A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 16

10. SAMUEL BUTLER (+1612-1680+), the wittiest of English poets, was born at Strensham, in Worcestershire, in the year 1612, four years after the birth of Milton, and four years before the death of Shakespeare. He was educated at the grammar-school of Worcester, and afterwards at Cambridge-- but only for a short time. At the Restoration he was made secretary to the Earl of Carbery, who was then President of the Princ.i.p.ality of Wales, and steward of Ludlow Castle. The first part of his long poem called +Hudibras+ appeared in 1662; the second part in 1663; the third in 1678. Two years after, Butler died in the greatest poverty in London. He was buried in St Paul's, Covent Garden; but a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey. Upon this fact Wesley wrote the following epigram:--

"While Butler, needy wretch, was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give; See him, when starved to death, and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust.

The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,-- He asked for bread, and he received a stone."

11. The +Hudibras+ is a burlesque poem,-- a long lampoon, a laboured caricature,-- in mockery of the weaker side of the great Puritan party.

It is an imaginary account of the adventures of a Puritan knight and his squire in the Civil Wars. It is choke-full of all kinds of learning, of the most pungent remarks-- a very h.o.a.rd of sentences and saws, "of vigorous locutions and picturesque phrases, of strong, sound sense, and robust English." It has been more quoted from than almost any book in our language. Charles II. was never tired of reading it and quoting from it--

"He never ate, nor drank, nor slept, But Hudibras still near him kept"--

says Butler himself.

The following are some of his best known lines:--

"And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn From black to red began to turn."

"For loyalty is still the same, Whether it win or lose the game: True as the dial to the sun, Altho' it be not shin'd upon."

"He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still."

12. JOHN DRYDEN (+1631-1700+), the greatest of our poets in the second rank, was born at Aldwincle, in Northamptonshire, in the year 1631. He was descended from Puritan ancestors on both sides of his house. He was educated at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge.

London became his settled abode in the year 1657. At the Restoration, in 1660, he became an ardent Royalist; and, in the year 1663, he married the daughter of a Royalist n.o.bleman, the Earl of Berkshire. It was not a happy marriage; the lady, on the one hand, had a violent temper, and, on the other, did not care a straw for the literary pursuits of her husband. In 1666 he wrote his first long poem, the +Annus Mirabilis+ ("The Wonderful Year"), in which he paints the war with Holland, and the Fire of London; and from this date his life is "one long literary labour." In 1670, he received the double appointment of Historiographer-Royal and Poet-Laureate. Up to the year 1681, his work lay chiefly in writing plays for the theatre; and these plays were written in rhymed verse, in imitation of the French plays; for, from the date of the Restoration, French influence was paramount both in literature and in fashion. But in this year he published the first part of +Absalom and Achitophel+-- one of the most powerful satires in the language. In the year 1683 he was appointed Collector of Customs in the port of London-- a post which Chaucer had held before him. (It is worthy of note that Dryden "translated" the Tales of Chaucer into modern English.) At the accession of James II., in 1685, Dryden became a Roman Catholic; most certainly neither for gain nor out of grat.i.tude, but from conviction. In 1687, appeared his poem of +The Hind and the Panther+, in which he defends his new creed. He had, a few years before, brought out another poem called +Religio Laici+ ("A Layman's Faith"), which was a defence of the Church of England and of her position in religion. In +The Hind and the Panther+, the Hind represents the Roman Catholic Church, "a milk-white hind, unspotted and unchanged," the Panther the Church of England; and the two beasts reply to each other in all the arguments used by controversialists on these two sides. When the Revolution of 1688 took place, and James II. had to flee the kingdom, Dryden lost both his offices and the pension he had from the Crown.

Nothing daunted, he set to work once more. Again he wrote for the stage; but the last years of his life were spent chiefly in translation. He translated pa.s.sages from Homer, Ovid, and from some Italian writers; but his most important work was the translation of the whole of Virgil's +aeneid+. To the last he retained his fire and vigour, action and rush of verse; and some of his greatest lyric poems belong to his later years.

