A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 17

"So when an Angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pa.s.sed, Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm."

For this poem Addison was rewarded with the post of Commissioner of Appeals. He rose, successively, to be Under Secretary of State; Secretary for Ireland; and, finally, Secretary of State for England-- an office which would correspond to that of our present Home Secretary. He married the Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had been tutor; but it was not a happy marriage. Pope says of him in regard to it, that--

"He married discord in a n.o.ble wife."

He died at Holland House, Kensington, London, in the year 1719, at the age of forty-seven.

8. But it is not at all as a poet, but as a prose-writer, that Addison is famous in the history of literature. While he was in Ireland, his friend Steele started +The Tatler+, in 1709; and Addison sent numerous contributions to this little paper. In 1711, Steele began a still more famous paper, which he called +The Spectator+; and Addison's writings in this morning journal made its reputation. His contributions are distinguishable by being signed with some one of the letters of the name _Clio_-- the Muse of History. A third paper, +The Guardian+, appeared a few years after; and Addison's contributions to it are designated by a hand ([->]) at the foot of each. In addition to his numerous prose-writings, Addison brought out the tragedy of +Cato+ in 1713. It was very successful; but it is now neither read nor acted. Some of his hymns, however, are beautiful, and are well known. Such are the hymn beginning, "The s.p.a.cious firmament on high;" and his version of the 23d Psalm, "The Lord my pasture shall prepare."

9. Addison's prose style is inimitable, easy, graceful, full of humour-- full of good humour, delicate, with a sweet and kindly rhythm, and always musical to the ear. He is the most graceful of social satirists; and his genial creation of the character of +Sir Roger de Coverley+ will live for ever. While his work in verse is never more than second-rate, his writings in prose are always first-rate. Dr Johnson said of his prose: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style-- familiar but not coa.r.s.e, and elegant but not ostentatious,-- must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." Lord Lytton also remarks: "His style has that nameless urbanity in which we recognise the perfection of manner; courteous, but not courtier-like; so dignified, yet so kindly; so easy, yet high-bred. It is the most perfect form of English." His style, however, must be acknowledged to want force-- to be easy rather than vigorous; and it has not the splendid march of Jeremy Taylor, or the n.o.ble power of Savage Landor.

10. RICHARD STEELE (+1671-1729+), commonly called "d.i.c.k Steele," the friend and colleague of Addison, was born in Dublin, but of English parents, in the year 1671. The two friends were educated at Charterhouse and at Oxford together; and they remained friends, with some slight breaks and breezes, to the close of life. Steele was a writer of plays, essays, and pamphlets-- for one of which he was expelled from the House of Commons; but his chief fame was earned in connection with the Society Journals, which he founded. He started many-- such as +Town-Talk+, +The Tea-Table+, +Chit-Chat+; but only the +Tatler+ and the +Spectator+ rose to success and to fame. The strongest quality in his writing is his pathos: the source of tears is always at his command; and, although himself of a gay and even rollicking temperament, he seems to have preferred this vein. The literary skill of Addison-- his happy art in the choosing of words-- did not fall to the lot of Steele; but he is more hearty and more human in his description of character. He died in 1729, ten years after the departure of his friend Addison.

11. ALEXANDER POPE (+1688-1744+), the greatest poet of the eighteenth century, was born in Lombard Street, London, in the year of the Revolution, 1688. His father was a wholesale linendraper, who, having ama.s.sed a fortune, retired to Binfield, on the borders of Windsor Forest. In the heart of this beautiful country young Pope's youth was spent. On the death of his father, Pope left Windsor and took up his residence at Twickenham, on the banks of the Thames, where he remained till his death in 1744. His parents being Roman Catholics, it was impossible for young Pope to go either to a public school or to one of the universities; and hence he was educated privately. At the early age of eight, he met with a translation of Homer in verse; and this volume became his companion night and day. At the age of ten, he turned some of the events described in Homer into a play. The poems of Spenser, the poets' poet, were his next favourites; but the writer who made the deepest and most lasting impression upon his mind was Dryden. Little Pope began to write verse very early. He says of himself--

"As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came."

