TO A.D. 1714]

ADDISON. POPE. GAY.

DENNIS

791

Thenceforth

Sports, a Georgic, with a dedication to Pope. Pope and Gay were friends, and to his new friend, who had begun his career in verse with rural themes, Pope, with Tickell's trumpeting of Ambrose Philips fresh in his ears, suggested the writing of a set of pastorals that should caricature Philips's lauded rusticity. This was the origin of Gay's six pastorals called The Shepherd's Week, published in 1714, with a proem in prose to the reader, and a prologue in verse to Bolingbroke. But though the proem burlesqued Philips, and the purpose of censure and caricature was evident enough, yet simple speech is better than the false classicism that condemned it; and Gay, being much more of a poet than Ambrose Philips, and in himself, as Pope said, “a natural man, without design, who spoke what he thought," The Shepherd's Week made its own mark as pastoral poetry, and, in spite of its Cloddipole and Hobnelia, by its own merit went far to disprove its case. At the end of Queen Anne's reign Gay went to the Court of Hanover, as secretary to the Earl of Clarendon.

41. Addison saw his tragedy of Cato first acted at Drury Lane, where Colley Cibber was joint patentee and manager, in April, 1713, when the Guardian was a few weeks old. He had thought of a play on the subject before leaving Oxford, and wrote the greater part when on his travels. He gave all profits of acting to the players, who, therefore, spared no cost in putting "Cato" on the stage. Pope had written a prologue for it, Garth an epilogue. The very great success of the play was due to the fact that it was received as a patriotic manifesto; and as each party claimed to be as patriotic as the other, factions strove who should applaud it most. Bolingbroke, indeed, wickedly drew from it a hit at Addison's own hero, Marlborough, who had so long had his own way. He sent between the acts for Booth, who acted Cato, and gave him fifty guineas, "for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator."

John Dennis appeared as a hostile critic, with Remarks upon Cato, a Tragedy; and Pope then, upon a question not personal to himself, took occasion to pay off an old score of his own by Dr. Norris's (a mad-doctor's) Account of the Frenzy of J. D., a form of advocacy which Addison repudiated as one to which he could not in honour or conscience be privy."

42. When Steele abruptly stopped the Guardian, Sir R. Blackmore (§ 17), with John Hughes (b. 1677, d. 1720), endeavoured to continue its work by establishing another series

of essays, published under the name of "The Lay Monk," but collected under the name of The Lay Monastery. This appeared, with little success, three times a week, for forty numbers, from Nov. 16th, 1713, to February 15th, 1714. John Hughes is said to have caused Addison suddenly to finish Cato, by accepting an invitation to write the last act of it for him. Since his poem, "The Triumph of Peace," on the Peace of Ryswick, Hughes had written much that was creditable, including three or four letters in the Spectator. He had a situation in the Ordnance Office, was made afterwards, by Lord-Chancellor Cowper, Secretary for the Commission of the Peace, and died of consumption on the first night of his most successful play, “The Siege of Damascus."

43. Among contributors to the Guardian, besides Addison, was George Berkeley, born at Kilcrin, in Kilkenny, in 1684. He was educated at the Kilkenny Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin, of which he became a Fellow in 1707. In 1709 appeared Berkeley's Theory of Vision; in 1710, his Principles of Human Knowledge; and, in 1713, his Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. He opposed the materialist tendencies of the time with a metaphysical theory that represented an extreme reaction from them. The existence of matter could no more, he said, be proved, than the existence of the spirit could be disproved. We know only that we receive certain impressions on the mind. Berkeley was made Bishop of Cloyne in 1735, and died in 1753.

44. Richard Steele made his interest in the political life of his time very conspicuous by his paper on the demolition of Dunkirk, in the Guardian for August 7th, 1713. When the Guardian had been brought to an end, it had a sequel in the Englishman, which appeared (from October 6, 1713, to February 15, 1714) three times a week, forming 57 numbers, and in which the essays were chiefly political. Swift, whom Harley and St. John had this year (1713) made Dean of St. Patrick's, violently attacked Stecle for his paper in the Guardian, urging the fulfilment of that stipulation in the Treaty of Utrecht which required the demolition of the harbour and works at Dunkirk. Steele replied with a pamphlet, The Importance of Dunkirk Considered.

When, in 1710, Robert Harley (made, in 1711, Earl of Oxford) became Secretary of State, there followed a Dissolution of Parliament, and a Ministry weary of war and taxation, and weary

TO A.D. 1714] HUGHES.

BERKELEY. STEELE. PRIOR 793 also of tolerance. It was ready to make peace at the expense of Holland. The preceding Ministry had of late years been making war at the expense of Holland, by tempting the unwilling Dutch with promises. Both parties were in the wrong. One had continued the war when all its ends could have been accomplished by an advantageous peace; the other was now ready to end it with a peace that was discreditable and disadvantageous. Louis XIV. negotiated with new hope, and greatly reduced his offers. Matthew Prior was now employed as a negotiator for the Tories. The English were bribed with commercial advantages over the Dutch, and the Dutch felt themselves betrayed. Prince Eugene had come to London in 1712, and in vain sought to influence Queen Anne. Warm controversies over complicated questions preceded the signing of the Peace of Utrecht, on the 11th of April, 1713. The Treaty of Commerce was rejected in the House of Commons by a small majority. The House was dissolved in July, and there was great party violence at the elections. Many wore emblems of allegiance to the Pretender. Jacobites were busy. The Pretender, inflexibly Romanist, claimed for himself the liberty of conscience he offered. The new Parliament met in February, 1714. Steele sat in it as member for Stockbridge, in Dorset. He put forth a pamphlet which is described by its long title: The Crisis; or, a Discourse Representing from the most Authentick Records, the just Causes of the late Happy Revolution: and the several Settlements of the Crowns of England and Scotland on Her Majesty; and on the Demise of Her Majesty without Issue, upon the most Illustrious Princess Sophia. With some Seasonable Remarks on the Danger of a Popish Successor. The Queen, in her speech on opening Parliament, said, "There are some who are arrived to that height of malice as to insinuate that the Protestant Succession in the House of Hanover is in danger under my Government." The Lords, mostly Whigs, summoned before them the printer and publisher of The Public Spirit of the Whigs, and committed them to the custody of the Black Rod. Harley, Lord Oxford, had given Swift £100 for writing it, but now affected indignation at its tone. The House of Commons, mostly Tory, fell upon Steele as author of the Crisis and of a pamphlet called The Englishman, being the close (No. 57) of the paper so called. Steele defended himself well, but he was expelled the House on the 18th of March, 1714, by a majority of 245 against 152.

