CHAPTER VIII THE SECOND FORTY YEARS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 1740-1780 An Age of Changing Standards. The second forty years of the eighteenth century are more remarkable for the foundations which they laid for future changes than for original literary productions. Moral, religious, political, and literary standards began to change. There was more diversity of opinion in regard to all these subjects. These years were a flight of stairs leading up to the romantic age, and to the entire nineteenth century. In 1742 Robert Walpole's long term as prime minister came to a close. His political code contained two rules of action: (1) to secure by bribery, whenever necessary, the adoption of his measures, and (2) never to attempt to. remedy abuses or to change any existing state of affairs, unless the demand for such change was too strong to be resisted. In 1757 William Pitt became, in effect, prime minister (though not so in name). Walpole had tried to bribe him in various ways and had utterly failed. In politics, Pitt was in a certain sense the counterpart of Wesley in religious life. Pitt appealed to the patriotism and to the sense of honor of his countrymen, and many heard his appeal. Under Walpole, Great Britain was a third-rate insular power; under Pitt, she became one of the foremost powers of the world. Between 1750 and 1760, Clive was making Great Britain mistress of the vast empire of India, and in 1759 Wolfe shattered the power of France in Canada.. England was expanding to the eastward and the westward and taking her literature with her. As Wolfe advanced on Quebec, he was reading Gray's Elegy. Change in Religious Influence. The church had become too lukewarm and respectable to endeavor to bring in the masses, and they saw nothing in the church to attract them to it. When religious influence was at the lowest ebb, two eloquent preachers, John Wesley and George Whitefield, started a movement which is still gathering force. Although anything like enthusiasm or appeal to the emotions from the pulpit had for some time been considered in bad taste, Wesley did not ask his audience to listen to a sermon on the favorite bloodless abstractions of the eighteenth century pulpit, such as Charity, Faith, Duty, Holiness, abstractions which never moved a human being an inch heavenward. His sermons were 'emotional. They dealt largely with the emotion of love, God's love for man. He did not ask his listeners to engage in intellectual disquisitions about the aspects of infinity. He did not talk free-will metaphysics or trouble his hearers with a satisfactory philosophical account of the origin of evil. He spoke about things which reached not only the understanding but also the feelings of plain men. About the same time, Whitefield was preaching to the miners near Bristol. Tears streamed down the cheeks of these rude men as he eloquently told them the story of salvation, and made many resolve to lead better lives. This religious awakening may have been accompanied with too much appeal to the feelings and some unhealthy emotional excitement, but some vigorous movement was absolutely necessary to quicken the spiritual life of such an age. 264 ✓ FROM 1740 TO 1780 Literature CHANGE IN LITERARY STANDARDS: ROMANTICISM What is Romanticism? It is important to understand the meaning of the romantic movement in order to comprehend the dominating spirit of the next age. The years from 1740 to 1780 nowhere show romantic literature at the height of its excellence, but they indicate how the foundations of the movement were laid. The best short definition of romanticism is that of Victor Hugo, who called it “liberalism in literature.” Although this definition is incomplete, it has the merit of covering all kinds of romantic movements. In this period and the far more glorious one that followed, romanticism made its influence felt for the better in four different ways. An understanding of each of these will make us more intelligent critics. In the first place, the romantic spirit is opposed to the prosaic. The romantic yearns for the light that never was on sea or land and longs to attain the unfulfilled ambitions of the soul, even when these in full measure are not possible. Sometimes these ambitions are so unrelated to the possible that the romantic has in certain usage become synonymous with the impractical or the absurd, but this is not its meaning in literature. The romantic may not always be "of imagination all compact," but it has a tendency in that direction. A reality of the imagination is as satisfying to romanticists as a reality of the prosaic reason, hence they, unlike the classicists, can enjoy The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The events in these plays could not have been objective realities in an actual world, but they have the necessary element of subjective truth. The imagination is the only power that can grasp the unseen. Any movements which stimulate imaginative activity must give the individual more points of contact with that part of the world that does not obtrude itself on the physical senses, and especially with many facts of existence which cold intellectual activity can never comprehend. Hence, romanticism leads to greater breadth of view. In the second place, the romantic is the opposite of the hackneyed. Hence, too much repetition may take a necessary quality away from what was once considered romantic. The epithets "ivory" and "raven," when applied to "brow" and to "tresses," respectively, were at first romantic, but much repetition has deprived them of this quality. If an age is to be considered romantic, it must look at things from a point of view somewhat different from that of the age immediately preceding. This change may be either in the character of the thought or in the manner of its presentation, or in both. An example of the formal element of change which appeared, consists in the substitution of blank verse and the Spenserian stanza for the classical couplets of the French school. In the next age, we shall find that the subject matter is no longer chiefly of the satiric or the didactic type. In the third place, the highest type of romanticism must contain something of the subjective element (see p. 130) peculiar to the individual. This often appears in the ideals that we fashion and in our characteristic conceptions of the spiritual significance of the world and its deepest realities. Two writers of this period by investing nature with a spirit of melancholy (see p. 270) illustrate one of the many phases which this subjective element can assume. In the fourth place, we shall see that the romantic movement tended toward deeper feeling. Sometimes the movement was injured and subjected to caricature by exhibitions of unbridled and ridiculous passion. Of course, the best romantic works are not mere seas of rippling sensibility or stormy passion, but the great romanticists never avoid expressions of profound feeling, like the love of Juliet or the jealousy of Othello. The classic school shunned as vulgar all exhibitions of enthusiasm and strong emotion. The Influence of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.-The classicists had turned away from the great English authors and had gone to French models for instruction in polish and form. Spenser exerted a powerful influence on the romanticists, for he is to the core a romantic poet. His far-off forest world with its enchantment of bowers, streams, glorious maidens, and heroic knights, is the very fairyland of romance. Before 1750 there was only one eighteenth century edition of Spenser's work published in England. In 1758, three editions of the Faerie Queene appeared. Spenser's readers and imitators were becoming very numerous. Much of the mid-eighteenth century influence of Shakespeare came from the masterly performance of his plays on the stage. In 1741 the great actor David Garrick captivated London audiences by his presentation of Shakespeare's dramas. Before Garrick retired in 1776, he had produced twenty-four of these plays, and so he brought some of the influences of the romantic Elizabethan age to bear on the taste of eighteenth century England. The presentation of Shakespeare by a master like Garrick affected the imaginations of the people far more vividly than a mere reading of the plays. We have seen that the classicists did not like the "monstrous irregularities of Shakespeare," but, later in the century, he found a larger and more delighted audience. No age |