His +Ode to Solitude+ was written at the age of twelve; his +Pastorals+ when he was fifteen. His +Essay on Criticism+, which was composed in his twentieth year, though not published till 1711, established his reputation as a writer of neat, clear, sparkling, and elegant verse. The +Rape of the Lock+ raised his reputation still higher. Macaulay p.r.o.nounced it his best poem. De Quincey declared it to be "the most exquisite monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers."

Another critic has called it the "perfection of the mock-heroic." Pope's most successful poem-- if we measure it by the fame and the money it brought him-- was his translation of the +Iliad+ of Homer. A great scholar said of this translation that it was "a very pretty poem, but not Homer." The fact is that Pope did not translate directly from the Greek, but from a French or a Latin version which he kept beside him.

Whatever its faults, and however great its deficiency as a representation of the powerful and deep simplicity of the original Greek, no one can deny the charm and finish of its versification, or the rapidity, facility, and melody of the flow of the verse. These qualities make this work unique in English poetry.

12. After finishing the +Iliad+, Pope undertook a translation of the +Odyssey+ of Homer. This was not so successful; nor was it so well done.

In fact, Pope translated only half of it himself; the other half was written by two scholars called Broome and Fenton. His next great poem was the +Dunciad+,-- a satire upon those petty writers, carping critics, and hired defamers who had tried to write down the reputation of Pope's Homeric work. "The composition of the 'Dunciad' revealed to Pope where his true strength lay, in blending personalities with moral reflections."

13. Pope's greatest works were written between 1730 and 1740; and they consist of the +Moral Essays+, the +Essay on Man+, and the +Epistles and Satires+. These poems are full of the finest thoughts, expressed in the most perfect form. Mr Ruskin quotes the couplet--

"Never elated, while one man's oppressed; Never dejected, whilst another's blessed,"--

as "the most complete, concise, and lofty expression of moral temper existing in English words." The poem of Pope which shows his best and most striking qualities in their most characteristic form, is probably the +Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot+ or +Prologue to the Satires+. In this poem occur the celebrated lines about Addison-- which make a perfect portrait, although it is far from being a true likeness.

His pithy lines and couplets have obtained a permanent place in literature. Thus we have:--

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

"Good-nature and good-sense must ever join.

To err is human, to forgive divine."

"All seems infected that the infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundic'd eye."

"Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof who merit praise."

The greatest conciseness is visible in his epigrams and in his compliments:--

"A vile encomium doubly ridicules: There's nothing blackens like the ink of fools."

"And not a vanity is given in vain."

"Would ye be blest? despise low joys, low gains, Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains, Be virtuous, and be happy for your pains."

14. Pope is the foremost literary figure of his age and century; and he is also the head of a school. He brought to perfection a style of writing verse which was followed by hundreds of clever writers. Cowper says of him:--

"But Pope-- his musical finesse was such, So nice his ear, so delicate his touch,-- Made poetry a mere mechanic art, And every warbler has his tune by heart."

Pope was not the poet of nature or of humanity; he was the poet of "the town," and of the Court. He was greatly influenced by the neatness and polish of French verse; and, from his boyhood, his great ambition was to be "a correct poet." He worked and worked, polished and polished, until each idea had received at his hands its very neatest and most epigrammatic expression. In the art of condensed, compact, pointed, and yet harmonious and flowing verse, Pope has no equal. But, as a vehicle for poetry-- for the love and sympathy with nature and man which every true poet must feel, Pope's verse is artificial; and its style of expression has now died out. It was one of the chief missions of Wordsworth to drive the Popian second-hand vocabulary out of existence.

15. JAMES THOMSON (+1700-1748+), the poet of +The Seasons+, was born at Ednam in Roxburghshire, Scotland, in the year 1700. He was educated at the grammar-school of Jedburgh, and then at the University of Edinburgh.

