly, if he
+does not sufficiently despise the motives, of the lower order of
+politicians to whom bribery and corruption represented the only
+political forces worth notice. In practice he might be forced to use
+such men, but he sees them to be contemptible, and appreciates the
+mischiefs resulting from their rule.</p>
+
+<p>The development of this morality in the aristocratic class, which was
+still predominant although the growing importance of the House of
+Commons was tending to shift the centre of political gravity to a lower
+point, is, I think, sufficiently intelligible to be taken for granted.
+Pope, I have said, represents the literary version. The problem, then,
+is how this view of life is to be embodied in poetry. One answer is the
+<i>Essay on Man</i>, in which Pope versified the deism which he learned from
+Bolingbroke, and which was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>characteristic of the upper circle
+generally. I need not speak of its shortcomings; didactic poetry of that
+kind is dreary enough, and the smart couplets often offend one's taste.
+I may say that here and there Pope manages to be really impressive, and
+to utter sentiments which really ennobled the deist creed; the aversion
+to narrow superstition; to the bigotry which 'dealt damnation round the
+land'; and the conviction that the true religion must correspond to a
+cosmopolitan humanity. I remember hearing Carlyle quote with admiration
+the Universal Prayer&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Father of all, in every age,</div>
+<div class="i1">In every clime adored,</div>
+<div>By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage,</div>
+<div class="i1">Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and it is the worthy utterance of one good legacy which the deist
+bequeathed to posterity. Pope himself was alarmed when he discovered
+that he had slipped unawares into heterodoxy. His creed was not
+congenial to the average mind, though it was to that of his immediate
+circle. Meanwhile, his most characteristic and successful work was of a
+different order. The answer, in fact, to the problem which I have just
+stated, is that the only kind of poetry that was congenial to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+environment was satire&mdash;if satire can be called poetry. Pope's satires,
+the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' the 'Epilogue,' and some of the 'Imitations
+of Horace,' represent his best and most lasting achievement. There he
+gives the fullest expression to the general sentiment in the most
+appropriate form. His singular command of language, and, within his own
+limits, of versification, was turned to account by conscientious and
+unceasing labour in polishing his style. Particular passages, like the
+famous satire upon Addison, have been slowly elaborated; he has brooded
+over them for years; and, if the result of such methods is sometimes a
+mosaic rather than a continuous current of discourse, the extraordinary
+brilliance of some passages has made them permanently interesting and
+enriched our literature with many proverbial phrases. The art was
+naturally cultivated and its results appreciated in the circle formed by
+such men as Congreve, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield and the like, by
+whom witty conversation was cultivated as a fine art. Chesterfield tells
+us that he never spoke without trying to express himself as well as
+possible; and Pope carries out the principle in his poetry. The thorough
+polish has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>preserved the numerous phrases, still familiar, which have
+survived the general neglect of his work. Pope indeed manages to
+introduce genuine poetry, as in his famous compliments or his passage
+about his mother, in which we feel that he is really speaking from his
+heart. But no doubt Atterbury gave him judicious (if not very Christian)
+advice, when he told him to stick to the vein of the Addison verses. The
+main topic of the satires is a denunciation of an age when, as he puts
+it,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Not to be corrupted is the shame.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He ascribes his own indignation to the 'strong antipathy of good to
+bad,' which is a satisfactory explanation to himself. But he was still
+interpreting the general sentiment and expressing the general discontent
+caused by the Walpole system. His friends, Bolingbroke and Wyndham, and
+the whole opposition, partially recruited from Walpole's supporters,
+were insisting upon the same theme. If, as I have said, some of them
+were really sincere in recognising the evil, and, like Bolingbroke in
+the <i>Patriot King</i>, trying to ascertain its source&mdash;we are troubled in
+this even by the doubt as to whether they objected to corruption or only
+to the corrupt influence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> their antagonists. But Pope, as a poet,
+living outside the political circle, can take the denunciations quite
+seriously and be not only pointed but really dignified. He sincerely
+believes that vice can be seriously discouraged by lashing at it with
+epigrams. So far, he represented a general feeling of the literary
+class, explained in various ways by such men as Thomson, Fielding,
+Glover, and Johnson, who were, from very different points of view, in
+opposition to Walpole. Satire can only flourish under some such
+conditions as then existed. It supposes, among other things, the
+existence of a small cultivated class, which will fully appreciate the
+personalities, the dexterity of insinuation, and the cutting sarcasm
+which gives the spice to much of Pope's satire. Young, a singularly
+clever writer, was eclipsed by Pope because he kept to denoting general
+types and was not intimate with the actors on the social stage. Johnson,
+still more of an outsider, wrote a most effective and sonorous poem with
+the help of Juvenal; but it becomes a moral disquisition upon human
+nature which has not the special sting and sparkle of Pope. No later
+satirist has approached Pope, and the art has now become obsolete, or is
+adopted merely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> as a literary amusement. One obvious reason is the
+absence of the peculiar social backing which composed Pope's audience
+and supplied him with his readers.</p>
+
+<p>The growing sense that there was something wrong about the political
+system which Pope turned to account was significant of coming changes.
+The impression that the evil was entirely due to Walpole personally was
+one of the natural illusions of party warfare, and the disease was not
+extirpated when the supposed cause was removed. The most memorable
+embodiment of the sentiment was Swift. The concentrated scorn of
+corruption in the <i>Drapier's Letters</i> was followed by the intense
+misanthropy of <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>. The singular way in which Swift
+blends personal aversion with political conviction, and the strange
+humour which conceals the misanthropist under a superficial playfulness,
+veils to some extent his real aim. But Swift showed with unequalled
+power and in an exaggerated form the conviction that there was something
+wrong in the social order, which was suggested by the conditions of the
+time and was to bear fruit in later days. Satire, however, is by its
+nature negative; it does not present a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> positive ideal, and tends to
+degenerate into mere hopeless pessimism. Lofty poetry can only spring
+from some inner positive enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>I turn to another characteristic of the literary movement. I have called
+attention to the fact that while the Queen Anne writers were never tired
+of appealing to nature, they came to be considered as prematurely
+'artificial.' The commonest meaning of 'natural' is that in which it is
+identified with 'normal,' We call a thing natural when its existence
+appears to us to be a matter of course, which again may simply mean that
+we are so accustomed to certain conditions that we do not remember that
+they are really exceptional. We take ourselves with all our
+peculiarities to be the 'natural' type or standard. An English traveller
+in France remarked that it was unnatural for soldiers to be dressed in
+blue; and then, remembering certain British cases, added, 'except,
+indeed, for the Artillery or the Blue Horse.' The English model, with
+all its variations, appeared to him to be ordained by Nature. This
+unconscious method of usurping a general name so as to cover a general
+meaning produces many fallacies. In any case, however, it was of the
+essence of Pope's doctrine that we should, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> he puts it, 'Look through
+Nature up to Nature's God.' God, that is, is known through Nature, if it
+would not be more correct to say that God and Nature are identical. This
+Nature often means the world as not modified by human action, and
+therefore sharing the divine workmanship unspoilt by man's interference.
+Thus in the common phrase, the 'love of Nature' is generally taken to
+mean the love of natural scenery, of sea and sky and mountains, which
+are not altered or alterable by any human art. Yet it is said the want
+of any such love describes one of the most obvious deficiencies in
+Pope's poetry, of which Wordsworth so often complained. His famous
+preface asserts the complete absence of any imagery from Nature in the
+writings of the time. It was, however, at the period of which I am
+speaking that a change was taking place which was worth considering.</p>
+
+<p>One cause is obvious. The Wit utters the voice of the town. He agreed
+with the gentleman who preferred the smell of a flambeau in St. James
+Street to any abundance of violet and sweetbriar. But, as communications
+improved between town and country, the separation between the taste of
+classes became less marked. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> great nobleman had always been in part
+an exalted squire, and had a taste for field-sports as well as for the
+opera. Bolingbroke and Walpole are both instances in point. Sir Roger de
+Coverley came up to town more frequently than his ancestors, but the
+<i>Spectator</i> recorded his visits as those of a simple rustic. After the
+peace, the country gentleman begins regularly to visit the Continent.
+The 'grand tour' mostly common in the preceding century becomes a normal
+fact of the education of the upper classes. The foundation of the
+Dilettante Club in 1734 marks the change. The qualifications, says
+Horace Walpole, were drunkenness and a visit to Italy. The founders of
+it seem to have been jovial young men who had met each other abroad,
+where, with obsequious tutors and out of sight of domestic authority,
+they often learned some very queer lessons. But many of them learned
+more, and by degrees the Dilettante Club took not only to encouraging
+the opera in England, but to making really valuable arch&aelig;ological
+researches in Greece and elsewhere. The intelligent youth had great
+opportunities of mixing in the best foreign society, and began to bring
+home the pictures which adorn so many English country houses; to talk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>
+about the 'correggiosity of Correggio'; and in due time to patronise
+Reynolds and Gainsborough. The traveller began to take some interest
+even in the Alps, wrote stanzas to the 'Grande Chartreuse,' admired
+Salvator Rosa, and even visited Chamonix. Another characteristic change
+is more to the present purpose. A conspicuous mark of the time was a
+growing taste for gardening. The taste has, I suppose, existed ever
+since our ancestors were turned out of the Garden of Eden. Milton's
+description of that place of residence, and Bacon's famous essay, and
+Cowley's poems addressed to the great authority Evelyn, and most of all
+perhaps Maxwell's inimitable description of the very essence of garden,
+may remind us that it flourished in the seventeenth century. It is
+needless to say in Oxford how beautiful an old-fashioned garden might
+be. But at this time a change was taking place in the canons of taste.
+Temple in a well-known essay had praised the old-fashioned garden and
+had remarked how the regularity of English plantations seemed ridiculous
+to&mdash;of all people in the world&mdash;the Chinese. By the middle of the
+eighteenth century there had been what is called a 'reaction,' and the
+English garden, which was called 'natural,' was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> famous and often
+imitated in France. It is curious to remark how closely this taste was
+associated with the group of friends whom Pope has celebrated. The
+first, for example, of the four 'Moral Epistles,' is addressed to
+Cobham, who laid out the famous garden at Stowe, in which 'Capability
+Brown,' the most popular landscape gardener of the century, was brought
+up; the third is addressed to Bathurst, an enthusiastic gardener, who
+had shown his skill at his seat of Richings near Colnbrook; and the
+fourth to Burlington, whose house and gardens at Chiswick were laid out
+by Kent, the famous landscape gardener and architect&mdash;Brown's
+predecessor. In the same epistle Pope ridicules the formality of
+Chandos' grounds at Canons. A description of his own garden includes the
+familiar lines</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>'Here St. John mingles with my friendly bowl</div>
+<div>The feast of reason and the flow of soul,</div>
+<div>And he (Peterborough) whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines</div>
+<div>Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines,</div>
+<div>Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain</div>
+<div>Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.'</div>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Pope's own garden was itself a model. 'Pope,' says Horace Walpole, 'had
+twisted and twirled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> and rhymed and harmonised his little five acres
+till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening
+beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick impenetrable
+woods.' The taste grew as the century advanced. Now one impulse towards
+the new style is said to have come from articles in the <i>Spectator</i> by
+Addison and in the <i>Guardian</i> by Pope, ridiculing the old-fashioned mode
+of clipping trees, and so forth. Nature, say both, is superior to art,
+and the man of genius, as Pope puts it, is the first to perceive that
+all art consists of 'imitation and study of nature.' Horace Walpole in
+his essay upon gardening remarks a point which may symbolise the
+principle. The modern style, he says, sprang from the invention of the
+ha-ha by Bridgeman, one of the first landscape gardeners. The 'ha-ha'
+meant that the garden, instead of being enclosed by a wall, was laid out
+so as to harmonise with the surrounding country, from which it was only
+separated by an invisible fence. That is the answer to the problem; is
+it not a solecism for a lover of gardens to prefer nature to art? A
+garden is essentially a product of art? and supplants the moor and
+desert made by unassisted nature. The love of Nature as understood in a
+later period, by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> Byron for example, went to this extreme, in words at
+least, and becomes misanthropical in admiring the savage for its own
+sake. But the landscape gardener only meant that his art must be in some
+sense subordinate to nature; that he must not shut out the wider scenery
+but include it in his designs. He was apt to look upon mountains as a
+background to parks, as Telford thought that rivers were created to
+supply canals. The excellent Gilpin, who became an expounder of what he
+calls 'the theory of the picturesque,' travelled on the Wye in the same
+year as Gray; and amusingly criticises nature from this point of view.
+Nature, he says, works in a cold and singular style of composition, but
+has the merit of never falling into 'mannerism.' Nature, that is, is a
+sublime landscape gardener whose work has to be accepted, and to whom
+the gardener must accommodate himself. A quaint instance of this theory
+may be found in the lecture which Henry Tilney in <i>Mansfield Park</i>
+delivers to Catherine Morland. In Horace Walpole's theory, the evolution
+of the ha-ha, means that man and nature, the landowner and the country,
+are gradually forming an alliance, and it comes to the same thing
+whether one or the other assimilates his opposite.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p><p>Briefly, this means one process by which the so-called love of nature
+was growing; it meant better roads and inns; the gradual reflux of town
+into country; and the growing sense already expressed by Cowley and
+Marvell, that overcrowded centres of population have their
+inconveniences, and that the citizen should have his periods of
+communion with unsophisticated nature. Squire and Wit are each learning
+to appreciate each other's tastes. The tourist is developed, and begins,
+as Gibbon tells us, to 'view the glaciers' now that he can view them
+without personal inconvenience. This, again, suggests that there is
+nothing radically new in the so-called love of nature. Any number of
+poets from Chaucer downwards may be cited to show that men were never
+insensible to natural beauty of scenery; to the outburst of spring, or
+the bloom of flowers, or the splendours of storms and sunsets. The
+indifference to nature of the Pope school was, so far, the temporary
+complacency of the new population focused in the metropolitan area in
+their own enlightenment and their contempt for the outside rustic. The
+love of field-sports was as strong as ever in the squire, and as soon as
+he began to receive some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> of the intellectual irradiation from the town
+Wit, he began to express the emotions which never found clearer
+utterance than in Walton's <i>Compleat Angler</i>. But there is a
+characteristic difference. With the old poets nature is in the
+background; it supplies the scenery for human action and is not itself
+consciously the object; they deal with concrete facts, with the delight
+of sport or rustic amusements: and they embody their feelings in the old
+conventions; they converse with imaginary shepherds: with Robin Hood or
+allegorical knights in romantic forests, who represent a love of nature
+but introduce description only as a set-off to the actors in masques or
+festivals. In Pope's time we have the abstract or metaphysical deity
+Nature, who can be worshipped with a distinct appreciation. The
+conventions have become obsolete, and if used at all, the poet himself
+is laughing in his sleeve. The serious aim of the poet is to give a
+philosophy of human nature; and the mere description of natural objects
+strikes him as silly unless tacked to a moral. Who could take offence,
+asks Pope, referring to his earlier poems, 'when pure description held
+the place of sense'? The poet, that is, who wishes to be 'sensible'
+above all, cannot <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>condescend to give mere catalogues of trees and
+rivers and mountains. Nature, however, is beginning to put in a claim
+for attention, even in the sense in which Nature means the material
+world. In one sense this is a natural corollary from the philosophy of
+the time and of that religion of nature which it implied. Pope himself
+gives one version of it in the <i>Essay on Man</i>; and can expatiate
+eloquently upon the stars and upon the animal world. But the poem itself
+is essentially constructed out of a philosophical theory too purely
+argumentative to lend itself easily to poetry. A different, though
+allied, way of dealing with the subject appears elsewhere. If Pope
+learned mainly from Bolingbroke, he was also influenced by Shaftesbury
+of the <i>Characteristics</i>. I note, but cannot here insist upon,
+Shaftesbury's peculiar philosophical position. He inherited to some
+extent the doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists and repudiated the
+sensationalist doctrine of Locke and the metaphysical method of Clarke.
+He had a marked influence on Hutcheson, Butler, and the common-sense
+philosophers of his day. For us, it is enough to say that he worships
+Nature but takes rather the &aelig;sthetic than the dialectical point of view.
+The Good, the True, and the Beautiful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> are all one, as he constantly
+insists, and the universe impresses us not as a set of mechanical
+contrivances but as an artistic embodiment of harmony. He therefore
+restores the universal element which is apt to pass out of sight in
+Pope's rhymed arguments. He indulges his philosophical enthusiasm in
+what he calls <i>The Moralists, a Rhapsody</i>. It culminates in a prose hymn
+to a 'glorious Nature, supremely fair and sovereignly good; all-loving
+and all-lovely, all divine,' which ends by a survey of the different
+climates, where even in the moonbeams and the shades of the forests we
+find intimations of the mysterious being who pervades the universe. A
+love of beauty was, in this sense, a thoroughly legitimate development
+of the 'Religion of Nature.' Akenside in his philosophical poem <i>The
+Pleasures of Imagination</i>, written a little later, professed himself to
+be a disciple of Shaftesbury, and his version supplied many quotations
+for Scottish professors of philosophy. Henry Brooke's <i>Universal
+Beauty</i>, a kind of appendix to Pope's essay, is upon the same theme,
+though he became rather mixed in physiological expositions, which
+suggested, it is said, Darwin's <i>Botanic Garden</i>. The religious
+sentiment embodied in his <i>Fool of Quality</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> charmed Wesley and was
+enthusiastically admired by Kingsley. Thomson, however, best illustrates
+this current of sentiment. The fine 'Hymn of Nature' appended to the
+<i>Seasons</i>, is precisely in the same vein as Shaftesbury's rhapsody. The
+descriptions of nature are supposed to suggest the commentary embodied
+in the hymn. He still describes the sea and sky and mountains with the
+more or less intention of preaching a sermon upon them. That is the
+justification of the 'pure description' which Pope condemned in
+principle, and which occupies the larger part of the poem. Thomson, when
+he wrote the sermons, was still fresh from Edinburgh and from
+Teviotdale. He had a real eye for scenery, and describes from
+observation. The English Wits had not, it seems, annexed Scotland, and
+Thomson had studied Milton and Spenser without being forced to look
+through Pope's spectacles. Still he cannot quite trust himself. He is
+still afraid, and not without reason, that pure description will fall
+into flat prose, and tries to 'raise his diction'&mdash;in the phrase of the
+day&mdash;by catching something of the Miltonic harmony and by speaking of
+fish as 'finny tribes' and birds as 'the feathered people.' The fact,
+however, that he could suspend his moralising to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> give realistic
+descriptions at full length, and that they became the most interesting
+parts of the poem, shows a growing interest in country life. The
+supremacy of the town Wit is no longer unquestioned; and there is an
+audience for the plain direct transcripts of natural objects for which
+the Wit had been too dignified and polished. Thomson had thus the merit
+of representing a growing sentiment&mdash;and yet he has not quite solved the
+problem. His philosophy is not quite fused with his observation. To make
+'Nature' really interesting you must have a touch of Wordsworthian
+pantheism and of Shelley's 'pathetic fallacy.' Thomson's facts and his
+commentary lie in separate compartments. To him, apparently, the
+philosophy is more important than the simple description. His
+masterpiece was to be the didactic and now forgotten poem on <i>Liberty</i>.
+It gives an interesting application; for there already we have the
+sentiment which was to become more marked in later years. 'Liberty'
+crosses the Alps and they suggest a fine passage on the beauty of
+mountains. Nature has formed them as a rampart for the homely republics
+which worship 'plain Liberty'; and are free from the corruption typified
+by Walpole. That obviously is the germ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> of the true Rousseau version of
+Nature worship. On the whole, however, Nature, as interpreted by the
+author of 'Rule Britannia,' is still very well satisfied with the
+British Constitution and looks upon the Revolution of 1688 as the avatar
+of the true goddess. 'Nature,' that is, has not yet come to condemn
+civilisation in general as artificial and therefore corrupt. As in
+practice, a lover of Nature did not profess to prefer the wilderness to
+fields, and looked upon mountains rather as a background to the
+nobleman's park than as a shelter for republics; so in politics it
+reflected no revolutionary tendency but rather included the true British
+system which has grown up under its protection. Nature has taken to
+lecturing, but she only became frankly revolutionary with Rousseau and
+misanthropic with Byron.</p>
+
+<p>I must touch one more characteristic. Pope, I have said, represents the
+aristocratic development of literature. Meanwhile the purely plebeian
+society was growing, and the toe of the clown beginning to gall the kibe
+of the courtier. Pope's 'war with the dunces' was the historical symptom
+of this most important social development. The <i>Dunciad</i>, which,
+whatever its occasional merits, one cannot read without spasms both of
+disgust and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> moral disapproval, is the literary outcome. Pope's morbid
+sensibility perverts his morals till he accepts the worst of
+aristocratic prejudices and treats poverty as in itself criminal. It led
+him, too, to attack some worthy people, and among others the 'earless'
+Defoe. Defoe's position is most significant. A journalist of supreme
+ability, he had an abnormally keen eye for the interesting. No one could
+feel the pulse of his audience with greater quickness. He had already
+learned by inference that nothing interests the ordinary reader so much
+as a straightforward narrative of contemporary facts. He added the
+remark that it did not in the least matter whether the facts had or had
+not happened; and secondly, that it saved a great deal of trouble to
+make your facts instead of finding them. The result was the inimitable
+<i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, which was, in that sense, a simple application of
+journalistic methods, not a conscious attempt to create a new variety of
+novel. Alexander Selkirk had very little to tell about his remarkable
+experience; and so Defoe, instead of confining himself like the ordinary
+interviewer to facts, proceeded to tell a most circumstantial and
+elaborate lie&mdash;for which we are all grateful. He was doing far more than
+he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> meant. Defoe, as the most thorough type of the English class to
+which he belonged, could not do otherwise than make his creation a
+perfect embodiment of his own qualities. <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> became, we
+know, a favourite of Rousseau, and has supplied innumerable
+illustrations to writers on Political Economy. One reason is that Crusoe
+is the very incarnation of individualism: thrown entirely upon his own
+resources, he takes the position with indomitable pluck; adapts himself
+to the inevitable as quietly and sturdily as may be; makes himself
+thoroughly at home in a desert island, and, as soon as he meets a
+native, summarily annexes him, and makes him thoroughly useful. He comes
+up smiling after many years as if he had been all the time in a shop in
+Cheapside without a hair turned. This exemplary person not only embodies
+the type of middle class Briton but represents his most romantic
+aspirations. In those days the civilised world was still surrounded by
+the dim mysterious regions, where geographers placed elephants instead
+of towns, but where the adventurous Briton was beginning to push his way
+into strange native confines and to oust the wretched foreigner, Dutch,
+French, Spanish, and Portuguese, who had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> dared to anticipate him.
+Crusoe is the voice of the race which was to be stirred by the story of
+Jenkins' ear and lay the foundation of the Empire. Meanwhile, as a
+literary work, it showed most effectually the power of homely realism.
+There is no bother about dignity or attempt to reveal the eloquence of
+the polished Wit. It is precisely the plain downright English vernacular
+which is thoroughly intelligible to everybody who is capable of reading.
+The Wit, too, as Swift sufficiently proved, could be a consummate master
+of that kind of writing on occasion, and Gulliver probably showed
+something to Crusoe. But for us the interest is the development of a new
+class of readers, who won't bother about canons of taste or care for
+skill in working upon the old conventional methods, but can be
+profoundly interested in a straightforward narrative adapted to the
+simplest understandings. Pope's contempt for the dunces meant that the
+lower classes were the objects of supreme contempt to the aristocratic
+circle, whose culture they did not share. But Defoe was showing in a new
+sense of the word the advantage of an appeal to Nature; for the true
+life and vigour of the nation was coming to be embodied in the class
+which was spontaneously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> developing its own ideals and beginning to
+regard the culture of the upper circle as artificial in the
+objectionable sense. Outside the polished circle of wits we have the
+middle-class which is beginning to read, and will read, what it really
+likes without bothering about Aristotle or M. Bossu: as, in the other
+direction, the assimilation between town and country is incidentally
+suggesting a wider range of topics, and giving a new expression to
+conditions which had for some time been without expression.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>(1739-1763)</h3>
+
+<p>I am now to speak of the quarter of a century which succeeded the fall
+of Walpole, and includes two singularly contrasted periods. Walpole's
+fall meant the accession to power of the heterogeneous body of statesmen
+whose virtuous indignation had been raised by his corrupt practices.
+Some of them, as Carteret, Pulteney, Chesterfield, were men of great
+ability; but, after a series of shifting combinations and personal
+intrigues, the final result was the triumph of the Pelhams&mdash;the
+grotesque Duke of Newcastle and his brother, who owed their success
+mainly to skill in the art of parliamentary management. The opposition
+had ousted Walpole by taking advantage of the dumb instinct which
+impelled us to go to war with Spain; and distracted by the interests of
+Hanover and the balance of power we had plunged into that complicated
+series of wars which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> lasted for some ten years, and passes all powers
+of the ordinary human intellect to understand or remember. For what
+particular reason Englishmen were fighting at Dettingen or Fontenoy or
+Lauffeld is a question which a man can only answer when he has been
+specially crammed for examination and his knowledge has not begun to
+ooze out; while the abnormal incapacity of our rulers was displayed at
+the attack upon Carthagena or during the Pretender's march into England.
+The history becomes a shifting chaos marked by no definite policy, and
+the ship of State is being steered at random as one or other of the
+competitors for rule manages to grasp the helm for a moment. Then after
+another period of aimless intrigues the nation seems to rouse itself;
+and finding at last a statesman who has a distinct purpose and can
+appeal to a great patriotic sentiment, takes the leading part in Europe,
+wins a series of victories, and lays the foundation of the British
+Empire in America and India. Under Walpole's rule the House of Commons
+had become definitely the dominant political body. The minister who
+could command it was master of the position. The higher aristocracy are
+still in possession of great influence, but they are ceasing to be the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+adequate representatives of the great political forces. They are in the
+comfortable position of having completely established their own
+privileges; and do not see any reason for extending privileges to
+others. Success depends upon personal intrigues among themselves and
+upon a proper manipulation of the Lower House which, though no overt
+constitutional change has taken place, is coming to be more decidedly
+influenced by the interests of the moneyed men and the growing middle
+classes. Pitt and Newcastle represent the two classes which are coming
+into distinct antagonism. Pitt's power rested upon the general national
+sentiment. 'You have taught me,' as George II. said to him, 'to look for
+the sense of my people in other places than the House of Commons.' The
+House of Commons, that is, should not derive its whole authority from
+the selfish interest of the borough-mongers but from the great outside
+current of patriotic sentiment and aspiration. But public opinion was
+not yet powerful enough to support the great minister without an
+alliance with the master of the small arts of intrigue. The general
+sentiments of discontent which had been raised by Walpole was therefore
+beginning to widen and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> deepen and to take a different form. The root of
+the evil, as people began to feel, was not in the individual Walpole but
+in the system which he represented. Brown's <i>Estimate</i> is often noticed
+in illustration. Brown convinced his readers, as Macaulay puts it, that
+they were a race of cowards and scoundrels, who richly deserved the fate
+in store for them of being speedily enslaved by their enemies; and the
+prophecy was published (1757) on the eve of the most glorious war we had
+ever known. It represents also, as Macaulay observes, the indignation
+roused by the early failures of the war and the demand that Pitt should
+take the helm. Brown was a very clever, though not a very profound,
+writer. A similar and more remarkable utterance had been made some years
+before (1749) by the remarkable thinker, David Hartley. The world, he
+said, was in the most critical state ever known. He attributes the evil
+to the growth of infidelity in the upper classes; their general
+immorality; their sordid self-interest, which was almost the sole motive
+of action of the ministers; the contempt for authority of all their
+superiors; the worldly-mindedness of the clergy and the general
+carelessness as to education. These sentiments<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> are not the mere
+platitudes, common to moralists in all ages. They are pointed and
+emphasised by the state of political and social life in the period.
+Besides the selfishness and want of principle of the upper classes, one
+fact upon which Hartley insists is sufficiently familiar. The Church it
+is obvious had been paralysed. It had no corporate activity; it was in
+thorough subjection to the aristocracy; the highest preferments were to
+be won by courting such men as Newcastle, and not by learning or by
+active discharge of duty; and the ordinary parson, though he might be
+thoroughly respectable and amiable, was dependant upon the squire as his
+superior upon the ministers. He took things easily enough to verify
+Hartley's remarks. We must infer from later history that a true
+diagnosis would not have been so melancholy as Hartley supposed. The
+nation was not corrupt at the core. It was full of energy; and rapidly
+developing in many directions. The upper classes, who had gained all
+they wanted, were comfortable and irresponsible; not yet seriously
+threatened by agitators; able to carry on a traffic in sinecures and
+pensions, and demoralised as every corporate body becomes demoralised
+which has no functions to discharge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> in proportion to capacities. The
+Church naturally shared the indolence of its rulers and patrons. Hartley
+exhorts the clergy to take an example from the energy of the Methodists
+instead of abusing them. Wesley had begun his remarkable missionary
+career in 1738, and the rapid growth of his following is a familiar
+proof on the one side of the indolence of the established authorities,
+and on the other of the strength of the demand for reform in classes to
+which he appealed. If, that is, the clergy were not up to their duties,
+Wesley's success shows that there was a strong sense of existing moral
+and social evils which only required an energetic leader to form a
+powerful organisation. I need not attempt to inquire into the causes of
+the Wesleyan and Evangelical movement, but must note one
+characteristic&mdash;it had not an intellectual but a sound moral origin.
+Wesley takes his creed for granted, and it was the creed, so far as they
+had one, of the masses of the nation. He is shocked by perjury,
+drunkenness, corruption, and so forth, but has not seriously to meet
+scepticism of the speculative variety. If Wesley did not, like the
+leader of another Oxford movement, feel bound to clear up the logical
+basis of his religious beliefs, he had of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> course to confront deism, but
+could set it down as a mere product of moral indifference. When Hartley,
+like Butler, speaks of the general unbelief of the day, he was no doubt
+correct within limits. In the upper social sphere the tone was
+sceptical. Not only Bolingbroke but such men as Chesterfield and Walpole
+were indifferent or contemptuous. They were prepared to go with
+Voltaire's development of the English rationalism. But the English
+sceptic of the upper classes was generally a Gallio. He had no desire to
+propagate his creed, still less to attack the Church, which was a
+valuable part of his property; it never occurred to him that scepticism
+might lead to a political as well as an ecclesiastical revolution.
+Voltaire was not intentionally destructive in politics, whatever the
+real effect of his teaching; but he was an avowed and bitter enemy of
+the Church and the orthodox creed. Hume, the great English sceptic, was
+not only a Tory in politics but had no desire to affect the popular
+belief. He could advise a clergyman to preach the ordinary doctrines,
+because it was paying far too great a compliment to the vulgar to be
+punctilious about speaking the truth to them. A similar indifference is
+characteristic of the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> position. The select classes were to be
+perfectly convinced that the accepted creed was superstitious; but they
+were not for that reason to attack it. To the statesman, as Gibbon was
+to point out, a creed is equally useful, true or false; and the English
+clergy, though bound to use orthodox language, were far too well in hand
+to be regarded as possible persecutors. Even in Scotland they made no
+serious attempt to suppress Hume; he had only to cover his opinions by
+some decent professions of belief. One symptom of the general state of
+mind is the dying out of the deist controversies. The one great divine,
+according to Brown's <i>Estimate</i>, was Warburton, the colossus, he says,
+who bestrides the world: and Warburton, whatever else he may have been,
+was certainly of all divines the one whose argument is most palpably
+fictitious, if not absolutely insincere. He marks, however, the tendency
+of the argument to become historical. Like a much acuter writer, Conyers
+Middleton, he is occupied with the curious problem: how do we reconcile
+the admission that miracles never happen with the belief that they once
+happened?&mdash;or are the two beliefs reconcilable? That means, is history
+continuous? But it also means that the problems<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> of abstract theology
+were passing out of sight, and that speculation was turning to the
+historical and scientific problems. Hartley was expounding the
+association principle which became the main doctrine of the empirical
+school, and Hume was teaching ethics upon the same basis, and turning
+from speculation to political history. The main reason of this
+intellectual indifference was the social condition under which the
+philosophical theory found no strong current of political discontent
+with which to form an alliance. The middle classes, which are now
+growing in strength and influence, had been indifferent to the
+discussions going on above their heads. The more enlightened clergy had,
+of course, been engaged in the direct controversy, and had adopted a
+kind of mild common-sense rationalism which implied complete
+indifference to the dogmatic disputes of the preceding century. The
+Methodist movement produced a little revival of the Calvinist and
+Arminian controversy. But the beliefs of the great mass of the
+population were not materially affected: they held by sheer force of
+inertia to the old traditions, and still took themselves to be good
+orthodox Protestants, though they had been unconsciously more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> affected
+by the permeation of rationalism than they realised.</p>
+
+<p>So much must be said, because the literary work was being more and more
+distinctly addressed to the middle class. The literary profession is now
+taking more of the modern form. Grub Street is rapidly becoming
+respectable, and its denizens&mdash;as Beauclerk said of Johnson when he got
+his pension&mdash;will be able to 'purge and live cleanly like gentlemen.'
+Johnson's incomparable letter (1755) rejecting Chesterfield's attempt to
+impose his patronage, is the familiar indication of the change. Johnson
+had been labouring in the employment of the booksellers, and always,
+unlike some more querulous authors, declares that they were fair and
+liberal patrons&mdash;though it is true that he had to knock down one of them
+with a folio. Other writers of less fame can turn an honest penny by
+providing popular literature of the heavier kind. There is a demand for
+'useful information.' There was John Campbell, for example, the 'richest
+author,' said Johnson, who ever grazed 'the common of literature,' who
+contributed to the <i>Modern Universal History</i>, the <i>Biographica
+Britannica</i>, and wrote the <i>Lives of the Admirals</i> and the <i>Political
+Survey of Great Britain</i>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> and innumerable historical and statistical
+works; and the queer adventurer Sir John Hill, who turned out book after
+book with marvellous rapidity and impudence, and is said to have really
+had some knowledge of botany. The industrious drudges and clever
+charlatans could make a respectable income. Smollett is a superior
+example, whose 'literary factory,' as it has been said, 'was in full
+swing' at this period, and who, besides his famous novels, was
+journalist, historian, and author of all work, and managed to keep
+himself afloat, though he also contrived to exceed his income and was
+supported by a number of inferior 'myrmidons' who helped to turn out his
+hackwork. He describes the author's position in a famous passage in
+<i>Humphry Clinker</i> (1756). Smollett also started the <i>Critical Review</i> in
+rivalry to the <i>Monthly Review</i>, begun by Griffiths a few years before
+(1749), and these two were for a long time the only precursors to the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, and marked an advance upon the old <i>Gentleman's
+Magazine</i>. In other words, we have the beginning of a new tribunal or
+literary Star Chamber. The author has not to inquire what is said of his
+performances in the coffee-houses, where the Wits gathered under the
+presidency of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> Addison or Swift. The professional critic has appeared
+who will make it his regular business to give an account of all new
+books, and though his reviews are still comparatively meagre and apt to
+be mere analyses, it is implied that a kind of public opinion is growing
+up which will decide upon his merits, and upon which his success or
+failure will depend. That means again that the readers to whom he is to
+appeal are mainly the middle class, who are not very highly cultivated,
+but who have at any rate reached the point of reading their newspaper
+and magazine regularly, and buy books enough to make it worth while to
+supply the growing demand. The nobleman has ceased to consider the
+patronage of authors as any part of his duty, and the tradition which
+made him consider writing poetry as a proper accomplishment is dying
+out. Since that time our aristocracy as such has been normally
+illiterate. Peers&mdash;Byron, for example&mdash;have occasionally written books;
+and more than one person of quality has, like Fox, kept up the interest
+in classical literature which he acquired at a public school, and added
+a charm to his parliamentary oratory. The great man, too, as I have
+said, could take his chance in political writing, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> occasionally
+condescend to show his skill at an essay of the <i>Spectator</i> model. But a
+certain contempt for the professional writer is becoming characteristic,
+even of men like Horace Walpole, who have a real taste for literature.
+He is inclined to say, as Chesterfield put it in a famous speech, 'We,
+my lords, may thank Heaven that we have something better than our brains
+to depend upon.' As literature becomes more of a regular profession,
+your noble wishes to show his independence of anything like a commercial
+pursuit. Walpole can speak politely to men like Gibbon, and even to
+Hume, who have some claim to be gentlemen as well as authors; but he
+feels that he is condescending even to them, and has nothing but
+contemptuous aversion for a Johnson, whose claim to consideration
+certainly did not include any special refinement. Johnson and his circle
+had still an odour of Grub street, which is only to be kept at a
+distance more carefully because it is in a position of comparative
+independence. Meanwhile, the author himself holds by the authority of
+Addison and Pope. They, he still admits for the most part, represent the
+orthodox church; their work is still taken to be the perfection of art,
+and the canons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> which they have handed down have a prestige which makes
+any dissenter an object of suspicion. Yet as the audience has really
+changed, a certain change also makes itself felt in the substance and
+the form of the corresponding literature.</p>
+
+<p>One remarkable book marks the opening of the period. The first part of
+Young's <i>Night Thoughts</i> appeared in 1742, and the poem at once acquired
+a popularity which lasted at least through the century. Young had been
+more or less associated with the Addison and Pope circles, in the later
+part of Queen Anne's reign. He had failed to obtain any satisfactory
+share of the patronage which came to some of his fellows. He is still a
+Wit till he has to take orders for a college living as the old Wits'
+circle is decaying. He tried with little success to get something by
+attaching himself to some questionable patrons who were induced to carry
+on the practice, and the want of due recognition left him to the end of
+his life as a man with a grievance. He had tried poetical epistles, and
+satires, and tragedies with undeniable success and had shown undeniable
+ability. Yet somehow or other he had not, one may say, emerged from the
+second class till in the <i>Night Thoughts</i> he opened a new vein<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> which
+exactly met the contemporary taste. The success was no doubt due to some
+really brilliant qualities, but I need not here ask in what precise rank
+he should be placed, as an author or a moralist. His significance for us
+is simple. The <i>Night Thoughts</i>, as he tells us, was intended to supply
+an omission in Pope's <i>Essay on Man</i>. Pope's deistical position excluded
+any reference to revealed religion, to posthumous rewards and penalties,
+and expressed an optimistic philosophy which ignored the corruption of
+human nature. Young represents a partial revolt against the domination
+of the Pope circle. He had always been an outsider, and his life at
+Oxford had, you may perhaps hope, preserved his orthodoxy. He writes
+blank verse, though evidently the blank verse of a man accustomed to the
+'heroic couplets'; he uses the conventional 'poetic diction'; he strains
+after epigrammatic point in the manner of Pope, and the greater part of
+his poem is an elaborate argumentation to prove the immortality of
+man&mdash;chiefly by the argument from astronomy. But though so far accepting
+the old method, his success in introducing a new element marks an
+important change. He is elaborately and deliberately pathetic; he is
+always thinking of death,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> and calling upon the readers to sympathise
+with his sorrows and accept his consolations. The world taken by itself
+is, he maintains, a huge lunatic asylum, and the most hideous of sights
+is a naked human heart. We are, indeed, to find sufficient consolation
+from the belief in immortality. How far Young was orthodox or logical or
+really edifying is a question with which I am not concerned. The
+appetite for this strain of melancholy reflection is characteristic.
+Blair's <i>Grave</i>, representing another version of the sentiment, appeared
+simultaneously and independently. Blair, like Thomson, living in
+Scotland, was outside the Pope circle of wit, and had studied the old
+English authors instead of Pope and Dryden. He negotiated for the
+publication of his poem through Watts and Doddridge, each of whom was an
+eminent interpreter of the religious sentiment of the middle classes.
+Both wrote hymns still popular, and Doddridge's <i>Rise and Progress of
+Religion in the Soul</i> has been a permanently valued manual. The Pope
+school had omitted religious considerations, and treated religion as a
+system of abstract philosophy. The new class of readers wants something
+more congenial to the teaching of their favourite ministers and
+chapels.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> Young and Blair thoroughly suited them. Wesley admired Young's
+poem, and even proposed to bring out an edition. In his <i>Further Appeal
+to Men of Reason and Religion</i>, Wesley, like Brown and Hartley, draws up
+a striking indictment of the manners of the time. He denounces the
+liberty and effeminacy of the nobility; the widespread immorality; the
+chicanery of lawyers; the jobbery of charities; the stupid
+self-satisfaction of Englishmen; the brutality of the Army; the
+indolence and preferment humbug of the Church&mdash;the true cause, as he
+says, of the 'contempt for the clergy' which had become proverbial. His
+remedy of course is to be found in a revival of true religion. He
+accepts the general sentiment that the times are out of joint, though he
+would seek for a deeper cause than that which was recognised by the
+political satirist. While Young was weeping at Welwyn, James Hervey was
+meditating among the tombs in Devonshire, and soon afterwards gave
+utterance to the result in language inspired by very bad taste, but
+showing a love of nature and expressing the 'sentimentalism' which was
+then a new discovery. It is said to have eclipsed Law's <i>Serious Call</i>,
+which I have already mentioned as giving, in admirable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> literary form,
+the view of the contemporary world which naturally found favour with
+religious thinkers.</p>
+
+<p>These symptoms indicate the tendencies of the rising class to which the
+author has mainly to address himself. It has ceased to be fully
+represented by the upper social stratum whose tastes are reflected by
+Pope. No distinct democratic sentiment had yet appeared; the
+aristocratic order was accepted as inevitable or natural; but there was
+a vague though growing sentiment that the rulers are selfish and
+corrupt. There is no strong sceptical or anti-religious sentiment; but a
+spreading conviction that the official pastors are scandalously careless
+in supplying the wants of their flocks. The philosophical and literary
+canons of the scholar and gentleman have become unsatisfactory; the
+vulgar do not care for the delicate finish appreciated by your
+Chesterfield and acquired in the conversations of polite society, and
+the indolent scepticism which leads to metaphysical expositions, and is
+not allied with any political or social passion, does not appeal to
+them. The popular books of the preceding generation had been the
+directly religious books: Baxter's <i>Saint's Rest</i>, and the <i>Pilgrim's
+Progress</i>&mdash;despised<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> by the polite but beloved by the popular class in
+spite of the critics; and among the dissenters such a work as Boston's
+<i>Fourfold State</i>, or in the Church, Law's <i>Serious Call</i>. Your polite
+author had ignored the devil, and he plays a part in human affairs
+which, as Carlyle pointed out in later days, cannot be permanently
+overlooked. The old horned and hoofed devil, indeed, for whom Defoe had
+still a weakness, shown in his <i>History of the Devil</i>, was becoming a
+little incredible; witchcraft was dying out, though Wesley still felt
+bound to profess some belief in it; and the old Calvinistic dogmatism,
+though it could produce a certain amount of controversy among the
+Methodists, had been made obsolete by the growth of rationalism. Still
+the new public wanted something more savoury than its elegant teachers
+had given; and, if sermons had ceased to be so stimulating as of old, it
+could find it in secular moralisers. Defoe, always keenly alive to the
+general taste, had tried to supply the demand not only by his queer
+<i>History of the Devil</i> but by appending a set of moral reflections to
+<i>Robinson Crusoe</i> and other edifying works, which disgusted Charles Lamb
+by their petty tradesman morality, and which hardly represent a very
+lofty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> ideal. But the recognised representative of the moralists was the
+ponderous Samuel Johnson. It is hard when reading the <i>Rambler</i> to
+recognise the massive common sense and deep feeling struggling with the
+ponderous verbiage and elephantine facetiousness; yet it was not only a
+treasure of wisdom to the learned ladies, Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs.