The Princess Sophia, aged eighty-four, died of apoplexy, on the 28th of May; and her son George, Elector of Hanover, or rather of Brunswick and Lüneberg, aged fifty-four, then became heir apparent. Queen Anne had a stroke of apoplexy on the 30th of July, and died on the 1st of August; so the Hanoverian became King George I.

CHAPTER XII.

FROM ANNE TO VICTORIA.

1. At the beginning of the reign of George I. (1714—1727) the oldest living writer was Thomas d'Urfey (ch. x. § 26), aged about eighty-six, who lived on to within a few years of a hundred. John Locke had been dead ten years, Sir Isaac Newton, aged seventy-two, was still living, and lived to the close of the reign of George I., dying March 20th, 1727, two or three months before the king. Bishop Ken had been dead three years. Bishop Sprat three months, Gilbert Burnet (ch. xi. § 9), whom William III. had made Bishop of Salisbury, was seventy-one years old, and died in the next year. Jeremy Collier (ch. xi. § 15) was sixty-four. He published in the year of Queen Anne's death the second of the two folio volumes of his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, chiefly of England, from the First Planting of Christianity to the end of the Reign of Charles the Second, with a brief Account of the Affairs of Religion in Ireland, collected from the best Ancient Historians. In 1721 appeared the original supplement to his translation of Moreri's Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical Dictionary, which he had issued in three volumes folio in 1701 and 1706. Jeremy Collier died in 1727, at the close of the reign of George I. But Joseph Butler, whose "Analogy of Religion" appeared in the reign of George II., was a young man of twenty-two at the accession of George I., and John Wesley was a boy of eleven. William Wycherley (ch. x. § 38) was then seventy-four years old, and had but a year to live. Elkanah Settle (ch. x. § 26) was sixty-six, with ten years of a life of poverty before him. Thomas Southern was fifty-five. Farquhar had died in the middle of Queen Anne's reign. Congreve (ch. xi. § 14) was forty-four, and lived through the reign of George I., dying in 1729. Colley

A.D. 1714]

ACCESSION OF GEORGE THE FIRST

795

Cibber was forty-three, Vanbrugh forty-two, and died the year before the king. Nicholas Rowe was forty-one, and had four years to live. Richard Bentley (ch. xi. § 23) was fifty-two. The critic, Thomas Rymer, died in the year before Queen Anne, having chiefly spent his time during her reign in publishing the great collection of public treaties, known as Rymer's Fœdera. The first of the ten folios issued by him appeared in 1704. Critic John Dennis (ch. xi. § 19) was fifty-seven; Charles Gildon, born in 1665, of a Roman Catholic family in Dorsetshire, who failed as an actor, and became critic of the narrowest French school, was forty-nine, and produced, in the reign of George I., his Complete Art of Poetry (1718), a Satirical Life of Defoe (1719), and The Laws of Poetry (1720). He died in 1724. Daniel Defoe (ch. xi. § 24, 30) was about fifty, of like age with Matthew Prior (ch. xi. § 25). Jonathan Swift (ch. xi. § 32), and Samuel Garth (ch. xi. § 18), who was knighted at the accession of George I., were both forty-seven years old; Steele and Addison both fortytwo; Gay and Pope both twenty-six; James Thompson and John Dyer both fourteen. John Oldmixon (ch. xi. § 19) was forty-one, and had begun to take especial interest in history. He produced, early in the reign of George I., Memoirs of North Britain and Memoirs of Ireland from the Restoration, and he began, towards the end of the reign, A Critical History of England. Among friends and helpers of Pope, John Arbuthnot was thirty-nine, Thomas Parnell thirty-five, Elijah Fenton thirty-one. Addison's friend, who became also his secretary, Thomas Tickell, was twentyeight, Samuel Richardson, the future novelist, was twenty-five, and Henry Fielding, seven, at the accession of George I., when Edward Young was thirty, Allan Ramsay twenty-nine, Richard Savage sixteen, Samuel Johnson a child five years old, David Hume three, Lawrence Sterne but a year old, and Shenstone newly born.

2. The chief writings of the reign of George I. were Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), and the novels of his that followed it; Swift's "Drapier's Letters" (1724), and his "Gulliver's Travels" (1726); Pope's "Iliad" (1715-1720), and "Odyssey" (1723-5); Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd" (1725), and Thomson's "Winter," and Dyer's "Grongar Hill," which were both published at the close of the reign, in 1726, and represented in the work of young men a reviving sense of nature. There were some indications, also, of coming social changes in Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees" (1723).