It was intended that he should enter the ministry of the Church of Scotland; but, before his college course was finished, he had given up this idea: poetry proved for him too strong a magnet. While yet a young man, he had written his poem of +Winter+; and, with that in his pocket, he resolved to try his fortune in London. While walking about the streets, looking at the shops, and gazing at the new wonders of the vast metropolis, his pocket was picked of his pocket-handkerchief and his letters of introduction; and he found himself alone in London-- thrown entirely on his own resources. A publisher was, however, in time found for +Winter+; and the poem slowly rose into appreciation and popularity.

This was in 1726. Next year, +Summer+; two years after, +Spring+ appeared; while +Autumn+, in 1730, completed the +Seasons+. The +Castle of Indolence+-- a poem in the Spenserian stanza-- appeared in 1748. In the same year he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, though he never visited the scene of his duty, but had his work done by deputy. He died at Kew in the year 1748.

16. Thomson's place as a poet is high in the second rank. His +Seasons+ have always been popular; and, when Coleridge found a well-thumbed and thickly dog's-eared copy lying on the window-sill of a country inn, he exclaimed "This is true fame!" His +Castle of Indolence+ is, however, a finer piece of poetical work than any of his other writings. The first canto is the best. But the +Seasons+ have been much more widely read; and a modern critic says: "No poet has given the special pleasure which poetry is capable of giving to so large a number of persons in so large a measure as Thomson." Thomson is very unequal in his style. Sometimes he rises to a great height of inspired expression; at other times he sinks to a dull dead level of pedestrian prose. His power of describing scenery is often very remarkable. Professor Craik says: "There is no other poet who surrounds us with so much of the truth of nature;" and he calls the +Castle of Indolence+ "one of the gems of the language."

17. THOMAS GRAY (+1716-1771+), the greatest elegiac poet of the century, was born in London in 1716. His father was a "money-scrivener," as it was called; in other words, he was a stock-broker. His mother's brother was an a.s.sistant-master at Eton; and at Eton, under the care of this uncle, Gray was brought up. One of his schoolfellows was the famous Horace Walpole. After leaving school, Gray proceeded to Cambridge; but, instead of reading mathematics, he studied cla.s.sical literature, history, and modern languages, and never took his degree. After some years spent at Cambridge, he entered himself of the Inner Temple; but he never gave much time to the study of law. His father died in 1741; and Gray, soon after, gave up the law and went to live entirely at Cambridge. The first published of his poems was the +Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College+. The +Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard+ was handed about in ma.n.u.script before its publication in 1750; and it made his reputation at once. In 1755 the +Progress of Poesy+ was published; and the ode ent.i.tled +The Bard+ was begun. In 1768 he was appointed Professor of Modern History at Cambridge; but, though he studied hard, he never lectured. He died at Cambridge, at the age of fifty-four, in the year 1771. Gray was never married. He was said by those who knew him to be the most learned man of his time in Europe.

Literature, history, and several sciences-- all were thoroughly known to him. He had read everything in the world that was best worth reading; while his knowledge of botany, zoology, and entomology was both wide and exact.

18. Gray's +Elegy+ took him seven years to write; it contains thirty-two stanzas; and Mr Palgrave says "they are perhaps the n.o.blest stanzas in the language." General Wolfe, when sailing down to attack Quebec, recited the Elegy to his officers, and declared, "Now, gentlemen, I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec." Lord Byron called the Elegy "the corner-stone of Gray's poetry." Gray ranks with Milton as the most finished workman in English verse; and certainly he spared no pains. Gray said himself that "the style he aimed at was extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical;"

and this style, at which he aimed, he succeeded fully in achieving. One of the finest stanzas in the whole Elegy is the last, which the writer omitted in all the later editions:--

"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The red-breast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