+Elizabeth Carter and the like, who were now beginning to appear, but was
+received, without provoking ridicule, by the whole literary class.
+<i>Rasselas</i>, in spite of its formality, is still a very impressive book.
+The literary critic may amuse himself with the question how Johnson came
+to acquire the peculiar style which imposed upon contemporaries and
+excited the ridicule of the next generation. According to Boswell, it
+was due to his reading of Sir Thomas Browne, and a kind of reversion to
+the earlier period in which the Latinisms of Browne were still natural,
+when the revolt to simple prose had not begun. Addison, at any rate, as
+Boswell truly remarks, writes like a 'companion,' and Johnson like a
+teacher. He puts on his academical robes to deliver his message to
+mankind, and is no longer the Wit, echoing the coffee-house talk, but
+the moralist, who looks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> indeed at actual life, but stands well apart
+and knows many hours of melancholy and hypochondria. He preaches the
+morality of his time&mdash;the morality of Richardson and Young&mdash;only
+tempered by a hearty contempt for cant, sentimentalism, and all
+unreality, and expressing his deeper and stronger nature. The style,
+however acquired, has the idiosyncrasy of the man himself; but I shall
+have to speak of the Johnsonian view in the next period, when he became
+the acknowledged literary dictator and expressed one main tendency of
+the period.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Richardson, as Johnson put it, had been teaching the passions
+to move at the command of virtue. In other words, Richardson had
+discovered an incomparably more effective way of preaching a popular
+sermon. He had begun, as we know, by writing a series of edifying
+letters to young women; and expounded the same method in <i>Pamela</i>, and
+afterwards in the famous <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i> and <i>Sir Charles Grandison</i>.
+All his books are deliberate attempts to embody his ideal in model
+representatives of the society of his day. He might have taken a
+suggestion from Bunyan; who besides his great religious allegory and the
+curious life of <i>Mr. Badman</i>, couched a moral<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> lesson in a description
+of the actual tradesman of his time. Allegory was now to be supplanted
+by fiction. The man was to take the place of the personified virtue and
+vice. Defoe had already shown the power of downright realistic
+storytelling; and Richardson perhaps learnt something from him when he
+was drawing his minute and vivid portraits of the people who might at
+any rate pass for being realities. I must take for granted that
+Richardson was a man of genius, without adding a word as to its precise
+quality. I need only repeat one familiar remark. Richardson was a
+typical tradesman of the period; he was the industrious apprentice who
+marries his master's daughter; he lived between Hammersmith and
+Salisbury Court as a thorough middle-class cockney, and had not an idea
+beyond those common to his class; he accepted the ordinary creeds and
+conventions; he looked upon freethinkers with such horror that he will
+not allow even his worst villains to be religious sceptics; he shares
+the profound reverence of the shopkeepers for the upper classes who are
+his customers, and he rewards virtue with a coach and six. And yet this
+mild little man, with the very narrowest intellectual limitations,
+writes a book which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> makes a mark not only in England but in Europe, and
+is imitated by Rousseau in the book which set more than one generation
+weeping; <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>, moreover, was accepted as the masterpiece
+of its kind, and she moved not only Englishmen but Germans and Frenchmen
+to sympathetic tears. One explanation is that Richardson is regarded as
+the inventor of 'sentimentalism.' The word, as one of his correspondents
+tells him, was a novelty about 1749, and was then supposed to include
+anything that was clever and agreeable. I do not myself believe that
+anybody invented the mode of feeling; but it is true that Richardson was
+the first writer who definitely turned it to account for a new literary
+genus. Sentimentalism, I suppose, means, roughly speaking, indulgence in
+emotion for its own sake. The sentimentalist does not weep because
+painful thoughts are forced upon him but because he finds weeping
+pleasant in itself. He appreciates the 'luxury of grief.' (The phrase is
+used in Brown's <i>Barbarossa</i>; I don't know who invented it.) Certainly
+the discovery was not new. The charms of melancholy had been recognised
+by Jaques in the forest of Arden and sung by various later poets; but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>
+sentimentalism at the earlier period naturally took the form of
+religious meditation upon death and judgment. Young and Hervey are
+religious sentimentalists, who have also an eye to literary elegance.
+Wesley was far too masculine and sensible to be a sentimentalist; his
+emotions impel him to vigorous action; and are much too serious to be
+cultivated for their own sakes or to be treated aesthetically. But the
+general sense that something is not in order in the general state of
+things, without as yet any definite aim for the vague discontent, was
+shared by the true sentimentalist. Richardson's sentimentalism is partly
+unconscious. He is a moralist very much in earnest, preaching a very
+practical and not very exalted morality. It is his moral purpose, his
+insistence upon the edifying point of view, his singular fertility in
+finding illustrations for his doctrines, which makes him a
+sentimentalist. I will confess that the last time I read <i>Clarissa
+Harlowe</i> it affected me with a kind of disgust. We wonder sometimes at
+the coarse nerves of our ancestors, who could see on the stage any
+quantity of murders and ghosts and miscellaneous horrors. Richardson
+gave me the same shock from the elaborate detail in which he tells the
+story of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> Clarissa; rubbing our noses, if I may say so, in all her
+agony, and squeezing the last drop of bitterness out of every incident.
+I should have liked some symptom that he was anxious to turn his eyes
+from the tragedy instead of giving it so minutely as to suggest that he
+enjoys the spectacle. Books sometimes owe part of their success, as I
+fear we must admit, to the very fact that they are in bad taste. They
+attract the contemporary audience by exaggerating and over-weighting the
+new vein of sentiment which they have discovered. That, in fact, seems
+to be the reason why in spite of all authority, modern readers find it
+difficult to read Richardson through. We know, at any rate, how it
+affected one great contemporary. This incessant strain upon the moral in
+question (a very questionable moral it is) struck Fielding as mawkish
+and unmanly. Richardson seemed to be a narrow, straitlaced preacher, who
+could look at human nature only from the conventional point of view, and
+thought that because he was virtuous there should be no more cakes and
+ale.</p>
+
+<p>Fielding's revolt produced his great novels, and the definite creation
+of an entirely new form of art which was destined to a long and
+vigorous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> life. He claimed to be the founder of a new province in
+literature, and saw with perfect clearness what was to be its nature.
+The old romances which had charmed the seventeenth century were still
+read occasionally: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, and Dr.
+Johnson had enjoyed them, and Chesterfield, at a later period, has to
+point out to his son that Calpren&egrave;de's <i>Cassandra</i> has become
+ridiculous. The short story, of which Mrs. Behn was the last English
+writer, was more or less replaced by the little sketches in the
+<i>Spectator</i>; and Defoe had shown the attractiveness of a downright
+realistic narrative of a series of adventures. But whatever precedents
+may be found, our unfortunate ancestors had not yet the true modern
+novel. Fielding had, like other hack authors, written for the stage and
+tried to carry on the Congreve tradition. But the stage had declined.
+The best products, perhaps, were the <i>Beggar's Opera</i> and
+<i>Chrononhotonthologos</i> and Fielding's own <i>Tom Thumb</i>. When Fielding
+tried to make use of the taste for political lampoons, the result was
+the Act of Parliament which in 1737 introduced the licensing system. The
+Shakespearian drama, it is true, was coming into popularity with the
+help of Fielding's great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> friend, Garrick; but no new Shakespeare
+appeared to write modern <i>Hamlets</i> and <i>Othellos</i>; Johnson tried to
+supply his place with the ponderous <i>Irene</i>, and John Home followed with
+<i>Douglas</i> of 'My name is Norval' fame. The tragedies were becoming more
+dreary. Characteristic of Fielding was his admiration of Lillo, whose
+<i>George Barnwell</i> (1730) and <i>Fatal Curiosity</i> (about 1736), the last of
+them brought out under Fielding's own management, were remarkable
+attempts to revive tragedies by going to real life. It is plain,
+however, that the theatre is no longer the appropriate organ of the
+reading classes. The licensing act seems to have expressed the general
+feeling which, if we call it Puritan, must be Puritan in a sense which
+described the general middle-class prejudices. The problem which
+Fielding had to solve was to find a literary form which should meet the
+tastes of the new public, who could not be drawn to the theatre, and
+which yet should have some of the characteristics which had hitherto
+been confined to the dramatic form. That was the problem which was
+triumphantly solved by <i>Tom Jones</i>. The story is no longer a mere series
+of adventures, such as that which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> happened to Crusoe or Gil Blas,
+connected by the fact that they happen to the same person; nor a
+prolonged religious or moral tract, showing how evil will be punished
+and virtue rewarded. It implies a dramatic situation which can be
+developed without being hampered by the necessities of
+stage-representation; and which can give full scope to a realistic
+portrait of nature as it is under all the familiar circumstances of time
+and place. This novel, which fulfilled those conditions, has ever since
+continued to flourish; although a long time was to elapse before any one
+could approach the merits of the first inventor. In all ages, I suppose,
+the great artist, whether dramatist or epic poet or novelist, has more
+or less consciously had the aim which Fielding implicitly claims for
+himself; that is, to portray human nature. Every great artist, again,
+must, in one sense, be thoroughly 'realistic.' The word has acquired an
+irrelevant connotation: but I mean that his vision of the world must
+correspond to the genuine living convictions of his time. He only ceases
+to be a realist in that wide sense of the word when he deliberately
+affects beliefs which have lost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> their vitality and uses the old
+mythology, for example, as convenient machinery, when it has ceased to
+have any real hold upon the minds of their contemporaries. So far Defoe
+and Richardson and Fielding were perfectly right and deservedly
+successful because they described the actual human beings whom they saw
+before them, instead of regarding a setting forth of plain facts as
+something below the dignity of the artist. Every new departure in
+literature thrives in proportion as it abandons the old conventions
+which have become mere survivals. Each of them, in his way, felt the
+need of appealing to the new class of readers by direct portraiture of
+the readers themselves, Fielding's merit is his thorough appreciation of
+this necessity. He will give you men as he sees them, with perfect
+impartiality and photographic accuracy. His hearty appreciation of
+genuine work is characteristic. He admires Lillo, as I have said, for
+giving George Barnwell instead of the conventional stage hero; and his
+friend Hogarth, who was in pictorial art what he was in fiction, and
+paints the 'Rake's Progress' without bothering about old masters or the
+grand style; and he is enthusiastic about Garrick because he makes
+Hamlet's fear of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> the ghost so natural that Partridge takes it for a
+mere matter of course. Downright, forcible appeals to fact&mdash;contempt for
+the artificial and conventional&mdash;are his strength, though they also
+imply his weakness. Fielding, in fact, is the ideal John Bull; the 'good
+buffalo,' as Taine calls him, the big, full-blooded, vigorous mass of
+roast-beef who will stand no nonsense, and whose contempt for the
+fanciful and arbitrary tends towards the coarse and materialistic. That
+corresponds to the contrast between Richardson and Fielding; and may
+help to explain why the sentimentalism which Fielding despised yet
+corresponded to a vague feeling after a real element of interest. But,
+in truth, our criticism, I think, applies as much to Richardson as to
+Fielding. Realism, taken in what I should call the right sense, is not
+properly opposed to 'idealism'; it points to one of the two poles
+towards which all literary art should be directed. The artist is a
+realist so far as he deals with the actual life and the genuine beliefs
+of his time; but he is an idealist so far as he sees the most essential
+facts and utters the deepest and most permanent truths in his own
+dialect. His work should be true to life and give the essence of actual
+human nature, and also<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> express emotions and thoughts common to the men
+of all times. Now that is the weak side of the fiction of this period.
+We may read <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i> and <i>Tom Jones</i> with unstinted
+admiration; but we feel that we are in a confined atmosphere. There are
+regions of thought and feeling which seem to lie altogether beyond their
+province. Fielding, in his way, was a bit of a philosopher, though he is
+too much convinced that Locke and Hoadley have said the last words in
+theology and philosophy. Parson Adams is a most charming person in his
+way, but his intellectual outlook is decidedly limited. That may not
+trouble us much; but we have also the general feeling that we are living
+in a little provincial society which somehow takes its own special
+arrangements to be part of the eternal order of nature. The worthy
+Richardson is aware that there are a great many rakes and infamous
+persons about; but it never occurs to him that there can be any
+speculation outside the Thirty-nine Articles; and though Fielding
+perceives a great many abuses in the actual administration of the laws
+and the political system, he regards the social order, with its squires
+and parsons and attorneys as the only conceivable state of things. In
+other words they,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> and I might add their successor Smollett, represent
+all the prejudices and narrow assumptions of the quiet, respectable, and
+in many ways worthy and domestically excellent, middle-class of the day;
+which, on the whole, is determined not to look too deeply into awkward
+questions, but to go along sturdily working out its own conceptions and
+plodding along on well-established lines.</p>
+
+<p>Another literary movement is beginning which is to lead to the sense of
+this deficiency. The nobleman, growing rich and less absorbed in the
+political world, has time and leisure to cultivate his tastes, becomes,
+as I have said, a dilettante, and sends his son to make the grand tour
+as a regular part of his education. Some demon whispers to him, as Pope
+puts it, Visto, have a taste! He buys books and pictures, takes to
+architecture and landscape-gardening, and becomes a 'collector.' The
+instinct of 'collecting' is, I suppose, natural, and its development is
+connected with some curious results. One of the favourite objects of
+ridicule of the past essayists was the virtuoso. There was something to
+them inexpressibly absurd in a passion for buying odds and ends. Pope,
+Arbuthnot, and Gay made a special butt of Dr. Woodward, possessor of a
+famous<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> ancient shield and other antiquities. Equally absurd, they
+thought, was his passion for fossils. He made one of the first
+collections of such objects, saw that they really had a scientific
+interest, and founded at Cambridge the first professorship of geology.
+Another remarkable collector was Sir Hans Sloane, who had brought home a
+great number of plants from Jamaica and founded the botanic garden at
+Chelsea. His servant, James Salter, set up the famous Don Saltero's
+museum in the same place, containing, as Steele tell us, '10,000
+gimcracks, including a "petrified crab" from China and Pontius Pilate's
+wife's chambermaid's sister's hat.' Don Saltero and his master seemed
+equally ridiculous; and Young in his satires calls Sloane 'the foremost
+toyman of his time,' and describes him as adoring a pin of Queen
+Elizabeth's. Sloane's collections were bought for the nation and became
+the foundation of the British Museum; when (1753) Horace Walpole remarks
+that they might be worth &pound;80,000 for anybody who loved hippopotamuses,
+sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese. Scientific research,
+that is, revealed itself to contemporaries as a childish and absurd
+monomania, unworthy of a man of sense. John Hunter had not yet begun to
+form the unequalled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> museum of physiology, and even the scientific
+collectors could have but a dim perception of the importance of a minute
+observation of natural phenomena. The contempt for such collections
+naturally accompanied a contempt for the antiquary, another variety of
+the same species. The study of old documents and ancient buildings
+seemed to be a simple eccentricity. Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary,
+was a typical case. He devoted himself to the study of old records and
+published a series of English Chronicles which were of essential service
+to English historians. To his contemporaries this study seemed to be as
+worthless as Woodward's study of fossils. Like other monomaniacs he
+became crusty and sour for want of sympathy. His like-minded
+contemporary, Carte, ruined the prospects of his history by letting out
+his belief in the royal power of curing by touch. Antiquarianism, though
+providing invaluable material for history, seemed to be a silly
+crotchet, and to imply a hatred to sound Whiggism and modern
+enlightenment, so long as the Wit and the intelligent person of quality
+looked upon the past simply as the period of Gothic barbarism. But an
+approximation is beginning to take place. The relation is indicated by
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> case of Horace Walpole, a man whose great abilities have been
+concealed by his obvious affectations. Two of Walpole's schoolfellows at
+Eton were Gray and William Cole. Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, who
+tried to do for his own university what Woodward had done for Oxford,
+was all but a Catholic, and in political sympathies agreed with Hearne
+and Carte. Walpole was a thorough Whig and a freethinker, so long, at
+least, as freethinking did not threaten danger to comfortable sinecures
+bestowed upon the sons of Whig ministers. But Cole became Walpole's
+antiquarian oracle. When Walpole came back from the grand tour, with
+nothing particular to do except spend his income, he found one amusement
+in dabbling in antiquarian research. He discovered, among other things,
+that even a Gothic cathedral could be picturesque, and in 1750 set about
+building a 'little Gothic Castle' at Strawberry Hill. The Gothic was of
+course the most superficial imitation; but it became the first of a long
+line of similar imitations growing gradually more elaborate with results
+of which we all have our own opinion. To Walpole himself Strawberry Hill
+was a mere plaything, and he would not have wished to be taken too
+seriously; as his romance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> of the <i>Castle of Otranto</i> was a literary
+squib at which he laughed himself, though it became the forefather of a
+great literary school. The process may be regarded as logical: the
+previous generation, rejoicing in its own enlightenment, began to
+recognise the difference between present and past more clearly than its
+ancestors had done; but generally inferred that the men of old had been
+barbarians. The Tory and Jacobite who clings to the past praises its
+remains with blind affection, and can see nothing in the present but
+corruption and destruction of the foundations of society. The
+indifferent dilettante, caring little for any principles and mainly
+desirous of amusement, discovers a certain charm in the old institutions
+while he professes to despise them in theory. That means one of the
+elements of the complex sentiment which we describe as romanticism. The
+past is obsolete, but it is pretty enough to be used in making new
+playthings. The reconciliation will be reached when the growth of
+historical inquiry leads men to feel that past and present are parts of
+a continuous series, and to look upon their ancestors neither as simply
+ridiculous nor as objects of blind admiration. The historical sense was,
+in fact, growing: and Walpole's other friend,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Gray, may represent the
+literary version. The Queen Anne school, though it despised the older
+literature, had still a certain sneaking regard for it. Addison, for
+example, pays some grudging compliments to Chaucer and Spenser, though
+he is careful to point out the barbarism of their taste. Pope, like all
+poets, had loved Spenser in his boyhood and was well read in English
+poetry. It was mighty simple of Rowe, he said, to try to write in the
+style of Shakespeare, that is, in the style of a bad age. Yet he became
+one of the earliest, and far from one of the worst, editors of
+Shakespeare; and the growth of literary interest in Shakespeare is one
+of the characteristic symptoms of the period. Pope had contemplated a
+history of English poetry which was taken up by Gray and finally
+executed by Warton. The development of an interest in literary history
+naturally led to new departures. The poets of the period, Gray and
+Collins and the Wartons, are no longer members of the little circle with
+strict codes of taste. They are scholars and students not shut up within
+the metropolitan area. There has been a controversy as to whether Gray's
+unproductiveness is partly to be ascribed to his confinement to a narrow
+and, it seems, to a specially stupid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> academical circle at Cambridge.
+Anyway, living apart from the world of politicians and fine gentlemen,
+he had the opportunity to become the most learned of English poets and
+to be at home in a wide range of literature representing a great variety
+of models. As the antiquary begins to rise to the historian, the
+poetical merits recognised in the less regular canons become manifest.
+Thomson, trying to write a half-serious imitation of Spenser, made his
+greatest success by a kind of accident in the <i>Castle of Indolence</i>
+(1748); Thomas Warton's Observation on the <i>Faery Queene</i> in 1757 was an
+illustration of the influence of historical criticism. I need not say
+how Collins was interested by Highland superstition and Gray impressed
+by Mallet's <i>Northern Antiquities</i>, and how in other directions the
+labours of the antiquarian were beginning to provide materials for the
+poetical imagination. Gray and Collins still held to the main Pope
+principles. They try to be clear and simple and polished, and their
+trick of personifying abstract qualities indicates the philosophical
+doctrine which was still acceptable. The special principle, however,
+which they were beginning to recognise is that indicated by Joseph
+Warton's declaration in his <i>Essay on Pope</i> (1757).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> 'The fashion of
+moralising in verse,' he said, had been pushed too far, and he proceeded
+to startle the orthodox by placing Spenser above Pope. The heresy gave
+so much offence, it is said, that he did not venture to bring out his
+second volume for twenty-five years. The point made by Warton marks, in
+fact, the critical change. The weak side of the Pope school had been the
+subordination of the imagination to the logical theory. Poetry tends to
+become rhymed prose because the poet like the preacher has to expound
+doctrines and to prove by argument. He despises the old mythology and
+the romantic symbolism because the theory was obviously absurd to a man
+of the world, and to common sense. He believes that Homer was
+deliberately conveying an allegory: and an allegory, whether of Homer or
+of Spenser, is a roundabout and foolish way of expressing the truth. A
+philosopher&mdash;and a poem is versified philosophy&mdash;should express himself
+as simply and directly as possible. But, as soon as you begin to
+appreciate the charm of ancient poetry, to be impressed by Scandinavian
+Sagas or Highland superstition or Welsh bards, or allow yourself to
+enjoy Spenser's idealised knights and ladies in spite of their total
+want<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> of common sense, or to appreciate <i>Paradise Lost</i> although you no
+longer accept Milton's scheme of theology, it becomes plain that the
+specially poetic charm must consist in something else; that it can
+appeal to the emotions and the imagination, though the doctrine which it
+embodies is as far as possible from convincing your reason. The
+discovery has a bearing upon what is called the love of Nature. Even
+Thomson and his followers still take the didactic view of Nature. They
+are half ashamed of their interest in mere dead objects, but can treat
+skies and mountains as a text for discourses upon Natural Theology. But
+Collins and Gray and Warton are beginning to perceive that the pleasure
+which we receive from a beautiful prospect, whether of a mountain or of
+an old abbey, is something which justifies itself and may be expressed
+in poetry without tagging a special moral to its tail. Yet the sturdy
+common sense represented by Fielding and Johnson is slow to accept this
+view, and the romantic view of things has still for him a touch of
+sentimentalism and affectation, and indicates the dilettante rather than
+the serious thinker, and Pope still represents the orthodox creed though
+symptoms of revolt are slowly showing themselves.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+<h3>(1763-1788)</h3>
+
+<p>I now come to the generation which preceded the outbreak of the French
+Revolution. Social and political movements are beginning to show
+themselves in something of their modern form, and suggest most
+interesting problems for the speculative historian. At the same time, if
+we confine ourselves to the purely literary region, it is on the whole a
+period of stagnation. Johnson is the acknowledged dictator, and Johnson,
+the 'last of the Tories,' upholds the artistic canons of Dryden and
+Pope, though no successor arises to produce new works at all comparable
+with theirs. The school, still ostensibly dominant, has lost its power
+of stimulating genius; and as yet no new school has arisen to take its
+place. Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott were still at college, and
+Byron in the nursery, at the end of the period. There is a kind of
+literary interregnum, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> not a corresponding stagnation of
+speculative and political energy.</p>
+
+<p>Looking, in the first place, at the active world, the great fact of the
+time is the series of changes to which we give the name of the
+industrial revolution. The growth of commercial and manufacturing
+enterprise which had been going on quietly and continuously had been
+suddenly accelerated. Glasgow and Liverpool and Manchester and
+Birmingham were becoming great towns, and the factory system was being
+developed, profoundly modifying the old relation of the industrial
+classes. England was beginning to aim at commercial supremacy, and
+politics were to be more than ever dominated by the interests of the
+'moneyed man,' or, as we now call them, 'capitalists.' Essentially
+connected with these changes is another characteristic development.
+Social problems were arising. The growth of the manufactory system and
+the accumulation of masses of town population, for example, forced
+attention to the problem of pauperism, and many attempts of various
+kinds were being made to deal with it. The same circumstances were
+beginning to rouse an interest in education; it had suddenly struck
+people that on Sundays, at least,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> children might be taught their
+letters so far as to enable them to spell out their Bible. The
+inadequacy of the police and prison systems to meet the new requirements
+roused the zeal of many, and led to some reforms. As the British Empire
+extended we began to become sensible of certain correlative duties; the
+impeachment of Warren Hastings showed that we had scruples about
+treating India simply as a place where 'nabobs' are to accumulate
+fortunes; and the slave-trade suggested questions of conscience which at
+the end of the period were to prelude an agitation in some ways
+unprecedented.</p>
+
+<p>In the political world again we have the first appearance of a
+distinctly democratic movement. The struggle over Wilkes during the
+earlier years began a contest which was to last through generations. The
+American War of Independence emphasised party issues, and in some sense
+heralded the French Revolution. I only note one point. The British
+'Whig' of those days represented two impulses which gradually diverged.
+There was the home-bred Whiggism of Wilkes and Horne Tooke&mdash;the Whiggism
+of which the stronghold was in the city of London, with such heroes as
+Lord Mayor Beckford, whose statue in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> the Guildhall displays him hurling
+defiance at poor George III. This party embodies the dissatisfaction of
+the man of business with the old system which cramped his energies. In
+the name of liberty he demands 'self-government'; not greater vigour in
+the Executive but less interference and a freer hand for the capitalist.
+He believes in individual enterprise. He accepts the good old English
+principle that the man who pays taxes should have a voice in spending
+them; but he appeals not to an abstract political principle but to
+tradition. The reformer, as so often happens, calls himself a restorer;
+his political bible begins with the great charter and comes down to the
+settlement of 1688. Meanwhile the true revolutionary
+movement&mdash;represented by Paine and Godwin, appeals to the doctrines of
+natural equality and the rights of man. It is unequivocally democratic,
+and implies a growing cleavage between the working man and the
+capitalists. It repudiates all tradition, and aspires to recast the
+whole social order. Instead of proposing simply to diminish the
+influence of government, it really tends to centralisation and the
+transference of power to the lower classes. This genuine revolutionary
+principle did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> become conspicuous in England until it was introduced
+by the contagion from France, and even then it remained an exotic. For
+the present the Whig included all who opposed the Toryism of George III.
+The difference between the Whig and the Radical was still latent, though
+to be manifested in the near future. When the 'new Whigs,' as Burke
+called them, Fox and Sheridan, welcomed the French Revolution in 1789,
+they saw in it a constitutional movement of the English type and not a
+thorough-going democratic movement which would level all classes, and
+transfer the political supremacy to a different social stratum.</p>
+
+<p>This implies a dominant characteristic of the English political
+movement. It was led, to use a later phrase, by Whigs not Radicals; by
+men who fully accepted the British constitution, and proposed to remove
+abuses, not to recast the whole system. The Whig wished to carry out
+more thoroughly the platform accepted in 1688, to replace decaying by
+sound timbers; but not to reconstruct from the base or to override
+tradition by abstract and obsolete theories. His desire for change was
+limited by a strong though implicit conservatism. This characteristic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+is reflected in the sphere of speculative activity. Philosophy was
+represented by the Scottish school whose watchword was common sense.
+Reid opposed the scepticism of Hume which would lead, as he held, to
+knocking his head against a post&mdash;a course clearly condemned by common
+sense; but instead of soaring into transcendental and ontological
+regions, he stuck to 'Baconian induction' and a psychology founded upon
+experience. Hume himself, as I have said, had written for the
+speculative few not for the vulgar; and he had now turned from the chase
+of metaphysical refinements to historical inquiry. Interest in history
+had become characteristic of the time. The growth of a stable, complex,
+and continuous social order implies the formation of a corporate memory.
+Masses of records had already been accumulated by antiquaries who had
+constructed rather annals than history, in which the series of events
+was given without much effort to arrange them in literary form or trace
+the causal connection. In France, however, Montesquieu had definitely
+established the importance of applying the historical method to
+political problems; and Voltaire had published some of his brilliant
+surveys which attempt to deal with the social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> characteristics as well
+as the mere records of battles and conquests. Hume's <i>History</i>,
+admirably written, gave Englishmen the first opportunity of enjoying a
+lucid survey of the conspicuous facts previously embedded in ponderous
+antiquarian phrases. Hume was one of the triumvirate who produced the
+recognised masterpieces of contemporary literature. Robertson's theories
+are, I take it, superseded: but his books, especially the <i>Charles V.</i>,
+not only gave broad surveys but suggested generalisations as to the
+development of institutions, which, like most generalisations, were
+mainly wrong, but stimulated further inquiry. Gibbon, the third of the
+triumvirate, uniting the power of presenting great panoramas of history
+with thorough scholarship and laborious research, produced the great
+work which has not been, if it ever can be, superseded. A growing
+interest in history thus led to some of the chief writings of the time,
+as we can see that it was the natural outgrowth of the intellectual
+position. The rapid widening of the historical horizon made even a bare
+survey useful, and led to some recognition of the importance of guiding
+and correcting political and social theory by careful investigation of
+past experience. The historian began to feel an ambition to deal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> in
+philosophical theories. He was, moreover, touched by the great
+scientific movement. A complete survey of the intellectual history of
+the time would of course have to deal with the great men who were laying
+the foundations of the modern physical sciences; such as Black, and
+Priestley, and Cavendish, and Hunter. It would indeed, have to point out
+how small was the total amount of such knowledge in comparison with the
+vast superstructure which has been erected in the last century. The
+foundation of the Royal Institution at the end of the eighteenth century
+marks, perhaps, the point at which the importance of physical science
+began to impress the popular imagination. But great thinkers had long
+recognised the necessity of applying scientific method in the sphere of
+social and political investigation. Two men especially illustrate the
+tendency and the particular turn which it took in England. Adam Smith's
+great book in 1776 applied scientific method to political economy. Smith
+is distinguished from his French predecessors by the historical element
+of his work; by his careful study, that is, of economic history, and his
+consequent presentation of his theory not as a body of absolute and
+quasi-mathematical truth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> but as resting upon the experience and
+applicable to the concrete facts of his time. His limitation is equally
+characteristic. He investigated the play of the industrial mechanism
+with too little reference to the thorough interdependence of economic
+and other social conditions. Showing how that mechanism adapts itself to
+supply and demand, he comes to hold that the one thing necessary is to
+leave free play to competition, and that the one essential force is the
+individual's desire for his own material interests. He became,
+therefore, the prophet of letting things alone. That doctrine&mdash;whatever
+its merits or defects&mdash;implies acquiescence in the existing order, and
+is radically opposed to a demand for a reconstruction of society. This
+is most clearly illustrated by the other thinker Jeremy Bentham.
+Bentham, unlike Smith, shared the contempt for history of the absolute
+theorists, and was laying down a theory conceived in the spirit of
+absolutism which became the creed of the uncompromising political
+radicals of the next generation. But it is characteristic that Bentham
+was not, during the eighteenth century, a Radical at all. He altogether
+repudiated and vigorously denounced the 'Rights of Men' doctrines of
+Rousseau and his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> followers, and regarded the Declaration of
+Independence in which they were embodied as a mere hotchpotch of
+absurdity. He is determined to be thoroughly empirical&mdash;to take men as
+he found them. But his utilitarianism supposed that men's views of
+happiness and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was
+wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached.
+Then, he thought, rulers and subjects would be equally ready to apply
+his principles. He fully accepted Adam Smith's theory of
+non-interference in economical matters; and his view of philosophy in
+the lump was that there was no such thing, only a heap of obsolete
+fallacies and superstitions which would be easily dispersed by the
+application of a little downright common sense. Bentham's
+utilitarianism, again, is congenial to the whole intellectual movement.
+His ethical theory was substantially identical with that of Paley&mdash;the
+most conspicuous writer upon theology of the generation,&mdash;and Paley is
+as thoroughly empirical in his theology as in his ethics, and makes the
+truth of religion essentially a question of historical and scientific
+evidence.</p>
+
+<p>It follows that neither in practice nor in speculative questions were
+the English thinkers of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> time prescient of any coming revolution.
+They denounced abuses, but they had regarded abuses as removable
+excrescences on a satisfactory system. They were content to appeal to
+common sense, and to leave philosophers to wrangle over ultimate
+results. They might be, and in fact were, stirring questions which would
+lead to far more vital disputes; but for the present they were
+unconscious of the future, and content to keep the old machinery going
+though desiring to improve its efficiency. The characteristic might be
+elucidated by comparison with the other great European literatures. In
+France, Voltaire had begun about 1762 his crusade against orthodoxy, or,
+as he calls it, his attempt to crush the infamous. He was supported by
+his allies, the Encyclop&aelig;dists. While Helv&eacute;tius and Holbach were
+expounding materialism and atheism, Rousseau had enunciated the
+political doctrines which were to be applied to the Revolution, and
+elsewhere had uttered that sentimental deism which was to be so dear to
+many of his readers. Our neighbours, in short, after their
+characteristic fashion, were pushing logic to its consequences, and
+fully awake to the approach of an impending catastrophe. In Germany the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>movement took the philosophical and literary shape. Lessing's critical
+writings had heralded the change. Goethe, after giving utterance to
+passing phases of thought, was rising to become the embodiment of a new
+ideal of intellectual culture. Schiller passed through the storm and
+stress period and developed into the greatest national dramatist. Kant
+had awakened from his dogmatic theory, and the publication of the
+<i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> in 1781 had awakened the philosophical world
+of Germany. In both countries the study of earlier English literature,
+of the English deists and freethinkers, of Shakespeare and of
+Richardson, had had great influence, and had been the occasion of new
+developments. But it seemed as though England had ceased to be the
+originator of ideas, and was for the immediate future at least to
+receive political and philosophical impulses from France and Germany. To
+explain the course taken in the different societies, to ask how far it
+might be due to difference of characteristics, and of political
+constitutions, of social organism and individual genius, would be a very
+pretty but rather large problem. I refer to it simply to illustrate the
+facts, to emphasise the quiet, orderly, if you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> will, sleepy movement of
+English thought which, though combined with great practical energy and
+vigorous investigation of the neighbouring departments of inquiry,
+admitted of comparative indifference to the deeper issues involved. It
+did not generate that stimulus to literary activity due to the dawning
+of new ideas and the opening of wide vistas of speculation. When the
+French Revolution broke out, it took Englishmen, one may say, by
+surprise, and except by a few keen observers or rare disciples of
+Rousseau, was as unexpected as the earthquake of Lisbon.</p>
+
+<p>Let us glance, now, at the class which was to carry on the literary
+tradition. It is known to us best through Boswell, and its
+characteristics are represented by Johnson's favourite club. In one of
+his talks with Boswell the great man amused himself by showing how the
+club might form itself into a university. Every branch of knowledge and
+thought might, he thought, be represented, though it must be admitted
+that some of the professors suggested were scarcely up to the mark. The
+social variety is equally remarkable. Among the thirty or forty members
+elected before Johnson's death, there were the lights of literature;
+Johnson himself and Goldsmith,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> Adam Smith and Gibbon, and others of
+less fame. The aristocratic element was represented by Beauclerk and by
+half a dozen peers, such as the amiable Lord Charlemont; Burke, Fox,
+Sheridan, and Wyndham represent political as well as literary eminence;
+three or four bishops represent Church authority; legal luminaries
+included Dunning, William Scott (the famous Lord Stowell), Sir Robert
+Chambers, and the amazingly versatile Sir William Jones. Boswell and
+Langton are also cultivated country gentlemen; Sir Joseph Banks stood
+for science, and three other names show the growing respect for art. The
+amiable Dr. Burney was a musician who had raised the standard of his
+calling; Garrick had still more conspicuously gained social respect for
+the profession of actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the representative
+of the English school of painters, whose works still impress upon us the
+beauty of our great-grandmothers and the charm of their children, and
+suggest the existence of a really dignified and pure domestic life in a
+class too often remembered by the reckless gambling and loose morality
+of the gilded youth of the day. To complete the picture of the world in
+which Johnson was at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> home we should have to add from the outer sphere
+such types as Thrale, the prosperous brewer, and the lively Mrs. Thrale
+and Mrs. Montague, who kept a salon and was president of the 'Blues.'
+The feminine society which was beginning to write our novels was
+represented by Miss Burney and Hannah More; and the thriving booksellers
+who were beginning to become publishers, such as Strahan and the Dillys,
+at whose house he had the famous meeting with the reprobate Wilkes. To
+many of us, I suppose, an intimacy with that Johnsonian group has been a
+first introduction to an interest in English literature. Thanks to
+Boswell, we can hear its talk more distinctly than that of any later
+circle. When we compare it to the society of an earlier time, one or two
+points are conspicuous. Johnson's club was to some extent a continuation
+of the clubs of Queen Anne's time. But the Wits of the earlier period
+who met at taverns to drink with the patrons were a much smaller and
+more dependent body. What had since happened had been the growth of a
+great comfortable middle-class&mdash;meaning by middle-class the upper
+stratum, the professional men, the lawyers, clergymen, physicians, the
+merchants who had been enriched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> by the growth of commerce and
+manufactures; the country gentlemen whose rents had risen, and who could
+come to London and rub off their old rusticity. The aristocracy is still
+in possession of great wealth and political power, but beneath it has
+grown up an independent society which is already beginning to be the
+most important social stratum and the chief factor in political and
+social development. It has sufficient literary cultivation to admit the
+distinguished authors and artists who are becoming independent enough to
+take their place in its ranks and appear at its tables and rule the
+conversation. The society is still small enough to have in the club a
+single representative body and one man for dictator. Johnson succeeded
+in this capacity to Pope, Dryden, and his namesake Ben, but he was the
+last of the race. Men like Carlyle and Macaulay, who had a similar
+distinction in later days, could only be leaders of a single group or
+section in the more complex society of their time, though it was not yet
+so multitudinous and chaotic as the literary class has become in our
+own. Talk could still be good, because the comparatively small society
+was constantly meeting, and each prepared to take his part in the game,
+and was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> not being swept away distractedly into a miscellaneous vortex
+of all sorts and conditions of humanity. Another fact is conspicuous.
+The environment, we may say, of the man of letters was congenial. He
+shared and uttered the opinions of the class to which he belonged.
+Buckle gives a striking account of the persecution to which the French
+men of letters were exposed at this period; Voltaire, Buffon, and
+Rousseau, Diderot, Marmontel, and Morellet, besides a whole series of
+inferior authors, had their books suppressed and were themselves either
+exiled or imprisoned. There was a state of war in which almost the whole
+literary class attacked the established creed while the rulers replied
+by force instead of argument. In England men of letters were allowed,
+with a few exceptions, to say what they thought, and simply shared the
+average beliefs of their class and their rulers. If some leant towards
+freethinking, the general tendency of the Johnson circle was harshly
+opposed to any revolutionary movement, and authors were satisfied with
+the creeds as with the institutions amid which they lived.</p>
+
+<p>The English literary class was thus content to utter the beliefs
+prevalent in the social stratum<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> to which the chief writers belonged&mdash;a
+stratum which had no special grievances and no revolutionary impulses,
+and which could make its voice sufficiently heard though by methods
+which led to no explicit change in the constitution, and suggests only a
+change in the forces which really lay behind them. The chief political
+changes mean for the present that 'public opinion' was acquiring more
+power; that the newspaper press as its organ was especially growing in
+strength; that Parliament was thrown open to the reporter, and speeches
+addressed to the constituencies as well as to the Houses of Parliament,
+and therefore the authority of the legislation becoming more amenable to
+the opinions of the constituency. That is to say, again, that the
+journalist and orator were growing in power and a corresponding
+direction given to literary talent. The Wilkes agitation led to the
+<i>Letters of Junius</i>&mdash;one of the most conspicuous models of the style of
+the period; and some of the newspapers which were to live through the
+next century began to appear in the following years. This period again
+might almost be called the culminating period of English rhetoric. The
+speeches of Pitt and Burke and Fox and Sheridan in the House of Commons
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> at the impeachment of Warren Hastings must be regarded from the
+literary as well as the political point of view, though in most cases
+the decay of the temporary interests involved has been fatal to their
+permanence. The speeches are still real speeches, intended to affect the
+audience addressed, and yet partly intended also for the reporters. When
+the audience becomes merely the pretext, and the real aim is to address
+the public, the speech tends to become a pamphlet in disguise and loses
+its rhetorical character. I may remark in passing that almost the only
+legal speeches which, so far as my knowledge goes, are still readable,
+were those of Erskine, who, after trying the careers of a sailor and a
+soldier, found the true application for his powers in oratory. Though
+his legal knowledge is said to have been slight, the conditions of the
+time enabled him in addressing a British jury to put forward a political
+manifesto and to display singular literary skill. Burke, however, is the
+typical figure. Had he been a German he might have been a Lessing, and
+the author of the <i>Sublime and Beautiful</i> might, like the author of
+<i>Laokoon</i>, have stimulated his countrymen by literary criticism. Or he
+might have obtained a professorship or a court <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>preachership and, like
+Herder, have elaborated ideas towards the future of a philosophy of
+history. In England he was drawn into the political vortex, and in that
+capacity delivered speeches which also appeared as pamphlets, and which
+must rank among the great masterpieces of English literature. I need not
+inquire whether he lost more by giving to party what was meant for
+mankind, or whether his philosophy did not gain more by the necessity of
+constant application to the actual facts of the time. That necessity no
+doubt limited both the amount and the systematic completeness of his
+writings, though it also emphasised some of their highest merits. The
+English political order tended in any case to divert a great deal of
+literary ability into purely political channels&mdash;a peculiarity which it
+has not yet lost. Burke is the typical instance of this combination, and
+illustrates most forcibly the point to which I have already adverted.
