English Literature

Chapter 21

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In literature the change is no less marked. From the Elizabethan drama playwrights turned to coa.r.s.e, evil scenes, which presently disgusted the people and were driven from the stage. From romance, writers turned to realism; from Italian influence with its exuberance of imagination they turned to France, and learned to repress the emotions, to follow the head rather than the heart, and to write in a clear, concise, formal style, according to set rules. Poets turned from the n.o.ble blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, from the variety and melody which had characterized English poetry since Chaucer"s day, to the monotonous heroic couplet with its mechanical perfection.

The greatest writer of the age is John Dryden, who established the heroic couplet as the prevailing verse form in English poetry, and who developed a new and serviceable prose style suited to the practical needs of the age.

The popular ridicule of Puritanism in burlesque and doggerel is best exemplified in Butler"s _Hudibras_. The realistic tendency, the study of facts and of men as they are, is shown in the work of the Royal Society, in the philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, and in the diaries of Evelyn and Pepys, with their minute pictures of social life. The age was one of transition from the exuberance and vigor of Renaissance literature to the formality and polish of the Augustan Age. In strong contrast with the preceding ages, comparatively little of Restoration literature is familiar to modern readers.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. _Dryden_. Alexander"s Feast, Song for St. Cecilia"s Day, selections from Absalom and Achitophel, Religio Laici, Hind and Panther, Annus Mirabilis,--in Manly"s English Poetry, or Ward"s English Poets, or Ca.s.sell"s National Library; Palamon and Arcite (Dryden"s version of Chaucer"s tale), in Standard English Cla.s.sics, Riverside Literature, etc.; Dryden"s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in Manly"s, or Garnett"s, English Prose.

_Butler_. Selections from Hudibras, in Manly"s English Poetry, Ward"s English Poets, or Morley"s Universal Library.

_Pepys_. Selections in Manly"s English Prose; the Diary in Everyman"s Library.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. _HISTORY_. _Text-book_, Montgomery, pp. 257-280; Cheyney, pp.

466-514; Green, ch. 9; Traill; Gardiner; Macaulay.

_Special Works_. Sydney"s Social Life in England from the Restoration to the Revolution; Airy"s The English Restoration and Louis XIV; Hale"s The Fall of the Stuarts.

_LITERATURE_. Garnett"s The Age of Dryden; Dowden"s Puritan and Anglican.

_Dryden_. Poetical Works, with Life, edited by Christie; the same, edited by Noyes, in Cambridge Poets Series; Life and Works (18 vols.), by Walter Scott, revised (1893) by Saintsbury; Essays, edited by Ker; Life, by Saintsbury (English Men of Letters); Macaulay"s Essay; Lowell"s Essay, in Among My Books (or in Literary Essays, vol. 3); Dowden"s Essay, _supra_.

_Butler_. Hudibras, in Morley"s Universal Library; Poetical Works, edited by Johnson; Dowden"s Essay, _supra_.

_Pepys_. Diary in Everyman"s Library; the same, edited by Wheatley (8 vols.); Wheatley"s Samuel Pepys and the World He Lived In; Stevenson"s Essay, in Familiar Studies of Men and Books.

_The Restoration Drama_. Plays in the Mermaid Series; Hazlitt"s Lectures on the English Comic Writers; Meredith"s Essay on Comedy and the Comic Spirit; Lamb"s Essay on the Artificial Comedy; Thackeray"s Essay on Congreve, in English Humorists.

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS. 1. What marked change in social conditions followed the Restoration? How are these changes reflected in literature?

2. What are the chief characteristics of Restoration literature? Why is this period called the Age of French influence? What new tendencies were introduced? What effect did the Royal Society and the study of science have upon English prose? What is meant by realism? by formalism?

3. What is meant by the heroic couplet? Explain why it became the prevailing form of English poetry. What are its good qualities and its defects? Name some well-known poems which are written in couplets. How do Dryden"s couplets compare with Chaucer"s? Can you explain the difference?

4. Give a brief account of Dryden"s life. What are his chief poetical works? For what new object did he use poetry? Is satire a poetical subject?

Why is a poetical satire more effective than a satire in prose? What was Dryden"s contribution to English prose? What influence did he exert on our literature?

5. What is Butler"s _Hudibras_? Explain its popularity. Read a pa.s.sage and comment upon it, first, as satire; second, as a description of the Puritans. Is _Hudibras_ poetry? Why?