His ode called +Alexander's Feast+ was written at the age of sixty-six; and it was written at one sitting. At the age of sixty-nine he was meditating a translation of the whole of Homer-- both the Iliad and the Odyssey. He died at his house in London, on May-day of 1700, and was buried with great pomp and splendour in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

13. His best satire is the +Absalom and Achitophel+; his best specimen of reasoning in verse is +The Hind and the Panther+. His best ode is his +Ode to the Memory of Mrs Anne Killigrew+. Dryden's style is distinguished by its power, sweep, vigour, and "long majestic march." No one has handled the heroic couplet-- and it was this form of verse that he chiefly used-- with more vigour than Dryden; Pope was more correct, more sparkling, more finished, but he had not Dryden's magnificent march or sweeping impulsiveness. "The fire and spirit of the 'Annus Mirabilis,'" says his latest critic, "are nothing short of amazing, when the difficulties which beset the author are remembered. The glorious dash of the performance is his own." His prose, though full of faults, is also very vigorous. It has "something of the lightning zigzag vigour and splendour of his verse." He always writes clear, homely, and pure English,-- full of force and point.

Many of his most pithy lines are often quoted:--

"Men are but children of a larger growth."

"Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He that would search for pearls must dive below."

"The greatest argument for love is love."

"The secret pleasure of the generous act, Is the great mind's great bribe."

The great American critic and poet, Mr Lowell, compares him to "an ostrich, to be cla.s.sed with flying things, and capable, what with leap and flap together, of leaving the earth for a longer or a shorter s.p.a.ce, but loving the open plain, where wing and foot help each other to something that is both flight and run at once."

14. JEREMY TAYLOR (+1613-1667+), the greatest master of ornate and musical English prose in his own day, was born at Cambridge in the year 1613-- just three years before Shakespeare died. His father was a barber. After attending the free grammar-school of Cambridge, he proceeded to the University. He took holy orders and removed to London.

When he was lecturing one day at St Paul's, Archbishop Laud was so taken by his "youthful beauty, pleasant air," fresh eloquence, and exuberant style, that he had him created a Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford.

When the Civil War broke out, he was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces; and, indeed, suffered imprisonment more than once. After the Restoration, he was presented with a bishopric in Ireland, where he died in 1667.

15. Perhaps his best works are his +Holy Living+ and +Holy Dying+. His style is rich, even to luxury, full of the most imaginative ill.u.s.trations, and often overloaded with ornament. He has been called "the Shakespeare of English prose," "the Spenser of divinity," and by other appellations. The latter t.i.tle is a very happy description; for he has the same wealth of style, phrase, and description that Spenser has, and the same boundless delight in setting forth his thoughts in a thousand different ways. The following is a specimen of his writing. He is speaking of a shipwreck:--

"These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs. A dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dash in pieces the fortune of a whole family; and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck."

His writings contain many pithy statements. The following are a few of them:--

"No man is poor that does not think himself so."

"He that spends his time in sport and calls it recreation, is like him whose garment is all made of fringe, and his meat nothing but sauce."

"A good man is as much in awe of himself as of a whole a.s.sembly."

16. THOMAS HOBBES (+1588-1679+), a great philosopher, was born at Malmesbury in the year 1588. He is hence called "the philosopher of Malmesbury." He lived during the reigns of four English sovereigns-- Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Charles II.; and he was twenty-eight years of age when Shakespeare died. He is in many respects the type of the hard-working, long-lived, persistent Englishman. He was for many years tutor in the Devonshire family-- to the first Earl of Devonshire, and to the third Earl of Devonshire-- and lived for several years at the family seat of Chatsworth. In his youth he was acquainted with Bacon and Ben Jonson; in his middle age he knew Galileo in Italy; and as he lived to the age of ninety-two, he might have conversed with John Locke or with Daniel Defoe. His greatest work is the +Leviathan+; or, +The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth+. His style is clear, manly, and vigorous. He tried to write poetry too. At the advanced age of eighty-five, he wrote a translation of the whole of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey into rhymed English verse, using the same quatrain and the same measure that Dryden employed in his 'Annus Mirabilis.' Two lines are still remembered of this translation: speaking of a child and his mother, he says--

"And like a star upon her bosom lay His beautiful and shining golden head."