19. WILLIAM COLLINS (+1721-1759+), one of the truest lyrical poets of the century, was born at Chichester on Christmas-day, 1721. He was educated at Winchester School; afterwards at Queen's, and also at Magdalen College, Oxford. Before he left school he had written a set of poems called +Persian Eclogues+. He left the university with a reputation for ability and for indolence; went to London "with many projects in his head and little money in his pocket;" and there found a kind and fast friend in Dr Johnson. His +Odes+ appeared in 1747. The volume fell stillborn from the press: not a single copy was sold; no one bought, read, or noticed it. In a fit of furious despair, the unhappy author called in the whole edition and burnt every copy with his own hands. And yet it was, with the single exception of the songs of Burns, the truest poetry that had appeared in the whole of the eighteenth century. A great critic says: "In the little book there was hardly a single false note: there was, above all things, a purity of music, a clarity of style, to which I know of no parallel in English verse from the death of Andrew Marvell to the birth of William Blake." Soon after this great disappointment he went to live at Richmond, where he formed a friendship with Thomson and other poets. In 1749 he wrote the +Ode on the Death of Thomson+, beginning--

"In yonder grave a Druid lies"--

one of the finest of his poems. Not long after, he was attacked by a disease of the brain, from which he suffered, at intervals, during the remainder of his short life. He died at Chichester in 1759, at the age of thirty-eight.

20. Collins's best poem is the +Ode to Evening+; his most elaborate, the +Ode on the Pa.s.sions+; and his best known, the +Ode+ beginning--

"How sleep the brave, who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blessed!"

His latest and best critic says of his poems: "His range of flight was perhaps the narrowest, but a.s.suredly the highest, of his generation. He could not be taught singing like a finch, but he struck straight upward for the sun like a lark.... The direct sincerity and purity of their positive and straightforward inspiration will always keep his poems fresh and sweet in the senses of all men. He was a solitary song-bird among many more or less excellent pipers and pianists. He could put more spirit of colour into a single stroke, more breath of music into a single note, than could all the rest of his generation into all the labours of their lives."

CHAPTER VII.

THE SECOND HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

1. +Prose-Writers.+-- The four greatest prose-writers of the latter half of the eighteenth century are +Johnson+, +Goldsmith+, +Burke+, and +Gibbon+. Dr Johnson was the most prominent literary figure in London at this period; and filled in his own time much the same position that Carlyle lately held in literary circles. He wrote on many subjects-- but chiefly on literature and morals; and hence he was called "The Great Moralist." Goldsmith stands out clearly as the writer of the most pleasant and easy prose; his pen was ready for any subject; and it has been said of him with perfect truth, that he touched nothing that he did not adorn. Burke was the most eloquent writer of his time, and by far the greatest political thinker that England has ever produced. He is known by an essay he wrote when a very young man-- on "The Sublime and Beautiful"; but it is to his speeches and political writings that we must look for his n.o.blest thoughts and most eloquent language. Gibbon is one of the greatest historians and most powerful writers the world has ever seen.

2. SAMUEL JOHNSON (+1709-1784+), the great essayist and lexicographer, was born at Lichfield in the year 1709. His father was a bookseller; and it was in his father's shop that Johnson acquired his habit of omnivorous reading, or rather devouring of books. The mistress of the dame's school, to which he first went, declared him to be the best scholar she ever had. After a few years at the free grammar-school of Lichfield, and one year at Stourbridge, he went to Pembroke College, Oxford, at the age of nineteen. Here he did not confine himself to the studies of the place, but indulged in a wide range of miscellaneous reading. He was too poor to take a degree, and accordingly left Oxford without graduating. After acting for some time as a bookseller's hack, he married a Mrs Porter of Birmingham-- a widow with 800. With this money he opened a boarding-school, or "academy" as he called it; but he had never more than three scholars-- the most famous of whom was the celebrated player, David Garrick. In 1737 he went up to London, and for the next quarter of a century struggled for a living by the aid of his pen. During the first ten years of his London life he wrote chiefly for the 'Gentleman's Magazine.' In 1738 his +London+-- a poem in heroic metre-- appeared. In 1747 he began his famous +Dictionary+; it was completed in 1755; and the University of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of M.A. In 1749 he wrote another poem-- also in heroic metre-- the 'Vanity of Human Wishes.' In 1750 he had begun the periodical that raised his fame to its full height-- a periodical to which he gave the name of +The Rambler+. It appeared twice a-week; and Dr Johnson wrote every article in it for two years. In 1759 he published the short novel called +Ra.s.selas+: it was written to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral; and he wrote it "in the evenings of a week."