6. Name the philosophers and political economists of this period. Can you explain why Hobbes should call his work _Leviathan_? What important American doc.u.ments show the influence of Locke?

7. Tell briefly the story of Pepys and his _Diary_. What light does the latter throw on the life of the age? Is the _Diary_ a work of literature?

Why?

CHRONOLOGY _Last Half of the Seventeenth Century_ ===================================================================== HISTORY | LITERATURE --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1649. Execution of Charles I | | 1649-1660. Commonwealth | 1651. Hobbes"s Leviathan | 1660. Restoration of Charles II | 1660-1669, Pepys"s Diary | | 1662. Royal Society founded | | 1663. Butler"s Hudibras 1665-1666. Plague and Fire of London | War with Holland | | 1667. Dutch fleet in the Thames | 1667. Milton"s Paradise Lost.

CHAPTER IX

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE (1700-1800)

I. AUGUSTAN OR CLa.s.sIC AGE

HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. The Revolution of 1688, which banished the last of the Stuart kings and called William of Orange to the throne, marks the end of the long struggle for political freedom in England. Thereafter the Englishman spent his tremendous energy, which his forbears had largely spent in fighting for freedom, in endless political discussions and in efforts to improve his government. In order to bring about reforms, votes were now necessary; and to get votes the people of England must be approached with ideas, facts, arguments, information. So the newspaper was born,[182] and literature in its widest sense, including the book, the newspaper, and the magazine, became the chief instrument of a nation"s progress.

The first half of the eighteenth century is remarkable for the rapid social development in England. Hitherto men had been more or less governed by the narrow, isolated standards of the Middle Ages, and when they differed they fell speedily to blows. Now for the first time they set themselves to the task of learning the art of living together, while still holding different opinions. In a single generation nearly two thousand public coffeehouses, each a center of sociability, sprang up in London alone, and the number of private clubs is quite as astonishing.[183] This new social life had a marked effect in polishing men"s words and manners. The typical Londoner of Queen Anne"s day was still rude, and a little vulgar in his tastes; the city was still very filthy, the streets unlighted and infested at night by bands of rowdies and "Mohawks"; but outwardly men sought to refine their manners according to prevailing standards; and to be elegant, to have "good form," was a man"s first duty, whether he entered society or wrote literature. One can hardly read a book or poem of the age without feeling this superficial elegance. Government still had its opposing Tory and Whig parties, and the Church was divided into Catholics, Anglicans, and Dissenters; but the growing social life offset many antagonisms, producing at least the outward impression of peace and unity. Nearly every writer of the age busied himself with religion as well as with party politics, the scientist Newton as sincerely as the churchman Barrow, the philosophical Locke no less earnestly than the evangelical Wesley; but nearly all tempered their zeal with moderation, and argued from reason and Scripture, or used delicate satire upon their opponents, instead of denouncing them as followers of Satan. There were exceptions, of course_;_ but the general tendency of the age was toward toleration. Man had found himself in the long struggle for personal liberty; now he turned to the task of discovering his neighbor, of finding in Whig and Tory, in Catholic and Protestant, in Anglican and Dissenter, the same general human characteristics that he found in himself. This good work was helped, moreover, by the spread of education and by the growth of the national spfrit, following the victories of Marlborough on the Continent. In the midst of heated argument it needed only a word--Gibraltar, Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet--or a poem of victory written in a garret[184] to tell a patriotic people that under their many differences they were all alike Englishmen.