+Johnson, as we know, was a mass of obstinate Tory prejudice, and held
+that the devil was the first Whig. He held at bottom, I think, that
+politics touched only the surface of human life; that 'kings or laws,'
+as he put it, can cause or cure only a small part of the evils which we
+suffer, and that some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> authority is absolutely necessary, and that it
+matters little whether it be the authority of a French monarch or an
+English parliament. The Whig he thought objected to authority on
+principle, and was therefore simply subversive. Something of the same
+opinion was held by Johnson's circle in general. They were conservative
+both in politics and theology, and English politics and theological
+disputes did not obviously raise the deeper issues. Even the
+devil-descended Whig&mdash;especially the variety represented by Burke&mdash;was
+as far as possible from representing what he took for the diabolic
+agency. Burke represents above all things the political application of
+the historical spirit of the period. His hatred for metaphysics, for
+discussions of abstract rights instead of practical expediency; his
+exaltation of 'prescription' and 'tradition'; his admiration for
+Montesquieu and his abhorrence of Rousseau; his idolatry of the British
+constitution, and in short his whole political doctrine from first to
+last, implies the profound conviction of the truth of the principles
+embodied in a thorough historical method. Nobody, I think, was ever more
+consistent in his first principles, though his horror of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>Revolution
+no doubt led him so to exaggerate one side of his teaching that he was
+led to denounce some of the consequences which naturally followed from
+other aspects of his doctrine. The schism between the old and the new
+Whigs was not to be foreseen during this period, nor the coming into the
+foreground of the deeper problems involved.</p>
+
+<p>I may now come to the purely literary movement. I have tried to show
+that neither in philosophy, theology, nor political and social strata,
+was there any belief in the necessity of radical changes, or prescience
+of a coming alteration of the intellectual atmosphere. Speculation, like
+politics, could advance quietly along the old paths without fearing that
+they might lead to a precipice; and society, in spite of very vigorous
+and active controversy upon the questions which decided it was in the
+main self-satisfied, complacent, and comfortable. Adherence to the old
+system is after all the general rule, and it is of the change not the
+persistence that we require some account. At the beginning of our
+period, Pope's authority was still generally admitted, although many
+symptoms of discontent had appeared, and Warton was proposing to lower
+him from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> first to the second rank. The two most brilliant writers
+who achieved fame in the early years of George III., Goldsmith and
+Sterne, mark a characteristic moment in the literary development.
+Goldsmith's poems the <i>Traveller</i> (1765) and the <i>Deserted Village</i>
+(1770), and the <i>Vicar of Wakefield</i> (1766), are still on the old lines.
+The poetry adopts Pope's versification, and implies the same ideal; the
+desire for lucidity, sympathy, moderation, and the qualities which would
+generally be connoted by classical. The substance, distinguished from
+the style, shows the sympathy with sentimentalism of which Rousseau was
+to be the great exponent. Goldsmith is beginning to denounce luxury&mdash;a
+characteristic mark of the sentimentalist&mdash;and his regret for the period
+when 'every rood of earth maintained its man' is one side of the
+aspiration for a return to the state of nature and simplicity of
+manners. The inimitable Vicar recalls Sir Roger de Coverley and the
+gentle and delicate touch of Addison. But the Vicar is beginning to take
+an interest in philanthropy. He is impressed by the evils of the old
+prison system which had already roused Oglethorpe (who like
+Goldsmith&mdash;as I may notice&mdash;disputed with Johnson as to the evils of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+luxury) and was soon to arouse Howard. The greatest attraction of the
+Vicar is due to the personal charm of Goldsmith's character, but his
+character makes him sympathise with the wider social movements and the
+growth of genuine philanthropic sentiment. Goldsmith, in his remarks
+upon the <i>Present State of Polite Learning</i> (1759), explains the decay
+of literature (literature is always decaying) by the general enervation
+which accompanies learning and the want of originality caused by the
+growth of criticism. That was not an unnatural view at a time when the
+old forms are beginning to be inadequate for the new thoughts which are
+seeking for utterance. As yet, however, Goldsmith's own work proves
+sufficiently that the new motive could be so far adapted to the old form
+as to produce an artistic masterpiece. Sterne may illustrate a similar
+remark. He represents, no doubt, a kind of sham sentimentalism with an
+insincerity which has disgusted many able critics. He was resolved to
+attract notice at any price&mdash;by putting on cap and bells, and by the
+pruriency which stains his best work. Like many contemporaries he was
+reading old authors and turned them to account in a way which exposed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+him to the charge of plagiarism. He valued them for their quaintness.
+They enabled him to satisfy his propensity for being deliberately
+eccentric which made Horace Walpole call <i>Tristram Shandy</i> the 'dregs of
+nonsense,' and the learned Dr. Farmer prophesied that in twenty years it
+would be necessary to search antiquarian shops for a copy. Sterne's
+great achievement, however, was not in the mere buffoonery but in the
+passages where he continued the Addison tradition. Uncle Toby is a
+successor of Sir Roger, and the famous death of Lefevre is told with
+inimitable simplicity and delicacy of touch. Goldsmith and Sterne work
+upon the old lines, but make use of the new motives and materials which
+are beginning to interest readers, and which will in time call for
+different methods of treatment.</p>
+
+<p>I must briefly indicate one other point. The society of which Garrick
+was a member, and which was both reading Shakespeare and seeing his
+plays revived, might well seem fitted to maintain a drama. Goldsmith
+complains of the decay of the stage, which he attributes partly to the
+exclusion of new pieces by the old Shakespearian drama. On that point he
+agrees as far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> as he dares with Voltaire. He ridiculed Home's <i>Douglas</i>,
+one of the last tragedies which made even a temporary success, and which
+certainly showed that the true impulse was extinct. But Goldsmith and
+his younger contemporary Sheridan succeeded for a time in restoring
+vigour to comedy. Their triumph over the sentimentalists Kelly and
+Cumberland showed, as Johnson put it, that they could fill the aim of
+the comedian, namely, making an audience merry. <i>She Stoops to Conquer</i>
+and <i>The School for Scandal</i> remain among genuine literary masterpieces.
+They are revivals of the old Congreve method, and imply the growth of a
+society more decent and free from the hard cynical brutality which
+disgraced the earlier writers. I certainly cannot give a sufficient
+reason why the society of Johnson and Reynolds, full of shrewd common
+sense, enjoying humour, and with a literary social tradition, should not
+have found other writers capable of holding up the comic mirror. I am
+upon the verge of a discussion which seems to be endless, the causes of
+the decay of the British stage. I must give it a wide berth, and only
+note that, as a fact, Sheridan took to politics, and his mantle fell on
+no worthy successor. The next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> craze (for which he was partly
+responsible) was the German theatre of Kotzebue, which represented the
+intrusion of new influences and the production of a great quantity of
+rubbish. After Goldsmith the poetic impulse seems to have decayed
+entirely. After the <i>Deserted Village</i> (1770) no striking work appeared
+till Crabbe published his first volume (1781), and was followed by his
+senior Cowper in 1782. Both of them employed the metre of Pope, though
+Cowper took to blank verse; and Crabbe, though he had read and admired
+Spenser, was to the end of his career a thorough disciple of Pope.
+Johnson read and revised his <i>Village</i>, which was thoroughly in harmony
+with the old gentleman's poetic creed. Yet both Cowper and Crabbe
+stimulate what may be called in some sense 'a return to nature'; though
+not in such a way as to announce a literary revolution. Each was
+restrained by personal conditions. Cowper's poetical aims were
+profoundly affected by his religious views. The movement which we call
+Methodist was essentially moral and philanthropic. It agreed so far with
+Rousseau's sentimentalism that it denounced the corruptions of the
+existing order; but instead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> of attributing the evils to the departure
+from the ideal state of nature, expressed them by the theological
+doctrine of the corruption of the human heart. That implied in some
+senses a fundamental difference. But there was a close coincidence in
+the judgment of actual motives. Cowper fully agreed with Rousseau that
+our rulers had become selfish and luxurious; that war was kept up to
+satisfy the ambition of kings and courtiers; that vice flourished
+because the aims of our rulers and teachers were low and selfish, and
+that slavery was a monstrous evil supported by the greed of traders.
+Brown's <i>Estimate</i>, he said, was thoroughly right as to our degeneracy,
+though Brown had not perceived the deepest root of the evil. Cowper's
+satire has lost its salt because he had retired too completely from the
+world to make a telling portrait. But he succeeds most admirably when he
+finds relief from the tortures of insanity by giving play to the
+exquisite playfulness and tenderness which was never destroyed by his
+melancholy. He delights us by an unconscious illustration of the simple
+domestic life in the quiet Olney fields, which we see in another form in
+the charming White of Selborne. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> escapes from the ghastly images of
+religious insanity when he has indulged in the innocent play of tender
+and affectionate emotions, which finds itself revealed in tranquillising
+scenery. The literary result is a fresh appreciation of 'Nature.' Pope's
+Nature has become for him artificial and conventional. From a religious
+point of view it represents 'cold morality,' and the substitution of
+logical argumentation for the language of the heart. It suggests the
+cynicism of the heartless fine gentleman who sneers at Wesley and
+Bunyan, and covers his want of feeling by a stilted deism. Cowper tried
+unsuccessfully to supersede Pope's <i>Homer</i>; in trying to be simple he
+became bald; but he also tried most successfully to express with
+absolute sincerity the simple and deep emotions of an exquisitely tender
+character.</p>
+
+<p>Crabbe meanwhile believed in Pope, and had a sturdy solid contempt for
+Methodism. Cowper's guide, Newton, would have passed with him for a
+nuisance and a fanatic. Crabbe is a thorough realist. In some ways he
+may be compared to his contemporary Malthus. Malthus started, as we
+know, by refuting the sentimentalism of Rousseau; Crabbe's <i>Village</i> is
+a protest against the embodiment of the same spirit in Goldsmith.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> He is
+determined to see things as they are, with no rose-coloured mist. Crabbe
+replies to critics that if his realism was unpoetical, the criterion
+suggested would condemn much of Dryden and Pope as equally unpoetical.
+He was not renouncing but carrying on the tradition, and was admired by
+Byron in his rather wayward mood of Pope-worship as the last
+representative of the legitimate school. The position is significant.
+Crabbe condemns Goldsmith's 'Nature' because it is 'unnatural.' It means
+the Utopian ideal of Rousseau which never did and never can exist. It
+belongs to the world of old-fashioned pastoral poetry, in which Corydon
+and Thyrsis had their being. He will paint British squires and farmers
+and labourers as he has seen them with his own eyes. The wit has become
+for him the mere fop, whose poetry is an arbitrary convention, a mere
+plaything for the fine ladies and gentlemen detached from the living
+interests of mankind. The Pope tradition is still maintained, but is to
+be revised by being brought down again to contact with solid earth.
+Therefore on the one hand he is thoroughly in harmony with Johnson, the
+embodiment of common sense, and on the other, excited the enthusiasm of
+Wordsworth and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> Scott, who, though leaders of a new movement, heartily
+sympathised with his realism and rejection of the old conventionalism.
+Though Crabbe regards Cowper's religion as fanaticism, they are so far
+agreed that both consider that poetry has become divorced from reality
+and reflects the ugly side of actual human nature. They do not propose a
+revolution in its methods, but to put fresh life into it by seeing
+things as they are. And both of them, living in the country, apply the
+principle to 'Nature' in the sense of scenery. Cowper gives interest to
+the flat meadows of the Ouse; and Crabbe, a botanist and lover of
+natural history, paints with unrivalled fidelity and force the flat
+shores and tideways of his native East Anglia. They are both therefore
+prophets of a love of Nature, in one of the senses of the Protean word.
+Cowper, who prophesied the fall of the Bastille and denounced luxury,
+was to some extent an unconscious ally of Rousseau, though he regarded
+the religious aspects of Rousseau's doctrine as shallow and
+unsatisfactory. Crabbe shows the attitude of which Johnson is the most
+characteristic example. Johnson was thoroughly content with the old
+school in so far as it meant that poetry must be thoroughly rational and
+sensible.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> His hatred of cant and foppery was so far congenial to the
+tradition; but it implied a difference. To him Pope's metaphysical
+system was mere foppery, and the denunciation of luxury mere cant. He
+felt mere contempt for Goldsmith's flirtation with that vein of
+sentiment. His dogged conservatism prevented him from recognising the
+strength of the philosophical movements which were beginning to clothe
+themselves in Rousseauism. Burke, if he condemned the revolutionary
+doctrine as wicked, saw distinctly how potent a lesson it was becoming.
+Johnson, showing the true British indifference, could treat the movement
+with contempt&mdash;Hume's scepticism was a mere 'milking the bull'&mdash;a love
+of paradox for its own sake&mdash;and Wilkes and the Whigs, though wicked in
+intention, were simple and superficial dealers in big words. In the
+literary application the same sturdy common sense was opposed to the
+Pope tradition so far as that tradition opposed common sense.
+Conventional diction, pastorals, and twaddle about Nature belonged to
+the nonsensical side. He entirely sympathised with Crabbe's substitution
+of the real living brutish clown for the unreal swain of Arcadia; that
+is, for developing poetry by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> making it thoroughly realistic even at the
+cost of being prosaic.</p>
+
+<p>So far the tendency to realism was thoroughly congenial to the
+matter-of-fact utilitarian spirit of the time, and was in some sense in
+harmony with a 'return to Nature.' But it was unconsciously becoming
+divorced from some of the great movements of thought, of which it failed
+to perceive the significance. A new inspiration was showing itself, to
+which critics have done at least ample justice. The growth of history
+had led to renewed interest in much that had been despised as mere
+curiosities or ridiculed as implying the barbarism of our ancestors. I
+have already noticed the dilettantism of the previous generation, and
+the interest of Gray and Collins and Warton and Walpole in antiquarian
+researches. Gothic had ceased to be a simple term of reproach. The old
+English literature is beginning to be studied seriously. Pope and
+Warburton and Johnson had all edited Shakespeare; Garrick had given him
+fresh popularity, and the first edition of <i>Old Plays</i> by Dodsley
+appeared in 1744. Similar studies were extending in many directions.
+Mallet in his work upon Denmark (1755) gave a translation of the <i>Eddas</i>
+which called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> attention to Scandinavian mythology. Bodmer soon
+afterwards published for the first time the <i>Nibelungen Lied</i>.
+Macpherson startled the literary world in 1762 by what professed to be
+an epic poem from the Gaelic. Chatterton's career (1752-1770) was a
+proof not only of unique poetical precocity, but of a singular facility
+in divining the tastes of the literary world at the time. Percy's
+<i>Reliques</i> appeared in 1765. Percy, I may note, had begun oddly enough
+by publishing a Chinese novel (1761), and a translation of Icelandic
+poetry (1763). Not long afterwards Sir William Jones published
+translations of Oriental poetry. Briefly, as historical, philological,
+and antiquarian research extended, the man of letters was also beginning
+to seek for new 'motives,' and to discover merits in old forms of
+literature. The importance of this new impulse cannot be over-estimated,
+but it may be partly misinterpreted. It is generally described as a
+foretaste of what is called the Romantic movement. The word is no doubt
+very useful&mdash;though exceedingly vague. The historian of literature is
+sometimes given to speak as though it meant the revelation of a new and
+definite creed. He speaks, that is, like the historian of science, who
+accepts Darwinism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> as the revelation of a new principle transfusing the
+old conceptions, and traces the various anticipations, the seminal idea;
+or like the Protestant theologian who used to regard Luther as having
+announced the full truth dimly foreseen by Wicliff or the Albigenses.
+Romanticism, that is, is treated as a single movement; while the men who
+share traces of the taste are supposed to have not only foreseen the new
+doctrine but to have been the actual originators. Yet I think that all
+competent writers will also agree that Romanticism is a name which has
+been applied to a number of divergent or inconsistent schools. It seems
+to mean every impulse which tended to find the old clothing inadequate
+for the new thoughts, which caused dissatisfaction with the old
+philosophical and religious or political systems and aspirations, and
+took a corresponding variety of literary forms. It is far too complex a
+phenomenon to be summed up in any particular formula. The mischief is
+that to take the literary evolution as an isolated phenomenon is to miss
+an essential clue to such continuity and unity as it really possesses.
+When we omit the social factor, the solidarity which exists between
+contemporaries occupied with the same problem and sharing certain common
+beliefs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> each school appears as an independent unit, implying a
+discontinuity or a simple relation of contrariety, and we explain the
+succession by such a verbal phrase as 'reaction.' The real problem is,
+what does the reaction mean? and that requires us to take into account
+the complex and variously composed currents of thought and reason which
+are seeking for literary expression. The popularity of <i>Ossian</i> for
+example, is a curious phenomenon. At the first sight we are disposed to
+agree with Johnson that any man could write such stuff if he would
+abandon his mind to it, and to add that if any one would write it no one
+could read it. Yet we know that <i>Ossian</i> appealed to the gigantic
+intellects of Goethe and Napoleon. That is a symptom of deep
+significance; <i>Ossian</i> suited Goethe in the <i>Werther</i> period and
+Napoleon took it with him when he was dreaming of rivalling Alexander's
+conquests in the East. We may perhaps understand why the gigantesque
+pictures in <i>Ossian</i> of the northern mountains and scenery&mdash;with all its
+vagueness, incoherence, and bombast, was somehow congenial to minds
+dissatisfied, for different reasons, with the old ideals. To explain the
+charm more precisely is a very pretty problem for the acute critic.
+<i>Ossian</i>, it is clear, fell in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> with the mood characteristic of the
+time. But when we ask what effect it produced in English literature, the
+answer must surely be, 'next to none.' Gray was enthusiastic and tried
+to believe in its authenticity. Scots, like Blair and even the sceptical
+Hume&mdash;though Hume soon revolted&mdash;defended <i>Ossian</i> out of patriotic
+prejudice, and Burns professed to admire. But nobody in Great Britain
+took to writing Ossianesque. Wordsworth was simply disgusted by the
+unreality, and nothing could be less in the <i>Ossian</i> vein than Burns.
+The <i>Ossian</i> craze illustrates the extension of historical interest, of
+which I have spoken, and the vague discontent of Wertherism. But I do
+not see how the publication can be taken as the cause of a new
+departure, although it was an indication of the state of mind which led
+to a new departure. Percy's <i>Reliques</i>, again, is often mentioned as an
+'epoch-making' book. Undoubtedly it was a favourite with Scott and many
+other readers of his generation. But how far did it create any change of
+taste? The old ballad was on one side congenial to the classical school,
+as Addison showed by his criticism of <i>Chevy Chase</i> for its simple
+version of a heroic theme. Goldsmith tried his hand at a ballad about
+the same time with Percy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> and both showed that they were a little too
+much afraid that simplicity might degenerate into childishness, and gain
+Johnson's contempt. But there was nothing in the old school incompatible
+with a rather patronising appreciation of the popular poetry. It gained
+fresh interest when the historical tendency gave a newer meaning to the
+old society in which ballad poetry had flourished.</p>
+
+<p>This suggests the last remark which I have room to make. One
+characteristic of the period is a growth of provincial centres of some
+intellectual culture. As manufactures extended, and manufacturers began
+to read, circles of some literary pretensions sprang up in Norwich,
+Birmingham, Bristol, and Manchester; and most conspicuously in
+Edinburgh. Though the Scot was coming south in numbers which alarmed
+Johnson, there were so many eminent Scots at home during this time that
+Edinburgh seems at least to have rivalled London as an intellectual
+centre. The list of great men includes Hume and Adam Smith, Robertson
+and Hailes and Adam Ferguson, Kames, Monboddo, and Dugald Stewart among
+philosophers and historians; John Home, Blair, G. Campbell, Beattie, and
+Henry Mackenzie among men of letters; Hutton, Black, Cullen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> and
+Gregory among scientific leaders. Scottish patriotism then, as at other
+periods, was vigorous, and happily ceasing to be antagonistic to
+unionist sentiment. The Scot admitted that he was touched by
+provincialism; but he retained a national pride, and only made the
+modest and most justifiable claim that he was intrinsically superior to
+the Southron. He still preserved intellectual and social traditions, and
+cherished them the more warmly, which marked him as a distinct member of
+the United Kingdom. In Scotland the rapid industrial development had
+given fresh life to the whole society without obliterating its
+distinctive peculiarities. Song and ballad and local legends were still
+alive, and not merely objects of literary curiosity. It was under such
+conditions that Burns appeared, the greatest beyond compare of all the
+self-taught poets. Now there can be no explanation whatever of the
+occurrence of a man of genius at a given time and place. For anything we
+can say, Burns was an accident; but given the genius, his relation was
+clear, and the genius enabled him to recognise it with unequalled
+clearness. Burns became, as he has continued, the embodiment of the
+Scottish genius. Scottish patriotic feeling animates some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> of his
+noblest poems, and whether as an original writer&mdash;and no one could be
+more original&mdash;or as adapting and revising the existing poetry, he
+represents the essential spirit of the Scottish peasant. I need not
+point out that this implies certain limitations, and some failings worse
+than limitation. But it implies also the spontaneous and masculine
+vigour which we may call poetic inspiration of the highest kind. He had
+of course read the English authors such as Addison and Pope. So far as
+he tried to imitate the accepted form he was apt to lose his fire. He is
+inspired when he has a nation behind him and is the mouthpiece of
+sentiments, traditional, but also living and vigorous. He represents,
+therefore, a new period. The lyrical poetry seemed to have died out in
+England. It suddenly comes to life in Scotland and reaches unsurpassable
+excellence within certain limits, because a man of true genius rises to
+utter the emotions of a people in their most natural form without
+bothering about canons of literary criticism. The society and the
+individual are in thorough harmony, and that, I take it, is the
+condition of really great literature at all times.</p>
+
+<p>This must suggest my concluding moral. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> watchword of every literary
+school may be brought under the formula 'Return to Nature': though
+'Nature' receives different interpretations. To be natural, on the one
+hand, is to be sincere and spontaneous; to utter the emotions natural to
+you in the forms which are also natural, so far as the accepted canons
+are not rules imposed by authority but have been so thoroughly
+assimilated as to express your own instinctive impulses. On the other
+side, it means that the literature must be produced by the class which
+embodies the really vital and powerful currents of thought which are
+moulding society. The great author must have a people behind him; utter
+both what he really thinks and feels and what is thought and felt most
+profoundly by his contemporaries. As the literature ceases to be truly
+representative, and adheres to the conventionalism of the former period,
+it becomes 'unnatural' and the literary forms become a survival instead
+of a genuine creation. The history of eighteenth century literature
+illustrates this by showing how as the social changes give new influence
+to the middle classes and then to the democracy, the aristocratic class
+which represented the culture of the opening stage is gradually pushed
+aside; its methods<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> become antiquated and its conventions cease to
+represent the ideals of the most vigorous part of the population. The
+return to Nature with Pope and Addison and Swift meant, get rid of
+pedantry, be thoroughly rational, and take for your guide the bright
+common sense of the Wit and the scholar. During Pope's supremacy the Wit
+who represents the aristocracy produces some admirably polished work;
+but the development of journalism and Grub Street shows that he is
+writing to satisfy the popular interests so keenly watched by Defoe in
+Grub Street. In the period of Richardson and Fielding Nature has become
+the Nature of the middle-class John Bull. The old romances have become
+hopelessly unnatural, and they will give us portraits of living human
+beings, whether Clarissa or Tom Jones. The rationalism of the higher
+class strikes them as cynical, and the generation which listens to
+Wesley must have also a secular literature, which, whether sentimental
+as with Richardson or representing common sense with Fielding, must at
+any rate correspond to solid substantial matter-of-fact motives,
+intelligible to the ordinary Briton of the time. In the last period, the
+old literary conventions, though retaining their old literary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> prestige,
+are becoming threadbare while preserving the old forms. Even the
+Johnsonian conservatism implies hatred for cant, for mere foppery and
+sham sentimentalism; and though it uses them, insists with Crabbe upon
+keeping in contact with fact. We must be 'realistic,' though we can
+retain the old literary forms. The appeal to Nature, meanwhile, has come
+with Rousseau and the revolutionists to mean something different&mdash;the
+demand, briefly, for a thorough-going reconstruction of the whole
+philosophical and social fabric. To the good old Briton, Whig or Tory,
+that seemed to be either diabolical or mere Utopian folly. To him the
+British constitution is still thoroughly congenial and 'natural.'
+Meanwhile intellectual movement has introduced a new element. The
+historical sense is being developed, as a settled society with a complex
+organisation becomes conscious at once of its continuity and of the slow
+processes of growth by which it has been elaborated. The fusion of
+English and Scottish nations stimulates the patriotism of the smaller
+though better race, and generates a passionate enthusiasm for the old
+literature which represents the characteristic genius of the smaller<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+community. Burns embodies the sentiment, though without any conscious
+reference to theories philosophical or historical. The significance was
+to be illustrated by Scott&mdash;an equally fervid patriot. He tells Crabbe
+how oddly a passage in the <i>Village</i> was associated in his memory with
+border-riding ballads and scraps of old plays. 'Nature' for Scott meant
+'his honest grey hills' speaking in every fold of old traditional lore.
+That meant, in one sense, that Scott was not only romantic but
+reactionary. That was his weakness. But if he was the first to make the
+past alive, he was also the first to make the present historical. His
+masterpieces are not his descriptions of medi&aelig;val knights so much as the
+stories in which he illuminates the present by his vivid presentation of
+the present order as the outgrowth from the old, and makes the Scottish
+peasant or lawyer or laird interesting as a product and a type of social
+conditions. Nature therefore to him includes the natural processes by
+which society has been developed under the stress of circumstances.
+Nothing could be more unnatural for him than the revolutionary principle
+which despises tradition and regards the patriotic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>sentiment as
+superfluous and irrational. Wordsworth represents again another sense of
+Nature. He announced as his special principle that poetry should speak
+the language of Nature, and therefore, as he inferred, of the ordinary
+peasant and uneducated man. The hills did not speak to him of legend or
+history but of the sentiment of the unsophisticated yeoman or
+'statesman.' He sympathised enthusiastically with the French Revolution
+so long as he took it to utter the simple republican sentiment congenial
+to a small society of farmers and shepherds. He abandoned it when he
+came to think that it really meant the dissolution of the religious and
+social sentiments which correspond to the deepest instincts which bound
+such men together. Coleridge represents a variation. He was the first
+Englishman to be affected by the philosophical movement of Germany. He
+had been an ardent revolutionist in the days when he adopted the
+metaphysics of Hartley and Priestley, which fell in with the main
+eighteenth-century current of scepticism. He came to think that the
+movement represented a perversion of the intellect. It meant materialism
+and scepticism, or interpreted Nature as a mere dead mechanism. It
+omitted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> therefore, the essential element which is expressed by what we
+may roughly call the mystical tendency in philosophy. Nature must be
+taken as the embodiment of a divine idea. Nature, therefore, in his
+poetry, is regarded not from Scott's point of view as subordinate to
+human history, or from Wordsworth's as teaching the wisdom of
+unsophisticated mankind, but rather as a symbolism legible to the higher
+imagination. Though his fine critical sense made him keep his philosophy
+and his poetry distinct, that is the common tendency which gives unity
+to his work and which made his utterances so stimulating to congenial
+intellects. His criticism of the 'Nature' of Pope and Bolingbroke would
+be substantially, that in their hands the reason which professed to
+interpret Nature became cold and materialistic, because its logic left
+out of account the mysterious but essential touches revealed only to the
+heart, or, in his language, to the reason but not to the understanding.
+Meanwhile, though the French revolutionary doctrines were preached in
+England, they only attracted the literary leaders for a time, and it was
+not till the days of Byron and Shelley that they found thorough-going
+representatives in English poetry. On that, however, I must not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> speak.
+I have tried to indicate briefly how Scott and Wordsworth and Coleridge,
+the most eminent leaders of the new school, partly represented movements
+already obscurely working in England, and how they were affected by the
+new ideas which had sprung to life elsewhere. They, like their
+predecessors, are essentially trying to cast aside the literary
+'survivals' of effete conditions, and succeed so far as they could find
+adequate expression for the great ideas of their time.</p>
+
+<hr class="smler" />
+
+<p class="center">Printed by T. and A. <span class="smcap">Constable</span>, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh
+University Press</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of English Literature and Society in the
+Eighteenth Century, by Leslie  Stephen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century
+
+Author: Leslie  Stephen
+
+Release Date: April 17, 2007 [EBook #21123]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LITERATURE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Juliet Sutherland, Martin
+Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY
+IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+FORD LECTURES, 1903
+
+_By_ LESLIE STEPHEN
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+
+_DUCKWORTH and CO._
+
+3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
+
+1904
+
+
+
+
+TO HERBERT FISHER
+
+NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD
+
+
+My Dear Herbert,--I had prepared these Lectures for delivery, when a
+serious breakdown of health made it utterly impossible for me to appear
+in person. The University was then good enough to allow me to employ a
+deputy; and you kindly undertook to read the Lectures for me. I have
+every reason to believe that they lost nothing by the change.
+
+I need only explain that, although they had to be read in six sections,
+and are here divided into five chapters, no other change worth noticing
+has been made. Other changes probably ought to have been made, but my
+health has been unequal to the task of serious correction. The
+publication has been delayed from the same cause.
+
+Meanwhile, I wish to express my gratitude for your services. I doubt,
+too, whether I should have ventured to republish them, had it not been
+for your assertion that they have some interest. I would adopt the good
+old form of dedicating them to you, were it not that I can find no
+precedent for a dedication by an uncle to a nephew--uncles having, I
+fancy, certain opinions as to the light in which they are generally
+regarded by nephews. I will not say what that is, nor mention another
+reason which has its weight. I will only say that, though this is not a
+dedication, it is meant to express a very warm sense of gratitude due to
+you upon many grounds.
+--Your affectionate
+                                           LESLIE STEPHEN.
+
+_November 1903_.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' NOTE
+
+
+Owing to the ill-health of Sir Leslie Stephen the proofs have been
+passed for press by Mr. H. Fisher, Fellow of New College, who read the
+Lectures at Oxford on behalf of the Author.
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH LITERATURE AND SOCIETY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+When I was honoured by the invitation to deliver this course of
+lectures, I did not accept without some hesitation. I am not qualified
+to speak with authority upon such subjects as have been treated by my
+predecessors--the course of political events or the growth of legal
+institutions. My attention has been chiefly paid to the history of
+literature, and it might be doubtful whether that study is properly
+included in the phrase 'historical.' Yet literature expresses men's
+thoughts and passions, which have, after all, a considerable influence
+upon their lives. The writer of a people's songs, as we are told, may
+even have a more powerful influence than the maker of their laws. He
+certainly reveals more directly the true springs of popular action. The
+truth has been admitted by many historians who are too much overwhelmed
+by state papers to find space for any extended application of the
+method. No one, I think, has shown more clearly how much light could be
+derived from this source than your Oxford historian J. R. Green, in some
+brilliant passages of his fascinating book. Moreover, if I may venture
+to speak of myself, my own interest in literature has always been
+closely connected with its philosophical and social significance.
+Literature may of course be studied simply for its own intrinsic merits.
+But it may also be regarded as one manifestation of what is called 'the
+spirit of the age.' I have, too, been much impressed by a further
+conclusion. No one doubts that the speculative movement affects the
+social and political--I think that less attention has been given to the
+reciprocal influence. The philosophy of a period is often treated as
+though it were the product of impartial and abstract
+investigation--something worked out by the great thinker in his study
+and developed by simple logical deductions from the positions
+established by his predecessors. To my mind, though I cannot now dwell
+upon the point, the philosophy of an age is in itself determined to a
+very great extent by the social position. It gives the solutions of the
+problems forced upon the reasoner by the practical conditions of his
+time. To understand why certain ideas become current, we have to
+consider not merely the ostensible logic but all the motives which led
+men to investigate the most pressing difficulties suggested by the
+social development. Obvious principles are always ready, like germs, to
+come to life when the congenial soil is provided. And what is true of
+the philosophy is equally, and perhaps more conspicuously, true of the
+artistic and literary embodiment of the dominant ideas which are
+correlated with the social movement.
+
+A recognition of the general principle is implied in the change which
+has come over the methods of criticism. It has more and more adopted the
+historical attitude. Critics in an earlier day conceived their function
+to be judicial. They were administering a fixed code of laws applicable
+in all times and places. The true canons for dramatic or epic poetry,
+they held, had been laid down once for all by Aristotle or his
+commentators; and the duty of the critic was to consider whether the
+author had infringed or conformed to the established rules, and to pass
+sentence accordingly. I will not say that the modern critic has
+abandoned altogether that conception of his duty. He seems to me not
+infrequently to place himself on the judgment-seat with a touch of his
+old confidence, and to sentence poor authors with sufficient airs of
+infallibility. Sometimes, indeed, the reflection that he is representing
+not an invariable tradition but the last new aesthetic doctrine, seems
+even to give additional keenness to his opinions and to suggest no
+doubts of his infallibility. And yet there is a change in his position.
+He admits, or at any rate is logically bound to admit, the code which he
+administers requires modification in different times and places. The old
+critic spoke like the organ of an infallible Church, regarding all forms
+of art except his own as simply heretical. The modern critic speaks like
+the liberal theologian, who sees in heretical and heathen creeds an
+approximation to the truth, and admits that they may have a relative
+value, and even be the best fitted for the existing conditions. There
+are, undoubtedly, some principles of universal application; and the old
+critics often expounded them with admirable common-sense and force. But
+like general tenets of morality, they are apt to be commonplaces, whose
+specific application requires knowledge of concrete facts. When the
+critics assumed that the forms familiar to themselves were the only
+possible embodiments of those principles, and condemned all others as
+barbarous, they were led to pass judgments, such, for example, as
+Voltaire's view of Dante and Shakespeare, which strike us as strangely
+crude and unappreciative. The change in this, as in other departments of
+thought, means again that criticism, as Professor Courthope has said,
+must become thoroughly inductive. We must start from experience. We must
+begin by asking impartially what pleased men, and then inquire why it
+pleased them. We must not decide dogmatically that it ought to have
+pleased or displeased on the simple ground that it is or is not
+congenial to ourselves. As historical methods extend, the same change
+takes place in regard to political or economical or religious, as well
+as in regard to literary investigations. We can then become catholic
+enough to appreciate varying forms; and recognise that each has its own
+rules, right under certain conditions and appropriate within the given
+sphere. The great empire of literature, we may say, has many provinces.
+There is a 'law of nature' deducible from universal principles of reason
+which is applicable throughout, and enforces what may be called the
+cardinal virtues common to all forms of human expression. But
+subordinate to this, there is also a municipal law, varying in every
+province and determining the particular systems which are applicable to
+the different state of things existing in each region.
+
+This method, again, when carried out, implies the necessary connection
+between the social and literary departments of history. The adequate
+criticism must be rooted in history. In some sense I am ready to admit
+that all criticism is a nuisance and a parasitic growth upon literature.
+The most fruitful reading is that in which we are submitting to a
+teacher and asking no questions as to the secret of his influence.
+Bunyan had no knowledge of the 'higher criticism'; he read into the
+Bible a great many dogmas which were not there, and accepted rather
+questionable historical data. But perhaps he felt some essential
+characteristics of the book more thoroughly than far more cultivated
+people. No critic can instil into a reader that spontaneous sympathy
+with the thoughts and emotions incarnated in the great masterpieces
+without which all reading is cold and valueless. In spite of all
+differences of dialect and costume, the great men can place themselves
+in spiritual contact with men of most distant races and periods. Art, we
+are told, is immortal. In other words, is unprogressive. The great
+imaginative creations have not been superseded. We go to the last new
+authorities for our science and our history, but the essential thoughts
+and emotions of human beings were incarnated long ago with unsurpassable
+clearness. When FitzGerald published his _Omar Khayyam_, readers were
+surprised to find that an ancient Persian had given utterance to
+thoughts which we considered to be characteristic of our own day. They
+had no call to be surprised. The writer of the Book of Job had long
+before given the most forcible expression to thought which still moves
+our deepest feelings; and Greek poets had created unsurpassable
+utterance for moods common to all men in all ages.
+
+
+     'Still green with bays each ancient altar stands
+     Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,'
+
+
+as Pope puts it; and when one remembers how through all the centuries
+the masters of thought and expression have appealed to men who knew
+nothing of criticism, higher or lower, one is tempted to doubt whether
+the critic be not an altogether superfluous phenomenon.
+
+The critic, however, has become a necessity; and has, I fancy, his
+justification in his own sphere. Every great writer may be regarded in
+various aspects. He is, of course, an individual, and the critic may
+endeavour to give a psychological analysis of him; and to describe his
+intellectual and moral constitution and detect the secrets of his
+permanent influence without reference to the particular time and place
+of his appearance. That is an interesting problem when the materials are
+accessible. But every man is also an organ of the society in which he
+has been brought up. The material upon which he works is the whole
+complex of conceptions, religious, imaginative and ethical, which forms
+his mental atmosphere. That suggests problems for the historian of
+philosophy. He is also dependent upon what in modern phrase we call his
+'environment'--the social structure of which he forms a part, and which
+gives a special direction to his passions and aspirations. That suggests
+problems for the historian of political and social institutions. Fully
+to appreciate any great writer, therefore, it is necessary to
+distinguish between the characteristics due to the individual with
+certain idiosyncrasies and the characteristics due to his special
+modification by the existing stage of social and intellectual
+development. In the earliest period the discrimination is impossible.
+Nobody, I suppose, not even if he be Provost of Oriel, can tell us much
+of the personal characteristics of the author--if there was an
+author--of the _Iliad_. He must remain for us a typical Greek of the
+heroic age; though even so, the attempt to realise the corresponding
+state of society may be of high value to an appreciation of the poetry.
+In later times we suffer from the opposite difficulty. Our descendants
+will be able to see the general characteristics of the Victorian age
+better than we, who unconsciously accept our own peculiarities, like the
+air we breathe, as mere matters of course. Meanwhile a Tennyson and a
+Browning strike us less as the organs of a society than by the
+idiosyncrasies which belong to them as individuals. But in the normal
+case, the relation of the two studies is obvious. Dante, for example, is
+profoundly interesting to the psychologist, considered simply as a human
+being. We are then interested by the astonishing imaginative intensity
+and intellectual power and the vivid personality of the man who still
+lives for us as he lived in the Italy of six centuries ago. But as all
+competent critics tell us, the _Divina Commedia_ also reveals in the
+completest way the essential spirit of the Middle Ages. The two studies
+reciprocally enlighten each other. We know Dante and understand his
+position the more thoroughly as we know better the history of the
+political and ecclesiastical struggles in which he took part, and the
+philosophical doctrines which he accepted and interpreted; and
+conversely, we understand the period the better when we see how its
+beliefs and passions affected a man of abnormal genius and marked
+idiosyncrasy of character. The historical revelation is the more
+complete, precisely because Dante was not a commonplace or average
+person but a man of unique force, mental and moral. The remark may
+suggest what is the special value of the literary criticism or its
+bearing upon history. We may learn from many sources what was the
+current mythology of the day; and how ordinary people believed in devils
+and in a material hell lying just beneath our feet. The vision probably
+strikes us as repulsive and simply preposterous. If we proceed to ask
+what it meant and why it had so powerful a hold upon the men of the
+day, we may perhaps be innocent enough to apply to the accepted
+philosophers, especially to Aquinas, whose thoughts had been so
+thoroughly assimilated by the poet. No doubt that may suggest very
+interesting inquiries for the metaphysician; but we should find not only
+that the philosophy is very tough and very obsolete, and therefore very
+wearisome for any but the strongest intellectual appetites, but also
+that it does not really answer our question. The philosopher does not
+give us the reasons which determine men to believe, but the official
+justification of their beliefs which has been elaborated by the most
+acute and laborious dialecticians. The inquiry shows how a philosophical
+system can be hooked on to an imaginative conception of the universe;
+but it does not give the cause of the belief, only the way in which it
+can be more or less favourably combined with abstract logical
+principles. The great poet unconsciously reveals something more than the
+metaphysician. His poetry does not decay with the philosophy which it
+took for granted. We do not ask whether his reasoning be sound or false,
+but whether the vision be sublime or repulsive. It may be a little of
+both; but at any rate it is undeniably fascinating. That, I take it, is
+because the imagery which he creates may still be a symbol of thoughts
+and emotions which are as interesting now as they were six hundred years
+ago. This man of first-rate power shows us, therefore, what was the real
+charm of the accepted beliefs for him, and less consciously for others.
+He had no doubt that their truth could be proved by syllogising: but
+they really laid so powerful a grasp upon him because they could be made
+to express the hopes and fears, the loves and hatreds, the moral and
+political convictions which were dearest to him. When we see how the
+system could be turned to account by the most powerful imagination, we
+can understand better what it really meant for the commonplace and
+ignorant monks who accepted it as a mere matter of course. We begin to
+see what were the great forces really at work below the surface; and the
+issues which were being blindly worked out by the dumb agents who were
+quite unable to recognise their nature. If, in short, we wish to
+discover the secret of the great ecclesiastical and political struggles
+of the day, we should turn, not to the men in whose minds beliefs lie
+inert and instinctive, nor to the ostensible dialectics of the
+ostensible apologists and assailants, but to the great poet who shows
+how they were associated with the strongest passions and the most
+vehement convictions.
