CHAPTER VI. THE AGE OF POPE, SWIFT, THE NOVELISTS, AND JOHNSON. 1700-1785. 18. SUMMARY OF THE PERIOD.-79. THE POETS: POPE.-80. PRIOR, GAY.-81. YOUNG, THOMSON.-82. GRAY, COLLINS.-83. CHURCHILL.-84. CHATTERTON, MACPHERSON.- 85. THE MINOR POETS.-86. THE WARTONS, PERCY.87. THE PROSE WRITERS: DEFOE.-88. SWIFT.-89. BERKELEY, ARBUTHNOT. -90. SHAFTESBURY, BOLINGBROKE, MANDEVILLE.-91. THE ESSAYISTS: ADDISON, STEELE, ETC.-92. THE NOVELISTS: RICHARDSON, FIELDING, SMOLLETT, STERNE, ETC.-93. GOLDSMITH.-94. JOHNSON.-95. BURKE.-96. THE HISTORIANS.-97. WILKES,JUNIUS.'-98. ADAM SMITH, BLACKSTONE.99. THE THEOLOGIANS.-100. THE DRAMATIC WRITERS. 78. Summary of the Period. In the last year of the seventeenth century Dryden died; and with his death the preceding period closed. The present chapter opens with an epoch which, owing to some not very obvious resemblance to the age of the Emperor Augustus, it was formerly customary to style the 'golden' or Augustan Age of English literature. That this resemblance did not lie in the protection of letters by royal or noble patrons; that it was not based upon any special elevation in the character of the works produced— which, on the contrary, were generally more or less identified with the interests of opposing Whig and Tory; that the time, in short, was not great by comparison with the periods that preceded and followed it—are facts now fairly established. To the question, In what, then, does the likeness consist?-it has been answered :- In the correctness or finish of style achieved by the leading writers. Yet, although it is allowed that a new attention to the mechanism of literary expression-a striving after perspicuity and brevity in style is traceable as far back as the Restoration, even this attribute of correctness' has been contested. It has been urged that the writings of Pope, of Addison, of Swift even, are not correct' in any exact sense of the word; and that, supposing this particular property were conceded to the writings of one or two of the authors who lived under Queen Anne and George I., they would not, numeri cally, suffice to constitute a literary age. It may, therefore, be held that the title 'Augustan,' as applied to the era in question, has now passed into the category of time-honoured misnomers. The foregoing remarks apply to the earlier years only of the period comprised in the present chapter. But, during the whole of the time (1700-1785), no 'great' poet can be said to have appeared. Pope, who stands first, and, it must be added, at an elevation far above that of his contemporaries, has, notwithstanding, been denied a place in the highest order of poets. Yet, in his own province, his ability was unquestioned. His poetry was 'the apotheosis of clearness, point, and technical skill; of the ease that comes of practice, not of the fulness of original power.'* As a metrical artist, he stands supreme among his fellows, and his influence over the fashion of verse-writing is distinguishable for at least forty years after his death. Nevertheless, there were not wanting indications of the advent of a truer and more genuine school of poetry. In the blank verse of Thomson's Seasons, in the Odes of Collins and the Odes and Elegy of Gray, in the Traveller and Deserted Village of Goldsmith, nay, in the very forgeries of Macpherson and Chatterton, and the popularity of Bishop Percy's Reliques, there were manifest signs, even in those days of apparent poetical sterility, that a reaction from the mechanic art' and 'musical finesse' of the popular Popesque manner from 'drawing-room pastoral' and the poetry of the town'-was gradually approaching, and that there was a growing and irrepressible impulse toward the poetry of nature and human life.t In the absence of poetry of the highest order, prose, on the other hand, exhibited an extraordinary development. With the Tatler and Spectator of Steele and Addison began that popular form of essaywriting which still survives and flourishes; while the class of fiction adopted by Swift and Defoe reached, in the minute characterpainting of Richardson, the vivid delineation of life and manners by Smollett and Fielding, the whimsical, super-subtle analysis of Sterne, and the idyllic grace of Goldsmith, a degree of excellence which, it may fairly be asserted, the modern British novelist has but seldom attained. Nor was it in fiction alone that the opulence of prose was apparent. The history of Hume, Robertson, Gibbon; the theology of Berkeley and of Butler; the political ecomony of Adam Smith, the rhetoric of Burke, and the invective of Junius,' all found * Lowell, My Study Windows: Pope. † V. Introductory Memoir to Ward's Pope, 1869 (Globe Ed.); English Poetry from Dryden to Couper, Quarterly Review, July, 1862 [by F. T. Palgrave]. their utterance in that homelier form of writing to which the more practical offices of literature are commonly assigned. The drama of the period calls for no special remark. Home and Rowe, Sheridan and Foote, shine out from their contemporaries. But they are luminaries of the lesser rank, whose brilliancy is the result of the comparatively feeble radiance of their neighbours. 79. The Poets: Pope.