In the latter half of the century the political and social progress is almost bewildering. The modern form of cabinet government responsible to Parliament and the people had been established under George I; and in 1757 the cynical and corrupt practices of Walpole, premier of the first Tory cabinet, were replaced by the more enlightened policies of Pitt. Schools were established; clubs and coffeehouses increased; books and magazines multiplied until the press was the greatest visible power in England; the modern great dailies, the _Chronicle, Post_, and _Times_, began their career of public education. Religiously, all the churches of England felt the quickening power of that tremendous spiritual revival known as Methodism, under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield. Outside her own borders three great men--Clive in India, Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, Cook in Australia and the islands of the Pacific--were unfurling the banner of St. George over the untold wealth of new lands, and spreading the world-wide empire of the Anglo-Saxons.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. In every preceding age we have noted especially the poetical works, which const.i.tute, according to Matthew Arnold, the glory of English literature. Now for the first time we must chronicle the triumph of English prose. A mult.i.tude of practical interests arising from the new social and political conditions demanded expression, not simply in books, but more especially in pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers. Poetry was inadequate for such a task; hence the development of prose, of the "unfettered word," as Dante calls it,--a development which astonishes us by its rapidity and excellence. The graceful elegance of Addison"s essays, the terse vigor of Swift"s satires, the artistic finish of Fielding"s novels, the sonorous eloquence of Gibbon"s history and of Burke"s orations,--these have no parallel in the poetry of the age. Indeed, poetry itself became prosaic in this respect, that it was used not for creative works of imagination, but for essays, for satire, for criticism,--for exactly the same practical ends as was prose. The poetry of the first half of the century, as typified in the work of Pope, is polished and witty enough, but artificial; it lacks fire, fine feeling, enthusiasm, the glow of the Elizabethan Age and the moral earnestness of Puritanism. In a word, it interests us as a study of life, rather than delights or inspires us by its appeal to the imagination. The variety and excellence of prose works, and the development of a serviceable prose style, which had been begun by Dryden, until it served to express clearly every human interest and emotion,--these are the chief literary glories of the eighteenth century.

In the literature of the preceding age we noted two marked tendencies,--the tendency to realism in subject-matter, and the tendency to polish and refinement of expression. Both these tendencies were continued in the Augustan Age, and are seen clearly in the poetry of Pope, who brought the couplet to perfection, and in the prose of Addison. A third tendency is shown in the prevalence of satire, resulting from the unfortunate union of politics with literature. We have already noted the power of the press in this age, and the perpetual strife of political parties. Nearly every writer of the first half of the century was used and rewarded by Whigs or Tories for satirizing their enemies and for advancing their special political interests. Pope was a marked exception, but he nevertheless followed the prose writers in using satire too largely in his poetry. Now satire--that is, a literary work which searches out the faults of men or inst.i.tutions in order to hold them up to ridicule--is at best a destructive kind of criticism. A satirist is like a laborer who clears away the ruins and rubbish of an old house before the architect and builders begin on a new and beautiful structure. The work may sometimes be necessary, but it rarely arouses our enthusiasm. While the satires of Pope, Swift, and Addison are doubtless the best in our language, we hardly place them with our great literature, which is always constructive in spirit; and we have the feeling that all these men were capable of better things than they ever wrote.

THE CLa.s.sIC AGE. The period we are studying is known to us by various names. It is often called the Age of Queen Anne; but, unlike Elizabeth, this "meekly stupid" queen had practically no influence upon our literature. The name Cla.s.sic Age is more often heard; but in using it we should remember clearly these three different ways in which the word "cla.s.sic" is applied to literature: (1) the term "cla.s.sic" refers, in general, to writers of the highest rank in any nation. As used in our literature, it was first applied to the works of the great Greek and Roman writers, like Homer and Virgil; and any English book which followed the simple and n.o.ble method of these writers was said to have a cla.s.sic style.

Later the term was enlarged to cover the great literary works of other ancient nations; so that the Bible and the Avestas, as well as the Iliad and the Aeneid, are called cla.s.sics. (2) Every national literature has at least one period in which an unusual number of great writers are producing books, and this is called the cla.s.sic period of a nation"s literature. Thus the reign of Augustus is the cla.s.sic or golden age of Rome; the generation of Dante is the cla.s.sic age of Italian literature; the age of Louis XIV is the French cla.s.sic age; and the age of Queen Anne is often called the cla.s.sic age of England. (3) The word "cla.s.sic" acquired an entirely different meaning in the period we are studying; and we shall better understand this by reference to the preceding ages. The Elizabethan writers were led by patriotism, by enthusiasm, and, in general, by romantic emotions. They wrote in a natural style, without regard to rules; and though they exaggerated and used too many words, their works are delightful because of their vigor and freshness and fine feeling. In the following age patriotism had largely disappeared from politics and enthusiasm from literature. Poets no longer wrote naturally, but artificially, with strange and fantastic verse forms to give effect, since fine feeling was wanting.

