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and fluent satires against the king, the Royal Academicians, Dr. Johnson, James Boswell, Gifford, and others. "The Lousiad," in which a little incident, said to have occurred at the royal table, is made the subject of a long satirical and mock-heroic poem, appeared in 1785.1 Gifford, besides a reply to Wolcot, called an Epistle to Peter Pindar," is the author of the "Baviad" (1794) and "Mæviad" (1796), two clever satires on a school of namby-pamby poets and poetesses, called, from the assumed name of their leader, Mr. Robert Merry, "Della-Cruscans." Lastly, Robert Bloomfield, a farmer's boy in early life, and then a shoemaker, gave to the world, in 1800, his excellent descriptive poem of "The Farmer's Boy."

The Drama, 1745-1800: Home, Johnson, Moore, Mason, Col. man, Murphy, Goldsmith, Foote, Sheridan.

The tragic stage resumed in this period, under the able management of Garrick, a portion of its former dignity; but no original tragedies of importance were composed. Home's play of "Douglas," known to all schoolboys as the source of that familiar burst of eloquence beginning,

"My name is Norval: on the Grampian Hills
My father feeds his flocks," &c., -

appeared in 1757. Johnson's tragedy of "Irene," produced at Drury Lane by Garrick in 1749, was coldly received, owing to the want of sustained tragic interest. When asked how he felt upon the ill success of his tragedy, the sturdy lexicographer replied, "Like the Monument." When we have mentioned Moore's "Gamester" (1775), celebrated for its deeply affecting catastrophe, and Mason's "Elfrida" (1752) and "Caractacus" (1759), our list of tragedies of any note is exhausted.

The comedy of manners, as exemplified by the plays of Congreve and Farquhar, had gradually degenerated into the genteel or sentimental comedy, in which Colman the elder and Arthur Murphy were proficients.

1 See p. 418.

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Goldsmith's "Good-natured Man" (1768) was a clever attempt to bring back the theatrical public to the old way of thinking, which demanded "little more than nature and humor, in whatever walks of life they were most conspicuous." Delineation of character was therefore his principal aim. "She Stoops to Conquer,' a piece written on the same plan, appeared, and had a great run, in 1773. Foote, the actor, wrote several clever farces between 1752 and 1778, of which "The Liar" and "The Mayor of Garratt" are among the most noted.

Sheridan, the son of an Irish actor and a literary lady, after marrying the beautiful actress Miss Linley, in defiance of a crowd of rivals, and after being for years the life of society at Bath, connected himself with the stage, and produced "The Rivals" in 1775. All his other comedies appeared in the ensuing five years; viz., “The Duenna,” “The School for Scandal," "The Critic," and "The Trip to Scarborough." All these plays are in prose; and all, with the exception of "The Duenna," reflect contemporary manners. In the creation of comic character and the conduct of comic dialogue, Sheridan has never been surpassed. His wit flashes evermore; in such a play as "The Rivals," the reader is kept in a state of continual hilarious delight by a profusion of sallies, rejoinders, blunders, contrasts, which seem to exhaust all the resources of the ludicrous. Mrs. Malaprop's "parts of speech" will raise the laughter of unborn generations; and the choleric, generous old father will never find a more perfect representation than Sir Anthony Absolute. In the evolution of his plots he is less happy; nevertheless, in this respect also, he succeeded admirably in "The School for Scandal," which is by common consent regarded as the most perfect of his plays, and is still an established favorite in our theatres.

Learning, 1745-1800: Porson, Lowth, Pococke.

The progress of classical and Oriental learning owed little to England during this period. The one great name that occurs (Edward Gibbon) will be mentioned when we come to speak of the historians. Sloth and ease reigned at the universities; and those great foundations, which in the hands of monks and churchmen in former times had never wholly ceased to minister to learning and philosophy, were now the mere haunts of port-drinking fellows, and lazy, mercenary tutors.1 Porson, the delicacy of whose Greek scholarship almost amounted to a sense, and who admirably edited several of the plays of Euripides; Bishop Lowth, author of the "Prælectiones" on Hebrew poetry, and of a translation of Isaias; and Pococke, the Arabic scholar, are the only learned writers whose works are still of value.