17. JOHN BUNYAN (+1628-1688+), one of the most popular of our prose-writers, was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in the year 1628-- just three years before the birth of Dryden. He served, when a young man, with the Parliamentary forces, and was present at the siege of Leicester. At the Restoration, he was apprehended for preaching, in disobedience to the Conventicle Act, "was had home to prison, and there lay complete twelve years." Here he supported himself and his family by making tagged laces and other small-wares; and here, too, he wrote the immortal +Pilgrim's Progress+. After his release, he became pastor of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. He had a great power of bringing persons who had quarrelled together again; and he was so popular among those who knew him, that he was generally spoken of as "Bishop Bunyan."

On a journey, undertaken to reconcile an estranged father and a rebellious son, he caught a severe cold, and died of fever in London, in the year 1688. Every one has read, or will read, the +Pilgrim's Progress+; and it may be said, without exaggeration, that to him who has not read the book, a large part of English life and history is dumb and unintelligible. Bunyan has been called the "Spenser of the people," and "the greatest master of allegory that ever lived." His power of imagination is something wonderful; and his simple, homely, and vigorous style makes everything so real, that we seem to be reading a narrative of everyday events and conversations. His vocabulary is not, as Macaulay said, "the vocabulary of the common people;" rather should we say that his English is the English of the Bible and of the best religious writers. His style is, almost everywhere, simple, homely, earnest, and vernacular-- without being vulgar. Bunyan's books have, along with Shakespeare and Tyndale's works, been among the chief supports of an idiomatic, nervous, and simple English.

18. JOHN LOCKE (+1632-1704+), a great English philosopher, was born at Wrington, near Bristol, in the year 1632. He was educated at Oxford; but he took little interest in the Greek and Latin cla.s.sics, his chief studies lying in medicine and the physical sciences. He became attached to the famous Lord Shaftesbury, under whom he filled several public offices-- among others, that of Commissioner of Trade. When Shaftesbury was obliged to flee to Holland, Locke followed him, and spent several years in exile in that country. All his life a very delicate man, he yet, by dint of great care and thoughtfulness, contrived to live to the age of seventy-two. His two most famous works are +Some Thoughts concerning Education+, and the celebrated +Essay on the Human Understanding+. The latter, which is his great work, occupied his time and thoughts for eighteen years. In both these books, Locke exhibits the very genius of common-sense. The purpose of education is, in his opinion, not to make learned men, but to maintain "a sound mind in a sound body;" and he begins the education of the future man even from his cradle. In his philosophical writings, he is always simple; but, as he is loose and vacillating in his use of terms, this simplicity is often purchased at the expense of exactness and self-consistency.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

1. +The Age of Prose.+-- The eighteenth century was an age of prose in two senses. In the first place, it was a prosaic age; and, in the second place, better prose than poetry was produced by its writers. One remarkable fact may also be noted about the chief prose-writers of this century-- and that is, that they were, most of them, not merely able writers, not merely distinguished literary men, but also men of affairs-- men well versed in the world and in matters of the highest practical moment, while some were also statesmen holding high office.

Thus, in the first half of the century, we find Addison, Swift, and Defoe either holding office or influencing and guiding those who held office; while, in the latter half, we have men like Burke, Hume, and Gibbon, of whom the same, or nearly the same, can be said. The poets, on the contrary, of this eighteenth century, are all of them-- with the very slightest exceptions-- men who devoted most of their lives to poetry, and had little or nothing to do with practical matters. It may also be noted here that the character of the eighteenth century becomes more and more prosaic as it goes on-- less and less under the influence of the spirit of poetry, until, about the close, a great reaction makes itself felt in the persons of Cowper, Chatterton, and Burns, of Crabbe and Wordsworth.