And this is the general character of the poetry of the Puritan Age.[185]

Gradually our writers rebelled against the exaggerations of both the natural and the fantastic style. They demanded that poetry should follow exact rules; and in this they were influenced by French writers, especially by Boileau and Rapin, who insisted on precise methods of writing poetry, and who professed to have discovered their rules in the cla.s.sics of Horace and Aristotle. In our study of the Elizabethan drama we noted the good influence of the cla.s.sic movement in insisting upon that beauty of form and definiteness of expression which characterize the dramas of Greece and Rome; and in the work of Dryden and his followers we see a revival of cla.s.sicism in the effort to make English literature conform to rules established by the great writers of other nations. At first the results were excellent, especially in prose; but as the creative vigor of the Elizabethans was lacking in this age, writing by rule soon developed a kind of elegant formalism, which suggests the elaborate social code of the time.

Just as a gentleman might not act naturally, but must follow exact rules in doffing his hat, or addressing a lady, or entering a room, or wearing a wig, or offering his snuffbox to a friend, so our writers lost individuality and became formal and artificial. The general tendency of literature was to look at life critically, to emphasize intellect rather than imagination, the form rather than the content of a sentence. Writers strove to repress all emotion and enthusiasm, and to use only precise and elegant methods of expression. This is what is often meant by the "cla.s.sicism" of the ages of Pope and Johnson. It refers to the critical, intellectual spirit of many writers, to the fine polish of their heroic couplets or the elegance of their prose, and not to any resemblance which their work bears to true cla.s.sic literature. In a word, the cla.s.sic movement had become pseudo-cla.s.sic, i.e. a false or sham cla.s.sicism; and the latter term is now often used to designate a considerable part of eighteenth-century literature.[186] To avoid this critical difficulty we have adopted the term Augustan Age, a name chosen by the writers themselves, who saw in Pope, Addison, Swift, Johnson, and Burke the modern parallels to Horace, Virgil, Cicero, and all that brilliant company who made Roman literature famous in the days of Augustus.

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

Pope is in many respects a unique figure. In the first place, he was for a generation "the poet" of a great nation. To be sure, poetry was limited in the early eighteenth century; there were few lyrics, little or no love poetry, no epics, no dramas or songs of nature worth considering; but in the narrow field of satiric and didactic verse Pope was the undisputed master. His influence completely dominated the poetry of his age, and many foreign writers, as well as the majority of English poets, looked to him as their model. Second, he was a remarkably clear and adequate reflection of the spirit of the age in which he lived. There is hardly an ideal, a belief, a doubt, a fashion, a whim of Queen Anne"s time, that is not neatly expressed in his poetry. Third, he was the only important writer of that age who gave his whole life to letters. Swift was a clergyman and politician; Addison was secretary of state; other writers depended on patrons or politics or pensions for fame and a livelihood; but Pope was independent, and had no profession but literature. And fourth, by the sheer force of his ambition he won his place, and held it, in spite of religious prejudice, and in the face of physical and temperamental obstacles that would have discouraged a stronger man. For Pope was deformed and sickly, dwarfish in soul and body. He knew little of the world of nature or of the world of the human heart. He was lacking, apparently, in n.o.ble feeling, and instinctively chose a lie when the truth had manifestly more advantages.

Yet this jealous, peevish, waspish little man became the most famous poet of his age and the acknowledged leader of English literature. We record the fact with wonder and admiration; but we do not attempt to explain it.

LIFE. Pope was born in London in 1688, the year of the Revolution. His parents were both Catholics, who presently removed from London and settled in Binfield, near Windsor, where the poet"s childhood was pa.s.sed. Partly because of an unfortunate prejudice against Catholics in the public schools, partly because of his own weakness and deformity, Pope received very little school education, but browsed for himself among English books and picked up a smattering of the cla.s.sics. Very early he began to write poetry, and records the fact with his usual vanity:

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.

Being debarred by his religion from many desirable employments, he resolved to make literature his life work; and in this he resembled Dryden, who, he tells us, was his only master, though much of his work seems to depend on Boileau, the French poet and critic.[187] When only sixteen years old he had written his "Pastorals"; a few years later appeared his "Essay on Criticism," which made him famous. With the publication of the _Rape of the Lock_, in 1712, Pope"s name was known and honored all over England, and this dwarf of twenty-four years, by the sheer force of his own ambition, had jumped to the foremost place in English letters. It was soon after this that Voltaire called him "the best poet of England and, at present, of all the world,"--which is about as near the truth as Voltaire generally gets in his numerous universal judgments. For the next twelve years Pope was busy with poetry, especially with his translations of Homer; and his work was so successful financially that he bought a villa at Twickenham, on the Thames, and remained happily independent of wealthy patrons for a livelihood.