+
+We may hold that the historian should confine himself to giving a record
+of the objective facts, which can be fully given in dates, statistics,
+and phenomena seen from outside. But if we allow ourselves to
+contemplate a philosophical history, which shall deal with the causes of
+events and aim at exhibiting the evolution of human society--and perhaps
+I ought to apologise for even suggesting that such an ideal could ever
+be realised--we should also see that the history of literature would be
+a subordinate element of the whole structure. The political, social,
+ecclesiastical, and economical factors, and their complex actions and
+reactions, would all have to be taken into account, the literary
+historian would be concerned with the ideas which find utterance through
+the poet and philosopher, and with the constitution of the class which
+at any time forms the literary organ of the society. The critic who
+deals with the individual work would find such knowledge necessary to a
+full appreciation of his subject; and, conversely, the appreciation
+would in some degree help the labourer in other departments of history
+to understand the nature of the forces which are governing the social
+development. However far we may be from such a consummation, and
+reluctant to indulge in the magniloquent language which it suggests, I
+imagine that a literary history is so far satisfactory as it takes the
+facts into consideration and regards literature, in the perhaps too
+pretentious phrase, as a particular function of the whole social
+organism. But I gladly descend from such lofty speculations to come to a
+few relevant details; and especially, to notice some of the obvious
+limitations which have in any case to be accepted.
+
+And in the first place, when we try to be philosophical, we have a
+difficulty which besets us in political history. How much influence is
+to be attributed to the individual? Carlyle used to tell us in my youth
+that everything was due to the hero; that the whole course of human
+history depended upon your Cromwell or Frederick. Our scientific
+teachers are inclined to reply that no single person had much
+importance, and that an ideal history could omit all names of
+individuals. If, for example, Napoleon had been killed at the siege of
+Toulon, the only difference would have been that the dictator would have
+been called say Moreau. Possibly, but I cannot see that we can argue in
+the same way in literature. I see no reason to suppose that if
+Shakespeare had died prematurely, anybody else would have written
+_Hamlet_. There was, it is true, a butcher's boy at Stratford, who was
+thought by his townsmen to have been as clever a fellow as Shakespeare.
+We shall never know what we have lost by his premature death, and we
+certainly cannot argue that if Shakespeare had died, the butcher would
+have lived. It makes one tremble, says an ingenious critic, to reflect
+that Shakespeare and Cervantes were both liable to the measles at the
+same time. As we know they escaped, we need not make ourselves unhappy
+about the might-have-been; but the remark suggests how much the literary
+glory of any period depends upon one or two great names. Omit Cervantes
+and Shakespeare and Moliere from Spanish, English, and French
+literature, and what a collapse of glory would follow! Had Shakespeare
+died, it is conceivable perhaps that some of the hyperboles which have
+been lavished upon him would have been bestowed on Marlowe and Ben
+Jonson. But, on the whole, I fancy that the minor lights of the
+Elizabethan drama have owed more to their contemporary than he owed to
+them; and that, if this central sun had been extinguished, the whole
+galaxy would have remained in comparative obscurity. Now, as we are
+utterly unable to say what are the conditions which produce a genius, or
+to point to any automatic machinery which could replace him in case of
+accident, we must agree that this is an element in the problem which is
+altogether beyond scientific investigation. The literary historian must
+be content with a humble position. Still, the Elizabethan stage would
+have existed had Shakespeare never written; and, moreover, its main
+outline would have been the same. If any man ever imitated and gave full
+utterance to the characteristic ideas of his contemporaries it was
+certainly Shakespeare; and nobody ever accepted more thoroughly the form
+of art which they worked out. So far, therefore, as the general
+conditions of the time led to the elaboration of this particular genus,
+we may study them independently and assign certain general causes. What
+Shakespeare did was to show more fully the way in which that form could
+be turned to account; and, without him, it would have been a far less
+interesting phenomenon. Even the greatest man has to live in his own
+century. The deepest thinker is not really--though we often use the
+phrase--in advance of his day so much as in the line along which advance
+takes place. The greatest poet does not write for a future generation in
+the sense of not writing for his own; it is only that in giving the
+fullest utterance to its thoughts and showing the deepest insight into
+their significance, he is therefore the most perfect type of its general
+mental attitude, and his work is an embodiment of the thoughts which are
+common to men of all generations.
+
+When the critic began to perceive that many forms of art might be
+equally legitimate under different conditions, his first proceeding was
+to classify them in different schools. English poets, for example, were
+arranged by Pope and Gray as followers of Chaucer, Spenser, Donne,
+Dryden, and so forth; and, in later days, we have such literary genera
+as are indicated by the names classic and romantic or realist and
+idealist, covering characteristic tendencies of the various historical
+groups. The fact that literary productions fall into schools is of
+course obvious, and suggests the problem as to the cause of their rise
+and decline. Bagehot treats the question in his _Physics and Politics_.
+Why, he asks, did there arise a special literary school in the reign of
+Queen Anne--'a marked variety of human expression, producing what was
+then written and peculiar to it'? Some eminent writer, he replies, gets
+a start by a style congenial to the minds around him. Steele, a rough,
+vigorous, forward man, struck out the periodical essay; Addison, a wise,
+meditative man, improved and carried it to perfection. An unconscious
+mimicry is always producing countless echoes of an original writer.
+That, I take it, is undeniably true. Nobody can doubt that all authors
+are in some degree echoes, and that a vast majority are never anything
+else. But it does not answer why a particular form should be fruitful of
+echoes or, in Bagehot's words, be 'more congenial to the minds around.'
+Why did the _Spectator_ suit one generation and the _Rambler_ its
+successors? Are we incapable of giving any answer? Are changes in
+literary fashions enveloped in the same inscrutable mystery as changes
+in ladies' dresses? It is, and no doubt always will be, impossible to
+say why at one period garments should spread over a hoop and at another
+cling to the limbs. Is it equally impossible to say why the fashion of
+Pope should have been succeeded by the fashion of Wordsworth and
+Coleridge? If we were prepared to admit the doctrine of which I have
+spoken--the supreme importance of the individual--that would of course
+be all that could be said. Shakespeare's successors are explained as
+imitators of Shakespeare, and Shakespeare is explained by his 'genius'
+or, in other words, is inexplicable. If, on the other hand,
+Shakespeare's originality, whatever it may have been, was shown by his
+power of interpreting the thoughts of his own age, then we can learn
+something from studying the social and intellectual position of his
+contemporaries. Though the individual remains inexplicable, the general
+characteristics of the school to which he belongs may be tolerably
+intelligible; and some explanation is in fact suggested by such
+epithets, for example, as romantic and classical. For, whatever
+precisely they mean,--and I confess to my mind the question of what they
+mean is often a very difficult one,--they imply some general tendency
+which cannot be attributed to individual influence. When we endeavour to
+approach this problem of the rise and fall of literary schools, we see
+that it is a case of a phenomenon which is very often noticed and which
+we are more ready to explain in proportion to the share of youthful
+audacity which we are fortunate enough to possess.
+
+In every form of artistic production, in painting and architecture, for
+example, schools arise; each of which seems to embody some kind of
+principle, and develops and afterwards decays, according to some
+mysterious law. It may resemble the animal species which is, somehow or
+other, developed and then stamped out in the struggle of existence by
+the growth of a form more appropriate to the new order. The epic poem,
+shall we say? is like the 'monstrous efts,' as Tennyson unkindly calls
+them, which were no doubt very estimable creatures in their day, but
+have somehow been unable to adapt themselves to recent geological
+epochs. Why men could build cathedrals in the Middle Ages, and why their
+power was lost instead of steadily developing like the art of
+engineering, is a problem which has occupied many writers, and of which
+I shall not attempt to offer a solution. That is the difference between
+artistic and scientific progress. A truth once discovered remains true
+and may form the nucleus of an independently interesting body of truths.
+But a special form of art flourishes only during a limited period, and
+when it decays and is succeeded by others, we cannot say that there is
+necessarily progress, only that for some reason or other the environment
+has become uncongenial. It is, of course, tempting to infer from the
+decay of an art that there must be a corresponding decay in the vitality
+and morality of the race. Ruskin, for example, always assumed in his
+most brilliant and incisive, but not very conclusive, arguments that men
+ceased to paint good pictures simply because they ceased to be good men.
+He did not proceed to prove that the moral decline really took place,
+and still less to show why it took place. But, without attacking these
+large problems, I shall be content to say that I do not see that any
+such sweeping conclusions can be made as to the kind of changes in
+literary forms with which we shall be concerned. That there is a close
+relation between the literature and the general social condition of a
+nation is my own contention. But the relation is hardly of this simple
+kind. Nations, it seems to me, have got on remarkably well, and made not
+only material but political and moral progress in the periods when they
+have written few books, and those bad ones; and, conversely, have
+produced some admirable literature while they were developing some very
+ugly tendencies. To say the truth, literature seems to me to be a kind
+of by-product. It occupies far too small a part in the whole activity of
+a nation, even of its intellectual activity, to serve as a complete
+indication of the many forces which are at work, or as an adequate moral
+barometer of the general moral state. The attempt to establish such a
+condition too closely, seems to me to lead to a good many very edifying
+but not the less fallacious conclusions.
+
+The succession of literary species implies that some are always passing
+into the stage of 'survivals': and the most obvious course is to
+endeavour to associate them with the general philosophical movement.
+That suggests one obvious explanation of many literary developments. The
+great thriving times of literature have occurred when new intellectual
+horizons seemed to be suddenly opening upon the human intelligence; as
+when Bacon was taking his Pisgah sight of the promised land of science,
+and Shakespeare and Spenser were making new conquests in the world of
+the poetic imagination. A great intellectual shock was stimulating the
+parallel, though independent, outbursts of activity. The remark may
+suggest one reason for the decline as well as for the rise of the new
+genus. If, on the one hand, the man of genius is especially sensitive to
+the new ideas which are stirring the world, it is also necessary that he
+should be in sympathy with his hearers--that he should talk the language
+which they understand, and adopt the traditions, conventions, and
+symbols with which they are already more or less familiar. A generally
+accepted tradition is as essential as the impulse which comes from the
+influx of new ideas. But the happy balance which enables the new wine to
+be put into the old bottles is precarious and transitory. The new ideas
+as they develop may become paralysing to the imagery which they began by
+utilising. The legends of chivalry which Spenser turned to account
+became ridiculous in the next generation, and the mythology of Milton's
+great poem was incredible or revolting to his successors. The machinery,
+in the old phrase, of a poet becomes obsolete, though when he used it,
+it had vitality enough to be a vehicle for his ideas. The imitative
+tendency described by Bagehot clearly tends to preserve the old, as much
+as to facilitate the adoption of a new form. In fact, to create a really
+original and new form seems to exceed the power of any individual, and
+the greatest men must desire to speak to their own contemporaries. It is
+only by degrees that the inadequacy of the traditional form makes itself
+felt, and its successor has to be worked out by a series of tentative
+experiments. When a new style has established itself its representatives
+hold that the orthodoxy of the previous period was a gross superstition:
+and those who were condemned as heretics were really prophets of the
+true faith, not yet revealed. However that may be, I am content at
+present to say that in fact the development of new literary types is
+discontinuous, and implies a compromise between the two conditions which
+in literature correspond to conservatism and radicalism. The
+conservative work is apt to become a mere survival: while the radical
+may include much that has the crudity of an imperfect application of new
+principles. Another point may be briefly indicated. The growth of new
+forms is obviously connected not only with the intellectual development
+but with the social and political state of the nation, and there comes
+into close connection with other departments of history. Authors, so far
+as I have noticed, generally write with a view to being read. Moreover,
+the reading class is at most times a very small part of the population.
+A philosopher, I take it, might think himself unusually popular if his
+name were known to a hundredth part of the population. But even poets
+and novelists might sometimes be surprised if they could realise the
+small impression they make upon the mass of the population. There is,
+you know, a story of how Thackeray, when at the height of his reputation
+he stood for Oxford, found that his name was unknown even to highly
+respectable constituents. The author of _Vanity Fair_ they observed, was
+named John Bunyan. At the present day the number of readers has, I
+presume, enormously increased; but authors who can reach the lower
+strata of the great lower pyramid, which widens so rapidly at its base,
+are few indeed. The characteristics of a literature correspond to the
+national characteristics, as embodied in the characteristics of a very
+small minority of the nation. Two centuries ago the reading part of the
+nation was mainly confined to London and to certain classes of society.
+The most important changes which have taken place have been closely
+connected with the social changes which have entirely altered the limits
+of the reading class; and with the changes of belief which have been
+cause and effect of the most conspicuous political changes. That is too
+obvious to require any further exposition. Briefly, in talking of
+literary changes, considered as implied in the whole social development,
+I shall have, first, to take note of the main intellectual
+characteristics of the period; and secondly, what changes took place in
+the audience to which men of letters addressed themselves, and how the
+gradual extension of the reading class affected the development of the
+literature addressed to them.
+
+I hope and believe that I have said nothing original. I have certainly
+only been attempting to express the views which are accepted, in their
+general outline at least, by historians, whether of the political or
+literary kind. They have often been applied very forcibly to the various
+literary developments, and, by way of preface to my own special topic, I
+will venture to recall one chapter of literary history which may serve
+to illustrate what I have already said, and which has a bearing upon
+what I shall have to say hereafter.
+
+One of the topics upon which the newer methods of criticism first
+displayed their power was the school of the Elizabethan dramatists. Many
+of the earlier critics wrote like lovers or enthusiasts who exalted the
+merits of some of the old playwrights beyond our sober judgments, and
+were inclined to ignore the merits of other forms of the art. But we
+have come to recognise that the Elizabethans had their faults, and that
+the best apology for their weaknesses as well as the best explanation of
+their merits was to be found in a clearer appreciation of the whole
+conditions. It is impossible of course to overlook the connection
+between that great outburst of literary activity and the general
+movement of the time; of the period when many impulses were breaking up
+the old intellectual stagnation, and when the national spirit which took
+the great Queen for its representative was finding leaders in the
+Burleighs and Raleighs and Drakes. The connection is emphasised by the
+singular brevity of the literary efflorescence. Marlowe's _Tamburlaine_
+heralded its approach on the eve of the Spanish Armada: Shakespeare, to
+whom the lead speedily fell, had shown his highest power in _Henry IV._
+and _Hamlet_ before the accession of James I.: his great tragedies
+_Othello_, _Macbeth_ and _Lear_ were produced in the next two or three
+years; and by that time, Ben Jonson had done his best work. When
+Shakespeare retired in 1611, Chapman and Webster, two of the most
+brilliant of his rivals, had also done their best; and Fletcher
+inherited the dramatic throne. On his death in 1625, Massinger and Ford
+and other minor luminaries were still at work; but the great period had
+passed. It had begun with the repulse of the Armada and culminated some
+fifteen years later. If in some minor respects there may afterwards have
+been an advance, the spontaneous vigour had declined and deliberate
+attempts to be striking had taken the place of the old audacity. There
+can be no more remarkable instance of a curious phenomenon, of a
+volcanic outburst of literary energy which begins and reaches its
+highest intensity while a man is passing from youth to middle age, and
+then begins to decay and exhaust itself within a generation.
+
+A popular view used to throw the responsibility upon the wicked Puritans
+who used their power to close the theatres. We entered the
+'prison-house' of Puritanism says Matthew Arnold, I think, and stayed
+there for a couple of centuries. If so, the gaolers must have had some
+difficulty, for the Puritan (in the narrower sense, of course) has
+always been in a small and unpopular minority. But it is also plain
+that the decay had begun when the Puritan was the victim instead of the
+inflictor of persecution. When we note the synchronism between the
+political and the literary movement our conception of the true nature of
+the change has to be modified. The accession of James marks the time at
+which the struggle between the court and the popular party was beginning
+to develop itself: when the monarchy and its adherents cease to
+represent the strongest current of national feeling, and the bulk of the
+most vigorous and progressive classes have become alienated and are
+developing the conditions and passions which produced the civil war. The
+genuine Puritans are still an exception; they only form the left wing,
+the most thorough-going opponents of the court-policy; and their triumph
+afterwards is only due to the causes which in a revolution give the
+advantage to the uncompromising partisans, though their special creed is
+always regarded with aversion by a majority. But for the time, they are
+the van of the party which, for whatever reason, is gathering strength
+and embodying the main political and ecclesiastical impulses of the
+time. The stage, again, had been from the first essentially
+aristocratic: it depended upon the court and the nobility and their
+adherents, and was hostile both to the Puritans and to the whole class
+in which the Puritan found a congenial element. So long, as in
+Elizabeth's time, as the class which supported the stage also
+represented the strongest aspirations of the period, and a marked
+national sentiment, the drama could embody a marked national sentiment.
+When the unity was broken up and the court is opposed to the strongest
+current of political sentiment, the players still adhere to their
+patron. The drama comes to represent a tone of thought, a social
+stratum, which, instead of leading, is getting more and more opposed to
+the great bulk of the most vigorous elements of the society. The stage
+is ceasing to be a truly national organ, and begins to suit itself to
+the tastes of the unprincipled and servile courtiers, who, if they are
+not more immoral than their predecessors, are without the old heroic
+touch which ennobled even the audacious and unscrupulous adventurers of
+the Armada period. That is to say, the change is beginning which became
+palpable in the Restoration time, when the stage became simply the
+melancholy dependent upon the court of Charles II., and faithfully
+reflected the peculiar morality of the small circle over which it
+presided. Without taking into account this process by which the organ of
+the nation gradually became transformed into the organ of the class
+which was entirely alienated from the general body of the nation, it is,
+I think, impossible to understand clearly the transformation of the
+drama. It illustrates the necessity of accounting for the literary
+movement, not only by intellectual and general causes, but by noting how
+special social developments radically alter the relation of any
+particular literary genus to the general national movement. I shall soon
+have to refer to the case again.
+
+I have now only to say briefly what I propose to attempt in these
+lectures. The literary history, as I conceive it, is an account of one
+strand, so to speak, in a very complex tissue: it is connected with the
+intellectual and social development; it represents movements of thought
+which may sometimes check and be sometimes propitious to the existing
+forms of art; it is the utterance of a class which may represent, or
+fail to represent, the main national movement; it is affected more or
+less directly by all manner of religious, political, social, and
+economical changes; and it is dependent upon the occurrence of
+individual genius for which we cannot even profess to account. I propose
+to take the history of English literature in the eighteenth century. I
+do not aim at originality: I take for granted the ordinary critical
+judgments upon the great writers of whom so much has been said by judges
+certainly more competent than myself, and shall recall the same facts
+both of ordinary history and of the history of thought. What I hope is,
+that by bringing familiar facts together I may be able to bring out the
+nature of the connection between them; and, little as I can say that
+will be at all new, to illustrate one point of view, which, as I
+believe, it is desirable that literary histories should take into
+account more distinctly than they have generally done.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The first period of which I am to speak represents to the political
+historian the Avatar of Whiggism. The glorious revolution has decided
+the long struggle of the previous century; the main outlines of the
+British Constitution are irrevocably determined; the political system is
+in harmony with the great political forces, and the nation has settled,
+as Carlyle is fond of saying, with the centre of gravity lowest, and
+therefore in a position of stable equilibrium. For another century no
+organic change was attempted or desired. Parliament has become
+definitely the great driving-wheel of the political machinery; not, as a
+century before, an intrusive body acting spasmodically and hampering
+instead of regulating the executive power of the Crown. The last Stuart
+kings had still fancied that it might be reduced to impotence, and the
+illusion had been fostered by the loyalty which meant at least a fair
+unequivocal desire to hold to the old monarchical traditions. But, in
+fact, parliamentary control had been silently developing; the House of
+Commons had been getting the power of the purse more distinctly into its
+hands, and had taken very good care not to trust the Crown with the
+power of the sword. Charles II. had been forced to depend on the help of
+the great French monarchy to maintain his authority at home; and when
+his successor turned out to be an anachronism, and found that the
+loyalty of the nation would not bear the strain of a policy hostile to
+the strongest national impulses, he was thrown off as an intolerable
+incubus. The system which had been growing up beneath the surface was
+now definitely put into shape and its fundamental principles embodied in
+legislation. The one thing still needed was to work out the system of
+party government, which meant that parliament should become an organised
+body with a corporate body, which the ministers of the Crown had first
+to consult and then to obey. The essential parts of the system had, in
+fact, been established by the end of Queen Anne's reign; though the
+change which had taken place in the system was not fully recognised
+because marked by the retention of the old forms. This, broadly
+speaking, meant the supremacy of the class which really controlled
+Parliament: of the aristocratic class, led by the peers but including
+the body of squires and landed gentlemen, and including also a growing
+infusion of 'moneyed' men, who represented the rising commercial and
+manufacturing interests. The division between Whig and Tory corresponded
+mainly to the division between the men who inclined mainly to the Church
+and squirearchy and those who inclined towards the mercantile and the
+dissenting interests. If the Tory professed zeal for the monarchy, he
+did not mean a monarchy as opposed to Parliament and therefore to his
+own dearest privileges. Even the Jacobite movement was in great part
+personal, or meant dislike to Hanover with no preference for arbitrary
+power, while the actual monarchy was so far controlled by Parliament
+that the Whig had no desire to limit it further. It was a useful
+instrument, not an encumbrance.
+
+We have to ask how these conditions affect the literary position. One
+point is clear. The relation between the political and the literary
+class was at this time closer than it had ever been. The alliance
+between them marks, in fact, a most conspicuous characteristic of the
+time. It was the one period, as authors repeat with a fond regret, in
+which literary merit was recognised by the distributors of state
+patronage. This gratifying phenomenon has, I think, been often a little
+misinterpreted, and I must consider briefly what it really meant. And
+first let us note how exclusively the literary society of the time was
+confined to London. The great town--it would be even now a great
+town--had half a million inhabitants. Macaulay, in his admirably graphic
+description of the England of the preceding period, points out what a
+chasm divided it from country districts; what miserable roads had to be
+traversed by the nobleman's chariot and four, or by the ponderous
+waggons or strings of pack-horses which supplied the wants of trade and
+of the humbler traveller; and how the squire only emerged at intervals
+to be jeered and jostled as an uncouth rustic in the streets of London.
+He was not a great buyer of books. There were, of course, libraries at
+Oxford and Cambridge, and here and there in the house of a rich prelate
+or of one of the great noblemen who were beginning to form some of the
+famous collections; but the squire was more than usually cultivated if
+Baker's _Chronicle_ and Gwillim's _Heraldry_ lay on the window-seat of
+his parlour, and one has often to wonder how the learned divines of the
+period managed to get the books from which they quote so freely in their
+discourses. Anyhow the author of the day must have felt that the
+circulation of his books must be mainly confined to London, and
+certainly in London alone could he meet with anything that could pass
+for literary society or an appreciative audience. We have superabundant
+descriptions of the audience and its meeting-places. One of the familiar
+features of the day, we know, was the number of coffee-houses. In 1657,
+we are told, the first coffee-house had been prosecuted as a nuisance.
+In 1708 there were three thousand coffee-houses; and each coffee-house
+had its habitual circle. There were coffee-houses frequented by
+merchants and stock-jobbers carrying on the game which suggested the new
+nickname bulls and bears: and coffee-houses where the talk was Whig and
+Tory, of the last election and change of ministry: and literary resorts
+such as the Grecian, where, as we are told, a fatal duel was provoked by
+a dispute over a Greek accent, in which, let us hope, it was the worst
+scholar who was killed; and Wills', where Pope as a boy went to look
+reverently at Dryden; and Buttons', where, at a later period, Addison
+met his little senate. Addison, according to Pope, spent five or six
+hours a day lounging at Buttons'; while Pope found the practice and the
+consequent consumption of wine too much for his health. Thackeray
+notices how the club and coffee-house 'boozing shortened the lives and
+enlarged the waistcoats of the men of those days.' The coffee-house
+implied the club, while the club meant simply an association for
+periodical gatherings. It was only by degrees that the body made a
+permanent lodgment in the house and became first the tenants of the
+landlord and then themselves the proprietors. The most famous show the
+approximation between the statesmen and the men of letters. There was
+the great Kit-cat Club, of which Tonson the bookseller was secretary; to
+which belonged noble dukes and all the Whig aristocracy, besides
+Congreve, Vanbrugh, Addison, Garth, and Steele. It not only brought
+Whigs together but showed its taste by giving a prize for good comedies.
+Swift, when he came into favour, helped to form the Brothers' Club,
+which was especially intended to direct patronage towards promising
+writers of the Tory persuasion. The institution, in modern slang,
+differentiated as time went on. The more aristocratic clubs became
+exclusive societies, occupying their own houses, more devoted to
+gambling than to literature; while the older type, represented by
+Jonson's famous club, were composed of literary and professional
+classes.
+
+The characteristic fraternisation of the politicians and the authors
+facilitated by this system leads to the critical point. When we speak of
+the nobility patronising literature, a reserve must be made. A list of
+some twenty or thirty names has been made out, including all the chief
+authors of the time, who received appointments of various kinds. But I
+can only find two, Congreve and Rowe, upon whom offices were bestowed
+simply as rewards for literary distinction; and both of them were sound
+Whigs, rewarded by their party, though not for party services. The
+typical patron of the day was Charles Montagu, Lord Halifax. As member
+of a noble family he came into Parliament, where he distinguished
+himself by his financial achievements in founding the Bank of England
+and reforming the currency, and became a peer and a member of the great
+Whig junto. At college he had been a chum of Prior, who joined him in a
+literary squib directed against Dryden, and, as he rose, he employed
+his friend in diplomacy. But the poetry by which Prior is known to us
+was of a later growth, and was clearly not the cause but the consequence
+of his preferment. At a later time, Halifax sent Addison abroad with the
+intention of employing him in a similar way; and it is plain that
+Addison was not--as the familiar but obviously distorted anecdote tells
+us--preferred on account of his brilliant Gazette in rhyme, but really
+in fulfilment of his patron's virtual pledge. Halifax has also the
+credit of bestowing office upon Newton and patronising Congreve. As poet
+and patron Halifax was carrying on a tradition. The aristocracy in
+Charles's days had been under the impression that poetry, or at least
+verse writing, was becoming an accomplishment for a nobleman. Pope's
+'mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,' Rochester and Buckingham, Dorset
+and Sedley, and the like, managed some very clever, if not very exalted,
+performances and were courted by the men of letters represented by
+Butler, Dryden, and Otway. As, indeed, the patrons were themselves
+hangers-on of a thoroughly corrupt court, seeking to rise by court
+intrigues, their patronage was apt to be degrading and involved the
+mean flattery of personal dependence. The change at the Revolution meant
+that the court no longer overshadowed society. The court, that is, was
+beginning to be superseded by the town. The new race of statesmen were
+coming to depend upon parliamentary influence instead of court favour.
+They were comparatively, therefore, shining by their own light. They
+were able to dispose of public appointments; places on the various
+commissions which had been founded as parliament took control of the
+financial system--such as commissions for the wine-duties, for licensing
+hackney coaches, excise duties, and so forth--besides some of the other
+places which had formerly been the perquisites of the courtier. They
+could reward personal dependants at the cost of the public; which was
+convenient for both parties. Promising university students, like Prior
+and Addison, might be brought out under the wing of the statesman, and
+no doubt literary merit, especially in conjunction with the right
+politics, might recommend them to such men as Halifax or Somers. The
+political power of the press was meanwhile rapidly developing. Harley,
+Lord Oxford, was one of the first to appreciate its importance. He
+employed Defoe and other humble writers who belonged to Grub
+Street--that is, to professional journalism in its infancy--as well as
+Swift, whose pamphlets struck the heaviest blow at the Whigs in the last
+years of that period. Swift's first writings, we may notice, were not a
+help but the main hindrance to his preferment. The patronage of
+literature was thus in great part political in its character. It
+represents the first scheme by which the new class of parliamentary
+statesmen recruited their party from the rising talent, or rewarded men
+for active or effective service. The speedy decay of the system followed
+for obvious reasons. As party government became organised, the patronage
+was used in a different spirit. Offices had to be given to gratify
+members of parliament and their constituents, not to scholars who could
+write odes on victories or epistles to secretaries of state. It was the
+machinery for controlling votes. Meanwhile we need only notice that the
+patronage of authors did not mean the patronage of learned divines or
+historians, but merely the patronage of men who could use their pens in
+political warfare, or at most of men who produced the kind of literary
+work appreciated in good society.
+
+The 'town' was the environment of the wits who produced the literature
+generally called after Queen Anne. We may call it the literary organ of
+the society. It was the society of London, or of the region served by
+the new penny-post, which included such remote villages as Paddington
+and Brompton. The city was large enough, as Addison observes, to include
+numerous 'nations,' each of them meeting at the various coffee-houses.
+The clubs at which the politicians and authors met each other
+represented the critical tribunals, when no such things as literary
+journals existed. It was at these that judgment was passed upon the last
+new poem or pamphlet, and the writer sought for their good opinion as he
+now desires a favourable review. The tribunal included the rewarders as
+well as the judges of merit; and there was plenty of temptation to
+stimulate their generosity by flattery. Still the relation means a great
+improvement on the preceding state of things. The aristocrat was no
+doubt conscious of his inherent dignity, but he was ready on occasion to
+hail Swift as 'Jonathan' and, in the case of so highly cultivated a
+specimen as Addison, to accept an author's marriage to a countess. The
+patrons did not exact the personal subservience of the preceding
+period; and there was a real recognition by the more powerful class of
+literary merit of a certain order. Such a method, however, had obvious
+defects. Men of the world have their characteristic weaknesses; and one,
+to go no further, is significant. The Club in England corresponded more
+or less to the Salon which at different times had had so great an
+influence upon French literature. It differed in the marked absence of
+feminine elements. The clubs meant essentially a society of bachelors,
+and the conversation, one infers, was not especially suited for ladies.
+The Englishman, gentle or simple, enjoyed himself over his pipe and his
+bottle and dismissed his womenkind to their bed. The one author of the
+time who speaks of the influence of women with really chivalrous
+appreciation is the generous Steele, with his famous phrase about Lady
+Elizabeth Hastings and a liberal education. The Clubs did not foster the
+affectation of Moliere's _Precieuses_; but the general tone had a
+coarseness and occasional brutality which shows too clearly that they
+did not enter into the full meaning of Steele's most admirable saying.
+
+To appreciate the spirit of this society we must take into account the
+political situation and the intellectual implication. The parliamentary
+statesman, no longer dependent upon court favour, had a more independent
+spirit and personal self-respect. He was fully aware of the fact that he
+represented a distinct step in political progress. His class had won a
+great struggle against arbitrary power and bigotry. England had become
+the land of free speech, of religious toleration, impartial justice, and
+constitutional order. It had shown its power by taking its place among
+the leading European states. The great monarchy before which the English
+court had trembled, and from which even patriots had taken bribes in the
+Restoration period, was met face to face in a long and doubtful struggle
+and thoroughly humbled in a war, in which an English General, in command
+of an English contingent, had won victories unprecedented in our history
+since the Middle Ages. Patriotic pride received a stimulus such as that
+which followed the defeat of the Armada and preceded the outburst of the
+Elizabethan literature. Those successes, too, had been won in the name
+of 'liberty'--a vague if magical word which I shall not seek to define
+at present. England, so sound Whigs at least sincerely believed, had
+become great because it had adopted and carried out the true Whig
+principles. The most intelligent Frenchmen of the coming generation
+admitted the claim; they looked upon England as the land both of liberty
+and philosophy, and tried to adopt for themselves the creed which had
+led to such triumphant results. One great name may tell us sufficiently
+what the principles were in the eyes of the cultivated classes, who
+regarded themselves and their own opinions with that complacency in
+which we are happily never deficient. Locke had laid down the
+fundamental outlines of the creed, philosophical, religious, and
+political, which was to dominate English thought for the next century.
+Locke was one of the most honourable, candid, and amiable of men, if
+metaphysicians have sometimes wondered at the success of his teaching.
+He had not the logical thoroughness and consistency which marks a
+Descartes or Spinoza, nor the singular subtlety which distinguishes
+Berkeley and Hume; nor the eloquence and imaginative power which gave to
+Bacon an authority greater than was due to his scientific requirements.
+He was a thoroughly modest, prosaic, tentative, and sometimes clumsy
+writer, who raises great questions without solving them or fully seeing
+the consequences of his own position. Leaving any explanation of his
+power to metaphysicians, I need only note the most conspicuous
+condition. Locke ruled the thought of his own and the coming period
+because he interpreted so completely the fundamental beliefs which had
+been worked out at his time. He ruled, that is, by obeying. Locke
+represents the very essence of the common sense of the intelligent
+classes. I do not ask whether his simplicity covered really profound
+thought or embodied superficial crudities; but it was most admirably
+adapted to the society of which I have been speaking. The excellent
+Addison, for example, who was no metaphysician, can adopt Locke when he
+wishes to give a philosophical air to his amiable lectures upon arts and
+morals. Locke's philosophy, that is, blends spontaneously with the
+ordinary language of all educated men. To the historian of philosophy
+the period is marked by the final disappearance of scholasticism. The
+scholastic philosophy had of course been challenged generations before.
+Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, however, in the preceding century had
+still treated it as the great incubus upon intellectual progress, and it
+was not yet exorcised from the universities. It had, however, passed
+from the sphere of living thought. This implies a series of correlative
+changes in the social and intellectual which are equally conspicuous in
+the literary order, and which I must note without attempting to inquire
+which are the ultimate or most fundamental causes of reciprocally
+related developments. The changed position of the Anglican church is
+sufficiently significant. In the time of Laud, the bishops in alliance
+with the Crown endeavoured to enforce the jurisdiction of the
+ecclesiastical courts upon the nation at large, and to suppress all
+nonconformity by law. Every subject of the king is also amenable to
+church discipline. By the Revolution any attempt to enforce such
+discipline had become hopeless. The existence of nonconformist churches
+has to be recognised as a fact, though perhaps an unpleasant fact. The
+Dissenters can be worried by disqualifications of various kinds; but the
+claim to toleration, of Protestant sects at least, is admitted; and the
+persecution is political rather than ecclesiastical. They are not
+regarded as heretics, but as representing an interest which is opposed
+to the dominant class of the landed gentry. The Church as such has lost
+the power of discipline and is gradually falling under the power of the
+dominant aristocratic class. When Convocation tries to make itself
+troublesome, in a few years, it will be silenced and drop into
+impotence. Church-feeling indeed, is still strong, but the clergy have
+become thoroughly subservient, and during the century will be mere
+appendages to the nobility and squirearchy. The intellectual change is
+parallel. The great divines of the seventeenth century speak as members
+of a learned corporation condescending to instruct the laity. The
+hearers are supposed to listen to the voice (as Donne puts it) as from
+'angels in the clouds.' They are experts, steeped in a special science,
+above the comprehension of the vulgar. They have been trained in the
+schools of theology and have been thoroughly drilled in the art of
+'syllogising.' They are walking libraries with the ancient fathers at
+their finger-ends; they have studied Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and have
+shown their technical knowledge in controversies with the great Jesuits,
+Suarez and Bellarmine. They speak frankly, if not ostentatiously, as men
+of learning, and their sermons are overweighted with quotations, showing
+familiarity with the classics, and with the whole range of theological
+literature. Obviously the hearers are to be passive recipients not
+judges of the doctrine. But by the end of the century Tillotson has
+become the typical divine, whose authority was to be as marked in
+theology as that of Locke in philosophy. Tillotson has entirely
+abandoned any ostentatious show of learning. He addresses his hearers in
+language on a level with their capabilities, and assumes that they are
+not 'passive buckets to be pumped into' but reasonable men who have a
+right to be critics as well as disciples. It is taken for granted that
+the appeal must be to reason, and to the reason which has not gone
+through any special professional training. The audience, that is, to
+which the divine must address himself is one composed of the average
+laity who are quite competent to judge for themselves. That is the
+change that is meant when we are told that this was the period of the
+development of English prose. Dryden, one of its great masters,
+professed to have learned his style from Tillotson. The writer, that is,
+has to suit himself to the new audience which has grown up. He has to
+throw aside all the panoply of scholastic logic, the vast apparatus of
+professional learning, and the complex Latinised constructions, which,
+however admirable some of the effects produced, shows that the writer is
+thinking of well-read scholars, not of the ordinary man of the world.
+He has learned from Bacon and Descartes, perhaps, that his supposed
+science was useless lumber; and he has to speak to men who not only want
+plain language but are quite convinced that the pretensions of the old
+authority have been thoroughly exploded.
+
+Politically, the change means toleration, for it is assumed that the
+vulgar can judge for themselves; intellectually, it means rationalism,
+that is, an appeal to the reason common to all men; and, in literature
+it means the hatred of pedantry and the acceptance of such literary
+forms as are thoroughly congenial and intelligible to the common sense
+of the new audience. The hatred of the pedantic is the characteristic
+sentiment of the time. When Berkeley looked forward to a new world in
+America, he described it as the Utopia
+
+
+     'Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
+     The pedantry of Courts and Schools.'
+
+
+When he announced a metaphysical discovery he showed his understanding
+of the principle by making his exposition--strange as the proceeding
+appears to us--as short and as clear as the most admirable literary
+skill could contrive. That eccentric ambition dominates the writings of
+the times. In a purely literary direction it is illustrated by the
+famous but curiously rambling and equivocal controversy about the
+Ancients and Moderns begun in France by Perrault and Boileau. In England
+the most familiar outcome was Swift's _Battle of the Books_, in which he
+struck out the famous phrase about sweetness and light, 'the two noblest
+of things'; which he illustrated by ridiculing Bentley's criticism and
+Dryden's poetry. I may take for granted the motives which induced that
+generation to accept as their models the great classical masterpieces,
+the study of which had played so important a part in the revival of
+letters and the new philosophy. I may perhaps note, in passing, that we
+do not always remember what classical literature meant to that
+generation. In the first place, the education of a gentleman meant
+nothing then except a certain drill in Greek and Latin--whereas now it
+includes a little dabbling in other branches of knowledge. In the next
+place, if a man had an appetite for literature, what else was he to
+read? Imagine every novel, poem, and essay written during the last two
+centuries to be obliterated and further, the literature of the early
+seventeenth century and all that went before to be regarded as pedantic
+and obsolete, the field of study would be so limited that a man would be
+forced in spite of himself to read his _Homer_ and _Virgil_. The vice of
+pedantry was not very accurately defined--sometimes it is the ancient,
+sometimes the modern, who appears to be pedantic. Still, as in the
+_Battle of the Books_ controversy, the general opinion seems to be that
+the critic should have before him the great classical models, and regard
+the English literature of the seventeenth century as a collection of all
+possible errors of taste. When, at the end of this period, Swift with
+Pope formed the project of the Scriblerus Club, its aim was to be a
+joint-stock satire against all 'false tastes' in learning, art, and
+science. That was the characteristic conception of the most brilliant
+men of letters of the time.
+
+Here, then, we have the general indication of the composition of the
+literary organ. It is made up of men of the world--'Wits' is their
+favourite self-designation, scholars and gentlemen, with rather more of
+the gentlemen than the scholars--living in the capital, which forms a
+kind of island of illumination amid the surrounding darkness of the
+agricultural country--including men of rank and others of sufficient
+social standing to receive them on friendly terms--meeting at
+coffee-houses and in a kind of tacit confederation of clubs to compare
+notes and form the whole public opinion of the day. They are conscious
+that in them is concentrated the enlightenment of the period. The class
+to which they belong is socially and politically dominant--the advance
+guard of national progress. It has finally cast off the incubus of a
+retrograde political system; it has placed the nation in a position of
+unprecedented importance in Europe; and it is setting an example of
+ordered liberty to the whole civilised world. It has forced the Church
+and the priesthood to abandon the old claim to spiritual supremacy. It
+has, in the intellectual sphere, crushed the old authority which
+embodied superstition, antiquated prejudice, and a sham system of
+professional knowledge, which was upheld by a close corporation. It
+believes in reason--meaning the principles which are evident to the
+ordinary common sense of men at its own level. It believes in what it
+calls the Religion of Nature--the plain demonstrable truths obvious to
+every intelligent person. With Locke for its spokesman, and Newton as a
+living proof of its scientific capacity, it holds that England is the
+favoured nation marked out as the land of liberty, philosophy, common
+sense, toleration, and intellectual excellence. And with certain
+reserves, it will be taken at its own valuation by foreigners who are
+still in darkness and deplorably given to slavery, to say nothing of
+wooden shoes and the consumption of frogs. Let us now consider the
+literary result.
+
+I may begin by recalling a famous controversy which seems to illustrate
+very significantly some of the characteristic tendencies of the day. The
+stage, when really flourishing, might be expected to show most
+conspicuously the relations between authors and the society. The
+dramatist may be writing for all time; but if he is to fill a theatre,
+he must clearly adapt himself to the tastes of the living and the
+present. During the first half of the period of which I am now speaking,
+Dryden was still the dictator of the literary world; and Dryden had
+adopted Congreve as his heir, and abandoned to him the province of the
+drama--Congreve, though he ceased to write, was recognised during his
+life as the great man of letters to whom Addison, Swift, and Pope agreed
+in paying respect, and indisputably the leading writer of English
+Comedy. When the comic drama was unsparingly denounced by Collier,
+Congreve defended himself and his friends. In the judgment of
+contemporaries the pedantic parson won a complete triumph over the most
+brilliant of wits. Although Congreve's early abandonment of his career
+was not caused by Collier's attack alone, it was probably due in part to
+the general sentiment to which Collier gave utterance. I will ask what
+is implied as a matter of fact in regard to the social and literary
+characteristics of the time. The Shakespearian drama had behind it a
+general national impulse. With Fletcher, it began to represent a court
+already out of harmony with the strongest currents of national feeling.