2. +The First Half.+-- The great prose-writers of the first half of the eighteenth century are +Addison+ and +Steele+, +Swift+ and +Defoe+. All of these men had some more or less close connection with the rise of journalism in England; and one of them, Defoe, was indeed the founder of the modern newspaper. By far the most powerful intellect of these four was Swift. The greatest poets of the first half of the eighteenth century were +Pope+, +Thomson+, +Collins+, and +Gray+. Pope towers above all of them by a head and shoulders, because he was much more fertile than any, and because he worked so hard and so untiringly at the labour of the file-- at the task of polishing and improving his verses. But the vein of poetry in the three others-- and more especially in Collins-- was much more pure and genuine than it was in Pope at any time of his life-- at any period of his writing. Let us look at each of these writers a little more closely.

3. DANIEL DEFOE (+1661-1731+), one of the most fertile writers that England ever saw, and one who has been the delight of many generations of readers, was born in the city of London in the year 1661. He was educated to be a Dissenting minister; but he turned from that profession to the pursuit of trade. He attempted several trades,-- was a hosier, a hatter, a printer; and he is said also to have been a brick and tile maker. In 1692 he failed in business; but, in no long time after, he paid every one of his creditors to the uttermost farthing. Through all his labours and misfortunes he was always a hard and careful reader,-- an omnivorous reader, too, for he was in the habit of reading almost every book that came in his way. He made his first reputation by writing political pamphlets. One of his pamphlets brought him into high favour with King William; another had the effect of placing him in the pillory and lodging him in prison. But while in Newgate, he did not idle away his time or "languish"; he set to work, wrote hard, and started a newspaper, +The Review+,-- the earliest genuine newspaper England had seen up to his time. This paper he brought out two or three times a-week; and every word of it he wrote himself. He continued to carry it on single-handed for eight years. In 1706, he was made a member of the Commission for bringing about the union between England and Scotland; and his great knowledge of commerce and commercial affairs were of singular value to this Commission. In 1715 he had a dangerous illness, brought on by political excitement; and, on his recovery, he gave up most of his political writing, and took to the composition of stories and romances. Although now a man of fifty-four, he wrote with the vigour and ease of a young man of thirty. His greatest imaginative work was written in 1719-- when he was nearly sixty-- +The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner,... written by Himself+. Within six years he had produced twelve works of a similar kind. He is said to have written in all two hundred and fifty books in the course of his lifetime. He died in 1731.

4. His best known-- and it is also his greatest-- work is +Robinson Crusoe+; and this book, which every one has read, may be compared with 'Gulliver's Travels,' for the purpose of observing how imaginative effects are produced by different means and in different ways. Another vigorous work of imagination by Defoe is the +Journal of the Plague+, which appeared in 1722. There are three chief things to be noted regarding Defoe and his writings. These are: first, that Defoe possessed an unparalleled knowledge-- a knowledge wider than even Shakespeare's-- of the circ.u.mstances and details of human life among all sorts, ranks, and conditions of men; secondly, that he gains his wonderful realistic effects by the freest and most copious use of this detailed knowledge in his works of imagination; and thirdly, that he possessed a vocabulary of the most wonderful wealth. His style is strong, homely, and vigorous, but the sentences are long, loose, clumsy, and sometimes ungrammatical.

Like Sir Walter Scott, he was too eager to produce large and broad effects to take time to balance his clauses or to polish his sentences.

Like Sir Walter Scott, again, he possesses in the highest degree the art of _particularising_.

5. JONATHAN SWIFT (+1667-1745+), the greatest prose-writer, in his own kind, of the eighteenth century, and the opposite in most respects-- especially in style-- of Addison, was born in Dublin in the year 1667.