Led by his success, Pope returned to London and for a time endeavored to live the gay and dissolute life which was supposed to be suitable for a literary genius; but he was utterly unfitted for it, mentally and physically, and soon retired to Twickenham. There he gave himself up to poetry, manufactured a little garden more artificial than his verses, and cultivated his friendship with Martha Blount, with whom for many years he spent a good part of each day, and who remained faithful to him to the end of his life. At Twickenham he wrote his _Moral Epistles_ (poetical satires modeled after Horace) and revenged himself upon all his critics in the bitter abuse of the _Dunciad_. He died in 1744 and was buried at Twickenham, his religion preventing him from the honor, which was certainly his due, of a resting place in Westminster Abbey.

WORKS OF POPE. For convenience we may separate Pope"s work into three groups, corresponding to the early, middle, and later period of his life.

In the first he wrote his "Pastorals," "Windsor Forest," "Messiah," "Essay on Criticism," "Eloise to Abelard," and the _Rape of the Lock;_ in the second, his translations of Homer; in the third the _Dunciad_ and the _Epistles_, the latter containing the famous "Essay on Man" and the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," which is in truth his "Apologia," and in which alone we see Pope"s life from his own view point.

The "Essay on Criticism" sums up the art of poetry as taught first by Horace, then by Boileau and the eighteenth-century cla.s.sicists. Though written in heroic couplets, we hardly consider this as a poem but rather as a storehouse of critical maxims. "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread"; "To err is human, to forgive divine"; "A little learning is a dangerous thing,"--these lines, and many more like them from the same source, have found their way into our common speech, and are used, without thinking of the author, whenever we need an apt quotation.

The _Rape of the Lock_ is a masterpiece of its kind, and comes nearer to being a "creation" than anything else that Pope has written. The occasion of the famous poem was trivial enough. A fop at the court of Queen Anne, one Lord Petre, snipped a lock of hair from the abundant curls of a pretty maid of honor named Arabella Fermor. The young lady resented it, and the two families were plunged into a quarrel which was the talk of London.

Pope, being appealed to, seized the occasion to construct, not a ballad, as the Cavaliers would have done, nor an epigram, as French poets love to do, but a long poem in which all the mannerisms of society are pictured in minutest detail and satirized with the most delicate wit. The first edition, consisting of two cantos, was published in 1712; and it is amazing now to read of the trivial character of London court life at the time when English soldiers were battling for a great continent in the French and Indian wars. Its instant success caused Pope to lengthen the poem by three more cantos; and in order to make a more perfect burlesque of an epic poem, he introduces gnomes, sprites, sylphs, and salamanders,[188] instead of the G.o.ds of the great epics, with which his readers were familiar. The poem is modeled after two foreign satires: Boileau"s _Le Lutrin_ (reading desk), a satire on the French clergy, who raised a huge quarrel over the location of a lectern; and _La Secchia Rapita_ (stolen bucket), a famous Italian satire on the petty causes of the endless Italian wars. Pope, however, went far ahead of his masters in style and in delicacy of handling a mock-heroic theme, and during his lifetime the _Rape of the Lock_ was considered as the greatest poem of its kind in all literature. The poem is still well worth reading; for as an expression of the artificial life of the age--of its cards, parties, toilettes, lapdogs, tea-drinking, snuff-taking, and idle vanities--it is as perfect in its way as _Tamburlaine_, which reflects the boundless ambition of the Elizabethans.

The fame of Pope"s _Iliad_, which was financially the most successful of his books, was due to the fact that he interpreted Homer in the elegant, artificial language of his own age. Not only do his words follow literary fashions but even the Homeric characters lose their strength and become fashionable men of the court. So the criticism of the scholar Bentley was most appropriate when he said, "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." Pope translated the entire _Iliad_ and half of the _Odyssey_; and the latter work was finished by two Cambridge scholars, Elijah Fenton and William Broome, who imitated the mechanical couplets so perfectly that it is difficult to distinguish their work from that of the greatest poet of the age. A single selection is given to show how, in the n.o.bler pa.s.sages, even Pope may faintly suggest the elemental grandeur of Homer:

The troops exulting sat in order round, And beaming fires illumined all the ground.

As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O"er Heaven"s clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o"ercasts the solemn scene; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, O"er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain"s head.

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