Prose Fiction, 1745-1800: Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Goldsmith, Miss Burney, Mrs. Radcliffe. Favored, in the manner before explained, by the continued stability of society, the taste for novels grew from year to year, and was gratified during this period by an abundant supply of fiction. Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne worked on at the mine which Defoe had opened. Richardson, who was brought up as a printer, produced his first novel, "Pamela," in 1740. A natural and almost accidental train of circumstances led to his writing it. He had agreed to compose a collection of specimen letters-a polite letterwriter, in fact for two booksellers; and it occurred to him, while engaged in this task, that the work would be greatly enlivened if the letters were connected by a thread of narrative. The bookseller applauded the

1 See Gibbon's Memoirs.

notion; and he accordingly worked up the true story of a young woman, the Pamela of the novel, which had come to his knowledge a few years before. Henry Fielding, sprung from a younger branch of the noble house of Denbigh, wrote his first novel, “ Joseph Andrews" in 1742, to turn "Pamela " into ridicule. Richardson's masterpieces, "Clarissa Harlowe " and "Sir Charles Grandison" appeared successively in 1748 and 1753; Fielding's "Tom Jones" and "Amelia," in 1749 and 1751. Smollett, a Scotchman, wrote, between 1748 and 1771, a number of coarse, clever novels upon the same general plan as those of his English contemporaries; that is, on the plan of "holding the mirror up to nature," and showing to the age its own likeness without flattery or disguise. The best are "Roderick Random" and "Humphrey Clinker." But Richardson wrote always with a moral purpose, which the other two had not; though that does not hinder much that he wrote from being of an objectionable tendency.

In Sterne, humor is carried to its farthest point. His novel of "Tristram Shandy" is like no other novel ever written: it has no interest of plot or of incident; its merit and value lie partly in the humor with which the characters are drawn and contrasted, partly in that other kind of humor which displays itself in unexpected transitions, and curious trains of thought. The first two volumes of "Tristram Shandy" appeared in 1759. "The Sentimental Journey," being a narrative of a tour in France, in which the author assumes credit for the utmost delicacy of sentiment, and the most exquisite refinement of sensibility, was published shortly before his death in 1768. The character and life of Sterne have been admirably portrayed by Thackeray, in his "Lectures on the English Humorists."

1 See p. 468.

Johnson's tale of "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," appeared in 1759. In Lord Brougham's "Life of Voltaire," Johnson is reported to have said that, had he seen Voltaire's "Candide," which appeared shortly before, he should not have written "Rasselas," because both works travel nearly over the same ground. Nothing, however, can be more different than the tone and spirit of the tales. Each writer rejects the optimism of Leibnitz, and pictures a world full of evil and misery. But the Frenchman founds on this common basis his sneers at religion, and at the doctrine of an overruling Providence; while the Englishman represents the darkest corners of the present life as irradiated by a compensating faith in immortality, which alone can explain their existence.

Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield," the book which, by its picturesque presentation of the manners and feelings of simple people, first led Goethe to turn with interest to the study of English literature, was published in 1766. "The Man of Feeling," by Henry Mackenzie, appeared in 1771. Its author, who wrote it while under the potent spell of Sterne's humor and the attraction of Johnson's style, lived far on into the nineteenth century, and learned to feel and confess the superior power of the author of "Waverley." "The Man of the World" and "Julia de Roubigné" are later works by the same hand. Frances Burney created a sensation by her novel of "Evelina," published in 1778; "the best work of fiction that had appeared since the death of Smollett." It was followed by "Cecilia " (1782), and, at a long interval both of time and merit, by "Camilla," in 1796.

Between the works just mentioned, and the writings of Godwin, there is a gulf interposed, such as marks 1 Macaulay's Essays.