+Dryden, in a familiar passage, gives the reason of the change from his
+own point of view. Two plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, he says in an
+often quoted passage, were acted (about 1668) for one of Shakespeare or
+Jonson. His explanation is remarkable. It was because the later
+dramatists 'understood the conversation of gentlemen much better,' whose
+wild 'debaucheries and quickness of wit no poet can ever paint as they
+have done.' In a later essay he explains that the greater refinement
+was due to the influence of the court. Charles II., familiar with the
+most brilliant courts of Europe, had roused us from barbarism and
+rebellion, and taught us to 'mix our solidity' with 'the air and gaiety
+of our neighbours'! I need not cavil at the phrases 'refinement' and
+'gentleman.' If those words can be fairly applied to the courtiers whose
+'wild debaucheries' disgusted Evelyn and startled even the respectable
+Pepys, they may no doubt be applied to the stage and the dramatic
+persons. The rake, or 'wild gallant,' had made his first appearance in
+Fletcher, and had shown himself more nakedly after the Restoration. This
+is the so-called reaction so often set down to the account of the
+unlucky Puritans. The degradation, says Macaulay, was the 'effect of the
+prevalence of Puritanism under the Commonwealth.' The attempt to make a
+'nation of saints' inevitably produced a nation of scoffers. In what
+sense, in the first place, was there a 'reaction' at all? The Puritans
+had suppressed the stage when it was already far gone in decay because
+it no longer satisfied the great bulk of the nation. The reaction does
+not imply that the drama regained its old position. When the rule of the
+saints or pharisees was broken down, the stage did not become again a
+national organ. A very small minority of the people can ever have seen a
+performance. There were, we must remember, only two theatres under
+Charles II., and there was a difficulty in supporting even two. Both
+depended almost exclusively on the patronage of the court and the
+courtiers. From the theatre, therefore, we can only argue directly to
+the small circle of the rowdy debauchees who gathered round the new
+king. It certainly may be true, but it was not proved from their
+behaviour, that the national morality deteriorated, and in fact I think
+nothing is more difficult than to form any trustworthy estimate of the
+state of morality in a whole nation, confidently as such estimates are
+often put forward. What may be fairly inferred, is that a certain class,
+who had got from under the rule of the Puritan, was now free from legal
+restraint and took advantage of the odium excited by pharisaical
+strictness, to indulge in the greater license which suited the taste of
+their patrons. The result is sufficiently shown when we see so great a
+man as Dryden pander to the lowest tastes, and guilty of obscenities of
+which he was himself ashamed, which would be now inexcusable in the
+lowest public haunts. The comedy, as it appears to us, must have been
+written by blackguards for blackguards. When Congreve became Dryden's
+heir he inherited the established tradition. Under the new order the
+'town' had become supreme; and Congreve wrote to meet the taste of the
+class which was gaining in self-respect and independence. He tells us in
+the dedication of his best play, _The Way of the World_, that his taste
+had been refined in the company of the Earl of Montagu. The claim is no
+doubt justifiable. So Horace Walpole remarks that Vanbrugh wrote so well
+because he was familiar with the conversation of the best circles. The
+social influences were favourable to the undeniable literary merits, to
+the force and point in which Congreve's dialogue is still superior to
+that of any English rival, the vigour of Vanbrugh and the vivacity of
+their chief ally, Farquhar. Moreover, although their moral code is
+anything but strict, these writers did not descend to some of the depths
+often sounded by Dryden and Wycherly. The new spirit might seem to be
+passing on with more literary vitality into the old forms. And yet the
+consequence, or certainly the sequel to Collier's attack, was the decay
+of the stage in every sense, from which there was no recovery till the
+time of Goldsmith and Sheridan.
+
+This is the phenomenon which we have to consider;--let us listen for a
+moment to the 'distinguished critics' who have denounced or defended the
+comedy of the time. Macaulay gives as a test of the morality of the
+Restoration stage that on it, for the first time, marriage becomes the
+topic of ridicule. We are supposed to sympathise with the adulterer, not
+with the deceived husband--a fault, he says, which stains no play
+written before the Civil War. Addison had already suggested this test in
+the _Spectator_, and proceeds to lament that 'the multitudes are shut
+out from this noble "diversion" by the immorality of the lessons
+inculcated.' Lamb, indulging in ingenious paradox, admires Congreve for
+'excluding from his scenes (with one exception) any pretensions to
+goodness or good feeling whatever.' Congreve, he says, spreads a
+'privation of moral light' over his characters, and therefore we can
+admire them without compunction. We are in an artificial world where we
+can drop our moral prejudices for the time being. Hazlitt more daringly
+takes a different position and asserts that one of Wycherly's coarsest
+plays is 'worth ten sermons'--which perhaps does not imply with him any
+high estimate of moral efficacy. There is, however, this much of truth,
+I take it, in Hazlitt's contention. Lamb's theory of the non-morality of
+the dramatic world will not stand examination. The comedy was in one
+sense thoroughly 'realistic'; and I am inclined to say, that in that lay
+its chief merit. There is some value in any truthful representation,
+even of vice and brutality. There would certainly be no difficulty in
+finding flesh and blood originals for the rakes and the fine ladies in
+the memoirs of Grammont or the diaries of Pepys. The moral atmosphere is
+precisely that of the dissolute court of Charles II., and the 'privation
+of moral light' required is a delicate way of expressing its
+characteristic feeling. In the worst performances we have not got to any
+unreal region, but are breathing for the time the atmosphere of the
+lowest resorts, where reference to pure or generous sentiment would
+undoubtedly have been received with a guffaw, and coarse cynicism be
+regarded as the only form of comic insight. At any rate the audiences
+for which Congreve wrote had just so much of the old leaven that we can
+quite understand why they were regarded as wicked by a majority of the
+middle classes. The doctrine that all playgoing was wicked was naturally
+confirmed, and the dramatists retorted by ridiculing all that their
+enemies thought respectable. Congreve was, I fancy, a man of better
+morality than his characters, only forced to pander to the tastes of the
+rake who had composed the dominant element of his audience. He writes
+not for mere blackguards, but for the fine gentleman, who affects
+premature knowledge of the world, professes to be more cynical than he
+really is, and shows his acuteness by deriding hypocrisy and pharisaic
+humbug in every claim to virtue. He dwells upon the seamy side of life,
+and if critics, attracted by his undeniable brilliance, have found his
+heroines charming, to me it seems that they are the kind of young women
+whom, if I adopted his moral code, I should think most desirable
+wives--for my friends.
+
+Though realistic in one sense, we may grant to Lamb that such comedy
+becomes 'artificial,' and so far Lamb is right, because it supposes a
+state of things such as happily was abnormal except in a small circle.
+The plots have to be made up of impossible intrigues, and imply a
+distorted theory of life. Marriage after all is not really ridiculous,
+and to see it continuously from this point of view is to have a false
+picture of realities. Life is not made up of dodges worthy of
+cardsharpers--and the whole mechanism becomes silly and disgusting. If
+comedy is to represent a full and fair portrait of life, the dramatist
+ought surely, in spite of Lamb, to find some space for generous and
+refined feeling. There, indeed, is a difficulty. The easiest way to be
+witty is to be cynical. It is difficult, though desirable, to combine
+good feeling with the comic spirit. The humourist has to expose the
+contrasts of life, to unmask hypocrisy, and to show selfishness lurking
+under multitudinous disguises. That, on Hazlitt's showing, was the
+preaching of Wycherly. I can't think that it was the impression made
+upon Wycherly's readers. Such comedy may be taken as satire; which was
+the excuse that Fielding afterwards made for his own performances. But I
+cannot believe that the actual audiences went to see vice exposed, or
+used Lamb's ingenious device of disbelieving in the reality. They simply
+liked brutal and immoral sentiment, spiced, if possible, with art. We
+may inquire whether there may not be a comedy which is enjoyable by the
+refined and virtuous, and in which the intrusion of good feeling does
+not jar upon us as a discord. An answer may be suggested by pointing to
+Moliere, and has been admirably set forth in Mr. George Meredith's essay
+on the 'Comic Spirit.' There are, after all, ridiculous things in the
+world, even from the refined and virtuous point of view. The saint, it
+is true, is apt to lose his temper and become too serious for such a
+treatment of life-problems. Still the sane intellect which sees things
+as they are can find a sphere within which it is fair and possible to
+apply ridicule to affectation and even to vice, and without simply
+taking the seat of the scorner or substituting a coarse laugh for a
+delicate smile. A hearty laugh, let us hope, is possible even for a
+fairly good man. Mr. Meredith's essay indicates the conditions under
+which the artist may appeal to such a cultivated and refined humour. The
+higher comedy, he says, can only be the fruit of a polished society
+which can supply both the model and the audience. Where the art of
+social intercourse has been carried to a high pitch, where men have
+learned to be at once courteous and incisive, to admire urbanity, and
+therefore really good feeling, and to take a true estimate of the real
+values of life, a high comedy which can produce irony without
+coarseness, expose shams without advocating brutality, becomes for the
+first time possible. It must be admitted that the condition is also very
+rarely fulfilled.
+
+This, I take it, is the real difficulty. The desirable thing, one may
+say, would have been to introduce a more refined and human art and to
+get rid of the coarser elements. The excellent Steele tried the
+experiment. But he had still to work upon the old lines, which would not
+lend themselves to the new purpose. His passages of moral exhortation
+would not supply the salt of the old cynical brutalities; they had a
+painful tendency to become insipid and sentimental, if not maudlin; and
+only illustrated the difficulty of using a literary tradition which
+developed spontaneously for one purpose to adapt itself to a wholly
+different aim. He produced at best not a new genus but an awkward
+hybrid. But behind this was the greater difficulty that a superior
+literature would have required a social elaboration, the growth of a
+class which could appreciate and present appropriate types. Now even the
+good society for which Congreve wrote had its merits, but certainly its
+refinement left much to be desired. One condition, as Mr. Meredith again
+remarks, of the finer comedy is such an equality of the sexes as may
+admit the refining influence of women. The women of the Restoration time
+hardly exerted a refining influence. They adopted the ingenious
+compromise of going to the play, but going in masks. That is, they
+tacitly implied that the brutality was necessary, and they submitted to
+what they could not openly approve. Throughout the eighteenth century a
+contempt for women was still too characteristic of the aristocratic
+character. Nor was there any marked improvement in the tastes of the
+playgoing classes. The plays denounced by Collier continued to hold the
+stage, though more or less expurgated, throughout the century. Comedy
+did not become decent. In 1729 Arthur Bedford carried on Collier's
+assault in a 'Remonstrance against the horrid blasphemies and
+improprieties which are still used in the English playhouses,' and
+collected seven thousand immoral sentiments from the plays (chiefly) of
+the last four years. I have not verified his statements. The inference,
+however, seems to be clear. Collier's attack could not reform the
+stage. The evolution took the form of degeneration. He could, indeed,
+give utterance to the disapproval of the stage in general, which we call
+Puritanical, though it was by no means confined to Puritans or even to
+Protestants. Bossuet could denounce the stage as well as Collier.
+Collier was himself a Tory and a High Churchman, as was William Law, of
+the _Serious Call_, who also denounced the stage. The sentiment was, in
+fact, that of the respectable middle classes in general. The effect was
+to strengthen the prejudice which held that playgoing was immoral in
+itself, and that an actor deserved to be treated as a 'vagrant'--the
+class to which he legally belonged. During the next half-century, at
+least, that was the prevailing opinion among the solid middle-class
+section of society.
+
+The denunciations of Collier and his allies certainly effected a reform,
+but at a heavy price. They did not elevate the stage or create a better
+type, but encouraged old prejudices against the theatre generally; the
+theatre was left more and more to a section of the 'town,' and to the
+section which was not too particular about decency. When Congreve
+retired, and Vanbrugh took to architecture, and Farquhar died, no
+adequate successors appeared. The production of comedies was left to
+inferior writers, to Mrs. Centlivre, and Colley Cibber, and Fielding in
+his unripe days, and they were forced by the disfavour into which their
+art had fallen to become less forcible rather than to become more
+refined. When a preacher denounces the wicked, his sermons seem to be
+thrown away because the wicked don't come to church. Collier could not
+convert his antagonists; he could only make them more timid and careful
+to avoid giving palpable offence. But he could express the growing
+sentiment which made the drama an object of general suspicion and
+dislike, and induced the ablest writers to turn to other methods for
+winning the favour of a larger public.
+
+The natural result, in fact, was the development of a new kind of
+literature, which was the most characteristic innovation of the period.
+The literary class of which I have hitherto spoken reflected the
+opinions of the upper social stratum. Beneath it was the class generally
+known as Grub Street. Grub Street had arisen at the time of the great
+civil struggle. War naturally generates journalism; it had struggled on
+through the Restoration and taken a fresh start at the Revolution and
+the final disappearance of the licensing system. The daily
+newspaper--meaning a small sheet written by a single author (editors as
+yet were not)--appeared at the opening of the eighteenth century. Now
+for Grub Street the wit of the higher class had nothing but dislike. The
+'hackney author,' as Dunton called him, in his curious _Life and
+Errors_, was a mere huckster, who could scarcely be said as yet to
+belong to a profession. A Tutchin or Defoe might be pilloried, or
+flogged, or lose his ears, without causing a touch of compassion from
+men like Swift, who would have disdained to call themselves brother
+authors. Yet politicians were finding him useful. He was the victim of
+one party, and might be bribed or employed as a spy by the other. The
+history of Defoe and his painful struggles between his conscience and
+his need of living, sufficiently indicates the result; Charles Leslie,
+the gallant nonjuror, for example, or Abel Boyer, the industrious
+annalist, or the laborious but cantankerous Oldmixon, were keeping their
+heads above water by journalism, almost exclusively, of course,
+political. Defoe showed a genius for the art, and his mastery of
+vigorous vernacular was hardly rivalled until the time of Paine and
+Cobbett. At any rate, it was plain that a market was now arising for
+periodical literature which might give a scanty support to a class below
+the seat of patrons. It was at this point that the versatile,
+speculative, and impecunious Steele hit upon his famous discovery. The
+aim of the _Tatler_, started in April 1709, was marked out with great
+accuracy from the first. Its purpose is to contain discourses upon all
+manner of topics--_quicquid agunt homines_, as his first motto put
+it--which had been inadequately treated in the daily papers. It is
+supposed to be written in the various coffee-houses, and it is suited to
+all classes, even including women, whose taste, he observes, is to be
+caught by the title. The _Tatler_, as we know, led to the _Spectator_,
+and Addison's co-operation, cordially acknowledged by his friend, was a
+main cause of its unprecedented success. The _Spectator_ became the
+model for at least three generations of writers. The number of
+imitations is countless: Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith, and many men of
+less fame tried to repeat the success; persons of quality, such as
+Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, condescended to write papers for the
+_World_--the 'Bow of Ulysses,' as it was called, in which they could
+test their strength. Even in the nineteenth century Hazlitt and Leigh
+Hunt carried on the form; as indeed, in a modified shape, many later
+essayists have aimed at a substantially similar achievement. To have
+contributed three or four articles was, as in the case of the excellent
+Henry Grove (a name, of course, familiar to all of you), to have
+graduated with honours in literature. Johnson exhorted the literary
+aspirant to give his days and nights to the study of Addison; and the
+_Spectator_ was the most indispensable set of volumes upon the shelves
+of every library where the young ladies described by Miss Burney and
+Miss Austen were permitted to indulge a growing taste for literature. I
+fear that young people of the present day discover, if they try the
+experiment, that their curiosity is easily satisfied. This singular
+success, however, shows that the new form satisfied a real need.
+Addison's genius must, of course, count for much in the immediate
+result; but it was plainly a case where genius takes up the function for
+which it is best suited, and in which it is most fully recognised. When
+we read him now we are struck by one fact. He claims in the name of the
+_Spectator_ to be a censor of manners and morals; and though he veils
+his pretensions under delicate irony, the claim is perfectly serious at
+bottom. He is really seeking to improve and educate his readers. He
+aims his gentle ridicule at social affectations and frivolities; and
+sometimes, though avoiding ponderous satire, at the grosser forms of
+vice. He is not afraid of laying down an aesthetic theory. In a once
+famous series of papers on the Imagination, he speaks with all the
+authority of a recognised critic in discussing the merits of Chevy Chase
+or of _Paradise Lost_; and in a series of Saturday papers he preaches
+lay-sermons--which were probably preferred by many readers to the
+official discourses of the following day. They contain those striking
+poems (too few) which led Thackeray to say that he could hardly fancy a
+'human intellect thrilling with a purer love and admiration than Joseph
+Addison's.' Now, spite of the real charm which every lover of delicate
+humour and exquisite urbanity must find in Addison, I fancy that the
+_Spectator_ has come to mean for us chiefly Sir Roger de Coverley. It is
+curious, and perhaps painful, to note how very small a proportion of the
+whole is devoted to that most admirable achievement; and to reflect how
+little life there is in much that in kindness of feeling and grace of
+style is equally charming. One cause is obvious. When Addison talks of
+psychology or aesthetics or ethics (not to speak of his criticism of
+epic poetry or the drama), he must of course be obsolete in substance;
+but, moreover, he is obviously superficial. A man who would speak upon
+such topics now must be a grave philosopher, who has digested libraries
+of philosophy. Addison, of course, is the most modest of men; he has not
+the slightest suspicion that he is going beyond his tether; and that is
+just what makes his unconscious audacity remarkable. He fully shares the
+characteristic belief of the day, that the abstract problems are soluble
+by common sense, when polished by academic culture and aided by a fine
+taste. It is a case of _sancta simplicitas_; of the charming, because
+perfectly unconscious, self-sufficiency with which the Wit, rejecting
+pedantry as the source of all evil, thinks himself obviously entitled to
+lay down the law as theologian, politician, and philosopher. His
+audience are evidently ready to accept him as an authority, and are
+flattered by being treated as capable of reason, not offended by any
+assumption of their intellectual inferiority.
+
+With whatever shortcomings, Addison, and in their degree Steele and his
+other followers, represent the stage at which the literary organ begins
+to be influenced by the demands of a new class of readers. Addison
+feels the dignity of his vocation and has a certain air of gentle
+condescension, especially when addressing ladies who cannot even
+translate his mottoes. He is a genuine prophet of what we now describe
+as Culture, and his exquisite urbanity and delicacy qualify him to be a
+worthy expositor of the doctrines, though his outlook is necessarily
+limited. He is therefore implicitly trying to solve the problem which
+could not be adequately dealt with on the stage; to set forth a view of
+the world and human nature which shall be thoroughly refined and noble,
+and yet imply a full appreciation of the humorous aspects of life. The
+inimitable Sir Roger embodies the true comic spirit; though Addison's
+own attempt at comedy was not successful.
+
+One obvious characteristic of this generation is the didacticism which
+is apt to worry us. Poets, as well as philosophers and preachers, are
+terribly argumentative. Fielding's remark (through Parson Adams), that
+some things in Steele's comedies are almost as good as a sermon, applies
+to a much wider range of literature. One is tempted by way of
+explanation to ascribe this to a primitive and ultimate instinct of the
+race. Englishmen--including of course Scotsmen--have a passion for
+sermons, even when they are half ashamed of it; and the British Essay,
+which flourished so long, was in fact a lay sermon. We must briefly
+notice that the particular form of this didactic tendency is a natural
+expression of the contemporary rationalism. The metaphysician of the
+time identifies emotions and passions with intellectual affirmations,
+and all action is a product of logic. In any case we have to do with a
+period in which the old concrete imagery has lost its hold upon the more
+intelligent classes, and instead of an imaginative symbolism we have a
+system of abstract reasoning. Diagrams take the place of concrete
+pictures: and instead of a Milton justifying the ways of Providence by
+the revealed history, we have a Blackmore arguing with Lucretius, and
+are soon to have a Pope expounding a metaphysical system in the _Essay
+on Man_. Sir Roger represents a happy exception to this method and
+points to the new development. Addison is anticipating the method of
+later novelists, who incarnate their ideals in flesh and blood. This,
+and the minor character sketches which are introduced incidentally,
+imply a feeling after a less didactic method. As yet the sermon is in
+the foreground, and the characters are dismissed as soon as they have
+illustrated the preacher's doctrine. Such a method was congenial to the
+Wit. He was, or aspired to be, a keen man of the world; deeply
+interested in the characteristics of the new social order; in the
+eccentricities displayed at clubs, or on the Stock Exchange, or in the
+political struggles; he is putting in shape the practical philosophy
+implied in the conversations at clubs and coffee-houses; he delights in
+discussing such psychological problems as were suggested by the worldly
+wisdom of Rochefoucauld, and he appreciates clever character sketches
+such as those of La Bruyere. Both writers were favourites in England.
+But he has become heartily tired of the old romance, and has not yet
+discovered how to combine the interest of direct observation of man with
+a thoroughly concrete form of presentation.
+
+The periodical essay represents the most successful innovation of the
+day; and, as I have suggested, because it represents the mode by which
+the most cultivated writer could be brought into effective relation with
+the genuine interests of the largest audience. Other writers used it
+less skilfully, or had other ways of delivering their message to
+mankind. Swift, for example, had already shown his peculiar vein. He
+gives a different, though equally characteristic, side of the
+intellectual attitude of the Wit. In the _Battle of the Books_ he had
+assumed the pedantry of the scholar; in the _Tale of a Tub_ with amazing
+audacity he fell foul of the pedantry of divines. His blows, as it
+seemed to the Archbishops, struck theology in general; he put that right
+by pouring out scorn upon Deists and all who were silly enough to
+believe that the vulgar could reason; and then in his first political
+writings began to expose the corrupt and selfish nature of
+politicians--though at present only of Whig politicians. Swift is one of
+the most impressive of all literary figures, and I will not even touch
+upon his personal peculiarities. I will only remark that in one respect
+he agrees with his friend Addison. He emphasises, of course, the aspect
+over which Addison passes lightly; he scorns fools too heartily to treat
+them tenderly and do justice to the pathetic side of even human folly.
+But he too believes in culture--though he may despair of its
+dissemination. He did his best, during his brief period of power, to
+direct patronage towards men of letters, even to Whigs; and tried,
+happily without success, to found an English Academy. His zeal was
+genuine, though it expressed itself by scorn for dunces and hostility to
+Grub Street. He illustrates one little peculiarity of the Wit. In the
+society of the clubs there was a natural tendency to form minor cliques
+of the truly initiated, who looked with sovereign contempt upon the
+hackney author. One little indication is the love of mystifications, or
+what were entitled 'bites.' All the Wits, as we know, combined to tease
+the unlucky fortune-teller, Partridge, and to maintain that their
+prediction of his death had been verified, though he absurdly pretended
+to be still alive. So Swift tells us in the journal to Stella how he had
+circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming to life again,
+and how footmen are sent out to inquire into its success. He made a hit
+by writing a sham account of Prior's mission to Paris supposed to come
+from a French valet. The inner circle chuckled over such performances,
+which would be impossible when their monopoly of information had been
+broken up. A similar satisfaction was given by the various burlesques
+and more or less ingenious fables which were to be fully appreciated by
+the inner circle; such as the tasteless narrative of Dennis's frenzy by
+which Pope professed to be punishing his victim for an attack upon
+Addison: or to such squibs as Arbuthnot's _John Bull_--a parable which
+gives the Tory view in a form fitted for the intelligent. The Wits, that
+is, form an inner circle, who like to speak with an affectation of
+obscurity even if the meaning be tolerably transparent, and show that
+they are behind the scenes by occasionally circulating bits of sham
+news. They like to form a kind of select upper stratum, which most fully
+believes in its own intellectual eminence, and shows a contempt for its
+inferiors by burlesque and rough sarcasm.
+
+It is not difficult (especially when we know the result) to guess at the
+canons of taste which will pass muster in such regions. Enthusiastical
+politicians of recent days have been much given to denouncing modern
+clubs, where everybody is a cynic and unable to appreciate the great
+ideas which stir the masses. It may be so; my own acquaintance with club
+life, though not very extensive, does not convince me that every member
+of a London club is a Mephistopheles; but I will admit that a certain
+excess of hard worldly wisdom may be generated in such resorts; and we
+find many conspicuous traces of that tendency in the clubs of Queen
+Anne's reign. Few of them have Addison's gentleness or his perception of
+the finer side of human nature. It was by a rare combination of
+qualities that he was enabled to write like an accomplished man of the
+world, and yet to introduce the emotional element without any jarring
+discord. The literary reformers of a later day denounce the men of this
+period as 'artificial'! a phrase the antithesis of which is 'natural.'
+Without asking at present what is meant by the implied distinction--an
+inquiry which is beset by whole systems of equivocations--I may just
+observe that in this generation the appeal to Nature was as common and
+emphatic as in any later time. The leaders of thought believe in reason,
+and reason sets forth the Religion of Nature and assumes that the Law of
+Nature is the basis of political theory. The corresponding literary
+theory is that Art must be subordinate to Nature. The critics' rules, as
+Pope says in the poem which most fully expresses the general doctrine,
+
+
+     'Are Nature still, but Nature methodised;
+     Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained
+     By the same laws which first herself ordained.'
+
+
+The Nature thus 'methodised' was the nature of the Wit himself; the set
+of instincts and prejudices which to him seemed to be so normal that
+they must be natural. Their standards of taste, if artificial to us,
+were spontaneous, not fictitious; the Wits were not wearing a mask, but
+were exhibiting their genuine selves with perfect simplicity. Now one
+characteristic of the Wit is always a fear of ridicule. Above all things
+he dreads making a fool of himself. The old lyric, for example, which
+came so spontaneously to the Elizabethan poet or dramatist, and of which
+echoes are still to be found in the Restoration, has decayed, or rather,
+has been transformed. When you have written a genuine bit of
+love-poetry, the last place, I take it, in which you think of seeking
+the applause of a congenial audience, would be the smoking-room of your
+club: but that is the nearest approach to the critical tribunal of Queen
+Anne's day. It is necessary to smuggle in poetry and passion in
+disguise, and conciliate possible laughter by stating plainly that you
+anticipate the ridicule yourself. In other words you write society
+verses like Prior, temper sentiment by wit, and if you do not express
+vehement passion, turn out elegant verses, salted by an irony which is
+a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had
+become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become
+extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in
+versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously,
+Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for
+his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the
+form by introducing real rustics and turning it into a burlesque. Then,
+as Johnson puts it, the 'effect of reality and truth became conspicuous,
+even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' _The
+Rape of the Lock_ is the masterpiece, as often noticed, of an
+unconscious allegory. The sylph, who was introduced with such curious
+felicity, is to be punished if he fails to do his duty, by imprisonment
+in a lady's toilet apparatus.
+
+
+     'Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
+     While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain.'
+
+
+Delicate fancy and real poetical fancy may be turned to account; but
+under the mask of the mock-heroic. We can be poetical still, it seems to
+say, only we must never forget that to be poetical in deadly earnest is
+to run the risk of being absurd. Even a Wit is pacified when he is thus
+dexterously coaxed into poetry disguised as mere playful exaggeration,
+and feels quite safe in following the fortune of a game of cards in
+place of a sanguinary Homeric battle. Ariel is still alive, but he
+adopts the costume of the period to apologise for his eccentricities.
+Poetry thus understood may either give a charm to the trivial or fall
+into mere burlesque; and though Pope's achievement is an undeniable
+triumph, there are blots in an otherwise wonderful performance which
+show an uncomfortable concession to the coarser tastes of his audience.
+
+I will not dwell further upon a tolerably obvious theme. I must pass to
+the more serious literature. The Wit had not the smallest notion that
+his attitude disqualified him for succession in the loftiest poetical
+endeavour. He thinks that his critical keenness will enable him to
+surpass the old models. He wishes, in the familiar phrase, to be
+'correct'; to avoid the gross faults of taste which disfigured the old
+Gothic barbarism of his forefathers. That for him is the very meaning of
+reason and nature. He will write tragedies which must get rid of the
+brutalities, the extravagance, the audacious mixture of farce and
+tragedy which was still attractive to the vulgar. He has, indeed, a kind
+of lurking regard for the rough vigour of the Shakespearian epoch; his
+patriotic prejudices pluck at him at intervals, and suggest that
+Marlborough's countrymen ought not quite to accept the yoke of the
+French Academy. When Ambrose Phillips produced the _Distrest
+Mother_--adapted from Racine--all Addison's little society was
+enthusiastic. Steele stated in the Prologue that the play was meant to
+combine French correctness with British force, and praised it in the
+_Spectator_ because it was 'everywhere Nature.' The town, he pointed
+out, would be able to admire the passions 'within the rules of decency,
+honour, and good breeding.' The performance was soon followed by _Cato_,
+unquestionably, as Johnson still declares, 'the noblest production of
+Addison's genius.' It presents at any rate the closest conformity to the
+French model; and falls into comic results, as old Dennis pointed out,
+from the so-called Unity of Place, and consequent necessity of
+transacting all manner of affairs, love-making to Cato's daughter, and
+conspiring against Cato himself, in Cato's own hall. Such tragedy,
+however, refused to take root. Cato, as I think no one can deny, is a
+good specimen of Addison's style, but, except a few proverbial phrases,
+it is dead. The obvious cause, no doubt, is that the British public
+liked to see battle, murder, and sudden death, and, in spite of
+Addison's arguments, enjoyed a mixture of tragic and comic. Shakespeare,
+though not yet an idol, had still a hold upon the stage, and was
+beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of
+commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign
+model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to
+moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes
+'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong,
+that a tragedy ought to be a work of art. The artist must observe
+certain rules; though I need not ask whether he was right in thinking
+that these rules were represented by the accepted interpreters of the
+teaching of Nature. What he did not perceive was that another essential
+condition was absent; namely, that the tragic mood should correspond to
+his own 'nature.' The tragic art can, like other arts, only flourish
+when it embodies spontaneously the emotions and convictions of the
+spectators; when the dramatist is satisfying a genuine demand, and is
+himself ready to see in human life the conflict of great passions and
+the scene of impressive catastrophes. Then the theatre becomes naturally
+the mirror upon which the imagery can be projected. But the society to
+which Addison and his fellows belonged was a society of good,
+commonplace, sensible people, who were fighting each other by pamphlets
+instead of by swords; who played a game in which they staked not life
+and death but a comfortable competency; who did not even cut off the
+head of a fallen minister, who no longer believed in great statesmen of
+heroic proportions rising above the vulgar herd; and who had a very
+hearty contempt for romantic extravagance. A society in which common
+sense is regarded as the cardinal intellectual virtue does not naturally
+suggest the great tragic themes. Cato is obviously contrived, not
+inspired; and the dramatist is thinking of obeying the rules of good
+taste, instead of having them already incorporated in his thought. This
+comes out in one chief monument in the literary movement, I mean Pope's
+_Homer_. Pope, as we know, made himself independent by that performance.
+The method of publication is significant. He had no interest in the
+general sale, which was large enough to make his publisher's fortune.
+The publisher meanwhile supplied him gratuitously with the copies for
+which the subscribers paid him six guineas apiece. That means that he
+received a kind of commission from the upper class to execute the
+translation. The list of his subscribers seems to be almost a directory
+to the upper circle of the day; every person of quality has felt himself
+bound to promote so laudable an undertaking; the patron had been
+superseded by a kind of joint-stock body of collective patronage. The
+Duke of Buckingham, one of its accepted mouthpieces, had said in verse
+in his _Essay on Poetry_ that if you once read Homer, everything else
+will be 'mean and poor.'
+
+
+     Verse will seem prose; yet often in him look
+     And you will hardly need another book.'
+
+
+That was the correct profession of faith. Yet as a good many Wits found
+Greek an obstacle, a translation was needed. Chapman had become
+barbarous; Hobbes and Ogilvie were hopelessly flat; and Pope was
+therefore handsomely paid to produce a book which was to be the standard
+of the poetical taste. Pope was thus the chosen representative of the
+literary spirit. It is needless to point out that Pope's _Iliad_ is not
+Homer's. That was admitted from the first. When we read in a speech of
+Agamemnon exhorting the Greeks to abandon the siege,
+
+
+     'Love, duty, safety summon us away;
+     'Tis Nature's voice, and Nature we obey,'
+
+
+we hardly require to be told that we are not listening to Homer's
+Agamemnon but to an Agamemnon in a full-bottomed wig. Yet Pope's Homer
+had a success unparalleled by any other translation of profane poetry;
+for the rest of the century it was taken to be a masterpiece; it has
+been the book from which Byron and many clever lads first learned to
+enjoy what they at least took for Homer; and, as Mrs. Gallup has
+discovered, it was used by Bacon at the beginning of the seventeenth
+century, and by somebody at the beginning of the twentieth. That it has
+very high literary merits can, I think, be denied by no unprejudiced
+reader, but I have only to do with one point. Pope had the advantage--I
+take it to be an advantage--of having a certain style prescribed for him
+by the literary tradition inherited from Dryden. A certain diction and
+measure had to be adopted, and the language to be run into an accepted
+mould. The mould was no doubt conventional, and corresponded to a
+temporary phase of sentiment. Like the costume of the period, it strikes
+us now as 'artificial' because it was at the time so natural. It was
+worked out by the courtly and aristocratic class, and was fitted to give
+a certain dignity and lucidity, and to guard against mere greatness and
+triviality of utterance. At any rate it saved Pope from one enormous
+difficulty. The modern translator is aware that Homer lived a long time
+ago in a very different state of intellectual and social development,
+and yet feels bound to reproduce the impressions made upon the ancient
+Greek. The translator has to be an accurate scholar and to give the
+right shade of meaning for every phrase, while he has also to
+approximate to the metrical effect. The conclusion seems to be that the
+only language into which Homer could be adequately translated would be
+Greek, and that you must then use the words of the original. The actual
+result is that the translator is cramped by his fetters; that his use of
+archaic words savours of affectation, and that, at best, he has to
+emphasise the fact that his sentiments are fictitious. Pope had no
+trouble of that kind. He aims at giving something equivalent to Homer,
+not Homer himself, and therefore at something really practical. He has
+the same advantage as a man who accepts a living style of architecture
+or painting; he can exert all his powers of forcible expression in a
+form which will be thoroughly understood by his audience, and which
+saves him, though at a certain cost, from the difficulties of trying to
+reproduce the characteristics which are really incongruous.
+
+There are disadvantages. In his time the learned M. Bossu was the
+accepted authority upon the canons of criticism. Buckingham says he had
+explained the 'mighty magic' of Homer. One doctrine of his was that an
+epic poet first thinks of a moral and then invents a fable to illustrate
+it. The theory struck Addison as a little overstated, but it is an
+exaggeration of the prevalent view. According to Pope Homer's great
+merit was his 'invention'--and by this he sometimes appears to imply
+that Homer had even invented the epic poem. Poetry was, it seems, at a
+'low pitch' in Greece in Homer's time, as indeed were other arts and
+sciences. Homer, wishing to instruct his countrymen in all kinds of
+topics, devised the epic poem: made use of the popular mythology to
+supply what in the technical language was called his 'machinery';
+converted the legends into philosophical allegory, and introduced
+'strokes of knowledge from his whole circle of arts and sciences.' This
+'circle' includes for example geography, rhetoric, and history; and the
+whole poem is intended to inculcate the political moral that many evils
+sprang from the want of union among the Greeks. Not a doubt of it! Homer
+was in the sphere of poetry what Lycurgus was supposed to be in the
+field of legislation. He had at a single bound created poetry and made
+it a vehicle of philosophy, politics, and ethics. Upon this showing the
+epic poem is a form of art which does not grow out of the historical
+conditions of the period; but it is a permanent form of art, as good for
+the eighteenth century as for the heroic age of Greece; it may be
+adopted as a model, only requiring certain additional ornaments and
+refinements to adapt it to the taste of a more enlightened period. Yet,
+at the same time, Pope could clearly perceive some of the absurd
+consequences of M. Bossu's view. He ridiculed that authority very keenly
+in the 'Recipe to make an Epic Poem' which first appeared in the
+_Guardian_, while he was at work upon his own translation. Bossu's
+rules, he says, will enable us to make epic poems without genius or
+reading; and he proceeds to show how you are to work your 'machines,'
+and introduce your allegories and descriptions, and extract your moral
+out of the fable at leisure, 'only making it sure that you strain it
+sufficiently.'
+
+That was the point. The enlightened critic sees that the work of art
+embodies certain abstract rules; which may, and probably will--if he be
+a man of powerful intellectual power, be rational, and suggest
+instructive canons. But, as Pope sees, it does not follow that the
+inverse process is feasible; that is, that you construct your poem
+simply by applying the rules. To be a good cricketer you must apply
+certain rules of dynamics; but it does not follow that a sound knowledge
+of dynamics will enable you to play good cricket. Pope sees that
+something more than an acceptance of M. Bossu's or Aristotle's canons is
+requisite for the writer of a good epic poem. The something more,
+according to him, appears to be learning and genius. It is certainly
+true that at least genius must be one requisite. But then, there is the
+further point. Will the epic poem, which was the product of certain
+remote social and intellectual conditions, serve to express the thoughts
+and emotions of a totally different age? Considering the difference
+between Achilles and Marlborough, or the bards of the heroic age and the
+wits who frequented clubs and coffee-houses under Queen Anne, it was at
+least important to ask whether Homer and Pope--taking them to be alike
+in genius--would not find it necessary to adopt radically different
+forms. That is for us so obvious a suggestion that one wonders at the
+tacit assumption of its irrelevance. Pope, indeed, by taking the _Iliad_
+for a framework, a ready-made fabric which he could embroider with his
+own tastes, managed to construct a singularly spirited work, full of
+good rhetoric and not infrequently rising to real poetical excellence.
+But it did not follow that an original production on the same lines
+would have been possible. Some years later, Young complained of Pope for
+being imitative, and said that if he had dared to be original, he might
+have produced a modern epic as good as the _Iliad_ instead of a mere
+translation. That is not quite credible. Pope himself tried an epic poem
+too, which happily came to nothing; but a similar ambition led to such
+works as Glover's _Leonidas_ and _The Epigoniad_ of the Scottish Homer
+Wilkie. English poets as a rule seem to have suffered at some period of
+their lives from this malady and contemplated Arthuriads; but the
+constructional epic died, I take it, with Southey's respectable poems.
+
+We may consider, then, that any literary form, the drama, the epic poem,
+the essay, and so forth, is comparable to a species in natural history.
+It has, one may say, a certain organic principle which determines the
+possible modes of development. But the line along which it will actually
+develop depends upon the character and constitution of the literary
+class which turns it to account, for the utterance of its own ideas; and
+depends also upon the correspondence of those ideas with the most vital
+and powerful intellectual currents of the time. The literary class of
+Queen Anne's day was admirably qualified for certain formations: the
+Wits leading the 'town,' and forming a small circle accepting certain
+canons of taste, could express with admirable clearness and honesty the
+judgment of bright common sense; the ideas which commend themselves to
+the man of the world, and to a rationalism which was the embodiment of
+common sense. They produced a literature, which in virtue of its
+sincerity and harmonious development within certain limits could pass
+for some time as a golden age. The aversion to pedantry limited its
+capacity for the highest poetical creation, and made the imagination
+subservient to the prosaic understanding. The comedy had come to adapt
+itself to the tastes of the class which, instead of representing the
+national movement, was composed of the more disreputable part of the
+town. The society unable to develop it in the direction of refinement
+left it to second-rate writers. It became enervated instead of elevated.
+The epic and the tragic poetry, ceasing to reflect the really powerful
+impulses of the day, were left to the connoisseur and dilettante man of
+taste, and though they could write with force and dignity when
+renovating or imitating older masterpieces, such literature became
+effete and hopelessly artificial. It was at best a display of technical
+skill, and could not correspond to the strongest passions and conditions
+of the time. The invention of the periodical essay, meanwhile, indicated
+what was a condition of permanent vitality. There, at least, the Wit was
+appealing to a wide and growing circle of readers, and could utter the
+real living thoughts and impulses of the time. The problem for the
+coming period was therefore marked out. The man of letters had to
+develop a living literature by becoming a representative of the ideas
+which really interested the whole cultivated classes, instead of writing
+merely for the exquisite critic, or still less for the regenerating and
+obnoxious section of society. That indeed, I take it, is the general
+problem of literature; but I shall have to trace the way in which its
+solution was attempted in the next period.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+(1714-1739)
+
+
+The death of Queen Anne opens a new period in the history of literature
+and of politics. Under the first Georges we are in the very heart of the
+eighteenth century; the century, as its enemies used to say, of coarse
+utilitarian aims, of religious indifference and political corruption;
+or, as I prefer to say, the century of sound common sense and growing
+toleration, and of steady social and industrial development.
+
+To us, to me at least, it presents something pleasant in retrospect.