Though born in Ireland, he was of purely English descent-- his father belonging to a Yorkshire family, and his mother being a Leicestershire lady. His father died before he was born; and he was educated by the kindness of an uncle. After being at a private school at Kilkenny, he was sent to Trinity College, Dublin, where he was plucked for his degree at his first examination, and, on a second trial, only obtained his B.A.

"by special favour." He next came to England, and for eleven years acted as private secretary to Sir William Temple, a retired statesman and amba.s.sador, who lived at Moor Park, near Richmond-on-Thames. In 1692 he paid a visit to Oxford, and there obtained the degree of M.A. In 1700 he went to Ireland with Lord Berkeley as his chaplain, and while in that country was presented with several livings. He at first attached himself to the Whig party, but stung by this party's neglect of his labours and merits, he joined the Tories, who raised him to the Deanery of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. But, though nominally resident in Dublin, he spent a large part of his time in London. Here he knew and met everybody who was worth knowing, and for some time he was the most imposing figure, and wielded the greatest influence in all the best social, political, and literary circles of the capital. In 1714, on the death of Queen Anne, Swift's hopes of further advancement died out; and he returned to his Deanery, settled in Dublin, and "commenced Irishman for life." A man of strong pa.s.sions, he usually spent his birthday in reading that chapter of the Book of Job which contains the verse, "Let the day perish in which I was born." He died insane in 1745, and left his fortune to found a lunatic asylum in Dublin. One day, when taking a walk with a friend, he saw a blasted elm, and, pointing to it, he said: "I shall be like that tree, and die first at the top." For the last three years of his life he never spoke one word.

6. Swift has written verse; but it is his prose-works that give him his high and unrivalled place in English literature. His most powerful work, published in 1704, is the +Tale of a Tub+-- a satire on the disputes between the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches. His best known prose-work is the +Gulliver's Travels+, which appeared in 1726. This work is also a satire; but it is a satire on men and women,-- on humanity. "The power of Swift's prose," it has been said by an able critic, "was the terror of his own, and remains the wonder of after times." His style is strong, simple, straightforward; he uses the plainest words and the homeliest English, and every blow tells. Swift's style-- as every genuine style does-- reflects the author's character.

He was an ardent lover and a good hater. Sir Walter Scott describes him as "tall, strong, and well made, dark in complexion, but with bright blue eyes (Pope said they were "as azure as the heavens"), black and bushy eyebrows, aquiline nose, and features which expressed the stern, haughty, and dauntless turn of his mind." He grew savage under the slightest contradiction; and dukes and great lords were obliged to pay court to him. His prose was as trenchant and powerful as were his manners: it has been compared to "cold steel." His own definition of a good style is "proper words in proper places."

7. JOSEPH ADDISON (+1672-1719+), the most elegant prose-writer-- as Pope was the most polished verse-writer-- of the eighteenth century, was born at Milston, in Wiltshire, in the year 1672. He was educated at Charterhouse School, in London, where one of his friends and companions was the celebrated d.i.c.k Steele-- afterwards Sir Richard Steele. He then went to Oxford, where he made a name for himself by his beautiful compositions in Latin verse. In 1695 he addressed a poem to King William; and this poem brought him into notice with the Government of the day. Not long after, he received a pension of 300 a-year, to enable him to travel; and he spent some time in France and Italy. The chief result of this tour was a poem ent.i.tled +A Letter from Italy+ to Lord Halifax. In 1704, when Lord G.o.dolphin was in search of a poet who should celebrate in an adequate style the striking victory of Blenheim, Addison was introduced to him by Lord Halifax. His poem called +The Campaign+ was the result; and one simile in it took and held the attention of all English readers, and of "the town." A violent storm had pa.s.sed over England; and Addison compared the calm genius of Marlborough, who was as cool and serene amid shot and sh.e.l.l as in a drawing-room or at the dinner-table, to the Angel of the Storm. The lines are these:--