-Among the poets of the so-called 'Augustan Age,' Alexander Pope (1688-1744), as we have already said, stands supreme. The only son of a tradesman of Lombard Street, he was, as a child, delicate and sickly; indeed, his whole life was, in his own words, 'a long disease.' Schools were not calculated to develope such a nature, and he was mainly self-taught. Writing he had learned early from copying type; and what he knew of Greek, Latin, and French, was acquired rather by his own patient translations than from the instruction of masters. The art of versification, and the verse of Dryden in particular, seem early to have attracted him; while the advice of a friend to make correctness 'his study and aim' (i.e. to copy the ancients') may be noted as further directing his tendencies. He said of himself that he ‘lisped in numbers;' and he is recorded to have written a play from the Iliad at twelve, and to have shortly after composed some 4,000 lines of an epic, having for hero Alcander, prince of Rhodes. This latter ho (perhaps wisely) burnt. But, if we may believe his own statement that some of its lines were imported bodily into much later and maturer poems, their technical excellence must have been already remarkable. His youthful connection with Wycherley has already been referred to (see p. 110, s. 77). By him he was introduced to Walsh, the judicious critic who advised him to cultivate classic models. Another and earlier friend was Sir William Trumbull, to whom, in 1709, he dedicated the first of his four Pastorals, then published in Tonson's Miscellanies. The unbounded praise with which these performances were received may now be modified into Johnson's words, that they show the writer to have obtained sufficient power of language and skill in metre to exhibit a series of versification which had in English poetry no precedent.' * With the publication of the Pastorals, Pope's literary life may be said to begin. In 1711 he gave forth his Essay on Criticism, a clever summary of the best received opinions, sparkling with the concise maxims and pointed illustrations which are distinguishing characteristics of his talent. Well might Addison observe, in com * Lives of the Poets, Cunningham's ed. menting upon those finished epigrammatic couplets of the critic of twenty, that 'Wit and fine Writing doth not consist so much in advancing Things that are new, as in giving Things that are known an agreeable Turn.' What, for instance, could be neater or more skilful than the way in which these verses (some of which he quotes) are made to exemplify the errors they condemn : 'But most by Numbers judge a Poet's song; And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong. These equal syllables alone require, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid do join; And ten low words oft creep in one dull line: " That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.' (Essay on Criticism.) In the year 1712 appeared (with other pieces), in Lintot's Miscellany, the first sketch of the Rape of the Lock, an 'heroi-comical' poem, which owes its slender motive to the theft of a curl by a 'well-bred Lord' (Lord Petre) from a 'gentle Belle' (Miss Arabella Fermor). Yet, upon this fragile basis, Pope has reared a masterpiece of filigree-a work' so exquisite, in its peculiar style of art,' says Professor Conington, 'as to make the task of searching for faults almost hopeless; that of commending beauties simply impertinent.'* 'It is the most exquisite monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers,' says De Quincey. Its plan, in fact, exactly suited the range of the poet's powers; his wit, his fancy, his command of polished verse are all seen to the best advantage, while his literary artifice and insincerity-grave faults elsewhere-are excusable in mock heroics. The most remarkable circumstance in the history of this famous production is that he extended its scheme, and yet improved it. In the first state Addison called it 'merum sal,-a delicious little thing,'—and not unreasonably deprecated further alteration-advice which, however well-intentioned, did not meet with the approval of the sensitive author. He accordingly addedand, it must be allowed, with entire success-the machinery of the * Miscellaneous Writings, 1972, 1. 83, Sylphs, which Dr. Garth had suggested; and the poem, as it now appears, was published in 1714. The Messiah, 1712, a Sacred Eclogue, in imitation of Virgil's Pollio, first brought out in No. 378 of the Spectator; Windsor Forest, 1713, the design of which is borrowed from Cooper's Hill (see p. 80, s. 55); and the Ode for Music on St. Cecilia's Day, 1713, written in 1708 at the suggestion of Steele, also belong to this period. In the November of 1713 he opened a subscription list for a work of greater magnitude than he had yet attempted-the translation of the Iliad. The list was swelled by the generous advocacy of Swift; and, in 1715, duly appeared the first volume, containing four books. The only poem of importance issued in the interval was the Temple of Fame, 1715, based chiefly on the last book of Chaucer's Hous of Fame (see p. 35, s. 17). The completed translation of the Iliad, in six vols. quarto, appeared in 1720, with a dedication to Congreve; and the author's gains are said to have amounted to more than 5,000l. For the subsequent translation of the Odyssey, published in 1725, he received some 3,000l. or 4,000l. more, after the necessary deductions had been made for the labours of Elijah Fenton (1683-1750) and William Broome (d. 1745), whose aid he had called in to complete his task. The splendour of this celebrated paraphrase has somewhat faded in our day. But even in the author's lifetime it was calmly estimated. The great Bentley (whose frankness procured him a niche in the Dunciad) is reported by Sir John Hawkins to have said that it was 'a pretty poem,' but must not be called Homer. Gibbon, writing later, describes it as 'a portrait endowed with every merit except that of faithfulness to the original.' After these opinions we may quote the judgment of the late Professor Conington, himself a distinguished translator of the Iliad.* Having indicated some of the defects of various preceding versions from Chapman to Sotheby, and referred to the keener appreciation of the characteristic style of different periods which now prevails,' he says:-'Probably no other work of his [Pope's] has had so much influence on the national taste and feeling for poetry. It has been-I hope it is stillthe delight of every intelligent schoolboy; they read "of kings, and heroes, and of mighty deeds" in language which, in its calm, majestic flow, unhasting, unresting, carries them on as irresistibly as Homer's own could do, were they born readers of Greek; and their minds are filled with a conception of the heroic age, not indeed Published 1861-68; Bks. i. to xii. are by Mr. Worsley; Bks. xiii, to xxiv. (a few stanzas excepted) by Professor Conington. |