+There were then no troublesome people with philanthropic or political or
+religious nostrums, proposing to turn the world upside down and
+introduce an impromptu millennium. The history of periods when people
+were cutting each other's throats for creeds is no doubt more exciting;
+but we, who profess toleration, ought surely to remember that you
+cannot have martyrs without bigots and persecutors; and that
+fanaticism, though it may have its heroic aspects, has also a very ugly
+side to it. At any rate, we who come after a century of revolutionary
+changes, and are often told that the whole order of things may be upset
+by some social earthquake, look back with regret to the days of quiet
+solid progress, when everything seemed to have settled down to a quiet,
+stable equilibrium. Wealth and comfort were growing--surely no bad
+things; and John Bull--he had just received that name from
+Arbuthnot--was waxing fat and complacently contemplating his own
+admirable qualities. It is the period of the composition of 'Rule
+Britannia' and 'The Roast Beef of Old England,' and of the settled
+belief that your lusty, cudgel-playing, beer-drinking Briton was worth
+three of the slaves who ate frogs and wore wooden shoes across the
+Channel. The British constitution was the embodiment of perfect wisdom,
+and, as such, was entitled to be the dread and envy of the world. To the
+political historian it is the era of Walpole; the huge mass of solid
+common sense, who combined the qualities of the sturdy country squire
+and the thorough man of business; whose great aim was to preserve the
+peace; to keep the country as much as might be out of the continental
+troubles which it did not understand, and in which it had no concern;
+and to carry on business upon sound commercial principles. It is of
+course undeniable that his rule not only meant regard for the solid
+material interests of the country, but too often appealed to the
+interests of the ruling class. Philosophical historians who deal with
+the might-have-been may argue that a man of higher character might have
+worked by better means and have done something to purify the political
+atmosphere. Walpole was not in advance of his day; but it is at least
+too clear to need any exposition that under the circumstances corruption
+was inevitable. When the House of Commons was the centre of political
+authority, when so many boroughs were virtually private property, when
+men were not stirred to the deeper issues by any great constitutional
+struggle--party government had to be carried on by methods which
+involved various degrees of jobbery and bribery. The disease was
+certainly not peculiar to Walpole's age; though perhaps the symptoms
+were more obvious and avowed more bluntly than usual. As Walpole's
+masterful ways drove his old allies into opposition, they denounced the
+system and himself; but unfortunately although they claimed to be
+patriots and patterns of political virtue, they were made pretty much of
+the same materials as the arch-corrupter. When the 'moneyed men,' upon
+whom he had relied, came to be in favour of a warlike policy and were
+roused by the story of Captain Jenkins' ear, Walpole fell, but no reign
+of purity followed. The growing dissatisfaction, however, with the
+Walpolean system implied some very serious conditions, and the cry
+against corruption, in which nearly all the leading writers of the time
+joined, had a very serious significance in literature and in the growth
+of public opinion.
+
+First, however, let me glance at the change as it immediately affected
+the literary organ. The old club and coffee-house society broke up with
+remarkable rapidity. While Oxford was sent to the Tower, and Bolingbroke
+escaped to France, Swift retired to Dublin, and Prior, after being
+imprisoned, passed the remainder of his life in retirement. Pope settled
+down to translating Homer, and took up his abode at Twickenham, outside
+the exciting and noisy London world in which the poor invalid had been
+jostled. Addison soared into the loftier regions of politics and
+married his Countess, and ceased to preside at Buttons'. Steele held on
+for a time, but in declining prosperity and diminished literary
+activity, till his retirement to Wales. No one appeared to fill the gaps
+thus made in the ranks either of the Whigs' or the Tories' section of
+literature. The change was obviously connected with the systematic
+development of the party system. Swift bitterly denounced Walpole for
+his indifference to literature! 'Bob the poet's foe' was guided by other
+motives in disposing of his patronage. Places in the Customs were no
+longer to be given to writers of plays or complimentary epistles in
+verse, or even to promising young politicians, but to members of
+parliament or the constituents in whom they were interested. The
+placemen, who were denounced as one of the great abuses of the time,
+were rewarded for voting power not for literary merit. The patron,
+therefore, was disappearing; though one or two authors, such as Congreve
+and Gay, might be still petted by the nobility; and Young somehow got a
+pension out of Walpole, probably through Bubb Dodington, the very
+questionable parson who still wished to be a Maecenas. Meanwhile there
+was a compensation. The bookseller was beginning to supersede the
+patron. Tonson and Lintot were making fortunes; the first Longman was
+founding the famous firm which still flourishes; and the career of the
+disreputable and piratical Curll shows that at least the demand for
+miscellaneous literature was growing. The anecdotes of the misery of
+authors, of the translators who lay three in a bed in Curll's garret, of
+Samuel Boyse, who had reduced his clothes to a single blanket, and
+Savage sleeping on a bulk, are sometimes adduced to show that literature
+was then specially depressed. But there never was a time when authors of
+dissolute habits were not on the brink of starvation, and the
+authorities of the Literary Fund could give us contemporary
+illustrations of the fact. The real inference is, I take it, that the
+demand which was springing up attracted a great many impecunious
+persons, who became the drudges of the rising class of booksellers. No
+doubt the journalist was often in a degrading position. The press was
+active in all political struggles. The great men, Walpole, Bolingbroke,
+and Pulteney, wrote pamphlets or contributed papers to the _Craftsman_,
+while they employed inferior scribes to do the drudgery. Walpole paid
+large sums to the 'Gazetters,' whom Pope denounces; and men like
+Amherst of the _Craftsman_ or Gordon of the _Independent Whig_, carried
+on the ordinary warfare. The author by profession was beginning to be
+recognised. Thomson and Mallet came up from Scotland during this period
+to throw themselves upon literature; Ralph, friend of Franklin and
+collaborator of Fielding, came from New England; and Johnson was
+attracted from the country to become a contributor to the _Gentleman's
+Magazine_, started by Cave in 1731--an event which marked a new
+development of periodical literature. Though no one would then advise a
+young man who could do anything else to trust to authorship (it would be
+rash to give such advice now) the new career was being opened. There
+were hack authors of all varieties. The successful playwright gained a
+real prize in the lottery; and translations, satires, and essays on the
+_Spectator_ model enabled the poor drudge to make both ends meet, though
+too often in bondage to his employer to be, as I take it, better off
+than in the previous period, when the choice lay between risking the
+pillory and selling yourself as a spy.
+
+Before considering the effect produced under the changed conditions, I
+must note briefly the intellectual position. The period was that of the
+culmination of the deist controversy. In the previous period the
+rationalism of which Locke was the mouthpiece represented the dominant
+tendency. It was generally held on all sides that there was a religion
+of nature, capable of purely rational demonstration. The problem
+remained as to its relation to the revealed religion and the established
+creed. Locke himself was a sincere Christian, though he reduced the
+dogmatic element to a minimum. Some of his disciples, however, became
+freethinkers in the technical sense, and held that revelation was
+needless, and that in point of fact no supernatural revelation had been
+made. The orthodox, on the other hand, while admitting or declaring that
+faith should be founded on reason, and that reason could establish a
+'religion of nature,' admitted in various ways that a supernatural
+revelation was an essential corollary or a useful addition to the simple
+rational doctrine. The controversies which arose upon this issue, after
+being carried on very vigorously for a time, caused less interest as
+time went on, and were beginning to die out at the end of this period.
+It is often said in explanation that deism or the religion of nature, as
+then understood, was too vague and colourless a system to have any
+strong vitality. It faded into a few abstract logical propositions which
+had no relation to fact, and led to the optimistic formula, 'Whatever
+is, is right,' which could in the long-run satisfy no one with any
+strong perception of the darker elements of the world and human nature.
+This view may be emphasised by the most remarkable writings of the
+period. Butler's _Analogy_ (1736) has been regarded by many even of his
+strongest opponents as triumphant against the deistical optimism, and
+certainly emphasises the side of things to which that optimism is blind.
+Hume's _Treatise of Human Nature_, at the end of the period (1739),
+uttered the sceptical revolution which destroys the base of the
+deistical system. Another writer is notable: William Law's _Serious
+Call_ is one of the books which has made a turning-point in many men's
+lives. It specially affected Samuel Johnson and John Wesley, and many of
+those who sympathised more or less with Wesley's movement. Law was
+driven by his sense of the aspects of the rationalist theories to adopt
+a different position. He became a follower of Behmen, and his mysticism
+ended by repelling the thoroughly practical Wesley, as indeed mysticism
+in general seems to be uncongenial to the English mind. Law's position
+shows a difficulty which was felt by others. It means that while he
+holds that religion must be in the highest sense 'reasonable' it cannot
+be (as another author put it) 'founded upon argument.' Faith must be
+identified with the inner light, the direct voice of God to man, which
+appeals to the soul, and is not built upon syllogisms or allowed to
+depend upon the result of historical criticism. This view, I need hardly
+say, is opposed to the whole rationalist theory, whether of the deist or
+the orthodox variety: it was so opposed that it could find scarcely any
+sympathy at the time; and for that reason it indicates one
+characteristic of the contemporary thought. To omit the mystical element
+is to be cold and unsatisfactory in religious philosophy, and to be
+radically prosaic and unpoetical in the sphere of literature. Englishmen
+could never become mystics in the technical sense, but they were
+beginning to be discontented with the bare logical system of the
+religion of nature. They were ready for some utterance of the emotional
+and imaginative element in religion and philosophy which was left out of
+account by the wits and rationalists. I do not myself believe that the
+intellectual weakness of abstract deism gives a sufficient explanation
+of its decay. In fact, as accepted by Rousseau and by some of his
+English followers, it could ally itself with the ardent revolutionary
+enthusiasm which was to be the marked peculiarity of the latter part of
+the century. We must add another consideration. Locke and his
+contemporaries had laid down political and religious principles which,
+if logically developed, would lead to the revolutionary doctrines of
+1789. They did not develop them, and mainly, I take it, because the
+practical application excited no strong feeling. The spark did not find
+fuel ready to be lighted. The political and social conditions supply a
+sufficient explanation of the indifference. People were practically
+content with the existing order in Church and State. The deist
+controversies did not reach the enormous majority of the nation, who
+went quietly about their business in the old paths. The orthodox
+themselves were so rationalistic in principle that the whole discussion
+seemed to turn upon non-essential points. But moreover the Church was so
+thoroughly subordinated to the laity; it was so much a part of the
+regular comfortable system of things; so little able or inclined to set
+up as an independent power claiming special authority and enforcing
+discipline, that it excited no hostility. Parson and squire were part of
+the regular system which could not be attacked without upsetting the
+whole system; and there was as yet no general discontent with that
+system, or, indeed, any disposition whatever to reconstruct the
+machinery which was working so quietly and so thoroughly in accordance
+with the dumb instincts of the overwhelming majority.
+
+Now let us pass to the literary manifestation of this order. The
+literary society, as it existed under Queen Anne, had been broken up;
+two or three of the men who had already made their mark continued their
+activity, especially Pope and Swift. Swift, however, was living apart
+from the world, though he was still to come to the front on more than
+one remarkable occasion. Pope, meanwhile, became the acknowledged
+dictator. The literary movement may be called after Pope, as distinctly
+as the political after Walpole. He established his dynasty so thoroughly
+that in later days the attempt to upset him was regarded as a daring
+revolution. What was Pope? Poet or not, for his title to the name has
+been disputed, he had one power or weakness in which he has scarcely
+been rivalled. No writer, that is, reflects so clearly and completely
+the spirit of his own day. His want of originality means the extreme and
+even morbid sensibility which enabled him to give the fullest utterance
+to the ideas of his class, and of the nation, so far as the nation was
+really represented by the class. But the literary class was going
+through a process of differentiation, as the alliance of authors and
+statesmen broke up. Pope represents mainly the aristocratic movement. He
+had become independent--a fact of which he was a little too proud--and
+moved on the most familiar terms with the great men of the age. The Tory
+leaders were, of course, his special friends; but in later days he
+became a friend of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and of the politicians
+who broke off from Walpole; while even with Walpole he was on terms of
+civility. His poems give a long catalogue of the great men of whose
+intimacy he was so proud. Besides Bolingbroke, his 'guide, philosopher,
+and friend,' he counts up nearly all the great men of his time. Somers
+and Halifax, and Granville and Congreve, Oxford and Atterbury, who had
+encouraged his first efforts; Pulteney, Chesterfield, Argyll, Wyndham,
+Cobham, Bathurst, Peterborough, Queensberry, who had become friends in
+later years, receive the delicate compliments which imply his excusable
+pride in their alliance. Pope, therefore, may be considered from one
+point of view as the authorised interpreter of the upper circle, which
+then took itself to embody the highest cultivation of the nation. We may
+appreciate Pope's poetry by comparing it with an independent
+manifestation of their morality. The most explicit summary of the
+general tone of the class-morality may, I think, be gathered from
+Chesterfield's _Letters_. Though written at a later period, they sum up
+the lesson he has imbibed from his experience at this time. Chesterfield
+was no mere fribble or rake. He was a singularly shrewd, impartial
+observer of life, who had studied men at first hand as well as from
+books. His letters deal with the problem: What are the conditions of
+success in public life? He treats it in the method of Machiavelli; that
+is to say, he inquires what actually succeeds, not what ought to
+succeed. An answer to that question given by a man of great ability is
+always worth studying. Even if it should appear that success in this
+world is not always won by virtue, the fact should be recognised,
+though we should get rid of the conclusion that virtue, when an
+encumbrance to success, should be discarded. Chesterfield's answer,
+however, is not simply cynical. His pupil is to study men and politics
+thoroughly; to know the constitutions of all European states, to read
+the history of modern times so far as it has a bearing upon business; to
+be thoroughly well informed as to the aims of kings and courts; to
+understand financial and diplomatic movements; briefly, as far as was
+then possible, to be an incarnate blue-book. He was to study literature
+and appreciate art, though he was carefully to avoid the excess which
+makes the pedant or the virtuoso. He was to cultivate a good style in
+writing and speaking, and even to learn German. Chesterfield's prophecy
+of a revolution in France (though, I fancy, a little overpraised) shows
+at least that he was a serious observer of political phenomena. But
+besides these solid attainments, the pupil, we know, is to study the
+Graces. The excessive insistence upon this is partly due to the
+peculiarities of his hearer and his own quaint illusion that the way to
+put a man at his ease is to be constantly insisting upon his hopeless
+awkwardness. The theory is pushed to excess when he says that
+Marlborough and Pitt succeeded by the Graces, not by supreme business
+capacity or force of character; and argues from recent examples that a
+fool may succeed by dint of good manners, while a man of ability without
+them must be a failure. The exaggeration illustrates the position. The
+game of politics, that is, has become mainly personal. The diplomatist
+must succeed by making himself popular in courts, and the politician by
+winning popularity in the House of Commons. Social success--that is, the
+power of making oneself agreeable to the ruling class--is the essential
+pre-condition to all other success. The statesman does not make himself
+known as the advocate of great principles when no great principles are
+at stake, and the ablest man of business cannot turn his abilities to
+account unless he commends himself to employers who themselves are too
+good and great to be bothered with accounts. You must first of all be
+acceptable to your environment; and the environment means the upper ten
+thousand who virtually govern the world. The social qualities,
+therefore, come into the foreground. Undoubtedly this implies a cynical
+tone. You can't respect the victims of your cajolery. Chesterfield's
+favourite author is Rochefoucauld of whom (not the Bible) his son is to
+read a chapter every day. Men, that is, are selfish. Happily also they
+are silly, and can be flattered into helping you, little as they may
+care for you. 'Wriggle yourself into power' he says more than once. That
+is especially true of women, of whom he always speaks with the true
+aristocratic contempt. A man of sense will humour them and flatter them;
+he will never consult them seriously, nor really trust them, but he will
+make them believe that he does both. They are invaluable as tools,
+though contemptible in themselves. This, of course, represents the tone
+too characteristic of the epicurean British nobleman. Yet with all this
+cynicism, Chesterfield's morality is perfectly genuine in its way. He
+has the sense of honour and the patriotic feeling of his class. He has
+the good nature which is compatible with, and even congenial to, a
+certain cynicism. He is said to have achieved the very unusual success
+of being an admirable Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. In fact he had the
+intellectual vigour which implies a real desire for good administration,
+less perhaps from purely philanthropic motives than from respect for
+efficiency.
+
+
+     'For forms of government let fools contest
+     Whate'er is best administered, is best,'
+
+
+says Pope, and that was Chesterfield's view. Like Frederick of Prussia,
+whom he admires above all rulers, he might not be over-scrupulous in his
+policy, but wishes the machinery for which he is responsible to be in
+thoroughly good working order. He most thoroughly sees the folly, if he
+does not sufficiently despise the motives, of the lower order of
+politicians to whom bribery and corruption represented the only
+political forces worth notice. In practice he might be forced to use
+such men, but he sees them to be contemptible, and appreciates the
+mischiefs resulting from their rule.
+
+The development of this morality in the aristocratic class, which was
+still predominant although the growing importance of the House of
+Commons was tending to shift the centre of political gravity to a lower
+point, is, I think, sufficiently intelligible to be taken for granted.
+Pope, I have said, represents the literary version. The problem, then,
+is how this view of life is to be embodied in poetry. One answer is the
+_Essay on Man_, in which Pope versified the deism which he learned from
+Bolingbroke, and which was characteristic of the upper circle
+generally. I need not speak of its shortcomings; didactic poetry of that
+kind is dreary enough, and the smart couplets often offend one's taste.
+I may say that here and there Pope manages to be really impressive, and
+to utter sentiments which really ennobled the deist creed; the aversion
+to narrow superstition; to the bigotry which 'dealt damnation round the
+land'; and the conviction that the true religion must correspond to a
+cosmopolitan humanity. I remember hearing Carlyle quote with admiration
+the Universal Prayer--
+
+
+     'Father of all, in every age,
+       In every clime adored,
+     By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage,
+       Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,'
+
+
+and it is the worthy utterance of one good legacy which the deist
+bequeathed to posterity. Pope himself was alarmed when he discovered
+that he had slipped unawares into heterodoxy. His creed was not
+congenial to the average mind, though it was to that of his immediate
+circle. Meanwhile, his most characteristic and successful work was of a
+different order. The answer, in fact, to the problem which I have just
+stated, is that the only kind of poetry that was congenial to his
+environment was satire--if satire can be called poetry. Pope's satires,
+the 'Epistle to Arbuthnot,' the 'Epilogue,' and some of the 'Imitations
+of Horace,' represent his best and most lasting achievement. There he
+gives the fullest expression to the general sentiment in the most
+appropriate form. His singular command of language, and, within his own
+limits, of versification, was turned to account by conscientious and
+unceasing labour in polishing his style. Particular passages, like the
+famous satire upon Addison, have been slowly elaborated; he has brooded
+over them for years; and, if the result of such methods is sometimes a
+mosaic rather than a continuous current of discourse, the extraordinary
+brilliance of some passages has made them permanently interesting and
+enriched our literature with many proverbial phrases. The art was
+naturally cultivated and its results appreciated in the circle formed by
+such men as Congreve, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield and the like, by
+whom witty conversation was cultivated as a fine art. Chesterfield tells
+us that he never spoke without trying to express himself as well as
+possible; and Pope carries out the principle in his poetry. The thorough
+polish has preserved the numerous phrases, still familiar, which have
+survived the general neglect of his work. Pope indeed manages to
+introduce genuine poetry, as in his famous compliments or his passage
+about his mother, in which we feel that he is really speaking from his
+heart. But no doubt Atterbury gave him judicious (if not very Christian)
+advice, when he told him to stick to the vein of the Addison verses. The
+main topic of the satires is a denunciation of an age when, as he puts
+it,
+
+
+     'Not to be corrupted is the shame.'
+
+
+He ascribes his own indignation to the 'strong antipathy of good to
+bad,' which is a satisfactory explanation to himself. But he was still
+interpreting the general sentiment and expressing the general discontent
+caused by the Walpole system. His friends, Bolingbroke and Wyndham, and
+the whole opposition, partially recruited from Walpole's supporters,
+were insisting upon the same theme. If, as I have said, some of them
+were really sincere in recognising the evil, and, like Bolingbroke in
+the _Patriot King_, trying to ascertain its source--we are troubled in
+this even by the doubt as to whether they objected to corruption or only
+to the corrupt influence of their antagonists. But Pope, as a poet,
+living outside the political circle, can take the denunciations quite
+seriously and be not only pointed but really dignified. He sincerely
+believes that vice can be seriously discouraged by lashing at it with
+epigrams. So far, he represented a general feeling of the literary
+class, explained in various ways by such men as Thomson, Fielding,
+Glover, and Johnson, who were, from very different points of view, in
+opposition to Walpole. Satire can only flourish under some such
+conditions as then existed. It supposes, among other things, the
+existence of a small cultivated class, which will fully appreciate the
+personalities, the dexterity of insinuation, and the cutting sarcasm
+which gives the spice to much of Pope's satire. Young, a singularly
+clever writer, was eclipsed by Pope because he kept to denoting general
+types and was not intimate with the actors on the social stage. Johnson,
+still more of an outsider, wrote a most effective and sonorous poem with
+the help of Juvenal; but it becomes a moral disquisition upon human
+nature which has not the special sting and sparkle of Pope. No later
+satirist has approached Pope, and the art has now become obsolete, or is
+adopted merely as a literary amusement. One obvious reason is the
+absence of the peculiar social backing which composed Pope's audience
+and supplied him with his readers.
+
+The growing sense that there was something wrong about the political
+system which Pope turned to account was significant of coming changes.
+The impression that the evil was entirely due to Walpole personally was
+one of the natural illusions of party warfare, and the disease was not
+extirpated when the supposed cause was removed. The most memorable
+embodiment of the sentiment was Swift. The concentrated scorn of
+corruption in the _Drapier's Letters_ was followed by the intense
+misanthropy of _Gulliver's Travels_. The singular way in which Swift
+blends personal aversion with political conviction, and the strange
+humour which conceals the misanthropist under a superficial playfulness,
+veils to some extent his real aim. But Swift showed with unequalled
+power and in an exaggerated form the conviction that there was something
+wrong in the social order, which was suggested by the conditions of the
+time and was to bear fruit in later days. Satire, however, is by its
+nature negative; it does not present a positive ideal, and tends to
+degenerate into mere hopeless pessimism. Lofty poetry can only spring
+from some inner positive enthusiasm.
+
+I turn to another characteristic of the literary movement. I have called
+attention to the fact that while the Queen Anne writers were never tired
+of appealing to nature, they came to be considered as prematurely
+'artificial.' The commonest meaning of 'natural' is that in which it is
+identified with 'normal,' We call a thing natural when its existence
+appears to us to be a matter of course, which again may simply mean that
+we are so accustomed to certain conditions that we do not remember that
+they are really exceptional. We take ourselves with all our
+peculiarities to be the 'natural' type or standard. An English traveller
+in France remarked that it was unnatural for soldiers to be dressed in
+blue; and then, remembering certain British cases, added, 'except,
+indeed, for the Artillery or the Blue Horse.' The English model, with
+all its variations, appeared to him to be ordained by Nature. This
+unconscious method of usurping a general name so as to cover a general
+meaning produces many fallacies. In any case, however, it was of the
+essence of Pope's doctrine that we should, as he puts it, 'Look through
+Nature up to Nature's God.' God, that is, is known through Nature, if it
+would not be more correct to say that God and Nature are identical. This
+Nature often means the world as not modified by human action, and
+therefore sharing the divine workmanship unspoilt by man's interference.
+Thus in the common phrase, the 'love of Nature' is generally taken to
+mean the love of natural scenery, of sea and sky and mountains, which
+are not altered or alterable by any human art. Yet it is said the want
+of any such love describes one of the most obvious deficiencies in
+Pope's poetry, of which Wordsworth so often complained. His famous
+preface asserts the complete absence of any imagery from Nature in the
+writings of the time. It was, however, at the period of which I am
+speaking that a change was taking place which was worth considering.
+
+One cause is obvious. The Wit utters the voice of the town. He agreed
+with the gentleman who preferred the smell of a flambeau in St. James
+Street to any abundance of violet and sweetbriar. But, as communications
+improved between town and country, the separation between the taste of
+classes became less marked. The great nobleman had always been in part
+an exalted squire, and had a taste for field-sports as well as for the
+opera. Bolingbroke and Walpole are both instances in point. Sir Roger de
+Coverley came up to town more frequently than his ancestors, but the
+_Spectator_ recorded his visits as those of a simple rustic. After the
+peace, the country gentleman begins regularly to visit the Continent.
+The 'grand tour' mostly common in the preceding century becomes a normal
+fact of the education of the upper classes. The foundation of the
+Dilettante Club in 1734 marks the change. The qualifications, says
+Horace Walpole, were drunkenness and a visit to Italy. The founders of
+it seem to have been jovial young men who had met each other abroad,
+where, with obsequious tutors and out of sight of domestic authority,
+they often learned some very queer lessons. But many of them learned
+more, and by degrees the Dilettante Club took not only to encouraging
+the opera in England, but to making really valuable archaeological
+researches in Greece and elsewhere. The intelligent youth had great
+opportunities of mixing in the best foreign society, and began to bring
+home the pictures which adorn so many English country houses; to talk
+about the 'correggiosity of Correggio'; and in due time to patronise
+Reynolds and Gainsborough. The traveller began to take some interest
+even in the Alps, wrote stanzas to the 'Grande Chartreuse,' admired
+Salvator Rosa, and even visited Chamonix. Another characteristic change
+is more to the present purpose. A conspicuous mark of the time was a
+growing taste for gardening. The taste has, I suppose, existed ever
+since our ancestors were turned out of the Garden of Eden. Milton's
+description of that place of residence, and Bacon's famous essay, and
+Cowley's poems addressed to the great authority Evelyn, and most of all
+perhaps Maxwell's inimitable description of the very essence of garden,
+may remind us that it flourished in the seventeenth century. It is
+needless to say in Oxford how beautiful an old-fashioned garden might
+be. But at this time a change was taking place in the canons of taste.
+Temple in a well-known essay had praised the old-fashioned garden and
+had remarked how the regularity of English plantations seemed ridiculous
+to--of all people in the world--the Chinese. By the middle of the
+eighteenth century there had been what is called a 'reaction,' and the
+English garden, which was called 'natural,' was famous and often
+imitated in France. It is curious to remark how closely this taste was
+associated with the group of friends whom Pope has celebrated. The
+first, for example, of the four 'Moral Epistles,' is addressed to
+Cobham, who laid out the famous garden at Stowe, in which 'Capability
+Brown,' the most popular landscape gardener of the century, was brought
+up; the third is addressed to Bathurst, an enthusiastic gardener, who
+had shown his skill at his seat of Richings near Colnbrook; and the
+fourth to Burlington, whose house and gardens at Chiswick were laid out
+by Kent, the famous landscape gardener and architect--Brown's
+predecessor. In the same epistle Pope ridicules the formality of
+Chandos' grounds at Canons. A description of his own garden includes the
+familiar lines
+
+
+     'Here St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
+     The feast of reason and the flow of soul,
+     And he (Peterborough) whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines
+     Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines,
+     Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
+     Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.'
+
+
+Pope's own garden was itself a model. 'Pope,' says Horace Walpole, 'had
+twisted and twirled and rhymed and harmonised his little five acres
+till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening
+beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick impenetrable
+woods.' The taste grew as the century advanced. Now one impulse towards
+the new style is said to have come from articles in the _Spectator_ by
+Addison and in the _Guardian_ by Pope, ridiculing the old-fashioned mode
+of clipping trees, and so forth. Nature, say both, is superior to art,
+and the man of genius, as Pope puts it, is the first to perceive that
+all art consists of 'imitation and study of nature.' Horace Walpole in
+his essay upon gardening remarks a point which may symbolise the
+principle. The modern style, he says, sprang from the invention of the
+ha-ha by Bridgeman, one of the first landscape gardeners. The 'ha-ha'
+meant that the garden, instead of being enclosed by a wall, was laid out
+so as to harmonise with the surrounding country, from which it was only
+separated by an invisible fence. That is the answer to the problem; is
+it not a solecism for a lover of gardens to prefer nature to art? A
+garden is essentially a product of art? and supplants the moor and
+desert made by unassisted nature. The love of Nature as understood in a
+later period, by Byron for example, went to this extreme, in words at
+least, and becomes misanthropical in admiring the savage for its own
+sake. But the landscape gardener only meant that his art must be in some
+sense subordinate to nature; that he must not shut out the wider scenery
+but include it in his designs. He was apt to look upon mountains as a
+background to parks, as Telford thought that rivers were created to
+supply canals. The excellent Gilpin, who became an expounder of what he
+calls 'the theory of the picturesque,' travelled on the Wye in the same
+year as Gray; and amusingly criticises nature from this point of view.
+Nature, he says, works in a cold and singular style of composition, but
+has the merit of never falling into 'mannerism.' Nature, that is, is a
+sublime landscape gardener whose work has to be accepted, and to whom
+the gardener must accommodate himself. A quaint instance of this theory
+may be found in the lecture which Henry Tilney in _Mansfield Park_
+delivers to Catherine Morland. In Horace Walpole's theory, the evolution
+of the ha-ha, means that man and nature, the landowner and the country,
+are gradually forming an alliance, and it comes to the same thing
+whether one or the other assimilates his opposite.
+
+Briefly, this means one process by which the so-called love of nature
+was growing; it meant better roads and inns; the gradual reflux of town
+into country; and the growing sense already expressed by Cowley and
+Marvell, that overcrowded centres of population have their
+inconveniences, and that the citizen should have his periods of
+communion with unsophisticated nature. Squire and Wit are each learning
+to appreciate each other's tastes. The tourist is developed, and begins,
+as Gibbon tells us, to 'view the glaciers' now that he can view them
+without personal inconvenience. This, again, suggests that there is
+nothing radically new in the so-called love of nature. Any number of
+poets from Chaucer downwards may be cited to show that men were never
+insensible to natural beauty of scenery; to the outburst of spring, or
+the bloom of flowers, or the splendours of storms and sunsets. The
+indifference to nature of the Pope school was, so far, the temporary
+complacency of the new population focused in the metropolitan area in
+their own enlightenment and their contempt for the outside rustic. The
+love of field-sports was as strong as ever in the squire, and as soon as
+he began to receive some of the intellectual irradiation from the town
+Wit, he began to express the emotions which never found clearer
+utterance than in Walton's _Compleat Angler_. But there is a
+characteristic difference. With the old poets nature is in the
+background; it supplies the scenery for human action and is not itself
+consciously the object; they deal with concrete facts, with the delight
+of sport or rustic amusements: and they embody their feelings in the old
+conventions; they converse with imaginary shepherds: with Robin Hood or
+allegorical knights in romantic forests, who represent a love of nature
+but introduce description only as a set-off to the actors in masques or
+festivals. In Pope's time we have the abstract or metaphysical deity
+Nature, who can be worshipped with a distinct appreciation. The
+conventions have become obsolete, and if used at all, the poet himself
+is laughing in his sleeve. The serious aim of the poet is to give a
+philosophy of human nature; and the mere description of natural objects
+strikes him as silly unless tacked to a moral. Who could take offence,
+asks Pope, referring to his earlier poems, 'when pure description held
+the place of sense'? The poet, that is, who wishes to be 'sensible'
+above all, cannot condescend to give mere catalogues of trees and
+rivers and mountains. Nature, however, is beginning to put in a claim
+for attention, even in the sense in which Nature means the material
+world. In one sense this is a natural corollary from the philosophy of
+the time and of that religion of nature which it implied. Pope himself
+gives one version of it in the _Essay on Man_; and can expatiate
+eloquently upon the stars and upon the animal world. But the poem itself
+is essentially constructed out of a philosophical theory too purely
+argumentative to lend itself easily to poetry. A different, though
+allied, way of dealing with the subject appears elsewhere. If Pope
+learned mainly from Bolingbroke, he was also influenced by Shaftesbury
+of the _Characteristics_. I note, but cannot here insist upon,
+Shaftesbury's peculiar philosophical position. He inherited to some
+extent the doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists and repudiated the
+sensationalist doctrine of Locke and the metaphysical method of Clarke.
+He had a marked influence on Hutcheson, Butler, and the common-sense
+philosophers of his day. For us, it is enough to say that he worships
+Nature but takes rather the aesthetic than the dialectical point of view.
+The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are all one, as he constantly
+insists, and the universe impresses us not as a set of mechanical
+contrivances but as an artistic embodiment of harmony. He therefore
+restores the universal element which is apt to pass out of sight in
+Pope's rhymed arguments. He indulges his philosophical enthusiasm in
+what he calls _The Moralists, a Rhapsody_. It culminates in a prose hymn
+to a 'glorious Nature, supremely fair and sovereignly good; all-loving
+and all-lovely, all divine,' which ends by a survey of the different
+climates, where even in the moonbeams and the shades of the forests we
+find intimations of the mysterious being who pervades the universe. A
+love of beauty was, in this sense, a thoroughly legitimate development
+of the 'Religion of Nature.' Akenside in his philosophical poem _The
+Pleasures of Imagination_, written a little later, professed himself to
+be a disciple of Shaftesbury, and his version supplied many quotations
+for Scottish professors of philosophy. Henry Brooke's _Universal
+Beauty_, a kind of appendix to Pope's essay, is upon the same theme,
+though he became rather mixed in physiological expositions, which
+suggested, it is said, Darwin's _Botanic Garden_. The religious
+sentiment embodied in his _Fool of Quality_ charmed Wesley and was
+enthusiastically admired by Kingsley. Thomson, however, best illustrates
+this current of sentiment. The fine 'Hymn of Nature' appended to the
+_Seasons_, is precisely in the same vein as Shaftesbury's rhapsody. The
+descriptions of nature are supposed to suggest the commentary embodied
+in the hymn. He still describes the sea and sky and mountains with the
+more or less intention of preaching a sermon upon them. That is the
+justification of the 'pure description' which Pope condemned in
+principle, and which occupies the larger part of the poem. Thomson, when
+he wrote the sermons, was still fresh from Edinburgh and from
+Teviotdale. He had a real eye for scenery, and describes from
+observation. The English Wits had not, it seems, annexed Scotland, and
+Thomson had studied Milton and Spenser without being forced to look
+through Pope's spectacles. Still he cannot quite trust himself. He is
+still afraid, and not without reason, that pure description will fall
+into flat prose, and tries to 'raise his diction'--in the phrase of the
+day--by catching something of the Miltonic harmony and by speaking of
+fish as 'finny tribes' and birds as 'the feathered people.' The fact,
+however, that he could suspend his moralising to give realistic
+descriptions at full length, and that they became the most interesting
+parts of the poem, shows a growing interest in country life. The
+supremacy of the town Wit is no longer unquestioned; and there is an
+audience for the plain direct transcripts of natural objects for which
+the Wit had been too dignified and polished. Thomson had thus the merit
+of representing a growing sentiment--and yet he has not quite solved the
+problem. His philosophy is not quite fused with his observation. To make
+'Nature' really interesting you must have a touch of Wordsworthian
+pantheism and of Shelley's 'pathetic fallacy.' Thomson's facts and his
+commentary lie in separate compartments. To him, apparently, the
+philosophy is more important than the simple description. His
+masterpiece was to be the didactic and now forgotten poem on _Liberty_.
+It gives an interesting application; for there already we have the
+sentiment which was to become more marked in later years. 'Liberty'
+crosses the Alps and they suggest a fine passage on the beauty of
+mountains. Nature has formed them as a rampart for the homely republics
+which worship 'plain Liberty'; and are free from the corruption typified
+by Walpole. That obviously is the germ of the true Rousseau version of
+Nature worship. On the whole, however, Nature, as interpreted by the
+author of 'Rule Britannia,' is still very well satisfied with the
+British Constitution and looks upon the Revolution of 1688 as the avatar
+of the true goddess. 'Nature,' that is, has not yet come to condemn
+civilisation in general as artificial and therefore corrupt. As in
+practice, a lover of Nature did not profess to prefer the wilderness to
+fields, and looked upon mountains rather as a background to the
+nobleman's park than as a shelter for republics; so in politics it
+reflected no revolutionary tendency but rather included the true British
+system which has grown up under its protection. Nature has taken to
+lecturing, but she only became frankly revolutionary with Rousseau and
+misanthropic with Byron.
+
+I must touch one more characteristic. Pope, I have said, represents the
+aristocratic development of literature. Meanwhile the purely plebeian
+society was growing, and the toe of the clown beginning to gall the kibe
+of the courtier. Pope's 'war with the dunces' was the historical symptom
+of this most important social development. The _Dunciad_, which,
+whatever its occasional merits, one cannot read without spasms both of
+disgust and moral disapproval, is the literary outcome. Pope's morbid
+sensibility perverts his morals till he accepts the worst of
+aristocratic prejudices and treats poverty as in itself criminal. It led
+him, too, to attack some worthy people, and among others the 'earless'
+Defoe. Defoe's position is most significant. A journalist of supreme
+ability, he had an abnormally keen eye for the interesting. No one could
+feel the pulse of his audience with greater quickness. He had already
+learned by inference that nothing interests the ordinary reader so much
+as a straightforward narrative of contemporary facts. He added the
+remark that it did not in the least matter whether the facts had or had
+not happened; and secondly, that it saved a great deal of trouble to
+make your facts instead of finding them. The result was the inimitable
+_Robinson Crusoe_, which was, in that sense, a simple application of
+journalistic methods, not a conscious attempt to create a new variety of
+novel. Alexander Selkirk had very little to tell about his remarkable
+experience; and so Defoe, instead of confining himself like the ordinary
+interviewer to facts, proceeded to tell a most circumstantial and
+elaborate lie--for which we are all grateful. He was doing far more than
+he meant. Defoe, as the most thorough type of the English class to
+which he belonged, could not do otherwise than make his creation a
+perfect embodiment of his own qualities. _Robinson Crusoe_ became, we
+know, a favourite of Rousseau, and has supplied innumerable
+illustrations to writers on Political Economy. One reason is that Crusoe
+is the very incarnation of individualism: thrown entirely upon his own
+resources, he takes the position with indomitable pluck; adapts himself
+to the inevitable as quietly and sturdily as may be; makes himself
+thoroughly at home in a desert island, and, as soon as he meets a
+native, summarily annexes him, and makes him thoroughly useful. He comes
+up smiling after many years as if he had been all the time in a shop in
+Cheapside without a hair turned. This exemplary person not only embodies
+the type of middle class Briton but represents his most romantic
+aspirations. In those days the civilised world was still surrounded by
+the dim mysterious regions, where geographers placed elephants instead
+of towns, but where the adventurous Briton was beginning to push his way
+into strange native confines and to oust the wretched foreigner, Dutch,
+French, Spanish, and Portuguese, who had dared to anticipate him.
+Crusoe is the voice of the race which was to be stirred by the story of
+Jenkins' ear and lay the foundation of the Empire. Meanwhile, as a
+literary work, it showed most effectually the power of homely realism.
+There is no bother about dignity or attempt to reveal the eloquence of
+the polished Wit. It is precisely the plain downright English vernacular
+which is thoroughly intelligible to everybody who is capable of reading.
+The Wit, too, as Swift sufficiently proved, could be a consummate master
+of that kind of writing on occasion, and Gulliver probably showed
+something to Crusoe. But for us the interest is the development of a new
+class of readers, who won't bother about canons of taste or care for
+skill in working upon the old conventional methods, but can be
+profoundly interested in a straightforward narrative adapted to the
+simplest understandings. Pope's contempt for the dunces meant that the
+lower classes were the objects of supreme contempt to the aristocratic
+circle, whose culture they did not share. But Defoe was showing in a new
+sense of the word the advantage of an appeal to Nature; for the true
+life and vigour of the nation was coming to be embodied in the class
+which was spontaneously developing its own ideals and beginning to
+regard the culture of the upper circle as artificial in the
+objectionable sense. Outside the polished circle of wits we have the
+middle-class which is beginning to read, and will read, what it really
+likes without bothering about Aristotle or M. Bossu: as, in the other
+direction, the assimilation between town and country is incidentally
+suggesting a wider range of topics, and giving a new expression to
+conditions which had for some time been without expression.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+(1739-1763)
+
+
+I am now to speak of the quarter of a century which succeeded the fall
+of Walpole, and includes two singularly contrasted periods. Walpole's
+fall meant the accession to power of the heterogeneous body of statesmen
+whose virtuous indignation had been raised by his corrupt practices.
+Some of them, as Carteret, Pulteney, Chesterfield, were men of great
+ability; but, after a series of shifting combinations and personal
+intrigues, the final result was the triumph of the Pelhams--the
+grotesque Duke of Newcastle and his brother, who owed their success
+mainly to skill in the art of parliamentary management. The opposition
+had ousted Walpole by taking advantage of the dumb instinct which
+impelled us to go to war with Spain; and distracted by the interests of
+Hanover and the balance of power we had plunged into that complicated
+series of wars which lasted for some ten years, and passes all powers
+of the ordinary human intellect to understand or remember. For what
+particular reason Englishmen were fighting at Dettingen or Fontenoy or
+Lauffeld is a question which a man can only answer when he has been
+specially crammed for examination and his knowledge has not begun to
+ooze out; while the abnormal incapacity of our rulers was displayed at
+the attack upon Carthagena or during the Pretender's march into England.
+The history becomes a shifting chaos marked by no definite policy, and
+the ship of State is being steered at random as one or other of the
+competitors for rule manages to grasp the helm for a moment. Then after
+another period of aimless intrigues the nation seems to rouse itself;
+and finding at last a statesman who has a distinct purpose and can
+appeal to a great patriotic sentiment, takes the leading part in Europe,
+wins a series of victories, and lays the foundation of the British
+Empire in America and India. Under Walpole's rule the House of Commons
+had become definitely the dominant political body. The minister who
+could command it was master of the position. The higher aristocracy are
+still in possession of great influence, but they are ceasing to be the
+adequate representatives of the great political forces. They are in the
+comfortable position of having completely established their own
+privileges; and do not see any reason for extending privileges to
+others. Success depends upon personal intrigues among themselves and
+upon a proper manipulation of the Lower House which, though no overt
+constitutional change has taken place, is coming to be more decidedly
+influenced by the interests of the moneyed men and the growing middle
+classes. Pitt and Newcastle represent the two classes which are coming
+into distinct antagonism. Pitt's power rested upon the general national
+sentiment. 'You have taught me,' as George II. said to him, 'to look for
+the sense of my people in other places than the House of Commons.' The
+House of Commons, that is, should not derive its whole authority from
+the selfish interest of the borough-mongers but from the great outside
+current of patriotic sentiment and aspiration. But public opinion was
+not yet powerful enough to support the great minister without an
+alliance with the master of the small arts of intrigue. The general
+sentiments of discontent which had been raised by Walpole was therefore
+beginning to widen and deepen and to take a different form. The root of
+the evil, as people began to feel, was not in the individual Walpole but
+in the system which he represented. Brown's _Estimate_ is often noticed
+in illustration. Brown convinced his readers, as Macaulay puts it, that
+they were a race of cowards and scoundrels, who richly deserved the fate
+in store for them of being speedily enslaved by their enemies; and the
+prophecy was published (1757) on the eve of the most glorious war we had
+ever known. It represents also, as Macaulay observes, the indignation
+roused by the early failures of the war and the demand that Pitt should
+take the helm. Brown was a very clever, though not a very profound,
+writer. A similar and more remarkable utterance had been made some years
+before (1749) by the remarkable thinker, David Hartley. The world, he
+said, was in the most critical state ever known. He attributes the evil
+to the growth of infidelity in the upper classes; their general
+immorality; their sordid self-interest, which was almost the sole motive
+of action of the ministers; the contempt for authority of all their
+superiors; the worldly-mindedness of the clergy and the general
+carelessness as to education. These sentiments are not the mere
+platitudes, common to moralists in all ages. They are pointed and
+emphasised by the state of political and social life in the period.
+Besides the selfishness and want of principle of the upper classes, one
+fact upon which Hartley insists is sufficiently familiar. The Church it
+is obvious had been paralysed. It had no corporate activity; it was in
+thorough subjection to the aristocracy; the highest preferments were to
+be won by courting such men as Newcastle, and not by learning or by
+active discharge of duty; and the ordinary parson, though he might be
+thoroughly respectable and amiable, was dependant upon the squire as his
+superior upon the ministers. He took things easily enough to verify
+Hartley's remarks. We must infer from later history that a true
+diagnosis would not have been so melancholy as Hartley supposed. The
+nation was not corrupt at the core. It was full of energy; and rapidly
+developing in many directions. The upper classes, who had gained all
+they wanted, were comfortable and irresponsible; not yet seriously
+threatened by agitators; able to carry on a traffic in sinecures and
+pensions, and demoralised as every corporate body becomes demoralised
+which has no functions to discharge in proportion to capacities. The
+Church naturally shared the indolence of its rulers and patrons. Hartley
+exhorts the clergy to take an example from the energy of the Methodists
+instead of abusing them. Wesley had begun his remarkable missionary
+career in 1738, and the rapid growth of his following is a familiar
+proof on the one side of the indolence of the established authorities,
+and on the other of the strength of the demand for reform in classes to
+which he appealed. If, that is, the clergy were not up to their duties,
+Wesley's success shows that there was a strong sense of existing moral
+and social evils which only required an energetic leader to form a
+powerful organisation. I need not attempt to inquire into the causes of
+the Wesleyan and Evangelical movement, but must note one
+characteristic--it had not an intellectual but a sound moral origin.
+Wesley takes his creed for granted, and it was the creed, so far as they
+had one, of the masses of the nation. He is shocked by perjury,
+drunkenness, corruption, and so forth, but has not seriously to meet
+scepticism of the speculative variety. If Wesley did not, like the
+leader of another Oxford movement, feel bound to clear up the logical
+basis of his religious beliefs, he had of course to confront deism, but
+could set it down as a mere product of moral indifference. When Hartley,
+like Butler, speaks of the general unbelief of the day, he was no doubt
+correct within limits. In the upper social sphere the tone was
+sceptical. Not only Bolingbroke but such men as Chesterfield and Walpole
+were indifferent or contemptuous. They were prepared to go with
+Voltaire's development of the English rationalism. But the English
+sceptic of the upper classes was generally a Gallio. He had no desire to
+propagate his creed, still less to attack the Church, which was a
+valuable part of his property; it never occurred to him that scepticism
+might lead to a political as well as an ecclesiastical revolution.
+Voltaire was not intentionally destructive in politics, whatever the
+real effect of his teaching; but he was an avowed and bitter enemy of
+the Church and the orthodox creed. Hume, the great English sceptic, was
+not only a Tory in politics but had no desire to affect the popular
+belief. He could advise a clergyman to preach the ordinary doctrines,
+because it was paying far too great a compliment to the vulgar to be
+punctilious about speaking the truth to them. A similar indifference is
+characteristic of the whole position. The select classes were to be
+perfectly convinced that the accepted creed was superstitious; but they
+were not for that reason to attack it. To the statesman, as Gibbon was
+to point out, a creed is equally useful, true or false; and the English
+clergy, though bound to use orthodox language, were far too well in hand
+to be regarded as possible persecutors. Even in Scotland they made no
+serious attempt to suppress Hume; he had only to cover his opinions by
+some decent professions of belief. One symptom of the general state of
+mind is the dying out of the deist controversies. The one great divine,
+according to Brown's _Estimate_, was Warburton, the colossus, he says,
+who bestrides the world: and Warburton, whatever else he may have been,
+was certainly of all divines the one whose argument is most palpably
+fictitious, if not absolutely insincere. He marks, however, the tendency
+of the argument to become historical. Like a much acuter writer, Conyers
+Middleton, he is occupied with the curious problem: how do we reconcile
+the admission that miracles never happen with the belief that they once
+happened?--or are the two beliefs reconcilable? That means, is history
+continuous? But it also means that the problems of abstract theology
+were passing out of sight, and that speculation was turning to the
+historical and scientific problems. Hartley was expounding the
+association principle which became the main doctrine of the empirical
+school, and Hume was teaching ethics upon the same basis, and turning
+from speculation to political history. The main reason of this
+intellectual indifference was the social condition under which the
+philosophical theory found no strong current of political discontent
+with which to form an alliance. The middle classes, which are now
+growing in strength and influence, had been indifferent to the
+discussions going on above their heads. The more enlightened clergy had,
+of course, been engaged in the direct controversy, and had adopted a
+kind of mild common-sense rationalism which implied complete
+indifference to the dogmatic disputes of the preceding century. The
+Methodist movement produced a little revival of the Calvinist and
+Arminian controversy. But the beliefs of the great mass of the
+population were not materially affected: they held by sheer force of
+inertia to the old traditions, and still took themselves to be good
+orthodox Protestants, though they had been unconsciously more affected
+by the permeation of rationalism than they realised.
+
+So much must be said, because the literary work was being more and more
+distinctly addressed to the middle class. The literary profession is now
+taking more of the modern form. Grub Street is rapidly becoming
+respectable, and its denizens--as Beauclerk said of Johnson when he got
+his pension--will be able to 'purge and live cleanly like gentlemen.'
+Johnson's incomparable letter (1755) rejecting Chesterfield's attempt to
+impose his patronage, is the familiar indication of the change. Johnson
+had been labouring in the employment of the booksellers, and always,
+unlike some more querulous authors, declares that they were fair and
+liberal patrons--though it is true that he had to knock down one of them
+with a folio. Other writers of less fame can turn an honest penny by
+providing popular literature of the heavier kind. There is a demand for
+'useful information.' There was John Campbell, for example, the 'richest
+author,' said Johnson, who ever grazed 'the common of literature,' who
+contributed to the _Modern Universal History_, the _Biographica
+Britannica_, and wrote the _Lives of the Admirals_ and the _Political
+Survey of Great Britain_, and innumerable historical and statistical
+works; and the queer adventurer Sir John Hill, who turned out book after
+book with marvellous rapidity and impudence, and is said to have really
+had some knowledge of botany. The industrious drudges and clever
+charlatans could make a respectable income. Smollett is a superior
+example, whose 'literary factory,' as it has been said, 'was in full
+swing' at this period, and who, besides his famous novels, was
+journalist, historian, and author of all work, and managed to keep
+himself afloat, though he also contrived to exceed his income and was
+supported by a number of inferior 'myrmidons' who helped to turn out his
+hackwork. He describes the author's position in a famous passage in
+_Humphry Clinker_ (1756). Smollett also started the _Critical Review_ in
+rivalry to the _Monthly Review_, begun by Griffiths a few years before
+(1749), and these two were for a long time the only precursors to the
+_Edinburgh Review_, and marked an advance upon the old _Gentleman's
+Magazine_. In other words, we have the beginning of a new tribunal or
+literary Star Chamber. The author has not to inquire what is said of his
+performances in the coffee-houses, where the Wits gathered under the
+presidency of Addison or Swift. The professional critic has appeared
+who will make it his regular business to give an account of all new
+books, and though his reviews are still comparatively meagre and apt to
+be mere analyses, it is implied that a kind of public opinion is growing
+up which will decide upon his merits, and upon which his success or
+failure will depend. That means again that the readers to whom he is to
+appeal are mainly the middle class, who are not very highly cultivated,
+but who have at any rate reached the point of reading their newspaper
+and magazine regularly, and buy books enough to make it worth while to
+supply the growing demand. The nobleman has ceased to consider the
+patronage of authors as any part of his duty, and the tradition which
+made him consider writing poetry as a proper accomplishment is dying
+out. Since that time our aristocracy as such has been normally
+illiterate. Peers--Byron, for example--have occasionally written books;
+and more than one person of quality has, like Fox, kept up the interest
+in classical literature which he acquired at a public school, and added
+a charm to his parliamentary oratory. The great man, too, as I have
+said, could take his chance in political writing, and occasionally
+condescend to show his skill at an essay of the _Spectator_ model. But a
+certain contempt for the professional writer is becoming characteristic,
+even of men like Horace Walpole, who have a real taste for literature.
+He is inclined to say, as Chesterfield put it in a famous speech, 'We,
+my lords, may thank Heaven that we have something better than our brains
+to depend upon.' As literature becomes more of a regular profession,
+your noble wishes to show his independence of anything like a commercial
+pursuit. Walpole can speak politely to men like Gibbon, and even to
+Hume, who have some claim to be gentlemen as well as authors; but he
+feels that he is condescending even to them, and has nothing but
+contemptuous aversion for a Johnson, whose claim to consideration
+certainly did not include any special refinement. Johnson and his circle
+had still an odour of Grub street, which is only to be kept at a
+distance more carefully because it is in a position of comparative
+independence. Meanwhile, the author himself holds by the authority of
+Addison and Pope. They, he still admits for the most part, represent the
+orthodox church; their work is still taken to be the perfection of art,
+and the canons which they have handed down have a prestige which makes
+any dissenter an object of suspicion. Yet as the audience has really
+changed, a certain change also makes itself felt in the substance and
+the form of the corresponding literature.
+
+One remarkable book marks the opening of the period. The first part of
+Young's _Night Thoughts_ appeared in 1742, and the poem at once acquired
+a popularity which lasted at least through the century. Young had been
+more or less associated with the Addison and Pope circles, in the later
+part of Queen Anne's reign. He had failed to obtain any satisfactory
+share of the patronage which came to some of his fellows. He is still a
+Wit till he has to take orders for a college living as the old Wits'
+circle is decaying. He tried with little success to get something by
+attaching himself to some questionable patrons who were induced to carry
+on the practice, and the want of due recognition left him to the end of
+his life as a man with a grievance. He had tried poetical epistles, and
+satires, and tragedies with undeniable success and had shown undeniable
+ability. Yet somehow or other he had not, one may say, emerged from the
+second class till in the _Night Thoughts_ he opened a new vein which
+exactly met the contemporary taste. The success was no doubt due to some
+really brilliant qualities, but I need not here ask in what precise rank
+he should be placed, as an author or a moralist. His significance for us
+is simple. The _Night Thoughts_, as he tells us, was intended to supply
+an omission in Pope's _Essay on Man_. Pope's deistical position excluded
+any reference to revealed religion, to posthumous rewards and penalties,
+and expressed an optimistic philosophy which ignored the corruption of
+human nature. Young represents a partial revolt against the domination
+of the Pope circle. He had always been an outsider, and his life at
+Oxford had, you may perhaps hope, preserved his orthodoxy. He writes
+blank verse, though evidently the blank verse of a man accustomed to the
+'heroic couplets'; he uses the conventional 'poetic diction'; he strains
+after epigrammatic point in the manner of Pope, and the greater part of
+his poem is an elaborate argumentation to prove the immortality of
+man--chiefly by the argument from astronomy. But though so far accepting
+the old method, his success in introducing a new element marks an
+important change. He is elaborately and deliberately pathetic; he is
+always thinking of death, and calling upon the readers to sympathise
+with his sorrows and accept his consolations. The world taken by itself
+is, he maintains, a huge lunatic asylum, and the most hideous of sights
+is a naked human heart. We are, indeed, to find sufficient consolation
+from the belief in immortality. How far Young was orthodox or logical or
+really edifying is a question with which I am not concerned. The
+appetite for this strain of melancholy reflection is characteristic.
+Blair's _Grave_, representing another version of the sentiment, appeared
+simultaneously and independently. Blair, like Thomson, living in
+Scotland, was outside the Pope circle of wit, and had studied the old
+English authors instead of Pope and Dryden. He negotiated for the
+publication of his poem through Watts and Doddridge, each of whom was an
+eminent interpreter of the religious sentiment of the middle classes.
+Both wrote hymns still popular, and Doddridge's _Rise and Progress of
+Religion in the Soul_ has been a permanently valued manual. The Pope
+school had omitted religious considerations, and treated religion as a
+system of abstract philosophy. The new class of readers wants something
+more congenial to the teaching of their favourite ministers and
+chapels. Young and Blair thoroughly suited them. Wesley admired Young's
+poem, and even proposed to bring out an edition. In his _Further Appeal
+to Men of Reason and Religion_, Wesley, like Brown and Hartley, draws up
+a striking indictment of the manners of the time. He denounces the
+liberty and effeminacy of the nobility; the widespread immorality; the
+chicanery of lawyers; the jobbery of charities; the stupid
+self-satisfaction of Englishmen; the brutality of the Army; the
+indolence and preferment humbug of the Church--the true cause, as he
+says, of the 'contempt for the clergy' which had become proverbial. His
+remedy of course is to be found in a revival of true religion. He
+accepts the general sentiment that the times are out of joint, though he
+would seek for a deeper cause than that which was recognised by the
+political satirist. While Young was weeping at Welwyn, James Hervey was
+meditating among the tombs in Devonshire, and soon afterwards gave
+utterance to the result in language inspired by very bad taste, but
+showing a love of nature and expressing the 'sentimentalism' which was
+then a new discovery. It is said to have eclipsed Law's _Serious Call_,
+which I have already mentioned as giving, in admirable literary form,
+the view of the contemporary world which naturally found favour with
+religious thinkers.
+
+These symptoms indicate the tendencies of the rising class to which the
+author has mainly to address himself. It has ceased to be fully
+represented by the upper social stratum whose tastes are reflected by
+Pope. No distinct democratic sentiment had yet appeared; the
+aristocratic order was accepted as inevitable or natural; but there was
+a vague though growing sentiment that the rulers are selfish and
+corrupt. There is no strong sceptical or anti-religious sentiment; but a
+spreading conviction that the official pastors are scandalously careless
+in supplying the wants of their flocks. The philosophical and literary
+canons of the scholar and gentleman have become unsatisfactory; the
+vulgar do not care for the delicate finish appreciated by your
+Chesterfield and acquired in the conversations of polite society, and
+the indolent scepticism which leads to metaphysical expositions, and is
+not allied with any political or social passion, does not appeal to
+them. The popular books of the preceding generation had been the
+directly religious books: Baxter's _Saint's Rest_, and the _Pilgrim's
+Progress_--despised by the polite but beloved by the popular class in
+spite of the critics; and among the dissenters such a work as Boston's
+_Fourfold State_, or in the Church, Law's _Serious Call_. Your polite
+author had ignored the devil, and he plays a part in human affairs
+which, as Carlyle pointed out in later days, cannot be permanently
+overlooked. The old horned and hoofed devil, indeed, for whom Defoe had
+still a weakness, shown in his _History of the Devil_, was becoming a
+little incredible; witchcraft was dying out, though Wesley still felt
+bound to profess some belief in it; and the old Calvinistic dogmatism,
+though it could produce a certain amount of controversy among the
+Methodists, had been made obsolete by the growth of rationalism. Still
+the new public wanted something more savoury than its elegant teachers
+had given; and, if sermons had ceased to be so stimulating as of old, it
+could find it in secular moralisers. Defoe, always keenly alive to the
+general taste, had tried to supply the demand not only by his queer
+_History of the Devil_ but by appending a set of moral reflections to
+_Robinson Crusoe_ and other edifying works, which disgusted Charles Lamb
+by their petty tradesman morality, and which hardly represent a very
+lofty ideal. But the recognised representative of the moralists was the
+ponderous Samuel Johnson. It is hard when reading the _Rambler_ to
+recognise the massive common sense and deep feeling struggling with the
+ponderous verbiage and elephantine facetiousness; yet it was not only a
+treasure of wisdom to the learned ladies, Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs.
+Elizabeth Carter and the like, who were now beginning to appear, but was
+received, without provoking ridicule, by the whole literary class.
+_Rasselas_, in spite of its formality, is still a very impressive book.
+The literary critic may amuse himself with the question how Johnson came
+to acquire the peculiar style which imposed upon contemporaries and
+excited the ridicule of the next generation. According to Boswell, it
+was due to his reading of Sir Thomas Browne, and a kind of reversion to
+the earlier period in which the Latinisms of Browne were still natural,
+when the revolt to simple prose had not begun. Addison, at any rate, as
+Boswell truly remarks, writes like a 'companion,' and Johnson like a
+teacher. He puts on his academical robes to deliver his message to
+mankind, and is no longer the Wit, echoing the coffee-house talk, but
+the moralist, who looks indeed at actual life, but stands well apart
+and knows many hours of melancholy and hypochondria. He preaches the
+morality of his time--the morality of Richardson and Young--only
+tempered by a hearty contempt for cant, sentimentalism, and all
+unreality, and expressing his deeper and stronger nature. The style,
+however acquired, has the idiosyncrasy of the man himself; but I shall
+have to speak of the Johnsonian view in the next period, when he became
+the acknowledged literary dictator and expressed one main tendency of
+the period.
+
+Meanwhile Richardson, as Johnson put it, had been teaching the passions
+to move at the command of virtue. In other words, Richardson had
+discovered an incomparably more effective way of preaching a popular
+sermon. He had begun, as we know, by writing a series of edifying
+letters to young women; and expounded the same method in _Pamela_, and
+afterwards in the famous _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_.
+All his books are deliberate attempts to embody his ideal in model
+representatives of the society of his day. He might have taken a
+suggestion from Bunyan; who besides his great religious allegory and the
+curious life of _Mr. Badman_, couched a moral lesson in a description
+of the actual tradesman of his time. Allegory was now to be supplanted
+by fiction. The man was to take the place of the personified virtue and
+vice. Defoe had already shown the power of downright realistic
+storytelling; and Richardson perhaps learnt something from him when he
+was drawing his minute and vivid portraits of the people who might at
+any rate pass for being realities. I must take for granted that
+Richardson was a man of genius, without adding a word as to its precise
+quality. I need only repeat one familiar remark. Richardson was a
+typical tradesman of the period; he was the industrious apprentice who
+marries his master's daughter; he lived between Hammersmith and
+Salisbury Court as a thorough middle-class cockney, and had not an idea
+beyond those common to his class; he accepted the ordinary creeds and
+conventions; he looked upon freethinkers with such horror that he will
+not allow even his worst villains to be religious sceptics; he shares
+the profound reverence of the shopkeepers for the upper classes who are
+his customers, and he rewards virtue with a coach and six. And yet this
+mild little man, with the very narrowest intellectual limitations,
+writes a book which makes a mark not only in England but in Europe, and
+is imitated by Rousseau in the book which set more than one generation
+weeping; _Clarissa Harlowe_, moreover, was accepted as the masterpiece
+of its kind, and she moved not only Englishmen but Germans and Frenchmen
+to sympathetic tears. One explanation is that Richardson is regarded as
+the inventor of 'sentimentalism.' The word, as one of his correspondents
+tells him, was a novelty about 1749, and was then supposed to include
+anything that was clever and agreeable. I do not myself believe that
+anybody invented the mode of feeling; but it is true that Richardson was
+the first writer who definitely turned it to account for a new literary
+genus. Sentimentalism, I suppose, means, roughly speaking, indulgence in
+emotion for its own sake. The sentimentalist does not weep because
+painful thoughts are forced upon him but because he finds weeping
+pleasant in itself. He appreciates the 'luxury of grief.' (The phrase is
+used in Brown's _Barbarossa_; I don't know who invented it.) Certainly
+the discovery was not new. The charms of melancholy had been recognised
+by Jaques in the forest of Arden and sung by various later poets; but
+sentimentalism at the earlier period naturally took the form of
+religious meditation upon death and judgment. Young and Hervey are
+religious sentimentalists, who have also an eye to literary elegance.
+Wesley was far too masculine and sensible to be a sentimentalist; his
+emotions impel him to vigorous action; and are much too serious to be
+cultivated for their own sakes or to be treated aesthetically. But the
+general sense that something is not in order in the general state of
+things, without as yet any definite aim for the vague discontent, was
+shared by the true sentimentalist. Richardson's sentimentalism is partly
+unconscious. He is a moralist very much in earnest, preaching a very
+practical and not very exalted morality. It is his moral purpose, his
+insistence upon the edifying point of view, his singular fertility in
+finding illustrations for his doctrines, which makes him a
+sentimentalist. I will confess that the last time I read _Clarissa
+Harlowe_ it affected me with a kind of disgust. We wonder sometimes at
+the coarse nerves of our ancestors, who could see on the stage any
+quantity of murders and ghosts and miscellaneous horrors. Richardson
+gave me the same shock from the elaborate detail in which he tells the
+story of Clarissa; rubbing our noses, if I may say so, in all her
+agony, and squeezing the last drop of bitterness out of every incident.
+I should have liked some symptom that he was anxious to turn his eyes
+from the tragedy instead of giving it so minutely as to suggest that he
+enjoys the spectacle. Books sometimes owe part of their success, as I
+fear we must admit, to the very fact that they are in bad taste. They
+attract the contemporary audience by exaggerating and over-weighting the
+new vein of sentiment which they have discovered. That, in fact, seems
+to be the reason why in spite of all authority, modern readers find it
+difficult to read Richardson through. We know, at any rate, how it
+affected one great contemporary. This incessant strain upon the moral in
+question (a very questionable moral it is) struck Fielding as mawkish
+and unmanly. Richardson seemed to be a narrow, straitlaced preacher, who
+could look at human nature only from the conventional point of view, and
+thought that because he was virtuous there should be no more cakes and
+ale.
+
+Fielding's revolt produced his great novels, and the definite creation
+of an entirely new form of art which was destined to a long and
+vigorous life. He claimed to be the founder of a new province in
+literature, and saw with perfect clearness what was to be its nature.
+The old romances which had charmed the seventeenth century were still
+read occasionally: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, and Dr.
+Johnson had enjoyed them, and Chesterfield, at a later period, has to
+point out to his son that Calprenede's _Cassandra_ has become
+ridiculous. The short story, of which Mrs. Behn was the last English
+writer, was more or less replaced by the little sketches in the
+_Spectator_; and Defoe had shown the attractiveness of a downright
+realistic narrative of a series of adventures. But whatever precedents
+may be found, our unfortunate ancestors had not yet the true modern
+novel. Fielding had, like other hack authors, written for the stage and
+tried to carry on the Congreve tradition. But the stage had declined.
+The best products, perhaps, were the _Beggar's Opera_ and
+_Chrononhotonthologos_ and Fielding's own _Tom Thumb_. When Fielding
+tried to make use of the taste for political lampoons, the result was
+the Act of Parliament which in 1737 introduced the licensing system. The
+Shakespearian drama, it is true, was coming into popularity with the
+help of Fielding's great friend, Garrick; but no new Shakespeare
+appeared to write modern _Hamlets_ and _Othellos_; Johnson tried to
+supply his place with the ponderous _Irene_, and John Home followed with
+_Douglas_ of 'My name is Norval' fame. The tragedies were becoming more
+dreary. Characteristic of Fielding was his admiration of Lillo, whose
+_George Barnwell_ (1730) and _Fatal Curiosity_ (about 1736), the last of
+them brought out under Fielding's own management, were remarkable
+attempts to revive tragedies by going to real life. It is plain,
+however, that the theatre is no longer the appropriate organ of the
+reading classes. The licensing act seems to have expressed the general
+feeling which, if we call it Puritan, must be Puritan in a sense which
+described the general middle-class prejudices. The problem which
+Fielding had to solve was to find a literary form which should meet the
+tastes of the new public, who could not be drawn to the theatre, and
+which yet should have some of the characteristics which had hitherto
+been confined to the dramatic form. That was the problem which was
+triumphantly solved by _Tom Jones_. The story is no longer a mere series
+of adventures, such as that which happened to Crusoe or Gil Blas,
+connected by the fact that they happen to the same person; nor a
+prolonged religious or moral tract, showing how evil will be punished
+and virtue rewarded. It implies a dramatic situation which can be
+developed without being hampered by the necessities of
+stage-representation; and which can give full scope to a realistic
+portrait of nature as it is under all the familiar circumstances of time
+and place. This novel, which fulfilled those conditions, has ever since
+continued to flourish; although a long time was to elapse before any one
+could approach the merits of the first inventor. In all ages, I suppose,
+the great artist, whether dramatist or epic poet or novelist, has more
+or less consciously had the aim which Fielding implicitly claims for
+himself; that is, to portray human nature. Every great artist, again,
+must, in one sense, be thoroughly 'realistic.' The word has acquired an
+irrelevant connotation: but I mean that his vision of the world must
+correspond to the genuine living convictions of his time. He only ceases
+to be a realist in that wide sense of the word when he deliberately
+affects beliefs which have lost their vitality and uses the old
+mythology, for example, as convenient machinery, when it has ceased to
+have any real hold upon the minds of their contemporaries. So far Defoe
+and Richardson and Fielding were perfectly right and deservedly
+successful because they described the actual human beings whom they saw
+before them, instead of regarding a setting forth of plain facts as
+something below the dignity of the artist. Every new departure in
+literature thrives in proportion as it abandons the old conventions
+which have become mere survivals. Each of them, in his way, felt the
+need of appealing to the new class of readers by direct portraiture of
+the readers themselves, Fielding's merit is his thorough appreciation of
+this necessity. He will give you men as he sees them, with perfect
+impartiality and photographic accuracy. His hearty appreciation of
+genuine work is characteristic. He admires Lillo, as I have said, for
+giving George Barnwell instead of the conventional stage hero; and his
+friend Hogarth, who was in pictorial art what he was in fiction, and
+paints the 'Rake's Progress' without bothering about old masters or the
+grand style; and he is enthusiastic about Garrick because he makes
+Hamlet's fear of the ghost so natural that Partridge takes it for a
+mere matter of course. Downright, forcible appeals to fact--contempt for
+the artificial and conventional--are his strength, though they also
+imply his weakness. Fielding, in fact, is the ideal John Bull; the 'good
+buffalo,' as Taine calls him, the big, full-blooded, vigorous mass of
+roast-beef who will stand no nonsense, and whose contempt for the
+fanciful and arbitrary tends towards the coarse and materialistic. That
+corresponds to the contrast between Richardson and Fielding; and may
+help to explain why the sentimentalism which Fielding despised yet
+corresponded to a vague feeling after a real element of interest. But,
+in truth, our criticism, I think, applies as much to Richardson as to
+Fielding. Realism, taken in what I should call the right sense, is not
+properly opposed to 'idealism'; it points to one of the two poles
+towards which all literary art should be directed. The artist is a
+realist so far as he deals with the actual life and the genuine beliefs
+of his time; but he is an idealist so far as he sees the most essential
+facts and utters the deepest and most permanent truths in his own
+dialect. His work should be true to life and give the essence of actual
+human nature, and also express emotions and thoughts common to the men
+of all times. Now that is the weak side of the fiction of this period.
+We may read _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Tom Jones_ with unstinted
+admiration; but we feel that we are in a confined atmosphere. There are
+regions of thought and feeling which seem to lie altogether beyond their
+province. Fielding, in his way, was a bit of a philosopher, though he is
+too much convinced that Locke and Hoadley have said the last words in
+theology and philosophy. Parson Adams is a most charming person in his
+way, but his intellectual outlook is decidedly limited. That may not
+trouble us much; but we have also the general feeling that we are living
+in a little provincial society which somehow takes its own special
+arrangements to be part of the eternal order of nature. The worthy
+Richardson is aware that there are a great many rakes and infamous
+persons about; but it never occurs to him that there can be any
+speculation outside the Thirty-nine Articles; and though Fielding
+perceives a great many abuses in the actual administration of the laws
+and the political system, he regards the social order, with its squires
+and parsons and attorneys as the only conceivable state of things. In
+other words they, and I might add their successor Smollett, represent
+all the prejudices and narrow assumptions of the quiet, respectable, and
+in many ways worthy and domestically excellent, middle-class of the day;
+which, on the whole, is determined not to look too deeply into awkward
+questions, but to go along sturdily working out its own conceptions and
+plodding along on well-established lines.
+
+Another literary movement is beginning which is to lead to the sense of
+this deficiency. The nobleman, growing rich and less absorbed in the
+political world, has time and leisure to cultivate his tastes, becomes,
+as I have said, a dilettante, and sends his son to make the grand tour
+as a regular part of his education. Some demon whispers to him, as Pope
+puts it, Visto, have a taste! He buys books and pictures, takes to
+architecture and landscape-gardening, and becomes a 'collector.' The
+instinct of 'collecting' is, I suppose, natural, and its development is
+connected with some curious results. One of the favourite objects of
+ridicule of the past essayists was the virtuoso. There was something to
+them inexpressibly absurd in a passion for buying odds and ends. Pope,
+Arbuthnot, and Gay made a special butt of Dr. Woodward, possessor of a
+famous ancient shield and other antiquities. Equally absurd, they
+thought, was his passion for fossils. He made one of the first
+collections of such objects, saw that they really had a scientific
+interest, and founded at Cambridge the first professorship of geology.
+Another remarkable collector was Sir Hans Sloane, who had brought home a
+great number of plants from Jamaica and founded the botanic garden at
+Chelsea. His servant, James Salter, set up the famous Don Saltero's
+museum in the same place, containing, as Steele tell us, '10,000
+gimcracks, including a "petrified crab" from China and Pontius Pilate's
+wife's chambermaid's sister's hat.' Don Saltero and his master seemed
+equally ridiculous; and Young in his satires calls Sloane 'the foremost
+toyman of his time,' and describes him as adoring a pin of Queen
+Elizabeth's. Sloane's collections were bought for the nation and became
+the foundation of the British Museum; when (1753) Horace Walpole remarks
+that they might be worth L80,000 for anybody who loved hippopotamuses,
+sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese. Scientific research,
+that is, revealed itself to contemporaries as a childish and absurd
+monomania, unworthy of a man of sense. John Hunter had not yet begun to
+form the unequalled museum of physiology, and even the scientific
+collectors could have but a dim perception of the importance of a minute
+observation of natural phenomena. The contempt for such collections
+naturally accompanied a contempt for the antiquary, another variety of
+the same species. The study of old documents and ancient buildings
+seemed to be a simple eccentricity. Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary,
+was a typical case. He devoted himself to the study of old records and
+published a series of English Chronicles which were of essential service
+to English historians. To his contemporaries this study seemed to be as
+worthless as Woodward's study of fossils. Like other monomaniacs he
+became crusty and sour for want of sympathy. His like-minded
+contemporary, Carte, ruined the prospects of his history by letting out
+his belief in the royal power of curing by touch. Antiquarianism, though
+providing invaluable material for history, seemed to be a silly
+crotchet, and to imply a hatred to sound Whiggism and modern
+enlightenment, so long as the Wit and the intelligent person of quality
+looked upon the past simply as the period of Gothic barbarism. But an
+approximation is beginning to take place. The relation is indicated by
+the case of Horace Walpole, a man whose great abilities have been
+concealed by his obvious affectations. Two of Walpole's schoolfellows at
+Eton were Gray and William Cole. Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, who
+tried to do for his own university what Woodward had done for Oxford,
+was all but a Catholic, and in political sympathies agreed with Hearne
+and Carte. Walpole was a thorough Whig and a freethinker, so long, at
+least, as freethinking did not threaten danger to comfortable sinecures
+bestowed upon the sons of Whig ministers. But Cole became Walpole's
+antiquarian oracle. When Walpole came back from the grand tour, with
+nothing particular to do except spend his income, he found one amusement
+in dabbling in antiquarian research. He discovered, among other things,
+that even a Gothic cathedral could be picturesque, and in 1750 set about
+building a 'little Gothic Castle' at Strawberry Hill. The Gothic was of
+course the most superficial imitation; but it became the first of a long
+line of similar imitations growing gradually more elaborate with results
+of which we all have our own opinion. To Walpole himself Strawberry Hill
+was a mere plaything, and he would not have wished to be taken too
+seriously; as his romance of the _Castle of Otranto_ was a literary
+squib at which he laughed himself, though it became the forefather of a
+great literary school. The process may be regarded as logical: the
+previous generation, rejoicing in its own enlightenment, began to
+recognise the difference between present and past more clearly than its
+ancestors had done; but generally inferred that the men of old had been
+barbarians. The Tory and Jacobite who clings to the past praises its
+remains with blind affection, and can see nothing in the present but
+corruption and destruction of the foundations of society. The
+indifferent dilettante, caring little for any principles and mainly
+desirous of amusement, discovers a certain charm in the old institutions
+while he professes to despise them in theory. That means one of the
+elements of the complex sentiment which we describe as romanticism. The
+past is obsolete, but it is pretty enough to be used in making new
+playthings. The reconciliation will be reached when the growth of
+historical inquiry leads men to feel that past and present are parts of
+a continuous series, and to look upon their ancestors neither as simply
+ridiculous nor as objects of blind admiration. The historical sense was,
+in fact, growing: and Walpole's other friend, Gray, may represent the
+literary version. The Queen Anne school, though it despised the older
+literature, had still a certain sneaking regard for it. Addison, for
+example, pays some grudging compliments to Chaucer and Spenser, though
+he is careful to point out the barbarism of their taste. Pope, like all
+poets, had loved Spenser in his boyhood and was well read in English
+poetry. It was mighty simple of Rowe, he said, to try to write in the
+style of Shakespeare, that is, in the style of a bad age. Yet he became
+one of the earliest, and far from one of the worst, editors of
+Shakespeare; and the growth of literary interest in Shakespeare is one
+of the characteristic symptoms of the period. Pope had contemplated a
+history of English poetry which was taken up by Gray and finally
+executed by Warton. The development of an interest in literary history
+naturally led to new departures. The poets of the period, Gray and
+Collins and the Wartons, are no longer members of the little circle with
+strict codes of taste. They are scholars and students not shut up within
+the metropolitan area. There has been a controversy as to whether Gray's
+unproductiveness is partly to be ascribed to his confinement to a narrow
+and, it seems, to a specially stupid academical circle at Cambridge.
+Anyway, living apart from the world of politicians and fine gentlemen,
+he had the opportunity to become the most learned of English poets and
+to be at home in a wide range of literature representing a great variety
+of models. As the antiquary begins to rise to the historian, the
+poetical merits recognised in the less regular canons become manifest.
+Thomson, trying to write a half-serious imitation of Spenser, made his
+greatest success by a kind of accident in the _Castle of Indolence_
+(1748); Thomas Warton's Observation on the _Faery Queene_ in 1757 was an
+illustration of the influence of historical criticism. I need not say
+how Collins was interested by Highland superstition and Gray impressed
+by Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, and how in other directions the
+labours of the antiquarian were beginning to provide materials for the
+poetical imagination. Gray and Collins still held to the main Pope
+principles. They try to be clear and simple and polished, and their
+trick of personifying abstract qualities indicates the philosophical
+doctrine which was still acceptable. The special principle, however,
+which they were beginning to recognise is that indicated by Joseph
+Warton's declaration in his _Essay on Pope_ (1757). 'The fashion of
+moralising in verse,' he said, had been pushed too far, and he proceeded
+to startle the orthodox by placing Spenser above Pope. The heresy gave
+so much offence, it is said, that he did not venture to bring out his
+second volume for twenty-five years. The point made by Warton marks, in
+fact, the critical change. The weak side of the Pope school had been the
+subordination of the imagination to the logical theory. Poetry tends to
+become rhymed prose because the poet like the preacher has to expound
+doctrines and to prove by argument. He despises the old mythology and
+the romantic symbolism because the theory was obviously absurd to a man
+of the world, and to common sense. He believes that Homer was
+deliberately conveying an allegory: and an allegory, whether of Homer or
+of Spenser, is a roundabout and foolish way of expressing the truth. A
+philosopher--and a poem is versified philosophy--should express himself
+as simply and directly as possible. But, as soon as you begin to
+appreciate the charm of ancient poetry, to be impressed by Scandinavian
+Sagas or Highland superstition or Welsh bards, or allow yourself to
+enjoy Spenser's idealised knights and ladies in spite of their total
+want of common sense, or to appreciate _Paradise Lost_ although you no
+longer accept Milton's scheme of theology, it becomes plain that the
+specially poetic charm must consist in something else; that it can
+appeal to the emotions and the imagination, though the doctrine which it
+embodies is as far as possible from convincing your reason. The
+discovery has a bearing upon what is called the love of Nature. Even
+Thomson and his followers still take the didactic view of Nature. They
+are half ashamed of their interest in mere dead objects, but can treat
+skies and mountains as a text for discourses upon Natural Theology. But
+Collins and Gray and Warton are beginning to perceive that the pleasure
+which we receive from a beautiful prospect, whether of a mountain or of
+an old abbey, is something which justifies itself and may be expressed
+in poetry without tagging a special moral to its tail. Yet the sturdy
+common sense represented by Fielding and Johnson is slow to accept this
+view, and the romantic view of things has still for him a touch of
+sentimentalism and affectation, and indicates the dilettante rather than
+the serious thinker, and Pope still represents the orthodox creed though
+symptoms of revolt are slowly showing themselves.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+(1763-1788)
+
+
+I now come to the generation which preceded the outbreak of the French
+Revolution. Social and political movements are beginning to show
+themselves in something of their modern form, and suggest most
+interesting problems for the speculative historian. At the same time, if
+we confine ourselves to the purely literary region, it is on the whole a
+period of stagnation. Johnson is the acknowledged dictator, and Johnson,
+the 'last of the Tories,' upholds the artistic canons of Dryden and
+Pope, though no successor arises to produce new works at all comparable
+with theirs. The school, still ostensibly dominant, has lost its power
+of stimulating genius; and as yet no new school has arisen to take its
+place. Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott were still at college, and
+Byron in the nursery, at the end of the period. There is a kind of
+literary interregnum, though not a corresponding stagnation of
+speculative and political energy.
+
+Looking, in the first place, at the active world, the great fact of the
+time is the series of changes to which we give the name of the
+industrial revolution. The growth of commercial and manufacturing
+enterprise which had been going on quietly and continuously had been
+suddenly accelerated. Glasgow and Liverpool and Manchester and
+Birmingham were becoming great towns, and the factory system was being
+developed, profoundly modifying the old relation of the industrial
+classes. England was beginning to aim at commercial supremacy, and
+politics were to be more than ever dominated by the interests of the
+'moneyed man,' or, as we now call them, 'capitalists.' Essentially
+connected with these changes is another characteristic development.
+Social problems were arising. The growth of the manufactory system and
+the accumulation of masses of town population, for example, forced
+attention to the problem of pauperism, and many attempts of various
+kinds were being made to deal with it. The same circumstances were
+beginning to rouse an interest in education; it had suddenly struck
+people that on Sundays, at least, children might be taught their
+letters so far as to enable them to spell out their Bible. The
+inadequacy of the police and prison systems to meet the new requirements
+roused the zeal of many, and led to some reforms. As the British Empire
+extended we began to become sensible of certain correlative duties; the
+impeachment of Warren Hastings showed that we had scruples about
+treating India simply as a place where 'nabobs' are to accumulate
+fortunes; and the slave-trade suggested questions of conscience which at
+the end of the period were to prelude an agitation in some ways
+unprecedented.
+
+In the political world again we have the first appearance of a
+distinctly democratic movement. The struggle over Wilkes during the
+earlier years began a contest which was to last through generations. The
+American War of Independence emphasised party issues, and in some sense
+heralded the French Revolution. I only note one point. The British
+'Whig' of those days represented two impulses which gradually diverged.
+There was the home-bred Whiggism of Wilkes and Horne Tooke--the Whiggism
+of which the stronghold was in the city of London, with such heroes as
+Lord Mayor Beckford, whose statue in the Guildhall displays him hurling
+defiance at poor George III. This party embodies the dissatisfaction of
+the man of business with the old system which cramped his energies. In
+the name of liberty he demands 'self-government'; not greater vigour in
+the Executive but less interference and a freer hand for the capitalist.
+He believes in individual enterprise. He accepts the good old English
+principle that the man who pays taxes should have a voice in spending
+them; but he appeals not to an abstract political principle but to
+tradition. The reformer, as so often happens, calls himself a restorer;
+his political bible begins with the great charter and comes down to the
+settlement of 1688. Meanwhile the true revolutionary
+movement--represented by Paine and Godwin, appeals to the doctrines of
+natural equality and the rights of man. It is unequivocally democratic,
+and implies a growing cleavage between the working man and the
+capitalists. It repudiates all tradition, and aspires to recast the
+whole social order. Instead of proposing simply to diminish the
+influence of government, it really tends to centralisation and the
+transference of power to the lower classes. This genuine revolutionary
+principle did not become conspicuous in England until it was introduced
+by the contagion from France, and even then it remained an exotic. For
+the present the Whig included all who opposed the Toryism of George III.
+The difference between the Whig and the Radical was still latent, though
+to be manifested in the near future. When the 'new Whigs,' as Burke
+called them, Fox and Sheridan, welcomed the French Revolution in 1789,
+they saw in it a constitutional movement of the English type and not a
+thorough-going democratic movement which would level all classes, and
+transfer the political supremacy to a different social stratum.
+
+This implies a dominant characteristic of the English political
+movement. It was led, to use a later phrase, by Whigs not Radicals; by
+men who fully accepted the British constitution, and proposed to remove
+abuses, not to recast the whole system. The Whig wished to carry out
+more thoroughly the platform accepted in 1688, to replace decaying by
+sound timbers; but not to reconstruct from the base or to override
+tradition by abstract and obsolete theories. His desire for change was
+limited by a strong though implicit conservatism. This characteristic
+is reflected in the sphere of speculative activity. Philosophy was
+represented by the Scottish school whose watchword was common sense.
+Reid opposed the scepticism of Hume which would lead, as he held, to
+knocking his head against a post--a course clearly condemned by common
+sense; but instead of soaring into transcendental and ontological
+regions, he stuck to 'Baconian induction' and a psychology founded upon
+experience. Hume himself, as I have said, had written for the
+speculative few not for the vulgar; and he had now turned from the chase
+of metaphysical refinements to historical inquiry. Interest in history
+had become characteristic of the time. The growth of a stable, complex,
+and continuous social order implies the formation of a corporate memory.
+Masses of records had already been accumulated by antiquaries who had
+constructed rather annals than history, in which the series of events
+was given without much effort to arrange them in literary form or trace
+the causal connection. In France, however, Montesquieu had definitely
+established the importance of applying the historical method to
+political problems; and Voltaire had published some of his brilliant
+surveys which attempt to deal with the social characteristics as well
+as the mere records of battles and conquests. Hume's _History_,
+admirably written, gave Englishmen the first opportunity of enjoying a
+lucid survey of the conspicuous facts previously embedded in ponderous
+antiquarian phrases. Hume was one of the triumvirate who produced the
+recognised masterpieces of contemporary literature. Robertson's theories
+are, I take it, superseded: but his books, especially the _Charles V._,
+not only gave broad surveys but suggested generalisations as to the
+development of institutions, which, like most generalisations, were
+mainly wrong, but stimulated further inquiry. Gibbon, the third of the
+triumvirate, uniting the power of presenting great panoramas of history
+with thorough scholarship and laborious research, produced the great
+work which has not been, if it ever can be, superseded. A growing
+interest in history thus led to some of the chief writings of the time,
+as we can see that it was the natural outgrowth of the intellectual
+position. The rapid widening of the historical horizon made even a bare
+survey useful, and led to some recognition of the importance of guiding
+and correcting political and social theory by careful investigation of
+past experience. The historian began to feel an ambition to deal in
+philosophical theories. He was, moreover, touched by the great
+scientific movement. A complete survey of the intellectual history of
+the time would of course have to deal with the great men who were laying
+the foundations of the modern physical sciences; such as Black, and
+Priestley, and Cavendish, and Hunter. It would indeed, have to point out
+how small was the total amount of such knowledge in comparison with the
+vast superstructure which has been erected in the last century. The
+foundation of the Royal Institution at the end of the eighteenth century
+marks, perhaps, the point at which the importance of physical science
+began to impress the popular imagination. But great thinkers had long
+recognised the necessity of applying scientific method in the sphere of
+social and political investigation. Two men especially illustrate the
+tendency and the particular turn which it took in England. Adam Smith's
+great book in 1776 applied scientific method to political economy. Smith
+is distinguished from his French predecessors by the historical element
+of his work; by his careful study, that is, of economic history, and his
+consequent presentation of his theory not as a body of absolute and
+quasi-mathematical truth, but as resting upon the experience and
+applicable to the concrete facts of his time. His limitation is equally
+characteristic. He investigated the play of the industrial mechanism
+with too little reference to the thorough interdependence of economic
+and other social conditions. Showing how that mechanism adapts itself to
+supply and demand, he comes to hold that the one thing necessary is to
+leave free play to competition, and that the one essential force is the
+individual's desire for his own material interests. He became,
+therefore, the prophet of letting things alone. That doctrine--whatever
+its merits or defects--implies acquiescence in the existing order, and
+is radically opposed to a demand for a reconstruction of society. This
+is most clearly illustrated by the other thinker Jeremy Bentham.
+Bentham, unlike Smith, shared the contempt for history of the absolute
+theorists, and was laying down a theory conceived in the spirit of
+absolutism which became the creed of the uncompromising political
+radicals of the next generation. But it is characteristic that Bentham
+was not, during the eighteenth century, a Radical at all. He altogether
+repudiated and vigorously denounced the 'Rights of Men' doctrines of
+Rousseau and his followers, and regarded the Declaration of
+Independence in which they were embodied as a mere hotchpotch of
+absurdity. He is determined to be thoroughly empirical--to take men as
+he found them. But his utilitarianism supposed that men's views of
+happiness and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was
+wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached.
+Then, he thought, rulers and subjects would be equally ready to apply
+his principles. He fully accepted Adam Smith's theory of
+non-interference in economical matters; and his view of philosophy in
+the lump was that there was no such thing, only a heap of obsolete
+fallacies and superstitions which would be easily dispersed by the
+application of a little downright common sense. Bentham's
+utilitarianism, again, is congenial to the whole intellectual movement.
+His ethical theory was substantially identical with that of Paley--the
+most conspicuous writer upon theology of the generation,--and Paley is
+as thoroughly empirical in his theology as in his ethics, and makes the
+truth of religion essentially a question of historical and scientific
+evidence.
+
+It follows that neither in practice nor in speculative questions were
+the English thinkers of the time prescient of any coming revolution.
+They denounced abuses, but they had regarded abuses as removable
+excrescences on a satisfactory system. They were content to appeal to
+common sense, and to leave philosophers to wrangle over ultimate
+results. They might be, and in fact were, stirring questions which would
+lead to far more vital disputes; but for the present they were
+unconscious of the future, and content to keep the old machinery going
+though desiring to improve its efficiency. The characteristic might be
+elucidated by comparison with the other great European literatures. In
+France, Voltaire had begun about 1762 his crusade against orthodoxy, or,
+as he calls it, his attempt to crush the infamous. He was supported by
+his allies, the Encyclopaedists. While Helvetius and Holbach were
+expounding materialism and atheism, Rousseau had enunciated the
+political doctrines which were to be applied to the Revolution, and
+elsewhere had uttered that sentimental deism which was to be so dear to
+many of his readers. Our neighbours, in short, after their
+characteristic fashion, were pushing logic to its consequences, and
+fully awake to the approach of an impending catastrophe. In Germany the
+movement took the philosophical and literary shape. Lessing's critical
+writings had heralded the change. Goethe, after giving utterance to
+passing phases of thought, was rising to become the embodiment of a new
+ideal of intellectual culture. Schiller passed through the storm and
+stress period and developed into the greatest national dramatist. Kant
+had awakened from his dogmatic theory, and the publication of the
+_Critique of Pure Reason_ in 1781 had awakened the philosophical world
+of Germany. In both countries the study of earlier English literature,
+of the English deists and freethinkers, of Shakespeare and of
+Richardson, had had great influence, and had been the occasion of new
+developments. But it seemed as though England had ceased to be the
+originator of ideas, and was for the immediate future at least to
+receive political and philosophical impulses from France and Germany. To
+explain the course taken in the different societies, to ask how far it
+might be due to difference of characteristics, and of political
+constitutions, of social organism and individual genius, would be a very
+pretty but rather large problem. I refer to it simply to illustrate the
+facts, to emphasise the quiet, orderly, if you will, sleepy movement of
+English thought which, though combined with great practical energy and
+vigorous investigation of the neighbouring departments of inquiry,
+admitted of comparative indifference to the deeper issues involved. It
+did not generate that stimulus to literary activity due to the dawning
+of new ideas and the opening of wide vistas of speculation. When the
+French Revolution broke out, it took Englishmen, one may say, by
+surprise, and except by a few keen observers or rare disciples of
+Rousseau, was as unexpected as the earthquake of Lisbon.
+
+Let us glance, now, at the class which was to carry on the literary
+tradition. It is known to us best through Boswell, and its
+characteristics are represented by Johnson's favourite club. In one of
+his talks with Boswell the great man amused himself by showing how the
+club might form itself into a university. Every branch of knowledge and
+thought might, he thought, be represented, though it must be admitted
+that some of the professors suggested were scarcely up to the mark. The
+social variety is equally remarkable. Among the thirty or forty members
+elected before Johnson's death, there were the lights of literature;
+Johnson himself and Goldsmith, Adam Smith and Gibbon, and others of
+less fame. The aristocratic element was represented by Beauclerk and by
+half a dozen peers, such as the amiable Lord Charlemont; Burke, Fox,
+Sheridan, and Wyndham represent political as well as literary eminence;
+three or four bishops represent Church authority; legal luminaries
+included Dunning, William Scott (the famous Lord Stowell), Sir Robert
+Chambers, and the amazingly versatile Sir William Jones. Boswell and
+Langton are also cultivated country gentlemen; Sir Joseph Banks stood
+for science, and three other names show the growing respect for art. The
+amiable Dr. Burney was a musician who had raised the standard of his
+calling; Garrick had still more conspicuously gained social respect for
+the profession of actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the representative
+of the English school of painters, whose works still impress upon us the
+beauty of our great-grandmothers and the charm of their children, and
+suggest the existence of a really dignified and pure domestic life in a
+class too often remembered by the reckless gambling and loose morality
+of the gilded youth of the day. To complete the picture of the world in
+which Johnson was at home we should have to add from the outer sphere
+such types as Thrale, the prosperous brewer, and the lively Mrs. Thrale
+and Mrs. Montague, who kept a salon and was president of the 'Blues.'
+The feminine society which was beginning to write our novels was
+represented by Miss Burney and Hannah More; and the thriving booksellers
+who were beginning to become publishers, such as Strahan and the Dillys,
+at whose house he had the famous meeting with the reprobate Wilkes. To
+many of us, I suppose, an intimacy with that Johnsonian group has been a
+first introduction to an interest in English literature. Thanks to
+Boswell, we can hear its talk more distinctly than that of any later
+circle. When we compare it to the society of an earlier time, one or two
+points are conspicuous. Johnson's club was to some extent a continuation
+of the clubs of Queen Anne's time. But the Wits of the earlier period
+who met at taverns to drink with the patrons were a much smaller and
+more dependent body. What had since happened had been the growth of a
+great comfortable middle-class--meaning by middle-class the upper
+stratum, the professional men, the lawyers, clergymen, physicians, the
+merchants who had been enriched by the growth of commerce and
+manufactures; the country gentlemen whose rents had risen, and who could
+come to London and rub off their old rusticity. The aristocracy is still
+in possession of great wealth and political power, but beneath it has
+grown up an independent society which is already beginning to be the
+most important social stratum and the chief factor in political and
+social development. It has sufficient literary cultivation to admit the
+distinguished authors and artists who are becoming independent enough to
+take their place in its ranks and appear at its tables and rule the
+conversation. The society is still small enough to have in the club a
+single representative body and one man for dictator. Johnson succeeded
+in this capacity to Pope, Dryden, and his namesake Ben, but he was the
+last of the race. Men like Carlyle and Macaulay, who had a similar
+distinction in later days, could only be leaders of a single group or
+section in the more complex society of their time, though it was not yet
+so multitudinous and chaotic as the literary class has become in our
+own. Talk could still be good, because the comparatively small society
+was constantly meeting, and each prepared to take his part in the game,
+and was not being swept away distractedly into a miscellaneous vortex
+of all sorts and conditions of humanity. Another fact is conspicuous.
+The environment, we may say, of the man of letters was congenial. He
+shared and uttered the opinions of the class to which he belonged.
+Buckle gives a striking account of the persecution to which the French
+men of letters were exposed at this period; Voltaire, Buffon, and
+Rousseau, Diderot, Marmontel, and Morellet, besides a whole series of
+inferior authors, had their books suppressed and were themselves either
+exiled or imprisoned. There was a state of war in which almost the whole
+literary class attacked the established creed while the rulers replied
+by force instead of argument. In England men of letters were allowed,
+with a few exceptions, to say what they thought, and simply shared the
+average beliefs of their class and their rulers. If some leant towards
+freethinking, the general tendency of the Johnson circle was harshly
+opposed to any revolutionary movement, and authors were satisfied with
+the creeds as with the institutions amid which they lived.
+
+The English literary class was thus content to utter the beliefs
+prevalent in the social stratum to which the chief writers belonged--a
+stratum which had no special grievances and no revolutionary impulses,
+and which could make its voice sufficiently heard though by methods
+which led to no explicit change in the constitution, and suggests only a
+change in the forces which really lay behind them. The chief political
+changes mean for the present that 'public opinion' was acquiring more
+power; that the newspaper press as its organ was especially growing in
+strength; that Parliament was thrown open to the reporter, and speeches
+addressed to the constituencies as well as to the Houses of Parliament,
+and therefore the authority of the legislation becoming more amenable to
+the opinions of the constituency. That is to say, again, that the
+journalist and orator were growing in power and a corresponding
+direction given to literary talent. The Wilkes agitation led to the
+_Letters of Junius_--one of the most conspicuous models of the style of
+the period; and some of the newspapers which were to live through the
+next century began to appear in the following years. This period again
+might almost be called the culminating period of English rhetoric. The
+speeches of Pitt and Burke and Fox and Sheridan in the House of Commons
+and at the impeachment of Warren Hastings must be regarded from the
+literary as well as the political point of view, though in most cases
+the decay of the temporary interests involved has been fatal to their
+permanence. The speeches are still real speeches, intended to affect the
+audience addressed, and yet partly intended also for the reporters. When
+the audience becomes merely the pretext, and the real aim is to address
+the public, the speech tends to become a pamphlet in disguise and loses
+its rhetorical character. I may remark in passing that almost the only
+legal speeches which, so far as my knowledge goes, are still readable,
+were those of Erskine, who, after trying the careers of a sailor and a
+soldier, found the true application for his powers in oratory. Though
+his legal knowledge is said to have been slight, the conditions of the
+time enabled him in addressing a British jury to put forward a political
+manifesto and to display singular literary skill. Burke, however, is the
+typical figure. Had he been a German he might have been a Lessing, and
+the author of the _Sublime and Beautiful_ might, like the author of
+_Laokoon_, have stimulated his countrymen by literary criticism. Or he
+might have obtained a professorship or a court preachership and, like
+Herder, have elaborated ideas towards the future of a philosophy of
+history. In England he was drawn into the political vortex, and in that
+capacity delivered speeches which also appeared as pamphlets, and which
+must rank among the great masterpieces of English literature. I need not
+inquire whether he lost more by giving to party what was meant for
+mankind, or whether his philosophy did not gain more by the necessity of
+constant application to the actual facts of the time. That necessity no
+doubt limited both the amount and the systematic completeness of his
+writings, though it also emphasised some of their highest merits. The
+English political order tended in any case to divert a great deal of
+literary ability into purely political channels--a peculiarity which it
+has not yet lost. Burke is the typical instance of this combination, and
+illustrates most forcibly the point to which I have already adverted.
+Johnson, as we know, was a mass of obstinate Tory prejudice, and held
+that the devil was the first Whig. He held at bottom, I think, that
+politics touched only the surface of human life; that 'kings or laws,'
+as he put it, can cause or cure only a small part of the evils which we
+suffer, and that some authority is absolutely necessary, and that it
+matters little whether it be the authority of a French monarch or an
+English parliament. The Whig he thought objected to authority on
+principle, and was therefore simply subversive. Something of the same
+opinion was held by Johnson's circle in general. They were conservative
+both in politics and theology, and English politics and theological
+disputes did not obviously raise the deeper issues. Even the
+devil-descended Whig--especially the variety represented by Burke--was
+as far as possible from representing what he took for the diabolic
+agency. Burke represents above all things the political application of
+the historical spirit of the period. His hatred for metaphysics, for
+discussions of abstract rights instead of practical expediency; his
+exaltation of 'prescription' and 'tradition'; his admiration for
+Montesquieu and his abhorrence of Rousseau; his idolatry of the British
+constitution, and in short his whole political doctrine from first to
+last, implies the profound conviction of the truth of the principles
+embodied in a thorough historical method. Nobody, I think, was ever more
+consistent in his first principles, though his horror of the Revolution
+no doubt led him so to exaggerate one side of his teaching that he was
+led to denounce some of the consequences which naturally followed from
+other aspects of his doctrine. The schism between the old and the new
+Whigs was not to be foreseen during this period, nor the coming into the
+foreground of the deeper problems involved.
+
+I may now come to the purely literary movement. I have tried to show
+that neither in philosophy, theology, nor political and social strata,
+was there any belief in the necessity of radical changes, or prescience
+of a coming alteration of the intellectual atmosphere. Speculation, like
+politics, could advance quietly along the old paths without fearing that
+they might lead to a precipice; and society, in spite of very vigorous
+and active controversy upon the questions which decided it was in the
+main self-satisfied, complacent, and comfortable. Adherence to the old
+system is after all the general rule, and it is of the change not the
+persistence that we require some account. At the beginning of our
+period, Pope's authority was still generally admitted, although many
+symptoms of discontent had appeared, and Warton was proposing to lower
+him from the first to the second rank. The two most brilliant writers
+who achieved fame in the early years of George III., Goldsmith and
+Sterne, mark a characteristic moment in the literary development.
+Goldsmith's poems the _Traveller_ (1765) and the _Deserted Village_
+(1770), and the _Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766), are still on the old lines.
+The poetry adopts Pope's versification, and implies the same ideal; the
+desire for lucidity, sympathy, moderation, and the qualities which would
+generally be connoted by classical. The substance, distinguished from
+the style, shows the sympathy with sentimentalism of which Rousseau was
+to be the great exponent. Goldsmith is beginning to denounce luxury--a
+characteristic mark of the sentimentalist--and his regret for the period
+when 'every rood of earth maintained its man' is one side of the
+aspiration for a return to the state of nature and simplicity of
+manners. The inimitable Vicar recalls Sir Roger de Coverley and the
+gentle and delicate touch of Addison. But the Vicar is beginning to take
+an interest in philanthropy. He is impressed by the evils of the old
+prison system which had already roused Oglethorpe (who like
+Goldsmith--as I may notice--disputed with Johnson as to the evils of
+luxury) and was soon to arouse Howard. The greatest attraction of the
+Vicar is due to the personal charm of Goldsmith's character, but his
+character makes him sympathise with the wider social movements and the
+growth of genuine philanthropic sentiment. Goldsmith, in his remarks
+upon the _Present State of Polite Learning_ (1759), explains the decay
+of literature (literature is always decaying) by the general enervation
+which accompanies learning and the want of originality caused by the
+growth of criticism. That was not an unnatural view at a time when the
+old forms are beginning to be inadequate for the new thoughts which are
+seeking for utterance. As yet, however, Goldsmith's own work proves
+sufficiently that the new motive could be so far adapted to the old form
+as to produce an artistic masterpiece. Sterne may illustrate a similar
+remark. He represents, no doubt, a kind of sham sentimentalism with an
+insincerity which has disgusted many able critics. He was resolved to
+attract notice at any price--by putting on cap and bells, and by the
+pruriency which stains his best work. Like many contemporaries he was
+reading old authors and turned them to account in a way which exposed
+him to the charge of plagiarism. He valued them for their quaintness.
+They enabled him to satisfy his propensity for being deliberately
+eccentric which made Horace Walpole call _Tristram Shandy_ the 'dregs of
+nonsense,' and the learned Dr. Farmer prophesied that in twenty years it
+would be necessary to search antiquarian shops for a copy. Sterne's
+great achievement, however, was not in the mere buffoonery but in the
+passages where he continued the Addison tradition. Uncle Toby is a
+successor of Sir Roger, and the famous death of Lefevre is told with
+inimitable simplicity and delicacy of touch. Goldsmith and Sterne work
+upon the old lines, but make use of the new motives and materials which
+are beginning to interest readers, and which will in time call for
+different methods of treatment.
+
+I must briefly indicate one other point. The society of which Garrick
+was a member, and which was both reading Shakespeare and seeing his
+plays revived, might well seem fitted to maintain a drama. Goldsmith
+complains of the decay of the stage, which he attributes partly to the
+exclusion of new pieces by the old Shakespearian drama. On that point he
+agrees as far as he dares with Voltaire. He ridiculed Home's _Douglas_,
+one of the last tragedies which made even a temporary success, and which
+certainly showed that the true impulse was extinct. But Goldsmith and
+his younger contemporary Sheridan succeeded for a time in restoring
+vigour to comedy. Their triumph over the sentimentalists Kelly and
+Cumberland showed, as Johnson put it, that they could fill the aim of
+the comedian, namely, making an audience merry. _She Stoops to Conquer_
+and _The School for Scandal_ remain among genuine literary masterpieces.
+They are revivals of the old Congreve method, and imply the growth of a
+society more decent and free from the hard cynical brutality which
+disgraced the earlier writers. I certainly cannot give a sufficient
+reason why the society of Johnson and Reynolds, full of shrewd common
+sense, enjoying humour, and with a literary social tradition, should not
+have found other writers capable of holding up the comic mirror. I am
+upon the verge of a discussion which seems to be endless, the causes of
+the decay of the British stage. I must give it a wide berth, and only
+note that, as a fact, Sheridan took to politics, and his mantle fell on
+no worthy successor. The next craze (for which he was partly
+responsible) was the German theatre of Kotzebue, which represented the
+intrusion of new influences and the production of a great quantity of
+rubbish. After Goldsmith the poetic impulse seems to have decayed
+entirely. After the _Deserted Village_ (1770) no striking work appeared
+till Crabbe published his first volume (1781), and was followed by his
+senior Cowper in 1782. Both of them employed the metre of Pope, though
+Cowper took to blank verse; and Crabbe, though he had read and admired
+Spenser, was to the end of his career a thorough disciple of Pope.
+Johnson read and revised his _Village_, which was thoroughly in harmony
+with the old gentleman's poetic creed. Yet both Cowper and Crabbe
+stimulate what may be called in some sense 'a return to nature'; though
+not in such a way as to announce a literary revolution. Each was
+restrained by personal conditions. Cowper's poetical aims were
+profoundly affected by his religious views. The movement which we call
+Methodist was essentially moral and philanthropic. It agreed so far with
+Rousseau's sentimentalism that it denounced the corruptions of the
+existing order; but instead of attributing the evils to the departure
+from the ideal state of nature, expressed them by the theological
+doctrine of the corruption of the human heart. That implied in some
+senses a fundamental difference. But there was a close coincidence in
+the judgment of actual motives. Cowper fully agreed with Rousseau that
+our rulers had become selfish and luxurious; that war was kept up to
+satisfy the ambition of kings and courtiers; that vice flourished
+because the aims of our rulers and teachers were low and selfish, and
+that slavery was a monstrous evil supported by the greed of traders.
+Brown's _Estimate_, he said, was thoroughly right as to our degeneracy,
+though Brown had not perceived the deepest root of the evil. Cowper's
+satire has lost its salt because he had retired too completely from the
+world to make a telling portrait. But he succeeds most admirably when he
+finds relief from the tortures of insanity by giving play to the
+exquisite playfulness and tenderness which was never destroyed by his
+melancholy. He delights us by an unconscious illustration of the simple
+domestic life in the quiet Olney fields, which we see in another form in
+the charming White of Selborne. He escapes from the ghastly images of
+religious insanity when he has indulged in the innocent play of tender
+and affectionate emotions, which finds itself revealed in tranquillising
+scenery. The literary result is a fresh appreciation of 'Nature.' Pope's
+Nature has become for him artificial and conventional. From a religious
+point of view it represents 'cold morality,' and the substitution of
+logical argumentation for the language of the heart. It suggests the
+cynicism of the heartless fine gentleman who sneers at Wesley and
+Bunyan, and covers his want of feeling by a stilted deism. Cowper tried
+unsuccessfully to supersede Pope's _Homer_; in trying to be simple he
+became bald; but he also tried most successfully to express with
+absolute sincerity the simple and deep emotions of an exquisitely tender
+character.
+
+Crabbe meanwhile believed in Pope, and had a sturdy solid contempt for
+Methodism. Cowper's guide, Newton, would have passed with him for a
+nuisance and a fanatic. Crabbe is a thorough realist. In some ways he
+may be compared to his contemporary Malthus. Malthus started, as we
+know, by refuting the sentimentalism of Rousseau; Crabbe's _Village_ is
+a protest against the embodiment of the same spirit in Goldsmith. He is
+determined to see things as they are, with no rose-coloured mist. Crabbe
+replies to critics that if his realism was unpoetical, the criterion
+suggested would condemn much of Dryden and Pope as equally unpoetical.
+He was not renouncing but carrying on the tradition, and was admired by
+Byron in his rather wayward mood of Pope-worship as the last
+representative of the legitimate school. The position is significant.
+Crabbe condemns Goldsmith's 'Nature' because it is 'unnatural.' It means
+the Utopian ideal of Rousseau which never did and never can exist. It
+belongs to the world of old-fashioned pastoral poetry, in which Corydon
+and Thyrsis had their being. He will paint British squires and farmers
+and labourers as he has seen them with his own eyes. The wit has become
+for him the mere fop, whose poetry is an arbitrary convention, a mere
+plaything for the fine ladies and gentlemen detached from the living
+interests of mankind. The Pope tradition is still maintained, but is to
+be revised by being brought down again to contact with solid earth.
+Therefore on the one hand he is thoroughly in harmony with Johnson, the
+embodiment of common sense, and on the other, excited the enthusiasm of
+Wordsworth and Scott, who, though leaders of a new movement, heartily
+sympathised with his realism and rejection of the old conventionalism.
+Though Crabbe regards Cowper's religion as fanaticism, they are so far
+agreed that both consider that poetry has become divorced from reality
+and reflects the ugly side of actual human nature. They do not propose a
+revolution in its methods, but to put fresh life into it by seeing
+things as they are. And both of them, living in the country, apply the
+principle to 'Nature' in the sense of scenery. Cowper gives interest to
+the flat meadows of the Ouse; and Crabbe, a botanist and lover of
+natural history, paints with unrivalled fidelity and force the flat
+shores and tideways of his native East Anglia. They are both therefore
+prophets of a love of Nature, in one of the senses of the Protean word.
+Cowper, who prophesied the fall of the Bastille and denounced luxury,
+was to some extent an unconscious ally of Rousseau, though he regarded
+the religious aspects of Rousseau's doctrine as shallow and
+unsatisfactory. Crabbe shows the attitude of which Johnson is the most
+characteristic example. Johnson was thoroughly content with the old
+school in so far as it meant that poetry must be thoroughly rational and
+sensible. His hatred of cant and foppery was so far congenial to the
+tradition; but it implied a difference. To him Pope's metaphysical
+system was mere foppery, and the denunciation of luxury mere cant. He
+felt mere contempt for Goldsmith's flirtation with that vein of
+sentiment. His dogged conservatism prevented him from recognising the
+strength of the philosophical movements which were beginning to clothe
+themselves in Rousseauism. Burke, if he condemned the revolutionary
+doctrine as wicked, saw distinctly how potent a lesson it was becoming.
+Johnson, showing the true British indifference, could treat the movement
+with contempt--Hume's scepticism was a mere 'milking the bull'--a love
+of paradox for its own sake--and Wilkes and the Whigs, though wicked in
+intention, were simple and superficial dealers in big words. In the
+literary application the same sturdy common sense was opposed to the
+Pope tradition so far as that tradition opposed common sense.
+Conventional diction, pastorals, and twaddle about Nature belonged to
+the nonsensical side. He entirely sympathised with Crabbe's substitution
+of the real living brutish clown for the unreal swain of Arcadia; that
+is, for developing poetry by making it thoroughly realistic even at the
+cost of being prosaic.
+
+So far the tendency to realism was thoroughly congenial to the
+matter-of-fact utilitarian spirit of the time, and was in some sense in
+harmony with a 'return to Nature.' But it was unconsciously becoming
+divorced from some of the great movements of thought, of which it failed
+to perceive the significance. A new inspiration was showing itself, to
+which critics have done at least ample justice. The growth of history
+had led to renewed interest in much that had been despised as mere
+curiosities or ridiculed as implying the barbarism of our ancestors. I
+have already noticed the dilettantism of the previous generation, and
+the interest of Gray and Collins and Warton and Walpole in antiquarian
+researches. Gothic had ceased to be a simple term of reproach. The old
+English literature is beginning to be studied seriously. Pope and
+Warburton and Johnson had all edited Shakespeare; Garrick had given him
+fresh popularity, and the first edition of _Old Plays_ by Dodsley
+appeared in 1744. Similar studies were extending in many directions.
+Mallet in his work upon Denmark (1755) gave a translation of the _Eddas_
+which called attention to Scandinavian mythology. Bodmer soon
+afterwards published for the first time the _Nibelungen Lied_.
+Macpherson startled the literary world in 1762 by what professed to be
+an epic poem from the Gaelic. Chatterton's career (1752-1770) was a
+proof not only of unique poetical precocity, but of a singular facility
+in divining the tastes of the literary world at the time. Percy's
+_Reliques_ appeared in 1765. Percy, I may note, had begun oddly enough
+by publishing a Chinese novel (1761), and a translation of Icelandic
+poetry (1763). Not long afterwards Sir William Jones published
+translations of Oriental poetry. Briefly, as historical, philological,
+and antiquarian research extended, the man of letters was also beginning
+to seek for new 'motives,' and to discover merits in old forms of
+literature. The importance of this new impulse cannot be over-estimated,
+but it may be partly misinterpreted. It is generally described as a
+foretaste of what is called the Romantic movement. The word is no doubt
+very useful--though exceedingly vague. The historian of literature is
+sometimes given to speak as though it meant the revelation of a new and
+definite creed. He speaks, that is, like the historian of science, who
+accepts Darwinism as the revelation of a new principle transfusing the
+old conceptions, and traces the various anticipations, the seminal idea;
+or like the Protestant theologian who used to regard Luther as having
+announced the full truth dimly foreseen by Wicliff or the Albigenses.
+Romanticism, that is, is treated as a single movement; while the men who
+share traces of the taste are supposed to have not only foreseen the new
+doctrine but to have been the actual originators. Yet I think that all
+competent writers will also agree that Romanticism is a name which has
+been applied to a number of divergent or inconsistent schools. It seems
+to mean every impulse which tended to find the old clothing inadequate
+for the new thoughts, which caused dissatisfaction with the old
+philosophical and religious or political systems and aspirations, and
+took a corresponding variety of literary forms. It is far too complex a
+phenomenon to be summed up in any particular formula. The mischief is
+that to take the literary evolution as an isolated phenomenon is to miss
+an essential clue to such continuity and unity as it really possesses.
+When we omit the social factor, the solidarity which exists between
+contemporaries occupied with the same problem and sharing certain common
+beliefs, each school appears as an independent unit, implying a
+discontinuity or a simple relation of contrariety, and we explain the
+succession by such a verbal phrase as 'reaction.' The real problem is,
+what does the reaction mean? and that requires us to take into account
+the complex and variously composed currents of thought and reason which
+are seeking for literary expression. The popularity of _Ossian_ for
+example, is a curious phenomenon. At the first sight we are disposed to
+agree with Johnson that any man could write such stuff if he would
+abandon his mind to it, and to add that if any one would write it no one
+could read it. Yet we know that _Ossian_ appealed to the gigantic
+intellects of Goethe and Napoleon. That is a symptom of deep
+significance; _Ossian_ suited Goethe in the _Werther_ period and
+Napoleon took it with him when he was dreaming of rivalling Alexander's
+conquests in the East. We may perhaps understand why the gigantesque
+pictures in _Ossian_ of the northern mountains and scenery--with all its
+vagueness, incoherence, and bombast, was somehow congenial to minds
+dissatisfied, for different reasons, with the old ideals. To explain the
+charm more precisely is a very pretty problem for the acute critic.
+_Ossian_, it is clear, fell in with the mood characteristic of the
+time. But when we ask what effect it produced in English literature, the
+answer must surely be, 'next to none.' Gray was enthusiastic and tried
+to believe in its authenticity. Scots, like Blair and even the sceptical
+Hume--though Hume soon revolted--defended _Ossian_ out of patriotic
+prejudice, and Burns professed to admire. But nobody in Great Britain
+took to writing Ossianesque. Wordsworth was simply disgusted by the
+unreality, and nothing could be less in the _Ossian_ vein than Burns.
+The _Ossian_ craze illustrates the extension of historical interest, of
+which I have spoken, and the vague discontent of Wertherism. But I do
+not see how the publication can be taken as the cause of a new
+departure, although it was an indication of the state of mind which led
+to a new departure. Percy's _Reliques_, again, is often mentioned as an
+'epoch-making' book. Undoubtedly it was a favourite with Scott and many
+other readers of his generation. But how far did it create any change of
+taste? The old ballad was on one side congenial to the classical school,
+as Addison showed by his criticism of _Chevy Chase_ for its simple
+version of a heroic theme. Goldsmith tried his hand at a ballad about
+the same time with Percy, and both showed that they were a little too
+much afraid that simplicity might degenerate into childishness, and gain
+Johnson's contempt. But there was nothing in the old school incompatible
+with a rather patronising appreciation of the popular poetry. It gained
+fresh interest when the historical tendency gave a newer meaning to the
+old society in which ballad poetry had flourished.
+
+This suggests the last remark which I have room to make. One
+characteristic of the period is a growth of provincial centres of some
+intellectual culture. As manufactures extended, and manufacturers began
+to read, circles of some literary pretensions sprang up in Norwich,
+Birmingham, Bristol, and Manchester; and most conspicuously in
+Edinburgh. Though the Scot was coming south in numbers which alarmed
+Johnson, there were so many eminent Scots at home during this time that
+Edinburgh seems at least to have rivalled London as an intellectual
+centre. The list of great men includes Hume and Adam Smith, Robertson
+and Hailes and Adam Ferguson, Kames, Monboddo, and Dugald Stewart among
+philosophers and historians; John Home, Blair, G. Campbell, Beattie, and
+Henry Mackenzie among men of letters; Hutton, Black, Cullen, and
+Gregory among scientific leaders. Scottish patriotism then, as at other
+periods, was vigorous, and happily ceasing to be antagonistic to
+unionist sentiment. The Scot admitted that he was touched by
+provincialism; but he retained a national pride, and only made the
+modest and most justifiable claim that he was intrinsically superior to
+the Southron. He still preserved intellectual and social traditions, and
+cherished them the more warmly, which marked him as a distinct member of
+the United Kingdom. In Scotland the rapid industrial development had
+given fresh life to the whole society without obliterating its
+distinctive peculiarities. Song and ballad and local legends were still
+alive, and not merely objects of literary curiosity. It was under such
+conditions that Burns appeared, the greatest beyond compare of all the
+self-taught poets. Now there can be no explanation whatever of the
+occurrence of a man of genius at a given time and place. For anything we
+can say, Burns was an accident; but given the genius, his relation was
+clear, and the genius enabled him to recognise it with unequalled
+clearness. Burns became, as he has continued, the embodiment of the
+Scottish genius. Scottish patriotic feeling animates some of his
+noblest poems, and whether as an original writer--and no one could be
+more original--or as adapting and revising the existing poetry, he
+represents the essential spirit of the Scottish peasant. I need not
+point out that this implies certain limitations, and some failings worse
+than limitation. But it implies also the spontaneous and masculine
+vigour which we may call poetic inspiration of the highest kind. He had
+of course read the English authors such as Addison and Pope. So far as
+he tried to imitate the accepted form he was apt to lose his fire. He is
+inspired when he has a nation behind him and is the mouthpiece of
+sentiments, traditional, but also living and vigorous. He represents,
+therefore, a new period. The lyrical poetry seemed to have died out in
+England. It suddenly comes to life in Scotland and reaches unsurpassable
+excellence within certain limits, because a man of true genius rises to
+utter the emotions of a people in their most natural form without
+bothering about canons of literary criticism. The society and the
+individual are in thorough harmony, and that, I take it, is the
+condition of really great literature at all times.
+
+This must suggest my concluding moral. The watchword of every literary
+school may be brought under the formula 'Return to Nature': though
+'Nature' receives different interpretations. To be natural, on the one
+hand, is to be sincere and spontaneous; to utter the emotions natural to
+you in the forms which are also natural, so far as the accepted canons
+are not rules imposed by authority but have been so thoroughly
+assimilated as to express your own instinctive impulses. On the other
+side, it means that the literature must be produced by the class which
+embodies the really vital and powerful currents of thought which are
+moulding society. The great author must have a people behind him; utter
+both what he really thinks and feels and what is thought and felt most
+profoundly by his contemporaries. As the literature ceases to be truly
+representative, and adheres to the conventionalism of the former period,
+it becomes 'unnatural' and the literary forms become a survival instead
+of a genuine creation. The history of eighteenth century literature
+illustrates this by showing how as the social changes give new influence
+to the middle classes and then to the democracy, the aristocratic class
+which represented the culture of the opening stage is gradually pushed
+aside; its methods become antiquated and its conventions cease to
+represent the ideals of the most vigorous part of the population. The
+return to Nature with Pope and Addison and Swift meant, get rid of
+pedantry, be thoroughly rational, and take for your guide the bright
+common sense of the Wit and the scholar. During Pope's supremacy the Wit
+who represents the aristocracy produces some admirably polished work;
+but the development of journalism and Grub Street shows that he is
+writing to satisfy the popular interests so keenly watched by Defoe in
+Grub Street. In the period of Richardson and Fielding Nature has become
+the Nature of the middle-class John Bull. The old romances have become
+hopelessly unnatural, and they will give us portraits of living human
+beings, whether Clarissa or Tom Jones. The rationalism of the higher
+class strikes them as cynical, and the generation which listens to
+Wesley must have also a secular literature, which, whether sentimental
+as with Richardson or representing common sense with Fielding, must at
+any rate correspond to solid substantial matter-of-fact motives,
+intelligible to the ordinary Briton of the time. In the last period, the
+old literary conventions, though retaining their old literary prestige,
+are becoming threadbare while preserving the old forms. Even the
+Johnsonian conservatism implies hatred for cant, for mere foppery and
+sham sentimentalism; and though it uses them, insists with Crabbe upon
+keeping in contact with fact. We must be 'realistic,' though we can
+retain the old literary forms. The appeal to Nature, meanwhile, has come
+with Rousseau and the revolutionists to mean something different--the
+demand, briefly, for a thorough-going reconstruction of the whole
+philosophical and social fabric. To the good old Briton, Whig or Tory,
+that seemed to be either diabolical or mere Utopian folly. To him the
+British constitution is still thoroughly congenial and 'natural.'
+Meanwhile intellectual movement has introduced a new element. The
+historical sense is being developed, as a settled society with a complex
+organisation becomes conscious at once of its continuity and of the slow
+processes of growth by which it has been elaborated. The fusion of
+English and Scottish nations stimulates the patriotism of the smaller
+though better race, and generates a passionate enthusiasm for the old
+literature which represents the characteristic genius of the smaller
+community. Burns embodies the sentiment, though without any conscious
+reference to theories philosophical or historical. The significance was
+to be illustrated by Scott--an equally fervid patriot. He tells Crabbe
+how oddly a passage in the _Village_ was associated in his memory with
+border-riding ballads and scraps of old plays. 'Nature' for Scott meant
+'his honest grey hills' speaking in every fold of old traditional lore.
+That meant, in one sense, that Scott was not only romantic but
+reactionary. That was his weakness. But if he was the first to make the
+past alive, he was also the first to make the present historical. His
+masterpieces are not his descriptions of mediaeval knights so much as the
+stories in which he illuminates the present by his vivid presentation of
+the present order as the outgrowth from the old, and makes the Scottish
+peasant or lawyer or laird interesting as a product and a type of social
+conditions. Nature therefore to him includes the natural processes by
+which society has been developed under the stress of circumstances.
+Nothing could be more unnatural for him than the revolutionary principle
+which despises tradition and regards the patriotic sentiment as
+superfluous and irrational. Wordsworth represents again another sense of
+Nature. He announced as his special principle that poetry should speak
+the language of Nature, and therefore, as he inferred, of the ordinary
+peasant and uneducated man. The hills did not speak to him of legend or
+history but of the sentiment of the unsophisticated yeoman or
+'statesman.' He sympathised enthusiastically with the French Revolution
+so long as he took it to utter the simple republican sentiment congenial
+to a small society of farmers and shepherds. He abandoned it when he
+came to think that it really meant the dissolution of the religious and
+social sentiments which correspond to the deepest instincts which bound
+such men together. Coleridge represents a variation. He was the first
+Englishman to be affected by the philosophical movement of Germany. He
+had been an ardent revolutionist in the days when he adopted the
+metaphysics of Hartley and Priestley, which fell in with the main
+eighteenth-century current of scepticism. He came to think that the
+movement represented a perversion of the intellect. It meant materialism
+and scepticism, or interpreted Nature as a mere dead mechanism. It
+omitted, therefore, the essential element which is expressed by what we
+may roughly call the mystical tendency in philosophy. Nature must be
+taken as the embodiment of a divine idea. Nature, therefore, in his
+poetry, is regarded not from Scott's point of view as subordinate to
+human history, or from Wordsworth's as teaching the wisdom of
+unsophisticated mankind, but rather as a symbolism legible to the higher
+imagination. Though his fine critical sense made him keep his philosophy
+and his poetry distinct, that is the common tendency which gives unity
+to his work and which made his utterances so stimulating to congenial
+intellects. His criticism of the 'Nature' of Pope and Bolingbroke would
+be substantially, that in their hands the reason which professed to
+interpret Nature became cold and materialistic, because its logic left
+out of account the mysterious but essential touches revealed only to the
+heart, or, in his language, to the reason but not to the understanding.
+Meanwhile, though the French revolutionary doctrines were preached in
+England, they only attracted the literary leaders for a time, and it was
+not till the days of Byron and Shelley that they found thorough-going
+representatives in English poetry. On that, however, I must not speak.
+I have tried to indicate briefly how Scott and Wordsworth and Coleridge,
+the most eminent leaders of the new school, partly represented movements
+already obscurely working in England, and how they were affected by the
+new ideas which had sprung to life elsewhere. They, like their
+predecessors, are essentially trying to cast aside the literary
+'survivals' of effete conditions, and succeed so far as they could find
+adequate expression for the great ideas of their time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
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